Dragon Head

by James Houston Turner

  Alice was already holding the door open for Talanov when he arrived, and once he was inside, ran with him to the elevator, which Kai was holding open. Once they arrived on the third floor, Alice led the way down the corridor and into her apartment, where Jingfei was seated at a glass dining table, working at a laptop. Visible on the screen was a live image of Charlie, who was wearing an orange University of Texas beanie. The beanie was barely able to restrain Charlie’s mane of thick raven hair.

  The apartment was a two-bedroom contemporary unit that overlooked a park surrounded by more highrise apartments. A dining table was positioned near a sliding glass door that led out onto a small balcony, where Wilcox was talking on his cell phone. Along the railing of the balcony were some potted plants.

  “Did you get the file I sent?” Charlie was asking just as Talanov entered the apartment and came into view. “Alex! Glad you’re okay.”

  “Charlie, how are we looking?” asked Talanov, looking over Jingfei’s shoulder.

  “It’s all there, right where you said.”

  “So you were able to do whatever it is you hackers do?”

  “Yep. The deposit’s been made, so we are ready to rock and roll. I was just asking Jing if she got the file I sent.”

  “Which I did,” Jingfei replied.

  “Then we’re set to go,” said Charlie. “Step one: take a screenshot of their escrow account page. It will verify the deposit. Step two: embed the file I sent you in that image and email it to them.”

  “That’s it?” asked Jingfei.

  “That’s it. I will take care of the rest. Call me when you get to DC. We’ll go out on the old man’s dime.”

  “I heard that,” shouted Wilcox from the balcony.

  With a grin, Charlie clicked off.

  “I trust what you’re doing is legal?” asked Alice while watching Jingfei work the keyboard.

  “Absolutely,” Jingfei replied.

  Alice frowned at her warily. “Are you telling me the truth?”

  “Absolutely,” Jingfei replied.

  Alice looked over at Talanov. “Is she telling the truth?”

  “Absolutely,” Talanov said.

  Alice looked suspiciously at Talanov while Jingfei continued to work the keyboard.

  “Will someone please talk to me?” asked Alice.

  “What do you want to know?” asked Talanov in return.

  “How did you locate the money? The original account was yours – this I know – so you already knew the account number. But the account had been emptied of its funds, which you discovered had been placed in a secret account that no one knew about, which could be accessed only by an access code and PIN that no one knew about. How did you do it?”

  “I guess we just got lucky.”

  “I don’t think luck had anything to do with it. You and your team, as you now call them, came to the station, rummaged through a file box of evidence, then miraculously figured out what none of my people could figure out. I demand to know how you did it.”

  “Are you sure you want to know?”

  Alice replied with an exasperated sigh.

  “If I explain, you’re not going to turn cop on us, are you?”

  Alice folded her arms impatiently.

  “Okay, okay,” said Talanov. He looked at Kai and gave him a nod.

  Kai arched his eyebrows in response. It was a gesture that asked, “Are you sure?”

  Talanov nodded again, so Kai reached into his pocket and withdrew the tube of toothpaste that he had palmed from the box of Wu Chee Ming’s belongings. He handed the tube to Talanov, who handed it to Alice.

  “What is this?” asked Alice, examining the tube.

  “Aside from it being the secret to whiter teeth, it was Wu Chee Ming’s way of safeguarding his account number and PIN.”

  “So you stole this? From one of my evidence boxes?”

  “Technically, it was Kai, so if someone’s in trouble, blame him.”

  “You told me to steal it!” exclaimed Kai, punching Talanov on the arm.

  Talanov recoiled and laughed.

  “Enough, both of you!” cried Alice. “Tell me what this is.”

  “Am I in trouble?” asked Kai.

  “No, you’re not in trouble,” Alice replied, glaring briefly at Talanov, then looking at Kai and gesturing with the toothpaste again. “But I need to know what this is.”

  “His PIN is in the barcode,” explained Kai, “which Wu Chee Ming designed and then printed as a customized label.”

  “How did you know that?” asked Alice. “Lots of products have barcode labels.”

