Darknet

by Matthew Mather

  Eamon and Elle checked in every few hours with updates.

  They were scouring the Albany and Schenectady area, targeting property lists that Jin had generated of buildings owned by Bluebridge or one of its affiliates. It was a formidable task. There were hundreds of buildings on the list.

  What did Bluebridge want? Was it hoping he’d stay still? Not react? How was that possible? Then again, the thing was a machine, maybe it didn’t understand the implications of what it was doing, didn’t consider the emotional reaction it was provoking.

  But maybe it did.

  Jake hadn’t slept. Had barely eaten. All he could think about was Anna.

  Sheldon was working at trying to track down the source of the anonymous messages, the videos of Anna delivered every two hours without fail. She looked happy enough, and at least they knew she was alive—assuming that was really Anna in those images. It was something nobody said but everyone knew.

  The federal agents, drones, the DHS, Jake’s topping the FBI’s ten-most-wanted-list—Bluebridge was bringing the full weight of the United States government to bear. The gloves were off. Which meant Bluebridge saw them as a serious threat. There was no way out but to move forward.

  Pulling up the lapels on his jacket, Jake hunched over and jogged across Canal Street, splashing through puddles. He turned into Little Italy.

  In less than a week, the San Gennaro festival would begin, the colorful celebration of the Patron Saint of Naples Little Italy held each fall. Already the decorations were up; the red-white-and-green arches stretching over Mulberry Street into the rainy distance, lined with Italian flags. Jake made it a tradition to bring Anna here each year. She loved the lights, the excitement.

  Thinking of Anna felt like ice poured into his veins. Where was she? He hoped to God she was all right. I’m coming, baby, he said to himself. I’m coming as fast as I can. A gold cross was affixed to the wall between two shops, and Jake muttered a prayer as he passed, his knuckles white around the umbrella’s handle.

  Was he doing the right thing? Maybe he should try to steal the money for Joey Barbara using the bank algorithms, pay him off that way. But what were the chances he could get away with that, with all the attention already focused on him?

  Even so, some part of him felt it was the better bet, but he couldn’t let himself go down that road. Bluebridge was a problem that wouldn’t go away. Fear knotted in his stomach. What did it feel like when a psychopath made a decision? Did they rationalize their choices like he was doing?

  If Bluebridge effectively won the American presidency, as it was on its way to doing, it would become impossible to defeat. And if it still had Anna then, there might be no way of getting her back.

  They still didn’t know what happened to set this in motion. Had Montrose seen his creation as some sort of ultimate hedge against death? People like him were so obsessed with themselves that it wasn’t death that they feared the most, but being forgotten.

  Had this been his way of extending his digital life beyond his physical death? Were they fighting what amounted to a digital ghost?

  Jake watched the addresses as he walked. He stopped. 132 Mulberry Street, the address scrawled on the piece of paper in his hand. He expected some hole in the wall, a dingy basement bar or dimly lit Italian restaurant with stained glass windows. Instead, he found himself staring through the polished windows of the Cannoli King, brightly lit rows of fresh pastries beckoning him inside.

  Opening the door, Jake made for the counter to ask for Joey Barbara. A waiter in a bright white apron headed him off, squinted at Jake and then flicked his chin toward a set of stairs at the back.

  Jake arched his eyebrows and pointed at the stairs. There? A sign hung across the stairs, ‘This Section Closed.’

  The waiter nodded.

  Jake walked to the back, past the only other people in the place, a couple making eyes at each other. They didn’t notice Jake. Shaking the rain off his umbrella, he jogged up the stairs two at a time.

  “Ah, Mr. O’Connell,” Joey Barbara announced as Jake cleared the last steps of the curving staircase. The short man sat alone in the middle of the top floor of the shop, a half-dozen rows of straight tabletops to each side of him.

  A hand shot out and stopped Jake. It was Tomasz, the big guy Jake had punched in the abandoned warehouse. Jake tensed, waiting for a blow, but Tomasz grinned menacingly and patted him down.

