Bojan and the bulge in his pants followed eagerly back to her room.
He had been inside Sam’s room for less than a second before she had him on the floor, his limbs tied up like a pretzel. At first, he thought it was a sexual thing, a little girl power with pain and bondage thrown in, some fun with a tough-looking stranger, but Brock’s appearance from around the corner stopped the blood flow to Bojan’s little brain, and redirected it to his business brain. “You have no idea who you’re fucking with,” Bojan said.
“Why don’t you enlighten me,” Sam said, dragging him to the center of the room, his limbs now expertly zip-tied together. “You got a call from Canada the other day. I’d like you to tell me about it.”
There was the usual bluster and posturing. Sam feigned a yawn, produced a razor blade, and pulled Bojan’s pants and underwear down around his knees. Brock held his torso, and Sam sat on his legs. She positioned the razor near his scrotum. Testicular torture is getting to be a thing with me, she thought absently. Should I see somebody about this?
Bojan struggled, but was bound fast. “What’s the matter, Bo?” Sam asked mockingly. “Suddenly shy? A minute ago, you couldn’t wait to show me your prong.”
He glared at her.
She put on a bored look. “People really bleed for a long time,” she said in a disinterested tone of voice. “You hear of rape suspects getting castrated by the fathers of their victims. A surprising number of those men die from all the blood loss. It’s really a dangerous thing,” she said.
She gave Bojan’s skin a little slice for emphasis. The man’s body bucked, and he screamed obscenities. But Sam and Brock’s combined weight, along with the disadvantaged position Bojan’s arms and legs were bound in, left him mostly helpless. She gave him another little slice, this time where his scrotum met his abdomen. “You’re going to run out of fight long before I lose interest,” Sam said.
She could tell from his eyes that Bojan believed her.
“Nobody would fault you for talking,” she said, her voice quiet and controlled. “I mean, who in his right mind would lose his schwanz to keep a secret?”
Bojan glared. “Bitch,” he spat.
Sam shrugged. “If the shoe fits…”
“You have no idea who you’re fucking with.”
“You keep saying that. You’re obviously in the kneecapping business. Despite falling for the honey trap like a complete amateur, you’ve got a tiny bit on the ball, so maybe you’re moving up the ladder. But you’re not old enough to be running the show. So you’re mid-level muscle. For whom?”
Bojan’s facial expression changed.
“Did I expose you just now, Bo?” Sam said. Brock chuckled at the pun.
“You were also pretty insulted about being called a Russian.”
Bojan’s eyes narrowed.
“I’m guessing you’re either in competition with the Russkies,” Sam said, “or you’re on their payroll, pissed about being a Serb ass kisser in a Russian world.”
“Go to hell,” Bojan hissed.
“Just a name and number,” Sam said. “Or contact instructions. That’s all you’d need to give me. We’ll pass it off like I’m looking to hire you guys. Nothing blows back in your face.”
“Why should I trust you?” Bojan asked, anger and hatred in his eyes.
“Maybe you shouldn’t,” Sam said, smiling sweetly. “But I will tell you that I won’t hesitate to turn you into a soprano.” She cupped her hand around his reproductive gear, stretched the parts to one side, and positioned the razor for a healthy slice.
“Okay,” Bojan said quickly.
“Why am I not surprised that Slobodan Radosz’ name came up again?” Sam asked.
“I’m shocked that you got that information out of him inside of five minutes,” Brock said.
Sam laughed. “Can you think of one secret you’d be willing to lose your manhood over?”
“Not a damn one,” Brock said, shuddering. “We’re seriously going to Moscow?”
“It isn’t likely that Radosz will come to us.”
“And you think he’s really there?”
Sam shrugged. “Sounds like he’s the point man for the Serb contingent. He’ll have to make occasional trips to the home office to stay relevant and keep his guys employed.”
“You talk like the Russian leg-breakers are a political organization,” Brock said with a chuckle.
