Firewall

by Mankell Henning

  "A dark blue car."

  "Was it a Mercedes?"

  "I don't know the first thing about cars."

  "Was it big? Did it look like a van?"

  "Yes."

  "And there was someone standing next to the car?"

  "That was what scared me. When I looked through the binoculars I saw a man who was looking at me with some binoculars of his own."

  "Could you see his face?"

  "I was pretty scared."

  "I know. What about his face?"

  "He had dark hair."

  "What was he wearing?"

  "A darkish raincoat. I think."

  "Did you see anything else? Had you ever seen him before?"

  "No. And I don't remember noticing anything else."

  "You left. Could you tell if he followed you?"

  "I don't think he did. There's a tiny road just a little bit past our house. I don't think he saw it."

  "Then what did you do?"

  "I had sent you the e-mail, but I didn't feel I could go to Runnerströms Torg. I didn't know what to do. At first I was planning to go to Copenhagen. But I didn't feel up to driving down to Malmö. I'm not a driver. Something could have happened."

  "So you simply drove into Ystad. What did you do then?"

  "Nothing."

  "You stayed in the car until some policemen found you?"

  "Yes."

  Wallander tried to think about where they should go from here. He wanted Martinsson to be present, as well as Alfredsson. He got up and left the room. Irene was at her desk. She shook her head when she saw him.

  "How is the food coming on?" he asked sternly.

  "Sometimes I think all of you are nuts."

  "That's probably true, but I have a boy back there who doesn't eat hamburgers. I guess there are people like that. And he needs food."

  "I called Ebba," Irene said. "She said she would take care of it."

  That put him in a better mood. If she had talked to Ebba then everything would be taken care of.

  "I'd like to speak to Martinsson and Alfredsson as soon as possible," he said. "Please get hold of them."

  At that moment Holgersson hurried in through the front doors.

  "More shooting?" she said. "That's what I heard. What happened?"

  Briefing Holgersson right now was the last thing he needed, but Wallander knew he had no choice. He rapidly filled her in on the day's events.

  "Have you sent out an alert to the neighbouring districts?"

  "It's been taken care of."

  "When can we have a meeting about this?"

  "As soon as everyone comes back in."

  "It feels to me as if this investigation is getting out of hand."

  "We're not quite at that point," Wallander said, and didn't bother to hide his annoyance. "But feel free to relieve me of my responsibilities if you like. Hansson is the one who's been in charge of the search operation."

  She had a few more questions, but Wallander had already turned his back and started walking away.

  Martinsson and Alfredsson came in at 5 p.m. Wallander and Modin sat down with them in one of the smaller conference rooms. Hansson had called to say there was still no sign of the man who had vanished into the fog. No-one knew where Höglund had got to. Wallander barricaded the door. Modin's computers were up and running.

  "We're going to go through everything from the beginning," Wallander said.

  "I'm not sure we can do that yet," Alfredsson said. "There are too many things we can't see clearly yet."

  Wallander turned to Modin. "You said you had thought of something new," he said.

  "It's hard to explain," Modin said. "And I'm very hungry."

  Wallander felt irritated with him for the first time. Modin might be a computer whizz, but he was far from satisfactory in other respects.

  "The food is on its way," Wallander said. "If you need something right now we have good old Swedish rusks, and some leftover pizza. Take your pick."

  Modin got up and sat down in front of his computers. The others gathered behind him.

  "It took me a while to work this all out," he began. "At first I was convinced that the number 20 which kept turning up had something to do with the year 2000. We already know that Y2K will cause a number of problems in many computer systems. But I never found the missing zeroes, and I also noticed that the countdown looked as if it was set to go off much sooner than the end of the year. Whatever it involves. But I concluded that it had to do with October 20 instead."

  Alfredsson shook his head and seemed to want to protest, but Wallander held him back.

  "Go on."

