GrayNet

by D S Kane

  Both companies looked like decent bets, but the idea of being responsible for helping make a cancer cure widely available drove her to her final decision.

  She picked up the phone and dialed Gerard Hopper’s direct number.

  She reached voice mail and hung up. Cassie wondered if the investment round had already been subscribed.

  She tried the company’s main number. The person acting as the company’s receptionist said, “The entire team is pitching to Piper Drugs,” a large company listed on the New York Stock Exchange. “They’ll be gone for at least three days.” She was disappointed when told Hopper turned off his cell phone while they pitched and there was no other way to contact him, so Cassie left a message with the receptionist.

  She felt impatient. She remembered her joint venture with Stillwater Technologies a few months ago. The negotiations had taken so much longer than she’d expected. Maybe this was common in the world of startup investing.

  * * *

  When no one returned her call after a week had passed, Cassie called again. Again, she got no answer at Hopper’s direct line. She dialed the main number and waited until the fourth ring for the call to be picked up. “Hopper Pharmaceuticals,” said the reception person.

  Cassie asked, “Is Dr. Hopper available? I left him a message about a week ago, informing him I wanted to invest for the whole five million, but no one has returned my call. Can you tell me why?”

  The man’s voice replied, “Ah, yeah. I remember you. I took the message. Ah, when we pitched to Piper, they offered to buy us, lock, stock, and barrel.”

  “What? Tell me what happened.”

  “Sorry, but there are other calls coming in. I’ll send you to Maria. She was our VP of Marketing.” Before Cassie could object, the other line was ringing.

  “Maria Rodriguez, VP Marketing. How can—”

  “Maria, I was interested in investing in Hopper. The whole round. But now you’re being bought. Please, tell me what happened.”

  “Who are you?”

  Cassandra Sashakovich. You handed me a copy of your investment folder at NYU last week.”

  “Oh, yeah. I remember you. Well, uh, the offer from Piper was overly generous, and we were all interested. Except for Gerry. Gerry said Piper wouldn’t market the cure. They’d sunset it, and keep selling products that have cancer patients hanging on for years but not cure them.”

  “So then, what’s your current status? Why can’t I fund the round?”

  “Well, as CEO, Gerry owned 51% of the stock, so even all of us together couldn’t outvote him. And then last night, someone murdered him. Bullet through one of his eyes, took the back of his skull off. All of us are thinking they’ll kill us, too. We’re all scared shitless. So, uh, well, you’re too late. We have Piper’s attorneys in here now and we’re reviewing the sale documents.”

  Cassie felt her hands tighten on the cell so hard her fingers hurt. After the conversation ended, Cassie sat unmoving, stunned to her core. Drug companies were worse than the terrorists she’d helped slaughter. “What the fuck is that all about,” she said out loud. She restrained herself from throwing her cell phone at the wall.

  Gizmo hissed and fled her lap in fear.

  She called Adam and William on a conference call. “Sorry for the interruption, but I’ve been almost tearing my hair out. A pharma corp bought the company I wanted to invest in. The bastards bought the cancer cure, probably to sunset it. I need both of you as sounding boards.” She told them the details of what had happened with Hopper Pharmaceuticals. “Any suggestions about what I do now?”

  William replied first. “Sorry about that. It happens with startups offering medical advances, and Hopper Pharmaceuticals isn’t the first with a cancer cure to be sunsetted by a big drug conglomerate. My only suggestion is keep looking. If at first you don’t succeed, as they say. Anyway, I may be able to help. I own shares in a startup that might interest you. They’re an Internet betting site with a twist. You can bet on real-life events, and by making the bets, you actually affect the outcome. For example, if you bet that something won’t happen, the folks who bet that it will happen can win the bet if they force their desired outcome.”

