"You have carte blanche. Proceed how you see fit."
I nodded, thanked him, and left the room.
I SPENT the rest of the morning back and forth on the phone between Abby, my ex, and Paul, my attorney brother. Abby was completely freaked. Paul was getting up to speed and looking for the right immigration lawyer. I was settling into a mode of quiet determination.
Ally had to be gotten out of the horrible situation she was in back in Russia all those years ago. She was at danger daily of being molested, or sold, or worse. After a year of Russian bureaucracy and bribes and begging going nowhere, I took her from the orphanage in the middle of the night and disappeared. I did what had to be done, because that's who I am. I don't regret it for a moment. Would do it again a thousand times. But now someone was trying to use a bloated bureaucracy to exploit what had happened, to take advantage of the salvation of a little girl. My little girl.
After all the info had been exchanged and everyone was up to speed, it was time for me to get back to work at SPACE. I could have an expensive legal battle ahead.
CHAPTER 45
SPACE
BY MID-AFTERNOON, I'd found a couple more players and handed them off to Dobo. My eyes were burning from watching video, so I switched my attention to finding out exactly where the machine adjustments had come from. After studying a lot of data, I had ruled out Gamboa's devices. She was somehow involved in all this, no doubt about that, but she wasn't the one tricking out machines to offer near-guaranteed wins at precisely the right moment.
The adjustments were, however, coming from inside the SPACE network, from the same computer every time, and that computer was likely in the same location every time. I knew this because of numerical signatures that are attached to computers and network locations. It was a start.
The problem? According to every bit of data I had from Rose and his IT underlings, the network location of that computer shouldn't exist on the SPACE network. Their network diagrams showed all the various subnets (“roped-off” smaller networks that combined to make up the larger SPACE data network), complete with the appropriate numerical addresses assigned to the devices inside each subnet. For example, each computer had a unique address, as did each EGM, each network printer, each data device of any kind that was connected to the company's network.
But the computer that made the adjustments, which I had taken to calling the "HCC," for "Hackers' Control Computer," had an address that was nowhere to be found among the diagrams. Its address shouldn't even be possible, because it was part of a subnet that, on paper, didn't exist. Imagine you're standing in front of a house at 123 Coyote Avenue, in Acme, Arizona. You know the house and the address exist, because you're looking at it. Yet when you pull out your smartphone and search for the address on Google Maps, Google tells you the address (HCC) doesn't exist. In fact, it tells you that Coyote Avenue (the subnet that HCC sits on) doesn't exist at all. That's where I was.
"Hey, Jimbo?" I said.
Nichols looked up from his Kindle. "Yes, sir?”
"Who could get me a set of architectural drawings for SPACE, all of it?"
He squinted his eyes for a bit. "Bert Addison. His title is Station Manager. Should be your guy."
"Thanks," I said. "Go back to your book." I pulled up a directory from the SPACE Resource Guide on the company intranet, found Addison, and shot him an email. Looks like Jacob Allen had spread the word well on cooperation, because I had a response back in a couple minutes. He wanted to know what kind of drawings I wanted. I told him to give me everything and I'd sort it out. Within five minutes, I had a big .ZIP file full of drawings. Maybe I should have narrowed my request.
It took a while to figure out what I had, and even longer to learn how to interpret the various symbols and labels, but I got to what I wanted, which turned out to be an elevation multiview that showed a wireframe rendering of the physical structure, overlaid with a network diagram. Actually, there were several of these, one for each major component of the SPACE complex. I strongly suspected what I was looking for would be in the central building that housed the casino and hotel, so I started there.
I moved from my laptop to one of my desktop machines, so I'd have a couple large monitors side by side. On the left, I brought up the master network diagram from IT. On the right, the wireframe architectural drawing. Looking back and forth between the two, a coherent mental image came together for where the various network locations were in the physical world. The IT diagram matched up perfectly with the wireframe, which is to say I still had no idea where the Control Computer or its mystery subnet were. I repeated the process for the shopping complex, the space museum, the entertainment area, and every other structure of the physical world of SPACE. Same result.
Back to the beginning. I pulled the wireframe for the casino-hotel back up and adjusted the view so I could see the entire drawing on my screen. Nothing. Well, almost nothing. This tidbit didn't provide me any information about the location of the Control Computer, but it was a curiosity, and when I encounter oddities of any kind in a difficult investigation, I pay attention. At the very bottom of the casino-hotel structure on the wireframe, which I hadn't paid much attention to during my first study of the wireframe, because the basement had little in the way of data networking, a section of the building was highlighted in bright yellow with an overlay of faint, diagonal red lines. By “bottom,” I mean below the basement, which put the area at least a couple stories underground. The highlight depicted a pair of rectangular central areas, surrounded by an array of corridors and smaller rooms. One of the corridors connected to a tunnel that angled up to ground level. Emblazoned in bold black text across the highlighted area was a label that said UNALLOCATED SPACE.
