The Honeypot Hustle

Wout did not want to be here.

“Stop fidgeting so much,” Mads hissed at him. “You look like you don’t want to be here.”

Wout glared at him with every bit of murderous rage that he felt. It was Mads’s fault that he even was in this situation, after all, standing in the casino’s lobby while wearing an uncomfortable dress shirt that was too tight in the arms and shoulders instead of kicking his feet up behind his monitors and enjoying an infinite supply of snacks and energy drinks.

(“I don’t care whose type I am,” Wout had said during the mission briefing earlier. “I’m not going out in the field.”

“Our mark has a weakness for twunks with strong jawlines and frosted tips, think early 2000’s boy band,” Mads explained. “You’re the only one of us who fits the profile.” Wout already had serious doubts about how true that statement was, but the smirk Mads wore did not help his case at all.

“I do not frost my tips,” Wout protested. He shot a pleading look in Jonas’s direction.

Jonas shook his head. “Wout, you’re going,” he said, and his word was final, so that was that.)

“This is supposed to be your job,” Wout muttered. Mads was their grifter, their con man, the smooth talker who charmed marks with a smile on his face. Who cared if he was supposedly too blond and baby faced for this particular mission? Wasn’t the whole point of Mads that he was everyone’s type?

Mads gave Wout a friendly pat on the back. It was not very comforting. Mads said, “You know I like to share the wealth.” Wout was fairly certain he gave a similar speech to all his various lovers, just in that case, wealth meant penis and here it meant tedious field work. “Besides, you know how small our social circles can get. Better to make sure he sees a fresh face, eh?”

“Great, then you already have a rapport established, and you don’t need me here at all.” Wout turned on his heel, ready to make his escape. He had become, like most people who ended up in this profession, pretty good at knowing how to beat a hasty retreat. He just hadn’t expected to have to beat a hasty retreat from his own goddamn crew.

“Wout,” Jonas’s voice crackled over the radios. The tone was mild, but it held just enough reproach that Wout could feel the heavy weight of Jonas’s disappointment. Jonas was watching this all unfold from Wout’s usual position up in their makeshift command center, where Wout had painstakingly spliced into the casino’s extensive security systems. Jonas was the only person Wout trusted anywhere near any of his computers, and the rest of the team had been warned that if anyone else touched anything while Wout wasn’t there to stop them that Wout would, well, Wout would come up with something, and they would find out what it was when they least expected it.

Wout let out a sigh and turned back to Mads. He had hoped, on some level, that if he complained enough that someone (Jonas) would let him off the hook. But grim determination was the only thing that was going to get him through this now. “Fine,” he said through gritted teeth. “Let’s go.”

---

They made their way through the casino floors, which were a riot of noises and colors. Sparkling chandeliers and screens. Rattling slot machines, roulette wheels, and card shufflers. The detailing was all in gleaming golds, polished until they shone. The rooms were filled with beautiful people, smiling and laughing, dressed to the nines, here to see and be seen. It was an assault on the senses, all of it designed to extract as much money from as many people as possible. Wout could admire how effective it all was, and even knowing what he did about all the tricks, he felt himself also getting a little high off the heady mixture of greed and desperation.

Still, they weren’t here to count cards or pick pockets. They were here to gather information on G’s operations in Monaco off an old associate of his that had landed in town. Supposedly this guy had gotten out of the game years ago, but he still had friendly relations with G, and he was here on little holiday to play the tables and flirt with some boys. His distance from any current jobs would make him a little less guarded, a little more vulnerable. At least, that’s what Mads said.

Wout still thought this whole plot was ridiculous, and he’d even laid out an entire twenty minute presentation on how they could just track all of the expenses in and out of G’s bank accounts, including the ones G had thought he had put under enough layers of indirection that the paper trail didn’t lead back to him. At the very least, they’d be able to get information on several people who had an interest in rare and expensive art and who weren’t above reaching out to the criminal underworld to get it. That would be worth way more than what Wout could half-heartedly seduce out of anyone. The bank account tracking would have only taken Wout a few days, and more importantly, Wout wouldn’t have had to talk to anyone. But Mads had been very insistent that they needed to do an in-person meeting. (“You get all sorts of information from being around a real person that no boring computer screen will ever tell you, you know?” he said. Wout very much did not know. Computers made way more sense than people did.)