  “True, but of everything that Wu Chee Ming was carrying, that tube of toothpaste was the only item with a printed label. The other items, like the books and other toiletry items, had no added label. Those barcodes had been produced as part of those items.”

  Alice shook her head, partly in admiration of the teenager who had figured out what her people had missed, partly in frustration because a teenager had figured out what her people had missed. “I still don’t see how you did it,” she said. “Why did you suspect Wu Chee Ming when we were certain it was Ling Soo? The money disappeared right before Ling Soo committed suicide. He even wrote a suicide note confessing to the crime. How did you know?”

  “Yeah,” agreed Kai, looking at Talanov. “How did you figure that out?”

  “Dinosaur technology,” answered Talanov.

  A blank stare was Kai’s reply, while Alice’s glare was more menacing.

  Still working the keyboard, Jingfei chuckled and said, “Old school detective work. No way could Ling Soo have managed to hold onto a suicide note after writhing in agony. That meant the whole scenario had to have been staged, including a typewritten, not handwritten, note that had obviously been planted in his hand. That left one man with motive, opportunity, and access to all of that money.”

  “Wu Chee Ming,” stated Alice.

  “Not only that,” added Talanov, “but Ling Soo was a slob, whereas Wu Chee Ming was the meticulous one. Plus, it was Wu Chee Ming, not Ling Soo, who was fond of saying one does not seek what one does not see. But I have to admit, I didn’t realize the full impact of that proverb until I asked Kai where he would hide something important, like a PIN.”

  “And I said, in a place where no one was looking.”

  “Exactly. That’s when I began to suspect Wu Chee Ming might be our culprit.”

  “So he was running off with the money when he got caught?” asked Alice.

  “Yes, and rather than face Dragon Head’s torture, threw himself in front of the train. Who knows, at one time he may even have been working with Dragon Head, but for whatever reason, decided to run off with the money.”

  “What I still don’t get,” said Jingfei, “is how you knew the money was in another Sun Cheng account. The PIN doesn’t tell you that.”

  “Again, like Kai said, we needed to be looking where no one was looking.”

  “So he hid the money right under everyone’s noses and got them looking in the wrong direction with that crazy maze of his?”

  “Yes,” answered Talanov. “And he made it so confusing and impenetrable that no one would be able to figure it out.”

  “And yet you did.”

  “Dinosaur technology,” said Talanov with a grin.

  “Stop saying that.”

  “You’re the one who called me a dinosaur. But what I don’t get is how Sun Cheng could have missed an account that huge. How could they not see one and a half billion dollars?”

  “Because it was in a trapdoor account,” explained Jingfei.

  Talanov responded with a clueless expression.

  “A digital safe deposit box.”

  “A what?”

  “Digital safe deposit box. If I had a bunch of money inside a physical safe deposit box, that money would not show up on the bank’s record of assets. Same with a digital safe deposit box, which is a separate account within an account. No one knows what’s in that account, or even
that it exists, because it’s behind a digital trapdoor that’s not publicly linked to the world of electronic banking. This makes it totally invisible, like a website on a dedicated server that is non-indexable by search engines and, therefore, invisible to everyone unless you know its specific address, or, in this case, an account number and a PIN. It’s a complicated arrangement, but since Wu Chee Ming worked at Sun Cheng, he would have known how to set it up and conceal any record of its existence.”

  “O-kay . . . I think.”

  “So, are you ready to do this?”

  Talanov looked over at Alice. “I am. Are you?”

  Alice did not reply and Talanov could almost read her worries about the legality of what they were about to do.

  “This gives all of us what we want,” said Talanov, reading her indecision. “It saves Su Yin. It stops the hacking. No more planes go down.”

  Alice continued deliberating for several more seconds, then finally nodded.

  A moment later, Jingfei tapped Send.

  CHAPTER 76

  While Jingfei told Alice what would happen next, Kai drew Talanov aside. Wilcox was still on the balcony talking on the phone, although the slider was open.

  “Are you really a secret agent?” asked Kai.

