Fool Me Once (Privateer Tales) Read Online Free PDF Page B

night stand. How about you give me your best number now or I will just move on. You know better than I do, I will eventually find someone to give me a fair price. I think that should be you, don’t you agree?”
    “It would seem I should know your name if we are to be business partners,” he said smoothly.
    “My friends call me Lena.”
    “Well Lena, my dear, I assume you have more than one of these coins and now you certainly have stirred my curiosity. It would seem coins of this nature might be in the company of other similarly interesting items. Would that be the type of partner you are looking for?”
    “You have a fanciful imagination, Mr. Gowda. Let me state that if I were able to find someone who could help me with this coin, then that would be a good start.”
    Punjay Gowda held the coin up and pretended to inspect it in-depth, trying to divine some new hidden value. We both knew it was a show. His AI had already told him what he could expect to sell it for, its break-even point, and had probably offered different thresholds for twenty, thirty, forty and fifty percent returns. He was just buying himself some time.
    “Okay, Lena. I’ll bite. Forty-seven fifty for the entire dozen.”
    I was a little startled to find he knew I was carrying that many coins. It was a good price. The way I figured it, he would make twenty percent. He was sending a message by tipping his hand about his awareness of the other eleven coins.
    “Immediate transfer?” I asked.
    “Yes.”
    “Agreed.”
    “Anything else you wish to discuss?” he asked. By now, I had no doubt he knew I had something strapped to my chest. If he was willing to work at twenty percent, I was willing to lay my cards on the table.
    “How are you set for funds? Will you work at twenty percent for precious metal, ninety-two percent pure?”
    “How much?”
    “You would need an additional eighteen thousand.”
    “If it pans out, yes,” he answered.
    “Immediate transfer as well?”
    “Yes.”
    I unzipped my suit-liner far enough down the front to unstrap the small platinum bar and placed it on the table.
    “Ahh. Platinum. You are asking eighteen thousand?”
    “I am.”
    Standing outside a few minutes later, I considered my accomplishments. If I didn’t settle anything else that day, liquidating those assets was enough. I could now move to my next objective - trying to fit in. For that, I needed to do some people watching.
    I consulted my map, even though I knew it would mark me as a tourist. I was no longer carrying anything of any value, so my risk was low. There was a concentration of restaurants a few blocks away and I was hungry.
    Small round tables with umbrellas, littered the restaurant district I’d discovered. Subtle differences in table size and umbrella style or color made it obvious which tables belonged to which cafés. It was hard to imagine that this hadn’t been here last night or that the décor wasn’t anything but original. The building’s walls looked like they had been there for centuries and the weather-worn look of the bricks in the street gave that same feeling of age. I felt completely out of place in my vac-suit and poorly maintained hair.
    If the waiter noticed, he was polite enough not to say anything, and I was grateful for that small kindness. I didn’t recognize anything on the menu. I needed to choose a persona. Who would I be? What would my story be? I scanned the crowd for women my age and tried to figure out who they were and what they might be doing. The first women who caught my attention was in a flowery dress with bright red shoes. She had matching glossy red paint on her lips and long flowing blonde hair. There were bags on the ground next to her, so she was obviously out shopping. A thin flat golden wire ran along her cheek from her ear to just in front of her eye. I wasn’t sure how it was attached but it was an HUD of some sort. She sat there chatting loudly into it and drinking from an impossibly small