The wardens for our floor got us out on to the fire stairs quickly. They kept everyone in line, their white helmets shiny in the smoke-filled air. Doors kept opening above and below us, and the stairs were flush with evacuees from other floors. Di, Bambi and I stuck together and moved quickly in the shush of skirts and woollen suits, the press of unfamiliar shoulders, the rasp of quick feet on concrete.
A flushed purple face gaped at me from the landing below, dribble hanging from the corner of a wide, slack mouth. With a shock, I recognised Jim Wilcox.
The travel centre had never looked so bright and various, colours rich, polished plastic undulating like silk held up to dry. Safe, silly with relief, I grinned and waved at Kerry Arnold, who was wearing a red chief warden’s hat a good three sizes too big for him.
Muffin vendors and espresso attendants stood outside on the footpath, cheek by steamy cheek. In my jacket pocket, I fingered the disk containing a backup of the outwork report, which I’d snatched before dashing for the fire stairs. Ivan had a box full of his precious disks and tapes. He must have worked fast collecting them, because he was outside before I was, holding forth to a queue of bus passengers, waving his free arm above his head like a propeller.
A crowd watched the fire trucks from a respectful distance, the tops of ladders resting against broken fourth-floor windows. The smoke seemed to move in slow motion along Northbourne Avenue, charcoal grey and black. With no wind to disperse it, it rose slowly, a viscous, greasy cloud.
I spotted the Secretary talking to the Dep. Sec. Tall men in expensive suits, they were joined by one of our senior executives, a woman who’d spoken to me kindly in the lift one morning when Peter had been sick.
Jim Wilcox walked up to them, waving pudgy hands. He appeared to have recovered from his fright on the stairs. I remembered the warning Wilcox had given me the day I discovered someone had been fiddling around with the names and addresses of my interviewers. I’d spoken to Wilcox in the lift as well, one lunchtime when he’d been carrying a huge bagful of chocolate muffins, with a naughty, half-defiant expression, as if he planned to eat them all in one sitting.
It wasn’t long before we were told the fire was out. Only a small section of the building had been damaged.
That afternoon, we were allowed back inside. The smell of smoke was everywhere, but the smoke itself had cleared. The carpets in our corridor and office were drenched with water from the fire hoses. Though none of the furniture seemed to have been damaged, a film of soot hung over everything. I began going through the drawers of my filing cabinet, stuffing my briefcase with papers, thinking that I’d enjoy working at home for a few days.
I stopped, unable to believe my eyes. When the fire alarm had sounded, I’d grabbed my bag and coat, and the back-up disk for the outwork report. I’d run for the fire stairs like everybody else, not thinking to stay for a few more minutes and clear out my filing cabinet.
My records were gone. A whole drawer of the cabinet was empty, those hard copies I’d been so glad to have when I’d discovered that someone had been tampering with my computer.
Stomach lurching, I pulled my chair towards me and sat down. I had to compose myself before Di and Bambi arrived to collect their things, not to mention the trio from next door. I would ask no questions. I would give none of them the satisfaction of seeing how upset I was.
One thing the theft proved—my enemy was in the building. He or she was someone working close to me, maybe on my floor, definitely under the same roof. Maybe I knew her scent. Maybe he shared the lift with me twice or three times a day.
As soon as I got home, I rang Rae and told her about the fire. She’d already heard it on the news. I told her about the Trojan Horse that had been programmed into my computer, and the false address that had been added to my list of interviewers, and said that someone had taken the opportunity to remove all my printed files while the Jolimont building was being evacuated.
Rae made sympathetic noises and told me not to worry too much. I thought she should be more worried.
‘Was it that Felix didn’t think you were competent to review that complaint about Compic?’ I asked her. ‘Or didn’t he want anyone to find out that he’d been doing favours for them?’
After a long pause Rae said, ‘It’s no secret that there’s no love lost between us, Sandra.’
‘Have you ever been asked to do anything like that before?’
‘No.’
‘Did you ask why? I mean, why you?’
