by Reece Hirsch
“Because there will be blowback from the feds if you harbor this man. Just let us know where he is, and we’ll take it from there.”
“Are you working with the State Department or law enforcement? Because this sounds like a matter for them.”
“Neither,” Chris said. “We’re on our own.”
“If what you say is true, then maybe I don’t want someone like that associated with our community—or with me. But forgive me if I don’t see you two being a match for someone like that. No offense.”
“We mentioned he was seeking medical attention, right?” Zoey said.
Jefferson squirmed at the remark.
Lai looked down to sample a green bean with chopsticks. “I’ll look into it. I don’t like things happening in this part of town without my knowledge. And while I love my homeland, my loyalty is to this country. It’s been very good to me.”
“Clearly,” Zoey said.
Lai raised an eyebrow, weighing whether he should take offense at the impertinence. Instead, he merely shrugged in acknowledgment. “Do you have a card?”
Chris produced one of his business cards.
“Good,” Lai said, fixing him with another smile-that-was-not-a-smile. “Now I know where to find you, don’t I? I’ll look into it.”
41
Later that day, Mr. Lai’s associate in the cream-colored sweater left a message on Chris’s office voice mail, requesting a meeting at Jefferson’s comic shop.
When Chris arrived, the man was already on the sidewalk in front of the shop, sucking on an e-cigarette with a disgusted look. “The man you’re looking for is at 485 Grant Avenue, Apartment 12,” he said without any prologue. “We don’t want the body to be found in Chinatown.”
“We’re not going to kill him,” Chris said. “We’re going to have him arrested.”
“Yeah, right. In case you don’t know, he doesn’t look like the type to go quietly.”
“What do you know about him?”
“I know that he goes by the name of Red Sun and advertises himself as a professional hit man on Silk Road. I thought anyone advertising there as a hitter would be a fake, but apparently not.”
“Why are you telling me that?”
“Because I don’t like the guy.”
“Why aren’t you handling this yourselves?”
“This has all the makings of an international shitstorm. It’s not our fight, and this conversation never happened.”
Chris and Zoey approached the apartment building at 485 Grant Avenue.
“I knew I was right about that connection between the PLA and Red Sun,” Zoey said. “The security team at Zapper can suck it.”
“Yes, you said that.”
They walked quietly up the steps. Chris drew his gun and tested the doorknob.
“Shouldn’t we just call the police? He’ll be armed,” Zoey said.
“So are we,” Chris said. “Besides, I want to know that he’s really here before we call them. We have enough credibility issues already.” Chris didn’t feel nearly as fearless as he sounded, but he didn’t want Zoey to know that.
The door was unlocked. Chris drew in a breath but couldn’t seem to release it. Chris pushed the door open, and it swung back on its hinges, revealing a sun-dappled and nearly empty apartment. On the other side of a bare living room, the door was opened on a bedroom that contained a bed, a chair, an empty IV bag on a cart, and a window in which thin curtains billowed.
They checked the bathroom and all of the closets until they were certain that he was gone. Chris approached the bed and examined the sheets, which bore several bloodstains that looked fresh.
“He’s still bleeding,” Chris said. “He probably didn’t want to leave here when he did.”
“Do you think the tong told him that we were coming?” Zoey asked.
“No, but he must have guessed.”
Zoey examined the pillow and found a strand of dark hair. “Do you have a plastic bag? We might need a DNA sample later.”
Chris produced one of the baggies he used to protect hard drives and retrieved the hair sample.
“We’ve had two opportunities to surprise this guy and both times he’s slipped away,” Chris said. “We may not get another chance like this.”
After the visit from the Chinatown gangster, Tao knew that he couldn’t stay in his makeshift recovery room much longer. The only reason he was alive was that killing him was above the pay grade of the middle-management thug who had visited him.
Tao removed the IV from his wrist and sat up painfully in the bed. He placed his feet gingerly on the floor. He wasn’t sure how many days he had been in bed, but it had been long enough to turn the muscles in his legs to jelly. He sat down quickly in the apartment’s one chair and spent fifteen minutes trying to get his clothes on without ripping out any stitches. Once that painful task was completed, he moved like a ninety-year-old down the steps of the apartment building.
When Tao made it to his rental car without being stopped, he knew that no one had been watching the building. He drove out of the narrow streets of Chinatown and into the crowded shopping district of Union Square.
He needed a couple more days to recuperate before he would be capable of taking any action. Clearly, he should not stay in any hotel that was within the borders of Chinatown. He needed a place where he was unlikely to be remembered or noticed, so he chose San Francisco’s largest hotel (according to his Zapper search), the Hilton San Francisco Union Square. It was only a few blocks from Grant Avenue and Chinatown, but it was far beyond the jurisdiction of the tongs.
Near the hotel, Tao found a pharmacy, where he purchased a few rolls of gauze, some antibiotic ointment, and pain relievers. Carrying only the plastic bag with his purchases, he trudged slowly through the cavernous hotel lobby adorned with massive sand-colored columns and crystal chandeliers. Tao watched for anyone who might be taking notice of him, but the lobby was full of businessmen and tourist families, who all seemed wholly engrossed in their tourist brochures and cell phones.
