“The thing is,” she explained, “the way the system works-the reason Nealy would not work back there-you have to be a certain security clearance to have access to all doors. Otherwise you’re supposed to take a particular door at a certain time of day. Nealy wasn’t being allowed in. Jorgenson’s got the run of the place-clearance five,” she told him.
“Who am I?” Dart repeated, feeling uneasy about this.
“Vice president and deputy director of R and D,” she said.
“You made me Martinson’s assistant?” Dart queried angrily. Security might notify Proctor of an unexpected late-night visit-if Proctor had any sense, he had his team on alert. Proctor was likely to know Martinson’s next-in-command, and it seemed to Dart he might question a visit by her at this wee hour of the morning, might see Dart’s ruse for what it was. It pushed him to hurry.
“This is seat-of-the-pants, Dartelli.” she sounded bitter.
He wondered what Haite was thinking as he heard two ex-lovers argue during a sting. He charged up the stairs as quickly as his bad ankle would carry him.
The lookout atop the phone pole reported, “The unidentified individual is inspecting the Lexus. He appears to be using a handheld communications device.”
“Scanning,” returned the voice of the dispatcher.
Dart continued up at a run, passing the door marked with a large “2.”
“We’ve intercepted the radio transmission,” the calm voice of the dispatcher said. “The individual called in the vehicle registration number and is awaiting callback. The sergeant is recommending that you abort operations at once. Repeat: Recommending you abort. Do you copy?” After a brief hesitation the dispatcher said, “Evacuation plan A as in Alpha. Do you copy?”
Plan A called for Dart to head on foot toward the ERT’s position, where the elite team would help him over the perimeter fence and to safety. All this was said not for Dart’s benefit but for that of whoever might be listening in to the unsecured frequency they were using. If Proctor’s people were in fact monitoring police radio transmissions-something Haite and Dart hoped was happening-then perhaps Dart’s arrival at Roxin would act as an invitation.
“I’m on the third floor,” Dart announced. Are you listening? he wondered. “A blue rectangle, a yellow triangle, and green circle,” he announced to Ginny.
“Blue, yellow, green,” she repeated. “Box, triangle, circle. Stand by.”
This office door, like every other, housed an ID reader to the right of the jamb. The cryptic code on the doors was playing to Roxin’s advantage. Ginny had to locate the specific door in the database. He waited impatiently. Finally he heard her say, “Try it.”
Dart pushed down on the door lever, and the locked door came open. “Got it!” he said brightly. “I’m in.”
Access to the office was certain to show on the security screens in the lobby. Ginny had been schooled not to attempt to shield Dart’s activities from these screens. Although it risked Dart’s getting caught, it also allowed security to inform Proctor, or other superiors, of Dart’s movements-something critical to the sting working.
The clock was now running and the trap set: the cheese was there for the taking. Dart slipped into a chair in front of a computer monitor, where a screen saver drew geometric patterns on the screen. He tapped the shift key, and the screen saver vanished, replaced by dozens of computer software icons.
“I’m at a terminal,” Dart announced softly.
“Well done, people,” Haite said for the benefit of anyone eavesdropping.
Joe Dart was on-line.
If Dart was right about Martinson’s scientific ego, then she had stored copies of the earlier clinical trial reports somewhere in the mainframe’s memory, and only Martinson herself could retrieve them. Ginny could not gain entrance to the password-protected file without the cooperation of Martinson herself.
By 2:00 AM, under the authority of a wire surveillance warrant, Martinson’s two unpublished home phone lines were being monitored. Under separate warrant, Terry Proctor’s residential lines were under tap-and-trace surveillance, forbidding recording but allowing the identification of phone numbers coming and going over the lines.
Since the inception of the surveillance, no traffic had been reported at Martinson’s. Records would later show that Proctor’s lines had been incredibly active that night.
“I’m logged on,” Dart announced for Ginny’s benefit. His hope was that, if not immediately, within minutes this radio traffic would be overheard by Proctor’s people and passed up to both Proctor and Martinson.
