CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

 

 

 

Moscow, Russia

 

 

When Ivan Volkov was a child, history lessons had fallen on deaf ears, but that had certainly changed yesterday. Volkov had paid close attention to Boris Artamonov, the former curator at the Hermitage, when he had described the significance of the historical documents in the collection that Volkov had stolen from Jarkko’s yacht.

Suddenly, the presence of the two Americans made perfect sense.

They were seeking an unfound Maltese treasure.

Although Volkov looked forward to getting revenge on the Finn and his gun-toting friends, he was even more excited about the possibility of unearthing a staggering sum of wealth. As a criminal with connections throughout Eastern Europe, he had heard rumors about a treasure train filled with gold and artifacts that had been located in a remote part of Romania.

He knew it was somehow tied to the death of Grigori Sidorov, the leader of a Russian extremist group known as the Black Robes that had caused Volkov’s organization a lot of problems over the years. But unlike the religious Sidorov, Volkov didn’t make his decisions based on dogma or blind faith.

Instead, he acted on reliable information.

Cold, indisputable truths.

That’s why he only hired the best hackers in the world.

They gave him an edge that no one else had.

The previous night, Volkov had tasked his cadre of computer specialists to track down any information that they could find on the Maltese treasure. He had given them several historical keywords (Hompesch, Paul I, Knights of Malta, etc.) to search for, and a number of modern ones (Payne, Jones, etc.) as well, hoping that they might stumble upon a digital breadcrumb that would give him a tactical advantage in his search for his rivals and/or the treasure.

At a ripe age of twenty-seven, Mikhail Blokhin was the most experienced member of Volkov’s hackers. He was paid an incredible amount of money to do what he did and rarely had to deal with Volkov in person—which was fine by Blokhin because he knew how unhinged Volkov could actually be. Most of their communication was done via phone or computer, while Blokhin and his crew worked in a non-descript warehouse in central Moscow.

Volkov had spared no expense when arming the collective. They had the best equipment and the fastest network in the entire city, outside of the government itself. Because of this edge, he expected results, and often got violent when his employees let him down.

Of course, that hadn’t been mentioned during the hiring process.

Blokhin had only discovered it when his superior had been fired.

Not just relieved of his duties, but tied to a pole and burned alive.

Now the pressure was on him to deliver results.

Thankfully, he had found something of value.

Volkov smiled when he glanced at his phone. He knew Blokhin wouldn’t be calling with bad news. That was usually delivered by email or text, if at all. Sometimes if the news was awful enough, the man responsible would simply pack a suitcase and run.

Little did they know, Volkov always relished the hunt that followed.

It usually made the bad news worth it.

Volkov answered in Russian. “Did you find something?”

Blokhin swallowed hard in his office. Whenever he spoke with Volkov, he assumed his life was on the line, and this was no exception. Even though he was calling to deliver good news, he realized that Volkov could have changed his mind about the project overnight, making this call moot and a waste of Volkov’s valuable time. “Yes, sir, I did.”

“Well, spit it out!”

Blokhin did the opposite. He swallowed harder. “Sorry, sir. My apologies. As you requested, I took the keywords that you provided and ran a comprehensive search on multiple networks in order to locate any threads that connected those terms in an unusual way. This was done to eliminate the type of results that one would expect in a search of this kind. Obviously historical figures like Paul the First and the Knights of Malta were going to be cross-referenced in thousands of results, but by tweaking my algorithms, I was able to weed out high-traffic sites like Wikipedia and focus on threads that were found in non-traditional forums.”

“Such as?”

“Sites about antiquities, treasure hunting, ancient maps, and so on. That’s where you find purveyors of artifacts—people who are buying and selling ancient items. Most of these sites are located on the dark web or similar networks in order to protect the identity of those involved, but as you know, those sites aren’t as secure as people think.”

Volkov thought of Sergei Bobrinsky and smiled.

His actions had made all of this possible.

“And what did you uncover?” Volkov asked.

Blokhin stared at his computer screen. “I found a post from five days ago on an obscure Maltese forum seeking information on any communication between Grand Master Ferdinand von Hompesch and Emperor Paul the First of Russia. A reply came the following day that directed the original poster to a highly encrypted network where they could have a private conversation.”

Volkov did the math in his head.

Four days ago was prior to his appearance in Malta.

But it coincided with Payne and Jones’s flight from America.

Perhaps this was what had triggered their journey.

“Please continue,” Volkov said.

Blokhin nearly fell out of his chair when he heard the word “please”. Until that moment, he didn’t think his boss was capable of pleasantries. “Using the processing power of our clustered network, I was able to crack the encryption within a few hours and view the contents of their conversation. Once we’re done with the call, I can send you the entire transcript if you’d like.”

Volkov groaned. “Fine! But get to the point!”

“Sorry, sir,” Blokhin said as his nerves reappeared. “Their chat was more than a simple exchange of information. It was a negotiation for a collection of letters written by Hompesch in the months after he departed Malta, and they settled on a price of one million American dollars.”

“You’re sure of this?”

“As sure as I can be, sir. Obviously I can’t confirm the veracity of the letters or their content, but I can verify the conversation itself. The transcript is quite clear.”

Volkov smiled at the news. “What do we know about the posters?”

“That took a little more doing. The two parties involved obviously knew their way around computers. Both of them routed their access through multiple proxies and VPN lines in order to throw off their scent, but I was able to trace the original poster by his device itself. Few people know this, but whenever data is accessed on the Internet, the requesting device leaves a digital footprint. Normally this wouldn’t be that big a deal if the user was working on a brand-name phone or computer, because there are literally millions of those devices floating around and they all have a similar footprint. But in this case, the device signature was extremely useful since the buyer in question was using a prototype manufactured by Payne Industries.”

Volkov laughed at his opponent’s error. Only a skilled hacker would have spotted it. “Excellent work! Truly excellent! And what about the seller?”

Blokhin was energized by his boss’s praise. “It gets better, sir. As you know, we constantly keep tabs on your rivals in order to exploit their weaknesses whenever we can, and when I was trying to track down the seller through the digital mist, I started to notice some similarities in tactics between him and one of your competitors. The same proxies. The same VPN lines. The same everything. Sure, their IP information is obscured—meaning we couldn’t track them to a specific location—but their pattern is still recognizable. And since I was already familiar with this particular pattern, I’m fairly confident I have identified the seller.”

“Who is it?” Volkov growled.

“Your old friend Kaiser.”

Volkov practically cackled with delight. Not because the two of them were comrades, but because they were bitter enemies. Two titans who clashed in the night, fighting for the same realm, each desperate to rid the world of the other.

Much like Volkov himself, Kaiser had emerged from nothing to launch a criminal empire. Starting as a supply sergeant in the U.S. military, he had realized he could make great money by delivering illegal goods to soldiers overseas. Long before Amazon, Kaiser had figured out a way to get people what they wanted faster than anyone else and had made millions in the process. But due to the proliferation of the Internet, Kaiser had been forced to change his business model and extend his network into new regions, and that included a profitable foray into Russia.

For the past decade, the two criminals had exchanged multiple body blows, yet neither had managed to knock out his opponent, despite several violent attempts.

But this seemed like a golden opportunity to finally finish the job.

That, and so much more.

In one fell swoop, Volkov could take out the Finn, the Americans, and Kaiser.

And as a billion-dollar bonus, maybe find a treasure as well.

Volkov was practically salivating. “When are they meeting?”

“Tomorrow night at nine.”

“In Malta?”

“In Finland. On the southernmost island of Suomenlinna.”