Seconds later, they were in. “Holy sweetness!” Dan exclaimed. “How’d you do that?”
“Friends in low places,” Trojan responded.
“You’re the one, aren’t you?” Sam asked. “The decryption toy that crushed the banks and exchanges?”
Trojan blushed a little. “Partly. I assembled the delivery vector. Someone else perfected the algorithm.”
“And dropped it in the server farm at NSA,” Dan finished.
Trojan nodded. “Team effort.”
“Best damned hack in history.”
Sam was pretty sure that Dan was awestruck. “Want his autograph?” she teased.
“Actually…”
“So here’s the deal,” Trojan announced. “Looks like this machine is running the script that’s generating the thefts. At least, some of them, anyway. Assets near a quarter of a million Bitcoins, looks like. They must have hacked into a number of different exchanges to find that many small-time users to rip off.”
“Can you disable it?”
“Already did. I can dig around a little bit, maybe pull together a few more clues about who these people are.”
Sam shook her head. “Not here. They’ll be back. I can’t believe they’ve left the thing unattended in the first place.” She got a chill down her spine. “In fact, let’s get the hell out of here, now.”
“Not just yet,” Dan said, eyeballing the phone on the wall. He lifted the receiver, clicked a few buttons on his own smart phone, and held the old-school wall phone up to his handset. Sam heard tones beeping back and forth between the two phones. “Mapping the phone number by reverse-lookup. We’ll be able to get a call log that way.”
“What would I do without you?” Sam asked.
“Catch a lot fewer assholes, I think.”
“No argument. But hurry up. I have a bad feeling.”
Trojan tucked the laptop and modem under his arm, and Dan hung the receiver back on the cradle. The foursome made their way out of the warehouse quickly but cautiously, and drove into the Seattle night, Dan and Trojan’s faces illuminated in the backseat of the giant six-passenger pickup truck by the glow of the computer devices in their hands, fingers buzzing in a torrent of activity.
It didn’t take long before the pair had found a destination to explore. The list of calls made to or from the phone on the wall in the dingy warehouse office included a cell phone belonging to one Angela Fuentes. Nobody answered, but the phone was on, and had been stationary for several hours. The address resolved to a residence belonging to Connie Fuentes, half an hour away.
“Now what?” Brock asked. The house was empty, with an abandoned look about it.
Sam’s search had revealed no essential toiletries, evidence that the occupants didn’t plan on returning any time soon. They’d also left their cell phones, which reinforced Sam’s flight theory.
Dan discovered the destroyed laptop. “No idea what this is all about. But they took the hard drive, which leads me to believe that something went awry.”
Sam nodded. “Internal strife, maybe. There’s a boatload of money in play. People get funny.”
She looked at her watch, still on Mountain time. Nine p.m. Eight in Seattle. Each case had a half-life, after which the odds of cracking it diminished dramatically. Her years of investigative work gave her a strong hunch that this particular case’s half-life was probably measured in hours, rather than days. “Gotta figure this out now, boys. I don’t think we’re going to get another crack at it. Not if Archive is right about the sums involved.”
“Who’s next on the call list?”
FBI Special Agent Adkins, it turned out. Not at the office, but not that hard to find, given that he was in the Homeland database of federal law enforcement officers.
He answered his cell phone on the fourth ring.
It took a bit of explaining, along with Sam’s badge number, to get Adkins in the right mood to talk. But talk he did, in clipped Fed staccato, equal parts cop and college, explaining that Domingo “Sabot” Mondragon was one of the world’s foremost hackers. So talented, in fact, that he once shut down a government, which brought the kind of attention that could feed both an ego and an indictment. One thing led to another, Mondragon played ball, did some time in exchange for ratting out a few dozen hacker cronies, and now earned a living working cyber crimes for the Bureau.
