“I agree. This looks bad. But I have nothing to do with it.”
“So how did it get here? Who would have opened this account? And why?”
“To set me up for this, obviously,” Kotler said. He pointed to the folder. “May I?”
Denzel slid it back across to him, and then watched him as if Kotler might pull some trick.
Kotler felt sick. Denzel had been his friend, possibly his best friend, for two years now. Whatever this was, it wasn’t just making Kotler’s life difficult. It was fracturing a relationship that Kotler had come to depend on. Being here, now, under a veil of suspicion, was just sickening.
Kotler opened the folder and started to look through the records.
None of it made sense.
All of his personal information was there. Everything he would have needed to start an account, all neatly typed into each field.
“This account says it was opened a year ago,” Kotler said, leaning over the pages as he would have done with some ancient manuscript.
“Yes,” Denzel replied.
Kotler looked up. “I haven’t opened any new accounts in years.” He looked back down, studying further, shaking his head.
The transactions were mostly outgoing, but there was a series of electronic transfers, at a rate of about once every three months. They were for large amounts, but always different. Irregular.
“What are these?” Kotler asked, pointing to one of the deposits.
Denzel looked. “Bank transfers. They’re coming in from a portfolio management service. Payouts from investments. The managing firm is called Finely Investments.”
Kotler shook his head. “I’ve never set up anything like that. I have a portfolio, but this isn’t the firm I use. I’ve never heard of them.”
Denzel paused, and sighed. “Kotler ...”
“Photos?” Kotler said, throwing his hands wide. “Video? Is there anything that shows me setting up these accounts? Anything beyond a paper trail?”
“Could have been done online, or over the phone.”
“I’d have to sign something,” Kotler said. “Is there anything with my signature? And a photo ID, that would be a requirement.”
Denzel reached out and flipped the pages to the back.
A form, with a signature, and a photocopy of a driver’s license. It was a New York State license, and the photo was definitely Kotler. Though in Kotler’s estimate it looked a bit more like one of his former headshots than a photo taken at the DMV.
Kotler laughed.
“What’s so funny?” Denzel asked.
Kotler pointed to the page, “First, that isn’t my signature. It isn’t even close.”
“Doesn’t prove anything,” Denzel said. “Maybe you faked it, in case you were caught later.”
Still smiling, Kotler said, “And then there’s the fact that I don’t have a driver’s license.”
Denzel frowned. “Wait ... you don’t have a license? I’ve let you drive my car.”
Kotler shook his head. “We’ll ... discuss it later. But third, there’s this,” he pointed to the driver’s license.
Denzel looked and shook his head. “I’m not seeing anything.”
“Nothing?” Kotler said, shaking his head. “Roland, you wound me.”
Denzel looked again, and glanced up, annoyed and confused.
“Look at my name,” Kotler said.
Denzel looked back down and frowned. “K-O-L-T-E-R,” he said, leaning back. “Your last name is spelled wrong.”
Kotler nodded. “People do that all the time. In fact, I had a professor who used to do it. Annoyed the hell out of me.”
“So what do you think this proves?” Denzel asked. “You’re a smart guy, Kotler. You might have thought of things like this.”
“Well, for a start,” Kotler replied, “it proves you haven’t looked at your email yet.”
Denzel glared, then reached into his pocket and produced his phone. He flicked the screen, tapped it, and then stared. He looked up at Kotler. “What am I looking at?” he asked.
“That’s a picture of Dr. Robert Wiley,” Kotler said. “He came to my building on a night he was supposedly locked in the Black Chamber.”
They were in Denzel’s office now, and Kotler sat in one of the two chairs in front of Denzel’s desk. They were watching the screen on the agent’s wall, as he once again fumbled with the remote. A red cursor appeared, wobbled around erratically, then finally circled and highlighted some of the information onscreen.
“These are debit card records from Dr. Wiley. Transactions made the night after he was abducted. We already had these, as part of the investigation.”
