Chapter 44: Moscow Waiting
By 16:00, Rudy was back at Saran’s apartment. He’d taken a circuitous route to Pervomayskaya, backtracking through a couple stations, then walking down to the edge of Izmailovsky Park and around the library before coming back to the apartment on the narrow street right across from the church. On that weaving walk, as on the metro, as on the bus, he tried to shrink and dissolve into the gray afternoon, just another workman headed nowhere of interest to anyone, even to himself. He tried to pay attention without looking attentive, looking everywhere but nowhere, afraid to meet anyone’s eye but afraid to miss some suspicious man or woman who would get close enough to grab his arm before he could… what? run? fight? He had a utility knife in a sleeve pocket; would he draw that two-centimeter blade and hope the attacker’s laughter would buy him time to run? Would he outrun a gang in a black van? or bullets? Would Black Crane bother to beat answers out of him? Would he bear up under a beating and keep his mouth shut, tell them lies, tell them to fuck themselves? Or would they just shoot him on the spot, take his gear, and leave him dead on the sidewalk right in front of the library?
No one shot him. No one jumped him in the alley or on the dark steps up to the apartment. Saran met him at the apartment door and asked for his computer. Rudy handed it over, set his wet backpack and sneakers by the neat line of Saran’s shoes and Volodya’s boots on the rug by the door, and went to the living room. Saran had already sat down at the small desk and opened his laptop next to hers. “Can you log in for me, Rudy? Thanks.” Under Rudy’s credentials, Saran connected to the Ring’s private network and activated remote control for Irkutsk. “Vitaly is checking every computer, wants to see if what happened there affected any of our machines off-site.”
That login would let Vitaly know Rudy was back at Saran’s apartment. Still, he texted, Safe now, as he looked out at the narrow alley from the third-floor window. He saw workmen tromping back and forth from their trucks to the mud around the expansion project at the far end of the block, on the north side of a church. He saw two babushki trundling their groceries through the murky puddles. No one was standing around watching.
A minute later, his phone rang. Rudy keyed in, and Vitaly said immediately, “Rudy, are you o.k.?”
Rudy turned away from the window. Volodya entered from the kitchen and took Rudy’s place by the curtain. Volodya’s hand rested close to his pistol. He always carried a pistol under his jacket; here in the apartment, his jacket was off, and the pistol rode in the open, in a holster clipped to Volodya’s belt. Saran had recruited him years ago from an Irkutsk nightclub where she’d watched him break up a fight among four men and throw them all out. Saran married him a year later. Volodya had none of Saran’s frequently playful nature. He was always on the lookout, rarely spoke. They had no children, but Saran seemed perfectly happy with Volodya’s companionship. He was Saran’s most reliable security man… but Rudy got the impression from Volodya’s steely demeanor that he had come to Moscow as much to make sure Rudy wasn’t alone with Saran as to make sure Black Crane didn’t get either of them.
Rudy paced the living room while Saran looked at data on her computer and Rudy’s. “Yeah,” Rudy said into his phone. “What happened there?”
A pause… “You’re on speaker. Kolya, Alenka, Nina, Galya, all here.”
Galina Filipovna spoke up. “Rudy, first, good work. Your taps, audio and data, worked fine on first pass. We’re still receiving audio; Alenka is monitoring. Understand: your trip was worth the risk.”
Rudy appreciated Galya’s reassurance. “But… the data?”
“Both systems were hacked,” Galya said, “Black Crane and our system, at the same time, the moment Vitaly connected. From what we are hearing, Black Crane is as puzzled as we are. Tell us what you heard.”
Rudy recounted everything, from his entry into the crawlspace to his nearly detected escape.
“You heard them mention a strange email,” Galya inquired. “Did they say what the email said?”
“An email, and a response from their backup, before it failed. I heard, We are not for you. We are not to be.”
“We,” Galya said. There was some soft, indistinct conversation on the other end. “Rudy,” Galya resumed, “we got the same message. It’s in our emails… yours, too, Vitaly says.”
Rudy keyed up his email on the Blackberry. He’d shut off notifications during his raid. Right there, top of the inbox, 14:03, subject line, We are not for you… and no message attached. “Who sent this?”
“We don’t know. The message was completely anonymized. But it went to every user account associated with our AI. It’s the same text you say Black Crane received from their AI backup. We, it said. We….”
