Strength in Numbers: The Game Players, #2

By Brad Vance

They’re back! In their first adventure, Marc Julian, software billionaire, and Jesse Winchester, hacker extraordinaire, survived the evil plans of the Krom brothers and Jesse’s first lover, Chip. But Jesse has old debts to pay to Russian gangster Leonid Ivanov. Now Leonid is calling in those debts, demanding that Jesse find a great treasure for him, and a new game is set in motion…

The mysterious “Satoshi,” creator of the cybercurrency Bitcoin, has been hiding $375 million worth of the currency for years. But now, he has chosen to start a quest for the keys to the Hoard, and he who controls the keys controls the fortune. And this will be a quest that will test the strength, the will, and the character of those who pursue it.

But Marc and Jesse aren’t the only ones on the hunt, as old enemies resurface to try and beat them to the treasure… And even if they reach it first, they must ask themselves – do they really want to give a Russian gangster $375 million to pursue his deadly enterprises? And what would be the consequences if they don’t?

The pursuit will take them from Andorra to Barcelona, through the museums of Tokyo, the streets of Buenos Aires, and the coast of Mexico, in a desperate and dangerous race to keep the fortune in digital gold from the hands of all their enemies…

• Language: English
• Publisher: Orland Outland
• Release date: Aug 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781536585346

Brad Vance

Brad Vance writes gay romance, erotica and paranormal stories and novels, including the breakout hits "A Little Too Broken" and "Given the Circumstances." Keep up with Brad at BradVanceAuthor.com, email him at [e-mail], and friend him on Facebook at facebook.com/brad.vance.10.

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AUTHOR’S NOTE

The Satoshi Hoard of approximately one million Bitcoins is real. Its value as of today, February 10, 2016, is around $375,000,000.

I’ve tried to include just enough about Bitcoin for the reader to understand this cryptocurrency, but I’ve deliberately omitted detail on how coins are mined, how wallets and keys are generated, etc. This is a romance novel-slash-cyberthriller, and there’s nothing like a long explication on blockchain forking to kill a story dead.

That said. If you’d like to know more, I recommend Nathanial Popper’s Digital Gold¸ which was an invaluable resource to me on the history and use of Bitcoin. To create the puzzles Marc and Jesse must solve, I relied on Simon Singh’s The Code Book, a user-friendly guide to cryptography and cryptanalysis. David Kahn’s massive The Codebreakers is a daunting read, especially for non-mathematical types like me, but it’s loaded with fascinating stories about puzzles and the men and women throughout history who make, and unmake, them.

CHAPTER ONE

There was something inherently nerve-racking for Jesse Winchester about lying face down on a table in an empty room. Sometimes he thought of it as PPSD, or post-prison stress disorder. He wasn’t necessarily powerless, but he was certainly vulnerable. It was the same reason that a man instinctively covers his privates when the barber washes his hair – the instinct that kicks in when he’s got his head back, his neck exposed to the predator’s bite. It doesn’t make sense, but, that’s Nature for you.

Jesse wasn’t in a cell. Far from it. Yeah – a massage table, in a private room, in the spa of the Sport Hotel Hermitage, in the town of Soldeu, in the European principality of Andorra…that was about as far from prison as it got.

Nonetheless, he was unarmed, naked, with only a towel across his backside. Although, if he could find enough water to soak it in, he could beat a man pretty badly with a towel if he had to. There was a slate fountain in the corner, its steady splash creating ambience and discharging negative ions.

Jesse mentally calculated the volume of water in the little pool, reaching back to finger the fabric of the towel – way too thick and plush, alas, to fully absorb what was in the fountain.

He wasn’t really scared, but he was certainly bored, and the calculations helped pass the time. Relaxing wasn’t in his repertoire. He never would have chosen to spend a week of pampering at a luxury resort. But circumstances had chosen Andorra for him, and well, if you had the money, you might as well enjoy it.

Okay, fine, he admitted. I’m a bit nervous. He’d had a day to wonder about the mysterious message that had been delivered from Leonid, the gangster who’d helped him while he was in prison…and who’d helped him get out of prison.

Dear Jesse. As I once told you, some day I would call on you for a favor. That day is here. I’ve waited until your plate was empty, so to speak, but now it’s time. A man will contact you soon, at your hotel. Take a spa treatment on Sunday, and ask for a private massage session with Erik. He will give you the details (and, yes, a professional massage too).

And there had been another message as well. One of interest to both Jesse and Marc. Their respective nemeses, Chip and Walt, had surfaced at last. What would come of that was yet to be seen.

Jesse smiled, remembering how he’d left Marc in the hotel room upstairs.

Maybe I should come along, Marc had said with a raised eyebrow. And chaperone you and ‘Erik,’ your masseur.

Jesse pondered this, his face serious. I tell you what. If it comes to making sexy time, I’ll be sure to call you to come join us.

You’d better.