“Any ATM video footage?” Kotler asked.
Denzel shook his head. “We’re waiting on a court order, but it could be awhile. But we do have something else.” Denzel advanced the presentation. The red dot wobbled again, this time dancing over a screenshot of a social media post. Two women, presumably a mother and daughter, based on their likeness to each other, were smiling for the camera with a stretch of lake behind them.
“Dr. Wiley’s wife and daughter went on an impromptu vacation to their lake house, a few days before his abduction. He was supposed to join them but stayed behind. He says he was finishing up some grading and advising some students on their dissertations. I made some calls. No one saw him on campus during that time, and none of his students met with him to talk about their work.”
“So not really proof of anything,” Kotler said, shaking his head.
“No. But I did get some interesting information from the registrar’s office,” Denzel said.
Kotler looked at him and noted that the agent was suppressing a smile. It made Kotler feel a strange sense of relief, though he wasn’t at all sure what Denzel had up his sleeve. It was just good to see trust in his eyes again.
“Cheryl Lanning is the head of that office,” Denzel said.
“I remember Cheryl,” Kotler smiled. “She worked there while I was attending, years ago. I liked her.”
“Apparently she liked you, too,” Denzel said. “Because she remembers vividly when Dr. Wiley came to her office, about a year ago, and requested your records.”
“My records?” Kotler said. “My grades? Courses?”
“That,” Denzel said, “and the rest of your file. Including your personal information.” He changed the screen again, and there was a scan of Kotler’s student profile, complete with a record that included his social security number. Attached to the document, with a paperclip, was a canceled check.
“The check had apparently come to their office instead of being mailed to you,” Denzel said. “The story that Mrs. Lanning gives is that you left right after graduation, going to some remote archeological dig for months. Out of contact.”
Kotler nodded. “I was in Egypt, helping open and explore a newly discovered tomb. It wasn’t my first dig, but it was my first as a graduate. I was there for a year.”
Denzel continued. “They kept the check with your file, in case you ever checked in about it. Over time it was just forgotten. But this is how Wiley got enough information about you to steal your identity.”
Kotler looked at him, sharply. “He opened an account in my name,” he said.
Denzel nodded. “And apparently bought a very convincing fake ID,” he replied, bringing up another screen that showed the driver’s license photo they’d already seen, side-by-side with a headshot of Kotler on the back of one of Kotler’s early books.
“Unbelievable,” Kotler said quietly.
“I’ve got requests in for everything I can get on him, including his financials. But he’s in the wind. Disappeared almost as soon as he was released. His wife says he called her and told her he’d feel better if she and their daughter stayed in the safe house a while longer. That’s the last time anyone spoke with him.”
Kotler felt numb. This was all so much. He’d always had a good relationship with Dr. Wiley. At least, he thought he did. Their conversations h
ad been pleasant, when they’d spoken. Wiley reached out to him occasionally with some note of congratulations, or a comment about the latest news story featuring Kotler. After the events in Pueblo, Wiley had sent dozens of emails. Even more, after news of the events in London, with the discovery of Sir Isaac Newton’s underground lab. Each subsequent event seemed to spur a few notes and comments, and Kotler was happy to share everything he could. He had assumed that Wiley was just a fan, maybe feeling a sense of paternal pride for having helped to nurture Kotler into his career.
To learn that it might all have been some ruse, that Wiley had been plotting against him, even stealing his identity ...
“Why did he do this?” Kotler asked.
Denzel had been watching him, Kotler realized. “To gain access to your money,” he said.
Kotler inhaled deeply and blew out a breath. “That’s disconcerting. I admit, I don’t monitor my finances all that closely, but I do have an accountant and a financial advisor. No one ever mentioned anything unusual.”
“Wiley was pretty tricky about the whole thing,” Denzel said. He pulled up another slide, this time a set of Kotler’s financial records.