“Can someone get your bags, sir?” The clerk noticed that he did not have a suitcase.
“No, thank you, I’m fine,” Tao said.
“Enjoy your stay.”
For the next two days, Tao rose only to greet the room service waiter and go to the bathroom. He wasn’t sure if two days would be enough, but it would have to do. He needed to complete his assignment, and it was possible that Bruen could be on the other side of the world by now.
Tao doubted it, though. Bruen seemed every bit as determined as Tao to resolve their situation.
As he recuperated, Tao watched a Real Housewives of Atlanta marathon on television, filled with horror and amazement. By the time the last big-haired, overdressed housewife had been slapped, any remaining doubts Tao had about the decadence of American culture had been dispelled.
On the morning of the third day, Tao rose, stiff but mobile. As the hot water streamed over him in the shower, he examined where the bullets had been extracted, the fresh scars puckered and pink.
This job was not going as smoothly as the others, but there was still time for Tao to set things right. He wondered whether Bruen was lucky or skilled. There was nothing in Bruen’s résumé to suggest skill or training, so Tao had to assume that he had simply gotten the benefit of some lucky breaks.
Tao wondered whether his new orientation to his work had unbalanced him, thrown off his equilibrium somehow. Ever since the Naruse hit in Tokyo, he had enjoyed his work more than ever before. But that didn’t mean he was better at it. Quite the contrary. The world was full of passionate amateurs who produced unreadable books, unlistenable music, and a host of other botched projects. A true professional had passion for their work, but they also had the dispassionate judgment to recognize when they were blowing it.
He knew that it was time to stop indulgin
g his baser instincts and finish the hit on Bruen without mess, without collateral damage, without senseless bloodshed.
But what was the point of work if you couldn’t enjoy it?
42
Chris and Zoey decided to see how far they could get with the information from the Chinese mobster. Now they knew what Zoey had suspected for some time—that the hit man offered his services through the Silk Road website under the name Red Sun.
Problem was, it wasn’t safe to return to the law firm and use their own computer forensic lab. Moreover, they had to assume that the PLA hackers had access to the Reynolds Fincher servers, much in the way they’d hacked Zoey’s electronics to get to Geist. Because of this, Chris had called in a favor and gotten access to the facilities of Hologram Security, a security consulting firm that he often collaborated with. Chris and Zoey had the lab to themselves through the dead hours of the night until Hologram’s team started arriving at 7:00 a.m.
Zoey was at the monitor, with Chris sitting next to her.
“There he is,” she said as she pulled up Red Sun’s page on Silk Road. “Every time I see this it freaks me out. It makes ordering a hit look about as easy as ordering a pizza.”
“Can you crack this, find some way to track him from here?”
Zoey gave a frustrated shrug. “If Silk Road were easy to crack, then the FBI would have done it a long time ago.” Her hands flew over the keyboard. “I’m going to see if I can get behind Silk Road’s firewall, find an email message to Red Sun, and decipher it.”
“But because this is the Deep Web, Silk Road has to be accessed through TOR,” Chris said. “Every node the email’s routed through is separately encrypted.”
Zoey nodded. “Right. Peeling back all of those layers and getting to the original sender is nearly impossible. But we have to try, right?”
“If we don’t find him, he’s probably going to find us,” Chris said.
“That’s not helping,” Zoey said. “I prefer to think about what will happen when we hear from Damien. I don’t know how that dude pulls his disappearing trick, but if he takes us in, I don’t think even the PLA could find us.”
“I hope you’re right,” Chris said. “How about the bitcoin payments that Red Sun receives for his services?”
“Exactly,” Zoey said. “Bitcoin transactions aren’t inherently anonymous, so that’s the angle to pursue.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
“You can get me two large coffees from Peet’s with nonfat milk and two Splendas. And a breakfast burrito.”
“I’d say get it yourself, but we need to keep you at the monitors, don’t we?”
“Exactly, lab wench.”
“You know I hate it when you call me lab wench.” Chris was happy to play along if it lightened Zoey’s mood.
“I think we’ve established that my hacking skills are superior to yours.”
“Marginally perhaps.” This was not the first time they’d had this conversation.
“Okay, so that means that I take the lead on the forensic work and you, my lovely assistant, are the lab wench.”
“I’m going to take this as motivation to sharpen up my skills. Then maybe you’ll be the lab wench.”
“I love seeing someone trying to better themselves. But until that time—lab wench.”
Chris left the lab in order to escape further taunting. Using a computer in the consulting firm’s reception area and an anonymized IP address, Chris accessed his law firm email account to see how impatient his clients were getting with his sudden unexplained absence.
Among the contents of his clogged inbox, Chris noticed a message from Richard Grogan, which read, “How’s it going, Chris? I noticed that you haven’t been in the office lately. Hope all is well.”
