by Ben Coes
Calibrisi, Foxx, and Tacoma nodded at the gunmen as they slipped quickly into the mansion.
The house was fully furnished and appeared lived in. Another gunmen stood inside the entrance hall. He nodded to a door at the side.
They stepped into a library. The walls were lined with bookshelves. Old taxidermy hung from the walls. The room contained only one desk. A man with long blond hair was typing frantically. In front of him, three computer screens were lit up. The center one showed a map of the world, lit up digitally. The other two screens displayed what looked like thousands and thousands of slow-moving rows of numbers and letters, in orange and green, scrolling over a black screen.
Calibrisi shut the door.
“Igor, this is Katie Foxx and Rob Tacoma.”
Igor turned, nodded, then turned back to the keyboard and kept typing.
Foxx and Tacoma glanced at each other, then at Calibrisi.
“This is the guy who’s going to find someone who just pried his way into the CIA?” asked Foxx.
Igor kept typing, ignoring her.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but Cloud sounds like he might be slightly more capable than some guy in an Aerosmith T-shirt that’s two sizes too small.”
“Oh, he’s much more capable,” said Igor as he continued to type without turning around. “He is on a level that is several generations more sophisticated than the U.S. government.”
“I doubt that,” said Katie.
Igor stopped typing and turned.
“Then you’re a fool,” he snapped, turning back around. “If you want to catch a hacker, you have to put aside self-delusion about the greatness of the brilliant men and woman at the CIA and the National Security Agency. No doubt they are all patriots, but catching a hacker has nothing to do with patriotism. It is a function of numbers and letters, and their arrangement in a three-dimensional grid, over time.”
Igor struck the keyboard.
“Tell me a city where Langley has a sphere of operations, Ms. Foxx.”
“It’s Katie.”
Igor scanned her up and down.
“You are beautiful, by the way,” he said, smiling.
“Tokyo,” said Katie.
Igor typed for a half minute.
Suddenly, the digital map of the world zoomed down onto Japan, then kept moving in, focusing, until Tokyo appeared. Igor typed, and different areas of the city flared up in pockets of red. Igor typed again. The screen to the left flashed a checkerboard of black-and-white photographs; they appeared to be some sort of surveillance photos.
“This is just a small example,” said Igor. “In fact, I was able to do this within one hour of arriving at my desk.”
Katie stepped forward. She studied the sheet and pointed to one of the photos. It showed a man climbing out of a car.
“That’s Kilmer,” said Katie, taken aback. “This was an operation. Last year. That’s off of my computer.”
“Yes, it is,” said Igor, “sorry about that. For what it’s worth, I didn’t look at any of your naked pictures.”
“I don’t—” said Katie, shocked. “My God. He hacked—”
“That is nothing. Watch this.”
Igor typed furiously. The right screen shot white, then came into focus. A note was written and he enlarged it.
“What is it?” Katie asked.
“That is computer code. Do you like it? A few little lines, like a haiku. Those lines were how I got them to drop you off in Columbus, Katie. Is that short for Katherine, by the way? Are you busy after we find this guy?”
“My God,” she said again.
“Yes, that is the proper reaction. Self-delusion doesn’t work in Cloud’s world. What does work is numbers and letters, arranged in a three-dimensional architecture—”
“Over time,” added Katie, “yadda yadda yadda.”
“Think of a cube,” said Igor, ignoring her. “That cube has a wrapper on it, a wrapper that is composed of numbers and letters, and they are constantly changing. But if we can unwrap it, inside we will find our hacker. Where we are going, Katie, there is no room for human emotion. Where you and I are going, however, after we find him, there is plenty of room for human emotion.”
“So do they know we’re here?” asked Katie.
“No,” said Igor.
“Why not?”
“Because I told them you’re not,” said Igor, smiling at her.
“Can you guarantee with one hundred percent certainty you’re going to find him?” asked Tacoma.
“Eventually, yes, I will find him,” said Igor. “By the time the nuclear bomb gets here? No, I can’t guarantee that. At best, I give it a twenty percent chance.”
