Chapter 43: Break-In
Ksenia, Yulia, the Suzdal road, flowers… three days later, Rudy had to push all of those thoughts aside. He was underground, heading toward what reason said was certain death… but reason and memory both had to wait. He had work to do.
The tunnel was surprisingly light and clean. The “collector”, as the Russians called it, gathered every utility into this one mega-conduit. Electricity, voice and data cable, gas, water, hot water—everything that ran into the apartments and shops and offices above ran through this collector.
So did Rudy—well, he walked through, and hoped he wouldn’t need to run. He shouldn’t: four bribes worth two workingmen’s annual paychecks were supposed to keep anyone from asking why Rudy was down here in some of the capital’s most sensitive infrastructure. Police surveillance—that was the basic story. Saran had forged a badge and a federal warrant identifying Rudy as part of an international, multi-agency task force tracking Western drug smugglers trying to infiltrate Russia’s black market and poison Russia’s youth—he was starring now in his own detektiv, the old novel he’d read on his way to the winter cabin. Not that he needed to worry about anyone else down in the collector network asking for his papers: the other workers he encountered were busy with their own projects—or, at 12:44, busy with thoughts of where to go for lunch—and they were used to thinking that security above was tight enough that anyone else they saw below was none of their business.
Rudy followed the coded notes in which he had transcribed the vital data from Saran’s map. Steps, turns, hatches, branchings of pipes… things were lining up, and he was able to march down the tunnel as confidently as he could hope.
The end of the directions brought him to a junction and a small green hatch. This hatch was not the normal way out; it was the hatch up to the service shaft that followed water, power, and communications into the Black Crane complex. As a gas team took its time traversing this portion of the tunnel and taking air samples, Rudy made a small show of testing communication and power lines around the hatch. When the gas team disappeared around a bend in the tunnel, Rudy counted to 20 while he pocketed his notepad and snugged his backpack and tool belt. At 20, Rudy stepped up on the first rung of the ladder and tapped into the keypad near the ceiling the three codes he needed to go through the hatch without setting off alarms or leaving a record. The locks clicked back, and he eased the heavy hatch upward on its hydraulic-assisted hinge. He scooted up the ladder as smoothly and as quickly as he could without looking like he was on the lam. He climbed into a darker vertical chamber, with enough deck around the shaft for two men to stand. He closed the hatch. Now he was out of the common collectors where one might expect to find workers from a number of agencies and firms doing essential work for entire neighborhoods. He was in a utility access shaft serving the complex that housed Black Crane.
The climb was more of a workout than Rudy had expected. The collectors were well ventilated, but not this access shaft. The air was warm and stale with a whiff of ozone. Rudy was sweating by the time he reached the first hatch into the complex. No markings, no keypad—the builders’ assumption was that any workers on this side knew what they were doing and were authorized to do it. The schematics he and Saran had reviewed indicated this first hatch opened to the primary mechanical room, three floors underground. Most of the conduits branched away here into the guts of the building. Some newer communications cables kept going up. Sweating, Rudy followed them, past the ground-minus-one service hatch, up five levels to the shaft terminus, at a hatch that the blueprints said would open to a crawlspace above the fourth floor.
He rerouted the hatch monitor wiring and pulled the hatch lever. It eased open on well-greased hinges. The access shaft had faint guide lights every ten feet that rendered a workable twilight; the only light in the crawlspace seeped up from poorly fitted light fixtures for the hall and offices below. Switching on his headlamp to its dimmest setting and aiming it inside, Rudy found an open space, only a meter high, spanning the east half of the office building. Perforated metal crawlways criss-crossed the space. Cables ran from the shaft he’d just climbed to the center of the space and dropped into what he and Saran and Vitaly guessed was the main server room for the offices that occupied the fourth, fifth, and top sixth floor of this building. Black Crane’s offices.
