Blood Price (Dark Places Of The Earth 1) (22 page)

 “Okay. Sorry. But he just might call Zoltan and tell him he better make sure we never make it to Agent Turner’s office. You understand? This isn’t a game. Please wake the fuck up. Just because we’re back in America doesn’t mean we’re safe. If they find out that we know, we’ll be in very deep, very serious shit. Even after we tell the FBI, we’ll be witnesses. You know what happens to witnesses a lot of the time? Their corpses wind up face-down in large bodies of water. Not the final resting place I had in mind, you know, I was kind of planning on a big funeral when I’m eighty, lots of sobbing grandchildren and a nice mausoleum and all the bells and whistles. So wake up and stop worrying about your Russian friend and start worrying about us. We could be in danger here. Seriously. A lot of it. You understand?”
   I looked at her. After a moment I nodded. “Yeah,” I said quietly. “Yeah. I understand.”
* * *
   The FBI’s San Francisco headquarters is on the thirteenth floor of 450 Golden Gate Avenue, the Philip Burton Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse, a 22-story sheer-walled monstrosity near City Hall that looks a bit like a gigantic radiator grille. The Stars & Stripes waved over a few small trees struggling to emerge from tiny portholes in the concrete plaza that led up to the entrance. The general architectural intent seemed to be Abandon All Hope And Be Intimidated And Dehumanized, Ye Who Enter Here. I felt a bit like a Catholic schoolboy about to go to his first confession, afraid that he would be damned to hell forever.
   Agent Turner hadn’t changed a bit. Middle-aged, dressed in a conservative dark business suit, a face wrinkled like her skull had shrunk beneath it, sharp eyes that studied rather than observed everything they encountered. Her desk was frighteningly clean, decorated only by the picture of a pretty blonde girl maybe eighteen years old holding a swimming trophy. Her daughter, I supposed. Maybe her niece. It was hard to imagine Agent Turner with a family or any kind of human existence at all outside the FBI.

She shook our hands from behind her desk and had us sit down.

“Begin recording,” Agent Turner said, presumably to some voice-activated digital recorder lurking in her desk. “August fifteenth, two thousand and three, oh eight oh four Pacific Time. Special Agent Anita Turner.” She looked at us. “Please introduce yourselves with your names, ages, addresses and occupations.”

I swallowed and said, “Balthazar Wood, twenty-nine, 1256 Rhode Island Street, San Francisco, software consultant, self-employed.”

After a moment Talena said, “Talena Radovich, twenty-eight, 880 Kansas Street, San Francisco, Web editor, Lonely Planet Publications.”

Which was already something of a lie. Talena paid the rent on 880 Kansas, but it was occupied by Saskia, Talena lived with me in our new place on Rhode Island. If she had given my address it might have looked suspicious that she was the tenant of record at Kansas Street. On the other hand now that they had both addresses maybe they would come to 880 Kansas looking for Talena and find Saskia there. What a tangled web we weave.

“Subjects have alleged that they have personal knowledge of Balkan war criminals at large in America,” Agent Turner said. She turned to me. “Please tell me everything in your own words, from the start. Then I’ll ask whatever questions I need answered.”

“All right,” I said. “Well. I guess it all started with the little boy…”

I talked long enough that my voice grew hoarse. Mostly I told the truth. Omitting any mention whatsoever of Saskia was surprisingly easy. I simply claimed that after I took the little boy to the warehouse, Sinisa had asked to meet me, and when we met he offered me a job, and I needed the money so I took it. The lie depicted me as pretty damn mercenary, but as long as I shielded Saskia I didn’t mind being misunderstood.

I told Agent Turner all about meeting Arwin in San Francisco, and him telling me that Zoltan and Zorana had arrived in the country, and, although I felt terrible about it, I told her about Arwin’s back door. As I spoke I was convinced that I was initiating a massive FBI investigation, the full brunt of which was about to fall on Arwin’s rodentlike shoulders, and I felt horribly guilty about ratting out a friend.

It turned out I didn’t need to be quite so concerned about what the FBI might do to him.
   “So that’s it,” I finished. “That’s the story.”
   “That’s everything,” Agent Turner said.
   “Yes, ma’am.”
   I figured she knew that there were gaps in my story. I expected her to start probing for as many details as possible, begin an exhaustive interrogation.

