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Darknet Page 11

by Matthew Mather


  Viegas’s death certificate had convinced Dean that Sean’s death had been no accident. Jake told him that the doctor and nurse who signed it had left the hospital, that there was no record of them anywhere else he could find. The only other option was that the certificate was a fake. And if so, why would Sean have sent Jake a package with a fake death certificate in it, telling him to go off on a wild goose chase?

  No, they both agreed that it was all connected.

  The Mohawk nation never forgot their own, Dean had assured him. They’d find a way to help.

  At one of the summer powwows twenty years ago, a school bus bringing in grade-school children had jumped the concrete curb of a low bridge spanning a small river leading to the event. The bus had flipped over and capsized into the water. Jake and Sean had been hiding under the bridge smoking a joint when it happened, and before he knew what he was doing, Jake had plunged into the frigid river. He and Sean pulled seven Mohawk children out before anyone else got there, probably saved the kids’ lives. The Mohawk Council had conferred status of honorary tribal members onto both of them.

  Still, there was a risk in getting involved, and Dean needed to get the elders’ blessing to dig into it more. After a few phone calls, they’d found this bush pilot who was willing to fly him up. When Dean asked if he could reveal what he knew to the Longhouse Council, Jake hesitated, but ultimately agreed.

  He needed all the help he could get.

  After finishing up at the bar, Jake and Dean had gone back to the MIT building, where they sat together and read media reports on Bluebridge and its founders, Vidal Viegas and Henry Montrose. The men might have been partners, but Montrose was the senior one. He had to be the one pulling the strings at Bluebridge.

  What was Montrose up to?

  Had he killed Viegas, replaced him somehow? Had Sean been killed for knowing that secret?

  Vidal—or whoever had replaced him—was busy on a tour promoting Senator Russ in the presidential campaign. The campaign donations for this year were staggering, and every industry Bluebridge was branching out into seemed to be a platform piece for Russ, everything from wind turbines to the defense industry. Then again, that was business and politics as usual. The only thing that made it unusual was the death certificate of Viegas.

  They’d disconnected some computers from the network to look at the contents of the memory keys. Dean took a quick look at the files on the one from Donovan, which he said looked like a collection of libraries for a database engine. He promised to dig deeper.

  They couldn’t open the one from Sean. It was encrypted, and they didn’t have the code. They tried all the passwords they could think of, scouring Sean’s note for clues. The only thing that stood out was the cryptic line from the note: Remember the nuggets, and the key is money in your pocket. Did he mean that once they got the code, they would have as much money as they needed? Or that they needed a lot of money to unlock it? Money was the last thing on Jake’s mind.

  The pilot reached around and prodded Jake’s shoulder. He’d been talking while Jake was daydreaming, staring out of his window.

  “What?” Jake asked.

  “Dat’s all you ‘ave?” the pilot yelled over the engine. He meant the backpack stuffed between Jake’s knees, some warm clothes and a sleeping bag Dean gave him. “Yoo ‘ave no ‘unting gear ‘der? You need something?”

  Jake frowned, his brain trying to make sense of the man.

  He meant, hunting gear.

  He thought Jake was going hunting.

  Jake was about to say, no, I’m not a hunter, but then he laughed grimly to himself. He was going hunting. “No, I don’t have any gear,” he yelled back.

  “No worry,” the pilot replied. “Dean tol’ me to take care of you.” Holding the flight stick with his right hand, he reached down his left hand and pulled out an old rifle.

  Jake hesitated, but took it. Propping it upright beside him, he checked its chamber. It wasn’t loaded.

  The pilot sensed what he was doing. “By your feet,” he said over the noise of the engine.

  Jake looked down at a cardboard box filled with rifle cartridges he hadn’t noticed before.

  Over his head, the pilot waved a leather wallet with a billfold. “Dean said to give you this, too.”

  Jake reached forward and took the money. “Thank you,” he yelled. “Thanks for everything.”

  Maybe he would survive this plane ride after all.

