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“He’s out of the office, but look at this.”
“What did you find?”
“You read it,” she said, turning the computer. “You too, Ali.”
In the email Stella had on the screen, Barb had made reference to an international soccer organization whose board was fired and eventually charged with extortion, but within days, those charges were dropped.
“I did a search of soccer scandals, and look what I found.” Stella clicked on another window; a news article appeared on the screen.
The piece, written by a sports’ watchdog organization, alluded to large sums of money that had flowed from the soccer organization into several international governments and one intelligence agency—Interpol.
“Look at t
his,” said Stella, clicking on another window. This time, an obituary appeared on the screen. “The man who wrote the article you just read was found dead the day after the story was posted. It was ruled a suicide.”
“How did you find this?” I asked.
“I didn’t. Decker did. My guess is that, somehow, he found it on the deep web.”
The story I continued to read unfolded into a series of allegations that had nothing to do with the soccer organization. Instead, it alleged that over the course of several years, Interpol had been the recipient of money not just from the international governments that had committed to fund the organization, but from private companies as well.
The amounts of what were called “voluntary funding contributions” were staggering, in the millions, year after year, significantly boosting Interpol’s annual operating budgets.
Ali, who had been reading over my shoulder, sat down and opened her own laptop. “Interpol is required to list their donors annually,” she said, turning her screen toward Stella and me. “Have you ever heard of these organizations? I haven’t.”
We broke the list into three groups and searched for the private companies listed on the site. As I expected and assumed Stella and Ali did too, all I was able to find were dummy corporations, proving that someone wanted to ensure whoever was really behind them was never discovered.
“Isn’t Interpol also required to publicly post their annual report?” I asked.
Ali shook her head. “It’s protected under classified information.”
Stella sat back in her chair and looked over at me. “What the fuck did Barb get herself involved in?”
“The same thing Cope, Irish, and Decker did.”
“Speaking of Irish, he needs to see this.”
26
Stella
Only hours ago, I believed I was on the brink of finally finding the information Barb had so desperately wanted me to. Now, I felt defeated all over again. Not just me, I could tell Ali, Buck, and Irish—who Buck had asked to join us—were experiencing the same level of frustration and disappointment I was.
Through IISG, Buck had gained access to the deep web—which contained content encrypted in such a way that it cannot be indexed by conventional search engines. Deep and dark were often used interchangeably, but they weren’t the same thing at all. In fact, the dark web made up less than one percent of the deep web.
Searching for anything, even with the use of Decker’s apps, was nearly impossible. The four of us worked well past sundown, occasionally hitting on something we thought promising, only to be disappointed when it led nowhere.
“When is Cope coming back?” asked Irish.
“Tonight sometime,” answered Ali. “In fact, he should land any minute.”
“Pretty damn nice, having a private plane at our disposal,” said Buck. “Although, like Cope said, K19 has three or four, whereas IISG only has one.”
I smiled at Buck’s attempt to lighten the mood in the room, but I was the only one who did.
“They have two now.” Irish closed his laptop, pushed back from the table, and stood.
“What did you say?” Buck asked.
