Clawback (24 page)

“Are you still working for him?” Clara said.

“Ganderson? He owes me money, so I guess I am.”

“You don’t sound enthusiastic.”

“No.” I nodded. “Not after he hung me out like that.”

“What, then?” Clara punched some buttons on the copier’s payment module, retrieving her credit card and a receipt.

“Everything.” I picked a topic. “I can’t see why Faust was targeted. He’d pulled out of the markets almost entirely, with the divorce going on. Too much garish publicity to get anything done, or just too much of a distraction—who knows? But nothing’s happened to his assets since his death. If the idea was to make money, I just can’t figure the payoff.”

“I think you answered your own question.”

“Huh?”

“Heaps and
heaps
of cash.”

“Yes…”

“And who gets it now?”

Suddenly I felt very dumb. “The wife!”

“Sure.” Clara grinned. “Whatever she might have gotten out of a settlement, it would have been less than a hundred percent. This way she walks away with everything. The entire estate.”

“She
hired
it done.”

“Makes sense to me, that way.” Her smile faded. “Not that I can hint about it, online. She’s not a public figure—libel suits would come raining out of the sky, and it wouldn’t matter if I won, in the end. I’d be bankrupt ten times over.”

“Post it anonymously, on some obscure blog’s comment section,” I suggested. “Then report the comment. Public domain, right? You’re safe.”

“Not from a determined law firm with an endless budget. It’s not worth it.”

I watched a scruffy older man photocopying what seemed to be an entire book, three machines over. One page at a time, seven cents each…the digital revolution hasn’t come to everyone yet.

“The cabal, the assassin’s league—they’re more than versatile,” I said. “Akelman, commodities. Sills, a huge mutual fund. Marlett, private-equity M&A. Faust, a simple contract hit.”

“And Plank.”

“Right—something else entirely, a major public company. The only constant is the payday someone earned on every one.”

“We think. What I’d really like is a smoking gun. Documentary evidence.”

“You and everyone else.”

Clara packed her papers into the courier bag, removing and replacing items until it all fit. The flap barely closed, but she yanked the latches and tucked everything in, protecting it from the rain still falling steadily outside.

I leaned on the copier. “You know these machines are like self-contained computers? Every copy they make is scanned, and stored on a hard disk inside. Since overwriting doesn’t eliminate the files, anyone can read what you were copying, later.”

“I do know that, in fact. But I choose not to obsess about it.” She looked up at me. “Ready to go?”

I couldn’t keep anything from her.

“The men who attacked you,” I said. “The ninja in the helicopter. Same guy.”

“You told me that.”

“I know who he is.”

She quickly straightened up, hauling the bag onto her shoulder. “Are you going to tell me?”

“You can’t publish it.”

“Of course.”

I still hesitated, then found my mind going down a little-used path: if things went bad, and I was no longer around, it might be nice to have someone like Clara to speak for me…to give Saxon’s name to the police.

“He’s an ex-serviceman. Army Special Operations, with years of top-secret missions in the Long War.”

“Like you.”

“No!” I lowered my voice. “Never like me. He’s no more than a cheap gun for hire.”

We walked out, pushing through the glass double doors into the rain. Water dripped off the rooflines from somewhere far above, spattering the sidewalk. Not yet five, it was dark as night.

“Not that cheap,” Clara said. “Not for what he’s been doing.”

“You’re right.” I zipped my jacket and wondered when the hell I’d ever remember a hat, or an umbrella. “But if I know him, he probably knows me. Or he will, soon enough. And that’s a problem.”

“I see.”

“It’s not a job anymore,” I said. “It’s self-preservation.”

W
e took the subway together, uptown—and being neighbors and all, we got off at the same stop. It was the most natural thing in the world for Clara to invite me up to her apartment for dinner.

“Rondo might be around.”

“Rondo?”

I’d seen the building, when I followed Clara out on her jog, but hadn’t gone back. It had only been five days but seemed like a year. She shared a two-bedroom on the upper floor: prewar moldings and solid wood doors, but cramped and worn from years of rental use. A bathtub had been installed in a tiny alcove off the kitchen, which itself was only about six feet square. When we came in, a man was sitting at the table, eating from a plain blue plate.

