“What about Aaron and Gloria?” Kynan asks.
“I’m not sure,” I say truthfully. “He asked me if there was a kid in the picture. He must have remembered Bebe had a child. I lied and told him I hadn’t seen a kid. In fact, I didn’t give him much info about Bebe. Never divulged exactly where I’d located her or what I’d seen.”
“Thank fuck for that,” Kynan mutters.
“I wasn’t going to put her in unnecessary danger. Despite how you must feel about me, know that from the moment he sent me to Cranberry to look for a woman, I operated in a manner that would protect her from whatever Anatoly had planned. That was my sworn duty to the FBI.”
“Even if it meant risking your cover?” Kynan asks skeptically.
“Yes,” I simply affirm.
Kynan nods, his expression clearly grateful. “Now, tell me what you’re doing to bring him down.”
I push forward in my chair, moving to the edge and leaning a forearm on the table. “About five years ago, we got whiff of some hackers operating out of Ukraine and Russia who were targeting U.S. citizens, among other countries. We started tracing backward as best we could, but cybercrimes are incredibly hard to track to the source because of proxy servers and such. So we ended up using some CI’s—”
“CI’s?” Kynan asks.
“Confidential informants,” I explain. “Low-level black hats. And the word on the street was Bogachev was behind a huge ransomware cyber heist.”
“What’s that?”
“Basically, we believe he orchestrated his hackers to send out an email to millions of people with a ransomware virus. It does as you’d expect… takes the computer hostage until money is sent in exchange for the code to unlock it. It’s simple but effective. People depend on their computers.”
“And people really fall for that?” Kynan asks incredulously.
“You’d be surprised. Mostly it’s the elderly and other naïve folks. He can effortlessly send out a hundred million emails. Let’s say only five percent fall for it, and they pay one hundred dollars. That’s five hundred million. As the money comes in, it’s immediately sent out to virtually untraceable private offshore accounts.”
Kynan whistles low. “Unbelievable. But you’re not going after Bogachev for the nuclear-code scheme Bebe went down for?”
I shake my head. “That was not on our radar. Had no clue he was involved until I researched who Bebe was. That case had been essentially closed. Besides that… we were looking at a completely different type of crime. The ransomware that was deployed went to millions of people. The nuclear codes had a single Chinese buyer.”
“So you’re on to Bogachev now, and you go undercover,” Kynan summarizes. “And you gain his trust somewhat, start to gather information—”
I nod. “My job is to try to hash his network.”
“Hash?”
“Create a forensic image of the data we’re seeking,” I supply. “We’ve got warrants in place. So far, I’ve not been able to gain physical access.”
“Can that information be gleaned remotely?”
I shrug. “Not by any of our people. We’ve tried, but his security systems are too advanced.”
“Maybe Bebe can do it remotely,” Kynan ponders. “What exactly do you have tying this to Bogachev besides informants?”
“Not a lot of hard evidence,” I admit. “Mostly stuff I’ve seen and heard over the past two years. I’m pretty much his right-hand man when it comes to protection and carrying out odd jobs for him. I’m by his side at all meetings and phone calls. I drive him around and listen.”
Kynan’s lips flatten. “So you have nothing.”
“I know where the information I need is physically located. At his New York apartment. He has a very secure office I’ve been inside many times, but never alone. It’s protected by extreme measures. But if Bebe could hit him remotely…”
“We’ll have to talk to her about it,” Kynan muses. “You’ll have to go over everything you know with her.”
“Of course,” I reply, ready to get on with this. Ready to get this shitstorm over with. “Let’s do it.”
Kynan holds his hand up, a grimace on his face. “She’s really, really pissed at you. You’re going to need to let her cool down a bit, but she’ll get over it.”
“Bebe doesn’t seem the type to get over something very easily,” I say.
Kynan chuckles. “She can totally hold a grudge, but she has a vested interest in bringing Bogachev down. She knows her life can’t be normal again until he’s behind bars. If I know her, she’s on the computer right now trying to figure out how to hack him.”
I nod, not liking the fact I’m going to have to work with Bebe. She’s too much of a distraction. I don’t want to be her partner. I want to be her…
Well, I don’t know exactly what I want, except a little bit more of what we had last night in my kitchen and a lot less of Anatoly Bogachev fucking with her life.