Eventually, Mads pulled them to a stop in the midst of some card tables. “Ah,” Mads said. “There he is.” He gestured towards a man sitting at one of the blackjack tables. Their mark was facing away from them, dressed in a leather jacket. His shoulders had a pleasant squareness to them, and his reddish hair was buzzed short. What was his name again? Brian? Bruce? All Wout could remember was that it was Anglo-sounding and started with a ‘B.’ His original plan of learning as little as possible about this particular mission was starting to bite him in the ass. Mads continued, “There’s a seat next to him. Go.” He gave Wout an unnecessarily hard shove in that direction.

Wout took a deep breath and walked over to the empty chair. He settled himself into it, trying to get a sense of the table and the stakes. It wasn’t a high roller table. Bets were reasonable, more for the type of person who was here to get a taste of gambling in a famous casino but wasn’t interested in betting away their entire life savings. The mark did have a decent stack of chips next to him, but he didn’t seem interested in spending all of them at once. Maybe he was a cautious person by nature. That was the kind of attitude that allowed someone to retire comfortably from their lives instead of ending up dead or in jail. Wout reached into his pocket for a €25 chip so he could buy his way into a hand. Sepp had set him up with a handful of chips that he just happened to have lying around, and Wout hadn’t asked any questions about how Sepp had gotten them. He knew better than to do that.

The mark didn’t look in Wout’s direction at all as Wout tossed the chip down on the table and the croupier dealt him in. He was too focused on the cards in front of him. Wout mostly sat there awkwardly, glancing at B-named Anglo out of the corner of his eye.

“At least try to make contact,” Mads hissed over the radio.

“Uh,” Wout said to the mark. “Hi.”

Mads let out a despairing groan.

The mark looked up at Wout and blinked. “Hello,” he said, somewhat warily.

“Well, at this point,” Mads sighed. “You might as well introduce yourself.”

Wout said, “I’m Wout.”

Some gleeful snickering that sounded suspiciously like Mathieu came over the comms before Mads broke in again. “Not your real name! How many times have you watched us do this? Didn’t you learn anything?”

In Wout’s defense, Mads’s original instructions were to “show up and look pretty.” Wout had already accomplished the first part, and who knew how well he was doing on the second, but at no point had anyone bothered to give him a cover identity.

The mark smiled and held out a hand. “Bradley. But all my friends call me Brad.”

Wout shook it. Bradley held on for a beat longer than was probably necessary. That was probably a good sign. Wout said, “That’s, uh, a nice name.” He had no idea if it was a nice name, but it sounded like something someone would say while they were flirting. Maybe Wout really should have been paying more attention during Mads’s ops. What would Mads say in a situation like this? “Can I, uh, would it be okay if I called you Brad?” That was something vaguely resembling something Mads had said while charming a rich heiress last month, though Mads didn’t sound like a malfunctioning robot when he said it.

This felt bad and like it was getting worse by the second. Wout was pretty sure he was tanking this whole operation, and that he would get to rub it in everyone’s face with a huge ‘I-told-you-so’ when G showed up with Rowe in tow to chew them all out for running a job against them. But Bradley just gave Wout a very obvious once over. “Honey,” he drawled, “you can call me anything you want.”

“How is this happening?” Mads bitched. “That was the most awkward pickup line I’ve ever heard. And somehow it still worked?”

The croupier made a polite but impatient noise in their direction, indicating that they should get back to play.

Bradley ignored her, his entire attention now focused on Wout. “What do you say we go somewhere else and I buy you a drink?” He wasn’t unattractive as far as marks went. He had a handsome, if somewhat weathered, face and broad shoulders and strong, tattooed hands.

“Sure?” Wout said. He had expected this whole thing to end with Bradley ignoring him for the next hour as Wout made worse and worse attempts at small talk. He was completely unprepared for any form of success.

Bradley beamed at him and swept up his remaining chips, excited and eager. He led them away from the tables and towards the nearest bar. Wout was worried that he’d be forced to engage in conversation, but Bradley kept up a steady stream of chatter about the last time he’d visited Monaco. It was a rambling story, and he made half-hearted attempts to gloss over the parts where he and his “friends” (read: crew) had engaged in grand larceny, but it was easy enough to read between the omissions and veiled euphemisms. Wout hoped that (a) Jonas was taking his usual meticulous notes and (b) that Bradley hadn’t made Wout’s paper-thin cover and wasn’t just playing along to fuck with them.

The bar looked like the rest of the casino, glittering and golden. A politely responsive bartender took their drink orders. If it were up to Wout, he would just get a beer, but he felt like this was a place where he’d get looked at funny about it, so he picked a cocktail at random off the menu. Bradley got a vodka martini, and Wout couldn’t tell if he was leaning into the James Bond espionage vibes of this whole thing or if he just liked martinis.

