Tecumseh had been an exception to Krakatoa’s employment rules. He had insisted that he wouldn’t tell Krakatoa anything about himself, other than he had served in the German KSK. Which was fair enough.
Krakatoa didn’t believe that Tecumseh had been in the German special forces. He doubted he was even German. But Tecumseh had a high rating and good reviews on the dark web and that was good enough for him.
And so far Tecumseh had provided a good service.
Seventeen
The police station in Akureyri was a miniature version of police headquarters in Reykjavík before they had tarted it up, squatting in its parking lot behind a high, forbidding wire fence. Árni found Magnus a desk, and they set to some serious googling. They needed to find out about Thomocoin and they needed to find out fast.
Thomocoin’s website was slick, a little glitzy, but friendly. ‘Welcome to our community’ was the vibe. Join a band of smart investors all over the globe who could see how the world was changing. Do something good for the countless millions without a bank account and make some money while you are at it. Stay two steps ahead of the game.
Skarphédinn Gíslason, or ‘Sharp’ as he was mostly referred to on the website, was the chief executive, an international banker living in London, ‘originally from Iceland’.
The site boasted that there were over four hundred thousand investors in Thomocoin from all over the world. A ‘white paper’ described the workings of the cryptocurrency in some technical detail. There were pages of investor education, graphs, charts and a number of videos of rousing events where Sharp or the darkly good-looking head of global marketing, Jérôme Carmin, fired up crowds of enthusiastic investors. The graphs looked financial; the videos looked like a cult.
Magnus tried to pin down where Thomocoin was actually located. There seemed to be an address in High Holborn in London, but that didn’t look like a company headquarters. There were occasional references to Thomocoin Holdings SA in Panama.
That figured.
Magnus scanned the section on regulation. This stated in several different ways that Thomocoin was confident it would get approvals to set up exchanges in London, Singapore and Iceland. Apparently, Iceland was the perfect place for the world’s first cryptocurrency as legal tender since it was already almost cashless, and forward-thinking politicians there were eager to promote Iceland as a world leader in digital currencies. Iceland would serve as ‘proof of concept’ for Thomocoin. Once it was seen to work there, it would be rolled out all over the world.
Which explained the pressure Financial Crimes was under.
Given what he had read on the website, Magnus was surprised by how little there was in the international press. There were two interviews with Sharp in major magazines, but that was about it.
‘Got anything interesting, Árni?’
Árni was poking about in the dingier corners of the web, looking for scandal.
‘Not really. There are guys on Reddit forums who think Thomocoin is all a scam, and there are others who say Sharp is a genius. No real evidence one way or another. It all seems to boil down to whether Thomocoin is serious about an exchange or not.’
‘It sounds serious,’ said Magnus.
‘There’s a guy called Krakatoa mentioned in a couple of places. He’s supposed to be the brains behind the operation. There’s some speculation about who he really is. A bunch of Thomocoin true believers think he is Satoshi Nakamoto, the guy who invented bitcoin.’
‘Really?’ said Magnus.
‘Someone else thinks he’s George Soros. Or a Rothschild. Thomocoin is going to take over the world’s banks. Wait a moment! Here’s someone who thinks he’s from Wuhan and he started the coronavirus.’
That’s what you get from looking at the internet, Magnus thought. PR, hype and conspiracy theories.
Magnus’s phone buzzed. A text from Sigurjón. Turned out he had the FBI agent’s details after all. Agent Ryan Malley at the New York Field Office.
Magnus dialled the number and left a message for Agent Malley to get back to him. That probably wouldn’t be until Monday morning New York time at the earliest.
He needed to talk to a real person before then. Someone who might know about Thomocoin as an investor, maybe.
Ollie!
Magnus and his younger brother had been extremely close when they were growing up but had fallen out when it transpired that Ollie had played a part in their father’s death. Ollie had done time as a result of Magnus’s testimony against him in a Massachusetts court.
He had been out of prison for several years now and lived and worked in the Boston area. Or lived and got involved in shady deals in the Boston area.
Putting an ocean between him and his newly released brother had been one of the reasons Magnus had moved back to Iceland three years before, but from the safety of Reykjavík, he had tentatively got back in touch.
And Ollie had tentatively responded.
Thomocoin was just the kind of money-making scheme on the edge of legality that would attract Ollie. And if he didn’t know about it, he would know someone who would.
So Magnus called him.
‘Magnus?’ Ollie’s voice was groggy. ‘Do you know what time it is?’
Magnus checked his watch. ‘Eight-thirty?’
‘On a Sunday! It’s Sunday morning, Magnus.’
Magnus winced. He should have waited another couple of hours.
‘Yeah, sorry, Ollie. How’re you doing?’
‘You woke me up to ask me how I’m doing? I’m sleepy, Magnus, and just a little bit pissed off. How are you?’
‘I’m working on a murder investigation.’
That might impress some people, but not Ollie. ‘Course you are.’
Magnus decided to cut the small talk. ‘And there’s something called Thomocoin involved. A cryptocurrency. Have you heard of it?’
‘Yeah, I heard of Thomocoin. I even looked into it last year.’
‘And?’
‘And it’s a piece of shit.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Classic crypto-Ponzi. They get new investors in to pay off the old investors, or in this case, give them the cash to pay commissions. They make up a price every day on some website. They talk about the coin becoming tradable on an exchange but it never happens. Like I said. A piece of shit.’
‘So how much do you think a Thomocoin is really worth?’
‘Nothing. Zero.’
‘Nothing at all?’
‘Nothing at all. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Magnus, I’ve got someone to see to.’
Magnus heard a female giggle and then Ollie was gone.
At least that was clear.
And not good news for Dísa. Or her family. Or the people of Dalvík who had bought Thomocoin through Helga.
His phone rang. Vigdís.
‘Did you see Ómar?’ Magnus asked her.
‘Just finished with him.’
‘And?’
‘He has an alibi for yesterday morning. Spent Friday night with a woman. Bumped into a neighbour on his way home in the morning. He is certain the neighbour will remember.’
‘Girlfriend?’
‘“Occasional friend”, Ómar called her. I checked with the neighbour on the way out. She did see Ómar at about nine a.m. Saturday morning.’
‘Pretty much when Helga was killed in Dalvík. Did he say anything about meeting Helga last week?’
‘Yes. They met at the Kaffitár on Borgartún. She wanted to talk to him about Thomocoin. She was worried that the currency would never be approved to trade on an exchange. He said he thought it would, but she wanted him to check with a guy called Sharp. A banker friend of his in London.’
‘Did he do that?’
‘He did, after Helga left. Sharp said that there would definitely be at least one exchange approved by the end of the year, and Ómar called Helga the next day and told her that.’