  The question gave Talanov a start. “Where did that come from?” he asked with an amused smile.

  “Bill said you were, like, this badass Russian spy for America back in olden days, and that he was the guy who recruited you, and that he taught you the ropes and turned you into this super-agent, and now you’re going to be working for him in this new task force that he’s heading up in DC.”

  “He told you that? That he taught me the ropes?”

  “Yeah, and that is, like, so cool! He made me promise I wouldn’t tell anyone because it was, like, you know, top

  secret.”

  Wilcox had been listening from the balcony, and when Talanov looked his way, replied with a sheepish smile.

  “So, have you ever, like, killed anyone?” asked Kai, leaning close and lowering his voice.

  “I’m thinking of doing so right now,” said Talanov, his glare still on Wilcox, whose smile broadened into an exaggerated grin.

  Kai laughed and punched Talanov on the arm. “For an old dude, you’re not so bad.”

  “You’re not so bad, either . . . for a kid,” Talanov replied. “A kid I might have to strangle if he keeps calling me an old dude.”

  “But an old dude who rocks,” Kai said, extending his fist.

  And with a chuckle, Talanov bumped fists with Kai.

  Across town, in the computer room of the Zhongzhen Martial Arts Academy, AK motioned his three visitors to chairs. Two were young men and the third was a young woman, all Chinese and in their early twenties.

  “AK, this here is Krait,” the young woman told AK, nodding to the first young man, who was chewing gum, “and this here is Z-Qi,” she said, introducing the other. “Guys, meet AK. The one and only.”

  “Dude, you’re a legend,” said Z-Qi in English.

  Krait sniffed indifferently at the remark “Your stuff is shit, you know that, don’t you?” he remarked while surveying the room. “If you expect us to hack anything more than a Gameboy with this junk . . .”

  The pong of an email drew AK’s attention and he looked at the monitor dedicated to the handling of the escrow account. Because the escrow account was such a priority, AK had been instructed to sit by the monitor until the deposit had been made and verification had been sent.

  AK opened the email, then the attached screenshot image of the escrow account’s online banking page, which showed a deposit of just under one and a half billion U.S. dollars.

  “Wait in gym,” AK told the others after switching off his monitor.

  “I thought we were here for an interview,” Krait replied. “To build an army of hackers for some secret project you couldn’t tell us about.”

  “You are,” AK replied, motioning them toward the door. “I call you when I am ready.”

  With a snort, Krait stood and left the room, followed by the others, then AK, who ran past them with a lanky stride into the gym, where Sofia was practicing roundhouse kicks on one of the muk yan jongs.

  While he was gone, his monitor’s built-in camera was activated, which was noticeable when its tiny LED, no larger than a pinhead, came on briefly before being switched off by Charlie. Twenty seconds later, AK reentered the computer room with Sofia, in whose hand was a silenced pistol.

  AK slid into his chair and switched on his monitor, and with Sofia looking over his shoulder, pointed to the verified deposit that had just been made into the escrow account. Sofia smiled and left the room without saying a word. Slouching back in his chair with a contented sigh, AK popped open a can of milk tea and took several long swallows.

  In her cubicle at the Naval Intelligence facility, Charlie took a bite from an organic apple while watching AK on her computer screen. “Did you know commercially grown apples are sprayed more than thirty times?” Charlie asked rhetorically. “That’s why people today get so sick and that’s why I buy organic, not that creeps like you care about people getting sick, because you are sick in the worst way possible. You kill people in airplane crashes without so much as batting an eye.” Charlie took another bite, her anger rising. “So let’s see what you do with this.”

  Charlie worked her mouse and took a screenshot of AK’s face, which she forwarded to Zulu, who was sitting in his van a block from the Zhongzhen Martial Arts Academy. In the seat beside him was Delta. Zulu heard his cell phone ding and read the message from Charlie.

  “This is our man,” said Zulu, showing Delta the image.

  “Funny how things change,” Delta replied, opening an energy bar. “A few hours ago we were hunting Talanov. Now we’re on his side.”

