The Last Hack

by Christopher Brookmyre

  He pinch-zooms on the touchscreen, noting that the signal has been stationary for a while. She is outside the Loxford School, and according to his phone, it is a couple of minutes to four: picking up time.

  Parlabane keeps his distance as he approaches. It is easy to hang back and stay hidden. There are dozens of people waiting at the gates, cars double-parked all along the narrow streets nearby. He can see her talking to two people: an Asian couple.

  Bang on four the bell rings and a few moments later he sees the pupils appear, the first of them emerging on wheelchairs, many heading towards waiting minibuses with hydraulic lifts attached. That’s when he deduces that it is a special needs school.

  He picks out Sam again, striding away from the Asian couple. There is a girl hurrying towards her, an eager smile on her face.

  Parlabane gets a closer look at them both as they walk back towards Ilford Lane, across the road from where he is standing between parked cars. He shrinks back and keeps his head down but there is little chance of being spotted. Sam is intent on listening to the girl, who is chatting away with gesticulative enthusiasm.

  He recalls Sam’s words in the coffee shop: If I end up in jail, what happens to—

  She had cut herself off, and he hadn’t speculated about what she left unsaid. He knows now. She means her sister. Begging the question: where are their parents?

  Before she is even out of sight he has Googled ‘Morpeth Loxford School Ilford’. He gets the name he is looking for – it’s Lilly – but he gets a lot more besides. Beneath a few links to school and community webpages is a brief news story reporting on a Ruth Morpeth (47) of Ilford being sent down for drugs and firearms offences.

  Parlabane follows the signal once more. Within half an hour he knows her address. He is filling in the blanks, but he already got the big picture outside the Loxford School. He saw the look on her face: both their faces. She loves her sister, and Sam is all Lilly has. Sam will do anything to stay out of jail, because she has to be there for the person she cares about most, and the person who is most reliant upon her.

  Going to the police can’t be his call. He doesn’t want to be responsible for Sam ending up in custody. Even if it happened for reasons beyond his control, he knows he would feel culpable now. It’s not just about her any more.

  Everything has changed. The more he has found out, the more complicated it has become. Merely the fact of knowing Sam’s real name has changed how he perceives her. The last vestiges of Buzzkill are gone, and now there is a real-world identity that fits this skinny, shy and vulnerable young woman.

  Young girl.

  She’s just a kid, a kid with way too much weight on her shoulders, which is why she came to him. There is no decision to make any more. He’s going to have to throw his lot in with Sam, for better or worse.

  COLLATERAL DAMAGE

  ‘Hello, this is Samantha Morpeth. I’m trying to find out about getting some support for after-school care for my sister.’

  ‘Financial assistance, do you mean?’

  ‘Yes. To help pay for my sister to go to—’

  ‘I’m sorry, that’s not really my department. Let me transfer you to—’

  ‘Please don’t, please. I’ve been transferred about three times already and they put me through to you because they said you handled carer support.’

  ‘Well, strictly speaking, I— Never mind. What’s your name again?’

  ‘Samantha Morpeth. My sister is Lilly Morpeth. Lillian, it would be.’

  ‘Pulling up your records now. Ah. There’s a note here about your case. Miss Morpeth, I’m afraid you’re not eligible for Carer’s Allowance because it says here you’re in full-time education.’

  ‘No, that’s just it. I’ve left full-time education. I’m not at school any more. That’s why I’m calling. I’m working now, but I can only do certain shifts because I need to be there to pick up my sister from school. I want to know if I can get some support to help pay for Lilly to go to an after-school club, so that I could do more hours.’

  ‘How many hours are you working right now?’

  ‘I’ve only just started, so it’s not really—’

  ‘Is it more than twenty?’

  ‘No, not so far. In a week, do you mean?’

  ‘Yes. I’m afraid you’re not eligible for any assistance unless you are working more than twenty hours.’

  ‘But that’s why I’m calling. I can’t work more than twenty hours unless I can get my sister into after-school care, and right now I can barely afford it. It would cost almost as much as I’d earn for doing the work.’

  ‘Well, it doesn’t sound like this is something I can help you with. If you like, I can transfer you to …’

  I barely hear what she says after that. I mumble a response and hear the phone ringing but I hang up before the next person answers. It’s hopeless. I’m hopeless.

  Why am I like this when I am telling the truth? When I am forced to be me? I let them fob me off, like they’re trained to do, and I fold up like wet cardboard in the face of any resistance.

  It’s only once Lilly’s gone to bed and I’ve got out my laptop that I realise there’s no internet. Or rather, there is, but it’s only the piss-weak signal from two doors along that I’ve got access to. The flat below have changed their password, or more likely BT have been in and changed their router, as the old couple down there wouldn’t touch the kit themselves. The good news is that this probably means they’ve got a fatter pipe for me to leech off, but I’m going to have to dream up a pretext for a visit tomorrow so that I can nab the password.