  Cassie thought about that. “Negative bets?” Hopper’s murder flashed through her head. Her desire to be a force for good fell away from her like a parka shed on a steaming hot day. She saw—felt—the bullet pierce his head. Felt his world go black and fade to nothing. His murder cried to her for revenge. “You mean, if I bet that if a drug company doesn’t develop at least one affordable cure for a major disease within a year, its CEO will die, then in effect I could cause them to develop and offer affordable cures so no one kills them?”

  “Exactly. That’s how it works. Admiral John Poindexter from DARPA, the Defense Department’s advanced research project agency, pioneered a predictive markets betting web years ago. Remember him? Ollie North’s boss? Irangate? Anyway, the US Senate closed him down just before his startup date to go live. Well, this new company is called Predictive Markets, Inc., and it owns an Internet betting website that operates somewhere offshore. The website is called GrayNet. That’s www.GrayNet.com. People bet on literally anything. They’d take the bet you just described if you placed it. I own five thousand shares of Predictive. Bought them for two bucks a share and they may be worth three or even four dollars per share now. The company is beginning to ramp and may soon be profitable, having doubled revenues every quarter for almost a year. You can contact their CEO, Phillip Watson. An old buddy, Jon Sommers, told me about him.”

  William gave Cassie the contact info for Watson.

  Within minutes of ending the phone call, Cassie visited the website for GrayNet and admired its layout. She found bets on the upcoming election, bets on the chances that the economy would swing down, and even a bet that one of the presidents of a South American country would die a violent death within the next six months.

  Cassie called Watson, surprised that he answered on the first ring. She introduced herself. When Watson asked who had referred her, she told him it was William Wing.

  “Ah, yes. Jon Sommers’s friend. Jon was instrumental in my marrying Jennie. I invited him to our wedding but he never showed.”

  Cassie had never met anyone named Jon Sommers. “Who are your other investors?”

  Watson replied, “We’ve been funded by several high-tech corporations as well as by several high-net-worth individuals, including one venture capitalist acting for herself. But we haven’t yet had any venture capital company put money in yet. We expect that will happen with our next round, a mezzanine round before IPO. So, William referred you? I’ll have to thank him.”

  “Tell me more.”

  “Yes, well, Predictive Markets, Inc., is incorporated in the Maldives and its prime asset is GrayNet, our Internet betting website. The site is hosted in Chechnya to circumvent some laws in this country against certain types of on-line betting. We have doubled or tripled our revenue base every quarter in the past eleven months since our founding. We accept bets on absolutely anything. Any questions?”

  “Not so far. I’d like to see your investor packet.”

  “Well, I can send you an email containing attachments such as a business plan, and documents for you to read. You can email or call me and I’ll answer any questions you have. The documents you’d sign to invest include a private placement memorandum, investor suitability questionnaire, and a term sheet. I’ll send them to you in an email, in case you decide to invest. Are you interested in the email?”

  “Yes.” Cassie gave him her email address at Swiftshadow Consulting and within two minutes an email arrived containing all the documents. Cassie read through all the materials and made notes in one of the two copies of each document that she printed. She thought for a while and made her decision to purchase. Cassie filed her copy with scribbled notes and placed it in a FedEx envelope to be sent on to the corporate attorney she’d selected to incorporate Swiftshadow Consulting Group. Her cover note ask
ed for comments back as soon as possible. She called FedEx for a pickup.

  Late the next day the attorney called and, it seemed, he could find nothing alarming within the documents. She called Watson and negotiated a share price lower than what the term sheet called for. Then she signed the other set, and placed them in a large envelope along with a check that gave her ownership of one hundred thousand shares at three dollars a share. She scheduled another Fedex pickup.

  Then Cassie went to the website for www.GrayNet.com and made an inverse bet that no drug company whose assets exceeded one billion dollars would have its president murdered within two years, except for those whose companies didn’t present “affordable cures” for at least one significant disease. She defined those diseases as cancer, Type 1 diabetes, spinal cord injury, kidney disease, liver disease, and heart disease. Cassie funded each bet with a “bounty” of one million dollars to the person who could provide proof to her of having committed the assassination.

