BEg2 ch 40 - brief summary

[Michael Bailey]

Having developed a distaste for the Deseret swimming pool, Maxine attends
her sister Brooke’s health club, and finds March Kelleher puffing away on
cigarettes in the snack bar, using the free wi-fi.

March confides that she’s worried about her daughter Tallis, who’s been
dumped by son-in-law Gabriel Ice. She describes Tallis as “innocent” -
Maxine doesn’t address criminal culpability, but in solidarity of
motherhood, listens as March limns a picture of Taillis’s naïveté - and of
course, (“wo-mensch”?) offers to take a dekko.


Maxine finds Tallis in a tiny apartment in a hyper-modern building,
drinking Hpnotiq

http://www.hpnotiq.com


SINCE STEPPING ONTO THE SCENE IN 2001, WE BROKE THE MOLD WITH OUR
EYE-CATCHING COLOR AND PREMIUM BLEND OF EXOTIC FRUIT JUICES, FRENCH VODKA &
A TOUCH OF COGNAC. NOW, IT’S TIME YOU DISCOVERED THE ORIGINAL FLAVOR AND
SIGNATURE COLOR THAT CHANGED GAME.


Tallis starts giving Maxine the scoop: says it started when she had noticed
escalating trouble accessing anything online including necessary work
sites; fast forward to Gabriel Ice screaming at her and throwing her
possessions about, telling her to get out.

Then she starts reminiscing about their college days and a movie called
“The Geek Who Couldn’t Sleep” which the two of them used to pretend they
were in; eventually Tallis’s remembering hanging with Ice’s old roommate
Dieter at a post-9-11 funeral; Dieter’s bagpipes are experiencing high
demand.

Maxine gets Tallis to admit to the previously-clocked-by-Maxine affair with
Chaz Larday, & makes her aware - if she isn’t already - that Chazz is
working for Ice.

Maxine advises Tallis to call her mother, then notices a security cam
blinking in a corner. They bat the thing till it falls, but Maxine urges
that they get out immediately.

In the lobby, Dragoslav the doorman advises Tallis of two guys leaving word
that they’d be seeing Tallis.

Maxine figures Misha & Grisha. Presumably there to help, not harm? Or so
she spins it to Tallis, who’s beyond worried.

& just around the corner, there the plucky padonki are, bustling the ladies
into Igor’s ZiL. Apparently they were planning on holding Tallis as a
hostage to ensure Ice’s behavior while they do - something?

Tallis laughs while Maxine explains to the lads why Tallis isn’t a
realistic hostage candidate.

So it turns out they’re headed for one of Ice’s server farms upstate which
Tallis has been to & offers to draw them a map of. She has trouble with the
name of the property, Tewattsirokwas - and Maxine is hit with nostalgia for
the Trotskyite summer camp she attended at that exact spot.

Lake Heatsink nearby has the depth & coldness that make it a great spot for
a server farm.

They’ve got a vircator they are going to run a little test with, not
full-scale, “maybe 10%.”

Igor “doesn’t know about this,” and Maxine goes along but fishes for more.
Apparently Igor’s sympathies with the Chechens had caused his leaving the
Spetsnaz -

< this stuff really conveys a lot more to me lately, Chechnya’s laudable
aspirations of independence having been ruthlessly crushed at the
insistence of glabrous-domed villain Putin back in the 90s, whilst the
“free world” was reveling in the “peace dividend” - revealing his scabrous
nature & genocidal imperialism all the way back then>

<so Igor from at least some angles is a righteous dude, I knew I liked him
at least a little>

And thus, Igor was supporting Chechens financially with some of the money
Lester Traipse was funneling away from the Wahhabist prick-bastards that
Ice (& possibly the CIA) was sending it to.

<this has to be unknown to Putin, right? or otherwise, Igor would have to
be looking out for pointy umbrellas and so forth >

So it isn’t just revenge for Traipse - though that’s the part which
emotionally moved Misha & Grisha - but also for an interruption of funds
that Igor’s friends count on.


Poughkeepsie’s where M&G meet their contact Yuri with his generator for the
vircator (Maxine upon seeing the size of it has some doubts about the
“maybe 10%”) - and it’s where Maxi & Tallis get out of the ZiL & board the
10:59 back to Manhattan.