by Dave Buschi
Lip shook his head. “You heard me. I’m not talking his politics, but on the personal level the guy was alright.”
Marks took a sip of water. “Fair enough.” He nodded for Lip to continue.
“So, I’ll give you the full picture. The day after. Wednesday, November 7th. We wake up to the same scenario as Gore/Bush. Too close to call. A recount is needed. As you know, we’re almost all electronic now. No more hanging chads, should be a cinch you’d think to do a recount. Everything is computerized. But let’s say anomalies start to be discovered? Exit polls, which are in sharp contrast to the actual results? Like happened in Miami-Dade County, but on a larger scale? Speaking of which, that was pretty farfetched. The majority of Jewish voters swinging Bush’s way? Do you actually believe that happened?”
“We’re not doing this,” Marks said. “Your man lost, mine won.”
Lip smirked. “He did, didn’t he? Kind of like four years ago? You’re pretty good at voting for winners, aren’t you?”
Marks frowned. “How many times are you going to beat that dead horse?”
“Cut the bullshit. I know you voted for Obama.”
Marks looked at Lip. “Read my lips. I did not vote for Obama.”
“You did,” Lip said. “I’ve dug, I’ve found, and you’re busted.”
Marks shook his head. “You’re not getting it.”
Lip frowned. “You’re not bullshitting?”
Marks chuckled. “Bingo! Give the man a prize.”
Lip leaned his head back, closed his eyes and opened them. “Shit.”
Marks had a smug look. “Sorry to burst your bubble, partner.”
Lip shook his head. “Whoa. They’ve already done it.”
“Done what?”
“Hacked our election.”
Marks laughed. “Now you’re talkin’ crazy. You know for sure my vote was wrong?”
“Hundred percent. Last election Maryland and DC had already implemented the Patriot Patrol software into their machines. Unlike everyone thinks, our votes are not anonymous.”
Marks shrugged, and then frowned. “Still… one vote wrong doesn’t mean they’re all wrong. You can’t make that leap.”
“No I can’t, but that’s worth relooking at. So where was I?”
“Anomalies?”
“Right,” Lip said. “Anomalies. Let this thing draw out for days, weeks. Where it just gets worse and worse. Both sides claiming victory. Neither wanting to relinquish the office to the other. Obama insisting he’s still in charge. Your man calling foul—saying it was rigged, and he won. It’d be chaos. We’re already half way there—we’re like a powder keg. I can only imagine how this would amp everything up. We’re talking major riots. Who knows how the markets would react?
“And what if there was a trigger that accelerated things? Something like that thousand point drop? You and I know that was probably a hack. So add that to the mix. With the computerized trading we have now, where billions of trades are executed in milliseconds—it’d be a complete sell-off. 1929, all over again. The crash that started the Great Depression. Forget this Great Recession we have now. This is nothing compared to what we would be facing, if this perfect storm hit.”
Marks smirked. “You’ve been drinking the Kool-Aid, partner. That’s a good story, but you’ll need more than what you just showed me to make me a believer. Even Johnny Two-cakes never told a doozy like that.”
“I think he did,” Lip said. “Or at least he was putting it together. Think of his office, and connect the dots. We’re already in a cyber war. The cyber attacks originating from China? Stealing our secrets. And now we got federal databases being hacked? Records expunged, changed? Certain key players, Reed, Larsen, cyber security champions being taken out of the picture? The Diebold connection? I read the article. Get this: they have a lock on voting machines. Thirty-two states have been cleared to use their models. All key electoral states. Those states are going to decide the election.
“If Johnny Two-cakes has linked these disparate items, somehow? If all of them are really connected? If that’s the case, emails all coming from the same spot.” Lip shook his head. “Shit. When I look at the sophistication of this. The PDFs looking like harmless recipes, the databases they accessed? Even them taking down the cameras at Starbucks? They’re working on a cyber level I haven’t seen before. Hack an election? Farfetched, but what if?