Vitaly jumped in. “Rudy, your computer checks out. So do ours. No damage, only the systems housing the AI. They were wiped clean.”
“Is that the same thing that happened to Black Crane?”
“It sounds like it, from what you heard and from the audio we’re getting, but I don’t dare check their network directly.”
“Aren’t the data taps working?”
“We’re getting solid signal from everything you installed. But I don’t dare try inputting commands to extract data, not without the AI. The hijacking depended on the hybrid AI to conceal our activity with whitewashed data. We can passively receive from the audio taps, but if I try querying Black Crane’s files, they’ll see it right away.”
“So who could have done this?” Rudy asked. “The FSB? Did they decide to confiscate our system, without telling us?”
“The feds steal our system, they steal Black Crane’s, they do it at the very moment we are hijacking Black Crane’s AI? Too much coincidence. And Putin’s guys aren’t this good. They aren’t this clean. If they tried hacking this deep, to steal the AI, they’d have ripped up files all over our network, and Black Crane’s.”
“Then who? And how? They didn’t just hack the network. They corrupted private backups. Who can do that?”
“I cannot explain it. But… we will figure it out.”
Galya spoke again. “Rudy, stay with Saran and Volodya a few more days. Lie low, keep your eyes open. We may need you on site.”
“In the Black Crane building again?”
“I’d rather not,” Galya said, “Thanks to you, we have audio surveillance, and I will have Vitaly look at ways we can use the data taps without blowing our cover. But in Moscow… maybe something will turn up.”
“Anything you need me to do?”
“No, not yet. Sit tight, help Saran. Be ready, o.k.?”
“O.K. Keep me posted.”
“Da. Spasibo.”
* * *
Rudy made himself scarce the rest of the week. Saran received some documents from Vitaly and tracked down some leads on Black Crane and FSB activity, but she relied on Volodya to drive around the city, and she didn’t have much to occupy Rudy. “Besides, Mr. Secret Agent,” Saran teased him at supper Wednesday, “you earned yourself a break today. Take it easy for now.”
So Rudy took his own excursions around Moscow, careful not establish any routine. He left his motorcycle locked in the apartment garage and went on foot and metro. Rain fell off and on every day, and Rudy felt safer keeping his two wheels off the wet streets, where Russians seemed pre-occupied with earning demolition-derby licenses. Rudy also figured he’d be less conspicuous if he didn’t charge around the city on his motorcycle. On the trains and the sidewalks, he blended into the crowd.
Rudy carried Ken’s Moscow dnevniki in his jacket pockets. 20 years ago, they had toured the capital on the weekends, two days before their week at the monastery south of the city, two days after. Rudy reread the journals and replicated their itinerary. Thursday he went to Red Square and the Kremlin. He sat outside the Cathedral of the Assumption with its golden domes, read Ken’s notes about hoping to see Yeltsin, and wondered what would happen now if he saw Putin, or if Putin saw him. Would the old KGB chief recognize the Ring’s foreman, have him arrested on the spot, hauled inside, tortured to tell the Ring Group’s secrets? Still jangled from his incursion into Black Crane’s building, Rudy looked around for utility access points. Could he find a connector that would take him to Putin’s office? Could he find a utility shaft through which to escape if the FSB arrested him?
Thursday afternoon and Friday he continued through the destinations recorded in Ken’s journals—Moscow State University (Rudy wondered how often Ksenia might have walked in these gardens between classes or which part of the library she had holed up in to study), museums, cathedrals, cemeteries. 20 years ago, they had taken the metro just twice, a gaggle of Americans literally clinging to each other so as not to get separated in the crowded and serpentine tunnels and escalators. Alone, Rudy found the metro restful—standing still, surfing the rails as Moscow whooshed around him and his fellow travelers. As he reread Ken’s account of their first metro trip, written in the comfort of their hotel that night, and as the next station rang closer and the car slowed, he recalled looking around to count heads, to catch the eye of Brenda, Marty, Carter, Ashley, and the others to confirm that this was indeed their stop and they were all ready to push through the doors and meet near the escalator. He needed his low-profile isolation now, but for a moment, as the train stopped and the doors slid open, Rudy longed for a companion or two, or two dozen, to accompany and protect until they emerged laughing at their bravery on the bright street above.
