The other bouncer saw this and darted toward them to help his buddy. Sandman didn’t react and waited until the man was within range before spinning around and whipping out a kick, catching him just above the knee. He didn’t intend to cripple the man, he just needed to tame him, which was why he spared his fragile cartilage and tendons. The bouncer fell to the ground without realizing how much long-term suffering he’d been spared.
“Let’s try this again, shall we?” Sandman asked. “I need to know if you and your friend here know these two. If you don’t, I’d appreciate a friendly introduction to the joint’s manager who might be able to help me with my enquiry. A copy of Saturday night’s CCTV footage would also be useful as I imagine they grabbed a cab and it would help to know which one it was. Does that sound doable to you?”
He really didn’t need him to reply.
“How do you know about Daland?” I asked, still stumped.
Gigi glanced at Kurt, then gave me a relaxed grin. “I like to know who I’m working with. And the CIA might have shut me out, but the FBI’s servers… pu-lease.”
I was still trying to process the relevance. “You know about this guy?”
Gigi glanced at Kurt again, this time a bit less comfortably, then turned back to me. “He came on to me once. At Comic-Con. Back in his Hidden Lynx days. The guy’s a total sleaze. I mean, he was dressed as Aquaman. Talk about lame. I had to pry his greasy claws off my hips.”
I appreciated Gigi’s honesty, but needed a cogent plan, not hacker crew reminiscences. “Again, Gigi-the point is?”
There was that grin again. “Oh, padawan, you still have so much to learn. You guys think you took him down? You only scratched the surface. They’re not called onion networks for nothing. The top layers might have been peeled away and dropped in the trash compactor, but there are deeper layers underneath it, built from an entirely different architecture, and they’re still fully functional. One of them’s called Erebus and that’s the one we need to get into.”
I knew a little about Erebus. The name was from Greek mythology, the god of darkness and shadows. It was a deep darknet site that had attained almost mythical status with our cyber geeks at the Bureau. As far as I knew, no one knew who’d built it or who ran it.
“Erebus?” I asked. “That’s Daland?”
“Yes. It’s the dark underbelly of Maxiplenty. The VIP area. We’re talking deep, deep darknet. But neither of us can access it. No one from the outside can. It’s so watertight it’s genius. You need a personal invitation from a site maven. On top of that, they use a three-stage access sequence. Each and every access permission is generated by multi-level cryptography starting with an asymmetric keyset based on a one-time algorithm. The unencrypted code is then used as the key for a symmetric cypher which, when combined with a separate code sent via text message, results in a single-use, time-sensitive password. The network is impossible to hack using a brute force attack. There are no back doors. The virtual server hubs are constantly moving around the world-Estonia, Chile, Lebanon, you name it-mirroring themselves without trace then overwriting the origin server’s code so it vanishes into thin air. Even if you could locate a server, the core code will have moved before you get a chance to clone it or get inside and upload a worm. It’s a thing of beauty, really. Daland is one hell of a programmer.”
I may have caught three words of it. Kurt didn’t exactly look overjoyed either, but-I’m sure-that was for entirely different reasons.
“Don’t worry, Snake. I appreciate relativity-in both its general and specific incarnations-but that doesn’t mean I want to screw Einstein’s brains out.”
I wasn’t following any of this. “Gigi, seriously. What the hell are you talking about? How does that help us?”
Gigi seemed to notice that Kurt’s eyes were now alive with possibility.
“I swear to God, Snake, I thought you were dead,” she told him, in a weird voice that I took to be some kind of fair approximation of one of the actors in that movie. Then, in her normal voice, she added, “Tell him, Sensei.”
Kurt smiled. “We need to speak to Daland. He can tell us how to get into Erebus. Then we can post the sketches and ask if anyone recognizes them. Maybe offer a reward. Or just see if there’s anyone there with a grudge against them. By the sounds of it, these assholes might have one or two out there.”
“Why would anyone on Erebus know them?” I asked.
“Seriously, G-boy,” Gigi said, “you don’t know who hangs out in the deep levels of the Darknet?”
“Drug dealers, hired guns, human traffickers, child porn sickos? Friends of yours?” I asked.
“Well, them too,” Kurt said. “But it’s also where you’ll find retired Eastern Bloc spies with shitty pensions, wet-work contractors, ex-Special Forces operatives looking to monetize their antisocial skill sets, drug cartel lieutenants with an eye on climbing up the food chain, gallant security consultants for noble African dictators… you name it. And if there’s one place where someone may have come across these two, it’s in Erebus.”
Gigi smiled. “That’s my Snake.”
I tried to let it all sink in. “You really think it’s worth a shot?”
“You want to find rats like that,” Gigi said, “where better than to look in the sewer?”
“OK, maybe,” I said, “but you seem to have forgotten a tiny detail.”
She deliberately played dumb. The girl really was enjoying this.
“Slight inconvenience,” I said. “Daland might not be able to meet us here for a latté as he’s currently in residence at the MCC while awaiting trial.”
The Metropolitan Correctional Center is New York City’s Federal jail, where prisoners are held pending, and during, trial, usually at the US District Court, which is directly opposite it. It’s been home to some of the worst criminals the country’s seen, some of whom have been there for years, awaiting a trial that would probably never happen.
Gigi leaned forward toward me. “So we go talk to him there.”
I had to laugh. “Great idea. Shouldn’t be a problem whatsoever that I’m a wanted man and that I’m not exactly a stranger to that building or that it’s a literal stone’s throw from FBI headquarters.”
“So?” she pressed.
“So there are guards in there who might recognize me. Lawyers. Judges. FBI agents going in and out of there. Not to mention maybe a dozen guys that I put there.”
“Fine. So we change your look.”
I shook my head. “What did you have in mind? One of the Avengers? How about Thor? I think I’d look cool with blond locks.”
I thought I was doing well by talking their lingo, but she wasn’t laughing. “We go in. Together. In disguise. You’re his ultra-slick defense attorney. You’re brash, brilliant and you tell it like it is, no matter who gets hurt. I’m the sexy paralegal who won’t let you get inside her panties.”
She was a couple of minutes from pitching the pilot.
Kurt’s voice was unusually forceful. “No fucking way.”
Gigi smiled, her voice gentle. “Down, tiger. Yes, way. And, in fact, only way.”
Kurt was glaring at me, willing me to shoot the idea down, eyes already filling with dread for a decision made without him.
Problem was, we had nothing else.
I sent Kurt a sideways look of apologetic resignation.
“OK. Tell me how we do it.”
WEDNESDAY
49
Park Row, New York City
The brown wig and goatee that Kurt and Gigi’s favorite costumier had selected in order to make me look like a fictional attorney from a genuine law practice were so itchy I had to keep reminding myself not to mess with them. Still, and despite the fact that I knew the MCC far better than was healthy right now, we survived the signing-in procedure, the ID checks, the scan and search and the roving eyes of several guards.