“Politics are an outgrowth of human nature,” Sam said. “It is what it is, regardless of your profession.”
“Somebody paid attention in Sociology 101,” Brock chuckled. “I was busy trying to get lucky with the blonde in the third row.”
“Too bad I didn’t know you then,” she said. “I’d have ruined you for anyone else.”
“Better late than never,” Brock said with a smile.
They packed their bags, left the semi-naked Serb tied up in the bathroom, and went downstairs to the internet cafe, where Sam logged in to the “Fight The Power” bulletin board. Dan had left her an encrypted phone number where she could reach him. She decoded the digits, then used her last virgin burner to dial the number.
“What’s up, eh?” Dan said in a shitty imitation of a Canadian accent.
“Hi Dan. What’s the news?”
“I followed the concierge home after his shift,” Dan said.
“Did he offer you a drink?”
“Funny. But he was talkative, after we established the right environment. He has a fairly large digital footprint, which is how I figured out that he’s sleeping with the building owner’s trophy wife.”
“I imagine that helped you put him in the right frame of mind,” Sam said.
“It did. So here’s the deal. Our guy is a regular at this upscale condo place, like we figured out earlier. He has this thing with his clothes. He’s obsessed with looking neat, and he has to get his clothes pressed every night before he wears them the next day.”
“Radosz, or the concierge?”
“Radosz. Pay attention.”
“Is this going somewhere?”
“Yes. So one day, the dry cleaner brings a fistful of Limpura to the concierge.”
“Limpura.” Sam frowned. “Isn’t that a small marsupial?”
“No,” Dan said. “It’s the national currency of Honduras. Radosz left it in his jacket. So the laundry guy gives it to our friend the concierge, who takes it up to Radosz’ room.”
“Really, Dan, we have to catch a plane,” Sam said. “Can you speed it up a bit?”
“I’m getting there. So the concierge knocks on Radosz’ door. Turns out that Radosz is very busy, beating the shit out of a prostitute. The concierge hears the noise, so he knocks harder. Radosz finally opens the door, all pissed off at the interruption. Anyway, this half-naked girl runs out of the room, bloody and beat to hell.”
“Dan, you’re killing me. Get to the point, please.”
“So the concierge freaks out a little bit. But Radosz pays him a grand to keep his mouth shut about the assault.”
“Man of the year,” Sam said, tapping her foot impatiently.
“Seriously. But now, Radosz figures the concierge works for him. He starts expecting the guy to fetch hookers, drugs, cash, whatnot.”
“I’m not interested yet.”
“And then Radosz asks him to fetch computer hackers.”
Sam raised her eyebrows. “Maybe I’m interested now. When was this?”
“Last week. Roughly the time the dollar went to shit. Turns out, the concierge has a kid brother who’s home on break from college in Vancouver. Computer science major, but with a juvie prior for hacking into a government website and defacing it with titty pictures. Anyway, the concierge turns his kid brother on to Radosz. Short term job opportunity kind of thing.”
“You’re thinking this is connected with the Bitcoin theft operation?”
“I am. The concierge’s brother had an interview with a group of five Russian programmers.”
“Russians?”
> “Russians. Evidently, they’re some of the best coders in the world. Something about not having much computer time, so they had to learn how to write clean code that works without a bunch of debugging. The kid brother started to work the next morning, and the concierge hasn’t seen him since.”
Sam mulled. The universe was full of coincidences, and she was certain that Russian computer hackers were busy hacking all kinds of things at any given moment. But what if they were working on the Bitcoin theft operation?
“Hey,” Dan said. “You said you were catching a flight. Where to?”
“Moscow,” Sam said. “Slobodan Radosz is supposedly on his way there now. We’re hoping for a chat. But I need some dirt on him, if you can dig any up. And maybe a way to find him. We got contact instructions from our new friend Bojan, but I always like a backup plan.”
“Shouldn’t be too hard. Sounds like the concierge has him on speed dial these days.”
