Zero Sum, Book One, Kotov Syndrome

by Russell Blake

  Steven felt like a complete idiot. Time resumed its normal flow and he drew a series of slow, deep breaths and relaxed his upper body, which had tensed in anticipation of conflict.

  “Yeah, Todd, it’s me. I thought I’d spend a night aboard, get some sea salt in my hair. I didn’t realize you’d be down here today.”

  “Well, it was such a nice morning I figured I’d get her out of the way, then maybe see if I can hook one of those big yellowtail running out by the jetty. Hope you don’t mind… I can always come back if it’s a problem,” Todd said.

  “No, I was just getting out of here. But you might want to try the fishing now, and rinse her off afterwards. She’ll still be here later today,” Steven suggested.

  Todd was a great maintenance worker, conscientious and skilled. Didn’t charge an arm and a leg, either. He lived on a boat on the other side of the marina and did odd jobs and cleaning to supplement his lifestyle. Not a bad existence for a bachelor. Simple. Easy.

  “Give me a second, and she’s all yours.” Still burning off adrenaline, Steven hastily grabbed the duffel, mounted the stairs and disembarked.

  “Have a good one, Todd.” Steven waved goodbye.

  “Okay, then. Later.”

  Traffic going south crawled agonizingly slowly. The I-5 freeway had fallen victim to the perennial California budget crisis and the surface was as bad as any he’d ever driven on in Baja. All that was missing was a burro and the odd roadside shrine.

  Carlsbad was a sleepy little bedroom community by the sea roughly half an hour north of San Diego, and Stan had lived there for years, apparently enjoying the slow pace and relaxed lifestyle.

  Stan was waiting for him on the patio of the restaurant when he pulled up. They exchanged pleasantries while considering the menu, and both ordered coffee and waffles. Once the waitress had left, Steven described the events of the last eighteen hours in more detail. Stan considered the situation.

  “I haven’t made any progress with the bank – they referred me to Justice, who in turn referred me to Homeland Security, who said they can’t discuss ongoing investigations.” Stan looked disgusted.

  “The runaround.”

  “Yes, that would be the technical term. Ever since 9/11 there’s been a stretching of governmental power; all, of course, in the interest of keeping us safe. A few years ago no one could have unilaterally frozen your bank account. Not so today. I’ll get through it, but I hope you don’t need that money anytime soon. Where’s their card?” Stan was not the type to forget details, and wanted the Homeland Security agent’s card.

  “Here you go,” Steven said. “See if you can find out what they want.”

  “I’ll have my friend call them today.” Stan looked at him over his spectacles. “Now, I have to ask: have you been involved in anything that would have our terrorist hunters after you?”

  Steven shook his head. “Stan, honest to God, I don’t have the faintest idea what any of this is about. The only thing I’m involved in is the Allied website, which has nothing to do with anything but a Wall Street lizard and a loser biotech company. I told you all about it.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense that a financial guy would be able to wag the dog and get the full might of the Federal Government to come down on you; things just don’t work that way. So that’s unlikely. Let’s suspend any speculation until we know more.”

  Steven nodded. “I agree. Now I have a request for you. I need an ATM card that can also work as a credit card, drawn on some neutral corporation’s account, so I have access to cash,” he explained.

  Stan considered the request. “Such a thing can be done. It’ll probably take a week, maybe less. In the old days, it would have been twenty-four hours.”

  “I appreciate your flexibility, Stan. That’ll help me out a lot. I don’t want to be on the radar. And one more request. I need a new blackberry.” Being able to log on from the boat would be invaluable if he was forced to be mobile for a while.

  “Easy enough.”

  They sipped their coffee and munched their waffles. He told Stan he and Jennifer had decided to take a break. Stan said he understood, sometimes that was best, it would all work out if it was meant to be. Blah blah, platitude, blah.

  Stan paid the check, and they made their way back to the car park.

