Unallocated Space: A Thriller (Sam Flatt Book 1) (18 page)

F
BI FIELD OFFICE

MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE

M
ax Sultanovich

M
ax sat
in a straight-backed metal chair, posture erect. His hands were still locked in handcuffs, but at least they were in front of him now, resting on a small wooden table in the interrogation room. He had been exactly this way for more than three hours, had seen no one, heard no one, although he knew the bastards were watching him through the mirror on the wall facing him. He looked at the mirror now, stared into his own eyes, and waited.

He heard a series of soft beeps, then a click, and the door opened. The man who had arrested him entered, carrying a manila file folder, and sat in the chair across the table from Max.

The man placed the folder on the table, opened it, and removed a single sheet of paper. Then he removed an ink pen from his shirt pocket and laid it across the document. "Mr. Sultanovich, I'd like to ask you some questions. Before we begin, I need you to sign this document, indicating that you understood the rights that have been explained to you. There has been some discussion as to whether you, as a foreign national, are entitled to those rights, but I'd like to see you afforded those rights."

Max said nothing. He watched as the man rotated the document to face Max, then smoothly slid it and the pen across the table to him.

"Will you sign the waiver, sir?"

"I will consider your document." Max looked down as if he were reading the paper, then raised his eyes back to the man and said, "If you do something for me first."

"What would that be?"

"Are you a married man?"

"Beg your pardon?"

"Married. Do you have a wife?"

"I don't see how that's relevant, but yes."

"Good. I will sign this document right after your wife sucks my fat Ukrainian cock." Max's mouth broke into a slow, thin smile.

The FBI man's face colored like a beet. His nostrils grew and quivered.

"She must swallow my seed." Still holding his gaze on the man, Max hocked up a big wad of saliva and sputum, then spat it onto the document. He leaned forward over the table. "And I want you to watch while she does it. I think you will learn much, you pathetic American cunt."

The American waited a long time before saying anything. When he spoke, his voice was controlled, flat. "You're making a big mistake."

"It is you who has made the mistake. Now I want my lawyer."

S
PACE

A
t a little after 11
:00 p.m., I watched the surveillance feed on my computer as a stream of people exited the bunker. No new ones entered. Workday over? It was nearly midnight when I saw that things had finally gotten quiet around and in the tunnel. I locked the computer, said good-night to Nichols, and went to my room. Things were moving in a little different direction now, and it was time to start exercising some common-sense caution. After changing into a pair of black cargo pants and a black T-shirt, I needed to take care of a pesky problem. I didn't want to be tracked with my magic SPACE credential bracelet, but I might need it to get in (or out of) somewhere if things got dicey. The bracelet tech wasn't particularly complex. Each bracelet has a tiny chip inside it, about the size of a grain of rice. It's called an RFID chip, and it contains a unique serial number. As I move about the property, thousands of RFID readers hidden in walls, doors, elevators, and a plethora of other places sense that the chip assigned to me is nearby, and logs that information in a database. That's it.

Those hidden readers can't log what they never see, and since this whole game works on radio waves, there's an easy answer. I took a coffee packet from the SPACE Refreshment Station in my room, opened it, and dumped the coffee into a filter and put it in the coffeemaker. Empty foil coffee packet in hand, I removed my bracelet and dropped it inside. Boom. RFID invisibility, thank you very much. Slid the whole thing into a pocket. Time to go.

D
espite the fact
that I planned to render the bunker cameras moot, I still wanted to conceal my face. I wasn't going to tamper with the footage from the casino's tunnel cameras, and I didn't want to be recognizable as I passed them. I decided against anything radical. A guy on a casino property at midnight, slinking around dressed in black and wearing a face mask, might draw exactly the wrong response. I didn't intend to be seen by anyone in the flesh, and my e-wanderings had shown me that casino security almost never looked at the tunnel cameras and didn't even have access to those inside the bunker. Still, Old Man Murphy is always lurking and never far from my mind. I decided on a compromise and put on the black SPACE baseball cap from my “SPACE Supplies” bag that had been in my room when I first arrived. I pulled it down low before entering the tunnel. I had cut a generous slot in the brim so I could keep my head down but look up through the slot and at least get a partial view ahead and above if needed.

Thanks to my electronic chicanery with the bunker door's lock, I had all twenty-eight codes capable of opening it. This, of course, suggested that since that lock went active, a total of twenty-eight people had been granted access to the bunker. I had looked at the lock's records and memorized the three most recently used codes with a lot of activity. Those would be the ones least likely to draw anyone's attention should the logs be examined.

Keeping my head angled down for the camera, I entered one of the seven-digit codes into the keypad and the LED glowed a beautiful green as a soft click sounded. I turned the lever handle and pulled the door open. Stepped inside. Closed it behind me. I was in a corridor that looked exactly like the portions of it I'd been watching through the surveillance cameras. I went left. Twenty feet later, the corridor turned right. Head down and eyes up, I stepped around the corner and saw one of the cameras I'd been watching. It was mounted high on the left wall pointed away from me, down the length of the corridor. Familiar with its view, I moved ahead. It was one of the ones I'd neutralize later, but in the worst-case scenario it would see the back of a figure in black. Big deal.