‘I wasn’t exactly in a position to do that.’
‘Have you ever met a woman called Allison Edgeware?’
‘Who?’
‘Allison Edgeware. She calls herself Compic’s director.’
‘No.’
‘Did you go through all the correspondence? I mean the original tenders for the contract, the unsuccessful ones?’
‘I didn’t have time to do that.’
‘Is there a file in your office with the letter of complaint and your reply?’
‘There should be. There was.’
. . .
We never did find out how the fire started. My guess was that it was meant to be a big one, a proper conflagration, but for some reason the plan hadn’t quite worked out. How convenient it would have been for the department to be gutted, all our records burnt.
There was no quick move to clean things up, and this, in a way, was more worrying than the fire itself. When we resumed our normal work, you could see that the regular cleaners had done the best they could, but there was no move to replace smoke-damaged furniture. People brought rugs and covers from home to protect their clothes, and at lunchtime the more industrious got busy with upholstery shampoo.
In the general confusion, I took the trouble to borrow a set of keys from Deirdre’s desk, copy and return them.
A week or so after the fire, I stayed back late at work. It was a Wednesday night, Peter’s cubs night. He’d gone home from school with one of his friends from cubs, and I was to pick both boys up at nine o’clock.
I walked along the corridor to Rae Evans’s office, trying to look as if I had every right to be there.
I unlocked Rae’s door and switched on her computer. It was just after seven-thirty. I’d followed Deirdre downstairs at half-past five, relieved that she was leaving on time, then gone back to my own office to wait.
If anyone caught me, I’d say Friday was my deadline for the outwork report, that the fire had put me seriously behind, and there was some information that I had to check.
It was a bit thin, but it might work. I knew the security rounds didn’t begin until later in the evening, and I figured that it looked less suspicious if I was found in Rae’s office while it was relatively early, rather than at midnight or two in the morning.
I raised my head at the sound of a step in the corridor. Someone was coming.
‘Working late?’ It was Rahoul from transport industries. His question was polite, his smile companionable.
I leant back so he could see the screen. ‘No choice, I’m afraid,’ I said.
I’d maybe said ten words to Rahoul in my time at DIR. Why did he have to pick tonight to work back?
I moved my hands to the keyboard, willing him to leave.
‘Want some coffee?’ he asked. ‘I’m just on my way to make some.’
‘Thanks, no.’ I forced a smile. ‘Just got about twenty minutes left here, then I’m done.’ I cursed myself as soon as I’d said this. I’d have to stay in Rae’s office now for another twenty minutes, no matter what I found, or failed to find.
Rahoul said, ‘You know, that tea room is a mess. You’d think they would have done something about it.’ I nodded agreement, praying that Rahoul would forget he’d seen me, that he wouldn’t say anything to anybody else.
He left, closing the door behind him.
I fitted a key into the top drawer of the filing cabinet. I had to twiddle it for what seemed like a year before I got it to turn. I didn’t know what heading the te
nder correspondence would be under. There was nothing labelled Compic, Tenders or Complaints, but Correspondence took up the whole of the second drawer.
With a glance at my watch, I began to go through it one folder at a time. Two doors down, I could hear the sound of the electric jug, a faint rattle of cups, the fridge door that shut with a small flat clap.
My twenty minutes were used up, plus an extra ten, when I finally admitted to myself that my search had got me nowhere. There was no file containing the correspondence about Compic in any of the four drawers of the filing cabinet, in Rae’s or Deirdre’s desk, or on the bookshelves or behind them. I’d looked everywhere I could think of. If there was a file, and I had no reason to doubt Rae’s word that there had been, someone had removed it.
Had they used the fire to do this, or had the file been gone for weeks?
On the way out, I mulled over what might have happened if I hadn’t kept all my original copies of my interviewers’ details. And what might happen to me now that they’d been stolen.
