Page 36 of Mastermind

“Checking the back exit. I have a feeling the guy up front was expendable and intended to give whoever was in here time to get out.”

I walk back inside, using a light from a pocket in the vest to illuminate the massive data center. There are twenty rows of server cabinets, each a hundred feet deep. I do a quick calculation in my head. If each cabinet holds twenty servers, there’s close to ten thousand servers in here.

As I walk down the aisle, I shine my light into each row, looking for a clue, but every row seems the same. I hear the sound of a door closing. Jessica, who had been following behind me, has her gun drawn.

“It’s us,” says Lilith.

“Anything?” asks Jessica.

“We think they left on foot,” she replies. “There’s a large apartment complex not too far from here. We’ll ask around and see if anybody saw anything, when we have a chance.” She looks around with her flashlight, taking in the size of the complex. “Too bad the security cameras are off. I would like to know what they were doing.”

“Me too,” I reply.

“Aren’t all the computers fried?” asks Jessica.

“Probably. But if the hard drives are shielded, there might be some data left,” I speculate.

“I’d love to know what they were after,” she sighs.

I cross my arms and try to think of what comes next.

“Very warm here,” says Ray, holding his hand near a server rack.

“That’s because the fans and cooling system are off. Even though the processors don’t have power, all the heat’s trapped and . . . damn. I’m such an idiot. Nobody move.”

“What is it?” asks Jessica with her gun at her side.

“Just stand still.” I pull the thermal scope from my pocket. “No more footsteps.”

I aim the sensor at the room and see the bright glow of the server racks. Jessica’s footprints are visible, as are Lilith’s and Ray’s in the direction from which they came. I spin around and see my own steps.

“Let me see if I can still find out where they went,” I say as I start walking past the server aisles.

“Clever man,” says Ray.

“Clever would have been doing this ten minutes ago when their footsteps were fresh. This is desperate.” I keep walking, scanning each section, looking for any glow that isn’t the servers.

I can see faint footprints of someone running, which would probably be my colleagues’ from when they were first searching the room.

When I reach a section just past the middle, I catch a hot spot on the tiles. Several people stood here for a while. I get closer and find the footprints concentrated near one server cabinet.

“Over here,” I call out to the others.

They join me in the row but keep a few meters away. I pull a pair of gloves from a pocket and open the door to the server rack. Inside, there are forty servers, all stacked on top of each other, each one containing anything from medical records to entire porn empires. There are no empty slots.

“Did they use a hard drive to steal the data?” asks Jessica.

“That would take too long. I think they replaced a server with another. That’s what I’d do.”

“They all look alike.”

“They do . . .” I take out the scope and look at the thermal image. All of them glow a bright white-blue . . . except one toward the top. This would be the server they brought with them. The one that hasn’t been running for several years straight. The cold one.

“Now what?” asks Jessica.

“We write down this location, and when the power comes back on, we find out what was supposed to be here. Also, we need to get a warrant to see what’s on this replacement they left.” I think for a moment. “We also need to contact every data center in Manhattan and find out if any of them had fire department personnel ask for access right after the blackout; then they need to dust for fingerprints and find the one server that doesn’t have any.”

“Singapore, too,” says Jessica.