by D. F. Bailey
“Just as well. We’ll need them at some point. The sooner the better.”
But Finch wasn’t convinced. Eve believed that the FBI had probably issued a warrant for her arrest by now. Her lawyer had successfully delayed the federal subpoena for the GIGcoin software and keys over the weekend but on Monday, the Feds won their court order and demanded that Eve turn over the property immediately. Fran Bransome explained to them that she’d tried and failed to contact Eve and had no idea where she might be. Indeed, Eve had removed the SIM card from her phone and turned it off. On her laptop, she read the incoming email from her lawyer, but she refused to reply to anything. Finch had also disabled his phone. While he could read the incoming messages from Wally, Fiona and Ornette Small, he set them aside, content to know that his allies were working on his behalf back home.
But moments before their departure from Philadelphia, a new message appeared from Fiona.
Will, not sure if you’re rec’ing email, but hope you get this. I just got a call from the hospital. Toby Squire is out of his coma. Apparently he’s coherent, but no one will say more. Cops will interview him ASAP. I put in an interview request, but told not to hold my breath. Will send more info when I get it. Take care. F.
“Another surprise,” Finch said and passed his laptop to Eve so she could read the news herself.
A gaunt look fell over her face as she handed the computer back to him. “Incredible. Somehow I’d convinced myself I’d never have to deal with him again.”
“Don’t worry,” he said as they entered the departure line-up. “You never will. Toby Squire will be locked up with the criminally insane for a very long time.”
“You think so?” A shudder rippled through her shoulders.
“Count on it. Believe me: Squire is toast.”
※
During the flight they tried to plan their next moves. Since only Eve possessed the functional software and keys, they knew they were vulnerable. Perhaps now more than ever. Both Malinin and Witowsky had killed to further their ambitions. Nothing suggested that Eve and Finch would be spared. As a result every possible course of action they considered seemed doomed.
“Who do you think is worse, Malinin or Witowsky?” Finch put this out as a rhetorical joke, something to lighten their mood as they soared over the Rocky Mountains on the cloudless, crystal-clear flight path.
“Depends.” She shrugged. “One’s a cobra, the other a weasel.”
“True enough.” He looked away and then turned back to her. “We do have another choice, you know.”
“What?”
“Something else the senator said. With the software and both keys there’s nothing to stop us from launching GIGcoin on our own.”
“No?” A doubtful expression crossed her face. “You think that will ward off Witowsky? And Malinin?”
“No.” He shrugged. “I was just checking.”
“Checking what?”
“To see if you’d cross over.”
She laughed, a gasp of surprise. “Really?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“Of course not.”
“Good.” She took his hand and set it in her lap. Then she pulled a blanket up to her shoulders and closed her eyes. Minutes later she fell into an uneasy sleep.
Will let his eyes settle on the mountains below and drifted in the weightless bubble of his imagination. He tried to envision a way forward, as if he could find a passageway that no one else could see, a hidden escape hatch that would lead him and Eve to safety. As they approached the coast he realized their current strategy was strictly defensive: wait for Witowsky and Malinin to strike them separately and fend them off one at a time until Lavigne and Sterne and a swat team of FBI black shirts rode to the rescue. A fool’s fantasy.
Then a new idea struck him. He nudged Eve. She turned her head and opened her eyes.
“Why should we wait for them?”
“Malinin and Witowsky? What’s the alternative?”
“We go after them.”
“Cowboy Willie.” She shook her head with amusement. “That Texan who smacked you toughened your cojones, huh?”
He sneered and glanced away.
“Sorry.” Her voice softened. “That was uncalled for.”
“Forget it.”
She set a hand on his arm and drew his attention away from the window. “So. What do you propose?”
“We do it right after we land.” He narrowed his eyes as he spoke. “You call Witowsky.”
“What? The guy’s gone AWOL and the IAD want to put him in San Quentin. You think he’s going to pick up the phone and chat?”
“No. He and Malinin are doing exactly what we did for the past five days: monitoring whatever comes their way. You leave him a voice message. Tell him we’ll meet him in front of the TIX booth in Union Square.”
