by J. Manuel
Aiden was at a loss for words. He hadn’t expected this level of petulance. Of course coder culture was a rather garish one, since it mostly consisted of young teen to thirty-something-year-old, sexually repressed males whose ideas of intimate relationships came from reading seedy Japanese manga. These often depicted cyborg sex, or tentacle-rape, which was something Aiden had to research and immediately regretted. Though he was a Gen-X trailblazer, he could not relate to current coder culture which was completely off of the reservation. Whatever happened to good-ole Playboy, and if you wanted something a little more risqué, Hustler? No, to get off on that you might as well be Amish by this generation’s standards.
“I just want to talk business. I want to make you a proposition.” He quickly regretted his use of words as Irina crudely grabbed her breasts and mouthed a lewd comment. His face flushed instantly, his eyes darted around the poorly lit, smoke-filled room of the underground bar. He wasn’t quite sure what he was looking for since no one was paying attention to either one of them. The crowd consisted of drunken, ecstasy-dosed youths throbbing to pulsating electronic dance music. Perhaps it was the fact that Irina looked all of sixteen-years-old that made him worry.
“Come on, please don’t do that! I’m trying to talk business here.”
“Relax, Aiden, no one is coming to arrest you. It’s okay if you fuck me.” Irina then raised her shirt over her perky, bare breasts. “You could even do me here on the table and nobody would care. Everyone is too busy having a good time, except you.”
Aiden was beyond disturbed and rose to leave. This was a joke and he was obviously the butt of it.
“Relax! I’m fucking with you. I don’t even really like men. I mostly like girls, and when I need dick, I usually like them young and hard, plus I’ve already had my fill this month.” She rubbed herself as if to show her satiation. “Let’s talk business. I’m serious now, have a seat.”
Aiden shook his head still angry, but somehow calmed by the fact that maybe she didn’t want him to perform some kind of lewd, public act as a prerequisite to their business. The truth was that she had all of the bargaining chips. He needed her.
“So how did you crack the cypher? I want to know if you are as smart as your reputation says you are.” He was done being made a fool of, and his opening salvo should have let her know.
“I didn’t.”
“What? What do you mean?
“I didn’t,” Irina answered this time with a shrug and with less give-a-damn.
“You didn’t crack the cypher?
“No.”
“Then how are you here? Why am I talking to you?” Irina did not respond and waved at a passing waiter with four extended, wiggling fingers. The waiter nodded, familiar with her two vodkas and two whiskey combos. “Am I wasting my time?” he continued, “Did I fly all the way over to this fucking meat freezer of a country for nothing?” Aiden’s patience had worn thin and he had finally snapped.
“Well I didn’t crack it, Aiden.” She made his name sound like ‘asshole’. “I am not going to play your fucking games and jump through your fucking hoops like I’m some kind of spayed bitch.” A vodka shot and a whiskey followed the curse-laden outburst.
“Well you can’t possibly be here by pure luck!” Aiden was not a violent man and he’d never dreamed of hitting a woman, but he was getting to the breaking point.
Irina looked at him like she had just read his mind, her eyes daring him to make a move. “You and I both know that it would take thousands of years to try to crack that code with a brute force attack. The encryption key is 278 digits long with 923 bits, pairing-based cryptography, am I right?” She didn’t wait for the answer. “Well I know I’m right. Let’s see, the Japanese cracked that a few years ago in 148.2 days give or take a tenth of a decimal point, correct? They used 21 computers running 252 core processors and ran some pretty nifty algorithms to do it. I don’t have that kind of time to waste.” She paused and cupped the last two shots in her hands before shotgunningthem into her gaping mouth. She drew a pickled cucumber, rimmed it seductively on the lip of the jar, and pointed it menacingly at him while she squinted down its ribbed shaft. “I hacked you, Aiden. That’s how I did it.”
“There’s no way that you did that.” His mind searched quickly for reassurance.
