False Witness (44 page)

Instead, Wellington focused on the English notes and the English verses the pastor had underlined. He went through the verses systematically, plugging in different iterations from his number sequences. What if he wrote down all the numbers in the verses the pastor had underlined, put them in order, then cross-referenced them against the code? For instance, maybe the first number to appear in the underlined verses corresponded to the number 1 in Kumari's encoded algorithm. He started that exercise but after a few minutes realized that many of these underlined verses probably went back several years, predating the algorithm and the code Kumari had put in place. Next, he focused on any numbers the pastor had written in the margins, applying different approaches to them.

For three hours, Wellington worked his what-ifs and plugged in trial symbols and numbers based on different assumptions regarding underlined verses and margin notes and the strange code Kumari had used. What if this? What if that? Eventually he quit focusing on the Bible and began focusing on the formula itself, applying every decryption trick he had ever learned. Not once did he leave his seat at the table—no breaks, no stretches, just one method after another.

Hours later, all he had to show for his efforts was a growing headache.

75

Friday, April 11

The SunTrust Bank at the intersection of Fourteenth and Peachtree in downtown Atlanta didn't open until 10:00 a.m. Hoffman and his captors—Huang Xu and two other members of the Manchurian Triad—arrived five minutes early in a conspicuous black Lincoln Town Car. At Xu's direction, the driver cruised around the block twice, past the bank building itself, the Peachtree Plaza, and the Sheraton Hotel behind the bank complex.

Traffic on Peachtree Street, the main artery for Atlanta's financial district and the upscale businesses of Buckhead, moved at its usual ultraslow pace, the road jammed with cars and SUVs and lane-hogging delivery trucks. Pedestrian traffic was a steady trickle, not New York City by any means, but enough lawyers and bankers and investment gurus to give the area a self-important, urban feel.

“Park here,” Xu said after the second lap. He pointed to a driveway that looped in front of the Peachtree Plaza, just beyond the entrance to an underground parking garage and adjacent to the bank building. Sitting in the circular drive, the occupants of the car would be able to watch the revolving front doors of the bank and be well positioned for an escape.

“You're coming with me,” Huang Xu said, motioning to Hoffman.

Hoffman took a split second, closed his eyes, and offered a final silent prayer. He got out the back door and waited, like a loyal hunting dog, for Xu to alight from the front passenger seat. Underneath Hoffman's bulky shirt he had been wired for obedience. A number of electrodes—two hooked to his nipples, two to the soft tissue on his upper back near his armpits, two near his hips—were strategically positioned to provide a debilitating electrical surge whenever Xu pulled the trigger on the Taser gun he carried in the pocket of his suit coat. It was, Xu boasted, Taser's newest wireless long-range electric-shock weapon.

Earlier that morning, to show Hoffman the full extent of the range, Xu had the driver of the Town Car pull over in a deserted parking lot. Xu dragged Hoffman out of the car, removed his blindfold, and made him run—ten yards, twenty yards, thirty. The pain of trying to run with cracked ribs was excruciating, but nothing compared to what happened next.

Smiling, Xu pulled the trigger on the Taser, bringing Hoffman to his knees, disrupting his neuromuscular system, and sending his muscles into agonizing contractions as the current pulsed through him in two-second cycles for the longest twenty seconds of Hoffman's life.

A few minutes later, as Xu put the blindfold back on Hoffman, he drove home his point. “Today, my friend, you are an epileptic. Prone to sudden seizures. Lucky for you, I am a physician and will treat you during your convulsions. That's the little role-playing that will happen if you try anything stupid. Understand?”

Hoffman understood. With drool running down his chin and struggling to maintain his balance, Hoffman climbed back into the car. He felt dazed and nauseated for the next ten minutes.

And terrified much longer than that.

When they reached the SunTrust building, Xu followed Hoffman through the revolving doors and into the main lobby. A bank of elevators was located on their left, the open glass doors for the SunTrust lobby on their right, a food court and plaza directly ahead.

They walked into the lobby of the bank and took a seat on the other side of the desk from the customer assistant nearest the door. Xu sat with his back to one of the lobby security cameras, his hand shielding his face from another one. Hoffman sat gingerly, every movement causing sharp pain in his ribs. The nameplate on the lady's desk said she was Cynthia Lawson. Her face was round and pleasant as she gave Hoffman her best customer-service smile. “How can I help you?”

“I need to access my safe-deposit box,” Hoffman said.

“Certainly.”

Hoffman provided his box number and name while Ms. Lawson fished the keys and signature card out of a drawer. Hoffman noticed Xu glance around the bank lobby without ever lifting his head. There were three tellers at the counter, a few customers already forming a line, a branch manager sitting at a desk in a glassed-in corner office, which was partially obscured by open miniblinds, and one other customer assistant seated at a desk in the lobby and flipping through some papers. There was no visible security guard on the premises. One outside wall was all glass, giving the occupants a view of the Fourteenth Street sidewalks.

