Constant Fear (5 page)

CHAPTER 8

T
he soft, middle-aged flab of Javier’s half-naked body sickened Fausto, who insisted his hostage get dressed. Minutes later, Javier stood inside his sizable bedroom closet, with Fausto and three of his sullen and silent minions keeping careful watch. Javier trembled putting on a dress shirt, and his hands shook too violently to do up the buttons, so he exchanged that outfit for an easy-to-slip-on black T-shirt and baggy gray sweatpants.

Fausto bristled at the final clothing choice. He preferred finer-looking fashions, but this was an American look through and through. Almost everything about the country displeased him—the women being the notable exceptions.

“¿Dices que eres mexicanoamericano?”
Fausto said to Javier as he watched him fumble with his clothes. (“You call yourself Mexican American.”)
“Pero, ¿qué es mexicano de ti? Nada. Eso.”
(“But what is Mexican about you? Nothing. That’s what.”)

“I love Mexico, Fausto, and, believe me, I am committed to the cartel’s mission. Please, you must know this.”

Javier knew to speak only in Spanish.

“You are committed to nothing but your disgusting self,” said Fausto. “If you loved Mexico so much, why not visit there? Why not live there? Oh, are you worried about the murders? The crime? Please, Javier, you of all people should know it is mostly just drug dealer against drug dealer. The finance types like you, they live a life of luxury. You listen too much to the media, my friend.”

Once Javier was dressed, Fausto escorted him from the bedroom to the dining room, with the other men in tow. The dining-room chairs were heavy black lacquer over oak, and suitable for Fausto’s purposes.

“Did you know,” said Fausto, running a hand along the smooth finished surface of one of the chairs, “Cancun and Cabo San Lucas have murder rates lower than Arizona?
Lower!
” Javier did not seem impressed, and this made Fausto angry. “Washington, D.C.—four times the number of murders in Mexico City. Four times, Javier. But
you,
you’re an American. You’ve lost touch with your people, your heritage.” Fausto crowded Javier and gave his cheek several patronizing pats with his hand. “But your heritage is about to reach out and touch you real hard. Pick up that chair. Carry it downstairs for me. You can call it exercise.”

Fausto would have two more chairs brought down in addition to the one Javier had carried. He would have three hostages here soon enough.

The unfinished side of the basement was nothing special, just a concrete room with a water tank, furnace, and a lot of ductwork. Javier kept his tools down here, however, and it was among them that Fausto had found the drill.

In a matter of minutes, two of Fausto’s men had lashed both of Javier’s ankles to the legs of the chair. Right away, the ankles began to swell. Javier’s arms were wrenched behind his back and secured with rope.

Slapping the tip of a twelve-volt Black & Decker power drill against his meaty palm, Fausto hovered in front of Javier’s chair and appraised his hostage thoughtfully. The drill had an orange plastic casing and a dull silver bit, which Fausto enjoyed spinning. The
whir
put a smile on his face and gave Javier a flash of the assassin’s gold metal mouth.

Four armed men from Sangre Tierra accompanied Fausto in the basement. They had all crossed the border on false passports, along with Fausto, and had spent days together in a van. The van was the best way to transport the assault rifles the men had picked up in San Diego, along with other weapons concealed in various pockets and belts of their tactical clothing.

Upstairs, three other members of the cartel waited. They had come by plane, and they would greet Stacey when she arrived home from work and Gus when he returned from school.

Fausto had Javier’s phone. He looked up Stacey’s number in his contacts. “I’d have you send the message, but maybe you have a code word or something established for a situation just like this,” Fausto said. “Who knows? You could be very well prepared. What do you call your wife, other than her name? Is it sweetie? Darling? Honey? Don’t lie to me. Bad things happen to people who don’t tell the truth.”

“Honey,” Javier said. “I’d say, ‘honey.’”

“Oh, how sweet,” said Fausto, sounding sincere.

To Stacey, Fausto typed in English:
Come home honey! I’ve got a big surprise for you. We’re taking a vacation. Bags are packed. We’re leaving soon so hurry home!

Thirty seconds later, Stacey typed back:
OMG!!! Are u serious?