  She sought vengeance for the murder of Gerard Hopper. She thought how vengeance often forced people down unexpected and dangerous pathways. Standing at the door, she smiled at the FedEx guy, looking forward to seeing the results of her handiwork.

  CHAPTER 8

  October 3, 6:22 p.m.

  Oil Ministry building,

  Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

  Achmed Houmaz held the notebook in his hands. He stared at its cover, but as he tried to drop it on his desk, he could not.

  He’d read most of it several times. The first time, he’d read each page several times before proceeding. The second time, he skimmed it. The third time, he cried several times, realizing how terrible the acts of his two brothers were. Surely, the world was better off now that they were dead.

  The evening sun was dimming to dusk through the window as he sat in his air-conditioned office. The palms of his hands felt sweaty against the pages in the cold air.

  As he read again, his eyes bulged open. The sheer audacity of what his brothers had planned led him to revulsion, souring his stomach. What they had accomplished troubled him to his core. He thought the very idea of exploding a nuclear weapon in Washington, DC, was preposterous. Yet, according to this notebook, on the day they died, they were on the verge of succeeding. He was awed by their evil vision and at the same time disgusted at what might have happened to the Islamic world had they succeeded.

  He shook his head and sighed. But whoever had been responsible for their deaths had killed his father. Indirectly, but their murderer was his father’s killer as well. Houmaz examined the pages for a name that might help him figure out who was the responsible party.

  His vow to his dead father was an indelible tattoo on his mind. Achmed Houmaz knew what he must to do.

  It took him hours, scouring the pages for contact information. The notebook listed every project, every attack. It was thick with details of over twenty major operations, hundreds of kidnappings and murders, mostly by beheadings or suicide bombings. There was contact information scattered throughout the notebook, in Arabic, with no encryption codes.

  For one of the projects listed, Pesi had failed to capture and torture a woman who might have hacked intelligence about their operations. The details of the torture Tariq had wanted Pesi to administer to her shocked Achmed. Had they caught Cassandra Sashakovich, they would have cut an eyeball from her head and then hammered a sharpened broomstick deep into her, up from her vagina. It was a sharia punishment. Brutal. She was to be left still alive, bleeding out slowly and mounted on the hotel bed in a standing position using the broomstick’s handle to prop her up. He’d read this page several times. The first time he’d felt his stomach revolt and his dinner ended in the toilet. This time, it made him sad, no longer shocked.

  But, just before midnight, he found what he was looking for near the end of the notebook, scribbled at the bottom of a page: Mark McDougal’s name and an email address at one of Washington’s intelligence agencies.

  He remembered seeing the statement burned into both brothers’ flesh, Such is the fate of all who fuck with intelligence agencies of the United States. He knew that a covert unit of US intelligence did this. He thought, McDougal is surely to blame. He used an Internet “private investigation” search service to find out Mark McDougal’s home address and phone number. Only cost him fifty dollars. He also began researching the Internet to find out how operations of US intelligence agencies did their work. It took him three days.

  Houmaz read the text of one of the websites he’d googled. According to them, the US intelligence agencies used management consultants, or NOCs. He wondered, what’s a NOC? These NOCs were sent on assignments to countries seeking loans from the World Bank. They created overly optimistic financial forecasts for government-sponsored projects in the Third World. The forecasts encouraged governments to borrow more than the projects could ever pay back. And when the net cash flows didn’t cover the loan payments, the World Bank renegotiated the loans for favors to the United States, such as military bases or cheaper oil. If the target country wouldn’t cooperate, the intelligence agencies fomented strikes, deadly accidents for the borrowing country’s leaders, or even revolution. And if none of that worked, they might even invade as they had in Panama, the Falkland Islands, and Iraq.

  Maybe they would do this to Saudi Arabia, thought Houmaz.

