No Fortunate Son (Pike Logan, #7)(31)

Palmer took the folder and said, “Anything good?”

“No, sir. Nothing much at all.”

He simply nodded, dismissing Kurt to sit with George. Kurt walked away, a feeling of deceit flowing through him, causing conflicting emotions. On the one hand, he wanted any lead on Kylie to pan out. On the other, a part of him hoped it didn’t involve the vice president’s son.

Lost in his thoughts, he failed to register President Warren entering the room. George elbowed him, and they stood, along with everyone else. To Kurt’s surprise, the vice president followed behind. The sight of him brought another twinge of regret for keeping silent.

President Warren said, “Have a seat. Let’s get this going.”

This time, it was Alexander Palmer himself giving the briefing. He started by stating where they stood on the search, which was basically nowhere. All the investigative effort had come up with very little. The murder of the secretary of defense’s son was a bust, with the command in Honduras stating he was supposed to be on duty, and since he’d basically gone AWOL, they had no thread at all. The information on the twins was no better. They had simply disappeared without a trace, and there wasn’t the faintest clue as to whether they were still on Okinawa or not. Still alive or not. The only lead was the Morocco ferry receipt from England related to the VP’s son, but that, too, had produced little.

Palmer finished the section and the president said, “That’s all we’ve got? The most powerful government on earth and we come up with nothing?”

Kurt had to physically stop himself from rising up at that point. Palmer saved him. “No, sir. All it will take is one break, and this thing could crack open completely. And we might have that break.”

He flipped a slide and said, “We received more communication from the terrorists, which is good. Every time they talk to us, they open themselves up to being found.”

The president said, “So we got something from this communication? A possible location? The name of the group?”

“Well, no. Not exactly. They once again masked their ISP.” Palmer tilted his head at the side and said, “We don’t know where it came from, but here it is:”

We could keep these men forever, much like you have at Guantánamo Bay and your secret prisons, but we are not like you. Lives matter. Even these lives. In the words of the prophet,“. . . if any one slew a person—unless it be for murder or for spreading mischief in the land—it would be as if he slew the whole people: and if any one saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of the whole people.” You are the ones spreading mischief in our lands, but these men are mere puppets of your blasphemous regime. How much are they worth to you? How much are you willing to pay?

President Warren said, “So here we go. Let me guess, get all US persons out of the Middle East?”

“Actually, no. In this case, they’re talking about real money.”

Kerry Bostwick, the D/CIA, said, “What the hell? They want to ransom them? That makes no sense whatsoever.”

The SECDEF said, “What’s the price?”

“One hundred thousand Bitcoins.”

Secretary Billings said, “What the hell is a Bitcoin?”






20




Alexander Palmer looked to a woman on his right. She rose and said, “Sir, I’m Nancy Phelps of the FBI’s financial crimes division. To answer your question, Bitcoin is a form of digital currency that is fairly anonymous. It has no physical, tangible properties, like a dollar bill, but it is worth money and can be exchanged for cash. It’s a way for the terrorists to get something of value without us being able to catch them. They want to prevent us from setting up any traps by avoiding hard currency. No wire transfers, no banks, no suitcases full of cash to pass off. Basically, they give us a digital address and we transfer the ‘coins,’ all done over the Internet.”

President Warren said, “Can we track it?”

She said, “Not if they set up certain protocols. It’s not like wiring money, with all the regulations involved. The Bitcoins will simply go to an address on the Internet. If their current expertise is any indication, we won’t know where that is. But when they exchange it for real money, we might be able to track that. Every Bitcoin transaction is maintained in a log, so when those coins resurface, we’ll know they’re the ones we paid, and we can then possibly get a real address to work back from. Sooner or later, if they want to use them on anything besides novelty sites on the Web, they have to have a bank account that takes real money. And that account will be tied to a name.”

“So if we give them the coins, they can’t ever use them? Surely they know that.”

“Well, there are ways around the problem. There are mixing sites that will take your coins and intermingle them with others.”

“Speak English, please.”

She paused for a moment, gathering her thoughts, then said, “Say you marked a bunch of quarters, then gave them to me. Every time I spent one of the marked quarters, someone would know. Now say I want to guarantee my anonymity. I get together with fifty or a hundred other folks with quarters, and we put them all in a bag and shake it up. When I’m done, I simply count out the number of coins I put in the bag. What I end up with is washed quarters. The mixing sites work the same way, only digitally. When they’re done, our Bitcoins will be spread out all over the place. We could track them to the mixing site, but little else.”