As I moved forward, I encountered doors on my right every twenty feet or so. Their doors all had conventional locks, but all were unlocked. Janitorial supplies. Empty. Empty. A big copier/printer, paper, other office supplies. Empty. Another right turn. A quick scan showed no visible cameras. A couple more empty rooms on my right, then I came to a door that was obviously more important. Big. Heavy steel. And a lock with a keypad exactly like the one on the main door. I entered the same code that had opened that main door. Success again. I stepped inside.

M
EMPHIS
, TENNESSEE

C
ourtney Meyer

T
he FBI jet
touched down at Memphis International Airport just shy of 10:30 p.m. Per instructions, an SUV from the Memphis field office was waiting on the tarmac when the plane taxied up to the fixed base operator, a fancy name for ‘airplane service station’ in Meyer’s estimation, that had the current bureau contract in Memphis. No security hassle, just get out of the plane and into the vehicle. She was on her way within two minutes of the plane rolling to a stop. Within minutes, she'd finally be face to face with the man she had pursued for so long.

When they arrived at the FBI's Memphis office, she walked through the door talking: "Where can I find Agent Kline?"

A man cut from classic FBI cloth approached from the corridor with his hand out. "David Kline. I assume you're Agent Meyer?"

Meyer nodded and shook his hand. "Any developments?"

"Nope. We let him make a lawyer call several hours ago. Nothing since then."

"Who'd he call?"

"Not sure. He dialed a cellphone registered to John Doe. Not kidding."

"Where?"

"D.C. area code."

"Got him in a mirror?" Meyer said.

"Yeah, you want to see what he looks like?"

She nodded, then followed Kline through a maze of corridors and into a room with a window looking through a two-way mirror into the interrogation room where Sultanovich was being held. He looked like the picture on her wall, just older. Not a good thing. He was gaunt, with a severe face and clear eyes, those eyes a very light and piercing shade of blue. She could see how he might have been a decent-looking man fifty years ago, but now? Max Sultanovich was one ugly, evil-looking sonofabitch. Wrinkled, papery skin stretched across a skeleton.

A light rap on the door, and a young man stuck his head in the door. "Got a guy in the lobby says he's Sultanovich's attorney."

Meyer let out a long sigh. "Let's go meet this asshole."

T
he three stood
in Kline's office. Both Meyer's and Kline's mouths were literally hanging open. After a few seconds, Meyer got her wits about her. "You cannot be serious."

Bykov gave a little half shrug. "You see the papers."

Meyer stared at him. She wanted to rip his five-thousand-dollar suit off him and shove it down his throat. She looked back down to the document in her hand, a letter from the Ukrainian embassy in D.C., identifying Maxim Andreyovich Sultanovich as a “Special Envoy of Ukrainian Culture.”

She looked at Bykov, then to Kline. "We need to verify this…status." She left the room and Kline followed.

As they walked down the hallway, they heard Bykov say from the doorway of Kline's office, "Excuse me? I assume Mr. Sultanovich will be released immediately?"

Meyer stopped walking and spun to face him. She jabbed a finger in the air at him. "You—"

Kline pulled her hand down and said in a whisper, "Don't. Come on." He continued walking and after a few more seconds of rapid breathing through flared nostrils, Meyer followed.

S
PACE

T
his was it
. The room was stark, devoid of anything cosmetic, a concrete work chamber filled with computer workstations arranged on cheap folding tables. Each workstation had a standard folding metal chair, most of which were beat to hell and back. The lights were off, the room lit only by the assorted screensavers on the computer monitors. I went to the nearest computer, sat down, and moved the mouse to clear the screensaver. As expected, I got a password prompt. The machine was running some flavor of Linux, also not a surprise. The final non-surprise was the bothersome one: the Cyrillic characters staring back at me. I didn't know enough about Russian and Ukrainian to tell the two apart, so it could have been either one. No matter. I went to work.

I
t took almost
forty-five minutes, but it was done. I had managed to get the computer set to English, then I'd defeated the password. I was in. I leaned back and stretched, then plugged a thumbdrive into the USB port on the front of the computer and started recording information that I would need later: IP addresses, MAC addresses, and a host of other configuration information. With that data stored to the thumbdrive, I installed a spy app. It would record every keystroke made on that computer, every screen, every anything done on the machine. It was the stealthiest such app on the planet, so there was little chance of it being discovered.

Next, I had to be sure I could access this computer later, and that the spy app could covertly deliver its payload outside the bunker network. From my location inside the hackers' network, setting up that access wasn't a major challenge, and within five minutes it was complete. I switched the computer back to its original language, which had turned out to be Russian. I'd wait to be sure it went back to the screensaver that had greeted me when I got here.

