He asked, ‘Where do you have to get to?’
‘Wardour Street.’
‘Ouch! Congestion charge?’
She nodded. ‘Company pays. But I need the car all the time. I suppose it’ll take, what, the best part of an hour to get there at this time of day?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
She stood up, drained her cup, looked at him steadily and said, ‘Shall I come back this evening?’
He gave a small smile. ‘I’d like that,’ he replied quietly. ‘I’ve got some calls to make….’ Then he remembered his conversation with Forsyth earlier in the week. ‘I’ve got to go to the States soon. It may be as early as tomorrow. I don’t know when I leave, or how long I’ll be there.’
‘That’s OK. I’ll be here at sevenish.’ She stopped and looked at him before adding, ‘I can call in to my place and pick up some things. That is, if I’m staying the night.’
He grinned. ‘I’d be delighted,’ he said. ‘Where’s your place?’
‘Clapham. It’s more or less on my route.’
‘OK. I’ll have supper ready for you.’
‘Shall I bring some wine?’
‘No need to. There’s plenty here.’
‘Maybe, but I’d like to.’
‘OK. I think I’ll do a stir-fry chicken.’
‘Great. I’ll bring white then.’
After she had left, he switched on his computer. He cleared up the dishes while it booted, then poured himself a black coffee before sitting down to read his emails. They were mostly trivia, but there was one from Grant’s secretary, telling him that she was holding on a British Airways flight to Denver. It was scheduled to leave Heathrow shortly before 1 p.m. on the following Monday, and to arrive in Denver at just after 4 in the afternoon. She apologized that this would involve a change at Chicago, but the only BA direct flight was overnight, and First Class was not available on that. If this was a problem, she could book him on a direct flight in First Class with American Airlines. Would he let her know which he wanted? He grinned: Forsyth’s PA had obviously told her about his preferences. He sent a reply saying that the BA one via Chicago would be fine, and could she make it an ‘Open Return’ since he didn’t know how long his business in Denver would take.
Then he looked up Powerplant Dynamics’ website. It was impressive and, as evidence of their commanding presence around the world and their impressive capability, it provided a complete list of all the power stations that had been fitted with their Generation 300 computer control system. Foster whistled: the list confirmed what Carol Lopez had told him the day before.
He blanched at the thought of the vulnerability of all those power stations around the world, all controlled by the PPD system with its hidden back door open to any hacker with a little knowledge and skill. All right, the original hacker was no more, but what he had done others could imitate.
The only cold comfort he could find was the realization that it would simply be too large a task for a single hacker to bring down all those power plants at the same time. But, all the same, a huge amount of damage could be caused by even a limited attack.
He found a page on the website that gave fairly detailed technical specifications for the Generation 300 system, the so-called data sheets. After studying the hardware and software sheets carefully he had gained a good understanding of how the system worked. But he had failed to find a reference to anything called Darkfall Switch.
He was still poring over the information when he heard the sound of a vehicle driving slowly along the towpath. He looked up and saw that it was a police car. It stopped at the nearest point to him and two officers emerged. He recognized one of them as the officer who had taken him to Westminster after he had left the Crabtrees. When he remembered that he realized that it had been over a week ago: a lot had happened since then.
He went to the door as the policeman reached the companionway. ‘Good morning, Officer,’ he said. ‘Come to look at the car?’
The policeman smiled and said, ‘I’ll do that later if I could, sir, but we want to talk to you about something else first, if we may.’
‘Of course. Coffee?’
The two men glanced at each other and then nodded at him. They both asked to have theirs white, with sugar.
The officer he had met before introduced himself and his companion and they both showed him their warrant cards: he was Detective Sergeant Baker and his companion was Detective Constable Johnson.
When they were sitting around the saloon table, sipping at their coffee, DS Baker took out a notebook and opened it before starting to explain the reason for their visit. ‘I understand you went to America about a week ago, sir,’ he said and, when Foster nodded, he continued, ‘You went to Connecticut and visited a Mr and Mrs Proctor?’
Foster tensed. He suddenly remembered the meeting in Arnold Coward and Partners’ office, when Mrs Andrews had asked him whether he believed that the youngster’s death had really been suicide. No, he thought. Surely not. But then why were the police here?
‘Yes, I did visit them,’ he said. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘I understand that their son’ – he looked down at his notebook for confirmation – ‘Luke Proctor, he died while you were there.’
‘Yes he did.’ Foster confirmed. ‘It was suicide. Really tragic.’
‘Quite so, sir,’ DS Baker said, looking at him seriously. ‘Tragic. But some new information has come to light and our colleagues in America have asked us to check certain facts with you.’
He frowned. ‘New information?’
‘Yes sir. The post-mortem – the Americans say it was a “clinical autopsy” – has indicated that it may not have been suicide.’
Foster almost reeled with shock. ‘Good God!’ he exclaimed. It was unbelievable.
‘The Americans will now carry out a full forensic autopsy,’ the officer continued. ‘But they’re coming round to thinking that the boy was murdered.’
‘Christ!’ He wondered how the Proctors would be feeling. As if losing Luke wasn’t tragedy enough, they now had to face the fact that their only son’s body was being dissected and examined by strangers in white coats. It was appalling.