“And find out who those hackers are. We’re going to need a little leverage, I think.”
“I’m on it, boss,” Dan said.
15
“Boo-yah!” Vaneesh exclaimed.
Trojan looked sideways at him. “Does anyone say that anymore?”
“Hot damn!”
“It’s working?”
“Like a champ!” Vaneesh rose from his chair and raised his arms above his head in victory.
“Hang it on the download site,” Trojan exhorted. “I’ve already got close to three thousand pings.”
“You’ve infected three thousand computers already?” Vaneesh asked, incredulous.
“Haven’t you been listening?”
“Apparently not,” Vaneesh said. “I’ll upload the code, and you tell Archive that we’re live.”
Trojan walked down the hallway in the subterranean bunker. He was a veteran hacker with serious street credibility, but even he was somewhat amazed by what they’d been able to accomplish. He had invented a family of viruses capable of penetrating the NSA’s data pipes and distributing themselves to thousands of personal computers linked via the internet, and Vaneesh had somehow found a way to engineer an application that re-stole Bitcoin from computers already infected by the thieves’ virus.
But they were not out of the woods yet. It wasn’t enough to infect thousands of computers with their code, or even millions of computers. They had to infect the same computers that had been co-opted into stealing Bitcoins for the thieves. They couldn’t identify those computers directly, so they had to use the old fashioned method: brute force. Trojan’s virus had to infect enormous numbers of computers in order to have a reasonable certainty that they’d infected enough of the right computers.
It wouldn’t take long, all things considered. There was a reason they’d gone to all the trouble of breaking into the NSA’s data-sucking system. No wired device on the planet was more than a few nodes removed from the NSA’s tentacles. Just like with the virus they’d used to castrate the banking system, this one would find happy homes on several hundred million computers by morning.
Trojan smiled as he walked into the media room and spied Archive’s white mane protruding from the top of a plush leather chair. It was nice to bear good news for a change.
16
“You’re done?” Fredericks’ mouth was agape.
“It wasn’t brain surgery,” Sabot said. “It’s pretty simple code.”
“How long till the money’s all transferred?”
“Done.”
“Already?”
Sabot nodded, a bemused smile stretching across his face. “You don’t know much about this stuff, do you?”
Fredericks huffed. “I know enough.”
“To be dangerous,” Sabot finished. “It’s over. All of the money moves at least once every second. So it took less than a second to funnel it all into our accounts.”
“And you set us up with that perpetual motion-thingy, too?”
“Wouldn’t do any good otherwise,” Sabot said. “I’m guessing it’d take them half a day to steal it all back from us if we left it all in static accounts.” Which reminded him that he needed to get that USB drive out of his digestive tract as quickly as possible in order to protect the gaudy fortune he’d already stolen.
“And you covered your tracks?” Fredericks asked.
“Naw, I left a nice big Thank You message,” Sabot quipped. “Of course I covered my tracks.”
Mostly, he didn’t add. There was no such thing as permanently deleting a file once it had been saved on a data drive. But as much as was feasible to accomplish remotely, Sabot had removed all traces of his hack, and had restored the original scripts to their proper function. He had even created false entries in the computer’s root logs, making it virtually impossible for all but the most accomplished computer security experts to trace his foray into the computer’s innards.
Fredericks’ face erupted into a huge grin. “Damn. Nice work, partner!” Sabot saw the jaded pipe-swinger turn giddy with greed.
Then Fredericks’ smile disappeared. “Give me the files,” he said.
Sabot laughed. “Look who’s out of his league now! You think I’m going to just hand it all over to you and hope for the best?”
“That was our deal. You hand over the accounts, I hand over the women.”
“Right. I hand you your cut, and then you shoot me and take mine. I don’t think so.”
Fredericks sneered. “You think I couldn’t do that right now anyway?”
“You’d never get your money, fat boy.”
“You spent the last three days spilling your guts, singing like a jaybird, you little beaner bastard.”
