BEg2 Chap 8 Summary Part 1

[Allen Ruch]

Sorry, I sent this but it didn’t seem to arrive: maybe because I attached an image of a Furby? Anyway, here it is again, sans Furby:

Chapter 8 Summary Part 1

Part 1: Outside Bagel Quest, near Queensboro Bridge.
Cast: Reg and Maxine

Reg, now in full paranoid mode, meets Maxine for lunch. He’s convinced he’s being followed, that his apartment has been searched, maybe even his computer. Maxine confides she believes she’s being followed, too.

Reg tells Maxine about a hawala, an off-the grid method of moving money around through families and organizations, leaves no trace. Things remain in human memory, fees may be paid in discounts and barter.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/hawala.asp

Reg’s spy Eric has a wired a Furby in a back office at hashsligerz.

https://furby.hasbro.com/en-us

According to Reg, he’s learned that hashslingerz is “hiding a lot of major transaction history down behind multiple passwords and unlinked directories.” Some of this is coded in a “strange Arabic” called “Leet.”

They believe that a memory-deficient “hawala” at hashslingerz is trying to move money out of the country into Dubai, and thence throughout the Persian Gulf.

Recalling that the Islamic world has its own interest-phobic financial rules and workarounds, Maxine believes that Ice “stands to make a bundle in the region.” Maxine and Reg discuss that this is not simple fraud; but “Ice or somebody in his shop” are bankrolling something “big and invisible.”

Reg asks if Maxine still keeps the Tomcat in her purse.

https://www.beretta.com/en-us/beretta-3032-tomcat-inox/

He wonders if he should bail, and points out that Eric is growing increasingly paranoid, and only wants to meet in the Deep Web. Thinking about her time in DeepArcher, Maxine volunteers to meet Eric. She decides a “real-world meeting” would be in order first, and Reg promises to email her a list o Eric’s hangouts.

[Minor spoiler: This comes to fruition in Chapter 20 at the strip-club called “Joie de Beavre.”]