Jesse sighed, impatient and ready to get this over with. He’d never doubted that Leonid would call in the favor one day. It was just…now he was with Marc, and they had resolved to have no more secrets, and that had meant telling Marc what was in the note.

Telling Marc what was in the note meant involving him in what was no doubt going to be some criminal enterprise. And Jesse wasn’t really all good with that. So the faster he could find out what Leonid wanted and give it to him without involving Marc, the better.

There was a discreet knock on the door before it opened, and a man in white scrubs entered.

His monogamous relationship with Marc was in no danger, Jesse realized. This was not a sexy time masseur’ by any stretch. The man was thick, slabby with muscle, and his face was about as attractive as that of Battling Bob," the punching dummy with a face, though Erik’s had probably taken more hits.

Jesse started to sit up, but Erik pushed him flat with one huge hand. You lie down, he grunted. Erik turned on a sound system, adding New Age music to the ambient noise from the fountain.

To Jesse’s enormous surprise, Erik really was a masseur, and a damn good one, if you like the kind of massage that involves inserting fingertips inside muscle groups and kneading them like pastry. Which Jesse most definitely did. Marc would not be happy to hear his grunts and groans, he thought – Erik was definitely pleasuring him.

Jesse had learned in prison to be awake to every sensation, to grasp each like a gift, to find pleasure even in the sight of a green weed breaking through a concrete yard. Erik applied some floral essence oils to Jesse’s skin, and he let his mind wander through the field of herbs and flowers, identifying each, inhaling through his nose like a perfumier.

The only thing that seemed off was that the binkle-dinkle New Age music was rather louder than ambience required. Maybe Erik was hard of hearing, Jesse thought for a moment.

Then he discovered there was a different reason for the volume. Erik started kneading Jesse’s trapezius muscles with his knuckles, digging in hard. And as he did, he bent down and whispered in Jesse’s ear.

[e-mail], and password 6, 4, 4, 5, Capital A, x, pound, star. Yes?

Jesse nodded, the information instantly cut into his memory as if chiseled on the inside of his forehead. He knew what this referenced perfectly well, from a conversation with Leonid long ago.

Then Erik whispered one more thing in his ear.

There was a pause, and a draft from the open door, and Jesse realized Erik had left. But once again, as he went to get up, a softer, less meaty hand pushed him down.

Two different, yet surprisingly strong hands kneaded his muscles just as deeply as Erik’s had. They were working down Jesse’s back, these hands, digging in, then spreading across his lats, moving lower with deliberate slowness.

Jesse drew a sharp breath as the fingertips drew over his tailbone, just above his ass crack, as if redirecting all his body’s electrochemical traffic into the southbound lanes.

Each hand now moved in opposite directions, drawing a straight line across the edge of the towel, over the arc of his glutes, around to his hips, where they trailed away off his body. The loss of contact was excruciating, as if some part of himself had been removed.

You vant happy endink? Marc whispered in a preposterous accent.

Who doesn’t? Jesse murmured into his forearm, where he’d buried his face about the time Marc had reached the base of his spine.

Jesse felt the thick towel slide off his ass, its deep fluffy fabric tickling as it traveled. Then he felt a hand, gently reaching between his legs. He spread them willingly, his cock throbbing and swollen.

Marc’s hand was well lubricated with the infused oils. He made Jesse jump a little when he touched Jesse’s taint, just below his asshole. Marc painted the root of Jesse’s hard-on with lazy watercolor strokes, and Jesse groaned.

Jesse arched his hips, trying to give Marc room to reach his cock, but Marc’s other hand pushed Jesse’s ass back down. You let masseur do job, Marc rumbled in the phony accent.

Jesse shut his eyes tight. Marc had extended his strokes to Jesse’s balls, freshly shaved that morning in anticipation of Marc’s arrival. They contracted, almost ticklish, as Marc pulled on Jesse’s sack, manipulating his balls with all the agility of a poker player flipping the chips in his hand.

At long last, Marc put his other hand beneath Jesse, along the V where his abs met his hips, and lifted him up, just an inch…just enough for Marc’s cupped hand to slide up Jesse’s shaft, cradling Jesse’s balls in his palm.

Four fingertips slowed their course, as if landing a plane. They reached Jesse’s head, the oils mixing with the juices already leaking out of him.

And then Marc began to work Jesse’s substantial cock, letting Jesse lift his ass up higher so Marc could slide his cupped hand along the underside. Jesse was dying to have Marc grab it, enfold it and beat the cum out of it, but no…

Vat vas ze secret, tell me and I let you cum.

No, I’ll never talk, Jesse said through gritted teeth.

Marc’s hand retracted and Jesse threw his arm out, grabbing Marc’s wrist just before his hand could depart Jesse’s neither regions.

Wait. I’ll confess. I’ll tell you everything. After.

Exzellent, Marc said, and now Jesse got what he wanted, that strong hand like a vise around him, pulling, pushing, stroking…

Oh, fuck… Jesse groaned, his sphincter tightening, his prostate cramping until…

Pow. He blew his load into the sheet beneath him, far too thin to absorb the spreading puddle Marc had extorted from him.

