Bitcoin Bandits

by Chris Kale

  He picked up the phone, walked outside to an alleyway to the right. After looking around and seeing no one except the people walking by on the busy sidewalk, he called Wyatt.

  Thomas knew it would be roughly midnight in D.C., but he figured he’d call anyway.

  “Hello,” Wyatt said, answering after a few rings. His voice was shaky, and he let out a loud cough after.

  “Wyatt,” Thomas said. “Did I wake you up?”

  “What’s up?” Wyatt asked, clearing his throat.

  “They found out who murdered Joon, it was Niklas Wolf who you looked into for me.”

  “No kidding,” Wyatt said, his voice now clear and his interest perked.

  “Someone sabotaged him,” Thomas said, “or back-stabbed him. It’s curious really.”

  “Any leads on how to get the crypto back?” Wyatt asked. “You think Niklas has it?”

  He thought of the missing USB drive. “Maybe,” Thomas said, “but if he did, he’d most likely have moved the funds. Whoever finds out how to get to that money is going to move it instantly, to keep it safe.”

  “Safe?” Wyatt asked.

  “Joon left a trail to follow, a posthumous code for how to get the Bitcoin.”

  “Do you know how to break the code?”

  Wyatt paused. “I have some theories.”

  “You let me know the instant you find anything out. I’m going to let our coders know about this, and they’ll get on it at once.”

  Shit. Why did I tell him that? I can’t tell Freyja.

  “Anything else?” Wyatt asked.

  “There’s a chance Li Wei is involved, but I’m not sure to what extent. The locals don’t know either. Doubt I’ll get much more information from him though. He kicked me out of his office.”

  “Well, it's not the first time,” Wyatt said. Indeed, Thomas had been asked to leave from a few banker CEOs after asking the questions they didn’t want to hear.

  “All right,” Wyatt said, as Thomas heard the squeak of what sounded like a bed frame as Wyatt shuffled in his home. “I’ll have our guys take a closer look into Wei. Keep after it Thomas but stay safe. Niklas Wolf is a trained mercenary remember. He’d do anything to cover his tracks. Let the authorities handle the murder investigation. Stick to the money.”

  “Will do,” Thomas said.

  “We’ll talk soon,” Wyatt said. “Goodnight.” But it wasn’t night in Korea, the sun still hung overhead, sending down its blazing rays in the thick of summer.

  “Stick to the money,” Thomas said to himself as he made his way back into the lobby. Soo-Jin was still on the phone, pacing the room, but after he met Thomas’ glance, he hung up his phone, placing it back in his pocket.

  “Well?” Thomas asked, “anything?”

  “We’re tracing it and getting warrants with the cell company,” Soo-Jin said, “but I’m not expecting much. We’re flooding the media with his picture. He won’t be able to hide forever if he’s still in Korea. And if he took a flight out of the country, we will know soon enough.”

  “Well,” Soo-Jin said, “be in touch if you find anything. Can you find your way back?” he asked. Thomas nodded, each of them bowing after, and then Soo-Jin was back on his phone quickly, and out the door.

  He texted Freyja on his phone: What is next? What have you found?

  Thomas sat in a far-too-comfy leather chair and stared out the window. He then got on the internet and checked on the current price of Bitcoin on that website. It had made a slight two percent recovery, but he thought it was most likely a bull trap, trying to get more people to buy because they think it's going back up and they can make a quick buck, but it was the opposite. He thought it was going to continue going down.

  His phone beeped. It was Freyja.

  Niklas is hard to track, but not impossible.

  What are you talking about, think about what you’re doing? You can’t hunt the hunter, he typed.

  It's the only way. Unless he knows what he has, he’s most likely not carrying it on him all the time. We just need to find where he stays. That’s what I’m looking for. Are you scared? she sent.

  Listen, this guy is dangerous. Very. We need to be very careful moving forward. We should talk about this in person. Where are you?

  I’ll find you, she sent.

  Today, he sent.

  No response for several minutes.