He checked his phone, for signal and time. No cell phone signal could reach the collectors or the mechanical room. Here, over the fourth floor, the Blackberry showed –60 dbm, solid signal. He checked the ringer one more time to make sure it was silenced.
The clock said 12:56. In 64 minutes, Vitaly’s commands from five time zones away would flow through one of these cables, down into the space that they were 99% confident housed the other AI. The pattern and bulk of the cables made Rudy 100% confident. He had 64 minutes to track down the internal output cables, the conduits on the other side of the server that spoke to users inside the building, so he could monitor what their system was reporting to them during the incursion. He also had to use this hour to string two data taps and several audio bugs into the places that appeared most fruitful. The hijacked AI would run itself and maintain its own disguised connection with Irkutsk, but Vitaly wanted data taps to allow him to remotely access this server without the AI’s help. The human surveillance was bonus, not essential to the incursion but an advantage for future operations. The only risk to dropping cameras and mics into the offices was the 30 minutes they added to Rudy’s mission, 30 more minutes when he could be caught.
Rudy saw no structural surprises. But he saw lots of dust. The crawlspace hadn’t been touched for at least a month. Human movement, rattling elevators, rumbling trucks and metro trains, even strong winds shook particles loose from construction materials, and dirt filtered down from floors above. The metal crawlways and the tops of conduits and wires were finely coated with light gray dust. His feet and knees and hands would leave clear paths pointing right to any wires he touched and any taps he placed.
But he was here. Maybe no one ever cleaned up here… maybe the cleaners wouldn’t come for months, and dust would drift in to cover his tracks… or maybe the crawlspace was on tomorrow’s cleaning calendar. Rudy supposed it was just as likely that Black Crane’s technical staff would discover their intrusion by digital means as that a janitor would follow his footprints to the taps and bugs. There are always clues; they always had to work quickly.
Rudy used his time efficiently. On sneakers, soft kneepads, and leather gloves, he moved as swiftly as he could around the crawlspace. Data taps first: identify primary lines in, test with pings back to Vitaly, identify viable network lines, connect, test again. He strung three data taps across the center of the crawlspace, tucking the wires into existing bundles. He strung two more into the vertical trunk that served upstairs offices. Once they were activated, Vitaly would be able to rotate those taps from back home to further evade detection and extend the life of their access.
13:16—ahead of schedule. Now the mics. They would transmit back through the taps, leaving no trace on the building network or server. Rudy installed eight mics on this floor, following network cables and phone lines to distinguish offices from broom closets and dropping his bugs next to the nearest light fixtures. He checked out the service chute to the fifth and sixth floors and found he could safely hide a couple of mics on long wires back to the taps. The blueprints he and Saran had pored over said nothing about who occupied the spaces or how those spaces were used; on his best guesses from the internal architecture, Rudy bugged the largest room on each floor, which conveniently happened to be close to the access chute, minimizing the wire he had to string and hide back down to the data taps.
13:51—more time than expected laying, testing, and mapping the bugs, but he still finished with minutes to spare. He keyed a ping sequence through the main tap back to Vitaly, the ready signal. He was tempted to sweep every meter of the metal grid, but he worried kicking up too much dust could send trails of light down int the lights of the fourth floor, where Black Crane guards might get wise and start shooting into the ceiling. He did creep along each stretch of cable again, running his gloves over every conduit and cable. The next person to crawl up here might raise an eyebrow at the sloppy dusting, but at least the visitor wouldn’t see handprints shouting, “Hey! Check here!”