“Witowsky first?”
“Witowsky first. Then I’ll call Malinin.”
“You’ve got his number?”
“He gave it to me in Honolulu.”
She took a moment to consider this. “Then what?”
“Who knows? But when you toss a cobra in a cage with a weasel, something crazy is bound to happen.”
※ — SEVENTEEN — ※
UNION SQUARE BUSTLED with throngs of tourists. A troupe of French acrobats performed a series of flips and circus tricks on the north-side stage. An all-girl cheerleading squad dressed in cotton pull-overs and pleated skirts loitered in front of the Apple Store while their chaperones conducted a headcount. A crammed cable car clanged its bells as it chugged up the hill along Powell Street. A queue of twenty or thirty people stood in front of the TIX Booth to purchase half-price deals for musicals and plays. In other words, San Francisco was in full swing.
In the midst of the tumult Will and Eve settled next to the planter beside the ticket office. As he scanned the crowds, Finch couldn’t detect any sign of Lavigne or Sterne or any other FBI operatives. Maybe they hadn’t tracked his movements after all. And maybe they hadn’t traced Eve’s voice message to Witowsky.
“Looks like he’s a no-show,” Eve said as if she might be doubting their earlier decision to confront him.
“Give him time.”
A moment later a latino boy toting a skateboard by its wheels stopped in front of Eve.
“Are you waiting for Mr. W?”
“Mr. W?” She glanced at Finch. “Yeah. I guess I am.”
“He said to follow me.” His voice was soft, pre-adolescent.
The boy led them across Powell along Post Street down to the First Congressional Church, a classic gothic structure wedged onto a corner in the surrounding commercial district.
“Up here.” His skateboard clattered on the steps as he brought them through the arched entrance into the solitude of the nave, down a side aisle to a set of stairs that led to matched wooden doors.
“Through here.” He pointed at the doors.
“Here?” Will scanned the room. He sensed they were being misdirected. “These doors lead back onto the street.”
“Go through the door.” He brushed a strand of hair from his forehead and pulled back a step. When Finch and Eve hesitated, he added, “He’s in the white Taurus.”
“What’s your name?”
“Jorge.”
Eve nodded as if she were sorting out a puzzle. “How much did Mr. W pay you, Jorge?”
He held up a twenty dollar bill and turned away.
“Wait.” Eve called him back and waved another twenty under his chin. “Jorge, this is yours if you sneak out the front door and write Mr. W’s license number on this slip of paper.”
In her free hand she held a scrap of paper and a pen. The boy made a grab for the money but she quickly drew her wrist away.
“Uh-uh. License number first.”
He considered the offer a moment, then took the paper and pen and sauntered toward the front door.
“And don’t let Mr. W see you,” she called after him.
Moments later Jorge returned with the paper and pen in hand. She examined the note, nodded her head and passed him the twenty. “Now listen, Jorge. You buy some decent food with that. And give it to your mother. All right?”
He smirked and narrowed his eyes. “Don’t got a mother.” His voice cracked on the word mother. He folded the cash into his front pocket, turned and ran back through the nave. A moment later they heard the thud of the oak door as it slammed shut.
“Poor kid.” Finch shrugged and turned his attention to the slip of paper. “I wonder if this’s really Witowsky’s number.”
“Me too.” She took out her cell, tapped the number Agent Sterne had entered on her phone, and waited while his message service cut in. “Agent Sterne, this is Eve Noon. This is an emergency 10-33. Will Finch and I are in the First Congressional Church on the corner of Post and Mason. We’re about to join Damian Witowsky in a white Ford Taurus, license number 7MIR731. We’ll stall as long as possible, but I urge you to shut this down ASAP.” She clicked off her phone and narrowed her eyes. All she could see was trouble ahead.
Finch put his hand on the door knob. “Ready?”
“I guess.”
They stepped out the door. At the curb sat the Taurus, the right rear window rolled down an inch or two.
“Eve does the driving,” Witowsky muttered from the back seat. “Finch, you’re beside her. Right in front of me.”
