Caldwell and Mei Lin were just three blocks away from the No. 455 Military Hospital at No. 388 Huaihai Road. They had rushed to the Peace Hotel on The Bund, checked in and deposited their luggage. Caldwell had spent a long time looking at his face in the bathroom while Mei Lin made some phone calls. He looked much healthier even though he was tired. He longed for the familiarity of capsule memory foam. Some of the lines on his face were gone and the bags below his eyes had diminished to shadows. He almost looked normal. He had returned to the room to find Mei Lin checking the Glocks they had bought from the obnoxious kid Mozi in Zhongguancun. That was the beauty of diplomatic bags. You could bring practically anything you wanted into the country, short of an armored tank.
“Do we really need these?” Caldwell had asked.
“Let’s hope not. Yet, if you are right, this AI has to be stopped at all cost. You hack into the system and we transmit the hack to Fouler. Then it’s up to him. You would have fulfilled your end of the bargain and you get your past back. He can decide what he wants to do at that point and aggregate the resources to do it,” Mei Lin had said looking at him intensely.
“Sure.”
In the recent excitement Caldwell had all but forgotten about that. He was very close to regaining that which had been unfairly taken away from him and he wasn’t anywhere near cutting Fouler any slack for what he had done to him. Caldwell thought about Kat, all the way back there in London. The Union, Angel and Waterloo Bridge seemed like a distant memory. He wondered what Kat was doing at this moment. She had probably spent most of her time in Glyph’s trailer overdosing on movies.
They walked purposefully down tree-lined Huaihai Road. It was close to midnight. The department stores and shops had long closed and the daytime crowds had thinned to a trickle of mostly young people heading home from late dinners or karaoke and night owls heading out for a night on the town.
“Be careful in there Cad. This is very likely a rogue outfit of the PLA we are dealing with and they’d probably stop at nothing to protect their secret,” Mei Lin said, giving him that funny look again.
“Yes. You too.”
“So, what’s the plan of action once we get in there?” Mei Lin asked.
“We somehow have to find those servers. I am sure we’ll recognize them when we see them unless they have some kind of server farm made up of identical Sun machines. Given the fact that this is so top secret, it is very likely that if there is a backup of the AI, it is located on the other server. We need to somehow gain operator access to the network and relay that to Fouler.”
“You make it sound so easy.”
“That’s the easy part, relatively speaking.”
“The parameters have changed somewhat since we last had a long talk,” Mei Lin said seriously.
“What do you mean the parameters have changed?”
“I spoke to Fouler briefly back at the Peace Hotel. He wants the AI code and the processor.”
“What?” Caldwell couldn’t believe his ears. “You want us to steal from the PLA?”
“Well, hacking is stealing anyway and we will be trespassing on military property which is just as bad. Fouler reckons that if we are going in, we better get our hands on the technology as a safeguard. In case anything goes wrong and the AI is released into cyberspace.”
“OK, if we do manage to get our hands on it, how do we spirit the processor and the AI out of the country?”
“Leave that to me,” Mei Lin said with a wink.
They were almost there. They could see the gates to No. 388 up ahead.
“OK, we walk past casually and try to see if there are any PLA guards on duty. My guess is the place would be crawling with PLA but they won’t be visible from the street. There’s a Southern-style mansion on the grounds not far from the hospital buildings. We enter the compound from behind the mansion. There is a backdoor, if I remember the plan from the search correctly. I would have liked to case the joint in more detail but we may already be too late.”
Caldwell was amazed at how effortlessly Mei Lin was able to switch from charming young woman to steely-resolved professional. She had timed the bombshell about stealing the AI’s processor and its code perfectly, informing him just when he was so close that he could almost see the end. She was just doing her job, he thought. He just wanted to get out of the compound alive, to live to see another day and to have his fifteen minutes with Fouler afterwards. The fact that either of them could be dead in a matter of minutes was not lost on him. He recalled Kat’s warning. He’s probably granting you your dying wish.
“I have another idea,” Mei Lin said looking at the perimeter wall surrounding the hospital. “Hope you are not scared of heights.”
“Not really. What do you have in mind?”
