Bad Intentions

by Matt Lynn

  Jack explained that he had taken a closer look at the extraordinary items. He had started out by looking through the movement of funds accounts, and then tracing those back to the billing records. He had checked the invoicing files stretching back over many years. He had looked at how Kizog billed the departments of health in each of the main European countries, and then he had sorted through the records of the government purchases of drugs in the US, mainly to the Medicaid system. Then he went back to check the figures in the market sales accounts. And then he started crunching the numbers.

  'And what does all that show?' asked Tara.

  'The company has been systematically overbilling the health systems throughout Europe, in Britain, Germany, Italy, the Benelux countries. Tens of millions every year from each one. And then in the US I could find nothing strange about the Medicaid billings. But I did find huge demand for Kizog drugs from the defence department, ostensibly for use by the military. Except most of those drugs were never delivered. Again, massive overbilling.'

  'To all the major countries of the Western alliance,' added Tara. Jack nodded, and looked at her closely. 'I think we have found out how Kizog was paid for its work on biological warfare. The money was funnelled into the company via the normal government reimbursements for drug purchases. Except that it wasn't drugs they were buying. It was weapons.'

  Shane leant down on the desk with Fuller standing beside him now, looking down at the screen, while Stile studied the information thrown up by the program. 'What does it tell you?' he asked.

  'Searching in the financial records was the right idea,' Stile replied. 'The programme has uncovered a hacking attempt in that section of the database. A tunnel. They came in right underneath the firewalls. I was always aware that it could be done, of course, but I've never seen it actually achieved before. Impressive.'

  'Bollocks to that,' snapped Shane. 'How recently were they there?'

  'How recently?'

  Shane was starting to dislike Mr Stile. 'When where they in?'

  'They're still inside,' Stile replied.

  'Then find them.'

  Stile turned to the keyboard and punched in a series of commands. 'This should take only a moment or two. I've told the program we are interested in this intrusion, and it is now initiating a search.'

  Shane was already pacing around the room, thinking about the next steps in the plan once they located their prey.

  'How long have they been in the database?' asked Fuller.

  'Judging by the information here, it could have been seven or eight hours,' replied Stile.

  Shane looked down at the man scornfully. 'Remind me never to buy a computer,' he said. 'These things are about as secure as Hyde Park.'

  'How much information could they collect in that time?' asked Fuller.

  'Depends,' said Stile. 'Assuming they are just downloading material for analysis later, and assuming they are using a very fast modem, which I think is inevitable since I doubt they are saving money on cheap equipment, they could probably be taking about a hundred megabytes of data an hour. Call that seven or eight hundred megabytes overnight, or roughly half a million pages of printed text.'

  'A lot, I think, is the answer we are looking for,' said Fuller.

  'Doesn't matter how much,' interrupted Shane. 'So long as we catch them. We'll get it back.'

  Stile was looking back at the terminal, studying the information on the screen, a fearful look deepening on his face as he peered into the machine. 'Bad news, I'm afraid,' he said slowly. 'They didn't use a direct modem connection into the network. They came in over the Internet.'

  Shane turned sharply on his heels, looking directly down at the man. His expression was fierce and unforgiving. 'What does that mean?'

  Stile was starting to wonder if Shane was the sort of man who should be on the Kizog payroll, but realised there was nothing he could do about him; his authority came directly from the Chairman and to disobey was madness. 'It means the connection comes from an Internet service provider. It is their computer that is plugging into ours. The hackers will be plugged into the service provider, but it's happening at one stage removed. There is no direct connection between us and the hacker.'

  Shane stuffed a cigarette into his mouth. 'You mean we can't find them.'

  'It's not as bad as that,' replied Stile. 'We can find the service provider, because we have their number here. It has a Birmingham code. There won't be many service providers in that area, so you shouldn't have much trouble locating it. They will know which of their subscribers has been plugging into our network. It will all be recorded on their mainframes. Whether they will co-operate with us I don't know.'

  Shane reached for the phone on the desk and keyed in four digits. It rang only twice before the Chairman picked it up. 'We need some help, boss,' said Shane. 'We located our prey hacking into the system. But they are trying to hold us up by using an Internet connection to disguise their location. You need to get the police to lean on those people at the Internet place to hand over details on which of their subscribers has been plugging into our system. Stile has the details.'

  'Quite so,' replied the Chairman. 'I'll see to it immediately. How long have they been inside?'

  'Overnight,' replied Shane. 'They have taken a load of gear.'

  'And they are still there?'

  'Still inside, yeah.'

  'Does it present a problem if we stop them?' asked the Chairman.

  Shane looked down at Stile and repeated the question.

  'We can stop them,' replied Stile. 'But we might lose the connection into the Internet service they are using. If we really want to get our hands on these people then we need to keep them online.'

  Shane relayed the answer. 'Tell Stile to let them remain in the database,' whispered the Chairman. 'I think we are very close to catching them now.'