Until Tuesday, Adkins amended, when people who only used their first names and threw tons of weight around had spirited Mondragon away. To do what, Adkins had no idea, but he knew that it involved an officially-sanctioned parole violation, namely using a semiconductor computing device.
“How do you feel about that?”
“I just work here. That shit rolled downhill with some serious snap. Regional director put his stamp on it, and some opinions don’t count as much as others.”
“I understand,” Sam said. “Have you been in contact with Mondragon since Tuesday?”
“I drove him home a couple days ago. He’d spent something like twenty-four straight hours pounding away on that computer. Like a long lost love, I think.”
“In the warehouse over in SoDo?” Sam asked.
“That’s right. You’ve done some homework, I see.”
“We’re not the Bureau, but we try,” Sam teased. “How about recent contact, over the last day or so.”
“None. Haven’t heard from him. I was actually going to give him a call tomorrow to see how he was doing. Everything okay?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Is he in trouble?”
“He might be on vacation.”
“Shit. I was afraid of that. Can I join your investigation?”
“More the merrier. Send me a picture of him, first, please.”
Adkins complied. Dan fed the image of Mondragon’s face into the national database, and submitted a search request, centered on the Northwestern US, with a Most Urgent tag on it.
Across the continent, four stories full of computer equipment in a downtown DC office building whirred to life, polling all of the public surveillance camera output streams, running a program called BIDSS, or Biometric Identification and Surveillance System. Big Brother had strong-armed Big Data, and the ensuing sweaty love knot had produced an Orwellian system that could spot anyone, anywhere, in near real-time.
Provided, of course, that they were unable to hide their faces from the ubiquitous surveillance cameras, posted at every American intersection, in every store, restaurant, and parking lot, and atop nearly every building of consequence. Staying hidden was no mean feat. You’d basically have to wear a ski mask and sunglasses around town, because the computers measured all manner of facial features, many of which were unaltered by even the best disguises.
Upshot: one Domingo “Sabot” Mondragon had crossed the Canadian border, without incident, it seemed, an hour and a half ago.
“Sonuvabitch,” Sam said, running back out to the six-pack truck. “Back to the airport!”
In the backseat of the six-pack truck, Dan lifted fingerprints from the laptop they found at the abandoned warehouse, took a picture of the print sheet, and scanned it into the national database tool. Less than a minute later, he had a positive match: Domingo Mondragon. “He’s our guy,” Dan announced, getting to work on his second assignment.
Sam had a stroke of brilliance during their mad dash to the airport. “Any chance you can ferret out a Bitcoin account address for any jet charter services operating out of the Vancouver area?” she’d asked Trojan and Dan. Her thinking was that Sabot Mondragon had just stolen a giant pile of Bitcoins, which suddenly gave him much more power and mobility than the average joe currently enjoyed.
It didn’t take long. Every Bitcoin transaction was visible in the block chain, and Trojan had earlier figured out how to plot the IP address – which also revealed the physical location – for the computers involved in any Bitcoin sale. It was relatively easy for him to correlate those computers with the businesses they served. “Blammo,” he exclaimed. �
��Five of them just set up accounts since Tuesday.”
“Major transactions?” Sam asked. “Like, enough crypto cash to haul three people to the South American destination of choice?”
“Just one,” Trojan said. “Obsidian Air. Based out of Pitt Meadows Regional, near Vancouver. Someone paid them three Bitcoins, which is worth, like, seven gazillion dollars right now.”
So Pitt Meadows it was.
Sam called ahead to the airport, the pilot had the plane ready, and they taxied and took off without delay.
Sam had given the Wonder Twins another assignment: figure out, for the sake of confirmation, whether the originating wallet, or wallets, that had paid Obsidian Air were in any way related to the thefts that had occurred over the past few days.
“In other words,” she said, “tell me if it really is our Bitcoin thief who just booked passage to a life on the lam.”