“Follow me, please,” Ms. Lawson said.

She led them past the side of the bank teller stations and back into a small vault with a massive steel door at least two feet thick. The inside walls of the vault, which Hoffman estimated to be about twenty feet wide by forty feet long, were lined with various sizes of lockboxes, all numbered and shining like coats of armor at a medieval castle. But for the smaller size of the boxes, it reminded Hoffman of a mausoleum he had seen as a child. About a third of the room was actually another small, self-enclosed vault, containing rows of oversize safety boxes and a counter along the length of one wall.

Hoffman showed his driver's license and signed the entrance record card. It was only the second time Box 273 had been accessed. Cynthia Lawson wrote in her name, the client ID, the date, and the time of access.

“Okay,” she said. “Do you have your key?”

Hoffman and Ms. Lawson both inserted their keys into Box 273, a three-by-ten-inch box located at eye level about a third of the way into the room. As Xu watched from behind, his right hand inside his suit coat, the door for Box 273 hinged open and Hoffman pulled out the small, metal rectangular box.

“Do you want to access it here or in a separate, private room?” the clerk asked.

Hoffman looked up at the ceiling-mounted security cameras. “Does the other room have cameras?” he asked.

“No, it doesn't.”

“We'll use that one,” Hoffman said.

He carried the lockbox in both hands, following Cynthia Lawson out of the vault and across the lobby. Huang Xu, his head low, trailed a step behind. Lawson unlocked the door to the small, rectangular room with reinforced block walls, no windows, and a Formica desk that extended across the length of the far wall. A solitary chair faced the desk and wall. A few pens and legal pads were placed neatly along the desk.

“Just call me when you're done,” Lawson said, pointing to a small buzzer next to the door.

After the woman left, David Hoffman carefully placed the lockbox on the desk and removed the lid, exposing a single sheet of paper folded in half.

Outside the bank, Wellington Farnsworth and Isaiah Haywood waited. They had arrived earlier in Isaiah's tricked-out Camaro, complete with spinners, tinted windows, and a Bose sound system that could rock an entire block. Wellington was too stressed to remember the vehicle's side-impact rating.

After riding with Isaiah to Fourteenth Street and pushing an imaginary brake on the passenger's side of the vehicle too many times to count, Wellington wished more than ever that he had checked on that rating. Once they arrived, Isaiah parked directly across the street from the SunTrust Bank and Peachtree Plaza, in the middle of a side alley next to a high-rise commercial building, ignoring the numerous No Parking signs posted on the alley.

Wellington looked at the signs and frowned.

“We can see the bank and that little driveway loop for the Peachtree Plaza next to the bank,” Isaiah said defensively. “Don't sweat it. Nobody will tow the car with me in it.”

What do you mean,
me
in it? What about
us
?

As if in answer to Wellington's thoughts, Isaiah began outlining his plan. “See that outdoor café over there, right next to the bank? I need you to go order a coffee or something and grab one of those seats. You'll be closer to the bank's front door in case we need somebody on foot or they have Hoffman in disguise so we can't recognize him from this distance.”

Both Isaiah and Wellington had studied the pictures of Hoffman provided by Stacie. Still, Wellington didn't feel quite up to completing this new assignment.

“Why don't we stay together? Seems like it would be safer that way.”

“For us, maybe,” Isaiah said. “But this isn't about us anymore.”

Though Wellington couldn't exactly figure out
when
it had stopped being about him, or even
why
it had stopped being about him for that matter, he obediently crossed the street (with the light) and picked up a diet soda and newspaper at the outdoor café.

As he waited, he tried to occupy his mind by focusing on the algorithm encryption, a challenge that had kept him up all night. After he had exhausted several possibilities related to the underlined biblical passages, Wellington had decided to ignore the Bible and try to solve the numbers as some type of substitution pattern. Maybe each number stood for a particular letter or possibly for a different number. When this concept failed to produce results, he assumed that certain combinations of numbers stood for single letters or single numbers. Or perhaps he was supposed to add the numbers in the five-number sequences, or divide them, or add the first and third and subtract the second and fourth.

It would have made him crazy had he been fully rested. Exhausted and stressed-out, he didn't stand a chance.

After twenty minutes of waiting, Wellington saw Hoffman and another man enter the building. Frantic, he called Isaiah immediately.

“I know,” Isaiah said. “I saw them.”

“I'd better come back over so we're ready to go,” Wellington suggested.

“Just sit tight,” Isaiah said. “Stacie should be calling any second.”

In the bank lobby, the second customer assistant, a woman named Tricia, transferred a call to Cynthia Lawson. “There's a problem with an overdrawn account,” Tricia explained. “He sounds pretty upset. He asked for you by name.”