Bounty

by Michael Byrnes

  # 58.01

  @ Lake City, Colorado

  06:11:17 MST

  Jonathan Farrell had just cast his line into the burbling brook, contemplating nothing beyond trout, when his satcom pinged. He plucked the phone from his vest, read the instructions, then reread them. His jaw clenched.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  It wasn’t the mark that he took issue with. Whoever wound up on the receiving end of his Lapua Magnum wasn’t any of his damn business. At this stage of his career, death was a transaction, not a moral dilemma. What bothered him most was the place.

  Why there? he thought.

  The location certainly complicated the method Oz was requesting. There were risks involved in everything, marginally more so in the art of killing. Calculated risk was perfectly acceptable, and every occupation came with some element of hazard. Wanton risk, however, entailed very different scales of probability, the sort he wasn’t all that comfortable with. By his thinking, you didn’t ask a poker player to place bets at a roulette table. Simple as that. It felt as if Oz was toying with him, pulling hard at his strings to try to make him dance.

  He scrolled down the message, read the bio and the logistical data, and scanned the high-res photos. The face was unique yet not extraordinary. Easy enough to pick out from a crowd, though the directive implied there’d be no crowd to mess with. And that didn’t sit quite right with him, either. Once the work was done, it would be hard enough to make an escape, and a bit more cover could, at the very least, compensate.

  Then the satcom trilled a second time to announce a piggyback directive. This fucker’s pushing his luck.

  Different mark.

  Same place.

  Same time.

  Same method.

  “Shit.”

  Dance, monkey, dance.

  He’d seen plenty of action movies where the master assassin has a cathartic moment—fade in on the surly veteran killer who gets dragged into that one last job, at the very moment he’s come to terms with hanging up his weapon and heading off for a simpler, killing-free life. Farrell had always sworn that he’d never be a cliché, yet for the first time, he was feeling reticent.

  So he mulled the facts once more, then assigned probabilities. Two marks. Shit location. Big show. An impossible escape. Invariably, however, he came to the conclusion that a challenge was a challenge. Above all, Jonathan Farrell wasn’t one to back down. Besides, Oz paid really well, and on time. And the pay was two times the $50K single rate, with a kicker of $25K. For that kind of money, he’d make concessions.

  From: Joshua.​L.​Tierney@nsa.​gov

  Sent: Tuesday, November 7, 2017 at 8:14 AM

  To: Walter Koslowski, Roman Novak, Tim Knight

  Cc: Dilip Kapoor

  Subject: Bounty4Justice—ciphertext query

  : Razorwire.​email

  Re: Query request #: 658YHRZJ395-001

  Hi Walter,

  I’ve attached a Gmail intercept dated May 12, 2016, that contains the exact cipher block you’d submitted for analysis. The metadata (included in attachment) points to an IP address once used by an Internet café in London, England, that went out of business earlier this year. The sender’s Gmail account was registered under “PIKE MASTER,” which is clearly a fictitious name. However, I’m sure you’ll be intrigued by the recipient’s email address, as well as the subject line of the message itself.

  Frankly, I’ve never seen anything like the random block of characters contained in the body of the message. I concur that the only semi-intelligible string is “iArchos6I6,” though I get no hits when I run it through data match—not even a screen name on IRC board archives. If I had to guess, I’d say it might be a password or username. I’m not sure if the “‹” and “›” to the left and right of the string might also be important, and it’s certainly possible that other pieces of the cipher block might also matter.

  I’ll continue to analyze the data. In the interim, the recipient of the “Razorwire” email is, by far, your best lead.

  Best of luck,

  Josh Tierney

  Senior Digital Network Exploitation Analyst

  # 59.01

  @ Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

  “Man, oh, man, we are breaking all the records today,” DEA Special Agent Robert Romeyn said to Novak and Michaels, wearing a shit-eating grin as he strolled around the ten pallets of cash sitting in SingLao’s stockroom. “So far we’ve got seventeen dead out in the yard, none of them friendlies, praise Jesus. Hands down, we’ve netted the largest black market chems seizure to date. Not bad. We’ve got sixty-eight out of seventy-two of SingLao’s top associates in custody. That’s impressive, too. But then this?” He whistled as if he were sizing up the prettiest lady he ever did see. “Shit-damn! This will definitely top any record for the biggest loot repo ever. Guess who’s gonna be employee of the month? That’s right. You’re lookin’ at him. Man, do I love it when a plan comes together.”

