Aslan230: I am here. I hope this is worth my time. I left a warm bed and a warmer woman for this.
TORquil: Of course it is. You paid me to do this, remember?
Aslan230: So do what I pay you to do. Talk.
TORquil: You were right. Dialogos has been in touch. Two-and-a-half hours ago.
Morosov, bleary-eyed in the security of his office, rocked back in his chair. He forced himself to remain calm. Powerful fingers thumped the keyboard of his computer.
Aslan230: You’re sure it was Dialogos, not an impostor?
TORquil: Reasonably sure, though nothing is certain in this life. This Dialogos knows the back-up safe words.
Aslan230: What did he want?
TORquil: He wants me to hack a mobile phone. In America.
Goosebumps prickled on the back of Morosov’s neck.
Aslan230: Where in America?
TORquil: The phone has an area code associated with a town called Pittsburgh. According to GPS, that’s where the phone is right now.
Aslan230: You’ve hacked it?
TORquil: Almost. Reception there is very bad. I suspect it’s in a basement or something. But it will not be long. It is only the reception that is slowing me down, not the phone itself.
Aslan230: Understood. Whatever you give to Dialogos, you give to me also, you understand?
TORquil: And my fee?
Aslan230: As agreed. Do what you do. I’m going back to bed. Goodnight.
Morosov vanished from the chatroom but made no move to return home. He couldn’t sleep. Not now. The negr was alive. And interested in a mobile phone in Pittsburgh, America. Was the mongrel shit in this Pittsburgh, too, or somewhere else entirely? What was he up to over there that needed TORquil’s very special sort of assistance? And for whom?
Morosov paced the bounds of his office like a caged animal, thinking.