God is a Gamer

by Ravi Subramanian

  People began to speculate. Was it a failed love affair? A career setback? Problems with the daughter? Stress in the family? And so forth . . . Tanya was extremely distressed by all this rumour-mongering.

  ‘Could we get a court injunction to stop people from writing about her?’ she asked Aditya, in a fit of desperation.

  ‘I know it is difficult, Tanya. But the more we tell them not to do something, the more they will. That’s the paparazzi for you.’

  Tanya had tears in her eyes. ‘Why are they doing this to mom? Her body has not even been released from the hospital and the slander has begun.’

  Aditya put his arms around her to console her.

  Malvika’s cremation took place that evening. Attendees included the finance minister, the RBI governor, as well as NYIB’s rank and file. Peter Baron flew in too.

  A couple of days later, a squad from the Mumbai crime branch came calling at Tanya’s house. They had with them a copy of the six-page long post mortem report. Tanya had seen the report earlier but hadn’t understood anything, except the last few lines.

  Death caused due to excessive bleeding and internal haemorrhage. All injuries found on the body are consistent with fall from a height. Victim was in a state of inebriation at the time of death, as indicated by high alcohol content in blood. Preliminary toxicology tests do not indicate foul play.

  ‘If we go by this report, Miss Tanya, it’s a clear case of suicide.’

  Tanya refused to believe the report. She tried telling the crime branch personnel but to no avail. The cops had made up their minds.

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  34

  USA

  Immediate action: convert 1 million dollars into bitcoins and transfer them to the wallet, details of which are being sent to you separately. Send 1 million dollars through a trusted personal courier. Procure two Rolex Submariners—they don’t cost more than 500,000 dollars. Wear one on person and leave the other in the check-in baggage. Other 500,000 dollars to be carried on person. In 500-dollar bills. We will advise you on how to remit the balance.

  Josh was a relieved man when he read this message. He had been awaiting instructions since the ATM heist. He was nervous—5 million dollars in 20-, 50-, 100- and 200-dollar bills was a lot of paper to be lying around in a room. He had bundled the money in two large suitcases a day after the heist. The backpacks were also crowding his room. He had not disposed of them yet.

  The mail was crisp. To the point. All on TOR mail. He read the mail three times to make sure he understood it.

  Josh was quite familiar with the process of converting cash into bitcoins, which had emerged as a darling of the underworld over the last two years. The dark internet. Money launderers.

  Josh was the admin on Cotton Trail, which only accepted payments through bitcoins. A customer placing an order on Cotton Trail would pay in advance by transferring the required amount of bitcoins into Cotton Trail’s wallet. Cotton Trail would wait till the goods were delivered, which took roughly five days, and then transfer the merchant’s dues into his bitcoin wallet after retaining 15 per cent as its commission for facilitating the transaction. At any given point in time, Cotton Trail had bitcoins worth five days’ sales in its wallet. Given that the daily trade on Cotton Trail was over 1.5 million dollars, the escrow, at any point in time, had bitcoins equivalent to in excess of 7.5 million dollars.

  Josh had access to Cotton Trail’s bitcoin wallet. For a minute, he considered transferring the bitcoin holdings of Cotton Trail to the perpetrators of the ATM heist but dropped the idea. Such transactions could be made only after seeking the concurrence of the entire group. He decided to ask. It was better that way.

  That was the easier leg of the instruction. As per the instruction, he had to send 1 million dollars in liquid cashable objects through his mule. The address that was sent to him was in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. He couldn’t trust anyone with the money. On the other hand, he couldn’t travel himself. If he did, where would he leave the cash that was stuffed in his room? He was in a fix.

  That’s when he decided to take a punt. He walked up to his roommate. ‘Stan?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘You free this week?’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘I need you to go to Santo Domingo. Obviously not for free.’

  ‘What’s the deal?’

  ‘Ten thousand dollars to deliver cash and back.’

