“I know where Belize is,” he said. “But why there?”
“Belize has become another tax haven,” she said, her face back in the tablet. Screens everywhere, Peter hated them. It was convenient for everything except actual human interaction. “Like the Caymans, the Bahamas, the British Virgin Islands, a bunch of other places. A good place to hide both your income and the names behind your corporate identity.”
“So how do we find out more about Western Holdings?”
“This isn’t really my area,” she said, “but my guess is we don’t. I’m on that right now. Give me a few minutes. This cheap-ass tablet is really slow.”
She tapped and read and the night rolled past outside the windshield. She had the bag of ice on her lip again.
“Okay,” she said finally. “Apparently, incorporating in Belize gives you a lot of protections. You’re required to disclose almost nothing, not even any company personnel or shareholders. You only need a single registered agent, which can be you or any person working for a specialized company that provides that service. You’re not required to disclose any information about the actual shareholders, which could be you, or could be one or more corporations. This would provide still another level of identity protection.”
“But we have a place to start, right?”
“Sure,” she said. “But if they want to be really tricky, they use more than one country. A global web of registered agents from Belize to the Caymans to Singapore to fucking Luxembourg. It’s a way to exhaust the resources of anyone trying to track them, because every added step costs more time and more money. So unless we have serious allegations against the corporation itself, and we can get the U.S. government involved, this is a dead end.”
“What about the algorithm? Can the skeleton key get in there?”
“Fucked if I know,” said June. “I don’t even know how to find it, let alone use it. We better not count on it.”
Peter sighed. “So we’re back to physical locations. SafeSecure in Rainier Valley. What about the addresses on the driver’s licenses? Are those real?”
“Let me look.” More tapping. “Google Maps thinks they are. So we can start there.”
“Well, that’s something,” he said. “Anything else you can do from here?”
“Not on this machine. When I get home, I’ll have more resources.” She set down the tablet and picked up her phone. “I just want to get my email accounts set up.”
“Right,” said Peter. “If you can’t check email every ten minutes, your head will explode.”
“We can’t all be antiques.” She was swiping at the small screen, not looking at him. “Do you even have an email address?”
“Sure.”
“When was the last time you checked it?”
He had to think. “A month ago?”
She snorted. “How are you even employed?”
“I’m on sabbatical,” he said. “And I’m not interested in the virtual world anyway.”
He wasn’t going to admit to being unemployed. Or living out of his truck, for that matter. Regardless, he didn’t need to be employed, not ever again, although he had complicated feelings about that.
June didn’t seem to be paying attention to him, anyway. After a few more minutes with her nose to the screen, she set her phone on the center console, pillowed her jacket against the door, and closed her eyes. “I think I’ll crash for a while.”
Peter started to answer, but stopped himself. She’d already fallen asleep, her mouth partway open.
He watched the darkened landscape, dimly lit. From inside the car, he couldn’t tell whether he was moving through the land or he was stationary and the land was passing beneath him.
After a few minutes, June began to snore.
She sounded like a rhino with a sinus infection.
But those freckles. And that attitude.
Oh, man.
21
Three hours later, the fuel gauge getting low, Peter pulled off the highway.
June came awake on the ramp and hopped out of the minivan at the pumps. She paced back and forth under the unearthly gas station lights while he filled the tank. She talked a mile a minute, as if she’d been thinking in her sleep.
“So our guys, they’re definitely pros,” she said. “They’re ex-Army, and working for somebody who doesn’t want to be known. Some kind of hidden operation.”
“Yeah,” said Peter. He needed more coffee. “They actually could be government, you know. Off-book groups have been known to pretend to be in the private sector. It’s the easiest way to hide from oversight. And you could understand why Uncle Sam would want the algorithm.”