“We know Rudnitsky and his crew are taking out people. The buckets I found? Match that with the videos we just watched? A bunch of folks that just happen to be tied to the election? Add that to the fact Johnny Two-cakes flew to Shanghai where the emails came from.”
Marks’s face was serious. “You know without a doubt that’s where he is? Shanghai?”
Lip shifted in his seat. “No. But before you get pissed off, this is what I do have.” He explained what he’d found out. The bit about the visa issuances. One for Costa Rica in Johnny Two-cakes’s name, and the other for Shanghai in a false name.
“How’d you determine it was him?” Marks said.
“Béla Ferenc Dezsõ Blaskó,” Lip said.
“Who is that?”
“Bela Lugosi.”
Marks gave a blank stare.
“Dracula? Ygor? Son of Frankenstein?”
“Movie guy,” Marks said.
Lip smirked. “Movie guy. I set Johnny Two-cakes up with the name, back when we worked together. It seems he used it to go to Shanghai. I confirmed with the flight manifests. He cleared customs and entered Shanghai. Béla was supposed to return three days ago—same day as Johnny Two-cakes, according to Marion—but he missed his flight. Didn’t come home.”
“So we’re looking for Dracula?” Marks said.
“I want to suck your blood,” Lip said with a Transylvanian accent. “Alright. Let me get to work here. I’ve got a lot of PDFs to check. You slept, yet?”
“Some. One eye open.”
“Get some more. I’ll wake you when I have this all figured out.”
Marks closed his eyes. “Tell me another bedtime story.”
Lip opened his laptop back up, clicked some screens, and adjusted his seat to get a little more comfortable. “You want the one about the boogie man?”
No reply. Lip looked over. Marks was already asleep.
Guy was like a machine. On. Off.
Lip shook his head and got to digging.
107
“YOU didn’t wake me,” Marks said.
“You looked too peaceful.”
“Well you look like shit,” Marks said.
Lip wiped his nose. “Damn cold’s getting worse.” He was bleary eyed from looking at the computer. “This gets uglier and uglier, and it’s all coming from Prime.”
“Prime?”
“Yeah, I thought it fit. From the emails with the numbers.”
Lip was so done. He’d viewed at least a thousand PDFs, and was only one-seventh way through all the material. He’d unpacked enough video, audio files and embedded text messages to last a lifetime. The contents were all over the map, and varied considerably depending on the recipient.
He’d pieced some of it together and it wasn’t pretty.
“Four eighty-seven,” Lip said. “Your favorite. Rudnitsky. Let me tell ya about him.”
108
MARKS listened.
He gritted his teeth, hearing it. Lip had confirmed some of their earlier suspicions. Rudy and his guns were the muscle. From what Lip had determined from the emails: extortion, leverage on certain people, and assassinations, were the primary use of the Gol’yanovskaya crew by Prime. The kid trafficking by Rudy’s crew was a side business, unrelated to Prime.
Least that was Lip’s assessment, and Marks was obliged to agree after Lip shared a few email exchanges between Prime and Rudy. The only involvement Prime had with the kids’ deal was supplying Rudy with information. It seemed to be how payment worked.
Barter exchange.
Prime was paying Rudy in two ways. By providing locatio
ns of marks: kids to pick up (complete with pictures, bios, and parents’ finances), and the other form of payment seemed to be keeping Rudy’s crew clean. Forget ‘Watch Lists’, Prime had just wiped them off the map. Vlad became Jiri. Worked that way for the whole crew.
“Pretty messed up,” Lip said. He’d already filled Marks in on what he’d uncovered earlier. Every one of Rudy’s crew had spanking clean records. Like babies’ bottoms.
US was getting dumped on in a big way. Watch Lists should have kept those animals from ever setting foot on US soil. But according to every federal database that mattered, those guys were model citizens. All thanks to Prime. Prime was enabling them. Wasn’t just the Gol’yanovskaya crew, either. It appeared Prime had a whole stable of go-to guys.
Not just in the US either, but all over the map. Lip traced some of the recipients’ emails. Prague, London, Dubai... all of them receiving emails from the same address in Shanghai.