  Stan wound down his window before driving off. “I’ll let you know what happens with the call and the card and the PDA. Consider the latter two done.” Stan looked hard at him again. “You call me. I don’t want to have any way of getting in touch with you, so I can respond to any questions about knowledge of your whereabouts honestly,” Stan told him. “I don’t foresee a problem, but better safe...”

  Steven’s next stop was a nearby hotel to use the business center. He paid $10 for fifteen minutes, doing a double take at the price. He asked what the fee would have been if he was checked in as a guest.

  “Let me look it up. Hmm. Hmmm. Oh, here it is: $10.”

  They really said fuck you with style in Carlsbad.

  “Things are kind of expensive in Carlsbad,” Steven remarked with a blank expression.

  “Try La Costa. It’s $20.”

  He moved to an available computer and logged on. The stock was up thirty cents from the open. He checked his S_Jordan e-mails, to discover dozens of complaint e-mails from the boards advising that the site was down.

  Huh. He tried the site. Nothing. Just a screen that said cannot locate site.

  Dammit. Another hacking attack? Maybe the server was down? The first e-mail was at 4 a.m. California time. He tried the Lone Star homepage. That was down too. So it was probably a server or connection issue, not a site-specific takedown.

  The only message in his normal e-mail was from Jennifer. Short and to the point.

  [Hi. Will drop off the bags and keys today. Hope you got some rest. J]

  No response necessary that he could think of.

  He checked in with the Group, and asked if they could figure out why his site was down. They pinged it, got nothing. Probably a power outage or a truck plowed into a pole.

  Steven signed off, his $10 about up, and asked the young lady at the guest desk if there was an Internet café or computer superstore anywhere close by. She gave him directions up the street.

  With the valet charge the whole episode cost him $16 for fifteen minutes. He wasn’t sure he could afford much more Carlsbad.

  Steven drove to the office supply chain store and got back online. He spent the rest of the afternoon researching the SEC’s regulations for offshore investment funds, and surfing the boards to catch up on any news. There was a lot of commentary on the sections Steven had uploaded before the site went dark. He’d really stirred up a hornet’s nest.

  Checking his inbox, he saw Spyder had sent him an article. Steven’s arm hair stood on end as he read. The author was a name he didn’t recognize, but the content was alarming. One part of his psyche told him it sounded like conspiracy junk, while another part of him got a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

  The article centered around the stock action in the airlines and insurance companies immediately preceding the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, and documented the brokerage firm that placed most of the winning trades that went through the roof when the value of the stocks fell off a cliff after the terrorist strike – a firm run by a fellow who later became the head of the CIA.

  The implications of the article were staggering. Were the connections between Washington and Wall Street such that there could be collusion at that level? It seemed impossible, but then again, so did much he’d seen lately. He’d always wondered why the government turned a blind eye to Wall Street. Spyder’s wry message was short and to the point:

  [Ya think the reason there’s no appetite to clamp down on the bad guys is because they’re running money through some of them? Ugly world we live in, huh? Watch your ass, Bowman. Spyder]

  Spyder pointed out the same sort of thing was still going on – witness the mas
sive put options (which increase in value as a stock price goes down) traded right before the ‘unexpected’ crash of Bear Stearns in 2008, and the government’s odd reluctance to investigate that obvious smoking gun. The more he read, the more corrupt it appeared to be.

  Steven called it a day at 3:00, his head whirling from the ramifications. He paid for his time and began the drive back to the boat. When he dialed the Lone Star number from his disposable cell, it just rang.

  No answer.

  It took him almost two hours to make it to San Clemente, and by that time he’d talked himself down. He had immediate problems to deal with, in the real world, and didn’t currently have bandwidth for CIA conspiracy theories. A big rig had blown a tire, and most of I-5 North was a parking lot past Oceanside, making any further driving a nightmare for at least another hour.

  Steven pulled over and hit a restaurant for an early dinner, figuring he could wait it out. He really wished he’d brought his laptop, instead of forgetting it on the boat – that PDA was going to be worth its weight in gold to him. After eating, he stopped by at an Internet cafe to check in with the Group. One of them immediately posted:

  [Check your mailbox. Trouble?!]

