“What I didn’t realize was that, for both of us, our deepest wound—inflicted at birth and reinforced every day since—was rejection. And in that moment, I was adding to his. I don’t blame him. And I don’t blame me. It is what it is. Frank’s primary question in life had become, ‘What is my name? Who am I?’ He had vowed that after we’d made it through the list, we’d get to work on solving that mystery. Frank was obsessed with holding his birth certificate. To him the most priceless work of art in the entire world was the piece of paper that spoke his name.

  “He saw my leaving as one more rejection, so he raged. When he came at me, I realized my brother was not in there. Some other demon now controlled his body. He couldn’t understand my betrayal. It was a painful fight, and I knew that if I was to get away, I had to hurt him. So I did. Left him on the floor of the hotel room. Crying. Begging me not to go.”

  Bones paused and was not proud of the admission. “He still walks with a slight limp.”

  “So . . . you beat your brother, who you’d never seen lose?”

  Bones nodded and said no more about it. “I flew back to the States. Not quite sure what to do. Entered and won a few Jiu Jitsu tournaments. Then won a national championship. Then another. This was pre-MMA, so these things served as a feeder for the Olympics. Which I cared nothing about. I began thinking I wanted to fly planes. Something about the freedom attracted me. The ability to leave here and go way up there—total freedom. Something I’d never really known. So I walked into a recruiting office, and they looked at me with dubious curiosity. Weren’t sure I could pass the physical. When I broke their record, or rather all of them, they sat me down and gave me a series of tests. Aptitude. Problem solving. I never really knew my test scores, but evidently they were good because somebody somewhere pulled some strings and got me a backdoor appointment to the Academy, where I put my nose down and tried to forget my past. Which I found difficult to do.

  “Some days I managed not to think about Frank. Most days I thought about my life and what I might do with the rest of it. In the beginning of my senior year, a man visited me. Didn’t wear a uniform. Didn’t tell me his name. All he said was, ‘Tell me what you know about sheep.’ Thanks to that old man in Switzerland, I knew a good bit. I shrugged and said, ‘They’re dumb. Hunted constantly. No match for the wolf. And totally lost without their shepherd.’

  “‘So what do you do to help them?’

  “My response was quick. ‘Kill the wolf.’

  “He considered this. ‘You thought about life after graduation?’

  “I pointed to the sky.

  “He weighed his head side to side and then nodded. ‘You can do that. And you’ll be good at it. Probably have a long career. But what if I could offer you a chance to stop bad men from doing bad things to people who can’t defend themselves?’

  “In the weeks that followed, he opened up to me and I to him. Aside from you and Frank, he’s the only person on the planet to hear me talk about me. Upon graduation, while everyone around me was scurrying off to jets or carriers or intelligence or some desk job, he flew me to DC, walked me below the city streets, and showed me what few had ever seen. An organization with no name. No official designation. Immune from government bureaucracy. Handpicked staff. All with one goal: making bad men pay for their sins. As a unit, they targeted specific people. Not countries. Not regimes. Not factions or movements. But individuals. Primarily individuals who enslaved others. He sat me down at a conference table and said, ‘We have one goal: to find the snake and cut off its head.’ I signed up right there.

  “That took me on quite a ride. A hundred and fifty plus countries. Millions of miles on planes—all of which I learned to fly—and hundreds of operations around the globe. The years flew by as we racked up success after success. I cannot count on two hands the number of times I’ve been brought into the Oval Office for a thank-you or commendation or medal—most of which I had to return the moment after receiving them because the op was classified and we weren’t supposed to be where they said I’d been.”

  Bones shook his head and laughed. “I think they’re all in some shoebox in the Library of Congress waiting for the statute of limitations to expire—which will occur twenty or thirty years after I’m gone. Some grad student will stumble across them, blow the dust off, and footnote them in his dissertation.