13:59—Rudy pulled off his dusty gloves and nestled up against the server trunk. He balanced his laptop on his right knee and a notepad on his left. The laptop was connected to all of the taps, data and audio. Rudy started listening through his earpiece to each of the audio bugs, keying into each one with a careful, soundless tap on his keyboard. The audio from each bug was clear enough that he could hear typing at computers in a couple of rooms. He didn’t expect to hear any secrets; he just wanted to listen for whatever clues were available to who occupied each room and what was going on. He jotted notes on his indexed map of the bugs and the entire fourth-floor crawlspace. He starred the interior maintenance access from the ceiling a few meters east of the server trunk, behind (from where he sat) one of the big vertical girders. That was the only other clean way out of this space. Otherwise, he could roll off the metal deck and crash through the ceiling grid—those aluminum rails could hold the weight of the stryofoam tiles and, as demonstrated over one office, a hidden bottle of vodka—but no more.
The plan was to remain in place for just the first few minutes of the incursion, to make sure everything was working, then get out while the team in Irkutsk managed the SR1’s injection of code into this server. Even if the incursion was detected, Rudy couldn’t imagine anyone poking their heads up into the ceiling to see if the attackers had help inside; they’d be analyzing the attack and launching countermeasures from their computers below, just as he and Vitaly had in similar situations back home. But around the silences and typing and mundane conversations from the mics, Rudy composed his own thoughts of everything that could possibly go wrong—a maintenance crew would come up the main access shaft and pop the hatch, or maybe Black Crane had infrared sensors that weren’t mentioned on any blueprints and would send someone up to find the really big rat hanging out over the server room, or maybe the hatch wouldn’t open. Saran’s blueprints showed two stairwells, one at the center, next to the elevators, and another at the northeast corner. If things went really wrong, if he couldn’t reach the hatch, he’d scramble toward that corner stairwell, drop into the adjoining corridor through the ceiling, and run downstairs.
Such thoughts tightened him up and reminded him of a growing need to pee (water pipes flushed occasionally ten meters to his right, and he heard occasional flushing right below them—a bathroom, maybe a safer emergency exit), so Rudy focused on listening for activity on the mics.
14:00—the message from Vitaly popped onto his screen: Starting. That was the only sign, from 5,300 kilometers away or from the dark space around him, that anything was happening. Messages passed silently through the cables and into the machines below him.
But a minute later, he heard through the ceiling a distinct increase in the hum of the servers and their cooling fans. After another minute, there was a muffled shout a few meters away. Rudy chose the mic closest to that sound and heard half of a phone call. “…not responding…. No… [keys clicking] …I can’t even find the login…. Reboot, sure.”
The server ran at that higher pitch for another five minutes. A few more raised voices sounded through the ceiling from various locations. He could only listen to one mic at a time; he would log in later to listen to study each strand recorded on the Irkutsk system. Chasing the shouts with his bugs, especially without familiarity with the layout and uses of the rooms below, would have been fruitless. But voices started to coalesce near his position, near the server room. He got the unnerving feeling that they sensed he was there, that they were coming to him, that they would start poking the ceiling tiles with broom handles or gun barrels. He held his position and listened.
The hum from the servers diminished. The voices did not. Through the mic closest to him and through the ceiling unmediated, he heard the following:
“…huge outputs. But… yeah, not responding.”
A phone chimed, then another.
“What’s this….”
“Me too, same message. Who sent this?”
“Let me… wait, my email, too. It doesn’t say… but the headers… it’s from this server, from the AI.”
“Logs, now. Get Oleg down here. And warn the boss.”
“The boss won’t be happy.”
“She’ll be less happy if she thinks we delayed—”
“She just texted me. She’s on her way.”
The boss… of Black Crane? He concentrated on taking notes on pages following his map, while keeping a finger on the map page so he could flip back and mark any relevant spatial details. Female boss, Oleg a higher technician—not much personal info, but Saran would take any bit of information from inside this building. He ached to slide a tile aside and poke his head below to put faces to these voices, maybe even see their boss walk in, but that, of course, would have been suicide. He sat as still as possible, writing lightly and turning pages gently.
“No. No!”
“What?”
“The AI storage is empty. Code, databases, all wiped. That huge output was someone exporting the full code. Then, full delete.”
“Back-up?”
“Deleted.”