They found a table after that, and Bradley even pulled out a chair for Wout in a way that felt almost chivalrous. After settling into his seat, Wout sipped at his drink, which was almost good enough to justify the price of it, and tried to think of a safe, reasonable conversational topic.

He was saved from having to do too much work on that front, because Bradley blurted out, “You’re really-- you’re really fucking beautiful.” He was staring at Wout, and his attention was bright and intent and unfiltered.

“Um,” Wout said. He had never been told he was beautiful before, and he had no idea how to respond. He had a brief moment of wondering if he could get away with pretending he didn’t actually understand English, but they were probably too far into this for it to be in any way convincing. Maybe this was just about his hair? People were always being weird about Wout’s hair and Mads did mention that thing about frosted tips.

Mads said, “Please stop looking so terrified. Someone is going to think you’re being trafficked.”

If Wout was capable of responding, he would point out that he was, in fact, being prostituted by his co-workers, so maybe the accusation had some merit. But because he couldn’t, he attempted to paste a smile onto his face.

“Oh fuck,” Bradley said, wincing. “I’m coming on too strong, aren’t I?” He pulled back a bit, suddenly looking a little shy. It was charming, more charming than Wout expected to find a mark. He seemed interested in Wout in a way that felt genuine, and for all his bluster, Bradley came across as rather sweet.

Wout felt himself smiling again, but this smile was real. “It’s fine. I was just surprised.”

Bradley said, “I just-- I don’t know what it is about you, but I just-- it’s like I can’t stop myself. Things just come out of my mouth.”

That particular line brought gagging noises over the team radio. Jonas said, “Mathieu, if you don’t stop being disruptive, I will have to kick you out of the room.”

Wout was used to getting people’s unfiltered selves, but that was usually because he was listening in over a bug in their rooms or poking around their phones or just because Jasper didn’t know when to shut the fuck up. Maybe it wasn’t good for the mission, but Wout was feeling a little tender-hearted for Bradley, who seemed lonely, who seemed like he just wanted someone around to listen to him without judgment. Wout said. “You should tell me more about your friends. That story about the last time you were here was fun.”

The smile Wout got in return from Bradley was blinding.

“That wasn’t half bad,” Mads said with grudging approval. “We’ll make a con man out of you yet.” Wout thought he’d much rather drown himself in the conveniently-located Mediterranean Sea than ever do this again, but he just nodded along as Bradley launched into another story about a job that he was trying to play off as a childish prank but really involved relocating some stolen art from one private collector to another.

Wout only had to sip on his drink and make vaguely affirmative noises during breaks in the conversation, which was doable at his current confidence game skill level. He dropped an innocuous comment about wondering what Bradley’s friends were up to these days, and Bradley gave up everything he knew about the current status of G’s crew. Ganna was still their front man, as handsome as ever. There was some new kid acting as their wheels who seemed to be going by the name of “Pidders” and didn’t understand the purpose of brakes. They’d picked up Mohoric at some point to be their gadget guy, which was new and interesting news, because he’d been strictly freelance for years and years, and who knew what G had promised him to get him on board. Some infant named Josh was hanging around, towering over everyone else, talking about how he thought Coldplay was old school, and occasionally bashing a few faces in. Remco was, well, he was still Remco. Bradley had even mentioned the rich Englishman who was bankrolling G’s whole operation. Everyone in the business knew of the guy, of course, but his identity had remained shadowy and hidden. According to Bradley, he was from Derbyshire and had this weird thing about pillows. It was more than they ever could have hoped for. Wout wondered if Mads’s job really was this easy. Maybe they should be giving him a smaller cut.

After half an hour of Bradley’s rambling, he paused. “Sorry I’ve been monopolizing the conversation,” he said, a little rueful about it. “What about you? What do you do?”

Wout had gotten too comfortable with this whole ’not-having-to-talk-about-himself’ situation, so this sudden shift in topic blindsided him. “Uh, computer stuff,” he said on instinct.

“And you were doing so well, too,” Mads said, and Wout could almost hear him shaking his head over the radio.

Bradley tilted his head to the side. “What sort of computer stuff?” he asked.

Wout considered saying, “security,” but that was probably a little too revealing, so he just said, “I’ve dabbled in a little bit of everything,” which was also the truth.

“Yeah?” Bradley asked. He leaned in a little closer. His leg was pressed up against Wout’s.

It was all getting a little intense, so Wout launched into an explanation of the differences between x86 and ARM processor architectures that he had used to put both Jasper and Mathieu to sleep more than once. Bradley, on the other hand, seemed indefatigable, though he did seem to spend an unreasonable amount of time staring at Wout’s mouth.