He raised the barrel of his service pistol through the lip of the window.
“Get in or I’ll kill you where you stand.”
※
As Eve walked toward the Taurus she checked the license plate. Well done, she whispered to herself, the kid got it right. She paused at the door and waited for Finch to slip into the passenger seat.
The instant she settled into the car a foul smell caught her off guard. A mix of stale tobacco and cheap whiskey swept through her nostrils. She brushed her fingers over her nose and peered over the seat at the cop.
Witowsky had shaved his head and grown a rough-cut, half-inch beard that merged with his salt-and-pepper mustache. He wore a tattered leather flight jacket and a scuffed-up pair of jeans torn at the knees. An ugly man to begin with, Eve realized that he’d managed to leverage his bad looks into something almost reptilian.
“Seat belts on,” he barked.
Eve and Finch pulled the restraints over their shoulders and clicked them into place.
“So, you crossed over, Witowsky.” Eve turned her head to the rear seat.
“No more bullshit, Eve. Everyone had enough of that from you for five God-damned years. Now pass me that .38 Cobra you keep next to the hankies in your purse.”
“What?”
Witowsky back-handed the butt of his gun against Finch’s head. He yelped in pain and tried to wrench forward out of Witowsky’s reach, but the cop was too fast for him. He looped a steel cord around Will’s throat and tugged him backward. Finch gasped in panic as he tried to wriggle his fingers under the wire. Witowsky crossed the ends of the garrote behind Finch’s neck, then snugged the cord securely behind the head rest and locked both ends of the garrote to a stay that Eve couldn’t see. Then he wedged an inch-thick wood dowel into the cable loop and gave it a turn. With his victim pinned in place he tested the tension, then let out enough slack so that Finch could breathe. Finch sat bolt-upright, wheezing for air, his neck clamped against the head rest. His face began to throb as the blood pressure in his head spiked.
“What the fuck!” Eve lashed at Witowsky’s face with a backhand that didn’t connect.
“Do not screw around with me, Eve. Otherwise I tighten the line one turn at a time.” His voice had an unbalanced, angry tone. He pointed his pistol at her forehead. “Now hand me that .38.”
She handed him her pistol and set her hands on the steering wheel.
He pushed her gun into his jacket pocket. “And now your cellphones.”
She drew her cellphone from her purse and handed it over the seat.
“Don’t forget Clark Kent.”
She paused to figure out what Witowsky meant, then tugged Will’s phone from his jacket and passed it to Witowsky.
“Start the car.”
Eve had to try the ignition three times before the engine caught. “All right Witowsky. Your move. Where’re we going?”
“To wherever you stashed Toeplitz’s bitcoin wallet.” He smashed the glass plate of each phone with the butt of his pistol, yanked out the SIM cards, opened his window and threw the shattered phones and cards onto the asphalt.
She shrugged and looked at Finch. His face had inflated with blood as if his head was about to explode. He gasped horribly as his fingers struggled to relieve the tension on the wire. “Take a turn off the garrote, Witowsky. My condo’s in Little Russia. In this traffic, it’ll take half an hour.”
“Drive.”
“Up yours! I’m not driving anywhere!” She cut the ignition. “I hit one pot hole with Will strung up like that and it’ll kill him. Now back that thing off or you can shoot us both right now!”
Witowsky studied her face through the rearview mirror. He held the gun in one hand, the wooden dowel with his other. He bit into his lower lip.
Eve could sense his indecision. “Look, kill us now and you get nothing. But take that wire down a notch and you’ll have the bitcoin wallet before noon.”
She could hear Finch breathing in short, tight puffs trying to restrain the panic flooding through his body. She gasped as she considered their situation. Marat had been shot. Sochi died from ricin poison. And now came the garrote. Three ways to die. Of the three, this had to be the worst.
She turned her attention to Witowsky. “Think about it, Witowsky. How much longer can you dodge the Feds? Sure, you’re clever, but not that good. Once you have Toeplitz’s flash drive you can exchange the bitcoin for cash in ten minutes. You can be in Mexico for dinner. A millionaire.”