Was the basic plot the same, in my case and in Rae’s? Was it only luck and timing that made the outcome different? Had the thief operated in the same way? Pinch my password, make a single alteration, then let the electronic payment system do the rest? Would the next step have been to leak a story to the Canberra Times about DIR sending money to a false address? Of course, the amount was negligible. Of course, I was a tiny fish to bait and catch. But then, Rae wasn’t that big a fish herself. Whoever was out to get us planned incremental damage, allegations of theft and corruption that piled on top of one another. They were relying on the pre-election paranoia that the Opposition was creating. Maybe I’d been thinking too much about Rae the person—who liked her, who didn’t. Rae as Access Computing’s public benefactor.
I knew that our Admin computer’s operating system could not be accessed through my PC. My password would not get the hacker in. He or she needed Kerry Arnold’s password, or that of someone with the authority to override him. System manager. Or someone masquerading as a system manager. I was sure Kerry was telling the truth when he said that he believed the amount for Access Computing’s grant had been changed from $100,000 to $1 million after he had signed for it. But wasn’t it also possible that someone with authority over Kerry had been able to make whatever changes to the system he or she liked?
Mirrors within mirrors, leads that weren’t leads but forever doubling back on themselves. The hacker hadn’t reckoned on my keeping those hard copies of my interviewers’ names and addresses. Therefore it had to be someone who didn’t know me all that well. Who couldn’t have predicted that I was the sort of person who kept everything. And who took the opportunity of the fire, or created it, to clear out my filing cabinet.
Hate Mail
Communicating illegally in the dark has a special, full-bodied feel to it. Yet the whole point of hacking is that you can’t see or hear, or get a whiff of your opponent’s shape, let alone their gender. The point is that you’re invisible.
Ivan smiled, his head inclined a little to one side.
‘You knew what it would be like, didn’t you?’ I said. ‘You’ve been here before.’
I’d told Ivan I wanted to try and log on to Access Computing’s bulletin board. Ivan had made a face and asked me why I thought the board would still be up. I had to admit it was unlikely, but I wanted to give it a try.
We were at Ivan’s, using a combination of guesswork and cheating to find a user name and password that would get us in. One of my outworkers had given me her user ID. Ivan had written a program that matched every possible combination of the letters of her name with a hundred commonly used passwords.
Pretty soon, much sooner than I’d dared to hope, WELCOME TO ACCESS COMPUTING came up on the screen.
Ivan gave his lion’s head a scratch and muttered something about it being too easy. But I was so excited I scarcely paid attention to his scepticism.
First, Ivan installed a copy of the Trojan Horse that he’d made when it turned up on my machine at work.
Would I find a reference to Angela Carlishaw? Had any of Access Computing’s subscribers been talking to her? Why hadn’t Access Computing shut their board down? Was it because they were waiting for a message?
There were three messages in the public section of the board, all with that day’s date. One was signed Anna D. My eyes jumped down the screen. Anna D’s indignation seemed to roll off it in waves.
‘Has anyone received a CD-ROM from a company called Compic? The day after mine arrived, this woman from the company phoned and tried to talk me into buying a $600 package. She more or less told me that I had to have it! She phoned back the next day even though I’d told her no. Has anything like this happened to anybody else? I want to know how they got my address and most of all, how they knew I’ve recently gone freelance!’
‘Jesus,’ I said. ‘How did Compic get hold of Access Computing’s list of subscribers?’
‘No-one seems to’ve replied to this Anna D,’ Ivan growled, scrolling rapidly forwards then backwards.
‘What d’you think that means?’
‘It might mean anything.’
‘Can we get a private contact number for Anna D?’
‘We can try.’
After the first couple of commands, I stopped being able to follow what Ivan was doing. A list appeared. There were two Annas with a surname beginning with the letter D, Anna Dubowska and Anna Dunlop, both with Melbourne addresses and telephone numbers.
Ivan saved and printed out the list.
‘Try this one first.’ He pointed to Anna Dubowska. ‘That’s a good solid Polish name.’
My eyes were beginning to cross from staring at the screen. I looked up and caught the blow-up photograph of Alexander Graham Bell, black on white on black.
