A Spill of Blood Ch. 04

"I told you there are no electronics in my office. This is where the legitimate business takes place."

"I think we both know you're not a legitimate businessman, Regan."

He smiled like a shark, white teeth and humorless. "Know and prove are a world apart."

"Why go to the trouble of a eurobond certificate?" I asked while he was booting up.

"It's complicated." His tone said I probably wouldn't understand.

"Yeah? I figured out your certificate dodge."

That got me a sharp glance. He didn't like being slapped back with a reminder that I wasn't some dumb pawn for him to move around the board.

"The exchanges available to upstanding American citizens are now sharing their identity-verification information with law enforcement. The FBI knows who owns what account. However, while they might know some Saudi prince owns one, they can't do too much to him because he's on foreign soil and not a U.S. national. Maybe freeze his assets if they can prove something, but that's rare because pissing off a Saudi prince upsets trade agreements. Follow me?"

"Yep."

"So the answer is obvious. Have one of those foreign nationals create the account, put the money in it, then send you the credentials. It's in his name, but you have the money. You filter it out little by little at a rate that isn't suspicious. The transactions look like his."

"Why don't you just encrypt the information and send an email?"

I got the contemptuous expression again. "I told you once about things like Pegasus. You didn't check it out, did you?"

I admitted I hadn't.

"Almost anything electronic can be snooped, even without you knowing it. And if the encryption is too hard to break, or if you're going places on the darknet to use exchanges that aren't known to legitimate businessmen, it gets you attention of the kind you don't want. You don't look legitimate anymore. Pretty soon they're going through your life with things like Pegasus and search warrants.

"But rich people couriering around financial instruments? That happens all the time. Even if some FBI agent finds them, they don't mean anything. Not like an encrypted file on a hard drive which is suspicious just for existing. If they find a list of account numbers and passwords in a safe, they go looking. If they find certificates, they let you keep them or impound them until a hearing, but they aren't curious.

"Plus, there's nothing that some hacker can extract if they find some way into your system, whether they're police, NSA, or even the real geniuses out there on the darknet who'll happily steal from anyone."

Personally, I didn't buy it. It felt like a bunch of boys playing at a James Bond movie. "Look at me, Ma. I've got a secret decoder ring." I controlled the sneer.

"And what is your world such that it lives like this?"

I got that shark smile again. "Labor relations consulting."

Interesting that he'd used the same phrase Charlie Everett had. I'd debated whether he was in the body trade with Everett, if that's what the money was. But I'd googled and it seemed like traffickers made about $40,000 a head. I doubted Gibson's "maybe a couple" was eight hundred bodies at a shot.

His attention turned back to the screen. He brought up a Tor browser—more Wikipedia on my part—and typed.

"Well, it appears you were telling the truth."

"Perfect. We're done."

"No. We're not. These are worthless now. The money's been moved." He didn't sound surprised by that. "But it was moved the day after Beck took them, over a week before I talked to you."

"Not my problem. You wanted the certificates and a name. I got both for you."

"Oh, I think it's very much your problem. Everything I said that first time in your office still holds. I want my money back and you're going to find it. Or else."

The threat against Jess. Plus Sydney was in the mix now because Mitchell had seen the moment of closeness in the corridor outside Emerald's apartment.

"Regan, you need to get one of your financial whizzes to track it. I don't know shit about tracking this stuff."

"You're not tracking digital currency. You're tracking a person." He pointed to a line on his screen. "That's the first move of the money. That got it into another account in case I had a copy of the keys to the first one. It made it unreachable to me while it's filtered through a mixer." He looked to see if I was following. I was up until that last term. "It's one way bitcoin is laundered, but it doesn't work with large amounts. You need to do it little by little."

He pointed to another line.

"But that's a decent chunk coming back out of that account. I'll bet anything that address is owned by an exchanger. You don't do a runner with only bitcoin because you can't spend it in hotels or with airlines. There's cash somewhere. Find who has that and we'll know who has the keys for the rest of it. You're after a person with cash. Old school, Harry, and you know how to do old school."

I thought about Beck on the run. I thought about Kimi, still unaccounted for. I thought of Nikki, back in her apartment under the same orders as I was: you do not leave the city or we get a warrant as a material witness.

I thought about Jess and Sydney, and the hulking shadow standing behind Regan.

And that made me think about Charlie Everett. He was a guy who'd slipped my mind in the excitement. Did I know Everett's fate for certain? No. But I had a hunch, and hunches were the only thing between me and some of those bullets lately.

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