Dart therefore had to slip up, making believable mistakes as he went. The Lexus-a car not registered to any Roxin employee-was part of that fiction; use of the police radio frequencies-impossible to scramble with so many participants involved-was also part of the ruse. Proctor had to be led to believe that Dart was close to uncovering Martinson’s files.
But so what? Dart doubted that Terry Proctor was aware of the existence of any such evidence. It seemed likely that once Zeller had blown open Martinston’s scam, Proctor would have advised her to destroy all evidence-he would have accepted Martinson’s word that she had done so. Only Martinson-and intuitively, Dart-knew the truth: No way would she destroy eleven years of research. Dart would have to enlighten Proctor, without it seeming intentional, and to sting him into panicking Martinson to finally destroy the evidence she held so dearly.
By necessity, Ginny was also part of the ruse, manipulating and monitoring and preparing to trap Martinson.
Most important was that Dart not allow himself to be discovered or abducted before completing the sting. To be caught was to fail.
“Logged on and awaiting instructions,” Dart repeated.
“Okay, Dart,” Ginny said, “here’s what I want you to do.”
Keystroke by keystroke, Ginny navigated Dart flawlessly through a hole in the upper-level security firewall that she herself had run only an hour earlier.
The Roxin Laboratories ROX NET logo, in gold and silver, sparkled on the screen, followed by a greeting and a cautionary non-disclosure statement warning of FBI investigation.
“I’m in,” Dart acknowledged.
“Enter the following,” Ginny instructed, rambling off a series of entries for Dart to duplicate.
He began typing furiously. Nervous, he made several mistakes and had to start again.
“Hold it,” Ginny said anxiously, now not having to play-act. “I’m seeing some movement within the facility.”
The lookout said, “I copy that. Lights have come on in the box.”
“I think they’re on to you, Joe,” Ginny said, her voice gripped in fear.
Dart took the news two different ways: If they were coming after him, then they knew he had broken into their computer and they knew where to find him-all of which was good, because Terry Proctor was certain to be notified; but he could not allow himself to be caught.
“I’m moving,” Dart announced. Dart left the room in a hurry, his sole mission for the next five to ten minutes to distance himself from security while maintaining the possibility of computer access. Roxin’s security computers were capable of tracking access on an office-by-office basis. The moment Dart had entered the office, the computer had registered that access and alerted the guards. Similarly, every time a security guard used his pass to enter a hallway, or an elevator, Ginny knew about it. The result was a kind of electronic cat-and-mouse-each side able to monitor the other’s movement.
Had Ginny been given days or weeks to override the security systems, she might have been capable of misleading security by creating false electronic clues for Dart’s whereabouts, thus giving him the advantage. But as it was, she was lucky to be able to monitor movements at all, and Dart was forced to keep on the move. Working against the security team was the facility’s all-glass design, for each time a hallway or office light went on, the lookout saw this and warned Dart of his pursuers’ location.
As he ran into the hall, Dart heard
the lookout warn, “E-S ascending. Repeat: Eagle-Sam ascending. Copy?”
“Eagle-Sam. Copy,” Dart replied, already running down the hall in a northerly direction. For communications purposes, they had designated the structure’s four imposing elevator hubs east and west, south and north. East-south was the elevator bank nearest the parked car. Dart turned around and ran to the stairs adjacent to elevators E-N and descended to the second floor.
The complexity of the layout worked against Dart and in the favor of those who pursued him: He was a rat in a maze, and the keepers knew the way. Armed keepers, at that. Dart bounded down, pausing occasionally for the telltale sounds of anyone approaching, with a running dialogue in his ear as the lookout and Ginny both advised him of security’s location.
At 2:53 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, November 19, Dr. Arielle Martinson was recorded as logging onto Rox Net from a remote terminal in West Hartford. Ginny was right there with her.
