God is a Gamer

by Ravi Subramanian

  ‘You are back for good?’

  ‘Hmm . . . ’ Varun nodded. ‘For good. For ever.’ And he hugged Gloria even tighter. She closed her eyes as his lips met hers. They kissed. Their first kiss in a long, long time. Varun’s first honest kiss from the time he landed in Goa.

  His thoughts went back to the days when he was in Stanford, pursuing a postgraduate degree in technology. Gloria was an undergrad. He had met her at a friend’s party. And fallen for the innocence. The grace. She loved his aggression, his will to succeed, his sense of humour. They were made for each other. They had started seeing each after the party. Their life revolved around each other. They met every day, went on long drives, dinner dates, pub nights, movies . . . Gloria loved that one moment when they were watching The Italian Job at the drive-in theatre. In the movie John Bridger tells Charlie, ‘Find someone you want to spend the rest of your life with and hold on to her forever.’ At that very instant, Gloria felt Varun’s hand snake into hers and hold hers tightly. She cried that day.

  She also cried another day, when she came to Varun and told her heartrending story. A story of abuse. Of sexual assault by her own father. Gillian Tan, the beast. It had happened when Nikki was travelling. The day after Mike Hendricks was announced as the new chief of staff to the President of America, a furious Gillian Tan had returned home, drunk. Gillian was a contender for the post, but had lost out in the race. In Gloria he saw Mike Hendricks and was reminded of his personal and professional failures and poured out all his frustration and anger on her. He repeatedly raped her that night.

  Varun was furious. He wanted to go to the cops. But Gloria talked him out of it. Gillian was too powerful. He was the senator who was the President’s closest friend. She held Varun back from taking any rash steps. He then worked out a plan. A man who could violate his own stepdaughter was sure to have more skeletons in his cupboard. He needed to know what those skeletons were.

  Reprisal on his mind, he started following Gillian. Even all the way to Rio. That’s where he learnt about Tanya. When he scraped the surface, it was not at all difficult to figure out that Tanya was Malvika’s daughter. And Malvika was his estranged father’s ex-colleague. Once back from Rio, he contacted the Hooker, who was then let loose on Gillian. His plan paid dividends. The Hooker was successful in seducing Gillian. They met a few times at a downtown hotel in California. That’s when Gillian invited her to the Stanford dorm. It was not difficult to smuggle her in. It was in the dorm that Gillian’s super-high libido came to the fore. The dorm played host to Gillian’s rendezvous with the Hooker along with the one whose dorm it was—Tanya Sehgal. During the assignation, the Hooker dropped a bug in the room, allowing Varun to listen in to all conversations taking place in the room then on.

  Once the room was bugged, it was just a matter of time before Varun discovered that Gillian was the creator of bitcoins, and went by the name of Satoshi Nakamoto in the virtual world. He also discovered that all was not well between Tanya and Gillian. They fought frequently and almost all the quarrels were on account of Gillian not sharing the gains from the bitcoin project with any of the project team. There was lot at stake, and Gillian kept promising but never delivered. From their conversation it was clear that Gillian had told Tanya about Gloria being his stepdaughter. Tanya repeatedly mentioned this to Gillian to poison his mind against Gloria and Nikki. She encouraged Gillian to sexually exploit Gloria when he lost the battle for the position of the President’s chief of staff. Varun figured this out for Gillian brought it up a few times and even blamed her for his past action, when they clashed on the equitable distribution of wealth. Tanya probably wanted Nikki and Gloria to leave him. She believed that a baggage-free Gillian would be more committed to her. Irrespective of the rationale, in the eyes of Varun she was equally accountable for Gloria’s plight, if not more.

  Nikki played the waiting game. Once Varun had gathered all the evidence, a furious Nikki did confront Gillian, but she was more practical about it. She forced him to transfer his entire bitcoin wealth to her. She also threatened Gillian into agreeing to confess to his involvement in the bitcoin saga to the President. She didn’t want to rake up the issue of Gillian and his stepdaughter publically, for she felt it would affect Gloria.

  Once the bitcoins were transferred to her, Nikki approached Mike Hendricks. Though her romantic liaison with Mike was long over, he was Gloria’s father had every right to know what had happened to his daughter. Mike decided to fix Gillian forever. He reached out to Islamic fundamentalists for help. Umar Farouk came forward but there was a cost attached to it. He had this grand plan of stealing money from ATMs using cloned cards and demanded support for that and free passage as compensation.