  Stan agreed. He had just got travel documents made through an agent he had contacted on Cotton Trail.

  After talking to Stan, Josh sent a message to the Boss: Delivery boy will be on his way in three days. Money will reach you by the weekend.

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  35

  Mumbai

  Once news of the breach into NYIB’s card operating system managed by eTIOS became public, other banks started to panic. Almost all the banks in the country had outsourced some process or the other to eTIOS.

  It was a huge challenge for Aditya to logically explain to the banks that the breach was not eTIOS’ fault but the handiwork of an international criminal gang. Not many bought the story. Sundeep too had his hands full, helping Aditya disseminate the right information.

  Swami called Aditya that evening. ‘Matt wants us to dump eTIOS and annul our contract with you.’

  ‘What?’ Aditya was shocked. Of all his clients, NYIB had been with him right from the beginning. Running eTIOS without NYIB as the anchor client was unimaginable.

  ‘Yes. These guys are all short-term thinkers. They want to tangibly demonstrate to the world that they are taking action against the service provider. And the only action he can take against you is termination.’

  ‘It’s not our fault, Swami, you know that. The hackers could have gotten into the systems of any bank, any BPO, any service provider!’

  ‘You’re preaching to the choir, Aditya. I’m just telling you what Matt said. I’ve asked him to hold on till the investigation is complete, at least. Hopefully, by then we will know what went wrong.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘Just got a bit worked up at the way he said it. These expats just don’t understand how we operate in India. Relationships don’t mean anything to them, Aditya.’

  ‘What an asshole!’ Aditya seldom got flustered but that day he couldn’t bottle it in. It was the fag end of the day by the time he was done meeting the chiefs of four banks. He had tried to convince them that eTIOS was a safe organization to work with. They hadn’t been completely convinced though they had agreed to wait for now.

  In the interim, Varun had taken complete charge at Indiscape. The last two weeks had seen good traction for Townsville. The game had been taken off their website and made available exclusively on Facebook. Customer interest was encouraging. Work had now begun in earnest on porting all their other games to Facebook. Indiscape was rolling again. Varun had made a tremendous impact. The deal with Facebook could be the game changer after all.

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  36

  Washington DC

  Adrian and Tony were in a downtown pub that night. Adrian had already downed six pints of beer. He was in a very sombre mood, reflecting on his past. He didn’t have a family. He had gotten divorced long ago for reasons he didn’t even remember clearly any more. Now, his only love was his job, his investigations, his cases. Nothing else mattered. And all that had come to a stuttering halt. For the first time in his life, he had been called incompetent. His commitment to his job had been questioned. His self-esteem was down in the dumps.

  When he ordered his seventh beer, Tony stopped him. ‘Adrian, let’s go.’

  ‘Don’t want to. We are losers, Tony. When I got the Gillian Tan case, I thought I finally had an assignment where I would make a diffe
rence. Now we run the risk of this being taken away from us.’

  ‘Nobody will take it away from you, Adrian. Come, let’s go.’ Tony helped him up. He dropped a 100-dollar bill on the table and gestured to the waiter, who nodded.

  ‘Where are you taking me?’ Adrian asked.

  ‘We’re going to my place. I’m driving. You’re too drunk.’ He supported Adrian as he stumbled towards the door. They crossed a television playing late-night news. Images of the CEO of a bank in India who was talking about the safety measures the bank was putting in place to prevent a repeat of the 5-million-dollar heist were flashing on the screen.

  ‘Some stupid bank. Couldn’t protect customer data. All banks are the same, Tony. Here or India, the story is the same,’ he slurred.

  Tony didn’t respond. He just held him by his hand and tried to lead him outside.

  The image transitioned to a map of New York, showing the ATMs where the heist had taken place. Adrian stopped and stared at the TV.

  ‘Let’s go, Adrian!’ Tony tried to pull him.

  ‘No, wait!’ Something had caught his attention. ‘Hold on a sec!’