  "I started looking for the other pieces of the puzzle. We know something here proceeds from the left to the right. There is an end point and that's how we deduce that something is going to happen. But we don't know what. I decided to surf the Web for information about the financial institutions we had already identified. The National Bank of Indonesia, the World Bank, the stockbroker in Seoul. I tried to see if they had anything in common, the point one is always searching for."

  "What point would that be?"

  "The point of weakness. The one spot where someone could enter the system without anyone noticing."

  "But there's a lot of awareness about hackers these days," Martinsson said. "And the business world is getting faster at responding to computer viruses when they emerge."

  "The United States already has the capacity to conduct computer wars," Alfredsson said. "Earlier the talk has been about computer-programmed missiles, or 'smart' bombs. But soon that will be as antiquated as cavalry. Now the objective is to dismantle the enemy's networks and knock out their missiles. Or better yet, to direct the enemy's missiles against himself."

  "Is this really true?" Wallander said, sceptically.

  "It is definitely in the works," Alfredsson said. "But we should also be honest about the fact that there are many things we just don't know. Weapons systems are complicated."

  "Let's get back to Falk's computer," Wallander said. "Did you find those weak points?"

  "I'm not sure," Modin said hesitantly. "But I think there is a way to see a connection between all of these institutions. They do have one thing in common."

  "And what is that?"

  "They make up the cornerstones of the global financial network. If you compromised them enough you would be able to set in motion a crisis that could derail all of the world's financial systems. The stock markets would crash. There would be panic. Everyone would rush to take out their money. Currency exchanges would fluctuate wildly until no-one could be sure what the rates should be."

  "And who would be interested in causing anything of this nature?"

  Martinsson and Alfredsson spoke at the same time.

  "Many people," Alfredsson said. "It sounds like the highest form of terrorism imaginable. And there are many people out there eager to cause chaos and destruction."

  "Taking out the global financial network would be the ultimate act of sabotage." Martinsson said.

  "Does everyone in this room think that that's what we're looking at here? And that something like this is housed in a computer in Ystad?" Wallander said.

  "It's definitely something like this," Martinsson said. "I've never come across anything like it before."

  "Is it harder to break into than the Pentagon?" Alfredsson said.

  Modin narrowed his eyes. "It's certainly not less complicated."

  "I'm not sure how best to proceed in this kind of a situation," Wallander said.

  "I'll talk to my people in Stockholm," Alfredsson said. "I'll send in a report that will later get sent on all over the world. We have to alert the institutions involved so that they can take precautions."

  "If it isn't already too late," Modin mumbled.

  Everyone heard him, but no-one made any comment. Alfredsson left the room in a hurry.

  "I still find it hard to credit," Wallander said.

  "Well, whatever it is in Falk's computer, there are
people ready to kill to keep the system and countdown going," Martinsson said.

  Wallander gestured at Modin so that Martinsson would understand that he should choose his words with more care.

  "The question is: what we can do?" Wallander said. "Is there anything we can do?"

  "There's often a button to push," Modin said abruptly. "If you infect a computer system with a virus you often hide it in an innocent and common command. But in order to set off the virus several things have to come together at once. The commands need to be carried out at a precise time, for example."

  "The best thing we can do now is carry on with what we've been doing," Martinsson said. "We need to warn the institutions that they're in danger of an attack so that they can double up on their security procedures. Alfredsson will handle the rest."

  Martinsson scribbled a few words on a piece of paper. He looked up at Wallander who bent over to read them: The threat against Modin is serious.

  Wallander nodded. Whoever had been spying on Modin from the road between the fields had known how important he was. He was in the same situation that Hökberg had been in.

  Wallander's phone rang. Hansson was calling to let him know that the search for his attacker had not yet yielded any results, but they would continue unabated.

  "How is Nyberg doing?"

  "He is comparing fingerprints."

  Hansson was still out near Backåkra, where he would stay for now. He didn't know where Höglund was.

  They ended the conversation. Wallander tried to phone Höglund, but her phone had no signal.

  There was a knock on the door and Wallander went to unblock the door. Irene came in with a box.