  Inside the stairwell leading up to the penthouse, Sofia paused to make a call. The walls of the stairwell were covered with silk wallpaper that featured a bamboo motif. The steps themselves were made of polished mahogany, and at the top was a landing featuring a shiny black credenza, which had brass hinges and white lotus flowers. To the right of the credenza was a large red door. Black metal straps with heavy carriage bolts gave it an impenetrable appearance. On the wall beside the door was a lighted keypad.

  Sofia had just begun to dial the number when she heard a noise at the bottom of the stairs. She turned to see Chao. The door was normally locked but Sofia had left it ajar.

  Putting a finger to her lips, Sofia motioned for Chao to join her. Chao closed the door while Sofia finished dialing and put the phone to her ear.

  On the second ring, her call was answered by Talanov.

  “Come and get her . . . alone,” Sofia replied. She clicked off, then led the way up to the landing, where she entered a code on the lighted keypad and the red door clicked open.

  Chao withdrew a pistol from where it had been tucked near the small of his back just as Sofia pushed open the door and gestured Chao to enter.

  “He’s all yours,” Sofia said.

  CHAPTER 77

  At the bottom of the stairs Sofia paused to dial another number. It was answered on the first ring by Penny Kwan, at the Sun Cheng Financial Group Limited. Penny had a desk near Song’s office, and hers was one of sixteen desks that filled the main floor of the operations hub, which was humming with the noise of a busy office. Phones were buzzing politely over the cacophony of brokers buying and selling, mostly in Chinese, but a few in English.

  “The money’s in escrow,” Sofia said.

  Penny hung up the phone. The moment had come. All she had to do now was hack that account and transfer the funds into Sofia’s offshore account.

  The plan had been Sofia’s brainchild and the reasons were obvious. First, Sofia wanted the money for herself. Second, she wanted to take possession of it before Talanov picked up the girl. Dragon Head had foolishly given his word that he would release the girl and that no harm would come to any of them. Penny snorted. Dragon He
ad and his code of honor. Sofia, of course, had no such morals.

  To his credit, Talanov had been crafty to use the funds as a bargaining chip, and it had almost worked. Sofia, however, was always one step ahead.

  With her fingers working the keyboard, Penny instinctively glanced around to make sure no one was watching. She had already made several practice runs hacking the account, and on each practice run, she had come and gone without anyone knowing. Thankfully, Straw Sandal had handled the opening of the escrow account, which had been set up with minimum security, as if she were buying a house. Obviously, she had not been savvy enough to order extra security protocols, nor had Talanov been savvy enough to demand them. His only interest had been the safety of the girl. To him, the money was unimportant. What a fool.

  As on each of her practice runs, Penny easily bypassed the firewalls and accessed the escrow account. But when she tried making the transfer, her keyboard froze and the webpage began to dissolve. Penny hit the Escape button repeatedly and tried every emergency measure she knew. But the webpage kept slowly dissolving until she was looking at a bright blue screen.

  Penny was stunned and all she could do was stare at the screen. What had just happened? Had she inadvertently caused a crash? Had she inadvertently just signed her own death warrant?

  Grabbing her handbag, Penny hurried to the elevator, where she pushed the call button repeatedly. She had to get out of here. Where she would go, she had no idea. She just knew she had to run.

  A ding sounded and Penny readied herself to step into the elevator and disappear forever from the Sun Cheng office. She had been wise enough to stash a supply of cash at home for emergencies, and this qualified as an emergency. But when the doors opened, Penny was met by Alice Ti and three uniformed officers.

  Startled, Penny stepped back.

  “Going somewhere?” asked Alice, who nodded to one of the officers, who took Penny into custody.

  The operation center grew quiet and everyone turned to watch.

  “Ms. Kwan, let’s take a ride,” said Alice, gesturing toward the elevator.

  Back at the Zhongzhen Martial Arts Academy, AK finished his milk tea and tossed the can into the trashcan near his feet. It slid off the other cans already filling the receptacle and landed on the floor, where it rolled to a stop.