Page 49 of Assassin Anonymous

Astrid rolls her eyes at me. I shrug at her. The thing I want to tell her is: I used to be pretty good at this, so let’s leave the judgment outside.

There’s a heavy sigh from behind the door and a chain unlocks. As soon as the door opens, I push my way in. Gaius is wearing a heavy robe, flannel pants, and a look on his face somewhere in the valley between surprise and terror. I grab his shoulder and press the felt marker into his ribs. Not too hard but it works its magic, knocking him off balance as he arches his body away from it, enough that I can move him against the wall. I tell Astrid, “Make sure we’re alone.”

I’m assuming we are, but she disappears down the hall to sweep the apartment. Gaius is surprisingly calm; I think he figures if he plays along he’ll be okay. “Listen, man, I have money. Cold cash, under the mattress. Take what you want and go and we’re all square, right?”

“Just be a good listener and everyone walks away healthy.”

He nods and puts his hands up. Astrid appears at the end of the hallway and throws me a thumbs-up. I lead Gaius to the living room. It’s cramped but tidy; a massive TV on the wall, every video game system I can name plus a few I can’t, an expensive velvet couch. The glass coffee table has the takeout he just picked up, as well as his expensive headphones and a closed laptop. The TV is paused, Chewbacca frozen mid-scream.

I push Gaius toward the couch and he sits. “You ain’t cops,” he says, “but I’m not sure if that’s much of a relief.”

“We’re not going to hurt you unless you give us a reason to,” I say. I move into the kitchen—also clean and sparse, like it’s never been used, besides a massive pile of rinsed and neatly stacked takeout containers next to the sink. I grab a chair from the small table and drag it into the living room, then place it on the other side of the coffee table. Astrid is standing by the hallway, unsure of what to do with herself.

Now that we’re settled and Gaius gets a good look at me, his eyes go wide and he moves back into the couch. “Shit. You’re him.”

“You saw the video?”

“ ’Course I saw the video. Everyone’s seen the video, bruv. Site’s got more traffic than it’s ever gotten.” He puts his hands up in a peaceful gesture. “Look, just, before you do it, let me call my mum, okay? I won’t tip her off, I just haven’t spoken to her in a while, and it’s weighing real heavy on me in this particular moment, that I ought to at least tell her I love her one more time—”

“Stop it,” I tell him. “I’m not here to hurt you.”

He squints, confused. “Then what are you here for?”

“Can you take the video down?”

He shrugs. “Maybe. Won’t be a point in it, though.”

“Why the hell not?”

He gives me a look like I just asked him why the sky is blue. “It’s been shared and screenshotted from here to kingdom come. Toothpaste doesn’t go back in the tube. Not even for you.”

“Okay, then. What can you tell me about me? Who’s been talking about me? Who’s been looking for information on me? Someone’s after me and that’s where he must have researched me, on the Via Maris. There’s got to be some trace of that.”

“I don’t dip into the site that much. I just run it.”

“Would Hannibal Khan know anything?”

“Maybe. No idea. You know how the site works?”

“Sort of, but I see you want to explain it, so go ahead and explain it.”

Gaius smiles a little. Even when it puts them at risk, people like to brag. Especially when they don’t often get the opportunity.

“Okay, so, it’s darknet,” he says. “Not cataloged on any search engines. Only one way in: with a direct address, through D@nt3, which is sort of like Tor, but better. With Tor you enter the internet in one place, then your signal bounces between about seven thousand relays around the world, right? Makes it impossible to trace. We use about a half million relays, randomized every time. So, impossibler.”

“I don’t understand what any of that means, starting with ‘impossibler,’ ” I tell him, figuring the more I can get him to talk, the quicker we get to something useful. “But how secure can it really be? The guy who ran the Silk Road got caught.”

“Yeah, he did, and you know why? Some old message board posts with his email, and he had counterfeit documents sent to his house. Even after all that, the fuzz had to set up some elaborate sting to catch him physically logging into his computer to really prove it was him. We’ve been at this long enough I’d say we know what we’re doing.”

“Yet here I am, sitting in your living room,” I tell him.

He exhales hard. “Yeah, kinda curious about that, bruv.”

“Where is Hannibal Khan?”

“Never met the man myself. All I do is provide tech and support.”

I pick his cell phone off the table and slap it down in front of him. “Call him.”

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