Bitcoin Bandits

by Chris Kale

  Niklas pushed the door open with a click of the door latch.

  Mr. Wei looked at the man with his brow furrowed, and an impatience growing in his voice as he said, “I’ll call you back,” into the phone. He ended the call and laid the phone slyly into his pocket. “Niklas, I wasn’t expecting you just yet, we’d made an appointment for six. . .”

  “There was a new woman talking with Thomas. I want to know who she is,” Niklas said in a bitter, raspy tone.

  “Then go find out.” Li shook his head, but his groomed hair barely moved. “Isn’t that what I pay you for?”

  “I’ve got a bad feeling about this girl,” Niklas said. “Scandinavian looking, young. . . Why would she be here now?”

  “Maybe because there’s a dead body in their case, who knows what kinds of specialists they are going to be bringing in now. The Americans want the funds back.” Li’s fists were balled up and shaking as he walked back and forth in his office, framed perfectly by the clear glass that glimmered like gems in the strong sunlight. “I want the crypto back too, more than anyone! Are you getting any closer to finding how to get it back for me?” He glowered at Niklas.

  “I don’t know the fucking technicals of this,” Niklas shot back, with the muscles in his neck tensed as he leaned over the chair before Li’s desk. “That’s for your monkeys to figure out. I’m curious in people, and there’s something about Thomas Merten meeting with this girl at Olympic Park. Why would they meet there of all places, and she looked suspicious, she even grabbed his arm at one point. She knows something.”

  Li sighed and clasped his forehead, causing wrinkles in his young skin. “Fine, I heard something—”

  “What?” Niklas asked, with desperation on his breath. “Who told you?”

  “I got word a few hours ago she’s been in contact with Mr. Merton for days now,” Mr. Wei said. “We believe she is the wanted hacker.”

  “C-C?” Niklas asked, with his eyebrows furrowed.

  Li nodded.

  “Why didn’t you tell me when you found out?” Niklas asked, the veins rippled in his arms as he gripped the chair. “Why are you withholding information from me? It's my job to get that crypto back. I had her! She was right there in front of me! She may be helping him to find the Bitcoin right now.”

  There was a heavy silence in the air, as Niklas glared at Mr. Wei, who looked up at the ceiling, nearly holding his breath.

  “Niklas. . .” Li said as he puffed his chest out and squared his shoulders, “you’re fired. You may leave the premises.” Then, a slow tear dropped out of the corner of Li’s eye.

  “What?” Niklas spat. “That isn’t how this works. You can’t just fire me. This isn’t over until it's over.”

  Mr. Wei glared with a wicked intensity, and another tear dropped down his cheek as he clenched his fists. “This wouldn’t be this bad right now if it wasn’t for you murdering Joon. You killed him for no reason, he may have done a bad thing, but he didn’t deserve to die. I never want to see you again.” He motioned to tap a button on his phone, but Niklas leaped over the chair with astonishing, aggressive speed and grabbed his arm before his finger was able to find the button. Li buckled in pain from the mere grasp of the mercenary’s hand around his wrist.

  “Please. . . please, stop,” Mr. Wei said in terror, with more tears streaming down his cheeks then. “You’re going to break my arm.”

  “This isn’t over,” Niklas said, with spit flinging from his downturned lips. “You don’t tell me with this is done. I will finish this. I’m sorry if your thieving friend died. If you ask me, he deserved worse. But, if you would’ve let me in the loop earlier, it wouldn’t have gotten to that point. See, that’s your problem Li.” He let go of Li’s wrist but sent him careening back toward the windows in his office. “You don’t trust people enough.”

  “I know I trusted you too much.” Li grabbed his wrist in pain. “Get out, just get out.”

  Niklas puffed out an angry grunt. “This isn’t over. Jobs don’t end me. I end jobs. I’m going to find that girl. Then I’m going to tell you what she knows, and you’re going to fucking pay me—pay me a lot, for all this bullshit.”