  TWENTY-THREE

  Tara and Jack stood huddled together in the phone box. They had walked three or four blocks from the hotel, twisting through the backstreets, and stood outside one of the many hospitals in the area. The booth was littered with cards from hookers, and a light drizzle was falling from above them. None of the people passing by paid any attention to them, and, for the moment at least, they felt sure they were safe.

  Jack fished the number from his jacket pocket, and began to dial. 'Julian Symonds, please,' he told the switchboard operator.

  The call went straight through to his office. His secretary said she would see if he was available and asked who was calling.

  'Jack Borrodin,' he replied crisply.

  'From which company,' she asked.

  'Don't worry about that. Just tell him I am on the line, and see if he takes the call.'

  She returned seconds later, saying that Mr Symonds would be happy to speak to him, and that she would put the call straight through.

  'Where are you, Mr Borrodin?' Symonds asked at once. 'I had been starting to think I would never hear from you again.'

  'We're still around,' Jack replied firmly.

  'And how are you getting on?'

  'We are nearly there,' answered Jack. 'How are your arrangements going?'

  'Transport has been taken care of,' replied Symonds. 'The Chairman of Ocher has seen to that personally. A credit facility in your and Miss Ling's joint names has been established here at the bank. I have authorised it personally. You can trade up to your credit limit. Two million.'

  'How do I know I can trust you?'

  Symonds hesitated before answering. 'Look, we are both taking a big chance here. But it seems neither of us is in a very strong position. I am about to lose this defence. And you are about to lose your freedom. I suggest we try to get along.'

  'OK,' replied Jack. 'This is the story. We have established beyond doubt that Kizog researched biological weapons and that it created Ator. We have established, beyond doubt, that it was paid for this work by the various Western governments, who reimbursed it via their health budgets. We are still a bit unclear about how the c
ounterfeiting operation works into the picture. Now, I need you to tell me something. Do we have enough?'

  Symonds sounded uncertain. 'You might do, you might not.'

  'What do you mean?' asked Jack.

  'We need the whole picture,' replied Symonds, his voice betraying his concern. 'Everything. The more we have, the more certain I can be that the bid can be called off, and that you can collect your money from us and be taken out of the country. Any gaps, and Kizog and their lawyers could start picking us to pieces. We have to have the whole story. With evidence.'

  'OK,' said Jack. 'We are still working on it. We have until Friday, right?'

  'Until Friday,' replied Symonds. 'Give me a call tomorrow and let me know how you are getting on. I will notify the Takeover Panel and the Bank of England to tell them we want a last-minute meeting. That will give us the maximum time.' He paused. 'And Mr Borrodin, good luck.'

  Jack replaced the receiver. Tara took him by the hand, and together they walked silently through the streets back towards the hotel. Along the way, they stopped at a cheap store and bought themselves a new pair of jeans each, and a couple of sweatshirts. The bill came to £72. Their clothes were already feeling horribly dirty; and, anyway, Jack pointed out, they deserved a treat.

  'Is there anyone you want to call?' asked Tara as they walked from the store.

  Her voice struck Jack as distant, unconnected from the present moment, as though she were drifting off to some other place of which he had no knowledge. 'I already called Symonds,' he replied flatly.

  'A personal call,' she continued. 'Someone you want to reassure, tell them you are still all right?'

  Jack shook his head. There was, he realised, no one. 'My parents are dead, you know that,' he replied testily. 'Who would I call?'

  'Some friends, perhaps,' she said quietly. 'A girlfriend.'

  He slipped his arm around her waist, letting it rest above her hips. 'No,' he answered evenly. 'It would be too risky.'

  Tara smiled, and he asked her if she wanted lunch somewhere, but Tara shook her head; not enough time, she told him. Pick up a sandwich and get back to work. They now had less than forty-eight hours to figure out where the counterfeiting operation fitted into the picture. There was still work to be done.

  Alan Lancer had spent two years as managing director of Arbex Internet Services in Birmingham, and this was the first time he had ever received a request for information from the special branch. It was the first time he had received any kind of a request from the police. And it had taken him by surprise.

  The officer had explained that they were attempting to catch a pair of dangerous computer hackers, and Lancer had been only too happy to comply. Searching through the database for the last twenty-four hours was a simple matter. He issued the instructions to his technical staff, and within an hour of delivering the request the police had the name of the subscriber who had been using this system to hack into the Kizog network.

  The Chairman had not been pleased when he heard the news. Late Wednesday afternoon, Fuller, Shane and Finer had gathered in his office to review the chase. 'It looks like they are smarter than we thought,' said the Chairman.

  Reluctant though he was to do so, Shane had been forced to concede he had a point. The Arbex subscriber they were looking for turned out to be a Mr KH Reid, who gave an address in Amsterdam. A quick check with the Dutch police revealed that no such address existed. Tracking down the credit card number had revealed that Mr Reid lived in Enfield, south London. When contacted, he told the police he had never heard of Borrodin and Ling, and they believed him. 'Obviously a stolen credit card number,' concluded Shane. 'An old trick, mostly used by your minor criminal. Pick up one of the old-fashioned manual swipe receipts and you have the name and number and expiry date of the card. You can order pretty much anything over the phone with it. Usually you get caught within a few weeks.'