CHAPTER 46
SPACE
THE WORD PLAY for "unallocated space" in this particular case could go on for a while. The term has a lot of meaning to digital forensic geeks like me, since it's the name of the electronic trash heap on a hard drive or flash drive or whatever. We often pull our juiciest tidbits from this junkyard of bits and bytes. That was true in this case; it was in unallocated space that I found Gamboa's deep web history. Then there was the obvious SPACE connection. And now here was a mysterious area with the label on a SPACE architectural drawing. I don't believe in omens, but as previously mentioned, I do investigate aberrations.
I shot an email over to Station Manager Bert Addison and asked him what the mystery space was for, and if he happened to have any more detail on it. Specifically, data network information. Less than a minute later, the phone on the conference table rang. I answered it, "Sam Flatt."
"Mr. Flatt, this is Bert Addison." His accent was Southern and strong.
"Call me Sam."
"All right. Listen, I wish I could tell you more about the 'unallocated space,' but I can't."
This was the first pushback I had encountered at SPACE in a while. "Will it help if Jacob Allen calls and okays you to tell me about it?"
"Ummm, no. You misunderstand, Sam. I can't tell you about it, because I don't know anything about it."
"You're in charge of this whole physical complex, and you don't know what something is for?" I said.
"Listen, it's not for lack of trying, believe you me. I pitched several hissy fits over that dadgum yellow void—that's what I call it, the yellow void. In the end, I was told I could shut up about it or be on my way."
"Who told you that?"
"Allen. Listen, they may call him just an in-house lawyer, but he's the biggest boss anybody's ever seen here. If you want to know what's what, he's your huckleberry."
I smiled at the colorful language. "Okay, I appreciate your help, Bert. Holler at you later."
After I hung up the phone, I leaned back in my chair and stretched while little red flags pinged up across my mind. I liked Jacob Allen and he had been nothing but helpful to me, but I also couldn't forget the way he shut me down on getting law enforcement involved in those rape videos. Now I was hearing that perhaps Jacob w
as more influential than a typical in-house counsel. I'd ask him about the unallocated space, but not now. Later.
Jacob Allen had told me I had carte blanche, so I felt empowered to dig on my own. If I asked him about the space and he told me directly to stay away from the issue, I'd have no choice but to comply. I had a better idea. It was a long shot, but sometimes long shots come through.
CHAPTER 47
SPACE
WE FIRST CROSSED paths at a digital forensics training conference I attended. This particular affair always brings in a big tech name to deliver the keynote address, and that year the big name was Matt Decker, of Decker Digital fame. Decker had gone through a hellish week when the U.S. power grid went down a year or so before, since the grid was controlled by software his company created. In the span of seven days, he had gone from celebrity geek to scapegoat to national hero, and his speech was one of the more interesting ones I'd heard.
I happened to catch him standing alone for a moment at a meet-and-greet after the talk, and decided to introduce myself. We hit it off and ended up hanging out some for a couple days, and it had been right here in Vegas. He's easily the most brilliant geek I've ever met. I had also discovered during my investigation that his company won the bid for all the network hardware in the SPACE complex, so if anyone had any helpful tricks, Matt Decker should be the man. I wasn't sure he'd remember me, but it was worth a shot so I emailed him.
HEY MATT,
REMEMBER ME? We met in Vegas after one of your talks, and took a helicopter ride out to the Grand Canyon, checked out Hoover Dam and some other stuff. Anyway, I'm back in the desert working a case and would love to pick your brain on something. Understand if you're too busy. Hope all is well.
SAM FLATT
THAT EVENING, I was in my room responding to a long list of personal email that had piled up, when my email notifier dinged. When I checked it, I had a response from Decker.
SAM! Do I remember? How in hell could I forget getting kicked out of Hoover Dam? Great to hear from you, man. I'm in LA at the moment, so if you can hang on til tomorrow, I'll grab a shuttle flight over there. Where are you?
THE CALLER ID said PAUL FLATT and I answered quickly. "Talk to me, bro."
"It ain't good."
My stomach tightened, did a little flip. "I'm listening."
"I found a great immigration lawyer at one of our offices, had a long talk."
"And?"
"I know why you took her out of Russia without the paperwork, and why you snuck her into the country without a visa already in place. I get it, I—"
"A history lesson is not helpful at this point, Paul. I know why I did it, you know why I did it. What does it mean now? That's all I care about."
"The feds could retroactively void the adoption. We might win in court—it's hard to imagine that we wouldn't win and be able to stop the deportation of a fourteen-year-old who's been here since she was five. But they could legally take her from you and put her with CPS during the fight. You work in the court system just like I do, so no need to tell you how long such a battle could last."
"So that's it? No options, nothing we can do to head it off?"
"I'm sorry, Sam."
"Thanks, bro," I said, and ended the call.
I walked to the window and looked out, wishing I'd never heard of SPACE. Then I returned to the desk, got her phone number from the last email she had sent, and dialed Special Agent Courtney Meyer.
She answered in a cheerful tone that made me want to reach through the phone and strangle her. "Good evening, Mr. Flatt! I didn't expect to be hearing from you."