  "Here's the food," she said. "Who's supposed to take care of the bill? I had to pay the delivery man out of my own pocket."

  "I'll take care of it" Wallander said and stretched out his hand for the receipt.

  Modin ate. Wallander and Martinsson watched him in silence. Then Wallander's phone rang again. It was Elvira Lindfeldt. He went out into the hall and closed the door behind him.

  "I heard on the radio that shots were fired in an incident near Ystad," she said. "And there were policemen involved. I hope that wasn't you."

  "Not directly," Wallander said vaguely. "But we have a lot going on right now."

  "It made me worried, that's all. I had to ask. Now of course I'm getting curious, but I won't ask any more questions."

  "There isn't much I can tell you," Wallander said.

  "I understand that you don't have a lot of free time at the moment."

  "It's too early to say. But I'll be in touch."

  When the conversation was over Wallander thought about the fact that it had been a long time since anyone had worried about him. Let alone cared about him.

  He went back into the room. It was 5.40 p.m. Modin was still eating. Wallander and Martinsson left to get some coffee.

  "I forgot to tell you that I cross-checked the list of names I got from Sydkraft. But I didn't find anything."

  "We didn't expect to," Wallander said.

  The coffee machine was on the blink again. Martinsson pulled out the plug and then put it in again. Now it was working.

  "Is there a computer program inside the coffee machine?" Wallander said.

  "Hardly," Martinsson said. "Though I guess you can imagine more sophisticated machines that would be controlled with tiny computer chips."

  "What if someone went in and changed the program? Could they change it so that tea came out instead of coffee? And milk when someone wanted latte?"

  "Of course."

  "But how would it get triggered? How could you get it to start?"

  "Well, you could imagine that a certain date has been entered in. A date and a time, perhaps an interval of an hour. Then the eleventh time that someone presses the button for coffee, the virus is triggered."

  "Why the eleventh?"

  "That was just an example. It could have been any number that you had chosen."

  "Is there anything you can do once that change occurs?"

  "You could pull out the plug and restart it," Martinsson said. "You can hang out a sign saying the machine is broken. But the program that runs the machine would have to be replaced."

  "Is this what Modin is talking about?"

  "Yes, but on a larger scale."

  "And we have no idea where Falk's coffee machine is."

  "It could be anywhere in the world."

  "And that would mean that whoever sets off the chain reaction wouldn't need to be aware of it."

  "It would be an advantage if whoever it was were nowhere near where the virus first arises."

  "So we are looking for the symbolic equivalent of a coffee machine," Wallander said. He walked to the window and stared out. It was already dark. "I want you to do something," he said. "I'd like you to write a memo about what we just talked about. The threat of a global financial collapse. Get Alfredsson to help you. Then send it on to Stockholm and all of the international police agencies you can think of."

  "If we're wrong we'll be the laughing stock of the world."

  "We'll have to take that chance. Give me the papers and I'll sign them."

  Martinsson left. Wallander stayed in the canteen, deep in thought. He didn't notice when Höglund came in. He jumped when she appeared at his side.

  "You know the poster of that film," she said, "the one you saw in Hökberg's wardrobe?"

  "The Devil's Advocate. I have the video at home, I just haven't had time to watch it."

  "I don't think the film is so important, actually," she said. "But I've been thinking about Al Pacino. He resembles someone."

  Wallander looked at her.

  "Who does he resemble?"

  "He looks like the man in her sketch. Carl-Einar Lundberg. He actually looks a little like Al Pacino."

  She was right. Wallander had seen a picture of Lundberg in a file she had put on his desk. He just hadn't thought about the resemblance until now. Another detail fell into place.

  They sat at a table. Höglund was tired.

  "I went to talk to Persson," she said. "I thought I would be able to get something more out of her. Silly me."

  "How was she?"

  "She is still impregnably nonchalant. That's the worst thing. I wish she looked as though she slept badly and cried at night. But she doesn't. She just sits there chewing her gum and seems mildly irritated at having to answer my questions."