  “No, Niklas. You leave the girl out of this,” Li said. “I’m going to handle this with the authorities from now on. Leave her alone. Leave everyone alone, just go back to whatever hell you came from.”

  Niklas showed his yellowing teeth. “That’s right. I come from hell. But you know what? You’re there with me. Whatever dirt we crawled in—we crawled in it together. That’s why this isn’t over. You gave me a job to do, and that’s what I’m fucking going to do.”

  “Niklas,” Li said, as Niklas stormed out of the office, slamming the glass door behind him. “Niklas!” Li then let out a great sigh, picked up the phone on his desk, and his secretary picked up on the other side of the glass door, with a concerned voice. “Get me Soo-Jin Park.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Later that evening, Thomas stood inside his boring hotel room, facing out the wide windows with the happenings of the city occurring down on the street. Buses passed by at slow, muffling paces, and expensive cars screamed by at electric speeds. Young people and old waited at the corners of the busy intersection below, waiting for their signal to cross, almost all of them were focused solely on their glowing screens propped up to their faces.

  Thomas wasn’t paying attention to the commotion down below or looking at either one of his phones. In his hand was that hand-scribbled string of numbers Freyja had given him hours ago. He rubbed his eye with his free hand, ran it through his slightly graying brown hair, and let out a frustrated sigh.

  3756713612698364508294611092232764 was the number.

  It doesn’t make any sense, there’s nothing there. But there’s got to be. He wouldn’t put it in here for no reason.

  The numbers, however, appeared to be at complete random to Thomas. He had been going through and analyzing another word that may be scattered somewhere in the code—anything that might make sense. But he found none. There were no words that fit with the same simple formula that she’d deciphered earlier. He tried it backward, nothing. He even turned it upside down, and after finding nothing—laughed at himself.

  Thomas considered calling Wyatt. But there was a bitter taste in his mouth already for talking to him about Freyja. At least Wyatt didn’t know much more about her than what he already told Thomas, so he didn’t know her name, but Thomas feared that if he called back and told him that she had come to Korea, she would immediately become someone of interest. Obviously, she didn’t steal the Bitcoins, she was trying to help him for heaven’s sake, but Wyatt’s bosses would definitely like to know as much as they could about her, and they’d surely get at least a picture of her. Thomas wouldn’t feel great about that, once the American government had a picture of her, how long would it be until all the other civilized governments had that same picture. A picture to match the name CryptoCunt. And although she wasn’t wanted by any governments—as far as Thomas knew anyway—those criminals out there who put a bounty on her didn’t want to pay out for some whiff of smoke, they wanted her head.

  There were people out there that wanted her dead; bad people. Thomas felt a dull pain in his stomach at the thought. He wasn’t risking anything by investigating this hack. She was risking everything.

  “No,” he said to himself. “I’ll figure this out without his help. Focus, just focus.”

  A ping came from his cell phone. He walked over to the nightstand and unlocked it quickly. It was a message from her. It didn’t say anything, but it was a link. He quickly pressed his index finger on the long link and was quickly directed to a website called CryptoToday.com. The headline at the top of the article in Helvetica read: BitX tries to calm investors by promising their money back. Sounded good, but the first line of the article read, But what they’re promising may not be exactly what you’d be hoping for.

  Thomas continued reading the article, and Li was quoted many times. Thomas
could vividly see in his mind the young, well-groomed man mouthing the exact words. Again, he saw the telltale signs of people trying to cling onto their remaining customers, even though they royally ‘screwed the pooch.’ He saw things like, ‘we’re doing everything in our power’, ‘your security is our number one concern’, and Thomas’ personal favorite, ‘everything that can be done is being done.’

  Really? Everything? Every single thing? I bet the first people they called were the local police. What the fuck do they know about high-level hack jobs like this?

  The really interesting thing to him though was the actual plan to reimburse investors in the case that they’d be unable to recover the Bitcoins that were missing.

  The plan was to not payout back into Bitcoin and give it to the investors. No. The plan was to pay the current market price for Bitcoin back to the investors in South Korean won or American dollars.

