22:10 - Part I - The Crooked Chain of Ghosts

Chapter 5

Once in the elevator, she pushed the button for the fourth floor. They stood in silence at first.

Nataly looked up at him and said with a grin, "Don't be so gloomy."

He remained silent.

She led him down the corridor to room 451, where Nataly pushed the keycard into the door and opened it. Nikolai followed her inside as she turned on the lights of a deluxe and luxuriously furnished room—as expected for this area of Moscow and this hotel in particular. A small entry hallway with the bathroom off to the right opened into the main area, featuring a meticulously made king bed, leather lounge chairs around a table, a stylish polished oak desk with a glass top, and a large flat-screen TV on top of a matching oak chest of drawers.

She stepped across the room to the floor-to-ceiling window, which looked down into a dark courtyard. Nataly pulled the curtains closed.

"How much does a room like this go for a night?" Nikolai asked.

"About $900. The cheapest type of room in the hotel," she replied, turning on a lamp and looking back over her shoulder at Nikolai.

His eyes widened. "That's about 60,000 rubles."

"Don't worry, you're worth it," she said with a laugh. From the chest of drawers, Nataly withdrew a thin laptop computer and set it on the desk.

"Letʼs get down to business. Let me have it," she said.

Nikolai reached into his pocket and brought out a small blue USB memory stick. "That's all of it," he said.

She took the storage drive and motioned for him to sit on the edge of the bed. She opened the laptop; the screen cast a pale glow as it came to life. Then she plugged the memory stick into the computer and tapped the touch pad to open its contents.

Nataly looked up at Nikolai in disbelief.

"It's the best I could do," he replied. "It's all there. Believe me."

There were hundreds of folders on the first screen, each marked with a number, such as 4.13, 7.02, and 12.28. She clicked one of them. And then clicked again to open a file.

"But this," she motioned at the screen, "this does not make any sense."

She turned the screen to Nikolai. It showed a Wikipedia entry in Russian for Casamba, a genus of moth. She clicked on another file. It was in Hindi with a photo of a telescope.

"Nikolai, what's going on here? What are all these Wikipedia files?"

He sighed. "In fact, it's every Wikipedia entry in every one of its 278 languages for the last year."

"Two hundred and seventy-eight! The last year?" she replied.

"Yes, each folder represents one day and contains 278 files, which are a complete copy of Wikipedia for that day in each language. Not only that, but the articles are not in alphabetical order, they are in a random order."

She rubbed her fingers across her eyes and looked back at him for some explanation.

"That's the encryption," Nikolai added.

"Wikipedia pages are the encryption?"

"Think about it. It's perfect for hiding information. Wikipedia is organic. Each day it evolves: Additional pages are added. Existing pages are altered and some are subtracted. Words change within the articles. And then the whole thing is randomized. There's no pattern. The code is unbreakable without a key. It might not even have one single key—perhaps there are hundreds or thousands—mostly because you don't know where the encryption begins or ends. It's there, but where?"