  I’m trawling through the fruits of another dumpster dive, this time from Gatekeeper Systems. Had to tap Jack to spring for car hire because the UK headquarters is in Colchester, and it wouldn’t look right if we were seen stepping off a bus. Gatekeeper’s waste disposal was secure, so we did the polo shirt routine again to get access. Jack wasn’t pleased to be doing more midge-raking, as he put it, and I can see how he might feel like we were actually moving further away from our goal by repeating what we had already done, and at a different outfit too. That’s how it works with hacking, though: sometimes you have to take a couple of steps back so that you can move three steps forward.

  I’m sipping black tea because we’re almost out of milk and I want there to be enough for Lilly’s cereal in the morning. My bed is covered in piles of paper, with the more manky sheets down on the carpet. This kind of stuff seemed more like fun when I was part of Uninvited. Maybe it was because it felt like I was working with friends, and we never knew what any of us might uncover or reveal the next time we all met up in IRC.

  I’m lurking on there now, anonymous. I’ve got some channels open simply to see who’s around, but not #Uninvited. I haven’t been back there since Zodiac contacted me.

  This time Jack brought a decent-sized shoulder bag, so we were able to heft more paperwork, though most of what I’ve read is useless bumf. There was a lot of shredded stuff in the dumpster, and it’s often the case that if staff are switched on to security concerns, they’ll only throw away complete sheets if they’re sure there’s nothing sensitive on there.

  I’m sifting through it methodically, harvesting names, titles, departmental structures, and any on-the-job jargon that crops up. People always believe you have the right to more information if they think you’re already in the know.

  Then I get lucky. It’s in a particularly grim pile on the carpet, which I have turned to last. I find a stack of crumpled pages all bearing wide coffee stains. Someone used the sheets to mop up a spill, then binned the lot without checking what was printed on them.

  What’s printed on them is just the break I need.

  The sheets tell me that Gatekeeper are having contractors in to do some heavy-duty maintenance on their IT systems. They’re going to be swapping out drive arrays, taking servers offline, updating operating systems, the whole shebang.

  The memos warn of potential disruption, informing every department of th
e dates on which the work is likely to affect them. To me, the warped and coffee-stained print-outs are like an embossed invitation.

  I’m starting to form a plan when I hear an alert and cast a glance at my laptop.

  I tense up, my train of thought derailed with mass casualties.

  Zodiac is online, inviting me to an IRC channel: #progressreport. And by inviting, obviously I mean demanding.

  Hello, Samantha. Long time no see. Hope the family are well.

  What do you want?

  I trust you’ve been a busy girl. I hope things are progressing. I’d hate to think you were dragging your heels.

  These things take time. You know that.

  I like to stay informed, though. So I’d appreciate it if you gave me a full breakdown of where you’ve got to and more importantly how you plan to proceed. I want full approval of your strategy before you execute.

  And I want an MSI Titan laptop but I ain’t getting that either. You don’t get to dictate the fine terms and micro-manage this thing.

  Yes, that is exactly what I get to do. I think you’re forgetting the alternative to you doing what I say, when I say it.

  No, *you* are forgetting the alternative. You can only pull the trigger on your big threat once. If you give me up to the feds, I can’t deliver on this thing you want so much.

  Don’t kid yourself, love. You’re not the only game in town. But you’re right in that my first priority is getting what I want, so I am ‘micro-managing’ because I want to ensure the best chance of success. To that end I want to know how you are intending to go about this. I want a progress report, and I want to be kept up to date regularly.

  I type the words ‘fuck you’ but my finger hovers over the Send button. I change my mind and delete it. Meanwhile my attention is drawn to an increase in activity elsewhere on the screen.

  At the bottom there is a panel listing all the users active on the IRC channels right now. It’s way busier than usual. You normally only see these kinds of numbers when there’s an op going down. It shows how out of it I’ve been lately that I don’t even know what’s in the wind.

  Zodiac is waiting for my obedient reply, and must be entertaining doubts as to whether it’s coming.

  Remember that when this is over, you will want to remain on the right side of me. You will want to remain of value. If it would help for you to see what happens when someone proves they are no longer of use, then I suggest you turn on the news.

  He sends me a link which takes me to a video feed on the BBC website. The banner at the foot of the frame states: ‘Liverpool – Police make first arrest in RSGN hacking investigation.’

  I see a scared-looking white guy around my age being led away in handcuffs, plain-clothes detectives either side as they march him down a gauntlet of officers wearing Kevlar and holding SMGs. Like us hax0rs are known for being tooled up with anything that doesn’t run Linux. It’s total overkill, purely for the cameras.

  This is why everybody’s on IRC. Bad news travels fast, especially online.

  It’s a running joke to post ‘Feds at the door’ when you are about to pop out of the room during a chat. I’m guessing nobody’s laughing right now.

  ‘Police have named the suspect as Paul Wiley, a twenty-two-year-old postgraduate student at Liverpool University,’ says the reporter on the screen.

  At once I’m sure this guy is Cicatrix. I picked up on hints that he lived up north.

  He was the one who bailed out of our meeting. I wonder if he had already met with Stonefish when he got cold feet about a second rendezvous. Maybe he was intending to warn me but, like me right now, had no way of knowing who could be trusted. Guess I’ll never know.

