by Ty Patterson
‘Is there anything else in his records?’
‘Nope —’ And then she leaned forward when an idea struck, making the game disappear with a series of commands and getting Werner to pull two files and compare rows.
‘What?’ Beth asked, not understanding.
‘Elementary mistake.’ Meghan tapped her keyboard, waiting for the supercomputer to finish. ‘We should have compared the … yes!’ she fist-pumped triumphantly when a number flashed on the screen.
‘Care to explain?’
‘The bank accounts that Werner got for Hidalgo and Kloops.’
‘You compared them,’ Beth caught on, her voice rising. ‘And there’s one account in common?’
‘Yeah, the Bermuda account that Hidalgo received six million from.’
‘Wasn’t there a Russian bank involved, too?’
‘Yes. That account paid three million, but that account does not figure in Kloops’ records.’
‘Nine million dollars?’ Beth whistled. ‘That must have bought a lot of guns.’
‘Don’t forget there must have been some cash payment, too, but look at this.’ Meghan brought up another transaction. ‘Kloops paid three million to that Bermuda bank. Look at the time stamps.’
Hidalgo’s payments matched what he had told them. They were five years old. The millionaire had paid into that bank a week before he had attacked Angie.
‘How much did he pay?’
‘Two million.’
‘Two million for her life,’ Beth said softly. ‘That’s …’ she trailed off.
‘That’s high,’ Meghan agreed. ‘Assuming that’s what the payment was for. She wasn’t a high-value target. It’s high-ranking politicians and business people who command such a price. For the man on the street, a hitter can be hired for a few Ks.’
‘We’re sure there’s no link to Konstantin’s business?’
Meghan opened another screen and pointed to rows of files. ‘All of his personal emails and calls. Werner’s hacked into his system, too. We’ve got records of his cell as well. No one called to blackmail him. No threats received.’
‘Who owns that account?’
‘Some shell company. Company called Phoenix Trading.’
‘No records of any directors or officers?’
‘An accountancy firm in Bermuda. They have a post-office box address.’
‘Which means they probably don’t exist,’ Beth swore, kicked at a trash can and sent it rolling. ‘Nikolai must be communicating with the bank directly for any business.’
‘Any link between Kloops and all the hitters? The Times Square dudes, the ones in the parking lot …’
Meghan did the thing with the commands again. ‘Nothing obvious. Werner’s running in the background and will go through the money trail … but here’s my theory.’
She went to a flip board and dragged it over to their desks.
She drew the timeline of the attacks, listed the locations and the number of attackers. Wrote down the identities of the assailants they knew. That was a small list. Chavez, the Russian criminals and Kloops.
Inserted two boxes: one for the payment Hidalgo received from the Bermuda account, and the other for Kloops’ money transfer. Wrote the sums transferred and their dates.
‘And your theory is …?’ her sister drawled.
‘Let’s assume the first hit was by Kloops. Outside that Fifth Avenue store.’
‘No money trail,’ Beth reminded her.
‘That we know of. Werner’s still checking. Stay with me on this.’
‘Kloops was no shooter, either.’ Beth didn’t budge.
‘He wasn’t an expert shooter, or at least there’s no record of it,’ Meghan corrected her. ‘However, he was a gun owner and a member of a gun club.’
‘Okay, I’ll go along with you for now. He took a shot at her. Missed.’
‘Then he organized grabs. Outside that nightclub, at the premiere. That one, Chavez had her in the back of his car. He could have killed her if he wanted to.’
‘What about the heavies in Times Square and her building?’
‘We don’t know what their intentions were. It’s not as if we were bystanders,’ Meghan replied acidly.
‘Why does he go to an assassin in Queens? And why didn’t he attack by himself?’
‘Because by then Angie was receiving a lot of publicity. We had stopped two attacks. It would have been more difficult. I think he wanted to end whatever mission he was on.’
‘By killing her.’
‘Yeah.’
Beth bought time for herself by going to her desk and picking up her cup of coffee.
‘It has holes. Your theory,’ she said slowly.
‘It does, Ms Obvious. It’s not as if Kloops left a note for us.’
‘The biggest hole,’ Beth continued undeterred, ‘is the other dude who was with Kloops. He could be the person who was gunning for Angie.’
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Vasily hacked into the election systems of several American states. He didn’t choose them at random. Nikolai gave him the targets. A special election in a Midwest state for which the hacker penetrated the system and altered votes. A similar election in a northern state, where Vasily manipulated the count.
‘How are we benefitting?’ the hacker asked when he had finished the tasks.
‘You are smart,’ Nikolai leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms behind his head. ‘Figure it out.’
Vasily had a glass-walled cabin within the gunrunner’s enormous office. Nikolai could watch him at work without leaving his seat. The hacker didn’t complain. He had never had an office before. He wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
‘You have stopped the arms business,’ the hacker thought aloud. Over time, the two men had become close. They weren’t friends; however, Nikolai had started sharing details of his business with the younger man.
‘You have Russian clients. Politicians, businessmen.’ Vasily snapped his fingers suddenly, his eyes lighting up, ‘They pay you for my work. They want particular candidates elected in the U.S.’