It was going to take some luck, Dan said, and no small amount of doing. Plus, even if they were successful, they would really only discover whether the money used to buy the plane tickets had come from somewhere within the collection of red dots that was centered around Seattle, the same density plot that Trojan had used to detect the wave of thefts initially. There was no guarantee that they would provide proof.
“I suppose that’ll have to be good enough,” Sam said.
But they got luckier than that. The thief had tried to launder the funds through a number of shill accounts and wallet-obscuring services, but that was an exercise in futility. It was an easy matter to follow the funds back to the originating wallets.
Several of those wallets had received stolen funds that had originated in several accounts belonging to Archive’s group.
“Smoking gun,” Trojan announced as the plane rotated skyward. “We caught a supremely lucky break. Turns out that part of the money the thief used to pay for his plane tickets was stolen from Archive.”
“Holy shit. You figured all of that out?”
“I don’t know why you Feds are so paranoid about Bitcoin as a laundering tool. It’s a forensic accountant’s wet dream. You just have to know what you’re looking for.”
Sam suddenly had a panicked feeling. What if he’s already gone? She dashed forward to the cockpit, tapped the pilot on the shoulder, and asked, “Any way you can step on it? We need to be there as fast as possible.”
Which wasn’t fast enough for Sam’s taste, and she spent the remainder of the twenty-minute flight in nervous anticipation, knees bouncing impatiently.
42
Pitt Meadows Regional Airport, British Columbia, Canada
Domingo Mondragon, Sabot to friends and enemies alike, had the ghost-white look of a man on borrowed time. Angie noticed, and so did Connie, and all of his denials, in various octaves across his vocal register, had failed to convince them that he was in anything but deep shit.
Which, by extension, meant that they were in deep shit. So there was a bit of nervous energy in the car as Sabot picked a parking spot in the Obsidian Air lot.
“Are you sure about this?” Angie asked, not for the first or even the fourth time.
“Sure as I’m gonna be, baby. I don’t see better options.”
They dragged their bags into the posh terminal, checked in with the desk clerk, and took seats in the waiting lounge.
Sabot sat down, exhaled, and allowed himself to relax just a little.
Then he noticed the large man seated in the corner, hidden behind a newspaper, large gut heaving with each breath. The man lowered the newspaper to reveal the kind of elaborate middle-aged hair arrangement that only denial could produce, with a part originating somewhere above the left ear, and a gravity-defying flap of stringy, greased hair clinging improbably to his bulbous pate, cascading carelessly down the right side of his head, the whole thing threatening to unwind itself at the slightest tilt of the man’s head.
He beamed a gigantic, jowly smile. “I heard you were heading a long way south. I was hoping I could catch a ride with you. There’s a little bit of job trouble, if I’m being honest. Happy to pay my way, and then some. What do you say?”
Angie and Connie turned as one to look at him, affirmative looks on their faces. Misery loved company, evidently.
He shook his head slightly, almost imperceptibly, afraid of opening themselves up to unnecessary human interaction of any kind. He caught daggers from Angie, and ignored the ones from Connie. “Would it kill us to give a guy a break?” Angie said quietly, through a smile and clenched teeth.
Sabot mulled, inhaled, exhaled, and stewed some more. He glanced across at the fat guy thumbing a ride to Central America. The man looked like someone’s porky, comical uncle. He still wore that silly, yokel-esque smile, a transparently uncomplicated expression on his wide face. He didn’t look like he could fool anyone, Sabot figured, so it was probably good that the guy was trying to get out of town before anyone wised up to whatever scheme he’d perpetrated.
Sabot glanced again at Connie and Angie, who were still looking at him expectantly.
The guy looked harmless, Sabot decided, and he’d offered to pay his way. Maybe karma would remember a good deed, and someone would lend them a hand when they needed it.
Sabot nodded his assent.
“Great! Hey, thanks, buddy, you really helped me out of a jam,” he said, a little bit of a conspiracy in his tone. “I really want to get out of here while the getting is still pretty good, you know?”