  Then she sent a message: Find somewhere to eat at five. Let me know where.

  OK, he typed.

  He stood and stretched his arms out, thinking he needed another cup of coffee, when one of his phones went off suddenly. He expected it to be Freyja, but it was Wyatt. Opening the phone and checking the message, his eyes went wide, and he stopped breathing. He couldn’t believe his eyes.

  Looking down at the phone, Wyatt had sent a simple text that hit Thomas like a freight train, sinking its sickly fingers into his heart, and squeezing tightly.

  It said: You’re being pulled off the case. You need to come back to America. Sorry, Thomas.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Wyatt, what the hell is going on here? he sent quickly back.

  It's coming from the top. Again. Sorry. I know how much this case meant to you.

  Wyatt, I’m close. Really close, he sent.

  There’s nothing I can do, really, Thomas. My hands are tied. I tried.

  This wreaks of corruption. You know it too. There’s something going on here. I’ve got to stay. Just a few more days. That's all I need.

  There’s a flight booked for you tomorrow. I suppose you have until then. Again. Sorry. We’ll get them next time.

  “Tomorrow?” Thomas said to himself, holding the phone away from his face, letting his near-brow-length hair fall to his eyebrows as he lowered his head. “That’s not enough time.”

  All the thoughts that rolled through his mind then shot through like that scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey, traveling into the event horizon. But instead of bright, warping lights, it was numbers and graphs sweeping by, like digital assets screaming across the internet as they exchanged hands. He could actually see the Bitcoins sitting on the wallets, they were shaking though, as if anxious; ready to be moved by the first to find that one missing word—that would send them screaming off to their next home, where they’d be more stable, more at home in the thieves’ hands.

  He saw Freyja’s disappointed face when he would tell her the news. He saw Li’s face washed over with a wry smile at the thought of Thomas being sent away, and finally he saw Niklas’ face, grinning with white teeth over Joon Chang-Min bleeding and pleading for mercy, of which he found none.

  Again, the subtle urge to wet his lips with whiskey meandered their way into his mind, which he shoved off with a deep sigh.

  Hours later, he made his way to a Korean restaurant off the beaten path. It was down an alley in downtown Seoul, sparkling with golden fringe on vibrantly colored sashes that hung along the walls. It smelled of a pungent fermentation of spicy Kim-Chi, and a deep, earthy roast happening somewhere in the back. Minutes later, after sipping on a can of Coke, Freyja walked in the eatery, quickly scanning the room before entering. She removed her large sunglasses and put them atop her head.

  Again, Thomas’ first reaction to her appearance, was along the lines of—aren’t all hackers the outcasts of society? Freyja looks like she could be a Nordic model if she wanted. But no, she chose the life of an online vigilante. How different, she’d probably be world-famous for what she does if she wasn’t hunted and hidden.

  “Hey,” he said moving out the thin, wooden seat for her with a brush of his shoe, which she grabbed and sat onto. Freyja pulled the chair up behind her, as she leaned in toward him with her elbows on the table and her fingers interlocked.

  “Thomas,” she said, her long dull-black hair flowing down her shoulders as if it hadn’t been brushed in days. Her clothes were wrinkled, as if just put on from a thrown-together suitcase. It was another black T-shirt—this one with logos. She wore a black leather b
racelet an inch thick around her right wrist. Freyja reminded him of his daughter Sarah when she was in the later part of her teenage years. “I’ve been tracking his movements through the cell phone he used. It was a burner, but it was enough.”

  “How did you. . . ?” he almost finished his question, but then realized again who it was he was talking to. “You got the records from the number Li had for him.”

  She nodded, looking around and over both shoulders. “I think I know where he was based at. He moved around a lot, even at night, but there is one place he went to more frequently than the rest. If we can get there—get inside, we may be able to. . .”

  “Whoa, whoa.” He leaned back with both hands out in front of him, and she leaned back too, with both eyebrows raised. “You know what you’re talking about here? That’s criminal, and we’re not even locals here.”