Nikolai smiled thinly and didn’t confirm nor deny. He presented another list to the hacker, who studied it, a frown on his face.
‘These are …’
‘Councils in Britain. They have elections coming up. Those I have highlighted are the ones I want you to go after.’
Vasily went.
The arms dealer observed him as the hacker worked. He watched him as he hacked and as he relaxed.
Play time for Vasily was games. Nikolai learned about various role-play games from the younger man. One particular game caught his interest, and he questioned the hacker at length.
‘You want to play?’ the tousle-haired man asked eagerly.
‘Nyet. It has no interest for me.’
But it had, though not in the way the hacker thought.
It took a few more months for Nikolai to refine his idea. He spoke to a few people, very discreetly, about a possible interest in what he was planning.
He was astounded by their reaction. They wanted to know when he was starting his ‘venture.’
He made a business plan; wrote down the risks and the benefits. There was no significant investment he needed to make. He had Vasily already. He wrote down some names and put some numbers next to them. He knew those figures were realistic. He knew that world; he had employed killers. That was the kind of money one spent on taking out particular targets.
Risks? Obviously, there were many. What he was planning wasn’t a legal business. However, in this ‘venture’ there was no need for warehouses, and no middlemen like Hidalgo needed to be involved.
There would be intermediaries, he corrected himself. People who provided information, like private investigators, transport providers, arms providers.
He had existing networks for those kinds of people. The more he thought about it, the more he liked his idea. The risks were lower simply because there would be no connection between
what happened in the real world and the online world.
Besides, he had his ultimate protection: the man in the Kremlin.
The next step was to talk to Vasily. By then, the hacker knew a lot about his business. He had moved on from hacking into elections to manipulating social media advertising. Vasily was a criminal. But then, he always had been, and what Nikolai was going to propose wouldn’t shock him, the arms dealer reasoned.
Nevertheless, he prepared for his meeting by carrying his Beretta in his pocket.
The hacker’s eyes turned wide when he heard Nikolai’s idea. His mouth dropped open, and for a moment the gunrunner wondered if he should kill Vasily.
‘A real-life version of —’
‘Yes.’
‘Wow,’ the hacker was lost for words. He looked at his screen, which had a game on it. Turned back to his sponsor. ‘How will it work?’
‘Can you design it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Not just the —’
‘Yes, I know,’ Vasily said impatiently, ‘the communication, the payment, the characters. It’s not the first time I have developed games. I am asking about the outside —’
‘Leave that to me.’ It was Nikolai’s turn to interrupt.
‘Go,’ he told the hacker.
And Vasily went.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Andropov provided further breaks for Beth and Meghan.
‘Your man,’ he told them in a video call, ‘is Ivan Biryukov,’ referring to the second man with Kloops. ‘He was a shooter for a few low-level gangs in Moscow. He dropped off the radar a year back. Looks like he came to your country.’
‘Not legally,’ Beth told him. ‘There’s no record of his arrival. Not with that name.’
‘He was a criminal,’ Andropov shrugged. ‘He knew how to live off the grid.’
‘He wouldn’t be the one after Angie?’ Meghan asked him.
‘I doubt it,’ the Russian replied. Someone knocked on his door and entered. He waved the flunky away. ‘He had a few kills to his name. A bar owner who was refusing to make payments to the Mafia. A rival gang leader. He didn’t have the brains or the resources to plan something like that.’
There goes your theory, Meghan smirked at Beth.
‘I have something else,’ said Andropov, drawing their attention. ‘Those six men who you killed. I think I know who recruited them.’
‘Nikolai?’ the sisters asked in one voice.
‘No,’ the Russian shook his head. ‘Nikolai, if that’s the name he uses, has not come up anywhere.’ He paused to allow them to work that out.
Andropov’s agency had dossiers for every major criminal in Russia. Its database was as vast as the FSB’s. Rumors were that the high-profile agency came to the secretive outfit if it needed help.
‘He has connections,’ Meghan said.
Andropov gave her a thumbs-up. ‘Not ordinary connections.’
‘All the way to the top.’
‘Yes, that’s the only way to have zero footprint.’
‘So, this dude —’
‘He is Max Sidorov,’ he read from a file. ‘I am meeting him tonight.’
‘He agreed?’ Beth asked in surprise.
Andropov’s flinty smile was her answer.
Grigor Andropov left his office at five pm and was immediately surrounded by his security detail. The spymaster, which was what his bosses called him even though he didn’t run any spies, stood outside the building for a moment, apparently breathing the air while discreetly checking out the street. Second nature to him.
His agency was housed in an unattractive building a block behind Lubyanka Square. The FSB had its offices in that square, and it attracted all the tourists. Not many visitors ventured to Andropov’s block, a fact he was very happy about. He wasn’t in the eyeball business.
His Mercedes E Class came around, and a guard sprang forward to open the door. Andropov seated himself in the back, while one of his bodyguards seated himself in the front.