"Bullshit," I said. "I'll send you updates on my case from a secure, anonymous email. Understand this, Ms. Meyer: If you ever let word get out that I'm doing this, I'll make you wish you'd decided to be a sewage worker instead of an FBI agent, and—"
"Don't you ever threaten m—"
"Shut your damn mouth and listen, you despicable bitch. And record this if you like, because I don't give a rat's ass who hears it. If anyone remotely connected with the United States government ever comes near my daughter, in any way, I will hunt your ass down and make you suffer like you can't imagine. Then I. Will. Kill. You."
I touched END CALL and laid the phone on the desk.
CHAPTER 48
KIEV, UKRAINE
MAX SULTANOVICH
MAX SAT ON THE SOFA, reading that day's copy of the Kyiv Post. Beside him, his six-year-old granddaughter Tatyana sat coloring a picture of a horse outside a barn. He paused his read and watched her, watched the way she carefully replaced one crayon before choosing another. The meticulous way in which she filled in the colors on the page. Her little face was a picture of concentration. She was the one thing Mikail had ever done right, and of course even that was only by chance, a fluke that what was likely the single good sperm in his body happened to be the one to squirm its way inside the egg. With a kiss to the top of Tatyana's head, he returned to his newspaper.
On the front page, below the fold, a headline read, SON OF PROMINENT KYIV BUSINESSMAN DEAD IN USA. Inserted in the text of the article was a picture of a younger Mikail. Probably his passport photo. Max's first thought was that some American bastard had killed his boy, for which he would require the life of at least that American bastard in return. Yes, he had given an order for Mikail to be killed, but that was different, a matter of fatherly and business prerogative. After mulling the issue and the appropriate retribution for a minute or two, he decided to read the article before thinking on it further. The more he read, the colder the blood ran in his old veins.
The women in Mississippi had escaped. It was a disaster. And his son was killed and he learned about it from a newspaper six thousand miles away? He picked up his phone and dialed Zuyev, the man he had moved from New York to Las Vegas when Mikail killed Dmitry. No answer. Something was very wrong. Zuyev would never not answer his call.
He scrolled through his contacts and dialed another number. When the call was answered, he said, "I must fly to America right now."
CHAPTER 49
SPACE
IN MY ROOM the next morning, I set up the anonymous email to use with Meyer and put together a terse summary of why I'd been hired, some of what I'd done, and some of what I'd found, then sent it and made my way to the workroom.
Matt Decker arrived a little before noon, and Nichols arranged for him to be brought straight to the workroom. I had already spoken with Jacob and gotten clearance to use Matt as a consultant, so we were good to go from a confidentiality perspective. After a little small talk and catching up, I brought him up to speed on my hunt for the location of the hackers and the HCC, my nickname for the Hackers' Control Computer.
"You sure we're allowed to investigate however we like?" Matt said with a crooked smile.
"Positive," I said.
"Then this should be doable. We sold the routers and switches for this place."
"Yes, you did. I saw that before I emailed you."
"Ah, so you just wanted to take advantage of me," he said, smiling.
I shrugged and gave him my best you-got-me smile.
"I pulled the records this morning. They bought the best of everything, which is gonna be very good for you, Uncle Sam."
"Oh no," I said. "You remember."
"Coolest name I ever heard."
"Glad you think so. How do we do this? Gotta tell you, I've already checked everything imaginable via routers and switches."
He pulled up a terminal window and started entering commands. "A lot of our high-end gear has experimental features. We don't document it because we don't want to support it yet, and in a lot of cases, we even cripple it."
I watched everything he did, and it became obvious that he was running commands that were proprietary to the Decker Digital gear. "And what feature are you accessing now?" I said.
"Would on-premises geolocation interest you?"
"No way," I said.
"Our customers with big networks have this problem o
ften enough to be a problem. Networks get set up without proper naming conventions and things get 'lost,' in that they still work but nobody knows what is where. We expect big things when we roll this feature out to market."
"And the devices here have the feature?"
"They're crippled, but every router and switch here has the capability. I'm about to run a script that will turn the feature on in every one of them." He raised his hand and brought a finger down on the Enter key with flair.
"Unlikely that many of the devices can get a GPS signal in here."
"They don't have to," he said. "At least not many of them. If just a few of them can get a lock, we're golden."
He minimized the terminal window and brought up a blank white page in a web browser. It wasn't blank for long. Little globe icons started appearing in what appeared to be random locations on the page. After a couple minutes, the page had the icons scattered left to right and top to bottom.
"Watch this," Matt said. Using the mouse, he hovered the cursor over one of the icons and a series of numbers popped up.
"I'll be damned," I said. "Latitude, longitude, altitude, and IP address. Sweet."
"Keep watching. The real magic starts soon."
We waited a minute and nothing happened. Two minutes. Then more icons appeared, globes like before, but colored red, not blue and green like the others. I leaned over and drove the mouse to hover the cursor over one of the red globes, and got the same type of location data as I'd seen on the blue and green globes. "How's it doing that?" I said.
"Every device has an encrypted RF transceiver. They talk to each other. And since we have a good number of devices with GPS lock, and thus known locations, the devices that don't have a GPS signal can triangulate their position based on the radio signals from the ones that do. Pretty slick, huh?"
"Slicker than gorilla snot," I said, and extended a fist for a bump-five.
Unallocated Space: A Thriller (Sam Flatt Book 1) Page 12