He was
big.
Not wide, but tall and powerful, even seated in the chair. A robust biker mustache flowed down the sides of his jaw.

“Nice to meet you,” he said, standing to shake hands, towering over me.

“Silas is here for dinner,” Clara said.

“Really? Who’s cooking?”

“I’ll find something.”

“I bet.” To me: “Keep your expectations in check.” He sat back down. The plate before him held a large, off-white block, densely sprinkled with brown and red flecks. “I have a class at six-thirty. You can have some of this if you want.”

“I thought you were off on Wednesday,” Clara said.

“Sensei’s out sick, so I’m filling in.”

When we shook, I’d felt the callus on the edge of his hand and across the knuckles, and he’d moved with a kind of grounded fluidity you only get after years of disciplined training.

“Karate?” I said.

“Tang soo do.” He didn’t seem offended. “You?”

“Level Four Combatives.” Pentagon bureaucrats could never use a simple phrase when polysyllabic jargon would do.

Rondo grinned. “Uh-huh. And?”

“Life experience.”

“Must be an interesting life.”

Of
course
Clara’s friends wouldn’t be self-absorbed dullards. I looked at his dinner. “What are you eating?”

“Lao tofu, with togarashi pepper and nori. Want some?”

“Got any steak?”

“No, but you could put A.1. sauce on it if you want.”

When you meet a woman’s male friends, it can be awkward, especially when the parameters aren’t clear—no matter what anybody says, there are always boy-girl complications lurking. But I wasn’t getting any of that from Rondo. No posturing of any kind, in fact.

Maybe if I was so good at some martial art that I could substitute for the master, I’d be more self-confident, too.

“Kimmie went out,” Rondo said. “And not back anytime soon, judging by the outfit she was wearing.”

“Kimmie?” I looked at Clara, who had dumped her bag on a chair and was rummaging in the refrigerator. “You live with your coworker?”

“We were roommates first. She introduced me to the supervisor at the athenaeum.”

“You know Kimmie?” Rondo cut a slab of tofu and shoveled it in.

“We met. She seems very quiet.”

“
Kimmie
?”

“He’s putting you on.” Clara returned to the table with eggs, pepperoni, mustard and a Chinatown sack of lychees. “There might be an omelet in there somewhere.”

“Cook much, do you?”

“Only coffee.”

“Like I said.” Rondo stood up, rinsed his plate in the enameled sink, and pulled a jacket from a hook on the back of the door. “I have to go.”

“Did you read my story today?” asked Clara.

“Every word.” He paused, and looked over at me. “Are you—?”

“No,” said Clara.

“Ah.” He nodded. “See you later.”

When the door had closed, we looked at each other, across the table.

“Hungry?” Clara asked.

“Yeah, but not for raw eggs and mustard.”

“Maybe there’s bread around for toast.”

Someone had music on somewhere, loud. Bass tremors drifted through the building. The kitchen was well kept, considering three unrelated twentysomethings lived there: the floor swept, dishes in the drainer, counterspace cluttered but clean.

Clara found an English muffin and some bread heels in the freezer. Pepperoni stretched it out, and lychees for dessert.

“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t think—we could have stopped at the market.”

“It’s fine. I’ve had worse.” Like on four-day infiltrations into Indian country, nothing but water and crumbled energy bars, but no need to mention that.

“Blacktail Capital,” said Clara. “They’re central. That’s where the story is.”

She was right, but I couldn’t go break into their offices, too. They’d be Fort Knox compared to Riverton. “Saxon, maybe,” I said.

“What do you have on him? Besides what you’ve told me?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? In the digital age? You just haven’t looked hard enough.”

“All right, you tell me.” I looked around. “Where’s your computer?”

She got it out, pushing our plates to one side on the table. I swung the keyboard my way long enough to log into one of my one-off email addresses and pull down the file Ernie had forwarded.

“I know his name and employer,” I said. “And scraps from this—his service record.”

I turned the computer back to Clara, showing her Saxon’s Official Military Personnel File, the 201.

“They blacked out just about everything, didn’t they?” She scrolled down. “Birth date, Social…wait. There’s one address, Fort Campbell. Where’s that?”