  That’s when Varun volunteered to help. His father, albeit estranged, ran a BPO which took care of cards processing for NYIB. His mother had convinced him that Aditya was the devil incarnate. This was a god-sent opportunity to get even with him. Mike looked the other way as Varun worked with Umar and chalked out a plan, which included stealing data from NYIB customers in India and hacking into their systems to increase their credit limits.

  Once the plan was set, Umar was ready to roll. The attack on Gillian had to be a precision attack and needed serious logistic support. Umar contracted the Red Army Faction from Germany, a local militant organization known to use the Misznay-Schardin effect, to eliminate Gillian and they did so with precision. The payment made to the RAF was to be recovered from the ATM heist. This was the agreed modus operandi to make sure no fingers pointed back at Mike, Nikki, or Varun. Gillian was taken out on the very day he was to meet the President.

  Everything went as per plan. Varun came to India. Befriended Leon D’Souza, the waiter who had access to drugs. Orchestrated a meeting between Leon and Tanya, met Tanya himself and then disappeared. Went to prison willingly, for a crime he did not commit. The Nigeria-linked riots provided ample cover. He was prepared to give himself up in a drug fight, just to make sure he was imprisoned. He knew that if he called Aditya at an appropriate time, he would have Varun released and welcome him back into his life.

  At an official party at Malvika’s residence, organized to welcome Matt Metzger to India, Leon was the official caterer. He had also convinced Tanya to allow him to set up a festive kiosk on Malvika’s terrace to sell Goan handicrafts. When the visitors (all senior management officials of NYIB) paid for the purchase, he skimmed the card information off the magnetic strip into the card skimmer he was carrying. It was a big risk; had he got caught, he would’ve had hell to pay. But Varun had paid him handsomely. Of the cards skimmed, Varun selected five and passed on the details to Umar to carry out the heist.

  On Tanya’s birthday, when she was drunk and fast asleep, in the guise of gifting her a life-size teddy bear, Varun managed to get her fingerprints on the card skimmer, which he dumped in her cupboard and was later recovered by the CBI. Tanya’s fingerprints on the skimmer were enough to implicate her in the ATM scam.

  In the meantime, Nikki decided to tackle Gillian’s accomplices in the bitcoins project. She knew that one of them, the Japanese, was dead. Tanya was likely to be incapacitated, once Varun’s plan in India was implemented. The only person left was Josh. She recommended to Umar that he use Josh to carry out the ATM heist. Evidence of Josh being involved in the heist would give her leverage over him if it ever came down to a conflict over Gillian’s bitcoins. Umar met Josh and sealed the deal for half a million dollars. On the day of the heist, Nikki went to the café to gather photographic evidence of Josh’s involvement in the heist. Even Mike Hendricks had recommended this. The heist went as per plan. Money was withdrawn from the ATMs as scheduled.

  The ATM heist ran into rough weather when Stan ran away with the money that Josh had sent to the Dominican Republic. Confronted with Umar Farouk’s ire, Josh panicked. He decided to do something which he had considered many times in the past but never followed through with. He decided to steal the private key of Gillian’s bitcoin wallet.

  Unfor
tunately, Nikki woke up and confronted him. During the confrontation, he saw the ring on Nikki’s finger and recognized it as the ring Gillian had engraved with his bitcoin key. In the attempt to run away with the ring, he was shot at and killed by Adrian and Tony.

  In India, at the first opportunity, Varun replaced Malvika’s bottle of wasabi nuts with the hemlock-laced ones on the day of Malvika’s party. At the party, once Malvika had picked up a few nuts, he took the plate away to make sure that no one else ate from it. When the same wasabi nuts were found in Tanya’s house, the police made the connection as he had intended and implicated Tanya. When Kabir confronted her with the wasabi nuts, though she was genuinely surprised, she couldn’t prove her innocence.

  Varun’s killer move was to bring in a long-time associate and ex-Microsoft programmer, Laksh. This smart programmer from suburban Bangalore knew how to get attention from women. He met Tanya at a party at the local club and approached her. Tanya found him interesting and they got talking. That night she brought him back to her house and after a steamy session in bed he told her that he had just come back from the US and was looking for a job. Tanya promised to help him out by referring him to Indiscape. When Laksh told Varun that he had slept with Tanya, it hurt his pride a bit, but he moved on quickly. He was on a mission.