  Michaels smiled and glanced over at Novak, shaking her head as Romeyn went about tabulating the inventory. The contraband was plainly visible under the plastic shrink wrap, so the DEA agent confirmed the denominations on the bills on top of each pile, then crouched down to count the individually packaged bricks stacked below. This was clearly not his first contraband cash rodeo.

  “Looks like we’ve got five pallets of hundred-dollar bills…three pallets of fifties…two pallets of twenties. Benjamins, Grants, Jacksons.” He stood and leaned against one of the pallets. It reached the top of his chest, nearly five feet high. “So let’s start with the Benjamins. As you can see, these hundreds are banded in stacks of ten thousand dollars, and they’re packed four stacks by thirteen stacks per brick. That’s fifty-two stacks per brick, or five hundred and twenty thousand dollars. Take your pick.”

  Novak realized that each brick, about the size of a shoe box, was worth more than what many middle-class families earned in a decade.

  “You can’t make a perfect square out of half a million in ten-thousand-dollar stacks. But you can see that each layer is six by three, or eighteen bricks per layer. Each pile is eleven layers high. Means each pallet of hundreds is worth one hundred and two million, nine hundred and sixty thousand dollars. Five pallets is roughly five hundred million in hundreds.”

  When skimming nearly $3,000,000 per pallet became a rounding error, you knew the numbers were big, thought Novak.

  “Over there you’ve got three pallets of fifties and two pallets of twenties.” He pointed to each pallet in turn. “Let’s ballpark those at another two hundred million combined.”

  “Holy shit,” Michaels said.

  “Jesus,” Novak contributed. He’d seen plenty of big dollar figures on computer screens and in financial documents, replete with multiple commas and zeros and decimal points. On paper, money was esoteric and abstract, not particularly impressive. Standing alongside its physical equivalent was an entirely different experience. He reached out and touched a big solid cube of cash. “Wow. Seven hundred million.”

  “You got it, my man. Not bad, eh?” Romeyn paced over and patted him on the back. “Seventy percent of hundred-dollar bills are held outside the U.S., just like this. For lots of honest folks who live in shit dictatorships and such, it’s the only way they can preserve what they’ve got. Of course, then you have scumbags like these guys who just stockpile it and hide it away because it’s ill-gotten to begin with. But physical money comes with its own problems. Take, for example, the fact that each of these pallets weighs just over a ton. That’s ten tons of legal tender that needs protecting.”

  Michaels said, “Can’t just go to the local bank to make a deposit.”

  “You got that right,” Romeyn said. “And sure as shit you can’t go bringin’ it on a plane to Switzerland. You can only transport ten grand at a pop without having customs perform a cavity search. I don’t even know how many trips that works out to.”

  “Seventy thousand,” Novak said, without hesitation.


  “Okay. Then that’s seventy thousand plane tickets and hotel stays, and a lot of mules who need to get paid a cut to move this inventory to a safe place. Suffice it to say that’s a mighty big hassle. Good luck trying to tape it to your privates, or jamming it elsewhere. I reckon, my friends, that’s why these fuckers got in the business of swapping cash for NcryptoCash—to liquidate the inventory. Tell me, how much bounty has actually been paid out so far by that website of yours?”

  Novak recalled the most recent updates to his spreadsheet. “It’s awarded bounties on fifty-two marks in fourteen countries, grand total of roughly thirty million dollars. No way to really know how much was paid in cash and how much was NcryptoCash.”

  “Okay,” Romeyn said. “Let’s even say that it was all paid out in cash. Every bounty, every country. Thirty mil ain’t even a third of a pallet of Benjamins. Barely puts a dent in the stock. So you can see why SingLao welcomed Bounty4Justice with open arms. It’s the best money-laundering prospect in town.”