Kotler had given permission for this, but still felt a slight tingle of discomfort. Money wasn’t something he thought about. It was just there. A tool. A resource that enabled his lifestyle. But it still felt private to him, and seeing a list of his spending habits onscreen made him uneasy.
“Wiley took advantage of the way you spend,” Denzel said. “He mirrored transactions you made, mostly withdrawals. If you gave a thousand dollars to a charity, he’d later withdraw a similar amount, marking it as another donation to a different charity. One that didn’t actually exist, except on paper.”
“And my accountant never noticed?”
Denzel shrugged. “It blended in. Don’t be too hard on the guy, Kotler. It’s clear that Wiley was playing this smart. He never made transactions that would be too noticeable. And all of this money went into a portfolio. Since he used your identity to open it, we were able to get our hands on it.”
The screen changed again, and now there was a statement for Finely Investments.
Kotler peered at it, then chuckled.
“What’s funny?” Denzel asked.
Kotler shook his head. “He did better with my investments than I did,” he said.
“Yeah, he definitely had a knack for it,” Denzel said. “Over two years he quadrupled the amount of money he’d stolen from you. Congratulations, Kotler, you have more millions.”
Kotler laughed, and shook his head. “Under the circumstances, I can’t seem to think of it as a windfall.”
“You might if you still had the money he’s spent and withdrawn over the years. We don’t know exactly where this money went. We’re waiting on his financials, to see if there are any unusual deposits. But the outgoing cash totals somewhere around thirty million.”
Kotler had been sipping from his coffee, and choked, nearly doing a spit take. “Thirty ... thirty million dollars?”
“On top of the two million that’s left in the account.”
Kotler stared at the screen for a long moment. “Can you send this list to my investment firm?”
“Focus, Kotler. Roll around in your money later.”
Kotler laughed. “Ok, so we can assume that he spent that thirty million on everything we just dealt with. Renting those two floors, the steel room, the secret entrances and staircases, all of that. And the Heisenberg machine.”
“That one may not have been a purchase,” Denzel said. “Something like that wouldn’t just be on eBay. It’s possible he could have found it on the black market, but it seems unlikely. We think he stumbled onto it, somewhere.”
Kotler thought about this. “You’re right,” he replied. “He did. In the Black Chamber.”
“How do you know?”
Kotler shook his head. “It’s a hunch, but think about it. He orchestrated the kidnapping of Dr. Marvin. That was cover. He needed Marvin’s wife to call the police, panicked, because he’d already arranged for his own wife and daughter to be out of town. He needed them out of the picture because they would know the truth about his abduction. He was never abducted at all. He’d gone to that room voluntarily and had the Ryba brothers grab Marvin. He arranged all of it. Which means he knew about the Black Chamber in advance. That’s where he’d found the Heisenberg machine, as well as records and photos about the government-sealed room. It gave him everything he needed to be three steps ahead of us the whole time.”
Denzel considered this, then said, “When you were on the phone with him, in that steel room. Did he say anything that might indicate what he was up to?”
“He had me solve the Heisenberg machine. He was … well, he was very familiar with me, the whole time. Kept calling me ‘Dan.’ I didn’t click to it at the time, but now I remember. He knew me. Knew how I thought and what I could do. He set all of this up to get me to that machine.” Kotler thought for a moment, then shook his head. “I think the manuscript pages were a bonus,” he said.
“Bonus?” Denzel replied. “How so?”
“I think he was after the solution to that Heisenberg problem. The manuscript was meant to get me involved and get me to solve it for him. He had me enter a word. Shiva.”
“Shiva?” Denzel frowned. “Sounds familiar.”
“Shiva is part of the pantheon of Hindu gods, and is the god of both destruction and transformation. Or rebirth, from a different perspective. The name is familiar to westerners for a lot of reasons, but the most famous is a misquote of Oppenheimer. After the first detonation of the nuclear bomb, Oppenheimer quoted the Bhagavad-Gita. ‘Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.’ It gets misquoted as ‘I am become Shiva, destroyer of worlds.’ Wiley had me type that word in after I completed the circuit on the device, and he was pretty pleased with the results.”