‘Vin Zavod,’ he directed his driver, ‘near Kursky railway station.’
The driver nodded. He knew the neighborhood, which once had factories, but now had art galleries and theaters. Sidorov had been summoned to meet in the agency’s office near the train tracks.
Even as the German-make car slid through the streets of Moscow, two agency men were hauling in the recruiter and taking him to the office.
It should be an interesting meeting, Andropov thought.
It would have been, if it had happened.
There was no one at the office when the Russian arrived. He waited. It wasn’t uncommon for people to be late in Moscow. He could have called his men but he didn’t. He minimized electronic communication, a habit acquired from his days as a field operative.
He broke custom when his men were half an hour late. They didn’t respond. Forty-five minutes later, he flagged the delay to his agency.
Fifteen minutes later, three of his operatives found Sidorov, in a garbage bin behind a large shopping outlet near Kursky station.
Andropov’s men were there, too, their bodies riddled with bullets.
And then it became personal for Grigor Andropov.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Vasily took six months to do the developing, a timeline Nikolai grew impatient with.
‘I am doing it all alone,’ the hacker snarled. ‘Do you know how many people usually work on something like this?’
Nikolai waved him away angrily. He didn’t want to know. That wasn’t his world. He forced himself to stay calm and used the time to wind down his arms business. There were only a few clients that he met personally and explained that he would no longer sell weapons.
‘Change of heart?’ an African dictator guffawed.
‘Something like that,’ Nikolai said. ‘I am starting a new business. It will take all my time.’
The despot had a liking for blood sports. He was worth cultivating.
The Russian didn’t get anger or bitterness with his other clients. It was business; besides, others had already stepped into the vacuum he had left.
He headed back to Rublyovka and invited two billionaires for dinner. Over the finest Russian vodka, he broached the topic he had mentioned to them a while back. They raised their heads, interested.
Nikolai knew both of them well. Pirogov had made his money by grabbing state-owned steel companies as Russia emerged from the remains of the former U.S.S.R. Maslow had similarly acquired oil companies. Both men, as was true of all Russian billionaires, had risen to their wealth by bribing and colluding with politicians. Nikolai was no different.
He also knew his dining companions liked killing. Both had areas in their estates, remote spots, where their victims were buried. Human prey.
There were no cops to question them. They owned the police. Nikolai wasn’t one to judge them. He had benefited from the same system. He had his man in the Kremlin. And now, he was planning to make money off them.
‘How will this work?’ one of his potential customers asked when two bottles had been emptied.
Nikolai explained.
They were bemused for a while. The gaming world wasn’t theirs.
‘It is the only way,’ the ex-arms dealer insisted. ‘For safety.’
Now, that was a word they understood.
‘It isn’t hard. Here, let me show you.’ He grabbed a screen and showed them the preliminary version that Vasily had developed.
‘And these?’ Pirogov, the steel magnate, asked. ‘They correspond to …’ he didn’t complete his words. Even Nikolai was careful with what he said.
‘You can make a guess,’ the weapons supplier’s finger hovered over a female. Vasily had described the roles and had physical descriptions for each character.
Pirogov swore when he made the link. ‘She’s —’
‘Yes.’
‘I want her.’
‘No, I want her,’ Maslow slammed his palm drunkenly.
Nikolai sat back. The bi
dding had begun.
He would provide logistics, intel, weapons and if necessary, people to assist the two men, he told them. He would help them with alibis. They might need training, and he would arrange for that too.
They discussed details long into the night, and when the day broke, he delivered a thumb drive to each of them that contained a video recording of their evening. Now each had leverage on the other.
Mutually assured destruction, the best protection they could have.
Nikolai refined his plan as Vasily perfected his creation, and by the time the hacker launched it, the arms dealer was ready.
Pirogov started off. Nikolai saw a different side of him as he helped the billionaire train. The steel company owner became cold, focused; his ruthlessness became apparent. On seeing him prepare, the weapons supplier knew his venture would work.
Pirogov made the payment to Nikolai. Full advance, no refunds. And on a cold, Moscow night, he shot Russia’s upcoming pop star as she was performing.
He made the kill from two hundred yards at the SK Olimpisky, an indoor arena and former Olympics stadium.
He used a Dragunov SVD, Russia’s sniper rifle — he was a patriot — and shot from a prone position. The shot was easy; after all, he was a crack shooter. He had triggered from the highest stand in the stadium, seats empty because he had ensured none of them got sold.
The weapon had been smuggled in before the concert and hidden in a restroom. His getaway had been easy amid the ensuing melee. He had crawled back, gone into a service closet and changed into a police officer’s uniform, donned a wig and a mustache, and had hurried out, shouting orders.
Easy. But it had required intense planning from Nikolai, and both men had used their political clout to erase certain sections of the security camera footage.
And with that kill, the game began in earnest.
Chapter Thirty
It had been a long journey. There had been hiccups, but overall, his new venture was a success. Several politicians had joined the game in the years since that first kill. Nikolai had taken them on enthusiastically. Many politicians in Russia were billionaires in secret and having them on board gave him ironclad protection.
