Walker said, “Yeah, but only thirty-two more today.”
The process had been initiated, and soon fell into a repetitive rhythm. By initiating a new transaction every twelve minutes, the two men could transfer the planned $266 million worth of trades in a day. Each complete transaction took only three to five minutes from start to finish, so Walker spent the rest of the time staring at the wall while Limonov spoke with Kozlov in the other room.
After they finished the seventh trade of the day, Walker looked up and saw it was just after eleven. He stood to stretch his legs and announced, “I’m going to the toilet.”
Kozlov heard him from where he sat on the sofa in the lobby of the little office. As Walker passed him by, heading for the door, the Kremlin operative looked to the security man from Canada. In English he said, “You go with him. Search it.”
“Yes, sir.”
Walker and his armed guard walked down a short hallway and nodded to a local attorney who passed them on his way out of his office for the stairs, and then they came to the second-floor restroom. The Canadian opened the door and saw it was just a simple space with two urinals and two stalls along with a sink and a garbage can. There were no windows, but he quickly opened the stalls, found them empty, and then looked to Walker.
“You going to be long?”
“Heaps longer if you stand there looking at me, mate.”
The big man gave Walker an annoyed look, turned around, and stepped out the door. “I’m in the hall.”
Walker did his business and returned to the office with his guard following behind him.
At one p.m. a Steel Securitas man with a German accent entered the office and brought paper plates of rice and sausage for Limonov and Walker, bought from a corner restaurant, along with bottles of soda from the machine in the lobby of the office building. The two men continued to make the trades, even while they ate. Walker wasn’t in the mood to eat, but Limonov finished quickly and asked the armed security man to go out and grab coffee.
By now Walker had relaxed enough to stop shaking, and he found himself spending much of the time between the trades dispassionately answering Limonov’s constant questions about the technological aspects of BlackHole and the Bitcoin markets in general. The Russian seemed fascinated by it all, and genuinely impressed by the incredible intelligence of Terry Walker.
Walker, on the other hand, just wanted this Russian in his office to shut up and get on with it.
At four p.m. Walker again announced that he needed to use the toilet. The same Canadian security man escorted him down, opened the bathroom door, and looked inside. This time, both stalls were wide open and visible from the doorway, so the man just waved Walker in while he remained in the hall.
Walker entered the restroom, and as the door closed behind him he heard a click. He turned to find a man with gray hair locking the door.
The older man turned back to Walker. Softly he said, “Don’t make a sound, Terry. I’m here to help.”
John Clark looked carefully at Walker, gauging the man’s reaction. If he was going to call out to his guard he would likely do it in the first few seconds, so Clark knew he had to be ready to launch forward the five feet that separated them to stifle the man’s shouts. But Walker just stood there, a look of confusion on his face, along with incredibly bloodshot eyes, obviously from the fatigue and stress of the past day.
To Clark’s relief, Walker replied in a whisper. “Who are you?”
Clark said, “We know the Russians have your family.”
Walker’s whisper was delivered now almost as a shout. “Yeah, and they will kill them if they think I am talking to Americans! Get the fuck out of here before Popov finds you!”
“He won’t know I’m here. You need to trust me.”
“You are FBI?”
“No.”
“CIA?”
“Look, Mr. Walker,” Clark said. “We are experts at doing this sort of thing, all while remaining in the shadows. We know you are converting assets into Bitcoin for someone in the Kremlin. We also know you are doing it to protect your family.”
Walker cocked his head. “The Kremlin?”
“Yes.”
“You mean, like Volodin? The fucking psycho who runs Russia?”
“I was hoping you could tell us.”
Walker rubbed his eyes. “I knew it was a rich Russian, obviously. I just figured it was some sort of Mafia boss.”
“After a fashion,” Clark said.
“Popov, the tough one, acts like a gangster.”
“That would be Kozlov. He works for the Kremlin. Ex-FSB. A very bad man.”
Walker sat down on the toilet slowly. “And the other one? The finance guy?”
“Andrei Limonov. He’s moving money for a high-ranking Kremlin suit. We don’t know who, but it could be Volodin himself. How much money is involved?”
Walker put his head in his hands. “Eight billion. Dollars.”
Clark just said, “Wow.”
Walker said, “Popov will kill them. Noah and Kate. He will really do it, won’t he? If I don’t give him what he wants he’ll kill my wife and kid.”
Clark moved into the other stall and closed the door. Sat down on the next toilet, ready to lift his legs if the guard returned. He said, “I’m not going to lie to you, Terry. Even if you do exactly what they say, these aren’t the type to just say thanks at the end. They are not going to let you or your family go. You just know too much.”
Clark could hear Walker sobbing softly. “What the fuck am I gonna do?”
“You are going to let us find Kate and Noah and get them away from the Russians, and then you are going to help us.”
After an audible sob Walker asked, “Can you really do it?”
“We can and we will. You keep doing what you are doing. Raise no alarm. But we also need you to help us find your family. Have you gotten any information about where they are being kept?”
“Somewhere here in the islands, within fifteen miles or so. On a boat. That’s all I know.”
“How do you know they are on a boat?”
Walker explained the clues Kate and Noah had given him.
Clark said, “She normally gets seasick?”
“Yeah. Violently ill. Don’t know what’s different about this boat.” Walker said, “I’ve got to get back out there. Look, you can’t tell anyone else. The CIA, the FBI. They’ll just come down here and make noise.”
Clark said, “I agree with you there. How much longer till you are finished moving the money?”
“I don’t know. Depends on what the markets do. If trading volume goes up, we’ll increase daily transactions.”
“What’s your best estimate?”
“We’ll probably be finished in two weeks.”
Clark regarded this information. “Can you stall them while we look for your family?”
“That’s impossible. Ivanov… you called him Limonov… he doesn’t know Bitcoin that well, but he is a bloody expert on finance. He really knows his shit. He’s watching me all the time, he sees everything I do. Asks me about anything he doesn’t understand. There is nothing I can do to change this process that he won’t see.”
Clark said, “Okay. Don’t try anything. We’ll get your family back, and then you can help us catch these guys.”
Instead of gratitude, Terry Walker said, “You guys better be fucking certain of your plan. You get my family killed and I’ll give the Russians whatever the fuck they want. You understand me?”
Clark just said, “Go.”
Walker flushed his toilet, then stepped out to the sink and turned on the water. While looking at himself in the mirror he said, “I can’t fucking handle this.”
Clark opened the door to the stall he had been in. “You can, Terry. You have to. Kate and Noah are depending on you.” And then, “You’ve got to get back out there.”