  “We h’almost der.” The pilot turned and smiled, revealing a mouthful of tobacco-stained teeth. He pointed at a large lake on the horizon, sparkling in the afternoon sun. “You be hunting soon, my friend.”

  Jake pulled out the map Sean gave him, the one pinpointing the location he needed to go to. It indicated a spot on a mountaintop near the lake they approached. A remote sport-fishing lodge was on the lake. That was where he was going to start.

  ▲▼▲

  Cormac held the picture of Jake O’Connell up to the bartender of the hunting and fishing lodge. It was an outside bar. Two old-timers battled on a chessboard at the table nearest him, while a group of four men in head-to-foot camouflage roared in laughter at a joke just told by a wiry man wearing a red Canadiens hockey team baseball cap.

  “So you’ve seen him?” Cormac asked. He was double-checking. The old man had called him in the morning, giving specific instructions that Jake O’Connell would be coming to the Bear Mountain Lodge. He was a weirdo, sure, but the old man was never wrong. Not when he was this specific.

  The bartender took the picture and studied it. “Yeah. He arrived a few hours ago. Jean flew him in.” The bartender nodded at the wiry man in the Canadiens baseball cap. He frowned at Cormac. “I didn’t know you were coming. The boss told me not to expect anybody else for the day.”

  Cormac smiled his goofiest grin. “Sorry, getting away from the wife and all. This was a last minute thing.” He turned and inspected the man in the Canadiens baseball cap.

  “Nice ride.” The bartender nodded at the Cessna 185 Cormac flew up in. It sat at the end of the docks next to the rusting old Super Cub and a more modern Bombardier six-seater. As the sun set, a beautiful orange-and-pink sky erupted on the horizon over the mirror-still lake.

  Cormac made it just before dark. It took longer to rent a float plane in Montreal than he’d anticipated—no valid pilot’s license under the alias he was using, but a big wad of cash could fix nearly any problem.

  “Is Jake staying here?” Cormac nodded at the main lodge.

  Frowning, the bartender shook his head. “No, he headed up Montagne d’Ours, to one of the cabins we rent up there.” He pointed to the right, to a forest trail leading up a steep incline. “Bear Mountain,” he repeated in English. “It’s a good two hour hike up. All of the ATVs are gone already.”

  “Right, right.” Cormac took back the picture. “I’ve been trying to catch up with my buddy all day. Thought he might be staying at the main lodge tonight.”

  “You could ask Jean, he might know more.” The bartender pointed at the pilot.

  Cormac glanced at the table of men again. Apart from them and the older-timers finishing their chess match, only two other men sat at the other end of the patio overlooking the lake, quietly watching the sunset. The hunting and fishing lodge looked like it could accommodate a dozen rooms. It didn’t seem full. Maybe twenty people including staff.

  No roads in or out.

  “Sure, that’s a good idea,” Cormac replied, looking at the three floatplanes moored at the docks. Those were the only escape routes.

  “Your other friend got here last week,” the bartender added.

  “Huh?” Cormac was still staring at the planes.

  “Your other friend, the one with long hair.”

  Long hair. “Tall guy, lanky?”

  The bartender nodded. “That’s right. Your friend was asking about him.”

  It had to be Maxime Lefevre—the other person the old man had sent him to kill. Cormac smiled. Two birds with one stone
. His lucky day. “Perfect.”

  Cormac needed to cut off all escape routes and disable the planes.

  Or the pilots.

  He grinned at the bartender. “Could you give me five beers?”

  “What kind?”

  “Whatever they’re drinking.” Cormac nodded at the table where Jean sat.

  Jake had at least several hours on him. It didn’t make any sense to try and climb up there tonight. He’d go at first light, and in the meantime he could tie up loose ends here. It might be Cormac’s lucky day, but it was about to be a bad luck day for his soon-to-be-best-friend Jean.

  Dropping his bag on the counter, Cormac reached into his pocket for his wallet.

  “What are you hunting with that?” the bartender asked as he popped the caps off the beers.

  Cormac had left his bag open. He cursed himself. A rare mistake. The barrel of his sniper rifle stuck out. Pulling it shut, he replied, “There’s some big game out there,” with a smile.