There was some back and forth texting, half of it written by Fausto, but guided by Javier. Stacey needed a little cajoling to become convinced she could act so spontaneously. Eventually, she decided that she could.

Stacey’s last message read:
I’m so excited. Leaving work now. Love U!!!

Fausto sent a similar text message to his son and told him to take a cab home. Gus’s reply came back quick:
No WAAAAAAAYY so pumped!! Love you Pop!

Fausto showed the replies to Javier. Everything needed to hurt.

“Soto doesn’t explain stuff to me,” Fausto said. “He tells me to go get his money, but he doesn’t tell me how. So you’ll tell me everything I need to know, deal?”

Javier’s chin was touching his chest in defeat.

Fausto lifted his head, using the tip of the drill. He wanted the eye contact. “Educate me.”

“What do you want to know?” asked Javier.

“Everything,” Fausto said.

Javier tried to speak, but an unexpected sob choked his voice. Fausto looked annoyed. To quiet the man down, Fausto slipped the drill bit into Javier’s ear. Out of instinct, Javier pulled his head to one side to dislodge it, but Fausto grabbed hold of his chin and held him in place.

“Ssh, ssh, ssh, my friend,” Fausto said. “Calm down or something messy could happen here. My finger could slip.”

Javier stopped thrashing. The tears dried up enough for him to find his voice. Many years of experience had taught Fausto that terror was a special kind of motivator.

Javier explained everything. When he finished speaking, Fausto extracted the drill from Javier’s ear canal. “These bitcoins,” Fausto said. “They don’t exist? They’re not real?” His curiosity was earnest.

“No,” Javier gasped, and spat. “They’re . . . real.”

“So I can buy things with them? Clothes? A car? That Dunkin’ Donuts coffee you all drink?”

Javier tried to answer, but again the words got stuck in his throat. He shut his eyes tight. Then, like a free diver before making a descent, he took in several readying breaths.

“Just relax,” Fausto said. “I won’t hurt you if you help me.”

Javier nodded several times. He’d be compliant. “You can buy things, yes,” Javier said. “Or exchange them for other types of currency.”

“And this kid you mention, he exchanged the bitcoins for real cash?”

“Not all,” Javier said, his voice still shaky. “It was only a couple thousand dollars’ worth, but it was a dumb thing to do.”

“Why ‘dumb’?”

“Because we could trace the coins to the new owner,” Javier said. He stopped speaking to look once more at the empty chairs next to his. “The seller used this thing called a proxy server to mask his IP address, but my computer consultant said it was an ‘unsophisticated means of tunneling.’ Those were his exact words.”

“Who is this consultant?”

“He calls himself The Lion. I can get you in touch with him.”

“You will.”

“Please, Fausto,” Javier said. “Keep my family out of this. I’ll help you. I promise. I’ll do anything. Just leave them alone.”

Instead of the ear, Fausto set the tip of the drill against Javier’s leg, directly at midthigh. The leg began to buckle and shake in a grand mal seizure way, but Fausto kept the contact point.

“They are a part.” Fausto indicated to the empty chairs. “You are a part.” He motioned to Javier. “And we are a part.” Fausto gestured to himself and his henchmen. “We’re all in this mess together,” he said, making a big circle with his hands, a big mess encompassing everyone.

“Okay. Okay. I got it. I got it,” Javier said. He was close to hyperventilating. “What do you know about the bitcoin business?”

“I know nothing, except that I’m here to get the money back,” Fausto said.

“It started when Soto had a lot of cash he wanted cleaned,” Javier said. “More than I’d seen before. Instead of cleaning it through bank accounts like I’d been doing, I suggested we could use that money to make more money. I’d been reading about this currency, and I told him he could buy computers so we could mine for bitcoins.”

Fausto looked puzzled. “Mine for them? Like dig-in-the-ground mine?”

“Not the ground,” Javier said. “Computational mining. Very powerful computers solving complex problems.”

“What kind of problems?”

“Computations that help to guarantee the integrity of bitcoins’ general ledger.”

“What does that mean?”

“Every bitcoin transaction has to be validated,” Javier said.

“You’re clear as fog,” Fausto said.