  “Can’t be too careful.” Joey Barbara waved Jake over to sit with him. He looked out the windows. “Nothing better than a cannoli and espresso on a rainy afternoon.” A half-eaten pastry sat on a plate in front of him. “You want one?”

  Jake approached cautiously. “Sure, why not.” If Barbara wanted to kill him, there were easier ways than poisoning.

  “Sit, sit,” Joey Barbara commanded as Jake hovered. “You know, next week they have a cannoli eating competition here to kick off the San Gennaro Festival.”

  Jake sat down, and a waiter appeared with a pastry and espresso, as if by magic. “I know, I bring my daughter every year.”

  “I’m sorry about your daughter.” Joey Barbara grimaced. “We had nothing to do with that. In fact, we looked into it. Nothing.” He shrugged. “But now that we’re through with the pleasantries…where’s—my—MONEY?” The tendons in his neck flared out, spittle flying onto Jake’s cannoli.

  “I don’t have it,” Jake answered quietly.

  “He doesn’t have it?” Joey Barbara laughed, looking up at Tomasz. When he looked back at Jake, the red in his face was fading. “You know, the only reason you’re not wearing cement boots at the bottom of the East River is because Mr. Shintao of the Yamaguci-gumi clan insisted on your safe passage.” He looked at Tomaza again. “The frickin’ Yakuza, I mean, who is this guy?”

  “I have a proposal for you,” Jake said, louder this time.

  “A proposal?”

  Jake nodded. “A proposal.”

  Joey Barbara leaned over and picked up Jake’s cannoli, then hurled it against the wall. “The only proposal I want to hear is that you have my money, do you understand?”

  Jake didn’t flinch. “I’m going to get you ten times your money back, but I need your help. This thing that’s chasing me, it’ll wreck your business. It’s already affected the Yakuza. That’s why Mr. Shintao is supporting us.”

  Joey Barbara pressed his hands to his temples as if he was trying to keep his brain from exploding. “I want my money.”

  “And you’ll get it,” Jake continued. “Or do you want to go back to the Five Families, the Chicago Outfit, the”—he paused, trying to remember—“A-Team, the Clerkenwell Syndicate, and tell them that you turned down ten times the money? Then explain how you let this thing loose on the world? You choose.”

  “You got ten seconds.” Joey Barbara slumped into his chair, sighing. “Ten seconds to convince me not to turn you into the feds right now and collect the million-dollar bounty on your head.”

  “You’re related to Lucky Luciano, right?” asked Jake.

  “What does that have to do with anything? Sure, he’s like my great-great-uncle or something.”

  “He fought for his country when it was in trouble, used the mafia to protect the docks, carry out hits against Nazi spies.”

  “Real patriotic. It got him out of jail. So what, you want protection from something?”

  “Sort of.” Jake picked up his espresso and took a sip. “You said the real criminals were the Wall Street types, like me. Right?” He waited for Joey Barbara to nod. When you were selling something, you had to get them nodding. “How about a chance to give the Wall Street guys a bloody nose, get ten times your money back, and be patriotic at the same time?”

  “I sense that there’s maybe a catch here somewhere. You got five more seconds.”

  “Vidal Viegas is dead.” Jake pulled a plastic bag from the pocket of his coat and unwrapped it, pulling out the death certificate and laying it on the table.

  “I saw that dirt bag at a fundraiser
my cousin Ricky made me go to last week and—”

  “Over a year ago.” Jake pointed at the date on the document.

  Joey Barbara leaned in to have closer look. “That’s just a piece of paper.”

  “It is, but it’s the first page of a book.”

  “You trying to be clever?”

  Jake leaned back in his chair. “Do you like ghost stories, Mr. Barbara?”