Lip was humbled. “Never thought I’d say it, but it seems Johnny Two-cakes was right. There is a smoky back room with guys pulling all the strings.”
“What else you got?” Marks said.
“Names, dates, locations. I’d need to dig into this for days—hell, weeks—to understand it. I see why Johnny Two-cakes had the newspapers. There is all sorts of correspondence going on between Prime and other parties. Can’t make sense of a lot of it without the context.
“Sometimes what you get is a name. Other times it’s a cryptic exchange. Sometimes it’s a directive that’s pretty easy to figure out, like terminate. Not much equivocation there. Couple of ‘em give some real detail on how that should be done. Pretty sick stuff. Then you got this complete other layer of material. Databases are mentioned, which explains the search thing. How we’re not pulling stuff up when we search for words like ‘Diebold’. They didn’t just hack into federal databases. They’ve expunged records everywhere. Maybe to cover their tracks? I don’t know… doesn’t make a ton of sense.
“Almost reminds me of the Chinese Communist Party. Some of their head honchos. Fits their M.O, at least in one respect. How they’ll feed you propaganda till you swallow it. Like the bird flu thing. Remember that? They had a major epidemic, thousands of their own people dying and they just put up an iron curtain and denied it all. A few isolated cases, is all. Everything fine here.”
The dark humor of it got to Marks. He chuckled.
“Wasn’t exactly funny,” Lip said.
“Didn’t say that,” Marks said. “But you are. Look at you. You really look like shit. You have a fever?”
“Feel hot. Yeah.”
“Bird flu, man,” Marks said. “They’re going to lock you up.”
Lip’s face scrunched. “That’s not funny.” Lip handed Marks an earplug. “Listen.”
Marks put the plug in his ear. Lip played the audio message.
“Put her in five bags. Upon confirmation, payment will be provided.”
Marks’s frown returned.
“That’s the type of garbage I’ve been listening to,” Lip said. “And that’s not even Rudnitsky or his crew. That’s in other folders.”
“Why don’t you give it a rest? You look beat.” Marks said. He undid his seat restraint and got up. “I’m going to hit the head. You want me to grab you something? Water? Nuts?”
“I’m good. You missed the venison and broiled asparagus.”
“How was it?”
“Didn’t eat it,” Lip said. “Wasn’t hungry.”
Marks’s brow furrowed. “Now I know you’re sick.”
LIP was still at it with the computer when he returned from the bathroom. Man looked ill. Big time. It was actually starting to worry Marks.
“Look at this one,” Lip said.
Marks watched. Another video. Young girl this time. Naked. On a couch. “Please pay them daddy.” Fear and tears in her eyes.
Marks’s stomach knotted.
“That was from Rudnitsky to Prime,” Lip said.
Marks didn’t say a word. Lip nodded grimly and clicked more PDFs.
109
THEY landed four hours later. Both of them got hung up going through customs. Lip was directed one way, Marks another.
Usual stuff, nothing to be concerned about. They’d seen this before. As long as they each kept with the program they should be fine.
Marks was dealing with Mr. Personality. The man went through both his bags thoroughly. Pulled out items, put them back. When he was done with that, he checked his passport; kept going to the picture and back to Marks. The man pursed his thin lips. He had one of those hydraulic jaw lines where you could see the tendons working.
“Hmmm.” Not a question.
Marks downplayed his boredom act. The customs officer was all business.
“Hmmm.”
Long pause.
“You’ve been here, before?”
“No.”
The man looked up. “No? Says you have.”
“Not this city.”
“Hmmm.” A nod.
“And where are you staying?”
Marks pulled out the letter with his hotel’s name. The man gave it a cursory look. He returned it, picked up a rubber stamp and crisply stamped Marks’s passport.
“Welcome to Shanghai,” he said.
“Thank you.” Marks took his offered passport, bags and moved on.