  “The U.S. government would protect you. We’re not going to get caught.”

  “Do you have any idea how that would look if I got arrested for breaking and entering on foreign soil?”

  “Entering into a suspected murderer’s place,” she said. “Can’t you just say you had some proof that something, something. . . ?” she asked, and he was mildly entertained by her vagueness, it was like lazy writing in the movies, or more like real life than the movies, he supposed.

  He folded his arms across his chest and said, “Something has happened.” He sighed.

  Just as he said that a small woman with deep lines on her face, and a warm smile approached. Thomas had no idea how to order and didn’t even know if his knotted stomach would allow him to eat.

  “What do you want?” Freyja asked him.

  “Uh. . . soup? Soup and tea,” he said.

  Freyja pulled out her phone, fingered a couple of clicks on it, and said, “Coffee for me, spicy meat, and for him mild soup and hot tea.” She then faced the phone at the kind-faced woman with dark, yet warm eyes, and the phone spoke a feminine-robotic voice in Korean. The woman nodded and headed back to the kitchen.

  “What is it?” Freyja asked, leaning in again. “You’re worried, aren’t you?”

  “Freyja,” he said softly, leaning in until their faces were less than two feet apart. “They’re pulling me off the case. They’re telling me I have to go back. . . tomorrow.” He wasn’t sure what reaction he’d get from her, but he had to admit to himself, he didn’t expect this one.

  “Nope,” she said, her green eyes the color of the print of dollar bills squarely looking into his eyes. “Not happening.”

  “What?” He furrowed his brow. “I have to.”

  “No, Thomas. You’re not leaving yet. We are so close,” she said, her voice firm and commanding, yet low. “If you leave now, I’m not stopping. I’m going to have to do the rest on my own. I don’t trust anyone else. Someone else is going to steal all that Bitcoin, someone who doesn’t have any intention on giving it back to those who earned it.”

  “You’re not going to that killer’s place by yourself, are you mad?” he said, hot tea was placed before him, and a small, dark coffee in front of her, both steaming in the already-warm restaurant. “I’d call the police before I let you do that.”

  “You wouldn’t dare.” Freyja shook her head. “Listen, people miss flights all the time, just say you got too drunk on your last night here and missed your flight. That would give us another day.”

  “That excuse wouldn’t work,” he said, knowing that Wyatt wouldn’t believe that for a second, “but I see where you’re going with this. You want us to go tomorrow, don’t you?”

  Freyja pulled out her vape pen and began to let it warm up. “Fuck it.” She pulled out a fresh pack of Pall Mall blues from her bag. She packed it with six slaps on her palm, opened it, put one to her lips and lit it with a lighter quick to find its way into her hand. She let out a plume of smoke overhead with a satisfying sigh. Pointing the pack toward him, he waved it away with a wave of his hand. “We go all the way on this, Thomas. We know what no one else does, at least for now. We have to move while the iron is hot. Do you have a gun?” Her voice was so calm and cool while she asked that, he found himself leaning away from her, scratching his chin.

  “No,” he said flatly. “But I probably know where I could get one, although it would raise a huge red flag with him.”

  “Make something up. Say you’re a paranoid schizophrenic who thinks he’s being followed after being pulled out of this case. You just need it while you’re here in Korea.”

  “Umm, no,” he said. “That would probably be the last thing I would say, but I guess I follow your drift. I get the feeling that he’d keep an eye on me if I asked for a gun, so we’d have to slip out.”

  “Do you trust him?” she asked.

  “I think so.”

  The food was laid down before them then, and the woman bowed with a wide smile. Thomas eyed the red soup, not sure if he was hungry yet with all the things swimming around in his head. Not only was he thinking about directly opposing his friend Wyatt’s orders, but now he was talking about getting a fucking handgun and going into the den of the murderer. He’d seen too many movies to know that was a bad idea. I mean, Silence of the Fucking Lambs. . . he thought about the end where Clarice Starling is left in the pitch black with a serial killer stalking her with night vision goggles. He nearly shivered at the thought.