Instead she asked, annoyed, “And what do you expect me to do?”
   Talena and I exchanged bewildered glances.
   “Are you kidding?” I asked. “I’m telling you that there are wanted war criminals here on American soil.”
   “No. You told me that an illegal immigrant and known criminal told you this. You have not actually personally seen any of the alleged war criminals here in America, correct?”
   “I…well…no, not personally. But Arwin wouldn’t have lied about it. And regardless I’m telling you about an international war criminal smuggling ring.”
   “Mr. Wood, the FBI’s jurisdiction ends at the American border. Since 9/11 we have obviously grown more interested in international crime, but Bosnian war criminals, however terrible their previous deeds may be, are not an obvious threat to our homeland security. The system you helped build for them is a disturbing development, and frankly I think you ought to be ashamed for what you have done, but it’s also nothing new, the genie of strong cryptography has been out of its bottle for years. If you had seen them here in person, that would be something. Then, in consultation with the war crimes tribunal, I could launch an official investigation with an eye towards serving the tribunal’s warrant and arresting these persons. But all you have, Mr. Wood, is a colourful story, all of which took place outside of America, and no supporting evidence. I am a federal agent, not Glinda the Good Witch.”
   “Mycroft. The web site. That’s evidence.”
   “A web site which, if your claim is correct, contains pictures that contain undecryptable messages. Even if your friend cooperates with us and opens his back door, which you admit is unlikely, it is an untrustworthy web site full of uncorroborated information, hosted in Albania, again very far indeed from our jurisdiction, and extremely unlikely to contain actionable evidence. Honestly, Mr. Wood, what did you expect? SWAT teams and all-points bulletins and a slot on the Ten Most Wanted list?”
   “Something like that,” I admitted.
   She shook her head. “On a personal level obviously I deplore what these people have done. But there is nothing I can do in the way of initiating an investigation and pursuing them. Not without real physical evidence that war criminals are on American soil.”
   “Then who else?” Talena asked angrily. “Should we go to the Secret Service or CIA or who? You can’t just blow us off like this. We’ll go to the media if we have to.”
   “With what?” Agent Turner asked. “I do understand your frustration, Miss Radovich, but once again, you have no evidence. Believe me, CNN won’t receive you with any more warmth than I have. I suspect considerably less.”
   Talena shook her head disbelievingly. “This is crazy.”

“I’ll tell you what I am going to do,” Agent Turner said. “I will file a report on Sinisa and his smuggling network with the CIA. That is of some interest because like all smuggling networks it is a potential threat to national security. In that report I will mention Zoltan Knezevic and his alleged presence in the United States. I have no idea what, if anything, the CIA will do with this information. I suspect very little.”
   “This is so fucked,” I said. “That’s all? That’s all you’re going to do? You’re going to file a report and forget about it?”

 “That’s all I
can
do for the moment,” Agent Turner said sharply. “Until and unless you can come to me and tell me that you are willing to testify under oath that with your own eyes you have seen one of these war criminals here in America. I would consider either or both of you to be a credible eyewitness. Or you can bring me Arwin and convince me of his credibility. But judging from his history and your depiction of him that will be something of a challenge.”
   “Oh,” I said, beginning to understand. “You want me to arrange a meeting with them. So I can come and tell you I’ve seen them here personally.”
   Agent Turner paused, and said very carefully, “I am not suggesting that. It would be unethical for me to do so. Such an action could expose both of you to considerable danger.”
   “Uh-huh. Suppose I do come to you and tell you I’ve seen them. What happens then?”
   “If that were to happen, then I could begin communications with the war crimes tribunal which should, after several weeks, culminate with the initiation of an official investigation.”
   “After several weeks?” Talena asked, disbelievingly.
   “If we’re lucky. The wheels of international justice grind exceedingly slow. And of course after we serve the warrant the subjects will have various levels of legal appeals before we actually turn them over to the tribunal. If everything goes smoothly it will probably still be years before they make it to The Hague. Hypothetically speaking of course.”
   “That’s insane,” I said.
   “Yes, it is,” Agent Turner agreed. “That’s international law.”
   Talena and I stopped for a coffee at Steven’s Café on Market en route to the BART station. We had plenty of time. Expected a lengthy interrogation, both of us had phoned our workplaces and told them we wouldn’t be in until noon.
   “I should have known,” I said. “It was all too perfect. We find an apartment and move in, Saskia gets your old place, Saskia gets a job, I get, well, at least half a job, summer is wonderful, we’ve got money in the bank, Steve and Lawrence are coming to visit, everyone’s happy, life is perfect, and then boom. I should have seen it coming.”
   Talena nodded. She hadn’t spoken a word since leaving Agent Turner’s office.
   “I’ve still got about four thousand dollars of Sinisa’s money in the bank,” I said.
   “Blood money,” she said dully. “They stole it from the Muslims and Croats they murdered. Or from smuggling during the war. We can’t spend it any more. Not on ourselves.”
   “I know.”
   We sipped our coffees, dejected.