“Shut up Eve.” He set his gun on the bench seat and loosened the garrote by a half rotation.
Finch gasped in relief and gulped down a lungful of air. His hands swept over his throat and he slipped his fingers under the wire on each side of his larynx. After a moment, the color in his face blanched slightly and he wheezed in wet sobs until his breathing stabilized.
“Now drive.”
Eve started the Taurus again and brought the car onto Geary. The traffic bottlenecked through a construction zone between Leavenworth and Hyde Streets, a delay that she welcomed in hope that Sterne and Lavigne could catch their trail. Maybe, but she knew she couldn’t count on them. Better to engage Witowsky, try to talk him out of his lunacy. After all, she’d managed to get him to loosen the garrote.
“I thought this was all about GIGcoin,” she said over her shoulder. “But now you just want Toeplitz’s bitcoin wallet?”
“Plan B, Eve.” He snorted with disgust. “After you two shit in my drinking water.”
“What?” She studied him in the mirror, wondered if he’d truly lost his mind. “I don’t get that.”
“No. You wouldn’t.” He leaned forward to inspect the garrote. Satisfied, he shifted the pistol to his right hand and continued. “After Clark Kent here shot the senator and exposed Malinin as a co-conspirator, GIGcoin became a lame duck. Instant poison. GIGcoin only had value when it was in mint condition. But with the media storm he caused” — he thumped the back of Finch’s seat — “GIGcoin is dead.”
She glanced at Finch. The color in his bruised face seemed to ebb between various hues of red. His breathing had stabilized but he still held his fingers under the wire at the front of his throat. When he saw her looking at him, he blinked with both eyes. Go on.
“So your first idea was what? To secure the GIGcoin software and sell it back to the cartel? Or maybe just one of the keys. That’s all it would take, right?”
Witowsky snorted as if he couldn’t believe it himself. “Why not? They had the play all lined up. High-profile politicians, oligarchs, the international bank, the technical
know-how, the name, the patent. Everything but the software itself. And the keys, of course.”
“So you were going to run a money swap. Trade one of the keys for cash.”
He mulled this over as if he was considering how much to reveal. “All right. Yeah, that was the play. Came to me when I started an investigation of Toeplitz’s estate. You know, dug into the digital side. I got one of our tech geeks to case all of Toeplitz’s files. Incredible what that guy did.”
“Toeplitz?” Eve guided the car into the right lane and coasted behind a bus. She had to keep him talking. The longer, the better. “Yeah. Everyone says he was some kind of Einstein.”
“He built GIGcoin based on the bitcoin system with a few sexy layers added for the banker set.” He raked his fingernails over the scrap of his beard and studied the stalled traffic. “Then I recalled the bitcoin ripoff in February 2014.”
“I know. It was huge.” She glanced at Finch, who’d settled into a trance-like daze, his fingers still curled under the front of the wire.
“Huge? Try four-hundred and fifty million dollars worth of huge. It’s only worth a third of that now. But still….” He exhaled with a snort of amazement. “Think about it. Who is the one person with the savvy to pull that off and get away without leaving a trace?”
“You think Toeplitz?”
“Tell me something, Eve. Have you even opened his bitcoin wallet?”
She tried to think where this could go. Did Witowsky know the flash drive was password protected? That Sochi had spent days cracking the code? More important, that the password was written on a sticky note she’d stashed in Will’s apartment back in Russian Hill. She realized that he had no more chance of opening the bitcoin wallet on his own than surviving a month in San Quentin.
“You know, I haven’t,” she confessed. “It’s true. No joke.”
Another snort of surprise. “Well then, you’re even dumber than your tits, Eve. And God knows, they fooled a lot of guys over the years.”
Eve set her jaw and tightened her grip on the wheel as a string of tourist busses heading west of Divisadero blocked their lane. Once again Witowsky had managed to slither under her skin. The sooner she brought this to an end, the better. Still, she knew she had to continue drawing him out of this madness.
