Alchemist (37 page)

After a pause, the screen showed the response:
WELCOME TO THE BENDIX SCHERE ELECTRONIC SERVICE. AUTHORIZATION LEVEL 3. ENTER SERVICE YOU REQUIRE
.

Conor glanced at his watch. He had learned as much as he could about the Bendix Schere computer system in the past couple of months, and for such a technologically advanced and security-conscious company, it was a surprisingly old system of networked Macintoshes.

It was due to be updated but not until the middle of next year, which would give him plenty of time to exploit the current system's weaknesses. Principal of these was the fact that it was extremely difficult and time-consuming for
Security to run audit logs – to trace specific illegal entries or uses. And the shorter the length of time he was on now, the harder still it would make Security's task. Although, unless there were any buried alarm triggers in the system, there was no reason for anyone to be alerted by this entry.

The relative antiquity of the system was not as strange as it had at first seemed to him, when Conor understood the reasons: the computer system was run by a sparky thirty-something manager called Cliff Norris; he was well up to speed on the latest technology, but had a definite ego problem. Security was run by a smoothie called Major Gunn, whom Conor had also encountered.

Gunn might have had his high technology training at GCHQ but he had left them a decade ago, and whilst he was well abreast of some of the latest hardware and software, there were gaps in his knowledge through which a supertanker could be navigated. Despite a huge team (no one seemed to know quite how many people worked in Security), Gunn kept everything to do with his Directorate close to his chest, as if scared of revealing his shortcomings. And he did not get on well with Cliff Norris.

As a result, Conor had gleaned, there was a serious lack of communication between the Director of Security and the computer systems personnel.

His plan was simple: to use that situation to his advantage.

First he worked his way through the system until he reached the Superuser entry level commands. Then he implanted his first Trojan Horse, by replacing the genuine command interface with a duplicate false one. Then he waited patiently for one of the system managers with Superuser status to log in. It could be a few minutes or it could be several hours.

Keeping an eye on the screen, he lit a cigarette. Ten minutes passed. Then twenty. He lit a second cigarette, his nerves taut. Five minutes later, as he was stubbing out the cigarette, the word
cliffnor
appeared on the screen. It was the system manager himself logging in!

This word disappeared and was replaced with:

a
1
c/hem>ist
.

With a wide grin, Conor copied the system manager's user name and password into his laptop's memory and trashed the false interface. Cliff Norris would have had his entry rejected, and would almost certainly assume he had mistyped his password. Conor lit a third cigarette and watched patiently as Norris logged in again and this time was connected.

Norris stayed logged in for twenty minutes, running a series of routine checks, then logged off again, this time for good, Conor hoped. To make sure, he logged off himself, unplugged his modem, dialled the Bendix Schere switchboard and asked to speak to Norris. After being put on hold for a short while, he was told that Norris had left for the day.

Conor plugged his modem back in and logged in again, this time using the system manager's user name and password. With his new Superuser status, he routed himself through to the network file archive which housed the system software for all the Macs in the building, and inserted a patch virus version of Mac TCP – the software link that handled data travelling between each individual computer and the system. This version held extra lines of program code which would monitor all the lines of data going through the system, pick out any information that Conor specifically requested, and automatically file it away into his eMail box at Minaret Internet. Effectively, he had just inserted a dead letter drop into the Bendix Schere computer network.

On the screen appeared the command:
ENTER KEY SEARCH WORDS.

Conor typed
MATERNOX,
then hit carriage return.

ENTER NEXT KEY WORD OR CARRIAGE RETURN IF INSTRUCTIONS COMPLETE
.

Conor pressed carriage return again. Then he logged into Norris's eMail software, and typed out a message to Major Gunn, informing him that an updated debugged version of Mac TCP called ‘TETRUS T.G.' had been added to the system and this should be distributed to all workstations in the company, replacing the existing version. It automatically carried the system manager's normal signature.

When Conor logged off his nerves were jangling, but he felt well pleased with himself. If all went well, during the next twenty-four hours Major Bill Gunn would unwittingly become his most valuable assistant.

London. Friday 18 November, 1994

The Bitch was taking him for every penny. She already had the kids, now she wanted his money. Bill Gunn sat at his desk sipping his coffee, and read the three-page letter from the solicitors for the second time that day.

It has come to our attention that you may own shares in the pharmaceutical company Bendix Schere, which information you have not previously disclosed to us or to the Child Support Agency. We would be grateful if you would kindly inform us within seven days of your exact position regarding ownership of any shares in said company.

He read the paragraph again. How had they got that information? The Bitch must have told them. But had he told the Bitch? He must have done, he supposed, years ago, once upon a time when he loved her or thought he loved her. Or had someone been digging deeper?

He was deeply disturbed. Ownership of shares in Bendix Schere was a strictly guarded secret; no paperwork ever changed hands and there was no documentation at all – it was taken on trust. And you never actually
owned
the shares. When Gunn had joined the company, he had been told there was an allocation of two hundred thousand shares in his name. The annual dividend would be paid into a numbered Swiss account for him on 1 May each year. And it had been. In the past ten years the amount in his deposit account at the Zuricher-Mehne bank had risen to just over three million pounds. There were, however, two snags: you couldn't touch
the money until you retired; and you forfeited the lot if you left, whether voluntarily or sacked.

