Page 100 of King’s Ransom

‘My son says I should tell you about a certain man, a—how to put it—“problem solver” we employed once. He was similar to the Grandmaster but also . . . different.’

‘Who was he?’

‘We never learned his name.’

‘He was a hit man? A contract killer?’

‘Not just murder. Other things. Problems. Kidnapping, extortion, punishment for a grievance. His company is on dark internet. It is called Modern Alchemical Solutions, Inc. It promises unusual solutions for unusual problems. Satisfaction—in the old sense of the word—guaranteed.’

‘Modern Alchemical Solutions?’ I said.

I’d never heard of it.

Oberov said, ‘I hear about this company after a Russian oligarch recommended it to me. A rich old-money American boy had broken his daughter’s heart, so the oligarch hired Modern Alchemical Solutions to punish him.

‘The boy, his name was Greyson Prescott, ended up going to prison for raping another girl. He protested his innocence to the end but the DNA evidence was incontrovertible and he was convicted.’

‘You think Modern Alchemical Solutions set him up?’

‘I know they did, and comprehensively, too. They got the boy’s semen—via a prostitute they hired to seduce him at a bar—and made sure it was found inside the victim’s vagina.’

Holy shit, I thought.

Oberov said, ‘After I hear about that, I get my son here to go on the dark internet and hire this company to teach a lesson to an American hedge fund manager named Nelson Yates in Connecticut. Mr Yates embezzle money from me. But the fellow from Modern Alchemical Solutions carried out the job—how you say—a little too enthusiastically.’

I hesitated to ask. ‘How do you mean?’

‘There was torture involved. And butchery. More than we felt was necessary or decent.’

When a murderous gang lord thinks someone’s levels of torture and butchery have gone beyond what is ‘decent’, you have a very dangerous individual on your hands.

‘What makes you think Modern Alchemical Solutions might have set up the Grandmaster here?’ I asked.

‘This man from Modern Alchemical Solutions, he was intelligent. Cunning. Also exceptional in the art of disguise. That was how he penetrated Mr Yates’s mansion and got past his security.’

‘How did you pay him?’ I asked.

‘With cryptocurrency on a dark internet escrow exchange,’ Oberov said.

By that he meant a buyer-and-sellers market on the darknet where funds could be transferred almost untraceably. Using Tor plus a privacy-enhancing operating system like Tails, you could place your money in escrow: once the job was done, the money was released.

‘He was not cheap,’ Oberov added, ‘but, oddly, he did not seem to care much for the money.’

‘Which cryptocurrency did you use?’ I asked.

(Bitcoin is popular with the public but not with the criminal classes. Since its blockchain ledger is public it’s pretty easy for law enforcement to trace bitcoin transfers. Criminals prefer more exotic cryptocurrencies like Zcash, Monero or Litecoin because these currencies obscure all the key elements of a transaction: the sender, the receiver and the amount.)

‘Monero,’ Oberov said.

The big Russian crime lord stepped over to the window overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.

His tone changed.

‘Doctor Speedman,’ he said. ‘You and I, we are professionals. So let us speak professionally. I am criminal, we both know this. Even so, I do not like being implicated in criminal business in which I had no part. I especially do not like having the FBI come to my home to question me in front of my family and my men. It looks bad. It angers me.’

He turned to face me.

‘You work for Yasmina. This is good. Now, at the same time, you work for me. Find out who did this. Find out who set up the Grandmaster.’