‘Murray! Get in here!’ screamed Lorraine.
Murray appeared.
‘Take this piece of shit back where you found it!’ she commanded. ‘And give her a good seeing-to!’ Gemma felt a sudden rush of nausea, the golden mirrors and mother-of-pearl finishes melting and pouring together as her vision wobbled. As she staggered, an insight suddenly came to her—she’d seen this woman somewhere recently, completely separate from Steve. Then she felt her legs go under her. Oh no, she thought on the way down, as something happened to space and time. Then she knew nothing.
Fifteen
When she came to, she was in the car again, but this time lolling against the back seat. The budgie man was driving. She saw his eyes in the rear vision mirror checking her out. ‘I’ll drop you off somewhere,’ he said. ‘I don’t mind doing that.’
‘Let me out!’
‘You were really smart, passing out back there. Fainting like that was the neatest thing you’ve ever done. Otherwise you would have got a good seeing-to.’
‘Seeing-to?’ Gemma yelled. ‘Where’s my briefcase?’
‘Here.’ He looked at her in the mirror.
‘Let me out,’ she demanded. ‘Right now. Here.’
‘Girlie . . .’ he started saying.
‘Right here!’ Gemma was shocked at her own scream. He screeched the car to a halt so that she jerked forward and would have banged against the front seat had she not saved herself with outstretched arms.
‘All right!’ he said.
She scrambled out of the car, not caring, not even knowing where she was.
‘Here. Take this!’
He flung the briefcase out onto the footpath. Gemma grabbed it. The car, a black Commodore with the LITCH registration, roared away. Gemma looked around. I will never forget that car, she thought. And I will never forgive Steve for this, no matter what he was doing.
She recognised Norton Street forming a right angle to the street she was in. It was the suburb of Leichhardt. She stood dazed for a moment. Then she pulled out her mobile and rang Kit but all she got was the voice mail. I was nearly killed, she reflected. She saw a café on the corner and made her way to it, grateful just to sit and breathe. She ordered coffee and, although she was starving, realised she’d throw up if she tried to eat anything just now. She stared out the door, watching cars crisscross on the street outside. She drank the coffee and when she went to pay, found that her wallet was missing. The face of the woman behind the counter changed from disapproval to shock as her customer burst into tears.
She scrambled for her phone, remembering Mike would be at the office by now, working on her computer. She’d have to get back to her car. She felt immense relief when his voice answered.
‘Mike,’ she said. ‘Something’s happened. Can you come and pick me up?’
‘What is it?’
‘Come and pick me up,’ she said, ‘corner of Norton and Marion streets, Leichhardt.’
He waited.
‘I’ll tell you what happened when I see you.’
When Mike’s car drove into view, Gemma limped out to him, borrowed ten dollars, paid for her coffee and scrambled into the front seat, the line of vehicles behind them honking.
‘What the hell happened to you?’ he asked, looking at the long streak of grease smearing her slacks, the dirt and scuffing on her shoes.
She looked sideways at his swollen mouth and the black edges of stitches that showed under the plaster on his forehead. He seemed worse now than yesterday. She pulled down the sun visor on the passenger side and checked herself in the mirror. Her heart sank. God, I’m getting old, she thought to herself. Another dark smudge on one side of her face, streaked mascara and no lipstick made her look like the woman in a poster about domestic violence. She slammed the mirror up again, grabbed a tissue from her briefcase and started rubbing at her face.
‘I was abducted off the street,’ she said. ‘A woman with a grudge against me.’
Mike swung round towards her. ‘Who?’ he asked.
‘Lorraine Litchfield.’
‘Are you going to lay charges?’
‘It’s not as clear cut as that,’ she said, and gave him a simplified version of events. She couldn’t bring herself to tell Mike about her own role in the affair—following Steve through Kings Cross, making eye contact with his companion, reacting in jealous fury, putting her man and herself at risk with her ill-conceived actions.
Mike frowned.