“You have some pretty sophisticated firewalls and antivirus systems, all pretty cool stuff. It looks like it was a real team effort, though that Rhea she’s got real talent. I’d like to meet her—and by meet I mean fuck, Aiden.” She couldn’t help herself. She really enjoyed making him squirm. “I like her taste in girls and I’m sure that I will like her taste too.”
“For God’s sakes, let’s get back to the point!”
“Well I hacked your systems and followed your team’s work, kind of like a live play-by-play telecast. Honestly it was some boring shit, no offense. Pretty complicated, but standard security just several layers of more bullshit protocols. You know bigger and longer doesn’t always mean better. Sometimes small and elegant is okay, too. The beauty of a system lies in its symmetry and simplicity.”
“So you hacked us. How come you weren’t detected?”
“You guys weren’t looking. The key to any successful intrusion is to exploit vulnerabilities in the seemingly innocuous parts of the system. You know, for all the security that everyone is hyper-paranoid about, there is one thing that always proves to be the downfall of a system. Sex! It’s like the forbidden fruit hanging on the Tree of Knowledge. Eve knows she shouldn’t play with it, but she can’t help but want some of that dangling fruit in her mouth!”
“I’m not following you. Our systems specifically don’t allow anyone to access porn-sites. There is no way around it. I coded that into the system myself. That is systems security 101.” Aiden was resolute in his defiance.
“Oh, Aiden,” Irina lowered her gaze toward the table. He could see a faint smile come to life around the corners of her mouth as her fingers tapped imaginary qwerty keys on the table. “Aiden… you’ve been such a dirty boy!” She reached for another pickle and inserted it slowly into her mouth.
Aiden’s shortly forgotten unease rushed back with a vengeance. He scrambled to think how he’d infected his system. His laptop? No, he never used his personal laptop at work. It had never set foot in the building. Thumbdrives? No, all thumbdrives were scanned by the system first to see if they contained any malware. He couldn’t think of a way in. The system was secure. He was sure of it. His team and others were asked to test the system before and after it was put in place to check for vulnerabilities.
Irina soon put him out of part of his misery, “Your phone.”
Aiden’s mind raced again going through all of the applications and their known vulnerabilities. Those were all updated by his team. They were secure.
“Trust me it’s your phone. You like to play with yourself a lot, I get that. I do it too, but on your phone? In a bathroom stall? I know you like Russian girls. In fact I can take you to that whorehouse, I mean, escort-service that you were researching. It’s just a few blocks from here, but I guess you already knew that.”
“Okay goddammit! You outsmarted me and my team. Now would you like to come work for me? It’s obvious that I need your talent, and believe me the work we are doing is far more interesting than what you have going on around here.” He thrust his hands dismissively at the club. “California has much nicer weather and scenery.” He pointed toward the dancing denizens and assured her that the club scene in San Francisco was more exciting than this place. “You’d be surprised at the level of debauchery in those places!”
“So when do we go?” she shrugged matter-of-factly.
“I had set aside some time to try to find you. Can you have all of your affairs in order in two weeks?”
“I can go tonight.”
Aiden hesitated, “No. I mean it. I am not in a rush to get back. We still have some time.”
“How about tomorrow afternoon? That should give you enough
time to meet up with Katerina. By the way, you do know that isn’t her real name right?” Irina paused for effect then continued. “Well you can do her, sleep in a little bit, then meet me at your hotel restaurant for lunch. We can leave then.”
Aiden began to object but aborted halfway through. It was pointless. “Tomorrow after lunch,” he relented.
Irina stood and walked away. He rose rather unceremoniously, made his way through a throng of overstimulated revelers, and out into the biting chill of Moscow’s evening air. He had been in the city for two weeks and every time he stepped outside of a building he was shocked by just how cold it was. What a godforsaken place! He just wanted to get back home to sunny California. He never thought that he would miss the taco stands, vegan restaurants, and avocados on every dish. Here all he had access to were heavy meat and potato dishes and booze. He was no teetotaler, but two weeks of Russian-style drinking was enough to make his liver scream uncle. What he wouldn’t do for a vegan, juice cleanse right about now.