  He went to his S_Jordan box, where a blind re-mailer had sent him a message with an attachment. He opened the attachment, and it was an article from that day’s Austin newspaper describing a massive fire at the strip mall that housed, among other things, Lone Star.

  Steven’s gut tightened again.

  This just couldn’t be a coincidence or conspiracy nonsense. Whoever was after him was clearly serious, and ruthless. But part of it made no sense – Homeland Security and the Justice Department didn’t go around burning buildings to shut down websites. If they had grounds to shut it down, which they didn’t, they’d just get an injunction and seize the server.

  In spite of his recent run-in with Homeland, maybe it was exactly what it appeared to be – an accidental fire. They did happen all the time. The whole world didn’t revolve around his website.

  Here he was again; wavering in a never-never land between feeling sheepish and paranoid – imagining assailants behind every tree, and reconciling all the coincidences before taking prudent precautions.

  Accident or not, from a practical standpoint, he now had no site and no server. Finding another ISP wouldn’t be that big a deal – he could sign one up over the web in minutes. The problem was the only copy of his site was on the boat. At least he’d backed it up on the laptop.

  He sent a post to the Group:

  [Weird coincidences, huh?] and got an immediate response:

  [Check six. There are no coincidences. I’ll be on late if you need anything. Gordo]

  He signed off and left the café to go and retrieve the laptop, fatigued from the stress of it all. He felt like he’d been starved of sleep for weeks.

  * * * *

  Chapter 16

  As Steven crested the hill to the marina he saw emergency vehicles everywhere and a plume of black smoke rising from the water. He couldn’t get his car anywhere near the entry because the lot was glutted with fire trucks. He drove to the next lot over and parked up, then hurried to his dock’s gate, only to find it closed off with yellow crime scene tape and a police barricade. He approached one of the park security men standing around the barricade. “Wow. What a mess. What happened here?”

  “Some guy’s boat blew up. Took out half the dock.”

  “You’re kidding! Which boat? What caused it?” Steven asked.

  “Don’t know. Sailboat, down at the end of A dock.” He pointed nonchalantly towards the area where Serendipity was berthed. “A bunch of other boats were damaged, too. They think it was a fuel leak – filled the bilge with fumes.”

  Inside Steven was thinking, God, no, say it isn’t Serendipity. It had to be an accident – somebody else’s boat, not mine, not mine, not mine.

  “The divers are pulling up debris and looking through what’s left of the hull right now. Doesn’t help that visibility’s down to nothing with all the oil in the water.” The kid seemed as interested as Steven was – probably the biggest thing that had happened since he’d started working for a living. “The owner was on board. They found some parts of him. Pretty gross.”

  Steven felt like he’d been hit in the face with a hammer. He squinted as he peered down the dock, and it looked a lot like his slip was now gone.

  He needed to know. Had to get by the kid. Stay calm. Think.

  “My buddy sent me down to check on his boat. He saw the smoke over the hill and called the marina. Can I take a quick look? Check on the lines, make sure it’s secure?”

  “No one’s supposed to go down there. It’s a crime scene right now. Give me the slip number and I’ll have someone on the dock check.” At least the guard was willing to try.

  Steven’s slip was A-32. He didn’t hesitate. “A-20.”

  The security guard spoke into his walky-talky. “Guy wants to make sure his boat’s okay. Slip A-20. Can someone look at it? Over.” The radio crackled for a minute.

  Then through the static came the fateful words Steven dreaded hearing. “It’s fine. Boat that blew was A-32. Over.”

  Steven smiled at the guy and croaked out a ‘thank you’.

  His head spun and his heart trip-hammered from the sudden jolt of adrenalin as he walked away, registering there were plenty of other spectators perusing the dreadful scene.