“It looks quite dark in the compound. There is not a lot of light being emitted from inside. I reckon we can gain access to the wall from that KTV building over there with less chance of detection. They may be monitoring all the entrances from the inside but they can’t monitor every section of the wall and they are working in the dark.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
Mei Lin dragged Caldwell into the lobby of a nearby building that read KTV in giant purple characters. A small crowd of stylishly dressed young people sat around on impossible-looking designer chairs waiting for their numbers to be called. It appeared that the karaoke was full. Mei Lin was leading him up the stairs to the karaoke rooms when a bow-tied waiter tried to stop them.
“The karaoke is full you have to take a number,” the bow-tied waiter shouted after them.
“We already have a room asshole,” Mei Lin said with feigned arrogance and continued pulling Caldwell after her. The waiter was used to such outbursts of rudeness from the KTV’s drunken clientele and decided to let the matter rest.
They walked up the carpeted stairway to the second floor and corridors of steel, designed and lighted to resemble some high-tech fabrication unit. The discordant sounds of people warbling over loud mandarin and Cantonese pop music surrounded them. There were a few smartly-dressed people in the corridors talking on mobile phones. A small army of waiters hovered around, waiting for the occupants within the rooms to order more drinks, food, playing dice or whatever else people at karaoke felt a craving for. There seemed to be a disco on the floor above as Caldwell could hear heavy bass pounding through the ceiling.
Mei Lin pulled Caldwell into the ladies washroom before he could protest. Fashionably-dressed Shanghai girls attended to their makeup in front of giant mirrors, while others washed their hands or adjusted their miniskirts. Before Caldwell could avert his eyes he caught sight of a girl squatting down in a half open cubicle doing her business.
“What the hell?” a female voice protested behind them.
“Give me a break. Haven’t had a shag in twelve months,” Mei Lin replied as she dragged Caldwell into an empty cubicle and locked the door.
“Way to go girl,” another voice encouraged.
Mei Lin bolted the cubicle door shut and opened the toilet window. A cool breeze blew into the cubicle, washing over Caldwell’s face. He peered out of the window. The window gave out to the hospital compound. A dilapidated mansion stood nearby. There were lights on in the top floor windows and Caldwell thought he saw heads moving about. About six feet below he could just make out the top of the perimeter wall. Caldwell could swear he saw a rat with a human ear attached to its back scurry along the wall and disappear into the darkness.
“How did you know that this cubicle on this floor overlooked the compound?” Caldwell asked, impressed.
“When you’ve staked out as many buildings as I have, especially in high-rise Hong Kong, you develop an instinct for building plans.”
“If you say so,” Caldwell conceded.
The hospital compound was dark except for the lights from the mansion windows. There was a much bigger cluster of buildings a few hundred meters away. The top floor of the largest of them also had lights on but they could barely be made out. Mei Lin fumbled in her rucksack for a pair of binoculars. She trained them on the house.
“There’s activity in one of the upstairs rooms. Uniformed PLA. There are PLA patrols in the grounds. It’s dark but you can just about make them out, maybe about twelve or so. Their level of alertness suggests they are expecting company,” Mei Lin informed him matter-of-factly. There was a commotion in the washroom as a group of girls speaking the Shanghai dialect came in giggling hysterically. Caldwell could catch only a few words and that was because they’d obviously had one drink too many and were speaking at high decibel.
“Is that good or bad?” he asked.
“We should be able to handle it. There is a blind spot behind the house. They seem to be focusing their attentions on the areas around the gates. There’s a bunch of military 4x4s in front of the house. I’d wager that’s were the servers are, in the mansion. There’s a heavyset older man in there.”
“The major-general?”
“Could well be. Ok let’s go. Wait ...”
“What?”
“They are leaving.”
“Leaving?”
“Yes, some of them at least. Take a look.” Mei Lin handed the binoculars over to Caldwell who trained them on the mansion.
“Yes, I see them.” He had the binoculars aimed at the front of the mansion. Half a minute later a group of about ten men walked out the front door. Instead of climbing into the 4x4s, they moved straight past the vehicles towards the main group of hospital buildings. Some of the PLA men were carrying weapons.
“They are not leaving. They are heading to the other building.” Caldwell kept the binoculars on the PLA men. He could see the heavyset older man. He was smoking a cigarette, the glowing end of which was dancing in the darkness. The authority of his walk, the elaborate military uniform with the decorated epaulettes and the way the other men surrounded him suggested that he probably was the major-general the PLA on the plane had been talking about. Major-general Wang.