‘This woman wants Steve,’ she said. ‘She has a . . .’ she groped for words that wouldn’t hurt her too much ‘. . . a personal interest in him. And she suspects my involvement with him. There was a scene. It was horrible.’ For another moment, she thought she was about to cry again. ‘Then I went and fainted.’ She put her head in her hands. ‘I don’t know what’s happening to me.’
Mike drove on in silence. ‘I don’t know what to say,’ he said finally. He swung a glance her way. ‘I’ve never known what to say to women.’
She studied his profile and noticed the way the low winter sun shone on the golden hair of his powerful forearms, relaxed behind the steering wheel. Despite her suspicions, Gemma warmed to him. She felt very glad he was sitting beside her. ‘I’m a mess,’ she complained. ‘I’ve never fainted in my life. I’ve never burst into tears in a public place.’ She bit her lip. ‘I’m a professional,’ she said.
‘You’re a human, too, Gemma. All of us have a breaking point.’
‘I thought I was tougher,’ she said, almost ashamed of her admission.
‘Better get you home and cleaned up,’ he said. ‘You look like you could do with a decent feed. And a good sleep.’ He concentrated on the driving for a few moments. ‘Gemma, you’ve got to report this to the police,’ he said. ‘It’s a very serious offence. What if she decides to get at you again—in a more permanent way?’
Gemma shook her head, thinking of Steve’s cold words, his dismissal of her, his comparison between Gemma, smeared with oil and smudged with dirt and the lovely blonde princess in the fluffy powder-blue suit.
‘I don’t believe I’m in any further danger from her. And anyway, this is a personal matter,’ she said. I’ll talk it over with Angie, she decided to herself. Angie will give it to me straight.
‘But what did she want? Why did she do it? How did it all come about?’
‘She wanted to find out about something.’ Gemma’s heart was still aching from the memory of the kiss she’d unwillingly witnessed and the struggle she was having, believing it was only theatre, part of Steve’s role, and necessary for Gemma’s own safety. ‘And she did,’ she added sadly.
Sitting in the car with Mike driving her, heading for home, with the winter sunlight filtering through molten clouds, she calmed down a lot. The rate of her dejected heart was almost back to normal and she realised only now how much she’d sweated during the incident, despite the cold day. Her blouse was soaked back and front under the jumper.
‘How are things back at the ranch?’ she asked.
‘There are one or two reasons for concern,’ he said.
Gemma sensed his unwillingness to continue, fearful of the understated remark.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, frightened.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to talk about it just now. Let it wait till you’re feeling a bit stronger.’
‘Mike, tell me. You’re really frightening me. What’s happened?’ Has something happened to Kit, she wondered, to Will? Taxi? ‘Has someone been hurt?’ she asked, dreading his answer.
Her companion was concentrating on making the turn at the roundabout into Bondi Road and his tanned face frowned at the rear vision mirror, then at her, but he shook his head and she felt some relief.
‘I feel bad telling you this now,’ he said, ‘knowing what you’ve just been throug
h.’
‘Tell me!’ Gemma was shocked at the terror in her voice.
‘Things aren’t good back at work,’ he finally said.
Gemma felt immediate relief. It must be problems with Louise, or a client. ‘What’s happened?’ she asked.
‘You know I did a full forensic on your hard disk,’ he said after a pause.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Like I asked you to. Go on.’
Mike negotiated a lane change before speaking. ‘You’ve got a Trojan attack zombie in your system.’ He looked at her to see if she knew what he was talking about.
Gemma stared back at him, angry and shocked. ‘But what about my firewall and the virus shield?’ she asked.
‘I’m afraid this got through your defences,’ he said. ‘And it brought you a complimentary copy of Hydra7Slave as well.’ The tone of Mike’s voice again told her clearly that this complimentary copy was not something to treasure.
‘Shit,’ she said. ‘What’s that?’ Now on top of everything, her computer was infected, possibly files lost, deleted or distorted.
‘Hydra7Slave Trojan was downloaded by your machine from a free web page server as a single file,’ he said.
