The roaring inside Kat’s head from the bomb began again when she left the hospital, but it’s subsided to a dull throb, the ringing in her ears quieter. Her left ankle is weak. If she puts too much weight on it, pain screams toward her thigh and kicks a nerve somewhere in her femur.
She’s been watching the screens for almost an hour. There’s a tiny spot about a gas pipe explosion on Portland Place and a brief shot of the destroyed facade of Grachev’s apartment.
From the hospital, Cranley took her to an office. Luxton was there. Apart from the cut over his right eye, he seemed fine. They photographed her, scanned her eyes, fingerprints, and palm, and made her an ID card for Media Axis, stripped secure by laser, and gave her a set of flash cards and USB drives. Her new name is Rachel Williams.
She’s wearing light blue dungarees with MEDIA AXIS in yellow letters on her back.
Between the café and the Media Axis compound is a pedestrian area, then a bend in the Thames River. On either side are the high-rises of other multinational corporations.
Luxton comes into view, walking alongside the line. He’s in the same uniform dungarees, and when he’s level with her window, he unfolds his arms, which is the signal for Kat to join him.
Kat walks out and falls into step ten yards behind him.
“After Iraq, everyone was saying that American power had to be balanced, right?” A tall man, head shaved and his face laden with rings, is haranguing anyone who’ll listen. “Well, that’s what Project Peace is all about.”
Luxton cuts to the left and goes through a revolving door. He waits for Kat in a foyer with stainless steel floors and ceilings, with a wall of television screens, at least 20 huge images.
It takes Kat a moment to separate out the familiar screens she sees on the streets; one with Spooner talking and playbacks of him as the England captain scoring goals. On the right, the story has shifted from Macedonia to Cuba.
BREAKING NEWS flashes in the top right-hand corner. A caption says HAVANA SIGNS PEACE TREATY WITH WASHINGTON. SANCTIONS LIFTED.
Luxton presses his pass against another revolving door. A green light comes on with a click, and he walks through. Kat’s about to follow him when a security guard steps in front of her.
“Pass,” he says, glancing at Kat and a row of clocks on the wall behind the reception desk. Kat flips her pass up to him. He checks it, looks at her again.
“What time does your shift start?” he asks.
“Now,” she says softly, looking down, not eyeballing him.
“What kind of an answer is that?”
She sees Luxton through three different shields of glass, halfway up a flight of stairs by a bank of elevators. He catches what’s happening and keeps going.
“My shift starts in four minutes,” says Kat. She twists her wrist and checks her watch so he can see it. “Fifteen twenty-seven. Well, three minutes.”
He says nothing, just nods. Kat slaps the card onto the ID reader, her heart pounding in the split second it takes for the green light to go on. She pushes the door and steps through as if she’s been working in the place forever.
She follows Luxton down a corridor of plasma screens from which faces stare out, soundlessly, talking at her.
With each step, the screen face locks onto her, eyes following until she moves out of range and another takes its place. She recognizes some from watching in the street; one of them is of Prime Minister Michael Rand. The ceiling is pine, lit by crisscrossing image lights that project laser slogans onto the floor. Kat makes out words like Trust and Values.
Eyes down, she keeps Luxton in view. The corridor leads to another foyer, older, with a wooden reception desk and visitors sitting as if in a hospital waiting room, all staring at screens on the wall. Luxton turns left down a flight of stairs. He waits for Kat at the bottom, then opens the third door on the right and holds it for her to walk through.
FORTY-SIX
Wednesday, 3:32 p.m., BST
The door swings shut behind her. The temperature is cooler and drier than outside. A stack of hardware, locked into frames, hums in a corner.
Liz sits in a high-backed chair in front of a semicircle of monitors, the center one showing a skirmish in Macedonia that Kat saw in the café a few minutes earlier. The shot pulls away to a road on a lush green hillside, where she sees that the upturned van is actually part of a three-vehicle collision.
“W-welcome to my edit suite,” Liz says, wheeling her chair to one side and beckoning Kat to pull up an empty one.