Sabot understood the desire very well.
The clerk entered the waiting lounge and summoned the passengers. It was time. Sabot found himself relaxing, believing, possibly for the first time all week, that he might emerge unscathed from a very dicey adventure.
As they made their way to the waiting aircraft, the fat man extended his hand. “Thanks again, buddy. By the way, the name’s Fredericks. Bill Fredericks.”
“Nice to meet you,” Sabot said, following him up the stairway to the well-appointed cabin.
The door sealed behind them, the engines wound up, and, moments later, they taxied to the runway.
They made small talk, Sabot’s innards unclenching a bit more. None of the passengers noticed that their takeoff was momentarily delayed by the arrival of an American government jet, which landed and barely slowed down before it exited the runway and charged toward the private charter ramp that Sabot and his family had just left behind.
Moments later, they lifted off, made a wide, arcing turn to the south, and sped skyward toward their entangled fate.
Sabot wasn’t sure, but he thought he caught a smug smile on the fat guy’s face. Probably just felt good to have made his escape from whatever trouble he was leaving behind, Sabot reasoned.
He knew the feeling.
He squeezed Angie’s hand, reclined his seat, and drifted off to sleep.
Mindscrew
Part I
Future and past
Are the stories we fashion
A mad distraction
From the one thing happening now.
-Chairman Zeitgeist, “Charismatic Megafauna”
1
The end of the modern world began in New Jersey. This proved a number of people right, who asserted that New Jersey sucked, a capacity which, it might well have been argued, grew very suddenly to encompass the entire globe.
At least, the portion of the globe whose lives were impacted directly by the whims and fancies of the US dollar, a population which included almost every human on the planet, minus a token tribe or two of hunter-gatherers.
The trouble was that almost nobody knew the world was ending. Not even the guy who had helped begin its ending.
Especially not him.
He just thought he was getting rich. Right guy, right place, right time. Right on.
The whole thing wasn’t even his idea. He was kidnapped, coerced, and cajoled into using what was by any standard a rare skill set. His task: to reapportion ownership of certain virtual financial assets.
In short, he was
made to steal things. Crypto-currency, to be precise, something he hadn’t heard of until the time came to begin stealing it.
Domingo Mondragon was his name, but he was known far more widely by his nom de guerre, Sabot. He was a hacker. He had Anonymous, Antisec, Lulzsec, and various other credits to his name. Arcane monikers notwithstanding, those were meaningful credits. He was damn good.
Equally meaningful was the fact that Sabot’s real name – Domingo Mondragon – appeared on another list, one that contained the names of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s stool pigeons. He was a rat, and there were just shy of two dozen people who were Big House guests on his account.
He was also on a list of convicted felons.
And a list of FBI employees.
And, now, Sabot occupied the top slot in Special Agent Sam Jameson’s Biggest Bastards list.
She knew the world was ending. Or, if “ending” was too dramatic a term for the kind of economic subjugation that was occurring second by second as a single server in a single cluster in a single data center — in New Jersey — steadily and inexorably redistributed a controlling percentage of the world’s wealth, Sam at least recognized the magnitude of the problem.
Freaking huge.
It was the kind of wealth that would make the Queen blush. Maybe Louis the Fourteenth, too.
A little blinking light on a little box full of semiconductors, situated in a server farm in a dark cave that used to be the main dig in the Naughtright Mine, protected by millions of tons of rock, cooled by spring water piped in from the nearby stream, was a terrifically poor indication of the mayhem being unleashed in the digital domain within.
The machine didn’t know Sabot, didn’t know Sam, and didn’t know anyone called Archive. It certainly didn’t know the Facilitator. And it also didn’t know that its simple script, which it repeated several hundred times per second, performed a task that tilted the entire socioeconomic world on its axis.
The Essential Sam Jameson / Peter Kittredge Box Set: SEVEN bestsellers from international sensation Lars Emmerich Page 163