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 fa 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 dimio shadows. He almost looked normal. He had returo the room to find Mei Lin cheg the Glocks they had bought from the obnoxious kid Mozi in Zhongguan. That was the beauty of diplomatic bags. You could bring practically anything you wanted into the try, short of an armored tank.
「Do we really hese?」 Caldwell had asked.
「Let』s hope not. Yet, if you are right, this AI has to be stopped at all cost. You hato the system aransmit 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 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 ret excitement Caldwell had all but fotten about that. He was very close taining that which had been unfairly taken away from him and he wasn』t anywhere near cutting Fouler any slack for what he had doo him. Caldwell thought about Kat, all the way back there in London. The Union, Angel and Waterle 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 thio a trickle of mostly young people heading home from late dinners or karaoke and night owls heading out for a night oown.
「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 a once we get in there?」 Mei Lin asked.
「We somehow have to find those servers. I am sure we』ll reize them when we see them uhey have some kind of server farm made up of identical Sun maes. 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 oher server. We o somehow gaior access to the work and relay that to Fouler.」
「You make it sound so easy.」
「That』s the easy part, relatively speaking.」
「The parameters have ged somewhat since we last had a long talk,」 Mei Lin said seriously.
「What do you mean the parameters have ged?」
「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, hag is stealing anyway and we will be trespassing on military property which is just as bad. Fouler res that if we are going iter get our hands oeology as a safeguard. In case anything goes wrong and the AI is released into cyberspace.」
「OK, if we do mao get our hands on it, how do we spirit the processor and the AI out of the try?」
「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, ast casu