  'We don't have a few weeks,' whispered the Chairman. 'We have two days.'

  'I know,' replied Shane.

  The next stage in the inquiry, he continued, was to track down the phone line they had been using to dial into the Arbex system. In theory that should lead them straight to Tara and Jack. The police had contacted British Telecom, instructing them to put an instant trace on the call coming into Arbex. Fortunately it was connected to an electronic exchange, so everything should be stored in the databases. It took them about three hours to sort through the computer records. Unfortunately, Shane was forced to concede once more, they appeared to have thought of that possibility as well. The calls were coming from Holland. His first thought had been that they had done a flit to the Continent, and were working from Amsterdam. That made no difference to him; it was as easy to finish them off there as here. But the calls seemed to be originating from the international operator's exchange outside the city. It was impossible they were camping out in that office. 'It seems they have been phreaking the phones,' Shane concluded reluctantly.

  'Phreaking?' asked Finer.

  'They have been messing with the phone system,' replied Shane. 'Playing with the electronic tones that route the calls around the world. It's a device hackers often use to get free calls, and our prey seem to have developed quite a taste for petty crime. The trouble is it also buggers up the trace. The computers get so confused they no longer know where the calls are coming from. They insist it is coming from the operator's office in Holland, which is why they aren't billing for it.'

  The annoyance was clear in the creases on the Chairman's brow. 'You mean there is no way we can locate them?'

  'Just one more possibility,' said Shane. 'The telecoms engineers have told the police that so long as the line is left open long enough, and if they have detected the phreaker, they should be able to trace the call back, at least to the exchange that is being messed with. That would give us the area where they are located.'

  'And they can do that now?' asked the Chairman.

  Shane shook his head. 'The line is closed right now,' he replied. 'But if they come back in, I think we can get a fix on them.'

  The Chairman looked thoughtful. 'I suppose it depends on whether they have enough information yet,' he said.

  Tara held the graph up before her, studying the way the lines moved. She had been poring over it at the hotel room desk for several minutes now, her face composed in an expression of perfect concentration. Eventually she passed it over to Jack. 'See something odd about this?' she asked.

  Jack looked at the graph and shrugged.

  'From about 1990 onwards,' she continued, 'if you add the legitimate sales from its drugs to the money it received from the government for research, the two figures stop giving you a hundred per cent.'

  Jack looked at it again, more closely this time. 'You're right,' he replied.

  'So from then on the company is receiving big slugs of money from somewhere else?'

  'The counterfeiting operation,' Jack replied. 'They are bringing money in from there. That would be my guess.'

  Tara nodded. 'Look at how the line for weapons research revenues starts shifting downwards,' she continued. 'Think about the wider context. From 1990 onwards the Cold War is over. Defence expenditure throughout the West starts to be scaled down. At the same time, our friends at Kizog see their sales falling. My guess is that after the demise of the old Soviet Union there was no longer such a demand for weapons research.'

  Jack took up the theme. 'Which is very embarrassing for the company. They can hardly go to the shareholders and say they are no longer getting as much for their biological weapons. They have to find some way of plugging the hole in the revenue line. And quickly.'

  'Hence the counterfeiting?'

  'I guess so,' replied Jack.

  'OK, it's a theory,' said Tara. 'But can we prove it?'

  Jack paused for a moment, numerous possibilities running through his mind. 'I think so,' he said at last.

  Tara looked at him closely. 'How?' she asked.

  'It means going back inside. If we can trace how t
hey're using the money from the counterfeiting operation to fill the gaps in their revenues, then we'll have them. The proof that Symonds is looking for.'

  A look of concern flashed across Tara's face. 'Is that safe?'

  'Probably,' replied Jack confidently. 'If they were able to trace us through the Dutch connection they would have found us by now, and we would probably be dead. I think we have fooled them. It's safe.'

  The Chairman was staring out of the plate-glass window, watching dusk fall on the offices and laboratories below. So close, he thought. So very close. They can't stop me now.

  Finer walked up to the desk, perching on its side, looking up at the Chairman. He too glanced through the window at the complex below. Time to bail out? he wondered. Perhaps. Perhaps not. He would see which way events unfolded, and make his decision later. 'You wanted to see me,' he said.

  'I thought you should see this.'

  The Chairman turned away from the window, standing over the desk, and handed two sheets of paper across to his finance director.

  Finer glanced down. It was a transcript of a phone conversation earlier that day between Jack Borrodin and Julian Symonds. He read the words slowly and carefully, chewing them over in his mind, weighing their consequences. Borrodin was clearly working for the other side now, and his raids on the company's databases must have yielded something. He had much of the story, although, clearly, not yet everything. Suddenly, Finer decided, they were starting to look like dangerous opponents.

  'From the wiretap?' he asked casually.

  The Chairman nodded. 'Symonds's phone has been bugged for some time,' he replied. 'Always useful to know what the opposition is doing.'

  'They are close,' said Finer. 'Too close for comfort.'

  The Chairman wiped his brow. 'Shane will deal with them,' he replied quietly. 'They aren't there yet. And there is still time.'