  Novak’s BlackBerry pinged a call from Knight. He went back out into the packing room to answer it.

  “Hey, Tim.”

  “I hear you’ve had one hell of a morning.”

  Novak related just how good it had been, and Knight laughed giddily.

  “Sounds to me like we’ve just put a big dent in the Bounty4Justice business model.”

  “Sure looks that way.”

  “Listen,” Knight said. “I’ve got some more good news. Not sure if you’ve seen it yet, but NSA just sent us the analysis on that cryptotext. Get this: they were able to trace it to an actual email account.”

  “An email account?” Novak listened intently as Knight explained the particulars of how the mysterious cipher block Borg had given him matched the message content of an old email captured by the NSA’s intercept program.

  Knight said, “The sender hasn’t been positively identified yet. But the guy who received the message has.”

  “NSA’s sure about that?” Novak pressed.

  “A hundred percent. I’ve already made some calls so you and Michaels can get on this immediately.” He gave Novak the contact details, then said, “Given the sensitive nature of our inquiry, it’s best to handle this one in person. And you need to exercise extreme caution. I’ve convinced management that since this was your lead, you’ll see it through. Hartley instructed me to tell you that this needs to be approached with finesse and utmost diplomacy. Understood?”

  “Dust with feathers, not with knives. Understood. I won’t let you down.”

  “I know,” Knight said. “I’m having Jennifer book your plane tickets now. You’ll head directly over there tonight, and your meeting will be tomorrow afternoon. I’m emailing the report to you now so you’ll have everything you need. I don’t think I need to emphasize that we have a lot riding on this. It’s a huge break.”

  “Sure is.”

  “You’ll bring Michaels up to speed?”

  “Of course. No problem.”

  “Good luck.”

  Washington Post @washingtonpost • 20m

  #SenBarbaraAscher to surrender to FBI after DOJ expedites 21-count indictment.

  wapo.st/1FRcL126xre1

  # 60.01

  @ Washington, D.C.

  13:13:13 EST

  Six Capitol Police patrol cars escorted the Yukon from the safe house in Georgetown, cruising at medium speed with lights flashing. This time, Jones did the driving, while Vargas sat in the passenger seat, glued to his smartphone, watching the senator’s bounty skyrocket on the all-seeing, all-knowing website that had brought down her world. Jones glanced in the rearview mirror at Senator Ascher, who sat in pensive silence in the backseat, slouching under the weight of the Kevlar vest they’d fitted over her pantsuit, maybe contemplating her last minutes of freedom or the bad choices of the past that had culminated in the current grim procession.

  The motorcade used a diversionary route over the Potomac bridge crossings, swept across Theodore Roosevelt Island, then whisked along Constitution Avenue, past the National Mall between the lawns of the White House and the Washington Monument—smooth sailing, thanks to D.C.’s Metropolitan Police beat patrolmen who kept the intersections clear.

  Vargas held up his phone so that only Jones could see it and pointed to the screen, mouthing, “Two million dollars!”

  Fuck, thought Jones. Ascher added a whole new meaning to “high-value target.” Someone’s gonna take a shot at us, for sure. If the sniper who’d shot that banker in Manhattan was still out there somewhere, he’d surely take a crack at this fat prize. Jones could practically feel the laser dot burning a hole into his forehead. He’d been inserted into plenty of hostile environments over the years, but this situation was in its own league. The higher-ups had been tight-lipped, but Jones had the distinct impression that they weren’t even sure of their own personnel—an inside job wasn’t impossible at this level of payoff—not to mention the uneasy sense of the center giving way, things spiraling out of control.

  Bounty4Justice had become a genuine menace. It had begun with the bankers and the child molesters and the cheats. Then it had moved up the food chain to mendacious journalists and bribe-paying businessmen, then to especially notorious, double-dealing local and state officials, and eventually to federal senators and congressmen, proving that no man or woman with a skeleton in the closet was safe. Which explained why so many politicos in D.C., in particular, were on high alert.