Aiden dug into his coat pocket for a coveted clove cigarette and a lighter. He wasn’t much of a smoker, but once he had arrived at his hotel he hit the tobacco shop in the lobby looking for his favorite puff. He inhaled the sweet aroma of the clove, drawing in a slow breath of the spiced smoke, and exhaling it just as precisely. The smoke billowed out from his mouth and nostrils with the satisfaction of a yogic ujjayi breath. It rose, momentarily condensing thickly around his head. His meditative state was interrupted by the blinding light of xenon headlamps that bathed the sidewalk in a bluish-white glow. Two large black SUV’s had barely pulled up in front of him, when a figure jumped from the first SUV and ran up on him.
The familiar hat and its wearer emerged through the light. Yulia interrogated him as six large men moved quickly past him and into the bar.
“Is Tovarich inside?”
“He never showed.” Aiden smiled through his clenched lips, the clove cigarette pinched between them. “I’ve been played for a sucker. Look for yourself. He pulled out his tablet and brought up the cryptologic visualization, punched in his override code, and handed it to her. The screen revealed a live-feed of the red Ferrari still parked in the garage.
“I think I’ve been had. Tovarich is probably just a Darknet legend. Something all of these nerds talk about while they play their avatar games.” Aiden spit with disgust and threw the clove to the ground. “I am tired of wasting my time and I am tired of this cold. No offense, it’s a lovely country you have here, but for God’s sakes it’s always freezing and dreary.” He turned to walk away, but Yulia grabbed his arm forcefully and spun him back around. Her huntress green eyes thinned around the edges looking for any sign of deception in his doe-eyed demeanor.
“So Tovarich never showed up?” her eyes locked on his.
“No he never showed.”
Yulia’s gang of brutes exited the bar appearing to confirm Aiden’s story, but they didn’t emerge empty handed. They found some targets of opportunity inside, in the form of a couple of gay men, whom they took pleasure in pummeling out in the alleyway. Yulia tightened her grip on his arm, bending his elbow slightly behind his shoulder enough for him to know that she could dislocate it at any moment. “The boys like to get their exercise in when they can. They hate coming out on these excursions especially when there is nothing to do when they get here. It’s even cold for Russians you know!”
Aiden understood the message clearly. Katerina would have to wait. Tonight was Yulia’s night. He just hoped he would live to see tomorrow afternoon when he would finally get his fox.
- - - - - - -
Alexi kept watch from a café across the street as Mr. Collier stepped out of a black Mercedes limousine, escorted by a beautiful, dark-haired woman whom he quickly recognized as Agent Annikova. Dima was inside in the hotel bar drinking and having his fun with some American university girls, a temptation that Mr. Collier would surely not pass up. Dima had checked himself into a room on the same floor as Collier, where he could best keep an eye on the American. Tonight, Alexi would keep tabs on the FSB agents that followed Collier’s every movement.
After a few minutes, Agent Annikova left the hotel in the same limousine. An FSB electronic surveillance van remained across the avenue, no doubt receiving live audio and video from Collier’s room. What he wouldn’t give for that kind of equipment. Though PRYAMO relied mostly on human intelligence to function, it was not without its toys as well. Up on the seventeenth floor, Dima drilled out and removed the eyepiece of his door’s peephole and replaced it with a digital eyepiece. He quickly assembled an infrared-laser, listening device and attached it to the door. The device sent an invisible light beam across the hall to Collier’s door. The steady beam vibrated at the slightest resonance, such as that created by a human voice. The beam’s slight vibrations were detected by a sensitive receiver that was adhered to the inside of Dima’s door. Within minutes, Dima had live audio of Collier’s room, but besides ordering room-service and an escort, Collier did not reveal much before he turned in for the night.