“Then I want to understand what you’re trying to do,” demanded Katie.
Igor paused, looked at Calibrisi, then back to Katie.
“I understand,” said Igor patiently. “I will explain how we’re going to capture Cloud. Then you need to leave me alone.”
“Deal.”
Igor typed.
“Hacking in point of fact is the process of exposing human frailty, then taking advantage of it,” he said, gesticulating with one hand while he typed with the other. “The computer networks that run the CIA, KKB, a bank, a person’s e-mail account—they’re all a collection of computer code, written by human beings. They’re all protected by different forms of encryption, which is also built by human beings. Most of these encryption keys are terribly built. Some are better. Some are, in fact, nearly perfect. But none is perfect. Because a human being built it. Hackers attack by finding those human flaws. Once they find a flaw, they can gain entry into the computer network. The best hackers are not only able to penetrate the most secure networks, they’re able to do it without being noticed.”
He pointed to one of the screens in front of Katie. The screen showed a dizzying sheet of numbers and letters, which scrolled down very rapidly. She leaned forward to look.
“Is that Chanel Number Five?” he whispered.
Katie glanced at him.
“Can you please focus?” she snapped, but in a whisper.
“Oh, I’m focused,” he whispered back.
“What I meant was, could you explain what that is?” she asked, pointing. “You’re not my type, anyway.”
“What is your type?”
“Not you. Now will you explain what those numbers and letters are.”
“That screen shows processing activity at a server farm. A warehouse full of computers are all right now focused on finding errors in the encryption algorithms that safeguard the Central Intelligence Agency.”
“Where are they?”
Igor typed. The scrolling letters were replaced by the inside of a brightly lit warehouse, the size of a football field, filled with rows upon rows of high-powered servers.
“Iceland.”
“Are they yours?” she asked.
“Not exactly.”
“So what you’re saying is, we’re going to hack into Langley?” asked Katie.
“Oh, we’ve already hacked in,” said Igor. “I’ve found six separate vulnerabilities thus far. But I haven’t found Cloud yet.”
Katie nodded, making no effort to hide her doubt. She glanced at Calibrisi, who stared back with a blank expression.
“Cloud is a great programmer,” said Igor. “One of the best hackers in the world. In fact, some might say the best. But those people would be wrong. There’s one hacker who’s better than Cloud.”
“Who?” asked Katie.
“Another Russian. He is the best hacker in the world. At least he was. He hasn’t hacked in many years. He disappeared. Some people speculate that he may have died. The truth is, he’s not dead. He simply chose to stop breaking the law. Not that he ever would’ve been caught, but he didn’t want to do it anymore.”
“Can he help us?” asked Katie.
“He’s trying to,” said Igor, smiling. “But he’s having a hard time getting any work done because you’re asking him too many fuck
ing questions.”
Katie nodded, then grinned.
“Lawbreaker, huh?” she said.
Igor smiled.
“Is that closer to your type?”
“A little.”
Igor pointed at the live video stream coming from Iceland.
“That warehouse generates so much heat that it had to be situated near cold water or else the air-conditioning would’ve been cost prohibitive. Right now, every computer in that room is scouring Langley’s technological infrastructure. Once we find the precise vulnerability point that Cloud is accessing, that is, his trapdoor, that, Katie, you beautiful American girl, is when you will have Cloud.”
“How long will that take?”
“If I had to guess, a week.”
“A week?” asked Katie.
“Then again, if a certain American woman with the most gorgeous blue eyes I’ve ever seen were to want to go to dinner with me, it might inspire me to do it quicker.”
“Well, I do want to find him,” said Katie, smiling mischievously at Igor, “but not that badly.”
“What happens if you can’t find him?” asked Tacoma.
Igor’s smile disappeared as his eyes roamed to Tacoma.
“Then we’re fucked.”