“Kentucky. I’m pretty sure that’s his last service posting.”

“It’s not current?”

“He’s been elsewhere for years.”

That was it for the 201. A straight Google search yielded nothing except some press releases more or less identical to the one I’d found, when Blacktail hired Saxon. They’d never publicized anything after that.

“Which suggests something about what he does there,” I said.

Clara called up Blacktail’s webpage.

“Not much here, is there?” she said, looking at the same minimalist presence I’d found earlier.

“No, but that’s typical for a hedge fund. They’re not trolling for customers or trying to sell anything. And they mostly want a low profile regardless. It’s just a splash portal for their investors.”

“Where are they located?”

“Chalder, New Jersey. Up in the north, close to where 287 crosses into New York.”

“Suburbia.”

“Which makes Saxon an anomaly. You don’t need SOF skills to check employee badges in a New Jersey office park.”

“We know Blacktail was on the other side of Akelman’s losses. Saxon attacked me after I wrote about Marlett, and he killed Faust. Seems definitive to me.”

“Yup. I just wish we knew more about him.”

“All right.” I noticed that Clara’s mouth thinned as she confronted obstacles. “Time to get serious.”

“Good.” She was the digital detective; maybe she could work some magic.

“We’ll start with the identity theft arenas.”

“Identity theft?”

“Carding forums, hacker tool startups, you know. East European warez chat rooms. That sort of thing.”

I watched her type, much faster than anyone I’d ever seen. “Spend a lot of time on the dark side, do you?”

“Anyone with money can buy a LexisNexis subscription. This stuff you have to work for, and most reporters don’t bother. Gives me an edge.”

“Hmm.”

“So…let’s see. How about the VA? Saxon’s a vet.”

“You’re going to break into Uncle Sam’s
mainframes
? On your home network? Are you nuts?”

“No, no. But the VA has outright lost tens of thousands of veterans’ records,” she said. “Mostly on misplaced laptops, that sort of thing. The key data is for sale if you know where to ask.”

And Clara did know, apparently. It cost some money. “They like Bitcoin,” she said. “Liberty Reserve was popular for a while, until the Europeans cracked down. It’s all anonymous.”

Learn something new every day. The high-finance criminals I usually deal with have far too much cashflow for fly-by-night digital-gold schemes—they launder their money right through Citi or Bank of A. This ground-level hawala was something I hadn’t seen before.

But no results—another empty net. “What next,” muttered Clara, thinking aloud.

“How about tax returns?” I asked. “He’s Blacktail’s director of security. That’s not an under-the-table kind of position. There must be a W-2 somewhere.”

“You’re right,” she said. “But not even the Feds can get at those. The IRS is mandated to protect privacy, and they do a damn good job of it.”

“Better than the military? We got his 201, after all.”

“It’s their systems, believe it or not. Congress has deliberately underfunded the IRS for years, which means they’re still using these, like, fifty-year-old System/360s running Fortran and storing data on punch cards. Hacking their data is like trying to crack Linear B—it’s so ancient, modern technology is completely frozen out.”

How about that? Maybe I could start filing my own returns again.

“What about professional groups?” Clara asked. “I don’t know, the NRA maybe? What kind of affiliations does a corporate security officer have?”

“I can’t see Saxon going to ASIS conventions in Vegas. And he doesn’t need to read their bulletin.” We tried anyway. There must have been twenty organizations for guys in this sort of job, but we couldn’t find Saxon in any of them.

Close to nine o’clock Clara gave up. “I hate to say it, but I think he’s defeated the internet.”

“He works in New Jersey, lives somewhere in the tristate megalopolis and has taken himself completely off the grid?”

“Apparently.”

“I’m impressed.” Too bad he’d tried to kill me before we had a chance to talk shop. “What now?”

“We know where he works, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well…”

Of course it was the obvious next step. “I’ll drive up in the morning.”

“By yourself?” She frowned. “Given what this guy seems capable of, is that a good idea?”

I felt an odd reaction, defensive and grateful at the same time. Having someone worried about me was not a common occurrence—really, since I got out of the service.

“Maybe I’ll call Zeke.”

“Don’t take stupid chances.” Clara put her hand on mine, next to the laptop.