Collier remained confined to his room until the next evening, when he suddenly decided to take in some of the local nightlife; his destination, a seedy nightclub that catered to dropouts, losers, and what little there was of Moscow’s alternative electronic dance music scene. Collier walked right into the club because there was no line and no door man—it wasn’t that type of club. Alexi and Dima followed him in a few minutes later. Dima walked up to the bar and ordered a couple of shots, loudly and belligerently— just another asshole in the crowd. Alexi braved the fray of the dancefloor, where he could keep an eye on Collier, who now sat in a booth. A few songs played and the crowd grew louder and increasingly raucous, responding to the thumping baseline. Some impatient moments passed while Collier fidgeted in his booth. Poor Collier was completely out of his element. An intoxicated female reveler danced her way to his table and made some gestures which Collier quickly passed on, or so it appeared. The young girl sat in front of Collier and began badgering him with unwanted conversation, but as uncomfortable as he was, Collier gave the impression that he was interested in continuing the conversation.
This had to be Tovarich’s intermediary. The conversation continued and the girl’s demeanor relaxed and so did Collier’s. This girl was important. The girl handed something to Collier that Alexi could not identify before she and Collier departed. Alexi located Dima at the bar, and they made their exit just as a few FSB bone-breakers entered the club in search of their collective quarry. Outside, Collier was having an unpleasant time with Agent Annikova. His bad luck was of no consequence to Alexi, he was interested in the mystery girl.
Alexi and Dima split up and attempted to find her. Dima spotted her entering a small apartment building just a few blocks away from the club, and followed her inside after waiting a few moments to avoid her picking up on his tail. He caught up in time to see her walk up to a second floor apartment. Dima exited the building and found Alexi a few minutes later.
The two men surveilled the building around the clock for several days, but there was no sight of the girl. Alexi had started having his doubts. He couldn’t be sure that she hadn’t just left the building during the few minutes that Dima left to find him. Dima was reckless in many ways, but he excelled at tracking people and remaining undetected, so he had earned the benefit of the doubt. They got their break two days later.
“Right there, Alexi! I see her.” Dima radioed him from a small market located across the street of the girl’s apartment building. Alexi sat upright in the Lada, and sure enough the girl was walking out of her building. She walked for several blocks before hailing a cab. The men followed the cab and its passenger onto the M5 motorway. After a few miles of travel, the cab pulled onto the Domodedovo International Airport exit. The cab stopped in front of the Aeroflot terminal where the girl dismounted.
Dima walked inside the terminal and informed Alexi that the girl had purchased a ticket for an Aeroflot flight to San Francisco. Alexi c
ontacted PRYAMO’s information division and requested the manifest for the flight. All of the passenger names were read to him moments later, to include a late arrival, one Yulia Annikova—Cute! Their girl had a sense of humor.
Dima exited the airport and jumped into Alexi’s waiting car. The two agents drove to the deserted landing strip where they had touched down just a few days earlier and boarded a small jet destined for San Francisco.
- - - - - - -
Aiden boarded his jet and was immediately relieved to be in the familiar confines. The pilot and co-pilot greeted him at the cabin entryway as the wind howled through, instantly chilling the air inside.
“I want to be in the air and out of Russian airspace as soon as possible,” Aiden grumbled without returning their welcome. Two flight attendants emerged from the rear galley ready to take care of their patron. His coffee was brewed and his Baileys had been added. He grabbed his coffee and waved them off. He was not in the mood to indulge. He was angry and terrified. He had wasted precious time trying to hunt down a legend and ended up discovering an irreverent, petulant, pubescent girl who had made him feel old, dirty, and dumb. To make matters worse, he had endured all of that humiliation, and was returning home empty-handed. He had been subjected to round-the-clock surveillance since landing in Moscow by the FSB, who had sent a particularly sadistic agent to be his tormentor. Aiden just wanted to fly away in the direction that would take him out of the country as fast as possible.