64
ELEKTROSTAL
Cloud saw the red icon in the shape of a star suddenly pop to the front of his screen. He double-clicked it, then scanned the flag:
22:00:15
Reinholt T.C.
Minsk NA MSQ UMMS 223
Withdrawal
NBRB
Exch. 75000 BEL ruble * RUS ruble
Cloud read and reread the alert. Reinholt was not one of the men, so why had the flag popped?
He went into the database and brought up the last two days’ worth of electronic signatures for both Brainard and Reinholt. Brainard’s last event was the purchase of drinks at a Minsk restaurant. The cash withdrawal at the airport ATM was Reinholt’s first. He did a quick directory search on Reinholt, using his passport identification to architect his financial activities—credit cards, bank accounts, and anything else the database had. Reinholt had three credit cards and two bank accounts. All of them had been created that day. In fact, the ATM withdrawals were the first electronic signature—the first transaction—Reinholt had ever made.
“Perhaps he’s a mountain man?” said Cloud to himself, facetiously. “Lived in a tree house for his whole life. Just happens to have a few credit cards along with a bunch of money in the bank. Now he wants to go to Moscow. Makes perfect sense.”
It was Langley’s asset, Brainard. He was at Minsk National Airport, where he’d just exchanged Belarus rubles for Russian ones.
Cloud looked at a publicly available schedule of flights between Minsk and Moscow. There was only one more flight that evening, a 10:07 P.M. Belavia flight.
He glanced at his watch: 10:00 P.M.
Within a minute, Cloud discovered a vulnerability in one of Aeroflot’s servers, enabling him to penetrate the airline’s computer network. By 10:04, he was looking at the passenger manifest of Belavia flight 9984 Minsk to Moscow. He thought for a minute. Then he copied the list of names and ran it against the Belavia customer database. Only one name was new. Either Langley had an alias they were employing for Brainard’s trip to Moscow unaffiliated with his identity, or they’d provisioned new identity in the last hour. If it was the former, there was little Cloud could do at this point.
At 10:06, Cloud dialed Minsk Customs emergency hotline.
“Customs hotline.”
“My name is Rudyev and I work for Federal Security Service,” said Cloud. “You have a suspected terrorist on flight nine-nine-eight-four. A Mr. Reinholt. He’s seated in 9B. Do not let that plane leave the ground.”
* * *
Two minutes later, from his seat aboard the plane, Brainard watched through a large terminal window as at least a dozen uniformed Customs agents charged through the terminal.
He picked up his cell and dialed Carter.
“I’m blown. Let Bill know.”
65
NOVGOROD, RUSSIA
Dewey got on the main highway between Saint Petersburg and Moscow, the M10. With every passing minute, he knew FSB would put more men on finding him. But those same minutes bought Dewey distance and—the farther away he got from Saint Petersburg—anonymity. They would be looking for him near the city. Then he remembered what Calibrisi told him. His photo was on the wire. His likeness attached to the APB posed a significant challenge.
There was something to take his mind off the feeling of being hunted, however …
He’d felt it for the past hour now, down his leg: cold, wet, raw.
So far, he’d been able to ignore the pain, as he’d been trained to do, but it was deep and it was getting worse. Dewey’s sheer size, and the layers of muscle on his arms, torso, and legs, prevented several bones from breaking when he’d hit the ground outside the Four Seasons, but that was little consolation right now. The bleeding wasn’t stopping.
Dewey looked at his leg. From the knee down, the trousers were solid red.
He unzipped his pants. Slowly, as he drove, he pulled them down below his knees, groaning in pain as the rough fabric chafed against the wound. In the dim light, he could see a deep gash glistening in fresh, dark blood.
He’d ignored it thus far, but the blood loss would debilitate him if he didn’t deal with it.
At the first exit, Dewey turned off the highway. He pulled into a modern orange-and-white Eka gas station.
He climbed out of the car and stuck the pump nozzle into the fuel tank, then limped toward the gas station, glancing down at the thin, wet trail of blood dripping from his right pant leg.