  He started processing automatically. Todd was dead – it had to be him. So this wasn’t all in his head. Someone blew up the boat. Someone set the web building on fire. Someone was willing to kill to stop him, to silence him.

  And they could still be here. Watching.

  He needed to blend in. Couldn’t draw attention to himself. He walked in the opposite direction from his car, and stopped to ask a couple walking their dog what had happened, doing a slow scan of the parking lot as he listened to them.

  Nothing suspicious, but it was hard to tell.

  He thanked them and continued walking along the perimeter of the marina. A man with binoculars was studying the aftermath of the carnage; could be innocent, but maybe not.

  Steven kept moving past him, quickly glancing at his watch – for all appearances a man on his way home for dinner. He made it to the main access street and walked slowly up the hill to the town, never looking back.

  His laptop was now either melted at the bottom of the harbor or in the hands of whoever blew up the boat.

  There could be no doubt it wasn’t an accident. Diesel fuel hardly ever caught fire, and was incapable of generating huge explosions like the one that had taken out the dock. They’d probably rigged it that afternoon, with some sort of trigger set to go off when he opened the hatch. Poor Todd had probably taken his suggestion to wash the boat later; in retrospect, likely a fatal recommendation. Or they could have been watching the boat to ensure the job got done right, by triggering the explosion remotely. Watched for a male in his late thirties going onto the boat, and then pushed a button. Simple, no mistakes. Kaboom. Problem over.

  The laptop was the least of his problems. If they knew his boat, then they knew his car – had to have the license plates. Then again, if they believed him to be dead, they wouldn’t be looking for it other than to confirm it was in the vicinity. That was a small advantage.

  He needed to get his duffel out sooner rather than later.

  Steven walked into town and waited for the sun to set. The forensic team would undoubtedly figure out it wasn’t him on the boat, but that could take days, or even weeks. As long as he didn’t post anything on the boards, or call anyone who couldn’t be trusted, he was safe, for now. But what to do? He couldn’t go to the police; they’d just turn him over to Homeland Security. He’d read about HS detainees held without access to their attorneys for years. No thanks.

  He fought down the urge to panic. He needed to stay clear-headed if he was going to come out of this alive.

  Once it was dark, he walked down the bike t
rail into the harbor park – the back way. The cops were still at the scene, and they now had large spotlights mounted on stands shining into the water. He looked around the lot his car was in, and saw no one. Plenty of other cars there. Good. Cover.

  Steven sat by a tree across from the lot for ten minutes, watching for any movement. Nothing. He got up, walked across to the lot, kept going past his car, and entered the restroom at the far end of the lot.

  He quickly scanned the confined area, moving from stall to stall as though deciding which to use. Satisfied he was alone, he moved to the sink and ran some water through his hair, then considered his reflection.

  Steven, you’re in the eye of a shit-storm, he concluded. No room for mistakes.

  He listened for sounds around the building. Nothing. Just radio chatter from the docks, and the whine of a winch motor.

  Okay. Showtime. He moved out of the building, seemingly preoccupied with getting the last of the moisture off his hands with a paper towel. Tossing it into a trash can, he did one last visual sweep of the lot. Still empty. He allowed some time for his eyes to re-adjust before walking towards the Porsche.

  There was a sudden flurry of motion by his legs.

  He jumped back. A cat tore by in hot pursuit of an errant pigeon.

  His heartbeats pounded in his ears. He kept walking, reached his car, opened the door. No light overhead, as it was an older convertible. Thank the Germans for small favors.

  He reached behind the passenger seat and grabbed the duffel. So far, so good. He pulled the phone charger out of the lighter socket and pocketed it.

  Done.

  Steven looked around. All quiet. He got out of the car, softly closed the door, and locked it with his key. He walked away, heart still racing, feeling like he’d just succeeded in doing a prison break; Steve McQueen in The Great Escape, sans motorcycle.

  The evening blew a soft, cool breeze but his shirt was soaked with sweat. He edged back to the bike path, scanning the lot a last time to confirm nobody was watching.