Chapter 274: Good boy!
Two men were sitting in a richly appointed corner office with a view of downtown Stetle and Stetle Lake. One sitting behind a mahogany wood desk, the other sitting in a chair facing the desk.
"What have you managed to dig up, Malcolm?" asked the man behind the desk.
"Not much, Mr. Nakamura. All I could find out about Naoko’s trust fund was that it was created by someone at Summit Partners. So that’s a dead end. Unless you want me to try bribing someone."
"No, let’s not poke that bear," sighed the man behind the desk. "Were you able to learn anything else?"
"Because she switched to using a dumb phone, we had to resort to trailing her manually. Besides attending classes, she spends most of her time at the Grand Wallingford. Her only new association of note is a boy, Jack Waldron. Her boyfriend, based on the way they behave together."
"Oh? And what can you tell me about this new boy?"
"He’s an orphan. Lost his birth parents when he was ten, and lost his adoptive parents more recently, father to a car crash, and his mother to cancer. The boy’s adoptive mother sued her late husband’s employer for negligence and received an undisclosed, out-of-court settlement."
"Do you think it’s the boy who gave my daughter a trust fund?"
"Maybe. We don’t know how big the settlement was or how much of the settlement the boy inherited. We suspect he’s behind North Star Properties, the company that purchased a mansion near NSU. So he might have enough money to create a trust fund for her, but why would he?"
"You mean, why bother with a trust fund when he could have just given her the money directly?"
"Yes."
"Giving her that trust fund was the best way to cut her loose from my grip. If he’s smart, and she told him about my plans for her, then he might have decided to give her a trust fund. Or been advised to if he consulted the right lawyers."
"I guess that’s possible," said Malcolm thoughtfully. "Do you want me to pressure the boy and see what pops out?"
There was a buzz from the intercom on Mr. Nakamura’s desk. He pressed a button and said, "What is it, Elaine?"
"Sir, there’s a package here for you. It was delivered by Nikolai Bykov."
Malcolm’s eyes widened, and Yoshi Nakamura’s nostrils flared almost imperceptibly.
"Thank you, Elaine, bring it in now."
A moment later the door to the office opened, and a petite woman in a short, tight skirt, and deep V-neck blouse walked through the large office. She leaned over to place a manila envelope in front of Yoshi, giving him a perfect view of what was under her blouse.
Ignoring his executive secretary’s tits, he said, "Thank you, Elaine. Close the door on your way out."
Yoshi always stared wolfishly at her tits when she exposed them to him like she just had, so him ignoring her and dismissing her like that was deeply disturbing. The man was insatiable, so for him to ignore her like that meant something was deeply wrong.
As Elaine walked towards the office exit, Malcolm asked, "Do you want me to leave as well?"
"No, whatever this is, I’ll probably need to tell you about it anyway," said Yoshi, sounding nervous for the first time in many years.
He knew about the Bykov’s and knew that most of the people who used Nikolai Bykov’s courier service were powerful. People who could crush him like an ant under their boot heel if they wanted.
He took a deep breath, trying to steady his nerves, then opened the envelope. Inside he found a stack of paper and a thumb drive.
He tilted the envelope and watched the thumb drive slide out onto his desk with the same wariness one would watch a primed nuclear warhead roll through the room.
Trying to ignore the thumb drive, he pulled out the stack of pages, but stopped when he saw what was on the first page. His hands began to shake, as he resumed pulling out the pages.
Placing the stack of paper on his desk in front of him, he stared in shock at the image printed on the first page.
It was a picture of his wife, Kimiko, naked and tied spread-eagle to a rack, and himself holding a whip, mid strike.
This picture should have been impossible. What the picture showed had happened just three days prior, and he still remembered it vividly. This picture was not a deep-fake or a forgery. It was real. And it was impossible.
That room was secure, locked behind several steel doors, and the room was swept for bugs regularly. So how could this picture have been taken!
He looked up at Malcolm, and for the first time in years, he wondered if he had been a fool to trust the man.
With trembling hands, he turned the page. Another picture, another intimate moment. He turned the page again.
Each page was a picture, each picture an intimate moment, taken in a place he thought was safe, secure.
When he turned the page for the tenth time, what he found wasn’t a picture, but a table of names and numbers. A table from a document stored on a laptop he kept secured in his office safe.
The document existed nowhere else but on that laptop. The laptop’s hard drive was encrypted, and only Yoshi knew the passphrase. Malcolm had ensured Yoshi that not even the government had the resources to crack that laptop.
He turned the page, his hand trembling so badly the page fluttered like a leaf in a strong wind, only to reveal another table, this listing all of his off-shore accounts.
After that was a page showing recent transactions from the first off-shore account on the list. And what followed were transaction logs from each of his other off-shore accounts.
With each page turned, his dread increased. And with each page, he felt an invisible noose tightening around his neck.
When he got to the last page, he found one more picture. It showed one of Malcolm’s operatives in the foreground, and his daughter and a young man in the background.
There was a red X drawn over Malcolm’s operative. And below the picture were the words, "This is your first, last, and only warning."
The printed pages painted a picture of power beyond Yoshi’s comprehension. The kind of power that he thought only existed in fiction, the stuff of spy-novel fantasy.
The pages alone were all the evidence he needed to know that whoever had sent them had the power to end him if he failed to heed their warning. And yet they also included a thumb drive.
He shoved the pages towards Malcolm, who had been watching Yoshi was growing concern, then grabbed the thumb drive and jammed it into his laptop.
Malcolm had warned him to never stick an unknown thumb drive into any of his devices. But he figured, if these people had the power to crack his encrypted laptop, then they didn’t need his help getting into his regular laptop.
On the drive, he found video files. He double-clicked on the first, almost certain he knew what he would see, and his suspicion was confirmed when the video started and he saw the same scene of him whipping his wife.
He quickly started, then closed, each video, confirming that each corresponded to one of the pictures on the printed pages.
"Jesus, Yoshi, who did you piss off?!" exclaimed Malcolm.
"I don’t know, and I don’t want to know. Call off your people. Now! Right now!"
As far as Yoshi knew, people with this kind of power expected expeditious responses to their warnings. If he delayed even a moment, he feared they might conclude that he was ignoring their warning.
Malcolm pulled out his phone and started typing messages as fast as his thumbs could manage. Once he had sent the messages, he waited anxiously for replies. One, two, three, bings, and Malcolm slumped back in his chair.
"Done, and confirmed."
Ding!
They both flinched when Yoshi’s private phone dinged, notifying him of a new message.
Yoshi snatched up his phone and unlocked it. He looked at the icon for the normal messaging app, but there was no new-message badge. However, there was a new message badge on his secure messaging app.
With trembling finger he jabbed the secure messaging app icon.
The app opened, and he found there was a new message from an unknown sender. When he opened the message, he saw two words that nearly crushed his soul.
"Good boy!"
He dropped his phone onto his desk, face up, then dropped to his knees, grabbing the trash can from under his desk.
As Yoshi’s stomach tried to turn itself inside out, Malcolm could be heard muttering, "Fuck me."
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Jack exited his remote-presence technique and turned to Naoko.
"It’s done. I don’t think your father will be a problem."
"How did he react?" she asked.
"His hands were shaking so badly at the end he had trouble turning the pages. And your idea to send the secure message? Chef’s kiss."
"Really, what happened?"
"Your father dropped to his knees and started puking into his trash can!"
"Seriously?! Damn. I just wanted to tweak his nose. But puking! Just... Wow!"
She grabbed him in a hug and said, "Thank you, Jack. I really can’t thank you enough. For everything."