The wind had picked up. He looked at the black sky and could see clouds undulating with stripes of white and, below, far in the distance, lightning. A storm was coming.
He remembered words from training:
You will learn to operate in the worst types of weather, so when it comes, you’re ready. A storm is an opportunity. It’s the time when strength and power can be freely used. In this way, the weather is a weapon. The best offensive operations occur at night, during storms.
The store was crowded. Dewey walked the aisles, looking for something to stop the bleeding. He picked up a package of baby wipes, scissors, duct tape, garbage bags, a bag of salt, cornstarch, bandages, and paper towels. He grabbed two large bottles of vodka, then looked up and made eye contact with a teenage girl, who abruptly turned and walked away. Dewey glanced at a mirror in the corner, seeing his face. He was drenched in sweat, and his skin was bright red. His clothes didn’t fit. He looked from the mirror to the floor. A small pool of blood had collected at his shoe. He saw an advertisement in the far corner of the convenience store. It was a photo of a fish, hooked to a fishing pole, as the fisherman pulled it flying out of a stream. Near the advertisement, he found a large stainless steel fishhook, a spool of fishing line, and a pair of pliers.
He stepped into line. The chaos of the crowd helped conceal the trail of blood at Dewey’s feet. People were too busy to look down, as they fumbled for their wallets and cash. As Dewey got to the front of the line, his eyes shot left, to the door. But it wasn’t something outside that caused him to turn. Instead, it was a bulletin attached to the door. It was a large poster, freshly hung. A Wanted poster. Dewey’s photo was spread across the center.
Luckily, the photo showed a man with long brown hair. Chopping off his hair had been a good call.
Dewey turned calmly back to the cashier. She was young and plump, with neon-blue-tinted hair, dressed in an Eka uniform.
Dewey pointed behind her to a pack of cigarettes. He added a lighter to the pile as well.
The cashier scanned the items, barely looking up.
Dewey glanced back to the Wanted poster as, to his right, he heard a commotion. He knew it somehow concerned him. He tried not to turn. Then he felt a tap on the shoulder. Looking, he saw a middle-aged man, a father,
pointing at the ground and the growing patch of blood on the linoleum floor. Next to him was his daughter, who was crying at the sight of it, her mother’s hand over her mouth.
The man said something in Russian. Dewey ignored him, turning back to the cashier as she bagged up his items.
Dewey pulled a wad of bills from his pocket and looked back to the Wanted poster. Two men were reading it and examining the photo of Dewey. As one read the poster, the other’s eyes settled on Dewey, staring at him as he waited for his change. From the corner of his eye, Dewey registered the man hitting his friend in the arm, trying to get his attention. The other man turned and joined his friend, staring relentlessly at Dewey.
Dewey picked up the bags and walked toward the door, directly at the men, who remained at the door, watching Dewey approach, suspicion in their eyes. As Dewey came closer, they didn’t move. They were blocking the door. One pointed to the ground, at the trail of fresh blood that followed Dewey, then said something in Russian. Dewey paused as he was about to walk into them. When neither moved, Dewey put his right arm between the two men and barreled through the door, knocking both men to the side.
He knew he needed to cut off the distraction immediately.
Dewey looked to the station wagon. It was to the left, at the pumps. He went right. Glancing back, he saw the two men following him.
The first drop of rain struck his head, then another, and then it was a downpour.
At the corner of the building, Dewey went right again. One of the men yelled. Dewey dropped the shopping bags and moved along the wall of the building toward the garage.
He heard the fast rhythm of boots behind him. Both men were now chasing after him.
Both bays of the garage were closed and the lights were out. Dewey moved to the door, slamming his left shoulder against it. The doorframe cracked, sending wood from the doorjamb to the ground. Dewey pushed in the door and was inside a dirty office that stank of petroleum.
The men were now on his heels.
He cursed himself for not bringing the Skyph with him.
Dewey cut left, into the darkness. He sprinted along the near wall, hands out, feeling his way. At a large tool chest, he stopped and crouched out of sight.