  “Several years in, I used my government contacts to track down Frank. At the time, he could still be found. Hadn’t gone underground yet. He was living in Paris. I surprised him at a coffee shop. He looked so different. Almost unrecognizable. His hatred for me was palpable. You could cut it. I just wanted to reestablish connection. Let him know I was alive. See his face. Hear his voice. He said little. I left my card. A month later, someone broke into my home and stole the two paintings. I let them go. I guess if I’m honest, I was tired of looking at them. Let Frank keep them. I returned to my work and tried to forget my past. The farther I traveled and the more I rescued others, the more I buried the parts of me that hurt.

  “But a decade in, I knew I was burning out and needed to replicate myself. My body wouldn’t let me do this much longer at the current pace, but the work was necessary. So I began thinking I needed to find another me. Train up somebody to do what I did. But how? There were very few of us who had my skill and thought like me. How do I find another me? Then I bumped into you on that riverboat.”

  I laughed. “If memory serves me, it was a forty-plus-foot dilapidated troller tied up to a forgotten dock attached to a deserted house, where Jack tried to rip my head from my shoulders.”

  “Good for you I showed when I did.”

  “But I was eleven. How’d you know then I had what I’d need now?”

  Bones shrugged. “I didn’t, but you fought back when you had no chance of winning, and then I watched you run—only to turn around when you heard the two more tied up down below that you hadn’t seen. Plus, the next day at the diner, you didn’t leverage your rescue of those girls as a chance to get something from them, when many would.”

  I scratched my chin. “Honestly, I was hoping for a free cheeseburger. Maybe some fries.”

  Bones chuckled and returned to the story of Frank. “As best I could piece together, Frank continued checking names off his list until the head of the snake tracked him down and offered him the world.”

  “The demented guy who ran the weird pyramid scheme and filmed videos of the world’s elite?”

  “The very same.”

  “Why?”

  “Not sure. And I’m not sure I ever will know, but despite his attempts to suggest the contrary, Frank is still human. Still has needs.”

  “Like?”

  “Sleep and power. Both of which were tough to find.” Another pause. “He had money, anonymity, he could have lived out his life however he wanted. Walked off into the sunset. Bought a beach. Flown in caviar. I’m not sure what was dangled, but all I can guess is that the offer included something Frank couldn’t buy. Frank loves nothing and no one, so you can’t leverage what he loves against him. And little tempts him because no one has what he needs. Save one thing. In many ways, Frank is still the scared boy who won’t let himself sleep for fear of what will happen if he does. Every time he closes his eyes, the memories return. And memories are the one thing he can’t kill, outrun, bribe, or lock up. They control him. The only way he can rest, much less sleep, is if he controls every aspect of his world. And the only way to do that is to own your enemies. So he became the very thing he hunted—working for the puppeteer who’d created him.”

  I sat dumbstruck.

  “I don’t know the extent of his wealth, but I imagine he’d make Forbes’s top ten. ’Course, all of it is hidden. Only he knows. He has enough to do what he wants, when he wants, however he wants, and he asks no one’s permission. Through shell companies several layers deep, he doesn’t just own buildings or skyscrapers so much as he owns multiple city blocks in multiple cities and all of the buildings that exist on those blocks. Including several in New York City. He doesn’t own homes so much as he owns counties. And he doesn’t own beachfront so much as entire islands. He never sleeps in the same place two nights in a row, and much of the time he sleeps on a plane because it’s only there he can ensure that he’s alone and safe and no one can get to him. He does have secure vaults spaced around the globe, but he uses them less and less. I think he’s grown paranoid that someone will find him and lock him inside.

  “If you need evidence of his paranoia, four out of seven nights a week he boards one of his dozen or so jets and takes off. By himself. No pilot. Somewhere around forty thousand feet, he sets it on autopilot en route to some destination on another coast or in another country—all in an effort to get a few hours of sleep. Each flight costs him eighty to a hundred twenty thousand. But that’s not the half of it. At the same time he’s taking off, he sends up several decoy planes. Each is empty save the pilot who’s been instructed not to land until a designated time the following day. Do the math. What is sleep worth to you?

  “That’s an expensive shell game.” I shook my head. “I write fiction for a living, and even I’m having trouble believing this one.”

