“Hello. J. B. Enterprises. How may I direct your call?”
I asked to be directed to the network manager.
“John Baxter. One moment, please.”
“Hello,” said Baxter in a slow drawl.
“Hi, there. I’m David Johnson. I’m calling from Network Solutions, Inc. We currently have a special offer on network switches.” I heard Baxter sigh. He was a busy network administrator. He didn’t need some cold-calling sales jerk to bend his ear.
“I don’t want anything,” he said bluntly.
I saw Grace looking at me. She must have heard me, and wondered what I was doing.
“That’s okay, sorry to have bothered you.”
“Yeah.”
“Before I go, do you mind if I ask if you have considered using Network Solutions hardware . . .”
“We use Cisco exclusively. I couldn’t buy what you are selling, even if I wanted to. Company policy.”
Well, I thought, at least I know you’re using a Cisco kit.
“Goodbye.” The phone went dead. Grace was looking at me, as if to ask,
“What was all that about?”
“You don’t want to know.”
I ignored her and went back to looking at my computer. I wasn’t disappointed by these early failures. For a start, I knew that Knight was always going to be hard.
Also, I knew that somewhere on one of his client’s machines, someone will have left a port open, ready and waiting for me to talk to it. Some office genius would have invented his own backdoor, so that he didn’t have to actually drive to the office to check his emails. Or some office slacker somewhere will have dismissed the notice every time it had popped up to tell him to update his machine. Finally, there were sixty-five-thousand ports on each machine, and I had several days to explore them.
Most computer delinquents I had met had more self-confidence than skills, and most of the hacks I had witnessed were not especially clever. They didn’t replace kernels with almost identical twins, they didn’t find clever ways to trip up Tripwire.
They just had more patience than the system administrators had time.
But in this case, I had no time, and I would have to use some smarts. While I left the script running, I racked my brains for some inspiration. One idea was to see if 61
anyone had previously attempted an attack on Knight, and left a few details somewhere on the Internet.
I surfed around, and while there were a few mentions of Knight having gone into business and becoming a marked target, there was nothing useful.
I carried on looking, typing on my notebook’s keyboard. Hack, hack, hack.
That was the sound I liked. It was the sound of the golden age of computers, of the old teletypes and line-printers. Maybe that was where the word ‘hack’ had come from—
those noisy machines.
It must have been something else to have lived in those difficult days. I read that artists appreciate their restrictions (presumably not including the restriction of not working), and such circumstances must have forced a programmer to be simultaneously creative and exacting—two opposite talents—while working on such ancient hardware, trying to find ways to knock a few bytes off of a program to save space.
“Do you want something to drink?” I came out of hack mode to see Grace walking back into the room, now wearing a T-shirt.
“Yes, thanks.” Grace went out, and came back a few minutes later, holding two cups of coffee. She put mine down on the desk, without saying anything.
“Where’s the bathroom?”
“Last door on the left.” She turned to the TV. That was something else I liked about Grace. I couldn’t really put a name to it. But my mother and her friends always seemed to be on guard when I was around. Everything would go quiet, but I could sense a certain tension. But Grace was relaxed. Normal. As if she wasn’t even thinking about me. I didn’t get it, I didn’t understand the difference, but it was a very good sign. I went down the hall, and into the bathroom. When I came out, I nearly collided with Grace’s stepdad.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi,” he replied, walking past. We left it at that. I went back into Grace’s room.
“I nearly crashed into your dad,” I said. Grace, who was leaning her head on one side to comb her hair, rolled her eyes. I picked up my cup of coffee, took a sip, and then went back to my computer.
Hack, hack, hack. Maybe the sound referred to the act of persistently chopping away at something. I checked the Knight scan, which had turned up nothing at all. He was firewalled and patched to the max. As a hacker, he knew all of the tricks in the book.
It was past nine o’clock when I came back down to planet Earth. I looked around. Grace was now lying on the bed, staring blankly at some serial drama on TV.
I was just going to say something when I noticed two long white scars, one on either side of her spine, where her shirt wasn’t covering her back. Each of the jagged lines was patterned with little white points, and it looked like her back had been cut open and sown back together again, Frankenstein fashion. She probably had a childhood illness, and had surgery, I thought.
I’ve got scars everywhere—on my chest (it is actually a burn mark), my left knee (accident), my right eyebrow (had my head pushed into a wall), a little one on my left elbow (that one’s a mystery)—all from when I was a too-curious kid, and also on my abdomen from surgery. I wondered if it would be okay to make a joke about it—you know, comparing scars—but it didn’t seem appropriate. I couldn’t tell how she would take it.
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Just then, Grace suddenly turned her head to look at me. I quickly moved my eyes away from her scars, feeling flustered. Grace pulled down her shirt and sat up, looking at me, seriously freaked, and not saying anything.
“Can I have some water?” I said, just to be saying something. Grace got off the bed without a word, and went out. Great, I had blown my free hideaway. I hadn’t meant to stare. I sat for ten minutes, waiting for Grace to return, and watching the drama on TV.