  * * *

  Just after 11 p.m., Mark McDougal stood at the master bathroom mirror and brushed his teeth as he listened to the late night news. He could hear his wife shift in their bed as she watched the screen in their bedroom. When the phone rang he heard her mute the television. She called out, “Mark? It’s for you.” He rinsed his mouth and entered the bedroom. She handed him the receiver.

  A voice on the other end said, “Mr. McDougal, you do not know me. But my brothers, you knew them before you had them murdered. I am Achmed Houmaz.”

  McDougal choked on the toothpaste still in his mouth. He tried to think, but his brain wouldn’t function, ready for bed. The best he could do was to ask, “What do you want with me?”

  “You were responsible for their deaths. You are listed in Pesi’s notebook as their contact at the agency. Their mole. And you sent the team that killed them. It was you who instructed their bodies be carved with the words, Such is the fate of all who fuck with intelligence agencies of the United States. I saw their bodies. When my father saw how they’d been mutilated, his heart stopped. He died because of you. I want you to know I will take revenge on you, and your family, just as they had threatened. I’m calling so you know that, as of now, you and your wife and son are walking dead. You will all be hunted and there is nothing you can do to stop their deaths before you suffer your own.”

  “Wait! I did nothing! It wasn’t me or the agency that murdered your brothers.”

  Silence at the other end of the line for too long. Then, “You have earned thirty seconds of my time.”

  McDougal looked at his wristwatch. “It was two of the agency’s former employees. We hired one back, but neither was with the agency when they committed this crime. One is Cassandra Sashakovich and the other is Lee Ainsley. Ainsley rejoined us two weeks ago. It wasn’t the agency. Don’t hurt my family.”

  The connection terminated. McDougal worried what would happen next.

  * * *

  Achmed Houmaz studied the notebook more carefully for several days until he found the names of both Cassandra Sashakovich and Lee Ainsley listed in small print on the pages toward the end.

  He read the notes and understood what might have happened, if Mark McDougal was telling the truth. He saw printed into the notebook that NOC meant “non-official cover.” From the notes he had, he knew his brother, Tariq, had blackmailed McDougal, a director of the agency, to find the name of the NOC covert agent who had stolen over fifty million dollars from Tariq’s bank account. Pesi threatened McDougal’s entire family. The name he received was Sashakovich. The bank account she’d stolen funds from was used to recruit and train mujahidin and to fund th
eir operations.

  His brothers had mounted numerous operations as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. Tariq wanted to know if Sashakovich had discovered the nuclear bomb operation they planned in Washington, and he was prepared to torture her to death to find out. Achmed sat at his desk late into the night, an untouched cup of tea next to his hand. He reread Tariq’s notes about their final plan, and this time his hand jumped, and the tea spilled into his lap. She was the woman whose plans for torture he’d read a while before.

  He had to read the section three times before he’d absorbed it. The words made him dizzy and he paced the room. Then, as he calmed, he sat down at the desk again. His brother Pesi recruited and administered for their organization, and Tariq handled training and conduct of operations. Pesi owned the bank account, but he had failed to keep it secure. Tariq was enraged but instead of killing his brother, he told McDougal he could either divulge the agent’s name or Tariq would capture, torture, and execute his wife and son, and then assassinate McDougal.

  Achmed shook his head. He couldn’t even imagine this world. How evil his brothers were! He wished there was more to read, but he had all there was. Instead of continuing to reread the notebook, he spent hours using the Internet to research Sashakovich and Ainsley. About Ainsley he found almost nothing. Ainsley’s credit was good. No convictions. Nothing on Google.com. Even the landlines for the house in Chevy Chase were listed only in Sashakovich’s name. But from Google he found some detailed information on the woman, all of it very recent. He began to read, to see how she fit into the events that led to his brothers’ deaths. The first Internet link was to Swiftshadow Consulting Group. He examined her photograph on the web page and decided that it wasn’t necessary to look further. He concluded, she’s the murderess. But, there were other links that he eventually found, linking her with the intelligence agency. Houmaz read through these as well.