Kat sits down.
“That’s a pileup in Malaga in Spain,” says Liz. “I g-get those pictures, put them with an armored car from Iraq, mix that with shots of the insurgency in Kashmir, and tell everyone the global terror threat has erupted into fresh fighting in Macedonia.”
Her contorted fingers move incredibly fast over the keyboard. She flips the screen back to the scenes she has just cut. “See how I show those bodies? No faces. No distortion. No flesh ripped down to the bones. I call them the peaceful dead. And they’re the bad guys. My job is to create images of sanitized war. Now look at this.”
She brings up a shot of a baby with its neck half severed; a village razed by tanks; a child’s hand protruding from underneath the rubble; three soldiers, their clothes torn off by a bomb, naked white limbs streaked with gore and one of them crying out.
“That’s Iraq.” She brings up another set of pictures. “These are the people in Russia who suffer under the control of companies like RingSet. See the children? The dullness in their eyes? That’s pollution. That scab there.” She points to a close-up of a boy swinging on a tire hanging from a lamppost in a concrete playground littered with plastic bags. “Malnutrition causes that. The food they eat is crap. The air they breathe is crap. The wages they earn are crap. All the money goes into RingSet’s pocket.”
The screen flips from one image to another and another—all scenes of dreadful poverty.
“They die. RingSet wins. Game over,” says Kat softly.
“All of this is censored,” says Liz. “For each story I edited for broadcast, Suzy and I edited another with the banned pictures. We loaded in the other evidence she collected, and that’s what’s buried somewhere deep inside here. Suzy called it The History Book, because it’s historical fact not controlled by television networks. There’s enough to jail Yulya, Tiina, and all the rest of them for life.”
“Those types need the needle,” Kat starts to say, then notices the shadow of someone passing outside. The door opens slightly.
“Something with the security guard who handled you at the door,” says Luxton. “He’s checking on Rachel Williams’ ID. There are other checks in line, so it’ll take him a few minutes, but hurry.”
FORTY-SEVEN
Wednesday, 3:52 p.m., BST
Is this where you and Suzy worked all the time?”
Kat’s looking at a keystroke tracker, linked into the cable between the keyboard and the computer.
It’s a tiny gadget that records every key used, including passwords that show up unencrypted. When a password appears on the screen as **********, it will show up on the keystroke tracker in the actual words, letters, and symbols.
“Most of the time. Sometimes we were bounced to another suite.”
“When were the new security codes put in?”
Liz stops working on the computer and looks up at her. “I found out on Saturday morning, the day after Suzy was killed.”
“You tried to get in?”
“Yes, and f-failed.”
“Alarms?”
“N-no. Just refused access.”
“What’s the authentication code?”
“MC08/5783”
Kat notes it on a scrap of paper. Liz’s images of fighting in Macedonia hang frozen on the screen in front of her. Chilled air-conditioning catches in the back of her throat.
“What’s your user name?”
“L-U-X-4-6-8-3”
“Password?”
“I’m
logged in already.”
“Just give me your password,” says Kat patiently.
“C-L-O-U-D-N-I-N-E”
“When did you change it?”
“Saturday.”
“Same time you were denied access?”
“Y-yes.”
“Do you have e-mail confirmation?”
Liz leans over Kat, opens Outlook, which shows her e-mail list, highlights one, and opens it. “Job number SATAUG014/password change/L-U-X- 4-6-8-3/operator MQuinn, HD.”
“MQuinn?” asks Kat.
“HD means the IT help desk. Melissa Quinn works there.”
“How many people would have been on shift with Melissa?”
“On Saturday? Three.”
“If she changed your password, would she have also changed Suzy’s?”
“She might. But Suzy was a client. She actually had a higher authorization than me.”
“So could it have been changed by the client—from outside?”
“I don’t know. But I’ve seen Suzy do it at the keyboard without registering with the help desk.”
“When did you last work here together?”
“Thursday, until late. We left at two on Friday morning, actually.”