He looked back at the sergeant. ‘But how…?’
‘There’re no facts yet, sir,’ DS Baker said. ‘But we’ve been asked to find out if you can throw any light on the events around that time.’
‘Well, there’s very little,’ Foster said, frowning as he went over the events. ‘I visited the Proctors, questioned Luke—’
The second officer had said virtually nothing up to this point. Now he asked, ‘Questioned him?’
‘Yes. You see, I’ve been asked by the government to look into the blackout.’ From their slow nods he saw that there was no need to elaborate: they knew which blackout he meant. ‘It seems that Luke Proctor hacked into the computers controlling two power stations over here, and that’s what shut them down. He tripped them.’
‘I see,’ DC Johnson said, and then looked at his companion.
DS Baker took over. ‘The boy was alive and well when you left their home?’
‘Yes. I was told about his death at around lunchtime the next day.’
‘Who told you, sir?’
‘An American government official who was assigned to help me. A guy called Worzniak, Joe Worzniak.’
The two officers wrote the name in their notebooks, confirming the spelling with him as they wrote.
‘Did you go back to the Proctors’ house, sir?’ DS Baker asked.
‘Yes, the next day. After I’d heard. I went to offer my condolences to the parents.’
‘Did you remain at your hotel between the time you left the Proctors’ house after talking to the boy and the next day, when you visited his parents?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘Is there any way of confirming that, sir?’ DC Baker asked. ‘Particularly between midnight and six? That’s when it happened. Somewhere between those times.’
Foster
thought about it. Then he remembered the fire alarm. ‘There was a fire,’ he said. ‘Well, a false alarm actually.’
He told them about it and they carefully wrote down the details in their notebooks.
‘Well, that’s about it, sir,’ DS Baker said as he finished, closing his notebook. ‘Our American colleagues will check with the fire officers, and that should be the end of it, at least as far as you’re concerned.’
As they stood to leave, the sergeant asked if it would be convenient for him to have a look at Foster’s Morgan, and the three of them went over to the moorings’ car-park.
After finishing his researches into Powerplant Dynamics, Foster took a quick lunch in a nearby pub and returned to the boat to finish preparing for his trip. As a result of his morning’s work, he now knew that PPD’s headquarters were not actually in Denver itself, but in Broomfield, about twenty miles from the city centre, on the way to Boulder. He looked up the route map to plan his journey and had almost finished when his mobile rang. He didn’t recognize the number on the display, and when he made the connection the woman’s voice was at first unfamiliar, but when she gave her name he remembered her.
‘Dr Foster? Dan? It’s Margaret Andrews. We met at Arnold Coward’s offices.’
‘Oh yes, I remember, Margaret.’
‘Is everything going well?’
‘Yes. It’s a long haul, but I think I’m making progress.’
There was a slight pause before she said, ‘I understand that you may have had a visit from the police.’
He was surprised: the officers had left him only a couple of hours ago.
When he confirmed their visit she said, ‘We were informed by our contacts in Washington that there had been a development. That it looked like Luke Proctor’s death wasn’t suicide.’
‘Yes.’ He remembered her questioning it at the time of their meeting. Had she suspected something even then? In fact, had she already known? ‘You asked me about it when we met,’ he continued. ‘At the time I had no reason to think anything different. Did you suspect something?’
‘No. It just seemed a little odd at the time. It’s only recently that our Washington people were notified by the American police. In fact, I think it was the FBI that was involved – I don’t understand the workings of the American police forces. Anyway, they said that you were a suspect, which I told them was patently rubbish, but they insisted that the CID were going to be asked to question you.’
‘They did,’ Foster said.
‘Were you able to satisfy them? Account for your movements?’
‘Very luckily, yes!’ He told her about the false alarm.
‘As you say, it was lucky for you.’
‘Yes indeed. But why would anybody suspect I was involved in Luke’s murder?’ he observed. ‘You’d sent me to question him. That’s all. Anyway, I’m an engineer, not an assassin. And, quite apart from the fact that I don’t go around murdering people, what motive could I have had for killing the boy?’
‘I suppose they could have thought that you might have gained information from him, information that you didn’t want anybody else to get hold of.’
He considered that carefully for a long moment. It made sense, but only if they knew about Luke’s note to him.
‘But they didn’t know he’d told me what he did.’
‘You mean the closing comment in the boy’s note, the Darkfall thing?’
‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘The boy had written that they should give the note to me, and to nobody else – certainly not to Joe Worzniak. I’m sure they would have respected his last wish.’
She countered, ‘I see why you think that, but we can’t be absolutely certain. At the time, just after they’d found their son, they may well have respected his wish and not told anybody other than you. But then they may equally well have changed their minds when they discovered that perhaps he’d been murdered.’
Foster considered that. Again, it did make sense.
‘Well,’ he said eventually, ‘whatever. But in the end it was lucky for us that he’d left the note. And incidentally, how can we be sure it was a suicide note? He could have just been planning to run away from home. But either way, without it I’d never have discovered what I did and I’d still be looking for clues.’ He waited for a response, but when none came he went on. ‘But I don’t want you to think that the Darkfall subroutine – if that’s what it is – is definitely the answer to all this. All I know at this stage is that it was something mentioned by Luke, and it seems to mean nothing to anybody, to the company’s British office or their clients over here.’
