AFTER CANCELING HIS RETURN flight to Reagan International in Washington, Nathan Silverman booked passage on a direct flight out of Austin to San Francisco and from there a one-hour shuttle to Los Angeles. If Booth Hendrickson, on behalf of the attorney general or anyone else in the Department of Justice, had indeed been conveying a message to cease and desist, the effect on Silverman was the opposite of what had been intended.
At 2:50 Saturday afternoon, in San Francisco International, as he sat near the appropriate gate, awaiting a boarding call for the commuter flight, he received an email from the L.A. field office. Enhancement of the park video and facial-recognition processing had determined that the man carrying the two briefcases, with a metallic balloon tied to one wrist, was Robert Frances Branwick, alias Jimmy Radburn, who operated a collectible-record store called Vinyl, which was a front for a cybercrime operation. The FBI had been conducting electronic surveillance on Radburn’s business, gathering data about his client list in preparation for a sweeping series of arrests.
The musclebound specimen who had been foiled at the hotel entrance by the chain and padlock was Norman “Kipp” Garner. He was of interest to various police agencies because they believed that he was a conduit for dark money coming out of certain totalitarian regimes for investment in criminal enterprises in the United States, though insufficient evidence existed to press charges against him.
As the boarding call came and Silverman got to his feet, he was unable to imagine anything in those briefcases, given their source, that wouldn’t incriminate Jane. Depending on what evolved in Los Angeles, he might not be able to delay much longer before reporting her to the director and opening an official investigation.
He refrained from doing so now only because of his faith in her and because, according to her father-in-law, unnamed players had threatened to kill her child. Ancel Hawk’s claim that young Travis was a target had become more credible following Silverman’s encounter with Booth Hendrickson.
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ON INTERSTATE 405, by the time Jane was drawing near to Long Beach, one thrombosis after another began to form in the traffic. Even the carpool lane was stop-and-go. She resorted to the kind of driving that annoyed her when others did it, frequently changing lanes to get around a clot of vehicles, weaving in and out to take advantage of a length of open pavement that might gain her only a hundred yards.
She was propelled by the thought of Overton’s corpse lying in his big walk-in closet since the previous night. Initially she had told herself that he wouldn’t be found until Monday. Now she could imagine a variety of scenarios in which a missed weekend engagement might motivate a friend to become concerned enough to pay a visit to the house. News of the attorney’s death would not necessarily be at once conveyed to other members of his vicious confederacy, but if it was, Shenneck would be even more security conscious.
In the passenger seat, for the past hour, Dougal Trahern had been studying satellite photos of Gee Zee Ranch. Occasionally he muttered to himself, but he didn’t speak to Jane until they were passing Inglewood. “Take the ten west to PCH and then north.”
A short while later, Jane turned onto the Pacific Coast Highway. She again passed Palisades Park, where roller-skating Nona had drop-kicked Jimmy Radburn and snatched the two briefcases on Wednesday, though this time she was on the ocean side of the park, the Palisades rising on her right.
“Now where?” she asked.
Trahern recited an address in Malibu, and at last he gave her a shorthand version of how to get past security at Gee Zee Ranch.
Although he didn’t plan to fly the bird, she expected the part with the helicopter. He’d been a Special Forces helo pilot, which was one reason she had gone to him.
The other component, however, seemed over-the-top. She didn’t say as much right away. She owed him thoughtful consideration. But she began to worry that in spite of his military heroism and his genius as an investor and his management skills evident in the free kitchen that he had established, his psychological problems made him a less-than-ideal strategist.
14
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NATHAN SILVERMAN PARKED the airport rental car a block from Vinyl, stiffed the parking meter, and walked to the record store.
Sunset was almost an hour away, but the gunmetal sky plated over the sun so effectively that the San Fernando Valley huddled under a premature dusk.
An agent at the front door of Vinyl checked Silverman’s ID before letting him inside. “Sir, the action’s on the second floor.”
The framed vintage posters on the walls and the bins of collectible records remained as they had been. The back room contained even more of that inventory.
He heard voices on the second floor. When he got upstairs, he found a forest of abandoned furniture and a table heaped with snack foods. But there wasn’t a single computer or scanner or other piece of equipment used in the Dark Web business that had been conducted there, not even so much as one extension cord or cable tie.
Present were John Harrow, SAC of the L.A. office, whom he knew, and two other agents who were unknown to him.
Harrow, with his gray crew cut and shoulders-back posture and sharply pressed suit and alert demeanor, was as clearly ex-military as a man could be. As the section chief of the Critical Incident Response Group, Silverman oversaw among other things the five Behavioral Analysis Units. Unit 2, which dealt with cybercrime and related issues, had been advising Harrow in the matter of Robert Branwick, alias Jimmy Radburn, for the better part of a year.
“There’s a bogus traffic cam,” Harrow said, “watching the front entrance. Phone and off-phone conversations are on auto-record for delayed review. With everything else going down these days, we don’t have personnel for twenty-four/seven surveillance, but we do regular drive-bys. Never seemed they’d bail from here without discussing it, which we’d have caught in plenty of time with the delayed review.”
A dreary mood had overtaken Silverman. “So they vacated quickly but discreetly.”
“Yeah. As if they discovered we had them boxed and ready to put away.” He waited a beat, then said, “Do you have a rogue, Nathan?”
Silverman didn’t miss the calculation in Harrow’s use of the word you instead of we. These days, the Bureau was, as it had always been, a loyal brotherhood—except when it wasn’t.
Instead of answering, he said, “Branwick’s ego weighs as much as his brain. He’s convinced he’s been clever about his identity, that no one but Kipp Garner knows his real name isn’t Radburn.”
“Yes. Unless…someone told him different.”
“Have you grabbed him?”
“Not yet. An hour ago we put surveillance on the Sherman Oaks house. We’re going after all the rats before they scatter, and at the same time, so they can’t warn one another.”
“Are you going with SWAT at the Branwick house?”
“Yeah. That’s where the big prize is, and where we’re likely to get a hard pushback. All those guys in the hacking crew that worked here—they’re gutless wonders. The moment they see a badge, they’ll be outbidding one another to sell each other out.” He looked at his watch. “It goes down after dark. We’re on our way over there now.”
“I’ll be there,” Silverman said.
“If Branwick knows we have his real name, if he’s skipped, you have a rogue.”
“It’s not that simple, John,” Silverman said, and hoped that he would not have to eat his words, at least not just a few hours after speaking them.
15
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