  As soon as he read that, he went over to his laptop and brought up the website the bartender back in D.C. had told him to go to. Since the hack, Thomas saw that Bitcoin’s price had dropped thirty-five percent! And he didn’t see any signs of it slowing. It was breaking through resistances like crazy, and rapidly. Volume was huge, but only on the sell side. It was crashing through the twenty-and fifty-day moving averages, and it was approaching the two-hundred day, which may show some support, but not with this news.

  What if someone bought one Bitcoin six months ago and they got paid out now. Their investment would be half! What kind of shit deal is this they’re offering to people? It's not even an offer—they’re telling them that’s how this is going to shake out.

  “At least they didn’t just leave everyone with completely empty pockets,” he said.

  He went back to his phone. He was going to type a message to Freyja, asking her why they would do this. But he knew why. They were a rich exchange, and if they could navigate their way through the shit infested swamp they were in, the lower the payout, the better for the company. Even if they lose half of those customers and squabble their way through years of lawsuits—what they’re doing is probably legal, even though he was no expert in Korean law. They’d make it through this, as long as they paid out something. So—they pay out sixty-five-ish percent of one billion, and they get to keep on keeping on. Bullshit, but probably legal. Li won’t lose any of his personal money, maybe a year’s worth of lavish bonuses from the board, or himself.

  Then he typed in his phone—seems pretty par for the course. The rich get richer and the normal gal and guy get it fucked.

  No reply. He put the phone back in his pocket and went back to the numbers.

  He thought about if it could be a bank account routing and checking number, he looked into that on the laptop, but nothing showed that that would be the case. He even typed in that long name with a .com at the end of it in the address bar—nothing. He thought about trying to see if it was a phone number with some small countries dialing code. That did check out—375 was the code for Belarus, just next to Poland.

  Knowing it was a long shot, he picked up the phone again and dialed the number, until he began to hear a ringing tone. The muscles in his shoulders instantly tightened, and he pulled the face right up flush to his ear. But then the ringing shut off, and it was a loud, annoying beeping of a dead line.

  Thomas hung up the phone, and looked out to the city far out, and below. The lights of Seoul were beginning to glow with vivid life. Bright neon lights glowed from the bottoms of tall buildings, excitedly inviting hungry patrons in for a late dinner. He glanced up at the tall buildings and at the huge apartment complexes that were scattered throughout the city.

  He thought about the seed phrase that was so far discovered that Freyja had told him before she ran off to find some taxi and be back on her computer. Thomas didn’t have to write the words down, he remembered them in order just fine in his head.

  The words were:

  Love

  Uncertainty

  Freedom

  Choice

  Melancholy

  Algorithm

  Instinct

  Thought

  Mercy

  Wisdom

  Pain

  USB

  All those seed phrase words, they’re all ethereal in nature. All except the last two, and the second to last is kind of a stretch. I suppose there could be an argument for pain being physical, but USB for certain is a tangible thing.

  He looked back out to the city—at the gleaming lights of the street lights, at the people who ran across streets arm in arm. He glanced up at the skyscrapers and the helicopter choppering by. His gaze went back to the buildings full of apartments.

  “A USB drive is a real thing. It needs to be somewhere. . .”

  He went back to his laptop, and his fingers moved over the keys with brimming enthusiasm. After his fingers stopped, his hands fell to his upper legs. His mouth was slightly open as he stared at the glowing screen. Then his lips locked, and a satisfying smile rose on his face. He scratched his cheek and his new day's stubble. “Of course,” he said. “It’s so obvious.”

  Thomas stood, went back to the window, and typed a quick message to Freyja: I know what it is. . .

  An immediate response came: OK. I’m going to send you an encrypted message to your e-mail. Don’t type it here. I knew you’d find it.

  He felt a wild thrill rushing through him, and a renewed pride working with her. It was as if he felt like he’d finally contributed to their ‘partnership.’

