Part 9 Imposters #2
A pause at the other end.
‘We recovered the bodies of two of the attackers on the parkway. They’ve been positively identified as MSS agents working out of the Chinese consulate here in New York.’
The MSS was the Ministry for State Security, China’s foreign spy service; the Chinese version of the CIA.
Audrey frowned. ‘Chinese spies?’
‘They wanted the QuantumSpeed-7 chip, which is why they went after you. Audrey, please, come in. Before they send more assassins.’
‘No,’ Audrey said firmly. ‘Hey, Trey, why don’t you use all those friends in high places whose asses you’re always kissing to call the fucking Chinese Consul-General and tell him to stand his killers down?’
‘This is sensitive, Audrey—’
‘They tried to kidnap me, Trey, even though I was being escorted by you, the NYPD and Hostage fucking Rescue. If it weren’t for Sam, they’d have got me, too. Given all that, right now I feel safer staying with Sam while he figures out what actually happened at that tower on December 21st.’
‘Is he with you now?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is he listening on speaker?’
I said, ‘Yes, I am.’
‘Fuck, Audrey, really? All right, Speedman, you little twerp, listen up. I know you’ve been poking around on behalf of Yasmina Ivanova. I know you met with the Russian mafia down at Brighton Beach and I know you turned up at the Sleepy Hollow morgue.
‘What happened in that tower on the 21st is an FBI matter. We solved it. Everything pointed to Yasmina Ivanova. I don’t give a flying fuck if you saved Audrey on that parkway. You killed two Chinese nationals, so we’ve issued a warrant for your arre—’
‘For killing two men who were wearing ski masks and trying to abduct a federal agent . . .’ Audrey cut in.
‘—and if you continue to poke your nose into this, I will come after you myself and haul you in.’
‘What are you worried about, Special Agent Hooper? That I’ll make the Bureau look bad?’ I said.
That was exactly what he was concerned about.
‘There is nothing you can figure out that we can’t—’
‘Okay, then,’ I said, ‘tell me how Aristo King was taken from his apartment.’
‘Well . . . I mean . . .’
I was thinking of the Mercedes courtesy van from the security footage and its unusually early departure on December 21st. Clearly, the FBI hadn’t figured that out yet.
(I imagined they’d given the gruelling task of viewing all that footage to junior agents and those junior agents weren’t as efficient or as attentive as I’d been.)
Hooper’s tone turned legal. ‘Mr Speedman. I am officially inviting you to turn yourself in at the FBI offices at 26 Federal Plaza, so we can debrief you about the shootout on the parkway. If you do that, this can all end peacefully. If you do not, then you will be arrested on sight. And if you continue to interview witnesses from that day at the tower, I will have you charged with obstructing a federal investigation. You understand?’
‘I understand,’ I said evenly.
‘This call is over, Trey. Bye.’ Audrey hung up.
‘Christ. What a jackass,’ Heidi said. ‘Can I just say you’re with a much better fella now.’
Audrey smiled at me.
‘I sure am. Oh, by the way, Sam,’ she added. ‘The nurse at the hospital in Sleepy Hollow told me that you waited there all day, every day while I was out of it. Even when Trey and my parents wouldn’t let you see me, she said you still stayed in that waiting room.’
‘You’d do it for me,’ I said.
‘Thanks. Oh, and thanks for the belt. It came in handy.’
‘I actually didn’t think you liked it.’
Audrey cocked her head kindly. ‘It’s not—how shall I put this—the most fashionable belt I own, but you gave it to me so I do wear it occasionally. It makes me think of you. I’m glad I wore it on the 21st.’
‘I got you a better present for this Christmas,’ I said. ‘But it’s back in Houston. I wasn’t expecting to see you here in New York, let alone be here this long and, well, you know . . .’
‘Sam,’ Audrey said gently. ‘It’s fine.’
‘Oh, good.’ Being a boyfriend was still something I was getting used to.
I looked at my watch. It was almost 9:30 p.m.
‘We should all get some rest,’ I said.
My phone buzzed.
It was an encrypted text on Signal.
My brow furrowed when I saw the sender.
‘It’s from the Tech Detect,’ I said.
The message read:
Found something.
Can’t text or tell you over a phone line.
Come to my office downtown. Now.
60 HUDSON STREET
60 Hudson Street
Downtown Manhattan
28 December, 2200 hours
As an Art Deco building in downtown New York City, 60 Hudson Street doesn’t strike the casual observer as anything particularly special.
There are many other buildings like it, with its brick facade and stepped or ‘setback’ levels, but it is perhaps one of the most important buildings in Manhattan, maybe even in the United States.