He would have to talk to someone in the Bendix Legal Department, let them handle it, he decided. Folding the letter away, he turned his attention to the second problem of the day. Conor Molloy.

Why had Mr Molloy gone to Brighton yesterday?

He studied the printout of the log of the American patent attorney's movements for yesterday, which had been brought to his attention by the data-tracking manager. The log had been compiled from a combination of an audit trail on Molloy's usage of his smart-card to enter and move around the Bendix Building, and the satellite data tracking of his car, which was automatically fed into the computer system.

It did not take Gunn more than a few seconds of studying the printout to realize that the American's trip was a substantial departure from his normal routine. A caveat had been added: on Wednesday Molloy had moved into a new apartment, and therefore, it was possible that yesterday's change in routine might be connected.

Gunn punched a sequence of keys and on his screen appeared a summary of Conor Molloy's movements on Monday and Tuesday, together with Thursday of last week. They seemed routine enough. The American arrived in the office shortly before eight, leaving around seven in the evening. He took a lunch break of exactly one hour, sometimes in the canteen, sometimes going out. He drove straight from his apartment to the office and home again. Nothing out of order there.

On Wednesday he had made two car journeys from his company flat to his new flat near the Fulham Road. That was fine also, the kind of activity to be expected when moving home. So what was yesterday all about?

Molloy had arrived in the office at 6.54 a.m. – an hour earlier than normal. He had taken only a ten-minute lunch break, then he had left at 3 p.m. and driven to Brighton.

Gunn picked up his phone and dialled the data-tracking manager's number. ‘Where did Molloy park in Brighton?' he asked the instant the phone was answered.

‘A small NCP just off the seafront, near the Palace Pier.'

‘Do you know Brighton? Big on antiques, isn't it?'

‘Yes, sir. Some people call it the antiques capital of Europe.'

‘Used to be the shagging capital,' Gunn said. ‘Is this NCP a likely place for someone going antiques shopping?'

‘It would be reasonably close to the Lanes and the Kemp Town shopping streets, I suppose. I can find out for certain and come right back to you, sir.'

Gunn hung up and looked at the log again. Molloy had left Brighton at 6.20 p.m., driven to the Post House Hotel at Gatwick, where he'd stayed three hours and ten minutes, then driven back to London.

Three hours and ten minutes in a hotel? Doing
what
? Meeting someone? Maybe a friend from America on stopover? That was possible. Knocking someone off? Possible too, but if he was doing that he would more likely have stayed the night.

Gunn needed something good right now, needed to land a big live fish, and a hunch told him that in Molloy he had distinct possibilities. But there wasn't enough, not yet. He was unhappy about the American's background, he was convinced something on his application form wasn't right, didn't fit, but he still hadn't been able to work out what.

Ever since Molloy had awarded that skunk Mr Rowley two points short of the maximum on the Colleague Data Sheet, and had continued to do so each week, Gunn had been on the alert. Yet Molloy received high marks back from Rowley and from the senior manager of the Group Patents and Agreements Directorate. There was nothing to suggest anything untoward. Nothing but Gunn's instincts.

He debated whether to put Conor Molloy under full twenty-four-hour surveillance, and satisfy himself once and for all, either way. But that was expensive in man-hour time costs, which was how his Directorate's efforts were measured. It was only November and he was already over budget for the year, plus there were several employees in other divisions who needed surveillance at the moment. Chemicals had been disappearing at their Newcastle plant. And Gunn had been tipped off that a new marketing man in the baby-foods
division at Reading might be a journalist planning to do an exposé on Bendix sales techniques in the Third World.

Dr Crowe had given him a rocket at the end of last year about the cost of security and poor results. This year had been even more of a bummer. He had not picked up one single instance of industrial espionage, large or small; he had failed to pick up any intelligence on Jake Seals' impending defection, and now Crowe wanted his guts for garters over his handling of the
Thames Valley Gazette
enquiries.

Come on, Mr Molloy, make my day. Do something, you slimy little Yank. Put a foot wrong, step into it right up to your sodding ankles
.

Secure in the knowledge that there would be a copy of the log on hard disk, Gunn fed the two sheets of printout into the shredder beside his desk. Then he turned back to his workstation. He re-read the eMail from the computer systems manager informing him that an updated, debugged version of Mac TCP, called ‘TETRUS T.G.', had been added to the system and should be distributed to all workstations in the company, replacing the existing version.

His first angry reaction was to phone Cliff Norris, the systems manager, and tell the lazy bastard to do the distribution himself. Then, calming himself down, he remembered it had been his own orders that all software had to be distributed by himself and no one else, and that it was a sackable breach of regulations for anyone to use software that had not been issued personally by him. That was the only way he could be certain of keeping the system free of viruses.