While that wait ticked away, I walked the room, smartphone in hand, shooting photos of anything and everything. That done, I stepped off the room in both directions and recorded the approximate measurements that resulted. It felt like I was on a recon mission from years back. The room was smaller than I'd expected and it was hot. Rooms full of computers always are if they don't have additional cooling in place to handle the heat output of the electronics. By the time I made it back over to the workstation I'd used, it was back on the proper screensaver. Time for me to boogie and take care of the last step.

I
n my room
, I fired up my laptop and went to work. I had previously located the surveillance computer on the bunker network, by tracing the network address the cameras “talked to.” Within minutes, I had control of that computer. The perfect solution would be to insert the footage of empty corridors I had recorded the night before. Except that's movie bullshit, for a host of techno-reasons. Next best thing? Be sure they had no footage at all for the time frame of interest. Hopefully they'd shrug it off as a glitch, but even if they didn't, they still wouldn't have anything to identify me.

I studied the surveillance computer on my screen. It had two hard drives, one that ran the computer, and a separate one to store the video footage coming in from the cameras. The video storage drive had three folders, CAM-A, CAM-B, and CAM-C. Inside each folder, video was stored in files that contained fifteen minutes each. In each folder, I wiped the files containing video between 12:00 midnight and 1:30 a.m., well before I got there and well after I'd left. That done, I disconnected my laptop from the bunker network and closed the lid.

M
EMPHIS
, TENNESSEE

C
ourtney Meyer

A
fter migrating
Bykov to an unoccupied office far enough away that he couldn't eavesdrop, Meyer and Kline stood in Kline's office on a concall with the State Department, Meyer's boss Tom Belt in Manhattan, and the deputy director of the FBI in Washington.

"With all due respect," Meyer said, "I can't believe what I'm hearing. Sultanovich is known by law enforcement throughout the world to be the kingpin of a crime syndicate based in Eastern Europe. How can he have diplomatic immunity?"

The robotic-sounding flunky at State said, "Special Agent Meyer, I can only confirm that Maxim Sultanovich's diplomatic papers have been verified, and that does indeed grant him diplomatic immunity. He must be released."

FBI Deputy Director: "How long has he had this status?"

State robot, after some clattering on a keyboard: "Well, this is interesting."

FBI Deputy Director: "Explain."

State robot: "Two days."

Meyer: "So as soon as he knew he was coming here, he magically became a diplomat?"

FBI Deputy Director: "Are you able to tell who signed off on this status for Sultanovich?"

State robot, after more clattering and a subsequent long pause: "The president of Ukraine."

NYC SAIC Tom Belt: "Sir, pardon my language, but this is horseshit."

FBI Deputy Director: "Agreed, but I don't see what we can do about it at the moment. Agent Meyer, release the prisoner."

Meyer: "Sir, if we can just have a little time, perhaps—"

FBI Deputy Director: "Release him, Agent Meyer. And let's end this call. Goodbye."

After a series of beeps, the IN USE light on the speakerphone winked out. Seconds later, the phone rang. Kline answered, "Special Agent Kline, Memphis."

It was the deputy director. "Agents, hold while Tom is patched back in."

Moments later, Belt announced himself on the call.

The deputy director said, "Listen to me. We do have to release him, but I want him covered so tightly with surveillance that he can't turn his head without seeing our people."

Meyer said, "Sir, the moment we release him, he'll flee the country. He has a private jet at Memphis International."

"I'm aware of that, Agent Meyer. And that plane is about to encounter difficulty in obtaining clearance to take off. Let's get busy, people. We're not going to lose this guy."

M
eyer delivered
the news to Sultanovich that he was being released. The old man looked up at her from his seat with a leering smile. His teeth were yellow, too small for his mouth, resulting in lots of visible gums. He was as disgusting in appearance as he was in character.

"I know who you are," he said, wagging a finger toward Meyer. "You are the one who has been interfering in my business, and I think that interference will soon end."

Meyer walked to the seat at the conference table that was directly across from him, leaned forward with her palms on the table, and said with her own smile, "I'm just getting started, Mr. Special Envoy."

The smile disappeared from Sultanovich's face, leaving behind a mask of hatred. With one corner of his mouth turned up in a sneer, and vertical threads of saliva connecting his blanched lips as he spoke, he said, "You fucking cow. You march in here with your fat ass and try to play with me? You will disappear from my life. One way or the other."

She tried not to let it show, but there was no mistaking the fact that she was looking into the eyes of pure evil.

The Ukrainian embassy man, Bykov, looked mortified. "Mr. Sultanovich, I think we should—"

Sultanovich leapt from his seat with speed that belied his withered husk of a body and was in Bykov's face before anyone could blink, poking him in the chest with a bony finger. "Close your mouth, boy."

Bykov did.

Sultanovich turned back to Meyer and cracked another yellow grin, then walked out of the room without another word.