Anna the maid was being accused of stealing by the rich and beautiful Rowena. Lee, Rowena’s husband came to Anna’s defense, but Rowena wasn’t buying it. The aliens were just about to land, and I was just about to fall into a coma, when Grace returned with a glass of water. She gave me the glass without speaking, and I was surprised that she didn’t look annoyed. I got the strange feeling that I had just passed some kind of test.
“Did you get your work done?” Grace asked.
“I made a start,” I said, sipping the water. “I really owe you.” I meant it. I hadn’t got far, but I’d have got nowhere at all if not for Grace.
“How about that trip to the mall?”
“Isn’t it a bit late?”
“I owe you a coffee.”
We took a taxi to the mall, and ambled around the stores. I looked at computer equipment and guitars, and Grace looked at books and swimsuits. Then we drank coffee and talked about random stuff, like which countries we wanted to visit, and what our favorite food was, and the times we had got into trouble as kids. Apparently, the year before, the cops had taken Grace home in a cop car, because she had been hanging around with some neighborhood kids who liked to steal things. I didn’t tell her that I routinely drove around in FBI cars.
We got back at just before eleven.
“See you tomorrow,” I said, hoping that I would be able to put in another four or five hours on Knight. Grace didn’t complain.
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Chapter 14
On Wednesday, I went through the same motions as the day before, only I was concentrating on J. B. Enterprises. I get quite intense when I’m hacking away at something. I hit the keys hard, I thump the desk, and I tap my feet. But I didn’t want to do that around Grace, because I didn’t want her to call the authorities and report an escaped madman. On the other hand, I was seriously annoyed about getting nowhere.
As I remembered him, Knight just wasn’t that good a hacker to have a flawless setup for h
is clients. Somewhere, I knew, there would be a large hole in his network defenses. But I guess he had been practicing for six months while I had been getting three hots and a cot.
Every so often, I became aware of Grace, moving in and out of the room. I looked up, and saw her frowning. I asked her what was wrong.
“I can’t download any songs by Cadence,” she said.
I set up a username and password on one of the legal download sites, so that she could use it. Grace didn’t want to spend my (the FBI’s) money, but I told her it was worth it, for letting me use her room. I went back to hacking.
An hour later, I heard her talking, and noticed her sitting on the bed, speaking to a sleepy-looking cat that she was holding by the belly.
Later still, when it had got dark outside, I saw her leaning on her hand, looking at her computer screen, and saying, “How should I know?” at some homework. I supposed that she was hitting a wall, too. Hacking J. B. Enterprise was as difficult as hacking Knight. At ten o’clock, I switched my computer off.
“Do you want to go out tomorrow?”
“Where to?”
“Just to get something to eat.”
“Okay.” I suddenly noticed that Grace was wearing a black dress that had polka dots on it. When she had changed, I had no idea.
“I’m trying it on, because I’m going to a wedding on Saturday,” she explained.
It reminded me that tomorrow, I would have to get a suit and tie, ready for the possibility of having to make a journey. If J. B. Enterprises wouldn’t come to me, I might have to go to them. My phone rang, and I answered it.
“David, it's Abdul.”
“Hi.”
“I hope you don’t mind me calling you at home.”
“No problem.”
“It’s on for Thursday night, at the Java Hut. Are you up for it?” He was referring to the hacker crew initiation test that I was to undergo. Thursday was tomorrow. My whole evening was wrecked. I told him that I was more than ready.
“See you tomorrow,” I said.
“Okay.” The line went dead.
Wait a minute. Tomorrow? I turned around, to look at Grace. Tomorrow I had to go to the coffee shop. And Friday I was at J. B. Enterprises.
“Sorry, but can I cancel tomorrow? I’ve got to go somewhere. I can't get out of it.”
“Okay,” Grace said, indifferently. “Friday?”
I was going to invent some lie, and then I realized that Grace might come in handy. I’d have to make my visit incognito, and Grace would be good camouflage.
“Friday?” I asked.
“Yeah, you know, comes after Thursday, rhymes with shy-day.”
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I took out a pencil and a piece of paper, and wrote:
“Shh! Don’t say anything out loud.”
Grace gave me a puzzled look, with a half smile.
Me: I am going to Silverdale on Friday. Wanna go?
Grace: Y r we writing in whispers?
Me:
Top secret. Tell u later.
Grace: U r being mysterious again!
Me: I’ll pay for yr train ticket + brkfast + beverg of yr choice.
Grace: Why Silverdale?
Me: ?
Grace: OK
Me:
Do u have a suit?
Grace: U joking?
Me:
No. Need disguise.
Grace drew a little picture of a false moustache, beard, and glasses, which I thought was amusing.
Me: Office
camo.
Grace: ?
If we were going to wander around J. B. Enterprises' office, we would both have to blend into a crowd of anonymous office clerks. I switched the PC back on, and quickly surfed over to a women’s fashion site, and pointed out a picture of a blonde office drone in a snappy grey business suit. Grace looked at me with a quizzical expression.