“That’s really fascinating,” Bradley said when Wout finished his rant about the tradeoffs in reducing the complexity of instruction sets. He placed one hand on Wout’s thigh, not in an uncomfortable way, but the intention was obvious. “Would you like to continue the conversation in my room?”

That got the panic bubbling up in Wout’s chest, and he had to resist the urge to make a frantic scan of the room for any sign of Mads, who had gone suspiciously silent. While it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to sleep with Bradley, it wasn’t something Wout has any particular interest in doing either, and it felt mean and more than a little cruel to keep stringing him along like this.

He was still attempting to think of a reasonable way to extract himself from this situation without being too weird and obvious about it when Mads stomped onto the scene, grabbed Bradley’s martini glass, and threw the drink directly into Bradley’s face. “How dare you, you home-wrecking whore,” Mads snarled, though there was a theatrical, overdone quality to his tone that made Wout want to roll his eyes. Mads then grabbed Wout by the arm, yanking him out of the chair. “And you,” he said to Wout, “I can’t believe you keep doing this to me.”

“Um,” Wout said, but he didn’t resist.

They were drawing stares. Of course, they were drawing stares. Bradley wiped the drink from his face and eyes, squinting at Mads. “Haven’t I--” he started.

“We’re leaving now,” Mads said, “before your slutty ass can cheat on me again.” He spun around and dragged Wout away before Bradley could get another word in.

Wout caught one last glimpse of Bradley’s hurt, confused face before they disappeared from view. He still felt a little bad for the guy, but all was fair in love in thievery. Hopefully he would find the frosted tips man of his dreams one day, even if that man wasn’t Wout.

---

“Thanks,” Wout said to Mads once they were safely ensconced in the hotel elevators on their way back to the hotel suite they’d converted into their command center.

“It was getting too painful,” Mads said with a shrug. “I can’t believe you didn’t lose him when you revealed how fucking boring you are.”

“He’s right, mate,” Jai chimed in over the radio. “You’re total shit at this. I thought Mathieu was going to pop a blood vessel when the guy said he wanted you to keep talking nerdy to him in the bedroom.”

“Was not!” Mathieu insisted.

Wout hadn’t realized that both of them had been watching this whole op play out. Had the whole team watched him fall flat on his face? He closed his eyes and dreamed of the sweet embrace of death or at least one of Tadej’s more interesting explosions. This is why he preferred his computers.

The elevator doors chimed as they opened up onto the familiar hallway of their suite, and Wout let out a sigh of relief. Primož was standing there, absently flipping a casino chip over his knuckles. He gave Wout what could almost be considered a sympathetic smile. “Don’t quit your day job, eh?” he said, and then he disappeared into the elevator himself, off to go do something that Wout didn’t feel the need to ask any questions about.

When they entered their hotel suite/command center, Wout could see that the area behind his monitors had taken on the atmosphere of a team movie night. There was popcorn scattered onto the floor. Several chairs were pulled into a semi-circle around Wout’s computers. Jonas looked up as they came in. He was the only person Wout had allowed into his chair, and he was still there, looking calm and collected. “You got the job done,” he said with a nod, and that was maybe intended to be a compliment.

Tadej seemed like he had spent the last hour howling with laughter, still clutching at his sides. Jasper was biting his bottom lip, but his entire body was vibrating in an attempt to keep the giggles in. Jai looked wryly amused as he tossed more popcorn into his mouth. Mathieu looked grumpy, like someone had messed up all the presets of his favorite car’s stereo system. Sepp was eating a sandwich.

“If anyone mentions this ever again,” Wout promised, keeping his voice low and deadly serious, “I will make it so that none of your phones will work correctly from now until the end of time. Understood?”

That seemed to be a good enough dismissal for the crowd, and they started trickling out of the room in all directions.

On his way out, Sepp gave Wout a pat on the shoulder and a bright grin. “For what it’s worth, I thought you did great.” He punctuated his statement with a very American thumbs up and headed out, still happily munching on his sandwich.

Wout closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and reminded himself that murder wasn’t his style and he probably wouldn’t be any good at it anyway. And besides, it was Sepp. Everyone liked Sepp.

When he opened his eyes again, the room was blissfully empty save for Wout and his machines. He considered for a very long moment if he could figure out how to replace the entire team with moderately complex shell scripts, but that seemed like a lot of work, and he didn’t think Jonas would approve. And besides, he had his actual job to do. He switched back into his favorite t-shirt and jeans, settled down in his chair, cracked open a Red Bull, and he got back to work.