Friday at 3:00, Suzy e-mailed Kat. In the evening, she was murdered. Kat points to the keystroke tracker. “How is this secured?”
“Any unauthorized access sets off an alarm.” In the opaque lighting of the edit suite, Liz’s face is creased with worry.
“Would Melissa be authorized?”
“I d-don’t know.”
“What about Suzy?”
“Her company might. But not here with me around.”
Kat glances up at the clock. She’s got a tough choice and no time to make it. Either she tries to attack a higher access level or she breaks into the keystroke tracker, pulls up everything from Thursday and Friday, and, amid the streams of text, identifies which one might be a new password.
If the password were made up of random keystrokes, such as gy<f*k, it might be easy to spot. If it were a familiar word, though, it would mean reading every sentence.
The keystroke tracker’s data will be protected, so Kat types the address of the Web site that she uses to help devise her own hacking software.
With the Web site up, she concentrates on ascertaining the types of security cordons she’s up against. Only two meet the level of security needed by a place like Media Axis. One, almost exclusively used in the United States, is known colloquially as Ball Blocker. The other is more global and operates under the licensed name of White Ice. Unless Media Axis has installed a military firewall, Kat figures it would almost certainly use White Ice—to which Kat, through one of her offshore companies, is a subscriber.
She types in c:Program FilesNetwork ICEWhiteICELICENSE.KEY, and clicks to get the White Ice log-in and password page. Kat puts in her personal code.
At the top of the screen, as her code is being checked, details come up of an organization providing security for Media Axis.
WEB-FRONTPAGE service.pwdSID959
hacktrap,1205 :
National Intrusion Computer Network Protection Center, Shanghai
She’s never heard of the organization, which means it could throw anything at her at any time. Like many corporations that do not trust their own staff, Media Axis has outsourced its security. A shadow passes outside the door again, reminding her of Luxton’s vigil outside.
Kat goes to the My Computer icon, selects the drive E, which takes her to a USB port, and types the keys to open the keystroke-grabber file.
The screen unfurls into a string of sentences and keyboard instructions.
“Okay,” says Kat, breathing out slowly. She scans for a time and date reference, but can’t see one. “Any of this Suzy’s work?”
They read together through a stew of catchphrases, rewrites, updates, and other products of CPS’s media campaign: POVERTY SUCH AS SEEN HERE WILL BE OBLITERATED THROUGH COOPERATION BETWEEN NATIONS. THESE PHOTOGRAPHS SHOW MISERY CREATED BY TRIBAL CONFLICT AND TERRORISM. MEASURE BROUGHT IN BY THE CPS DEAL WILL END SUCH PLIGHP\\ T = ..>>>>>
Spaces are shown with chevrons, backspaces are backward slashes. Mouse movements were not picked up, so the text constantly goes non sequitur into new documents and e-mails.
“Wait! This is what we were d-doing on Friday,” says Liz. She touches the screen.
“What was Suzy’s user name?”
“T-H-O-M-9-7-3-6”
Kat runs a search on it, and way down the data, the cursor comes to a stop. T-H-O-M-9-7-3-6 and right next to it without a space L-B-U-P-M-J-W-F.
She notes the password, scrolls down the text, and finds the user name again, this time with another password next to it: M-C-V-Q-N-K-X-F. The next time she does it, the password appears as L-C-W-S-Q-O-B-*. Once again, and it appears as J-Z-S-N-K-H-U-D. Then again and it comes up as F&6LUIT$, and finally F*SDLT*U.
One of those six passwords will give her access to Suzy’s History Book, the dossier she and Cranley need.
As on the shooting range, you have to get balance, breathing, and concentration in line before taking the perfect shot. With code analysis, you do the same. The first three passwords seem to follow a pattern. The fourth with the star is difficult to tell. The last two look as if they have been thrown up by the system.
Kat reckons she’ll have two, maybe three shots at it. It’s like the chamber of a revolver loaded for Russian roulette. Each time a password is rejected, the system will note it. Too many rejections over too short a space of time, and it will signal an alert.