Ivan grinned at me and said, ‘I haven’t been sneaky like this in years.’
‘Oh—when was the last time?’
‘Jesus, Sandy, I don’t know. Before I joined the public service?’
‘Really? Don’t tell me that’s what’s made you moral.’
Ivan punched me on the arm and I pretended to fall over.
My chair scraped and I remembered Peter, curled up asleep on the couch in Ivan’s living room.
‘We’d better go,’ I said.
I drove home and helped my son into bed. Then I phoned Gail Trembath, with the list Ivan had copied unfolded next to me. I asked Gail if she’d ring some of the women on the list for the piece on clerical outwork she had promised.
Gail groaned, then said reflectively, ‘Lately they’ve been spiking all my best stories. Gives me the tom tits, actually.’
‘See if you can bring the conversation round to Compic,’ I advised. ‘Something will blow, Gail, and when it does, you might just be the one who’s waiting underneath.’
We laughed, and I hung up.
The following night, when Ivan and I logged on again to Access Computing, our Trojan Horse had done its job. We saved Isobel Merewether’s password. There was nothing of Angela Carlishaw, though.
Gail rang back with some news. The second woman she’d spoken to had raised the subject of Compic without her having to say anything. ‘Out of the blue,’ Gail said excitedly. ‘Compic’s been emailing the eyeballs off her, offering her all kinds of fabulous deals. She’s not in a position to buy their stuff, or she hasn’t been, but she’s just landed a contract with this building company, the sort of crowd that might well fork out for smart-looking graphics. Here’s the interesting bit. The lady claims Compic knew all this.’
I was holding my breath. ‘Go on,’ I said.
‘She saw that message on Access Computing’s BBS—the one you told me about? Tried to reply to it and got the bum’s rush.’
I thanked Gail, and hung up.
Allison Edgeware was a beautiful and deadly spider. And Isobel Merewether. Another china-doll name for another crooked female. Spinning silk webs with false, gracious smiles. If Compic’s web o
f influence stretched to Access Computing in Brisbane, how far in other directions? And then there were our outworkers and interviewers, a network of threads reaching to every capital city and beyond.
. . .
‘What do you think our Felix is doing right now?’ I asked Ivan.
‘Jogging,’ Ivan grunted.
It was Saturday afternoon, and Ivan and I were searching Felix Wenborn’s office. Ivan had the computers, and I was going through boxes of disks and filing cabinets. The first thing to look for was the file dealing with the Compic tender. I wasn’t expecting to find it, and I didn’t. I was pretty sure Felix had stolen that file from Rae’s office, and if so, he wouldn’t leave it sitting round in broad daylight in his own.
Provided no-one interrupted us, we were in for a long afternoon. Peter was at a birthday party. Ivan had planted a small bug in DIR’s main operating system late on Friday afternoon. Then he’d volunteered to come in and work on it over the weekend, since the fire had put the IT section behind, like everybody else. If we were challenged, I would say I was keeping Ivan company. A thin excuse, but I was feeling confident that day.
‘The beauty of this little bug, Sandushka,’ Ivan said, ‘is that to chase it I have to open all the system programs.’
Ivan moved to another computer and began keying in commands. ‘Adding that zero to the grant money was a one-step job,’ he muttered to himself. ‘In and out. Quicker than a ten-dollar fuck. There’s no trace. Don’t know why the bloody hell I thought there would be.’
‘Ivan,’ I said. ‘Look.’
‘What?’ He glanced up at me and frowned.
I pushed a box of floppy disks towards him. ‘Email backups.’
The disks had been filed by individual PC. I began going through Jim Wilcox’s.
‘Jesus,’ I said a few minutes later, unable to believe the words staring at me from the screen.
Scattered through Wilcox’s email were abusive messages, calling Rae Evans everything from a tight-arsed bitch to ‘female chauvinist sow’ to ‘that Fucking Blue-rinse Femocrat’.There was no doubt that the messages referred to Rae. She was named in nearly every one of them.
The Trojan Dog Page 15