  Jones had always thought that computer technology was a manmade construct, easily controlled by software and circuits. Evidently, in the wrong hands, there was nothing simple about it. There was something uniquely unsettling about knowing that people were out there online, voting in real time to have Ascher taken out, clicking away as if to say, Last chance! Let’s get her now, before it’s too late! The United States vs. Barbara Ascher, gangland-style. With all the disenchanted folks around nowadays, it made for bad odds. Very bad odds. Precisely why the senator had gone ahead and made the smartest choice of her career.

  They swung a left onto Tenth Street, heading against the one-way signs. The street had been blocked off at the last minute for the final stretch to the J. Edgar Hoover Building—a little surprise tactic to throw off any clued-in assassin who might be expecting to take advantage of the normal traffic pattern. As they slowed to cross Pennsylvania Avenue, Jones got a good look at the protestors lining the wide sidewalks fronting the building’s brutalist facade. They were all wearing creepy white masks that looked a bit too much like the slasher model from that classic horror movie his dad loved, which only made an already tense situation more surreal.

  “I keep seeing those hacker freaks on the news,” Vargas said. “They look mighty pissed off.” He laughed, but Jones didn’t think he was persuading anyone, including himself.

  Contained by a cordon of police officers, the mob—hundreds of those white masks—whipped up into a frenzy as the motorcade skirted them and evaded the front entrance. Some of them were holding up signs that said things like BOUNTY4JUSTICE = TRUE LAW and THE FBI DOES NOT CONTROL THE WEB. The rest of them thrust their fists skyward in unison, as if they shared one brain. It gave Jones the chills. He caught Ascher’s expression in the mirror; she seemed unfazed, as if this were all some bad dream she had already replayed in her mind, over and over again.

  A heavily armed and body-armored security detail emerged from the building’s side entryway to receive them. The FBI agents directed the patrol cars to stack and box around the Yukon.

  Now they only needed to cover the last few yards to the door. But Jones felt a nasty sense of vulnerability that made him hesitate.

  “Let’s do this,” Vargas said.

  Jones nodded, took a deep breath, and opened the door.

  # 60.02

  They made it through the final leg of the transfer without a hitch—thank God. Once they had safely escorted Senator Ascher inside, they helped her remove the Kevlar vest.

  She smoothed out her black suit
jacket with trembling fingers. “I guess this is it,” she said with a rueful little smile.

  Vargas wasn’t one for emotional displays. He just stood there with his hands crossed behind his back, nodding, like he had when he’d watched her heart-rending goodbyes to her family, a little while ago.

  Jones reached out to straighten the American flag pin on her lapel. “You’re going to be okay.”

  For the first time, she looked scared, and with good reason, he thought. Just this morning, inside the Justice Department building, all of them sitting across the street from those crazy protestors out front, the judge had finalized the hasty twenty-one-count indictment, which promised to stack years upon years upon years for myriad frauds and instances of tax evasion and taking bribes and knowingly endangering children, plus Lord knew what else. No doubt she’d been granted leniency for her full cooperation. But there was simply no avoiding the snowball effect of all those charges. She wouldn’t be around to watch her kids grow up, plain and simple, and Jones was certain that this was the sentence that would inevitably tear at her the most. The only conditions she’d requested were that her arrest be dignified, for the sake of the children, and that she be given the opportunity to address the public on her own terms. Both requests had been granted, and the media conference was to be held here, in the press hall of FBI headquarters. A select group of reporters were now funneling through the metal detectors and security checkpoint at the building’s main entrance.

  Down the corridor, an FBI reception committee rounded a corner, coming to take charge.

  “I never meant for any of this to happen,” she said to Jones. “Power is a very seductive thing, you know. It makes otherwise decent people do stupid things. Really stupid things. Really bad things…”

  Jones could see her eyes welling up. “But now you’re doing the right thing, Senator. For you. For your family.”

  She smiled sadly. “Thank you for everything. Both of you.”