  “I think we should ask for Ron’s help on this,” he said.

  “Who’s Ron?” she asked.

  “The local here who has been assisting me on this. He’s the one I’d possibly get the gun from.”

  “Who’s mad now?” she asked, picking up a shredded piece of what appeared to be pork dripping with a red-chili sauce with chopsticks and putting it in her mouth. “You’re out of your mind if you think I’m trusting this info with government agents.”

  “May I remind you, I’m a government agent,” he said.

  “No, you’re not. You’re pretending to be one. You’re a wolf in sheep’s clothing, or the other way around. . .”

  Is she right about that? Maybe. . .

  They ate their meal, going over what would be done with the assets if they were the ones to get them back. Thomas could actually plead ignorance if he wanted. It would have been all the CryptoCunt hacker doing the work, unless he got caught. It would be perjury, hopefully not treason. But the idea was to get the funds back to the rightful owners, but off the BitX exchange.

  Somewhat agreeing and not agreeing to enter into the killer’s lair, Thomas still thought there had to be a better way, but he didn’t know what that was, if Freyja wouldn’t allow for Ron’s help. But he decided on his own that that was the backup plan. . . if anything went wrong. . . call Ron for help.

  Afterward, and after eating all the soup, finding his nerves calmer, they went their separate ways. He was to find a gun, which he found were actually much scarcer in Korea than he thought among the population, and she was to find what time of day seemed like Niklas would be furthest away from his ‘home.’ Little did she know, at that moment, he was much nearer than either of them would have foreseen.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Behind dark, tinted windows he watched. Straight down the alley, little more than a block away, through the people walking by, like looking past a tightly packed picket fence while driving by, he watched them. A small pair of military-grade binoculars he saw them as they split up, going their own ways. He was chewing on an already dead toothpick.

  Niklas dropped the toothpick out the cracked window and grabbed his cell from the black leather passenger seat. It was a new cell, a burner phone that he’d had as a backup, newly powered on. He only had a handful of contacts on the phone, and he called the one at the top of the list.

  It rang a couple of times while he stared out the passenger window, down the long block as a tall woman with matte-black hair with blond roots and two piercings on her face walked in his direction.

  The phone connected to the one being called. “What are you calling me for?” th
e man with the Korean accent asked in English.

  “I’ve got some business to discuss,” Niklas said. “I’m done when the business is done, and it's not over yet.”

  The was a heavy pause in the conversation, the kind of pause when someone wants to lash out at another, but hesitation hangs think in the air.

  “What business?” the man asked, almost holding his breath.

  “The seed phrase,” Niklas said, firing up the engine in the black sedan with a deep rumble of the motor. “I know you still haven’t figured it out yet.”

  “You have the seed?” the man asked, gruffly but with deep concern.

  “No, not yet, but I believe I know who does.”

  “No one has it yet or the Bitcoin would have disappeared already,” the Korean man said.

  “They may not have it yet,” Niklas said, “but I believe they are very close to figuring out what it is. How much might that information be to someone like you. After all, time is running out.”

  “It's running out almost directly because of your actions, Niklas.”

  That sent a white-hot heat running through the mercenary’s chest. “Not true. This is Joon’s fault, he’s the one who stole it, not me.”

  “If you wouldn’t have killed him,” the man said, “we may have talked some sense into him. But you went and murdered him, and now the police are after you.”

  “I was set up,” Niklas hissed. “Do you know who it was? Was it you?”

  “No,” the man said. “And I don’t know who it was. It was an anonymous tip to the police. Are you certain you didn’t screw up? You really should be leaving the city. Where are you now?”

  “Nowhere.” Niklas put the car into drive and watched as the tall woman got into a taxi. He pulled out from the curb after it.

  “Niklas,” the man snapped. “You need to get out of the country. I can’t protect you, no one can. If you get caught, you’ll certainly have prison time, and no one wants you going on the stand.”