  The moment Tanya sent the CV to Varun, his objective was accomplished. Everything that Laksh did could be attributed in an indefensible manner to Tanya. Not that she was accountable for his actions simply because she had referred him, but it was enough to get people suspicious. Varun took extra care to make sure that people in office believed that he didn’t know Laksh.

  Finally, Varun hammered the last nail in the coffin by writing to Kabir and telling him the version of the story he wanted people to know. A version that suited the government and the CBI, and incriminated Tanya. At that time the bank CEO–finance minister saga was at a crescendo.

  Malvika, who towards the end of her life, was quite depressed and worked up about the direction her life was taking, became an unsuspecting pawn in this deadly game.

  By the time Tanya was taken away by the CBI—accused of the brutal murder of Malvika—the FBI was fully convinced that Tanya had not only masterminded the assassination of Gillian Tan and his project associates but was also the brain behind Cotton Trail and Satoshi Nakamoto’s closest and only surviving associate in the bitcoins project. It was true that she was a part of Gillian’s team. She was a sex maniac with a gigantic libido. She was Altoids. But that’s all she was. She hadn’t killed anyone. The Japanese student, who was a member of the project team was eliminated by Gillian because he had become a threat. He had started blackmailing him, threatening to expose his Satoshi Nakamoto identity to the world. Tanya is now paying the price, for sins she didn’t commit. But life, as they say, is a big leveller. The crimes she committed were far more serious and far more heinous in nature. And given the FBI’s interest in camouflaging those crimes, she would never have ended up in the dock for those.

  For someone of Tanya’s pedigree in the virtual world, she was very casual. Despite knowing that in the virtual world, everyone is naked, she did not even try to cover herself, for she thought she was alone. Unaware of the fact that the FBI and Varun were always watching her, for different reasons. Else the night Varun took her to the office, when he went back to check if the Townsville update had been uploaded or not, she wouldn’t have logged in using Aditya’s wi-fi network. Not only did she log on to the Internet, she also posted a message as Altoids, and asked the bitcoin community to help identify the missing alphanumerics in Malvika’s private key. That night, Aditya had given her the wi-fi password as he was leaving for home. Even on the night of her birthday, when Varun left her in Aditya’s room, after a passionate lovemaking session, she committed the cardinal mistake of logging in from there and posting another message as Altoids, agreeing to engage in order to get the missing alphanumerics.

  *

  Tanya has been denied bail by the high court and is housed in the Arthur Road jail in Mumbai, home to hardened criminals. When she comes out of jail, if she ever does, her life will be worse than death.

  Nikki is happy that Gloria has found a loving partner in Varun. Someone who is willing to put his life and reputation on the line for her daughter. She is even happier to have all of Gillian’s bitcoins, and more importantly, the entire blueprint of Cotton Trail.

  Cotton Trail Ver 2.0 is her latest passion. But this time around it is a Cotton Trail with a difference. A cleaner, genuine, well-meaning Cotton Trail Ver 2.0, trading in household goods, kitchen equipment, books and everything one can think of; except drugs, narcotics, banned pharmaceuticals and pornography of any kind. A site meant for clean libertarians who valued their online privacy and under no circumstances wanted that to be compromised. Though she never got back with Mike Hendricks, both of them knew that they were always there for each other.

  A few months after Varun returned to the US, he and Gloria went away to New Zealand where they now run a small organic farm and live happily, taking care of each other.

  The dry run paid off for Umar Farouk. In February 2014, he carried out the biggest ATM heist in the history of the world. In a coordinated operation lasting over twelve hours, using fifteen debit cards of a mid-eastern bank, a crew of cashers carried out 40,000 transactions across ATMs in two dozen countries and made away with 45 million dollars—the largest ATM heist ever. The Gillian Tan murder paid for itself ten times over.

  The value of each bitcoin has soared to 1000 dollars, making Varun one of the world’s youngest billionaires. He won’t be seeing Aditya ever again.

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  First published by Penguin Books India 2014

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  Copyright © Ravi Subramanian 2014

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously; they are not accurate portrayals of real persons, places or events. Any resemblance to any actual person, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN 978-0-143-42139-9

  This digital edition published in 2014

  eISBN 978-9-351-18808-7

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