  The bartender arched his eyebrows. Must be an American, his Gallic shrug seemed to say. He arranged the beer on a tray and followed Cormac to the table.

  ▲▼▲

  Twilight faded into night as the moon appeared on the horizon.

  Jake had a headlamp but hadn’t turned it on yet. He wasn’t planning to, either. He slowly made his way up from the lodge, staying off the main trail as much as possible. An ATV would have been faster, but the noise would have given him away. Walking up was difficult work, and he wasn’t in hiking shape. Huffing and puffing, he stopped to lean against the trunk of a birch tree. Sweat soaked him.

  The path followed a ridge up the side of the mountain, and from here he had a view back to the lodge. He noticed another plane had arrived when he was about halfway up the trail to the top. He wondered if anyone else was heading up here.

  He hoped not.

  Then again, he had no idea what was waiting for him at the top. As night fell, he realized how unprepared he was. How isolated he felt. And how afraid he was.

  Fear.

  Like a mouthful of nails he couldn’t spit out.

  When he was arrested on the rape charges, he’d whiled away his time in lockup by ranking the other detainees on his psychopath scale. At least a few of them were full-Teds. Only the finest of hairs separated the unsuccessful psychopaths in jail from the successful ones running Wall Street. Dazzling, super-confident—just a few of the words used to describe the predators of Wall Street, and they were the same ones used to describe psychopaths.

  Fear knotted Jake’s stomach, and it was both unnerving and reassuring. Fear meant he wasn’t a psychopath.

  People saw psychopaths as aberrations, examples of something gone wrong in human programming, but Jake often thought that perhaps we had it wrong. After all, you wouldn’t see a psychopath panic. Maybe psychopaths were the next stage in evolution for the human species. Ruthless and fearless, they were perfectly adapted to the modern world, maybe more evolved.

  And maybe that was why they both fascinated and repelled Jake.

  Down at the lodge, he’d asked a bartender about the location indicated on his map. The bartender told him it was a cabin that the lodge rented out to hunters, that it was rented out for the season. He didn’t have a name. Whoever it was, it had to be who Sean wanted Jake to meet. There was no phone in the cabin up top, no way of communicating with the lodger, and Jake had refused a guide. Said that he’d like to surprise his friend.

  And that was the truth.

  After taking the time to enjoy a burger at the lodge patio bar and call Dean from the lodge’s phone, Jake trudged into the woods. Jean, the pilot, had said he was planning to stay overnight, but that he had to leave the next day around noon. Jake had assured him he’d be back, but in reality, he wasn’t sure of anything.

  As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could see that the trees thinned out up ahead. A structure bordered the tree line. It had to be the Bear Mountain cabin. There weren’t any lights on inside. Time to wait and see. Leaning against a tree, Jake pulled a fleece out of his backpack and put it on, shivering against the chill of the night. He sat and settled against a tree for surveillance.

  Shaking his head, he tried to fight his drooping eyelids.

  He hadn’t slept in two days.

  AUGUST 20th

  Saturday

  17

  Lockhart Street

  Hong Kong

  Catcalls from throngs of partygoers echoed above the pounding music pouring in through the window of Chen’s cramped apartment. Dawn painted the sky pink, but Lockhart Street in Hong Kong’s Wan Chai district was still littered with people.

  Not quite able to shake off its history as a port of call crawling with prostitutes, the Wan Chai area was trying to transform itself with flashy new bars. But no matter how shiny the chrome at a grand opening of a new Lockhart Street nightclub, there was always an undercurrent of sleaze. Prices were cheap, half that of other areas, which drew in heavy drinkers like fat flies to hot dung.

  Wutang and Jin sat on matching black faux-leather couches that took up two walls of Chen’s apartment’s tiny living room, with an open window next to Jin. They worked on laptops balanced on their knees. Chen stood by the window and smoked.