  AUGUST 29th

  Monday

  39

  Financial District

  New York City

  Chase Rockwell stared out the seventieth-floor window-wall of his corner office, the rain clouds at eye level. As the head of the private client division of one of Manhattan’s largest banks, his office befitted his position. A thousand square feet of open space, the walls adorned with Renoir and Degas, with his desk and the attending chairs tucked away at one end. The voluminous empty space—some of Manhattan’s most expensive per square foot—said what was needed without a word being uttered.

  When he looked down at the people hurrying by on the streets below, they were like ants at his feet.

  Situations like this needed to be handled with care, with his personal deft touch. As few people as possible involved, but as many as required if blame had to be shifted. It was a fine line—one he’d carved many times before to skate past anti-laundering regulations while still respecting his bank’s internal controls, and always ensuring his actions were within the range of reasonable deniability.

  The Senate sub-committee of the Office of the Comptroller of Currency flagged sixty trillion dollars in suspicious transactions this year, over 30,000 accounts that they were looking into. Chase knew. He’d personally picked the financial lobbyists who worked with them.

  The Financial Round Table had five lobbyists for every member of Congress, and they made sure the sub-committee made it their job to check each and every suspicious transaction, no matter how obscure.

  Sixty trillion dollars made for a lot of transactions to wade through. Sure, every now and then a bank would get caught in illegal activity, lose a few accounts or have to close an off-shore subsidiary, but the government had to find something from time to time, otherwise it would be too suspicious. Acceptable losses, just like drug runners who knew a certain percentage of their shipments would be caught—but 90% still made it through.

  It was just business.

  Even if Chase got jammed up, there would never be more than a slap on the wrist. Before moving into this position, his previous bank had been caught ‘red-handed’ laundering money for the Mexican and Colombian cartels, setting up banks in the Caymans with hundreds of billions in deposits but without even one employee or a physical office.

  The fees they’d generated from the cartels were astronomical. Even after they were caught, the fines the government imposed amounted to less than two percent of the profits for that year. They didn’t even have to admit to any wrong doing, even though they acknowledged breaching the Bank Secrecy Act. No charges were ever laid. “Too big to indict,” were the words the New York Times used to describe what had happened. Not Chase’s words, but he liked them.

  He kept the Times article in his desk drawer, took it out from time to time.

  And smiled.

  The government was pragmatic.

  That was the truth.

  Organized crime was an integral part of modern democracies, their illicit earnings enabling them to win transportation and construction contracts by lowering their bid prices. In a way, organized crime helped subsidize the infrastructure of the nation.

  Sometimes organized crime even helped save banks. Back in 2008, money from organized crime was the only liquid investment capital available to many banks when the legal financial system went into cardiac arrest. Chase liked to think of organized crime as the secondary system, the shadow market that helped support the world from below.

  You had to be pragmatic about it. Chase liked the word pragmatic. He used it a lot.

  The Mexican and Colombian cartels were fading in importance, however, and most of them had already chosen their favored bankers. It was time to look to growth, to new markets, and the Eastern Europeans—newly minted EU members with strong organized crime networks that spanned the Eastern and Western worlds—were the future.

  The Albanian mafia—the Shqiptare—was a hybrid organization, incorporating both criminal and political wings. Chase liked that. Very pragmatic. They also dominated the world trade in illegal organs. In polite company, Chase would frown and say how disgusting it was, but to be honest, he might need a new liver one day. This was a good contact to have.

  The door to his office opened. “Mr. Lluca is here,” announced his secretary.

  Chase let his widest and warmest smile spread across his face. “Ah, Mr. Lluca, a real pleasure.” He strode across his office, hand out.

  A stooped old man stepped through his door, his hair disheveled, his suit wrinkled. “Yes, yes,” the old man muttered, waving away Chase’s offered hand.

  Chase’s secretary closed the door behind the old man, pausing to glance at Chase.

  Chase nodded at her, his lips pressed together. Close the door and mind your own business, his answering glare said. Chase dropped his hand, smoothing it on the leg of his three-thousand-dollar bespoke Saint Laurie suit.

  “This way,” he said, indicating the chairs at the other end of his office.