It was you all along, you fat bastard. Fredericks’ angry slip-up had confirmed Sabot’s inchoate suspicions: Fredericks was much more than a hapless hanger-on in Sabot’s little adventure over the past several days. Fredericks was at least involved, and potentially behind the whole damned thing.
Sabot saw Fredericks’ face change. It was clear the fat man realized his mistake. He had revealed a little more than he had intended.
But it didn’t change anything, Sabot knew. He suspected Fredericks knew it, too.
“You’re a pencil-neck computer geek,” Fredericks said, derision in his voice. “What makes you think you could withhold a few passwords from me?”
Sabot laughed. “Passwords? Ha! Who’s the rube now?”
Fredericks’ look turned confused, disconcerted.
“Sure, you could take the files,” Sabot said. “You could torture and kill me. But you’d never have access to your money. You need me for that. Every day of your miserable life.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Biometrics, big guy.” Sabot wiggled his fingers and winked. “Fingerprints and a retina scan. My fingerprints and my retina. That’s what unlocks your money and mine. Every time you want to move your money? You go through me.”
Fredericks seethed. “What makes you think I won’t rip your eyeballs right out of their sockets? Slice your goddamned fingers off?”
“You could do that,” Sabot said, “but you’d be throwing away every penny. Your accounts are only unlocked by a biometric report from my workstation at the FBI office in Seattle. And the time stamp has to be inside of fifteen minutes of when you log in. Otherwise, no access.”
Fredericks advanced menacingly, eager to do bodily harm.
“Think it over, fat man. Do you think you’re going to break into the Bureau office with my eyeballs in your pockets?” He laughed. “Besides, even if you could, my retinal signature becomes unrecognizable after the blood vessels stop feeding my eyes.”
Sabot let it sink in. “You said you were in private security,” he said after a long moment. “Well, now your new full-time job is making sure I stay safe and sound.”
Fredericks’ jaw and fists clenched.
“And if you piss me off?” Sabot said, eyebrows raised, “I cut you off. No questions asked. Not a thing you could do about it, either.
”
Sabot sat back in his chair, a satisfied smile on his face. “I believe that’s what you call insurance.”
Fredericks paced, his mind churning through possibilities. “Bullshit,” he finally said. “No way you did all of this in an hour. With me watching you the whole time.”
Sabot chuckled. “You were a pig staring at a wristwatch. You had no clue what I was doing. But it wasn’t hard.” A sardonic smile settled on his face. “Everything’s easy when you know how.”
Fredericks shook his head. “Unfuckingbelievable.”
“Look on the bright side, vato,” Sabot said after a while, placing sarcastic emphasis on the Latino euphemism, as Fredericks was fond of doing. “As of right now, you’re one of the richest men in the world. You could buy a small continent. So I’ve thrown in a minor inconvenience to get at your money. Big deal. I think it’s a small price to pay.”
Fredericks sat heavily atop the desk, shoulders slumped, shaking his head. “You damned nerds have taken over,” he said. “This world has gone to shit.”
Sabot smiled. Then his face turned serious. “Listen, partner,” he said. “Now it’s your turn to get to work. I want Angie and Connie back with me, safe and sound, right now. Harm a hair on their heads, and it’s over. You’ll never see a dime.”
Fredericks glared, angry but defeated. He left the room without a word.
Sabot smiled, satisfied, listening to Fredericks’ heavy footfalls retreating down the walkway in front of the motel. “Who’s the bitch now, bitch?”
17
It was surreal. Sam sat in the window of a darkened hotel room, the scope of her high-powered rifle trained on Brock’s figure seated several hundred yards away on a snowy park bench.
In Gorkiy Park. In Moscow. In fucking Russia. The storied, iconic center of all things cloak-and-dagger, in what remained of one of the world’s most paranoid states.
The Essential Sam Jameson / Peter Kittredge Box Set: SEVEN bestsellers from international sensation Lars Emmerich Page 189