He must be even more paranoid about me leaving the firm than I realized.
Concerned that Richard might start undermining him with his clients if he didn’t offer an explanation, Chris sighed and typed out a response.
CHRIS: Working on a big project for Zapper that’s been taking me out of the office.
Chris shouldn’t have been as surprised as he was when he received an immediate response at 5:00 a.m. Richard probably slept with his smartphone.
RICHARD: Glad to hear it. Related to the China trip?
CHRIS: You could say that.
RICHARD: You working with Zoey? You two seem very close.
CHRIS: Yeah, she’s invaluable.
Chris hoped it wasn’t yet common knowledge around the office that he and Zoey were a couple. He knew he couldn’t keep it private for much longer, though.
RICHARD: Just remember that you two shouldn’t be on an island at the firm. You have colleagues who are more than willing to support you. In the end, Zoey, capable as I’m sure she is, is just an ex-hacker who was working as a bartender less than a year ago.
CHRIS: That’s a pretty dismissive way of putting it. Zoey and I are partners, and I couldn’t do what I do without her.
RICHARD: I understand. But just remember that in the end she’s an employee. She’s not actually your partner—I am. Your partners at the firm recognize and value your contribution. Especially me.
CHRIS: It’s nice to be appreciated. But doesn’t true appreciation usually take the form of dollars?
Chris smiled. It was just too easy to push Richard’s buttons.
RICHARD: I’ve been thinking about what you said. You just sit tight and we’ll figure something out. In the meantime, don’t make any rash decisions.
CHRIS: Believe me, Richard, I have other things to attend to right now.
RICHARD: Good. I want to sit down with you the next time you’re in the office. Call me.
When Chris returned to the forensic lab with coffee and breakfast, Zoey was deep into her work, her hands flying over the keyboard as she glanced back and forth among her three large monitor screens.
“How’s it going?”
“It’s not. As you would expect from someone who’s offering murder for hire over the Internet, Red Sun set up his bitcoin transactions so they are anonymous. He probably used the TOR browser for each step in the process. Then he used Mt. Rox to anonymously create a bitcoin wallet online. When payment for a hit arrives, he can just withdraw it to the anonymous Mt. Rox account.” Mt. Rox was a leading bitcoin exchange website.
“So what we’re looking at is a dead end.”
“Nearly. What we can see is the payments going into the Mt. Rox account. The dates and amounts of those transfers might give us some clues as to the hits that Red Sun has performed in the past.”
“What sort of amounts are we talking about?”
“Well, here’s a thirty-five-thousand-dollar payment that was transferred to the account three weeks ago. That’s probably you.”
“I’d have hoped I’d command a higher price.”
“Don’t get down about yourself,” Zoey said. “If Red Sun fails, I’m sure they’ll pay the next guy even more to take you out.”
“Thank you for that.” Chris ran a hand through his hair. “What about the other payments?”
“Well, there’s a twenty-five-thousand-dollar transfer about two weeks earlier. Then another for forty thousand dollars last year. But that tells us nothing. If we can’t access the emails, how do we track him down?”
“We’re going to need to take a different tack,” Chris said.
“A different tack. Sounds good. Anything more specific?”
“I’ve got a card that I can play. I’ve considered using it before, but I know it’s a source I can’t tap very often, and I have to pick the right time.”
“Considering that there’s a professional hit man after you, I’d say this is the time to use any lifelines that you have.”
“I agree. It’s time to see the Wizard.”
43
Even though Paul Saperstein
had distanced himself from Chris in order to avoid the political fallout from the events in Shenzhen, Chris suspected that he felt guilty about it. Saperstein was not a bad guy; it was just that he was constrained by his role as the CEO of one of the world’s largest corporations. It was a lot like being the president of a country. You had to be aware at all times of how your actions were perceived by various constituencies—shareholders, stock analysts, employees, your government, and even other governments.
Sitting in the computer forensic lab of Hologram Consulting, and routing through an anonymized IP address with a secure email account, Chris typed out a message to Saperstein.
CHRIS: I have a favor to ask.
Less than five minutes later, the response came back.
SAPERSTEIN: What can I do for you?
CHRIS: I have a problem. A tough one. There’s been fallout from my trip to China. I’m being pursued, and I need protection. The kind of protection that you could provide.
A long pause stretched. Finally, the computer pinged with a response.
SAPERSTEIN: You’re lucky this connection is secure, but I’ll need a phone number to continue the conversation.
Chris provided the number of his burner phone. About a minute later, the phone rang. Saperstein did not want their conversation preserved as an email thread.
“Chris, I can’t take you in. I shouldn’t even be talking to you.”
Chris had anticipated the response. “Then I have one request. For old times’ sake.”
“What is it?”
“I’d like some time with BD.”
After a moment, Saperstein said, “It would have to be a one-time thing. And if you ever mention this, we’ll deny it happened.”
“Understood,” Chris said.
“I want to see you come out of this, man. I really do.”