He rolled his bag behind him, his other carry-on he slung across his chest. His light eyes swept the enormous airport, looking for Lip. He saw him coming from another section. His partner looked frazzled. Not a surprise; Man could look shitass sorry when he traveled—but it was more than that, he realized. Marks frowned, seeing the taut look on Lip’s face.
Something was wrong.
110
LIP huffed over, rolling his bag behind him.
“What is it?” Marks said.
Lip caught his breath. “Are they following me?”
“Is who following you?”
“The Gestapo, the customs police. Are they following me?”
Marks looked around. “Nope, you look good.” His tension eased. “What happened?”
Lip’s face scrunched. “Thought I was going to explode. I’m so jacked now. I almost shit when the customs police asked why I had the NyQuil.”
“Hmmff. Should have said you had a cold.”
“Are you kidding? What with that Health Declaration Form we had to sign? They wouldn’t have let me in here. I’ve got bird flu all over me.”
Marks smirked.
“Your fault, you know. Putting that in my head. Where’s Mei?”
“Haven’t seen her, yet.”
Lip frowned. “Haven’t seen her? That’s not good.”
“Relax. She’s around here somewhere, looking for us.”
“She better be. Remember last time…”
Marks stopped himself from rolling his eyes. “Hold it,” he whispered.
“What?” Lip stopped.
“They’re looking at you.”
“Who is?” Deep creases formed on Lip’s forehead.
Marks kept his voice low. “Three men. Two o’clock. Armed. Uniforms.”
“You’re kidding?”
Marks nodded, face serious. “Sorry Lip, nice knowing you.”
Marks turned and walked away. Behind him, as he knew he would, Lip was turning his head. Marks waited for Lip to catch up.
“Asshole,” Lip groused.
A moment later, near doors that led outside, they spied Mei. She was holding a piece of cardboard.
Marks smirked. “Up to the same old tricks.”
Lip pushed his thick frames firmly on his nose. “That is so not right.”
On Mei’s homemade placard were scrawled two names in thick black pen.
Hyma Domi and Stu Peid.
111
THERE it was scrawled on her placard for every Tom, Dick and Harry to see. Though in this case, Chen, Wang and Zhang might have been more appropriate.
Mei was beaming a thousand-watt
smile. Thought she was a regular comedian.
Personally, Marks would have preferred the old standbys: Ben Dover or Amanda Huggenkiss.
“Hi guys.”
Mei Ling. Big thing in a small package. Barely five feet tall, if that. Ninety pounds, and that was adding some. She’d cut her shiny black hair since last time. It was shoulder length with a tapering angle on the side. Gave her spunk. Spunk was something she did not need. Girl had way too much of it for her own good.
Marks had to bend low to give her a hug. “Cute,” he said.
“I know I am.” She winked.
Girl had no end of confidence too.
“You do realize that sign could reflect badly on you?” Marks said.
Mei frowned and quickly broke into an even bigger smile. “No, if I was to put my own name, I’d use something much better.”
“Like Ivona Tinkle?” Lip said.
She took a second… laughed. “I want to tinkle. Yes. That one!”
She stepped back. “It is good to see you two.”
“So how many marriage proposals are we up to now?” Marks said.
Mei batted her eyelashes and feigned complete innocence. “None. Unless you’re asking?”
“Well?” Lip said.
“Did I forget you?” Mei said. She opened her arms and gave him a hug.
“No love as usual,” Lip said.
His face said otherwise. He had a big smirk as she broke away. Pretty girl hugging you could do that. “Alright,” Lip said. “You’re embarrassing us. Lose the sign, Mei, or we’re getting another ride.”
“Really?” she said. “Good luck with that.” She turned on a dime and headed towards the exit. Girl could move fast in spiked heels.
Mei glanced back, once she was through the double doors. “Keep up slowpokes.”
Outside, the cold wind and acidic taste of car exhaust hit them.
“What the fuck?” Lip said.
“Complaining already,” said Mei. “I see you haven’t changed, Lip.”
They maneuvered through the crowd.
“There I am.” Mei pointed towards a group of cars parked by the curb.