He rolled over to see Marc grinning, dressed in the same white scrubs as Erik. Come here, Jesse demanded.

Marc yelped as Jesse pulled him down onto him. There’s gonna be a giant wet spot on my white scrubs, he protested. How will I walk out of here like tha…

Jesse’s eyes went dark, and with a wrestler’s agility, he flipped them both over. Hovering above Marc, pinning him down, Jesse grinned.

Then we’ll just have to strip ‘em off.

CHAPTER TWO

Few men are happier than the man who’s had three orgasms in one day. Especially, Jesse thought, when all three are attributable to someone who really knows how to push my button, so to speak.

But however relaxed his body might be, his mind was still on high alert. There was a job to be done, and it would have to be done carefully. Festina Lente was the old Roman saying – make haste slowly. Don’t rush your preparations, don’t go off half-cocked, but when you are ready, strike hard and fast.

Jesse closed the door of a small room in the hotel’s business center where a desk and computer were available to any guest. The Andorran hotel had recently put the Tor browser on all its business center computers. The software didn’t guarantee your anonymity, but its complicated routing scheme ensured that casual investigators (and more serious ones) couldn’t track your web activity. There were more than a few visitors to Andorra who shared Jesse’s desire for online privacy, especially those who were there for banking purposes.

The Tor browser bounced Jesse’s request for Ameritrade.com across the globe, making it nearly impossible to trace its origin. It was called onion routing because it put so many layers of misdirection around the request that peeling them all off would require NSA-level supercomputing, and even that might not do the trick.

The communications code he had devised didn’t need this level of security. He could have done what he needed to do from his own computer upstairs, but Jesse’s Law was simple - as long as you can keep adding layers of security to something, do it.

At Ameritrade.com, he logged into Wall Street Wolf’s account, with the email address and password that Erik had given him. He clicked on the transaction history.

The Wolf was to all appearances a day trader, who would execute hundreds of buys and sells in a day, trying to shave a few dollars’ profit off every fluctuation.

Jesse sent the most recent transaction history to the printer, which hummed and spit out page after page. He logged out and closed the browser, leaving no trace of his activity on the machine.

Flipping the pages on his way back to the suite, he had it decoded before he got out of the elevator. Back upstairs, he found Marc digging into a room service cheeseburger.

I couldn’t wait. Marc grinned through a mouthful of food and pointed to a covered dish. Yours should still be hot.

Worked up an appetite, did you?

Indeed. What’s that?

Jesse grabbed a pen, sat down at the table, and pushed his plate aside. It’s the message from Leonid.

Marc looked at the upside-down printout and frowned. It’s just a set of stock transactions.

Oh? Jesse said. You sure about that? Watch and learn, grasshopper!

Marc rolled his eyes. Okay, master, amaze me.

Jesse sighed. It’s not that complicated. Do you know what the ‘Caesar Shift’ is?

Yes, of course, Marc said casually, surprising Jesse. It’s named after Julius Caesar, who used it to encrypt his messages. A ‘Caesar Shift’ takes any letter in the alphabet and ‘shifts’ it by a certain number. You just need the key, which is the number of letters you’re shifting forward. So if the key is 4, then you add four letters to encode and subtract four to decode. J-E-S-S-E becomes N-I-W-W-I when encrypted.

Well, you are full of surprises. Are you a cryptography buff, then?

A shadow passed over Marc’s face, to Jesse’s surprise. He’d seen it before in conversation with Marc, and he knew what it meant – a memory, a person, not pleasant.

I picked up a bit from a friend once.

Jesse paused, then decided to let it go for now. Well, that’s what we have here. He turned the paper around for Marc’s perusal and handed him the pen. Give it a shot.

The first seven transactions were:

100 shares of REXX

400 shares of WRES

500 shares of OHRP

1200 shares of CLNE

500 shares of NETE

300 shares of ESCR

800 shares of AEZS

Despite having enjoyed more climaxes in one day than most men had with their partners in a week, Jesse felt himself stirring again as he watched Marc’s face. There was something so sexy about Marc when he looked like this, his features locked in intense concentration, the wheels behind them turning so fast, the perfect stillness of his face as he rapidly tapped his pen against his chin, as if trying to send himself a Morse code message.

It was this that had bound Jesse to Marc, the intellect and imagination that Marc brought to everything – their sex, their conversations, the perpetual surprises both physical and mental. Marc could not only keep up with Jesse, but would leap ahead of him from time to time, as no man had ever done.

They’re penny stocks, Marc said, noting the sale prices.

Yep. No point in spending real money on them, if they’re just a message.

So that’s irrelevant. Hmm. Give me a hint, Marc said at last. I’m not seeing it.

Two nulls, then three nulls, Jesse offered. It was just enough information for Marc’s intuition to kick in