Rudy watched in the stations for anyone who waited on the platforms as his train pulled in and followed him onto a connecting train or out to the street. He looked in windows for reflections of tails. He lingered, backtracked, walked through little grocery stores and book shops. But he didn’t recognize any faces, didn’t see any familiar jackets or sneakers or buzz cuts or scowls coming to haul him away to the Kremlin or a mafia club or his last back alley.
Nor did he see Ksenia. Ridiculous, he told himself more than once, but Yulia’s farewell stuck in his mind right beside her unlikely greeting at the bus stop outside Globus. If he could happen upon Yulia, then why not Ksenia? Had he used up chance with their encounter in Astrakhan? Or did Yulia show there was still some juice left in the fortuitous universe that would cross his path with Ksenia’s again here, in the capital, the crossroads, the center of all Russia? However remote the chance of seeing Ksenia again, wouldn’t that slim chance be least slim here? And if he had to look so attentively for bad guys, for Black Crane or FSB or anyone else who might cause him trouble, couldn’t he direct a little of his attention to looking for someone—some one, the one, so wonderful, full of nothing but wonder, no menace, only joyful memory and maybe, finally, if the rain would let up, one more motorcycle ride?
Didn’t I put that to bed after Astrakhan? Rudy thought. Didn’t Ksenia?
Evidently not. Yulia brought it all back.
It was crazy to think he’d see Ksenia on the street. She completely disappeared after Astrakhan. He and Vitaly and the SR1 had found no trace of her online. She wasn’t going to bloom big and bright right in front of him on a Moscow street. She wouldn’t let fate repeat one more time, wouldn’t give him one more chance to talk, just talk, as he and Yulia did, to apologize for whatever he said to offend Ksenia in Astrakhan, to assure her that he was fine and get assurance that she was fine, too, that whatever she’d gotten into hadn’t hurt her and wouldn’t hurt her.
That won’t happen, Rudy thought, because Ksenia won’t let it happen. He recalled Anna Nikolayevna and Pavel Pavlovich’s letter: She wishes she could see you… but insists that she cannot. Rudy stopped in front of a café, looked at a smattering of afternoon customers snacking under the awnings, looked all the way around at the rumbling street and sparse sidewalk. If Ksenia sees me, she’ll turn away. Again.
Ksenia, of course, did not magically appear on the street. Rudy looked, looked for faces like hers (and would he dare approach if he spotted her before she spotted him?), but no one clicked… and maybe to his relief, because any profounder chance might have floored him, left him unable to complete whatever further mission Galina Filipovna deemed necessary. With an anxious and sinking heart, Rudy thought he might have turned away just as he imagined Ksenia would, for the sake of his obligations, to keep her safe from whatever trouble his work would bring down on her or anyone else around him.
Disappointed that the impossible wouldn’t materialize, afraid of Black Crane around every corner, frustrated to not know what work he would have to do next… Rudy lugged around a whole basket of negative feelings, under a stubbornly gray sky.
Under such gray, Rudy couldn’t replicate the joy Ken had captured in his journals 20 years ago, the joy that had bound him and Ken into a sudden family and propelled them to Suzdal and the bell tower and made him think of a gesture as crazy as taking a Russian girl for a motorcycle ride. Moscow didn’t inspire any such joy or bond now, only slick new glass and steel, rain and doubt, danger and waiting.
* * *
Saturday morning, Rudy went for a long walk, through the thickly wooded Izmailovsky Park, just a couple minutes south of where they were staying. He walked around a little pond and up to the flea market (where surely Ksenia would not be, for what did a woman of means need with Russia’s touristy cast-offs?). 20 years ago, the Plowshare group had come to this open-air market on a sunny afternoon. Ken had stopped at a cart with hats piled five feet high and bought two: a green KGB officer’s cap with the red star and hammer-and-sickle insignia and a more practical black ushanka, a thick fur hat—”great for snowmobiling,” Ken wrote, Rudy assumed of the latter, though he could imagine Ken riding through the snow in the Black Hills with the KGB officer’s cap pulled tightly down to his frosty ears, walking into a bar, and shouting “Comrades!” Rudy didn’t remember buying anything—they’d visited on the first weekend, and he hadn’t wanted to weigh his bag down with souvenirs until closer to their departure. The market seemed unfamiliar now, entombed in a new ersatz kremlin.