  Tony looked at the TV too. He couldn’t make out anything. He was about to pull Adrian again when Adrian turned to him. Though his eyes were still red, the effect of six pints had seemingly disappeared. ‘Will you take me to Edgar Hoover right now?’ The slur had gone.

  ‘Now? You want to go to the FBI headquarters in this state?’

  ‘Can you take me there?’

  ‘We’ll go tomorrow, Adrian, what say?’ Tony led Adrian out of the bar.

  ‘Don’t you worry, my friend. I will be okay.’

  Tony just threw up his hands. ‘Whatever!’

  In no time, they were hurtling through the streets of Washington DC, towards the Edgar Hoover Building, the headquarters of the FBI. There, Tony swiped his card and walked in. Adrian followed. They quietly walked into the elevator and straight to the office on the sixteenth floor. Adrian was completely sober now.

  ‘Tony, can you get me a list of the ATMs?’ Seeing the blank look on Tony’s face, he added, ‘The ATMs that were raided, Tony!’

  ‘What do you want to do with them? We are not dealing with the ATM case.’

  ‘I know. Just trust me and don’t ask any questions. I need this information right now.’

  It didn’t take Tony long to pull it out of the system. List in hand, Adrian walked up to the wall, pulled off a giant map of New York and placed it on the floor. For the next hour, he plotted the ATMs one by one on the map with a marker. Tony was getting restless.

  ‘Just a couple of minutes,’ said Adrian, not lifting his eyes off the map.

  Once he was done, he looked up. ‘I need to call the Prick.’ And without waiting for Tony to respond, he called Robert Brick.

  A surprised Robert picked up the call the moment he saw it was from the FBI headquarters.

  ‘Robert, it’s Adrian.’

  ‘Are you out of your mind? It’s an hour past midnight! You better have a damn good reason for calling.’

  Adrian quickly told him why he had called.

  Robert was aghast. ‘I’m coming over. Wait for me.’

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  37

  New York

  It was 2 a.m. when Josh was woken up by the persistent ringing of his phone. He looked at the screen sleepily. It showed a private number. He took the call.

  ‘How long should I wait for you to pick up the phone?’

  The tone jolted Josh out of sleep. ‘Who the fuck is this?’

  ‘Your guy hasn’t reached with the money. Where is he?’

  ‘What? I don’t understand . . . what you are saying!’

  ‘Which part of what I said did you not get?’ Ferocious grunt. ‘Go, find him!’

  Josh was sitting upright on his bed in the middle of the night, wondering what could have gone wrong. He had sent Stan with the million dollars. The checkers at the airports at JFK and Santo Domingo had been bought, so it was unlikely that Stan had been caught.

  Where the hell was Stan?

  And where the hell was the money?

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  38

  Washington DC

  Robert Brick reached Edgar Hoover in less than an hour. Adrian was waiting for him outside his room.

  ‘You better be sure of what you are saying. I detest being woken up at night.’

  ‘Okay, here goes. The ATM heist seems to be the work of Islamic militants.’

  Robert was not impressed. ‘You told me that already. Which group is it?’

  ‘Not sure. Could be Al Qaeda or Lashkar-e-Taiba or even a local faction . . . can’t say. It needs to be investigated.’

  ‘Then what makes you say with such conviction that it’s Islamic terrorists?’ He walked back to his chair, sat down and sighed. ‘Five minutes is all you have, Adrian.’

  Adrian dug into his bag and pulled out a large map of New York. He cleared a space by pushing away everything that was kept on Robert’s table and placed the map on the glass. Not for a moment did he look apologetic for the mess he had created.

  ‘Here, Robert . . . they strike first at the ATM outside Coney Island Hospital. The second strike is at an ATM twenty feet from there.’

  ‘We know that.’

  ‘For the next fifteen minutes, one by one, all the ATMs along this route from the hospital to the Coney Island rail yard are visited by the gang.’ Adrian drew a line from Coney Island Hospital to the rail yard along Shore parkway . . . a straight line.