There were four men walking in front of the major-general but Caldwell couldn’t make them out properly. Two of them looked like they were limping. Then the tight formation of the group dispersed a little and Caldwell realized that three of the men were not wearing military uniform at all. They were being held, or rather pushed along, by two uniformed PLA. They were wearing business suits.
“Oh my God!”
“What?”
“The Japanese. They’ve been captured by the PLA. I can recognize those two anywhere.” Caldwell handed the binoculars back to Mei Lin.
“Shit, they are going to be killed. Let’s move.” Mei Lin said, placing the binoculars in her rucksack. She slipped backwards through the open window, suspended her body on the window sill and jumped on to the perimeter wall, crouching like a cat. She signaled for Caldwell to follow. He went through legs first, using the toilet’s flush tank for support. Caldwell felt Mei Lin’s hands grasp his legs and he let himself fall, trusting her. He was on the perimeter next to her. She paused and waited. There was nothing but silence. They hadn’t been spotted. Mei Lin started crawling along the perimeter towards the back of the mansion.
A few minutes later they could almost look through the upstairs French windows of the mansion. There were a couple of PLA in there with their backs to them, working at computer terminals. Mei Lin jumped down into the undergrowth behind the house and Caldwell followed. The backdoor to the house was locked. Mei Lin fished in her pocket and removed a lock pick. She started picking the lock. Seconds later, they were inside what looked like a disused storage room illuminated by light from the front foyer. Mei Lin peered round the inner door and signaled that all was clear. They emerged into the empty foyer. Above them an ornate staircase with peeling paintwork coiled upwards.
“We need to be quick. Those guys could be back at any time,” Mei Lin whispered. They walked gingerly up the staircase to a carpeted landing. The door to the room they had been looking into was open. Caldwell could hear the whir of computing equipment. Before he could gather his wits about him, Mei Lin was already inside. He peered into the room. There were two PLA in the room. One of them was sitting at a terminal. The other was standing nearby with his back to them, his head partially covered by a virtual reality display. Mei Lin was nowhere to be seen. Caldwell was about to retreat when he saw the goggled PLA suddenly collapse. The other PLA’s head snapped towards the noise but before his mouth could open Mei Lin had almost reached him. The man started to rise but Mei Lin’s right hand was already in motion. Caldwell heard a snap and the man slid to the floor.
Caldwell moved into the room. To the right, on a worktop, sat the two servers from Tsinghua University. Protective foam still covered the edges of the servers. Caldwell checked the screens while Mei Lin looked around the room. The monitor attached to one of the servers read: TRANSFER COMPLETE. The AI had been transferred to the network. Caldwell sat in front of the servers while Mei Lin perused the plasma monitors set in the wall. He jumped from one keyboard to the next in an effort to save time.
“This is it all right. These monitors up here show the status of the network,” Mei Lin said.
“Yeah. The AI seems to be gone. Just checking the logs and the other server.”
“It says population is 2011. And these dots I am guessing are the population. Bots? AIs?” Mei Lin asked.
“AIs probably but why have 2011 of them. Seems a bit like overkill to me,” Caldwell said as he pulled up the servers logs. Mei Lin continued looking at the monitors.
“But why would AIs have vital signs? Heartbeats, blood pressure etcetera?”
“Could just be the way they have been labeled.”
“I don’t think so. I think these are real humans. Those people we saw in the virtual Pudong,” Mei Lin observed.
“Why would they be monitoring vital signs? Unless ... shit ... That’s why they chose a disused hospital,” Caldwell speculated.
“I am listening.”
“There are lights on in one of the main hospital buildings. I bet there are real subjects in there. Humans, people, wired to the network indefinitely. That’s where that group of PLA have taken the Yakuza.”
Caldwell couldn’t believe what he was saying but the beauty of the plan made perfect sense. How better to test the AI than to pit it against real humans? Real people, experts, who were running real-time simulations in this virtual economy and could react to any attempts at control in the same way humans would. They’d have to be jacked in full time for the test to be realistic. They were probably in that hospital, attached to intravenous drips, spending weeks if not months online. But they’d have to be biologically connected, a bio interface of some kind or something that inputted straight into the retina, interfacing directly with ... the brain. They’d be seeing what the computer saw and reacting as though they were part of the network. Human input systems.
“There’s someone coming,” Mei Lin hissed.