“Sinisa was in the Dutch Army at Srebrenica,” I said. “He was there. Seven thousand people massacred. How could he turn around and help the same people who did it?”

“Money,” Talena said.

“Money. Yeah. Market fucking share. To grow his business. To be the Amazon and the EBay of international crime. I should have known. I should have fucking known.”

“Stop that,” Talena said sharply. “Let’s focus on what we’re going to do. Not what you think you should have done or known or telepathically intuited.”

“Okay.” I sighed. “I guess I’ll email Arwin and try to set up a meeting. Except I can’t think of any good excuse to want to see them. Maybe I can check out the area boxing gyms. They might be working out at one of them.” It sounded feeble even as I said it.

“Arwin’s back door,” Talena said. “If he gave you his password. Then maybe you could read the messages and find out where they are.”

“Maybe,” I said. “If he just up and gave it to me.”

We looked at each other.

“They’re going to get away, aren’t they?” Talena asked. “They’ll find out we’re looking for them and they’ll disappear. Just like that. Take a bus to Columbus, somewhere nobody knows them. They’ve got all kinds of money, they’ll help each other out, they could die of old age here. Just like a lot of Nazis did. They’re going to get away.”

“Not if I can help it,” I said. But it felt like an empty promise.
* * *
   I went from the FBI to my job at Autarch Software, where I wrote billing-management software for cell phones. It was only twenty hours per week, but it paid forty dollars an hour, a sum I would have sneered at during the dot-com boom but which seemed a godsend in this post-crash era. A painful era which at long last seemed to be ending. Most of my qualified techie friends now had jobs, and it took reassuringly longer every week to browse the coder-help-wanted ads on Craigslist, Monster, and HotJobs. I was still worried that in the long term all the world’s programming jobs would be outsourced to Bangalore, but in the medium term, my professional future looked brighter than it had for years.
   I sent Arwin an email from work. I hoped to get him to set up a meeting with Zoltan, and maybe wheedle his back door’s private key from him, using the carrot of a job along with the implied stick of an FBI investigation.
From:      [email protected]
To:        [email protected]
Subject:   what up?
Date:      15 Aug 2003 19:11 GMT
Hey, Arwin, what’s going on?
Wanna meet for a beer tonight or tomorrow? I’m working a contract job now and I’ve got some leads you might be interested in. Say, Noc Noc, 7:00 tonight, if you’re free?
Paul
   Arwin called me just before I left work.
   “Hey hey hey, my main man Paul!” he greeted me.
   “Arwin, hey, what’s up? Got time for a beer?”
   “Tomorrow. Tonight I got a date. You should see this girl. She’s like a fucking miracle freak of nature. Her tits, man, they’re beyond good, they’re fucking hypnotic.”
   “What’s her name?”
   “How the fuck should I know?” He laughed. “Just kidding. Her name’s Oksana. She acts like she’s a good girl, but she’s a nasty freaky ho, I can tell it, I can smell it. But she’s playing good girl so I’m playing romantic Russian criminal.”
   “You are, technically, a Russian criminal,” I said. “But romantic?”
   “Fuck, man, I don’t know. Chicks see what they want to see.”
   “True.”
   “True dat. What about these jobs?”
   I described the openings that did more or less exist at Autarch Software. “They’re a small startup company,” I warned him. “So this depends on financing. Right now I’m only working twenty hours a week. Ian, my friend who got me the job, he says it’s a slam-dunk, but you know how it is. Not until the ink dries on the paper.”
   “All right. But they sound pretty good. I could do them. You know that.” He sounded like it was important I believe him.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “I know that.”

“They pay cash?”

“You don’t have to worry about it. You tell them you’re a self-employed sole proprietorship. There’s a massive enforcement loophole there. Then they wash their hands and pay you like you’re a business, and that means it’s your responsibility, not theirs, to check whether you’re legal or not.”