This is because the building is what is known as a ‘colocation centre’: it’s a gigantic data facility packed with entire floors filled with servers, cabling and bandwidth, all of which is rented to commercial and retail customers.
Basically, the internet wouldn’t work without it.
And if your business requires robust and superfast network connections, you have an office there.
Wall Street firms that engage in high-frequency trading are based there so they can execute their trades in microseconds.
So are major cloud and telecommunications companies like Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, Yahoo!, Telefónica and China Mobile.
And so is Monty Woods, the Tech Detect.
Monty’s offices were on the 15th floor.
After announcing myself to the (rather large force of) security guards in the lobby, Monty buzzed me in, and after riding up in the elevator, I came to a sleek smoked-glass door marked:
THE TECH DETECT
Cyber Investigations
and
Security
Proprietor
Montgomery Woods
Everything about the place looked glossy, black and high tech. It would impress the Wall Street crowd, which I figured was Monty’s main clientele.
As soon as I arrived at the door, Monty opened it from within.
‘Heya, Sam. Come on in.’
The reception area was also a study in cool.
(Seriously, Monty’s interior decorator was awesome. I needed to up my office game.)
Dark walls, dark carpet.
A black-glass reception counter.
And on one entire wall, lit by recessed downlights, a display of gadgets.
‘Nice . . .’ I said, eyeing them.
It was an array of everyday items that had been modified for surveillance.
A bedside digital clock with a camera.
A ballpoint pen with a tiny forward-facing camera on its pocket clip.
And some cool radio-chip tracking devices disguised as everyday objects: a business card with a chip in it, even a tiny ball of fluff.
‘Is that a tracker?’ The tiny ball of lint-like fluff couldn’t have been more than a centimetre wide. It looked like a super-tiny dandelion: fluffy, delicate and white.
‘Yuh-huh. Full RFID and GPS capabilities. Slip that onto the cuff of their jacket or their jeans, and they won’t even notice. Then follow them on Google Maps on your phone.’
‘Amazing,’ I said.
(I knew bugs had gone nano, but not at this level. I needed to up my tracking game as well.)
‘My clients love this shit,’ Monty said.
‘All the James Bond gadgets. They wouldn’t know the first thing about coding or hacking, but a little spy camera hidden in a bedside clock, they dig that the most. I had a woman who thought her housekeeper was stealing her jewellery.
The clock-camera revealed it was her stepdaughter. ’
‘And the pen?’ I asked.
‘Very effective at catching office workers stealing stuff after hours. Put it in a coffee mug filled with other pens, then just sit back and watch in 2K with full audio.’
(I shook my head. I needed to up my surveillance game, too.)
Monty guided me into his inner office.
They say a visitor can see more in your house or office in sixty seconds than you can see in sixty days.
We get used to our messiness, our decorations, our knick-knacks. But a visitor sees them all immediately.
I could see a lot about Monty Woods in his office.
First, there were lots of computers in it.
Eight screens ringed his desk, some showing the regular internet, others showing the darknet, and one showing rows and rows of plain green code which was some exotic computer network I didn’t know.
Racks of servers rose up one wall.
Snaking clusters of thick Cat-9 cables—the fastest ethernet cables in the world—connected them all.
Nestled within the most networked building in America, Monty Woods was networked to the hilt.
I also noted the Dungeons & Dragons dungeon-master books on a bookshelf—neatly arranged in chronological order—an expensive figurine of Goku (the hero from Dragonball Z) and a very expensive figurine of the Mandalorian in a cool battle pose.
In other words, Monty Woods was a total geek who, beyond his detective work, lived in a world of computers, D&D, anime and Star Wars.
‘So what have you found?’ I asked.
Monty made a face.
‘Be careful what you wish for, dude. You may not want to know.’
Monty opened a window on his main screen.
‘All right. You asked me to check out a couple of things: one, who would want the QuantumSpeed-7 chip? And two, a darknet “problem-solving” business called Modern Alchemical Solutions. Turns out, they’re connected.’
‘Go on.’
Monty nodded at his screen. ‘Okay. So this window is the darknet, or the dark web as it used to be known. And this is the website of Modern Alchemical Solutions Inc.’
On the screen was a splash page.
Green text on a black background:
Monty said, ‘Like I said to you on the phone, this is a creepy fucking business, so I did some very light digital surveilling of its communications. Turns out, Modern Alchemical Solutions uses EnigmaUltra to communicate with its clients.’
‘What’s EnigmaUltra?’ I’d never heard of it.
‘It’s a texting app, like Signal or Telegram, only with higher levels of encryption.’
‘I thought Signal and Telegram were impregnable, encryption--wise,’ I said.