Me: Y/N?
Grace thought about it for a few more seconds, then put a line through the N, leaving the Y. Yes, she would go.
Me:
Don’t bring yr phone.
Grace frowned.
Me:
I’ll send a taxi here at 7:00 am. Will bring u to train station. Train 2
Silverdale at 7:45. C U there. PS. Don’t forget to wear office suit. PPS. Don’t forget -
no phone. PPPS. Don’t tell anyone. Top secret.
Grace: !?@*!
I let her have the last word, or rather punctuation mark, and then left.
The next day, I ditched school at lunch time. Some hall monitor thought that she would stop me, and I showed her the pass that Stony had handed me days ago, and moved quickly on.
I got out of the taxi at the mall, and wandered around aimlessly for a few minutes, to check if anyone was following me. The only thing I can ever remember Knight saying that struck me as intelligent was “If you think you’re under surveillance, you are.” He probably stole that line from a movie, but I had come to appreciate its paranoid logic. I ducked in and out of a few shops, and tried to catch out anyone was still following me. But nobody was.
From a store, I bought a pair of dark sunglasses, a baseball cap, a plaid overshirt, and a travel case. There was a small tie shop nearby, and I picked out a cheerful red silk neck tie, and put it in the bag. I made my way to the tailors that I had spotted on my first visit, went in, and asked to rent a business suit for the weekend.
They gave me a black suit that looked smart and professional when I tried it on, despite being off-the-rack.
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I left the shop, went into a restroom, and carefully folded the suit, and put it into the case. Wearing my new plaid shirt, dark glasses, and baseball cap, I took a taxi to the bus station. I got out of the taxi and ran into the bus station, as fast as I could, nearly colliding with a pair of ancient travelers with about a hundred cases stacked on top of a cart. I got a locker, stuck my bag in it, along with the dark glasses. I was pretty sure that nobody could have watched what I was doing without giving themselves away.
I was back to my taxi in a few minutes. I returned to school, and breezed through the rest of the school day. It’s amazing how quickly school goes when you don’t take it seriously.
After dinner, Hannah drove me to Java Hut, to meet Zaqarwi. Before I got out of the car, I made a big deal out of checking over the FBI notebook. I knew that I would probably be using it for hacking soon, and it made me happy to think that the feds would be checking the key log later. As far as I was concerned, they could see exactly what I had done. That would give them plenty of evidence that I was doing the job properly. The more they thought that, the more they would leave me to do things my way, without interfering.
I got out of the car, and walked past the video rental store at the entrance, and into the coffee shop.
“David,” said a voice. I looked around, and saw Zaqarwi and three other guys at the side of the room. Zaqarwi was still dressed in his school clothes, but it wasn’t unheard of for hackers to go days without changing their clothes.
“Nice to see you,” he added. “What’s your poison?”
I looked at the board where there was a list that had pretty much every coffee ever thought up by marketing executives.
“Unleaded, thanks.”
“Sure. I’ll introduce you to everybody first. This is Bennell.” I said hello to a guy who was two years younger than me, but taller, and with a trace of acne on his jaw. “He’s our wireless expert.” Bennell nodded.
“This is Bates. He knows a lot about hardware, routers, firewalls, and stuff.
His dad works for MicroWorld, but we don’t hold it against him.” That was an in-joke, judging by the grin that went around the group.
“Wright knows everything about VMS,” said Zaqarwi, indicating a big guy with long hair and a shy smile.
“We’re beginning to suspect that he likes it.” That got a smile, too. VMS was an operating system used on minicomputers. It was known for being verbose, and you had to like typing to use i
t. I said hello to Wright.
It was all easy-going and pleasant, and I wouldn’t have suspected any one of the group of being mixed up with terrorists.
While Zaqarwi went to the counter for supplies, I took my notebook out and got a wireless signal to the Internet. I opened a browser, surfed to my favorite search engine, and had a casual look at what was new in the world of hacker software.
Bennell, Bates, and Wright went back to their computers, and began typing rapidly.
After a minute, Zaqarwi came back to the table, holding an oversized cup, and handed it to me.
“Thanks,” I said. I took a sip. The coffee was strong and tasted very good.
“It’s decaf?”
“Yeah, man.”
“It’s strong.”
“It’s good coffee here.”
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“So what are you guys up to tonight?”
Zaqarwi smiled.
“We’ve got a bit of a challenge. We thought that you might be able to help us.”
“Uh-huh?”
“We’d really like to get into the school’s system.”
“Elmwood High?”
Zaqarwi nodded.
“I already had a look around,” I said. “Logan’s assignment took me about two minutes to complete, so I had plenty of time.”
“So, you think you might be able to help us?”
“Maybe. What do you need a school account for?”
“You never know,” said Zaqarwi, shrugging.
I smiled. “Do you have any leads?”
“Here’s something you might find interesting.” Zaqarwi indicated a list on his notebook’s screen. The one he was pointing to was the dial-in number and Internet address of the server that I had previously discovered was called “RAS” (Remote Access Service/Server).
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