“What did he get out of it?”
Kotler shook his head. “He told me that machine is part of a set. I think it uses quantum entanglement to send and receive signals.” He huffed. “I’ve handed over the world’s most secure and uncrackable encryption tool. The word ‘Shiva’ may have been the key he needed to unlock all of it. He told me there were four of those machines in existence, and that he had two. He was sacrificing one to get what he wanted.”
“So there’s another set out there,” Denzel said.
“Probably in the hands of someone we don’t want to have it,” Kotler replied.
“And now they have a way to turn it on,” Denzel said.
Kotler said nothing but slumped slightly in his chair.
Denzel watched him for a moment. “This wasn’t you, Kotler.”
“I gave him the key.”
“True, but under duress. And what I’m saying is, I believe you.” Denzel waved a hand toward the monitor on his wall. “This wasn’t you. I believe you.”
Kotler nodded. “I appreciate that, Roland. But what good does this do us?”
“We know who we’re looking for now,” Denzel said. “I’ve got requests in, court orders on the way. I have people already digging in and asking questions, trying to find where Wiley disappeared to. We’ll find him.”
Kotler thought about this. “Have we checked the lake house?”
Denzel’s eyebrows went up. “It was cleared after his wife and daughter were retrieved from there,” he said. “We wouldn’t have had any reason to go back there.”
“Sounds like we have a reason now,” Kotler replied.
Denzel stood and pulled on his coat. “Let’s go. And I’ll be driving from now on.” He shook his head in wonder. “I can’t believe you don’t have your license.”
33
HISTORIC CRIMES FORENSICS LAB
Ludlum was relieved when Denzel emailed her to say that Kotler was cleared. Of course, she’d never believed for a moment that he was guilty. It was just good to know that the matter was settled.
She’d come back to the office, insisting
that she was fine to return to work. And it was true. She was fine. But more importantly, some things needed to be tended to. There were tests she needed to approve and test results she needed to sign off on, that sort of thing. Just because she’d been abducted didn’t mean the work stopped. There were other injustices in the world. She had to do what she could to help right them.
That was the way she framed it, to herself and to anyone who might ask. She knew the truth, however, and she could admit it herself.
Her real motive for coming back so quickly was that she needed access to resources she didn’t have at home.
She was still hunting for Red Ryba.
Since he’d broken into the impound lot and killed a security guard, he’d become more of a priority for law enforcement, but he’d also gone completely off the radar. Both the NYPD and the FBI had traced his path from the impound, tracking him and the Indian through the city streets using footage from traffic cameras and other means. They had gained footage much faster than she had when begging it off of bodegas and convenience stores. But Ryba had turned into an alley with a blind spot, a part of the city that had very little video coverage, and had disappeared entirely.
Police were combing the area, knocking on doors, questioning locals and searching for any clue about Ryba, and they were finding nothing.
Ludlum had warned both Denzel and Kotler about Ryba’s likely motives, but she worried that they’d both let it fall down on the list of priorities. With everything else that was happening, a hypothetical hitman with a grudge wasn’t at the top of their list. Even if Ludlum thought it should be.
The NYPD and FBI hadn’t given up on finding him, of course. Now that they could positively ID him in conjunction with a murder, interest was on the rise. And Ludlum was pleased when Denzel told her that she’d been given clearance to access the files from the investigation.
It made things a lot easier.
Ryba had a history of going underground when suspicions were high. If there were any chance he’d be so much as questioned over any incident, he tended to end up in a whole other country, far enough away, in a short enough timeframe, that he could claim an alibi and usually leverage non-extradition loopholes. He had managed to keep a veil of doubt around his involvement in every crime he committed, by hiding his features and distancing himself from all of it. And when that veil was pierced, he’d lay low someplace that couldn’t care less about having another murderer on its beaches, as long as they bought plenty of rum drinks.
The Stepping Maze Page 19