Page 109 of Moonlighter

“I like a good caper as much as the next guy. But he’s so slick you wouldn’t find anything,” Max says. “So let’s talk about your options. I can think of three, in order of easiest to hardest.”

“Let’s hear ‘em.”

“First one is obvious—pretend we never had this conversation.”

“God, it’s tempting.”

“I’m sure it is. But you and I are the good guys. We don’t just let the bastards win.” Max sips his coffee and gives me a rare smile. He looks more like Eric when he smiles.

“And the second option?”

“You drop a lot of extra money into manufacturing. Send a team of your most trusted engineers to stand around in the factory while the motherboards are made. Compare the results to your blueprint every few hours. And send more trusted people to watch the shipping container all the way home. You’ll blow your budget, but at least you’ll know you have clean hardware.”

Even as he’s speaking, the difficulties are multiplying like mushrooms. I’d have to convince my board to spend a lot of money on a problem that I can’t prove we actually have.

“I could manufacture my own product,” I say slowly. That’s only slightly more palatable though. “But that would cost just as much and take twice as long.”

“Yeah, that’s why I left that solution off the list.”

“What’s behind door number three?” I have to ask. “Please tell me it’s cheaper.”

“Well…” Max chuckles. “I love door number three. It’s my personal favorite. And it will possibly save you money. You’d agree to buy motherboards from Xian Smith, while buying them from someone else at the same time. You’d order twice the number you reasonably need. And then we nail his ass when he delivers something dirty.”

“It’s only cheaper if I can decline to pay,” I point out.

Max shrugs, because he doesn’t think about these things. He doesn’t have to. His business has no cranky board members, and no hungry shareholders. Max runs a fiefdom. And I’m envious.

“Remind me why you like this option?” I ask.

“Because I like to make people pay for their indiscretions. And because he may be backed by a sovereign nation. If we let him get away with this, the bad guys just won. They could use their tools to shut down the whole financial system. Or shut down our legal system. Shut down our power grid. Shut down—”

“Okay, I get it. Jesus. If you had to guess, is Xian Smith a spy? For who?”

Max shakes his head. “I can’t guess. China is the obvious answer, given his factory connections there. But it could be anyone. You can no longer say ‘China wants this’ or ‘Russia wants that.’ The world is now run by a bunch of billionaire plutocrats with too much money and power, pulling everyone else’s puppet strings in the name of national defense. Xian Smith might be working only for himself. At his whim, he might sell information to China, Russia, Iran…”

I rub my temples. “Okay. I get it. I need to think.”

“I’ll bet you do.”

“And I need to think fast. I only have a few days to order the parts I need. Maybe I’ll use the guy in Thailand. Nobody is expecting me to do that.”

“Send me everything you have on the manufacturers you’re vetting. And when Xian Smith contacts you again, wave him over.”

The last bite of bagel pauses on its way to my mouth as I realize I’ll have to meet with him again. I wonder if he does his own dirty work. That man might have rappelled into my kitchen window the other night. He might have searched my bedroom.

I have never felt such loathing for a stranger in my life. And I’m not even sure that he’s guilty.

“Alex, I know this is a lot to take in,” Max tells me. “And there’s a small chance I’m wrong. Very small.”

Eric lets out a bark of laughter.

“It’s a crazy thing,” I babble. “To hack an entire factory design. Too many things could go wrong. Too many people might notice.”

“That is all true,” Max agrees. “But you have to weigh the difficulty of a crime against the potential payoff. How much would it be worth to someone to eavesdrop on New York’s richest people?”

“You wouldn’t be able to control the targets,” I point out.

“So? Once the spy chips are in place, you could switch on the whole mess and then search their communications for keywords.Merger. Acquisition. Prototype. You could spy on their Slack channels. You could read emails and texts at will. You could eavesdrop…”