‘And because it’s a mystery you need to find out more about it.’
‘Yes. Once I know what it is, I’ll be able to either eliminate it, or nail it as the culprit.’
There was another pause, but then she asked, ‘I wonder why the note said that his parents shouldn’t tell this Worzniak man about it. The message that was addressed to you, that is.’
‘I gather he was scared of him. I’m not surprised: I took something of a dislike to the man myself.’ Then, as an afterthought, he added, ‘Do you have any information on him? This Worzniak, I mean?’
There was a brief silence before she answered, as though she was thinking over what to say. ‘Not much. Actually, he seems to be a bit of a mysterious character – something of an éminence grise. Our contacts know of him but they weren’t able to tell us much about him. Or they don’t want to.’
Foster wondered briefly about this hint of a breach in the special relationship between the two nations.
But there was little more to say, and so they ended the call.
Afterwards, he looked thoughtfully at the phone for some time. He realized that he knew very little about Margaret Andrews. At their first meeting she had been a quiet observer, leading him to assume that she was a junior civil servant, perhaps an assistant to the government’s expert, Sir James Ballantyne. It was only when they were parting, and she asked about Luke’s death, that he had detected that she may have had a deeper insight into the affair. Now he wondered if he hadn’t underrated her status quite considerably.
When he checked his computer he found another email from Grant’s secretary, confirming his booking on the flight and asking if had a preference for any hotel in Denver.
He had indeed! As he sent his reply he remembered the Brown Palace fondly, with the huge stars and stripes hanging down the centre of its enormous atrium. It was one of his favourites.
That evening, as he sat with Janet over the chicken stir-fry, he made a decision. ‘You know I said I had to go to the States soon,’ he said and when she nodded he added, ‘Well, it’s next Monday.’
‘Oh.’ She took a sip of her wine; she had brought a bottle of Sancerre which he had cooled off in his refrigerator before they sat down to eat.
‘I was wondering if you’d like to come with me.’
She stopped, the rim of her glass still at her lip, and stared at him over the glass, her mouth open in surprise. ‘To America?’ she exclaimed.
‘Yes. Denver. It’s a lovely area. I could take a few days’ break and we could explore the Rockies together.’
‘But … can you do it, Dan? Just “take a few days”? What are you doing there that gives you that freedom?’
‘It’s a long story. I’ll tell you about it later, but right now I need to know. Will you come?’
She took a sip of her wine and gazed at the glass, as though collecting several thoughts. Then she looked up at him. There was a shade of doubt in her voice as she said, ‘Well, I suppose I could. God knows I need a break. They owe it to me….’ Then she smiled; she’d obviously reached a conclusion. ‘OK. I’ll come. But it can’t be Monday. I’ll come and join you.’
‘You’ve got a US visa?’ he asked and she nodded.
‘Good. I’ll make the arrangements tomorrow.’
They clinked glasses to celebrate the plan.
As they continued eating he told her about his work and
his present assignment. She asked a question or two and in the end observed, ‘How exciting! I never thought engineering was like that.’
‘It isn’t always,’ he replied. ‘This is very unusual. Not that engineering doesn’t have its own excitements, you know.’
‘Actually, I don’t know anything much about engineering – or engineers. Tina’s told me a bit about what Alex did in Hong Kong, but she didn’t really seem to know too much about it.’
‘Or care?’ he asked.
Her eyes gazed steadily into his for a moment before she smiled understandingly and responded, ‘Probably. But the rest of us out here – us non-engineers – we don’t know much about it.’
He smiled at her and said, ‘And yet your life’s affected by engineering at almost every second of every day.’
‘It is?’
‘Definitely. Just tell me, you made telephone calls today, didn’t you?’ She nodded and he expanded on his theme. ‘And drove to work? Switched on lights? Probably rode an escalator.’
‘Of course.’
‘Each one of those involves engineers and engineering.’
A small frown crossed her face. ‘I suppose they do.’
‘Too right,’ he said, and then added in a very quiet voice, ‘And, most of the time, they all work OK. But when they stop working, or go wrong….’
She looked at him sadly for several seconds. ‘Like what happened on the Underground.’
He nodded silently and she reached across to squeeze his hand.
‘Yes,’ he said as he returned her clasp. ‘The Underground’s a very complex operation, involving all forms of engineering: civil, mechanical, electrical and electronic. They work together like a spacecraft’s life-support system. But if something goes wrong the risk to life is enormous. And then there’s very little time before the consequences start skyrocketing.’
She shivered. ‘God! I’m always using the Tube. Now I wonder if I’ll ever do so again.’
‘You can’t stop doing things because you realize that your life depends on engineering. If you did, you wouldn’t drive a car or take a lift. Every day, most of us trust our lives to engineering and we all take it for granted that everything will work safely. As generally it does. But if you brought a tribesman here from some remote South American village, he’d see it all, wonder how it all worked, and be terrified.’
The Darkfall Switch Page 11