“How do you prove somebody bought and sold something that you can’t hold?” Javier said. “You can count dollars, weigh gold and silver, but how do I prove that I have as many bitcoins as I say I do? I could be faking it. Without proof, nobody would trust the system, and the currency would be worthless. The bitcoin ledger, that’s the official accounting of all the bitcoins bought and sold. The computational mining we do validates that every transaction on the ledger is real. It’s complex computing work, but anytime a bitcoin miner can confirm a block of transactions is real, they get bitcoins rewarded to them for the effort. Mining it is hard computing work. It’s how they limit the number of bitcoins in circulation, which helps sustain value.

“So Soto bought a bunch of expensive computers with his money, and he’s using those computers to mine for these bitcoins.” A strange, almost excited look had replaced Javier’s more terrified one. It was, after all, his idea; and with lots of highly educated but underpaid computer experts in Mexico, Soto had little trouble getting the operation off the ground.

“And that’s how you collected two hundred million dollars’ worth of these bitcoins? By mining them?”

“Not all,” Javier said. “I also bought bitcoins on the exchange, but those transactions were anonymous. Nobody knows I bought them, unless I try to off-ramp the bitcoins.”

“‘Off-ramp’?”

“That’s where you sell the bitcoins. Owners of the coins are anonymous until they sell their coins. When somebody sells, the transaction gets broadcast for the whole bitcoin community to see.”

“So that’s how you know this kid from the school took the money?” Fausto asked.

Javier nodded. “Yes, yes. The Lion traced the seller’s IP address. I was shocked to see that the coins were sold from Pepperell Academy.”

Fausto was beginning to understand, and it pleased him. “How do you know who at the school took the coins?” Fausto asked.

“The Lion worked his magic and somehow penetrated the school’s computer network. From there, he got a name—David Townsend from Chicago.”

“So then we go and get this David person to give us back our money.”

“It’s not that easy,” Javier said.

“Why not?”

“The Lion hacked into David’s computer at school. I figured we could get the money back before anybody even knew it was gone. My guy said it wasn’t easy to do. I guess this David kid is a computer nut himself and he had all sorts of firewalls and protections, things I don’t understand. Eventually he managed to get in, and that’s when he showed me messages between David and his friends about the theft.”

“Friends?”

“They call themselves The Shire.”

Fausto creased his brow. “The Shire? What’s that?”

“It’s the name of their club,” Javier said. “These kids are a group, a cartel of sorts. They’re like cyber bank robbers or something. They steal from rich parents of kids who go to Pepperell Academy and give the money anonymously to different charities. My guy, he figured how to decrypt the group’s charter and I read it. It details their methods. They use key loggers, different ways of getting pass codes to bank accounts, and then they transfer out small sums of cash.”

“So they hacked into your computer here at your home. Is that it?” Fausto looked aggrieved.

“It’s the only way they could have emptied my bitcoin wallet.”

“And they took two hundred million dollars’ worth of these coins?”

Javier nodded grimly.

“You kept that much money in one stupid wallet?” Fausto looked to his accomplice. “Efren, how much money do you have in your wallet?” he asked.

The stocky man reached into his back pocket, took out his brown leather wallet, and counted the bills within. “About six hundred pesos and a few hundred in dollars,” he said.

Fausto, animated, pointed to Efren. “You see? That’s a normal amount of money to have in a wallet. A few hundred dollars. Not
two hundred million, cabrón.
”

“It’s different with bitcoins,” Javier said.

A shadow crossed Fausto’s face. He crouched to get eye level with Javier. “They emptied your big, fat wallet. It’s no different,” he said. “So we go find this David person and we get the money back. End of problem.”

Javier shook his head. It wasn’t the end of anything. “I’ve read the e-mails and text messages the kids have been sending to each other. They don’t have the money. At least they say they don’t.”

This captured Fausto’s attention.

“Or one of them is lying about not knowing,” Fausto said. “Maybe they picked each other’s pockets. Two hundred million dollars is a lot of reasons to betray a friend.”

“What do you suggest we do, Fausto?” Efren asked.

“How many are in this group, this Shire?” Fausto asked.