  “The other three nights he doesn’t sleep. Occasionally he will sleep on land, and when he does . . .” Bones paused to consider his words. “Think Fort Knox. If a cockroach moves within a thousand feet, he knows it. Frank’s every decision is predicated on his own safety, exit, and control. He will not allow himself to be put in a cage or come under another man’s authority. If those three don’t exist, you won’t find him. And everyone, and I do mean everyone, is expendable when it comes to achieving that. In the last few years, we discovered he would prefer to sleep on a boat rather than land for much the same reason he likes to sleep on planes.”

  “Does this guy do anything for fun?”

  “Golf. Almost daily. Always alone. Multiple locations around the world. He plays private courses under one of his many aliases—which might or might not include makeup and a disguise. He owns many of the courses. Can shoot par on a good day.

  “To keep everybody guessing and to make him as unpredictable as possible, he has at least six different teams of assistants who plan six to twelve possible itineraries for each day. Meals. Tee times. Locations. He chooses the itinerary at the start of the day, and nobody knows which he’s going to choose until he does. The choice appears completely random. The unchosen five complete their assigned tasks anyway—acting as if he chose that itinerary. They fix meals. Set tables. Regardless of whether he’s in the country or not. Given that he’s a computer and programming genius and nobody has better security, he makes sure. If they fail to set out his lunch or his 3:00 p.m. tonic water or the 4:30 masseur, they’re gone.

  “He’s been known to ‘jump’ from one itinerary to the next without notice. He’ll start the day on itinerary number one, jump to number four at lunch, and finish on six. Only to further confuse everyone the following day. Random is his friend. The only thing predictable about him is that he is unpredictable.

  “The fact that you saw him in Montana is a miracle. Because if he doesn’t want you to see him, you won’t—which means he wanted you to. Face-to-face meetings are rare. His own staff rarely see him. It’s also thought that he’s a master of disguise, traveling freely around the world as any number of characters. Man or woman matters not. He could be sitting next to you at a bus stop or movie theater and you’d never know it. He pays his people exceedingly well, so they are loyal. An office assistant will take home a million dollars a year. Tax-free. He keeps much of the details of his kingdom filed away in his head, but he’s grown so large now that I suspect that’s becoming more difficult. It’s thought—”

  I interrupted him. “By whom?”

  “The underground folks in DC. It’s thought that he’s set up computer banks. Or systems. Comprising his own closed Internet. His own cloud. Where he stores the information he uses to leverage those below and around him. He is a voracious reader and can read several thousand pages or files in an evening. Retaining ninety-nine percent. He’s the most unhuman human I’ve ever met. When he drinks, he drinks only very expensive wine. Does not do drugs. Is a strict vegetarian. And interestingly enough has no romantic inclination of any kind. Nor does he sample his own menu. By some accounts, Frank is thought to enslave several hundred thousand people, and yet he touches no one.

  “Oddly, and as his brother I find this interesting, he collects art. Mostly black market. Has a thing for Rembrandt and Monet. Rumor suggests he may well be the owner of Rembrandt’s Storm on the Sea of Galilee.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  Bones paused. “It’s taken some time. Over the years, he’s brought in what you might call generals. Top-tier men to whom he’s given some measure of authority. And power. These are men without remorse. Without feeling. Godless. Who see flesh as a commodity. He grooms them over a period of years and then sets them up as kings of their own kingdoms. None of them know each other, and they’ve never been in the same room at the same time. It’s doubtful they’ve ever been in the same city.” Bones laughed. “Mutiny is easier to prevent if all the sailors never sail on the same ship at the same time. Frank safeguards his own position atop the food chain since anonymity breeds suspicion. Which breeds loyalty—albeit perverted. The keys to Frank’s kingdom are a better-kept secret than the Coca-Cola recipe.

  “We’ve been almost two decades collecting what I just told you. Our problem is that, at best, we’re always several steps behind him. And we can’t seem to get any closer. We’ve reached a wall. In return he toys with us. He’s hacked and crashed our system multiple times. Deleting everything. Leaving smug little messages that only I understand. At this point we’re entertainment. Sport, even. Which would be consistent with the Frank I know.”