Using a land-link telephone line that connected her to the common van via the only scrambled radio frequency available to HPD, she announced cryptically, “The fish is on the line,” just as she had been told to. “Access password,” she spelled, “is L-E-A-N-M-O-N-T.”
Ginny studied Martinson’s on-line movement, as her second laptop computer, patched into the high-speed data line by the SNET worker down the manhole outside the governor’s mansion, recorded Martinson’s every keystroke. Ginny divided her attention between the one laptop, monitoring security, and the other, monitoring Martinson. Rox Net’s central interface utilized both graphics and menus, allowing the user to click through desired addresses and functions. Martinson was clearly no stranger to the network. She moved quickly and flawlessly, often clicking her choice so fast that Ginny had no time to read or make note of it, though her laptop did record it.
Martinson’s first choice, selected from the welcoming menu, was for OTHER SERVICES. Ginny missed the names of the next two selections because of Martinson’s speed, but she caught the heading DAILY DIARY because it required a password. Martinson typed in: 1E2Q3T4Z, and Ginny wrote this down, despite the fact that the laptop continued to capture it all.
The CEO chose OPTIONS next, followed by SET DATE FUNCTION, and Ginny took note of it all because Martinson had to slow down to enter a date: June 14, 2000.
Ginny followed her with a computer hacker’s admiration. She had expected her to have used the network’s personal file area, a section devoted to an individual user’s personal storage. It was the logical location to upload information into the server. As a rule, network software restricted user storage to such limited areas, and only such areas, allowing the system operator to predict, control, secure, and maintain a specified amount of storage. Martinson had cleverly found another location that would allow the uploading of files, one that, through a series of passwords and now a date function, installed several secure gates in place, effectively locking the information away so that she, and only she, could access it.
A colorful calendar filled Ginny’s screen with the date, June 14, 2000, highlighted in a small box. There was a To-Do list, complete with Preferences. A time-of-day work space for appointments and calls. A small spreadsheet to track cash and credit card expenses.
The calendar work space was left blank-a particularly clever move. Even if a hacker sleuthed the several passwords needed to reach this location, even if the hacker then arbitrarily landed ahead on June 14, in the year 2000, there was nothing to see, nothing that announced the prized information hidden within. Nothing but a single asterisk at the very bottom of the screen in a box marked MEMO.
Martinson clicked on MEMO.
An information box presented itself in the middle of the screen.
RESTRICTED BY PASSWORD
PLEASE ENTER 8-DIGIT ALPHANUMERIC
STRING
Ginny looked on as Martinson typed: L-A-T-E-R-I-N-5. The letters meant nothing to her.
The screen filled with the first page of a technical report. Ginny was momentarily distracted by the contents of this page. It had something to do with drug testing….
“I’ve got it!” she spoke into the phone. But Martinson caught her off-guard by suddenly selecting EDIT … DELETE. The screen responded.
MEMO IS 76 PAGES.
DELETE CONTENTS
(Y)es(N)o
Martinson moved too quickly. Before Ginny could notify the SNET workman to interrupt the transmission, Martinson sent the necessary “Y” down the high-speed transmission line.
Into the phone, Ginny shouted, “Disconnect!”
But the screen suddenly read:
DELETING CONTENTS IS
UNRECOVERABLE.
ARE YOU SURE?
(Y)es (N)o
This final protection device saved them.
“Disconnect!” Ginny shouted again.
But the blinking cursor, frozen in its position on the screen, told her that the SNET man had done his job. Martinson was disconnected.
“Ready,” Ginny informed Dart.
Although able to access the system’s security functions by modem-a necessity to allow people like Proctor to monitor functions from the field-Ginny had no modem access to this user-area side of the Roxin network. Access was restricted to actual terminal nodes, to prevent the kind of hacking that Ginny had in mind. Where the SNET man had managed to hard-wire Ginny the ability to monitor Martinson’s line, she lacked the necessary software cryptography to manipulate data.
That job was up to Dartelli.
Dart reached the second floor at the same time that the security guards pursuing him charged into the third floor office where he had been working.