  He looked up. Robert was looking at him, perplexed. ‘But Robert, fifteen minutes after the perps go down this route, an ATM near the Waldbaum’s on Ocean Avenue comes up on the target list. We could have assumed it was the same team but there is a problem. Waldbaum’s is over a couple of miles from the rail yard where the first trail has already reached. Clearly, this is a second team in operation. While the first team progresses along the yard’s periphery, this second team goes on to rob the ATMs along Ocean Avenue.’ With a pen he traced the path on the paper. ‘This is trail number two,’ he said.

  ‘Another fourteen minutes, and the first ATM on another route appears on the horizon. Next to Sheepshead Bay. Along E16th Street straight down to Graves End, Neck Road, Barbara Reign School and further down . . .’ Adrian drew a line tracing the path of the ATMs on the E16 that were looted by the gang.

  In front of them, on the map, were three distinct lines. ‘Now we know that there were three teams, looting different ATMs in sequence, on three different trails.’ Adrian divulged more as he progressed with his revelations. One by one, he drew six trails of the ATMs looted in Brooklyn.

  ‘Six lines. Six trails. Six teams.’

  Robert nodded. ‘Apart from this, there are two distinct trails in Manhattan and two in the Bronx. A total of ten teams. The trail of looting in Manhattan started forty minutes after the first ATM in Coney Island Hospital was hit. The one in the Bronx, meanwhile, started thirty minutes after Coney Island.’

  ‘What are you trying to prove, Adrian?’

  ‘Two things. The entire operation was run out of here . . .’ He circled a small area on the map. Robert looked at the map and then at Adrian.

  ‘The teams that went to the Bronx and Manhattan were the first to leave from here,’ Adrian explained, pointing at the circle on the map. ‘It took them thirty minutes across the GWB to the Bronx and forty minutes to Manhattan. The moment they reached, the Bronx and Manhattan legs of the unlimited operation started. After dispatching the teams to Manhattan, the operations in Brooklyn and Queens would have started. The first team started down this path . . .’

  He pointed to the line he had drawn, joining Coney Island Hospital to the rail yard route. ‘The second team went down Shore Avenue and Waldbaum’s. The third went down E16 and so on.’

>   ‘I understood it the first time you explained,’ Robert said testily.

  ‘If you pull back these six lines, extrapolate them backwards, you will find that they all meet right here,’ Adrian said, pointing at the circle on the map. ‘Right here, at the cluster near Tete-e-Tete in the Brighton beach area. Near Coney Island Avenue. I’m assuming the operation has something to do with someone in this neighbourhood.’ He tapped repeatedly at the circle he had drawn on the map. ‘Here. It has to be here.’

  ‘And who do you think is behind all this?’

  ‘This cluster is dominated by Asians. Indians, Pakistanis and a few other ethnic groups from southeast Asia. Several Muslim fundamentalist organizations are known to have roots here.’

  Robert sat back in his chair and pondered. ‘I hear you, Adrian, but security camera footage from the ATMs tells a different story. The perps’ faces are not visible but one can clearly make out that most of them are white people, not brown.’

  ‘That doesn’t count for much,’ Adrian argued. ‘Many Muslim jihadis in America these days are white. Almost 21 per cent are born in America. Not much of a distinction between whites and non-whites, we must confess. A blonde woman in a business suit is as likely to be a criminal as a Muslim woman in a black headscarf.’

  There was merit in Adrian’s hypothesis. Why hadn’t his team thought of it? Robert’s face betrayed no emotion. ‘You have made little or no progress on the Gillian Tan case. As a result, I am disinclined to accept this theory of yours. But, given the promise and drive you have otherwise demonstrated, I’m willing to put my neck on the line. But not for long. A week is all you have to get to the bottom of this. If you are able to make progress, you get to stay on as lead investigator. Else I take this case from you and you can get the fuck out. Got it?’