  Zodiac decides I’ve had time enough to take it in.

  You’re not the only member of Uninvited I’ve got the goods on. That one wouldn’t play nice. Tried to hack me, the cheeky skrub. He forgot I was the one holding all the high cards. So, about this progress report …

  I write out a text document describing how I intend to pull off the Synergis job, and the whole time there’s a voice in my head saying, ‘Lol. Yeah, right. As if.’

  I keep Jack out of the story. Zodiac doesn’t know about him, and that gives me some kind of edge; or at least some kind of comfort.

  I consider how, given more time to play with, I could embed some malware in the next one of these docs I write: a Trojan that might help lead me to Zodiac’s location or harvest some clue to his identity. Then I think of the fact that this poor bastard Paul Wiley must have pulled something similar and got caught.

  It’s as I’m blocking out my strategy for hitting Gatekeeper that two things hit me, neither of them good. The first is that by writing out this plan I’m basically giving Zodiac a signed confession up front. The second, and deffo the scarier one, is that what I’ve got in mind for Gatekeeper will require me personally to carry it out.

  I had mentally assigned Jack the same field-ops role as I’ll require of him when we hit Synergis, but looking at the Gatekeeper strategy written down, I realise he doesn’t have the technical know-how. I could walk him through most of it in advance, but if anything happens that I don’t expect, we’re humped. And something always happens that you don’t expect.

  I lie awake, listening to drunks meander home, hearing sirens in the distance.

  How am I supposed to do this?

  I can’t, I conclude.

  I think of the call I made to the Social earlier on. If I can’t even stand up for myself in a telephone conversation when I’ve every right to state my case, how am I going to handle myself face-to-face inside a building I’ve got no right to even enter?

  Then I remember that I stand up for myself in telephone conversations all the time, in the very act of infiltrating places I’m not supposed to be. Throughout all those pre-hack calls, some of which can get really knife-edge as they threaten to go south, I always hold my nerve. I lie, improvise and manipulate instinctively, no matter who I’m talking to, so what’s different about that? I ask myself.

  That’s when it hits me: it’s not about phone calls versus face-to-face. It’s about acting a part versus being myself. I’m never scared of what they might do or say as long as they think I’m someone else.

  So when I hit Gatekeeper, I won’t be Sam Morpeth. I’ll be Buzzkill, unleashed IRL.

  HANDS-ON POLICY

  It takes Parlabane minutes to search the people on the list he snapped on Cruz’s secretary’s desk, and to distinguish them from namesakes. In most instances this is achieved via personnel listings on tech-industry companies’ websites, but in the case of the one he got the longest look at, Google Images does the trick. As soon as he keys in the name ‘Danny Winter’, that angry-gargoyle mug leaps out from the resultant grid of headshots like it’s trying to bite him.

  What proves more taxing is the job of nailing down what it is Winter actually does. His name pops up all over the industry and beyond, on the boards of several companies and in other elusively non-specific roles. Deeper digging establishes that he fronts a venture capitalist company with connections to an offshore hedge fund, though his specific relationship to the latter proves obstinately obscure.

  Like Cruz, he has a reputation as an asset stripper, though his involvement with the hedge fund seems more oriented around investment opportunities than fire sales. Unlike Cruz, it would appear he prefers the shadows to the limelight.

  The closest he comes to high-profile involvement is his recent investment in a hi-fi company. Metal Box Audio was once a brand leader through its prestigious CD players, but with most people choosing to buy, store or stream their music online, the format has been rendered redundant. As a long-time print journalist, Parlabane can sympathise.

  Metal Box opted belatedly to move with the times and manufacture its own music streaming systems, but by that time it was heavily in debt, just when it needed to invest in new equipment
, new expertise and new marketing strategies. This was when Winter stepped in.

  ‘He was able to take a big slice of the company at that time, because we urgently needed investment or we were going to fold.’

  Parlabane gets this from Agnieszka Savic, Metal Box’s marketing director, who invites him to take a tour of their factory in Braintree. The cachet of the Broadwave brand seems to make people more eager to talk than Parlabane has been used to recently; though maybe it’s also a sign that his own name is less toxic, largely through fading from notice.

  Parlabane initially requested an interview with Winter. Savic sounded pessimistic regarding the chances of this, and Parlabane detected that she was reluctant to even ask. Thus she suggested the factory tour by way of compromise, adding that Winter would be on-site that day, so they might be able to improvise a quick chat.

  ‘It will look like he got us for a song if we continue to grow the way we’ve been doing over the past three financial quarters,’ Agnieszka tells him. ‘But nobody else was offering to take the risk. We never lose sight of that.’

  Parlabane acknowledges the gratitude but it’s hard to miss the subtext. There must be times when ‘never losing sight of that’ seems particularly difficult.

  ‘I’ve read some criticism of the firm’s status as a British brand,’ Parlabane suggests. ‘Your critics say that you import all of your components from overseas and merely assemble the units here in the UK. Their beef seems to be that you still get certain grants and benefits as a British manufacturer.’