  The demon boat idled beneath us. He pointed at my stomach—where the crossbow bolt had exited. “I’m not getting any younger. Neither are you. In my youth I thought maybe I could remove Frank from the equation, whatever that looked like, and maybe make a dent in this whole trafficking thing. Now . . . I’m not so sure. It’s bigger than me. There are more people enslaved today—women, children, girls and boys—than in the history of the world. And there will always be demand.”

  I nodded. “The intent of man’s heart.”

  “Exactly. But maybe we can affect the supply side. And in order to affect supply, we have to cut the head off the snake.”

  “So what’s the holdup?”

  “In many ways he’s just better than us. The reason we’re talking in his boat is because I’m reasonably certain he hasn’t bugged it. We have found dozens of devices in Freetown. None placed by us. Not only is he listening to us, but he’s watching us. We’re his Netflix. If you’re in a room with electrical outlets or any type of high-speed wiring, and there’s a computer or a cell phone in someone’s pocket—regardless of whether it’s yours or not—he’s listening. And recording. He probably has a dozen people assigned to you alone.”

  “Only a dozen?” I asked.

  Bones smiled. “We have to change tactics. Get smarter. In some ways—we have to out-evil evil.”

  “Got any ideas?”

  “We need to build a team of hackers who are better at his game than he is and bring his playhouse crumbling down. Disrupt his supply, or his ability to administer it, and force him out of hiding.”

  “Then what?”

  Bones hesitated. “Help me hunt the wolf.”

  “You want me to hunt him? Or kill him?”

  Bones looked at me but made no response.

  Chapter 11

  Las Vegas

  From Cornell to Princeton, MIT, Stanford, and Harvard, we had handpicked twenty. Sent personal invites. All but three agreed. From there, we rolled out the red carpet. All expenses paid. Give us forty-eight hours to wine and dine you and make you an offer tough to refuse. Then we’ll send you home $2,500 richer just for listening. These were people who thought in code, zeroes and ones and languages spoken by a select few. Who possessed special skills. And minds. Given that the best hackers often avoided college, Eddie helped us cast another net into the non-college, not-so-legitimate world. Guys who broke the law for fun and, often, for anonymous fame. We focused specifically on individuals who had been questioned by a federal agency and who may or may not have actually hacked into or stolen information from the government.

  By design there was not a single female in the group. Certainly there are talented female hackers and programmers. Some better than the guys we’d brought in. But we needed guys who, for lack of a better explanation, thought like guys. An inherent trait, not something we had to train. We didn’t have the time. While Frank might be different from most, those who worked for him were not. And we were going to use their carnal desires against them.

  Bones had hatched this plan, along with input from Eddie, during my long nap. When I woke up, he filled me in. The general idea was that we needed a team of brilliant minds to first find and then hack and get behind the impenetrable technical walls of Frank’s world. Our first problem was that neither of us was all that technologically savvy. And we knew this. It’s why we leaned on Eddie, and when we did, he had floated his idea.

  “To outsmart the smartest, you need to hire smarter people.” When we pressed him, he asked, “You ever see the Gene Wilder version of Willy Wonka?”

  We both nodded.

  Eddie continued, “We need to create a process—an attractive process—whereby we bring in the best, whittle them down test by test, and find the one or two worthy of the chocolate factory.”

  This made good sense. So Eddie hacked the recruiting systems of Google, Facebook, Instagram, Apple, and Microsoft and ‘discovered’ this year’s top picks. Every year, the tech giants receive tens of thousands of applications from the brightest minds on the planet. They then task about a hundred people with sifting through the résumés to find the diamonds in the rough. The ones they would hire. They range from programming opportunists selling themselves and their services to the highest bidder to green-world idealists hoping to make their dent in the universe, along with every gradation in between. Rather than reinvent the wheel, we opted to let them do the heavy lifting. The overlap was insightful. We then sifted them ourselves. Narrowing the herd to twenty.

 

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