‘But that’s impossible. I’ve never done that,’ she said. ‘I’ve never downloaded a web page server. And why would I download a Trojan?’
‘You wouldn’t have known you were doing it,’ he said. ‘You would have just opened an email attachment and this damn thing comes in like the midget Japanese submarine under the Manly ferry. You wouldn’t even know it was there. Then if you went looking for it, you’d never find it because the minute it gets in, it breaks into two randomly named files and deletes its original file name.’
‘God, Mike,’ she said. ‘How bad is it?’
He was turning past Wonderland Avenue approaching Phoenix Crescent and now Gemma dreaded arriving home. She wondered how long it would take to put everything back together again. She had backed up all her files but wished, too late, she’d been more assiduous with some of the other material in her hard drive. She pulled out another tissue and blew her nose, concentrating on what Mike was telling her. I just want to run away somewhere nice and safe, she thought to herself. She thought of the boatshed, of camping there and locking the door. I need a break. I don’t want to deal with all this right now.
‘I used a packet sniffer running on my machine adjacent to yours so I could keep yours under observation,’ he said. ‘The minute I turned it on, your machine immediately went into action. I didn’t touch it.’
‘What? By itself?’ Gemma was incredulous.
‘It knew to connect with an ICR client.’
‘Who?’ she asked.
Mike shook his head. ‘Some International Chat Relay,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t keep up with the speed of the damn thing.’
‘But how does that affect my computer?’ she said.
‘It joined a special Hydra7 ICR chat server where it posted everything,’ Mike said.
Gemma’s voice was barely a whisper as she tried to comprehend the full impact of this information. ‘Does this mean I’ve lost everything?’ she whispered.
They had pulled up outside her place. Along the horizon, a low white ship piled high with containers slid out of sight. In spite of everything, Gemma was aware of one of her favourite songs on the radio. ‘Total eclipse of the heart,’ wailed the singer reflecting Gemma’s mood. A cold wind blew through the window. Mike’s silence alarmed her more than anything he’d said so far. She’d copied a lot of her records onto more permanent files but not all of them. What if the floppies had deteriorated? She imagined the horror of losing sensitive and irreplaceable records. It was unthinkable. All her work of the last seven years, contacts, associations. All possibly beyond retrieval.
Mike pulled the handbrake on and turned to face her. ‘I’m afraid it’s much worse than that,’ he said. ‘The minute you switch it on, the damn thing phones home to the zombie master. It tells him all your necessary connection details. Then it reports on you. Every keystroke you make. It’s just the same as if a hacker was standing behind you, copying everything you do.’
Gemma turned to him in horror. ‘Someone, somewhere,’ Mike continued, ‘has complete control over your computer, your entire file system and access. Someone now knows as much as you do about your business.’
She shook her head in disbelief, incomprehension.
‘Everything is posted out there,’ Mike said. ‘Everything anyone would need to know about your files. All publicly available.’
Gemma stared at the horizon. Someone had got into her most confidential files, sensitive reports, methods of subterfuge. Someone now knew everything about her business—the names of all her clients, the results of all the surveillance work she’d ever done. Her whole system was burned wide open. She put a hand over her mouth as if to block a silent scream, hardly aware of Mike’s arm around her shoulder.
‘But my password! No one could know that but me!’
Mike glanced away, then he turned to her again.
‘It’s out there for anyone now.’
Gemma sat like a block of stone.
‘Your password is “Ratbag”,’ Mike said.
‘My God,’ she said. ‘This is a nightmare.’ She still couldn’t move. Shock on shock. She felt numb, immobilised.
‘I’ve closed it all down, Gemma,’ he said. ‘Chances are it’s just a smart-arsed script kiddie of fifteen who’ll lose interest now and it’ll all just blow over.’
Slowly, she turned to look at his concerned features. She recalled the effort someone had gone to so that her system would be flooded with ugly email, the phone call that might have been a breather, the odd feeling she’d had in the boatshed—that someone had been there. She shook her head, shivering as every instinct chilled her.
‘This is no script kiddie,’ she whispered.