He told Ginny the color code on the door that he was facing, and a moment later, when the small indicator light turned from red to green, he opened this door and entered a glassed-in area. Behind the wall of glass and a stainless steel entrance purification chamber, he saw a clean-room lab, with no computer terminal. The idea of breaking into a genetics lab did not thrill Dart; he turned around and hurried out, seeking another office.
The next door down was marked with a blue box, a yellow box, and two red circles. Ginny, believing she was getting the hang of things said, “You’re in.” Dart tried the door. It was locked. The blue-green characters marched across the reader:
ACCESS DENIED-PLEASE CONTACT SECURITY. THANK YOU.
“No good,” he announced.
“Try again,” she advised.
“Same thing.”
“Shit,” she said, “they’ve locked me out. We’re screwed!”
The computer’s security program had identified Ginny’s raid and blocked her access.
Dart stood there in the darkened corridor, his heart pounding in his chest, wondering what to do.
He couldn’t think clearly. It was as if, all at once, his mind went blank.
“E-S, descending by stairs. E-N, descending by stairs,” warned the lookout suddenly. “Eagle-Nova, descending. Eagle-Sam, descending. Do you copy?” The security team pursuing him had split up, coming toward him from both directions, leaving Dart sandwiched. Trapped. By Ginny’s attempting to gain him access, the computer had once again identified his location.
How many guards on the night watch? Dart wondered. One at the front security desk; one at the third-floor security desk; two, possibly four roamers. Four to six, total, he decided. If that number held, he guessed that the team sent to bring him in would be no larger than a pair-leave one man by the car, one to roam the west side of the building, and send two after him.
Dart glanced back at the reader.
ACCESS DENIED-PLEASE CONTACT SECURITY.
“Approaching the second floor,” the lookout reported.
In an attempt to divide and conquer, the pair had split, each taking one of the stairways. No doubt the computers had been used to shut down the elevators, in an attempt to bracket Dart into being caught.
“Lookout, how many in each stairway?” His feet began to carry him toward the south stairs, the closest to him.
The plan formulated quickly in his mind: A security guard will carry a master “key,” a card allowing him access to the various rooms.
“One each,” returned the steady voice.
Perfect, Dart thought.
“Arriving second floor,” the lookout warned. Dart was on the second floor.
The door to the fire stairs was ten feet away. Five …
His only hope was surprise. A rent-a-cop in pursuit would be excited and probably poorly trained. He would be thinking that his target was attempting to run away and hide; he would be in a hurry.
A wedge of yellow light arced across the hallway floor as the guard opened the door to the stairs. This wedge spread open like a fan unfolding, illuminating the far wall.
A boot and a dark pant leg stepped through. The guard had gotten ahead of Dart by a fraction of a second. The other guard, at the far end of the hall, could not be far off.
Dart threw himself to the floor, diving for that leg as if it were home plate. He hooked his left arm out and snagged the leg as he slid past, pulling the stunned guard with him. The man went down, looking as if he’d hit a banana peel, all limbs in the air at once. A whoosh of air was expelled from his lungs.
Dart scrambled atop him, grabbed him by the hair, and snapped the man’s head down firmly against the hard floor. The sound of the contact instantly made Dart nauseated. The guard groaned sickeningly.
He’s alive. Thank god, Dart thought as he reached down and ripped the man’s credit-card-size pass from where it was clipped to his pocket. Dart flipped it over, establishing that it did, in fact, carry a magnetic stripe.
He had one shot, he realized. After that, they would block use of this card as well.
“Hold it! Stay where you are!” roared a voice from the far end of the hall.
Dart came to his feet and charged through the door and into the stairway. Down or up? he debated. His legs carried him up.
Behind him, in the hallway, he heard the fast-paced running of the guard coming in hot pursuit.
In his left ear he heard Ginny. “We gotta get this happening, Dart. We’re running out of time. And I mean fast.”
Chain of Evidence Page 31