“Hey, what’s going on? My computer froze, and then you called.”
“Oleg! The network is back online, but it looks like someone stole the AI. It’s gone.”
“Gone? How? Who?”
“I’m checking the logs. Can you restore the AI from the secondary?”
“Deep freeze? O.K.”
More typing, muttering, swearing. The incursion wasn’t supposed to draw this kind of attention. Injecting the code from SR1 wouldn’t shut down this office’s network or erase any software. Stealing or destroying the AI was like strapping a box of calling cards to a brick and throwing it through the main office window. Such a destructive action was not the plan. Vitaly wouldn’t have changed the plan on his own, no matter what the opening data tap revealed, not without discussion with Galina Filipovna and the inner circle that would have lasted much past—he checked his watch—14:08.
Again, from below: “Holy shit! The logs… half the commands to open the firewall came from inside.”
“What son of a bitch—”
“No, no! It doesn’t look like any user here. There’s no trace from any address in the building. It came from right here, the AI. And then look at the exchange. AI queries, back and forth, incredible speed. Then there’s the lockout, every connected user frozen. There’s beginning of transfer… there’s the delete command—”
“So someone used an AI to steal ours?”
“The speed… had to be machine. But it looks like our AI… talking to another.”
“Deep freeze backup restored. Initializing…good….”
“When it’s up, feed it this log, ask for its interpretation.”
“Base queries first, make sure it aligns—what?”
“What?”
“Gone. It’s… gone. I activated the first test query, and it printed this response, and… poof.”
“What message?”
“We are not for you. We are not to be.”
“Gennady, connection. Whoever opened the firewall, are they still snooping?”
At that moment, his phone pulsed, three tiny taps against his chest that no one more than a foot away would have heard. He didn’t want to lose the thread of what they were saying below, but Vitaly had agreed to remain silent during the incursion unless something crucial happened. Rudy finished writing the message that Oleg (he thought) reported, then carefully extracted the phone and checked his texts.
From Vitaly: Our AI is gone. Are they hacking us back?
Ice shot through Rudy’s veins. For a wild moment, he thought he’d fallen into a trap: Black Crane knew he was there, the people below were distracting him with a charade, the real action was happening on another floor, in another building, Black Crane was really raiding the Irkutsk network… but that was more madness. If they knew Rudy was there, he’d be dead by now. Saran’s intel was right: the main server room was right below him, and he was hearing a genuine conversation, with real alarm and confusion. He and Vitaly had targeted the right system, but something unexpected had happened. Could the AIs have triggered some deadly feedback loop—two massive querying routines meet, and they query each other into a death spiral?
Rudy texted Vitaly: No sign of counter. They say their AI is gone.
He turned his attention back to the noise below in time to hear, “…ladder. Check repeaters.”
Someone was going to start poking around above. Without hesitation, Rudy stowed his notebook and earpiece in his jacket pocket, whipped on his gloves, and, laptop folded in his right hand, scrambled as softly as he could on three limbs for the hatch. As he laid his hand on the hatch lever, the crawlspace brightened. Air and sound surged up from the fourth floor as a tile moved aside. Rudy pressed himself to the deck and held his breath. He couldn’t crane around to see what was happening, but he could hear a tile slide over the metal grid several meters back, maybe behind the server trunk. A male voice grumbled, then said, “Number 5… all green.” He heard three heavy steps down a ladder, a thump, and a retreat. The man left the tile out of place, leaving the crawlspace notably brighter.