  The old man ambled forward, grumbling something in a language Chase didn’t understand. He assumed it was Albanian. He watched the old man. Was this really the head of one of the most violent criminal organizations on the planet? Chase wondered how many people this old man had killed, but he had a hard time fitting that image onto the broken wreck shuffling across his carpet.

  Then again, when people looked at Chase in his fine suits and polished shoes, they couldn’t imagine the monster lurking behind the Windsor knot. He shrugged and walked past the old man to sit on the front of his desk.

  “Would you like some coffee?” Chase asked. “A bottle of water, perhaps?”

  Lluca settled into the chair and groaned. “No, something stronger. Whiskey?”

  “Of course.” Chase hit his intercom button. “Micah, please bring in the Abelour and two tumblers and ice.”

  “No ice,” grumbled the old man as Chase closed the connection.

  “You come with some excellent personal introductions, Mr. Lluca.” The day before, senior people in the Genovese family had contacted Chase's assistants, leading to a conversation with Mr. Joey Barbara himself.

  Mr. Lluca sighed loudly and looked up at Chase with watery blue eyes. “My family needs a…safe…place to invest some funds.”

  “Of course.”

  The far door opened, and Micah appeared with a tray. She walked over and deposited the 40-year-old single malt scotch and tumblers, offering to pour them each a glass. Chase held up two fingers. She poured them and left quickly, closing the door behind herself.

  “I understand, Mr. Lluca. I have a lot of experience in this. And I guarantee we can accommodate you, with few questions asked.” Chase handed one of the tumblers to Mr. Lluca. “Gezuar,” he toasted. He’d looked up the Albanian word for cheers.

  ▲▼▲

  Jake’s father, Conor, stared at the smug expression on Chase Rockwell’s face and lifted his glass of whiskey.

  “Cheers,” he replied, and drank it down in one gulp. Jake hadn’t mentioned anything about not getting a drink on his rounds. Free forty-year-old scotch was a nice bonus.

  “More?” Chase Rockwell asked.

  Conor nodded. “Da.” He wasn’t sure if that was Albanian, but he was pretty sure Chase would be equally clueless.

  Chase poured more scotch, half-filling the tumbler this time.

  Conor smiled.

  Chase thought he was a trout chasing a fat fly.

  Time to reel him in.

  “I can only make a small deposit to begin with,” Conor said, taking another gulp from his glass. “But
I can assure you, more is coming.” He did his best to ape a Russian accent. He wouldn’t win any Oscars, but then, this wasn’t the most discerning audience.

  “Do you have any idea how much?” Chase asked. “It would help in deciding how to structure, well, how we would handle this arrangement.”

  “I have the information, but I cannot give this to you. Not yet.”

  They stared at each other.

  “Any information you share with me, it would—”

  “Young man, you will do as I ask, yes?”

  Conor saw the flash in Chase’s eyes, a fleeting glimpse of the demon that raged behind this suited patsy. He knew it well. He could recognize things in the way people walked, whether someone was weak. It was fun to target someone more challenging.

  Time for the magic.

  “I must go,” Conor said after a pause. He finished his whiskey. “I will send a wire this afternoon with instructions.”

  Getting up, he groaned and let his coat fall to the floor. Chase jumped forward to help, but Conor waved him back. Leaning over, he grabbed his coat. At the same time, he dropped a memory key onto the floor, to the side of the chair.

  He straightened up.

  “Thank you, Mr. Rockwell,” Conor said, extending his hand. Chase’s eye flickered down. Chase saw the memory key, but was choosing not to say anything.

  Chase shook Conor’s hand. “A pleasure, Mr. Lluca.”

  Conor turned and made for the door, smiling.

  He had five more appointments.

  Five more whiskeys waiting for him.

  40

  Two Bridges Housing Project

  New York City

  “Four for four, baby!” Sheldon whooped, turning from his computer screens to high-five Jake. “Your old man is a frigging genius at this.”