  Thomas smiled and watched the city brimming to life under the night sky, his computer still glowed on the small table at the side of the room. He left the website open; it was EnterLatitudeandLongitude.com.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The following morning, after a small pot of below par, pre-ground coffee and an ‘American style’ breakfast with a soggy, sausage sandwich and a football-shaped tater tot, Thomas made a phone call to detective Ron Jones. Ron answered, seemingly surprised by the call.

  It was a quick conversation. Thomas simply asked if he could see Joon Chang-Min’s condo, that day. Ron agreed, and said he would pick Thomas up at 11 a.m.

  After the call, Thomas went back to his laptop. Flipping it open and clicking back the encrypted chat that Freyja had sent him, he stared at the screen. He’d already told her the night before about the second to last string of digits being coordinates for a geographical location. They pointed right to Joon’s condo. He got the impression she felt a bit. . . stupid for not figuring it out herself. The new mystery is why would he give the location of his condo? Isn’t it obvious already to look at his possessions for it? Or, perhaps he had to, so that whoever was going to solve this mystery had to be pointed to exactly where the seed word was. After all, Thomas knew, that if those Bitcoins were taken by Joon and Joon alone, and if this seed phrase wasn’t discovered, then all those Bitcoins would be gone forever. Billions—possibly tens of billions—in wealth just sitting there, unusable. It would be like standing in front of bulletproof glass with billions of dollars in cash sitting on a table and being told that money would sit there for eternity.

  He typed: Has the Bitcoin moved?

  A reply came promptly: No.

  How much time do you think we have? he typed.

  We may have a few days on everyone, but there's no way of knowing. People far smarter than you and I are digging in. Maybe we only have a few hours or minutes.

  He typed: Well, whoever solves it is going to have to get into Joon’s condo. I’ll be there soon, even the best hacker in the world would have to physically go there.

  I hope you find something. But I’m worried you won’t find anything at all.

  He typed: If I find anything, I won’t tip off anyone, but it's going to be difficult to get a USB drive out of that place. I’ll have to take my laptop and copy whatever is on the stick onto my hard drive.

  That should be fine. Send me the files immediately if you do. Let’s not take any chances of losing whatever you may find, she sa
id.

  Freyja, what will we do if we get the Bitcoin? I’m a contracted employee of the U.S. government. I have to hand it over if we get it. You weren’t planning on. . . keeping it, were you?

  There was a minute-long pause before she sent a response.

  If you mean, I want to keep stolen Bitcoin you are very wrong. The crypto doesn’t belong to us, and it doesn’t belong to any government. It belongs to the ones it was stolen from. If we get the crypto, I’m going to send it to four wallets, all ones that I’ve created. We will keep it safely on those until we are able to get it back to the victims of the crime, but away from the BitX exchange. You can tell your job whatever you want, but I’ll put a bullet in my brain before I turn over that much Bitcoin to some corrupt fucking government.

  Thomas didn’t like the idea. It was borderline illegal, but legality with cryptocurrencies was a budding sapling. It might not be completely illegal to hold the crypto, ‘season’ it if you will. But there was a familiar feeling in his gut when Freyja said the word corrupt. Thomas had been working too long in D.C. to not agree. There was a hell of a chance the U.S. Government might end up keeping most of it, just because they ‘lost’ it, or if they found the original owners of the crypto not worthy individuals to be handing out wealth to. Even if it was their money.

  Another thing—this wasn’t cash, or the digital U.S. dollar. This was the new world. The Federal Reserve back in the states could print whatever money they wanted with a couple of keystrokes. No Reserve anywhere in the world could make even one more Bitcoin. It's similar to gold, and you remember what the government used to do with gold?

  Give it to people if they wanted it in exchange for their hard-earned money. When was the last time the government gave away gold? Shit, they stopped backing the dollar with gold back in ’71 with that crook Nixon. Now what would they do with it? Hoard it in fortresses like Fort Knox. Why wouldn’t they do the same with Bitcoin? Especially when the price spikes back up like it's done so often over the years.