She types in F*SDLT*U. Since it was the last one to show up, logically she guesses it is the current password. But the window fades and returns. Above in red is the message INCORRECT USER NAME OR PASSWORD.
Strike one.
The next step is to try the first one. She types in L-B-U-P-M-J-W-F. The screen takes longer to react, a mechanism set up against password cracking. Each time a wrong password is entered, there’s a longer delay before accepting a new one.
Kat’s hands rest on either side of the keyboard, fingers splayed out to dry the sweat on her palms. The red message returns.
Strike two.
Kat holds back from typing in a third password from the list. She breathes deeply and asks Liz, “You were here at three o’clock, Friday afternoon, with Suzy?”
“Yes.”
“How does it work? You editing and Suzy on the keyboard, sitting next to each other like you and I are now?”
Liz nods.
“So you wouldn’t know what Suzy is writing, everything she’s doing here?”
“That’s right.”
As Kat fires questions, her eyes skim ceaselessly over the keystrokes her sister left on that fateful night, then she sees KAT, CALL ME, PLEASE. IT’S ABOUT PROJECT PEACE. I NEED YOUR HELP. YOU’RE ALWAYS ON MY MIND WHEN I’M STAYING INCREMENTALLY ONE STEP AHEAD.
Oh my God. The solution, Kat hopes, is the word incrementally. Could the clue to decoding the password be staying one step ahead?
A moment of thought, and Kat gets it. Those five words must somehow point her to the correct password.
She begins playing the alphabet game with her own name. Kat spots the right one—L-C-W-S-Q-O-B-*. Suzy actually made it more obvious than she should have. One step ahead turns a K into an L. Incrementally means adding two letters to the next letter, three to the third, and so on, thus turning an A into a C and a T into a W.
Kat’s name is represented by the first three characters; Olive, as in Olive Street, where she lives, is the basis for the last five characters.
In the password window, Kat types in K-A-T-O-L-I-V-E, disciplining a welling in her throat, stopping her eyes from misting so she can see properly.
“Got it,” she says. Liz joins her, leans on Kat’s shoulder.
“There,” says Liz, finger clumsily jabbing the screen at a folder called The History Book.
Kat asks Liz to watch the door and tries to settle
her mind. Kat opens the file and finds herself looking at Yulya again, her face cruel and untroubled, her victim’s blood soaking into the snow.
She flips on to make sure it’s all there. The next shot shows an airbase in a snowy wasteland that’s completely stark and empty, like a white sea. Two transport aircraft are on the ground. Behind them stands a control tower amid a sprawl of low-rise buildings and a high wire fence.
Is that Voz Island? she wonders. If so, is her father still there?
Kat double-clicks the White Ice security software icon at the bottom of the screen, copies a symbol called On-The-Move, and pastes it into the History Book folder. She calls up the folder itself. The security software demands her code and password. Now she opens her own secure Internet file and copies over The History Book to the remote site where her private data are stored.
She inserts a jump drive into the USB port, copies it again. She’s about to put in a flash card for good measure when Liz’s hand grips her shoulder. Through glass at the top of the door, she sees Luxton, talking into his cell phone and shaking his head.
An image from the file automatically comes back onto the screen and catches her eye: A dead man’s face is in the snow. Blood soaks all around his gray hair. He is wearing just a shirt, no coat, no scarf, no gloves. His corpse would be frozen within minutes.
Why would Suzy put it there, the first picture of the file, if that man is not their father?
“That’s not your dad,” says Liz, reading her mind. “But here.” She zooms out to make the picture’s panorama expand.
Behind the executed man stands a line of prisoners—there must be a hundred of them, all dressed in summer clothes although the ice on the jeep’s windshield puts the temperature at well below freezing. What Kat had once thought was a U.S. eagle is, in fact, the RingSet logo: a bird of prey, wings outspread and beaked head turned slightly away. And the victim—was he just picked out of the line at random? Why?
Shaking, Liz’s finger points to a man still standing in the line. “Suzy said that was your dad.”
The History Book Page 19