"Pilaf!" Raf enthused, all jolliness. "I haven't had a decent pilaf sinceBeirut."
Starlitz narrowed his eyes. "How about your personnel? Any problems there?"
Eero nodded. "We wish we had more people on the start-up, of course. Technicalstart-ups always want more people. Still, we have enough Finnish hackers to bootand run your banking system. We are mostly very young people, but if thoseRussian maths professors can log in from Leningrad -sorry, Petersburg--then weshould have no big problems. The Russian maths people, they were all unemployedunfortunately for them. But they are very good programmers, very solid skills.The only problem with our many young hackers from Finland... . " Eero absentlyswitched the grenade from hand to hand. "Well, we are so very excited about thefirst true Internet money-laundry. We tried very hard not to talk, not to tellanyone what we are doing, but ... well, we're so proud of the work."
"Tell your mouse-jockeys to sit on the news a while longer," Starlitz said.
"Really, it's too late," Eero told him meekly.
Starlitz frowned. "Well, how many goddamn people have you Finn cowboys let in onthis thing, for Christ's sake?"
"How many people read the alt newsgroups?" Eero said. "I don't have thosefigures, but there's alt.hack, alt.2600, alr.smash.the.state, alt.fan.blacknet... . Many."
Starlitz ran his hand over his head. "Right," he said. Like most Internetdisasters, the situation was a fait accompli. "Okay, that development has tornit big-time. Aino, you did right to bring this guy here right away. The hellwith proper operational protocol. We gotta get that bank up and running as soonas possible."
"There's nothing wrong with publicity," Raf said. "We need publicity to attract