He heard a burst of English and laughter. Americans, college students, clustered around one of innumerable matryoshka stands. Four girls and one lucky boy were gushing over a literary matryoshka, Tolstoy containing Dostoevsky containing Turgenev containing Lermontov containing—squeals of delight—”Omigod look a little Pushkin!” The squealers turned in unison—remarkable telepathy among these travelers—and tugged at the shoulder of another young American, gangly and clean in a white shirt and almost white hair, who was far more interested in twisting open another matryoshka to discover how many members of FC Barcelona it contained. Rudy saw the football fan get to #7 before deciding he’d lingered near the Americans too long and risked drawing attention to himself.
Rudy was approaching a bookcart—an elaborate traveling affair with multiple foldout shelves, books all strapped in place—when his phone buzzed. He automatically turned and started walking toward the quieter edge of the market. When he had a little more space between himself and the shoppers, he pulled the phone out and saw Galina Filipovna was calling. He answered immediately: “Yes, listening.”
“Where are you?”
Galina Filipovna’s tone made him look around, not to verify his location, but to see if anyone was listening… or coming toward him. “Izmailovsky Market. What is wrong?”
“New development. Can you talk?”
Rudy hurried past the fake cannons and down the bridge to the market gate. He headed south to get back to the park, away from the crowds coming to shop, away from eavesdroppers. “Go ahead.”
“Black Crane wants to meet. They sent a message an hour ago. They say they want to talk about our ‘shared technological interests.’ Vitaly thinks they mean our AI systems. They say we—their leadership and ours—need to negotiate to…’avoid hostilities and focus on our common enemy.'”
Rudy looked around the sidewalk. He was still a block away from the forest park. Three children whizzed by him on skateboards. He chose his words carefully. “A negotiation? For what?”
“We don’t know yet. They won’t share details online. They insist on a meeting in person.”
“In person? They want you to fly in? The whole committee?”
“They did not specify. I told them we can’t get anyone to Moscow until Sunday. I didn’t want to tip them off to the fact that we have people on the ground already. I suggested we could fly one representative to Moscow, and they agreed.”
Rudy checked his stride and his volume. Don’t draw attention, don’t draw attention…“One… you?”
Galina did not respond immediately. Rudy’s blood went cold, and his feet stopped. Galya wasn’t calling to give him a heads-up. She was calling to ask….
“Forgive me,” he said, picking up his pace again, “but I think our ideas are getting worse. I talk with suppliers and partners, not mafia. This…this is too big. I can’t speak for us to these guys.”
“Yes, you can,” Galya said. “I trust you, Rudy. We all trust you.”
“What about Saran? Wouldn’t…” but Rudy trailed off. Saran was a better speaker, a sharper negotiator, but he immediately felt awful proposing that she face a danger to spare him.
“I considered Saran,” Galya said, “but she’s investigating some signals we’re getting from the Kremlin. Assets are moving, more online surveillance, FSB–police transmissions, activity with Chechnya… the security forces are preparing for something. I need Saran to keep working with Vitaly on that problem and on… contingencies. The state may be the ‘common enemy’ Black Crane mentioned. We should see what Black Crane may offer. If things are going to go to hell with Putin, we’ll need every partner we can get.”
Rudy was finally in the park, deep into the woods, where he was as alone as one could be in the city. “And you think this is safe?”
“Safer than rebuffing Black Crane. Safer than operating without whatever intelligence they may share. And safer than what you did Wednesday. The taps you set up are still working. We aren’t hearing anything to make us think this is a trap. Actually, some of the chatter we are picking up suggests Black Crane is afraid of us and wants to avoid a confrontation.”
“If we do it, when? where?”
“Sunday evening. Their headquarters.”
“Jesus.”
“Bodyguards are perfectly normal in these situations. You could bring Volodya.”
Rudy ducked under a heavy branch that had fallen across the path, propped at a diagonal against a broken gray trunk. The path twisted down to a muddy streambed. Rudy followed a single track of slick packed dirt just above the mud. “I could… but if the meeting is what you think, Volodya’s not needed. If it’s not, he’s not enough. Either way, he should stay and protect Saran. The fewer people we… expose, the better.”
“So you’ll do it?”
The stream and trail turned. Rudy clutched a leafy birch branch to steady himself around the bend. He looked up the empty path and let out a heavy breath. “I don’t like this. But I didn’t like going in the back door. Going in the front door can’t be worse. Send me details. I’ll go.”