  A pair of thirty-inch LCD monitors packed against aging rack-mounted servers occupied the other wall of the living room. Chen had made his digs in Hong Kong sound glamorous, but this tiny apartment—the paint on the walls peeling, the carpets stained, the appliances rusted—was a cliché wrapped in a cliché, the hacker den above the rave club.

  Jin frowned at the open window. She could barely hear herself think. “What time do they close downstairs?” A headache pounded behind her eyes, each thump of bass from the music like a hammer strike driving a nail into her head. Her entire body hurt from the beating she’d taken, and her face was swollen. She took painkillers, but it wasn’t helping.

  “Usually ten on weekends.” Chen could see what she was thinking. “Sorry, but it’s cheap, and they let me pay cash. This place doesn’t exist, not officially, and that’s what we need right now.”

  Jin flashed Chen a tight smile. “You’re right.” They risked a lot by helping her. She had a hard time believing they were putting themselves in so much jeopardy for Wutang’s crush, but she didn’t have many options.

  Chen flicked the butt of his cigarette out the window and slid it shut. He sat down at his workstation and opened up a search window in a browser. The closed window shook, the bass thumped through the walls.

  Two days ago, when Jin was kidnapped, Chen saw the goons carry her out of Wutang’s apartment when he showed up to meet her at the noodle shop. He followed them and called Wutang on the way. After scoping out the building for a day, they were about to try and sneak in when she suddenly appeared in front of them.

  After they all jumped into Chen’s car, they raced downtown, then abandoned the car and jumped onto a series of commuter buses, hiding themselves in the rush hour crowds. After taking the 113 bus out to Shekou terminal, they took the ferry into Hong Kong’s main port. The path of least surveillance, Chen had joked.

  When they arrived at Chen’s place, the first thing Jin did was go back and try to log into the Assassin Market, but the darknet service had disappeared. Wutang said that autonomous corporations spawned themselves, morphing into new entities and leaving their old shells behind—a tactic to evade authorities.

  To access it again, they’d need a new set of credentials. Even then, cracking the anonymity shield would require the resources of a government-sized organization like the NSA. The autonomous corporation wasn’t about to expose any of its clients.

  But while Jin could no longer log into it, she could research how the Assassin Market operated. The information was freely available on the web. Anyone could place an initial bounty on the head of any person in the world, and others could add to that amount. Bettors placed wagers—of at least 10% of the current pool—on when that person would die. When the target
died, the person with the closest bet won the pool, with the time of death independently verified by media reports online.

  A dead pool.

  The idea had been around for a long time, but the Assassin Market was the first time an autonomous corporation was used to implement it. The CIA were investigating the darknet entity for several killings in the past year, but nobody had been able to shut it down.

  “Oh boy,” Chen exclaimed from his workstation.

  “What?” She had her attention on an Assassin Market article in Forbes Magazine.

  Chen closed the window he had open on his screen. “Nothing.”

  This wasn’t the time to be secretive. “What?” Jin insisted. She looked at him.

  “I saw a new story about Shen Shi’s death. Doesn’t matter.”

  “Show me.” Why did Chen look so awkward? “Open it in our shared workspace.”

  Chen pursed his lips and grimaced. “Okay, but stay calm.” He clicked a link on his screen, sending the article into the workspace they shared between their machines.

  A video opened on Jin’s screen. It was from a security camera in the hallway when Shen Shi fell into the elevator. Jin took a sharp intake of breath, blood draining from her face. The video showed the elevator doors open, Shen Shi turning to Jin as he chatted with her. Then it looked like Jin pushed him. She reached forward as he fell into the elevator shaft, then pulled back. The headline of the news article: Jin Huang charged in brutal death at Shenzhen High-Tech Incubator. Suspect now on the run from authorities…

  “I didn’t push him, it’s just the angle of that video…” Jin began shaking, tears coming to her eyes.

  “Shut that down,” Wutang told Chen, reaching to put an arm around Jin. “I know you didn’t,” he whispered. The video image disappeared from their shared workspace.

  Tears streamed down her face. “I tried to grab him, that’s why I moved forward.”

  “I know,” Wutang repeated, squeezing her. “Come on, we had to expect this.”

 

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