•
She watched while Mike ran through her system again, making sure everything was as clean as possible before he closed it down completely. ‘Don’t use this machine,’ he said, ‘until I’ve gone right through it and checked what changes it might have made to the registry.’ He looked more closely at her. ‘Gemma, I think you should take the rest of the day off and look after yourself,’ he said. ‘You look terrible.’
She waved him away. ‘We’ll have to change everything,’ she said. ‘We’ll have to start again.’ She limped down to the door of her lounge area. ‘I’ll have to start again.’
Mike had never been into her private domain before and he paused as she went through. Taxi fussed around her ankles and she kicked him aside, turning to Mike.
‘Come in, Mike. Do you want a drink before you go?’ She didn’t feel she wanted to be alone just then.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s been quite a day.’ He followed her down the hallway and walked around, looking at the view. ‘I should only have something soft with my injuries. But what the hell.’
She had poured them both a Scotch and handed Mike’s drink to him when the phone rang. She picked it up. She hardly had a chance to say a word.
‘It’s Jenny Porter here, Gemma. Risk analyst with Social Security.’
Gemma wondered why her erstwhile colleague was sounding so distant, so formal. ‘Jenny,’ she started to say, ‘of course I know who you are.’ Jenny would be able to advise her in this situation, but the tone of the voice at the other end of the line stopped her in her tracks.
‘I just turned my printer on,’ Jenny said, ‘to do a few queued jobs. Imagine my horror when instead it started printing out the confidential records of a security business.’
Gemma felt herself sinking onto the arm of the lounge.
‘Your business, Gemma.’
In the chilly silence between them, Gemma felt more of her world collapsing, sliding in great
chunks into a bottomless ravine.
‘Can you explain to me,’ Jenny was saying, ‘how such sensitive—inappropriate, I should say—material of yours happened to get itself into my system?’
‘Jenny, I can’t . . . I only just found out about it myself.’
‘It is a shocking breach of security from your end, Gemma, and an appalling inconvenience to us. Our system is in complete meltdown. We can’t get into our own files. I can’t believe you could let this happen.’
‘As soon as I’ve found out what’s going on, I’ll be straight on to it, Jenny. I can’t tell you how sorry I am . . .’
‘My 2IC,’ Jenny continued, ‘is telling me now that this is happening as we speak to other security operators. Your stuff is jamming everyone else in the business. We’re going to have to close down our system while we make sure the hacker hasn’t sent us anything worse that we don’t know about.’
Gemma closed her eyes. Just when she thought Jenny had finished with her, her erstwhile colleague spoke again.
‘You better find out who hates you enough to do this.’ Then she put the phone down.
It was a long minute before Gemma spoke. ‘That was Jenny Porter, the risk analyst at Social Security,’ she said in a faint voice. ‘Jenny was so impressed with the results my business was delivering, she was going to give me the contract for the department’s out-sourced fraud investigations. All the work I’d ever need. Solid government contracts.’
Mike put his drink down, watching Gemma as she fell back onto her blue leather lounge chair.
‘It would’ve meant a huge increase in business. I was looking to put you and Spinner in as manager and assistant manager, put on more road operatives. I would have been a rich woman by the time I was forty.’ She looked at him.
‘I take it you won’t be getting the work now?’
Gemma slowly shook her head. ‘That’s the least of what Jenny just told me.’ She put her drink to her lips but put it down again, sickened. She couldn’t swallow anything at the moment, let alone alcohol. Her voice was almost a whisper. ‘Mike, all the confidential details of every job we’ve—Mercator’s—done, the surveillance operations, the identities of all the frauds we’ve caught, the names of their employers, our methods of surveillance, the unfaithful spouses—their names and addresses, who they did it with and how often—all my reports and everyone else’s, problems and personal comments—every single detail started printing out on Jenny’s printer when she switched it on a little while ago.’ She took a gulp of Scotch. ‘Jenny naturally was horrified. And as if that’s not bad enough, she just told me that all my files have been sent to every serious operator in the security business.’
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