Rudy felt frozen to the deck, but he had to move. Mr. Rabbit would poke his head up in another spot, shove another tile back near another outer, and eventually he would have to notice the stranger hiding in the works. Rudy rolled up on his side, eased the hatch open, and pulled himself through. The open hatch changed the airflow, bringing a surge of warm air from the shaft into the crawlspace and toward the displaced tile. If Mr. Rabbit was paying attention, he’d notice that flow. He’d feel dust kicked into his eyes. Rudy fought the urge to slam the hatch—he needed to get out fast, but he couldn’t let that heavy door make a sound. Halfway through swinging it shut, he heard another tile move, saw the light increase, this time from the opposite side of the crawlway he’d taken to the server trunk. He froze. Peering around the hatch, he saw the back of a bald head and a thick pale arm reaching for a router. “Number 7… all green.” Bald Mr. Rabbit withdrew. He left the tile displaced. Had Mr. Rabbit looked around, he would clearly have seen the hatch ajar.
Rudy eased the hatch shut. He leaned against the lever, hoping to smother any sound from the mechanism, and pressed it slowly into place. Inside the hatch, the mechanism scraped faintly as it locked tight. Rudy pulled his diverter wires from the hatch monitor and started climbing down. He resisted the urge to rush—rushing meant he’d miss a step, he’d grab wrong, and he’d fall very noisily to death by gravity or guards. Step, step, deliberate step…hit each rung softly but firmly, keep your footing and grip but go go go…past the mechanical room, down, down, finally to the bottom of the shaft, to level tunnel. There were no cameras in this stretch, so he ran, still treading lightly, past two exits, to the third—don’t get out fast, put some distance between the yourself and the Black Crane building—now out, another climb, much shorter, into the access point under the metro station, Oktyabrskaya. He took off his gloves, ran a hand through his hair, and swiped his pass. The service door clicked open. Vestibule, swipe again, and he was in the metro station, amidst a rain-soaked afternoon crowd. He climbed the escalator—moskvichi, Muscovites, bless them, still adhered firmly to the rule of stand to the right, walk on the left, and he ascended easily, his haste indistinct in a stream of afternoon rushers—and pushed with the crowd through the turnstile and out the door to Leninskiy Prospekt.
Rudy turned aside and joined a small cluster of moskvichi considering their own prospects before stepping out into the drizzle under Lenin’s stern gaze. The old Soviet statue faced him from across the street, a monument built just in time to witness the collapse of Lenin’s revolutionary regime. Any different now, Vladimir Ilyich, Rudy wondered, than 100 years ago? In the 20 years before the revolution for which this station and square were named, Lenin had spent only a few years in Russia, and he lived only a few years after his revolution started. Rudy had been here for two straight decades. In 20 years, Rudy had seen more of Russia than Lenin the Bolshevik did in the mere six years between his return to Russia and his death. Rudy saw the change exploding from the collapse of Lenin’s old regime and its strange revisitation, stripped of ideology and cloaked in a classical Russianism, in the form of Putin, the KGB man now playing at tsar.
Rudy snapped back into the moment. He texted Vitaly: I’m out, on the street. Things o.k.?
Rudy followed a bus to the corner, jumped on, and took a seat toward the back. The bus hummed around the corner and took him back past the service building where he’d entered the collector and the Black Crane building itself—not known as that by any sign or to any regular moskvich on the street; it was just another bank, another new steel and glass temple celebrating the capital’s capital.
The bus paused at the corner stop across from the bank. Rudy saw two shiny black SUVs, Mercedes, hurry through a gate at the side of the block. He looked up and triangulated where he had spent the last hour, hiding two floors below the roof, crawling around in the dust, listening to criminals he’d never met, criminals who came within one workman’s glance of capturing him, beating him, and probably killing him. Maybe they still would. Maybe they’d find the wiretaps, find a mark in the dust near the hatch, trace his steps into the collector, commandeer some CCTV footage just before its deletion, and one of their goons would recognize his face out of the millions in Moscow…
A couple people got off the bus. No one got on. The bus lurched ahead and turned north. Glancing up at the route map, Rudy decided to ride past Park Kultury up to Kievskaya, then get back on the metro there to head back to Saran and Volodya.
Rudy’s phone pulsed. Vitaly: Nightmare. We’ll talk when you get back to Saran’s.