Eureka!
MY EYES WERE full of sand and poised precariously on two matchsticks. My whole head ached. Even my eyebrows were hurting. It was half past four in the morning and I hadn’t had one wink of sleep yet. Nosh had checked through the listings I’d given him and fallen asleep over an hour ago. I’d finished checking my print-outs about an hour ago and I never wanted to go through that again. I would’ve had more fun watching my fingernails grow.
Since then, I’d been trying to work out Mum’s password. And I have to admit, I was getting desperate. Maybe the eighteen letters in the password were the first eighteen letters of the alphabet? No. The last eighteen letters of the alphabet. Nope.
Without warning the bedroom door opened. It was Nosh’s dad. It was hard to say which one of us was more surprised.
‘Elliot? What on earth are you doing? You should’ve been asleep hours ago.’
‘I …I …’
‘Come on. Put down your toy. It’ll still be there when you wake up,’ said Nosh’s dad. ‘Besides, you won’t be too cute if you don’t get your beauty sleep, now will you?’
My face burning, I stretched up to switch off my bedside lamp, before scooting under the duvet.
‘Good night, Elliot.’
‘Good night.’
But the moment the light was off and the door closed, I sat bolt upright.
Eureka! I had it!
Switching on the bedside light again, I stared down at the screen telling myself that it couldn’t be that simple – could it? My fingers started to tremble as I tried yet another password:
ELLIOT YOU’RE CUTE
The screen cleared momentarily, then a load of new options appeared. I was in!
‘Yaahoo!’ I shouted. I quickly bit my lip as I remembered what time it was.
‘Whasamata?’ Nosh asked sleepily.
‘Nosh, wake up. I did it!’ I told him, waving the phone above my head.
He was instantly awake.
‘You didn’t.’ Nosh was impressed. ‘What was the password, then?’
‘That doesn’t matter,’ I dismissed. I certainly wasn’t going to tell him that! ‘The point is, we’re in.’
‘So what’s on it?’
I sat down at the edge of my bed and started going through the new stuff that had now appeared. Nosh came and sat beside me. There was a file called SHELBY stored in VAULT. The weird thing was that even though the file had only been recently copied, the file itself was two years old. Its creation date was two years ago. But as the name had caught my attention, I opened that one first.
But when I looked at the file contents, I could’ve howled. It was gobbledy-gook! Pure and utter gibberish!
‘What’s all that, then?’ Nosh asked.
‘The file has been computer coded,’ I replied. ‘And there’s no way I can decrypt the file without the original program.’
‘Is that an App on the phone too?’ Nosh asked.
I checked but there was no file that even came close to doing that. I went back into the coded SHELBY file and scrolled down it, hoping against hope that the whole thing wouldn’t be encrypted. It was. I checked every other file in VAULT. Mum had a number of what she called ‘case files’ which were like something out of Sherlock Holmes. Like when such and such a person had entered a restaurant, or where another person kept their safe. They made Mum seem more like a private investigator than a secretary, but then I knew she wasn’t a secretary. She’d told me so herself. I went through every other file, but there was nothing else about Shelby’s. Nosh could see how disappointed I was. The only other interesting file was a really short one. It just had a single name in it – Paul S. C. Darmare, with no comments or anything. But I could see that the file had been created on the phone just fifteen seconds after the SHELBY file had been copied onto it – so were they connected somehow?
‘The SHELBY file and the Paul S. C. Darmare file were copied onto the phone on the same day that Mum … that Uncle Robert was arrested,’ I said. ‘Why would she want to download a file that’s over two years old?’ I stared at the hieroglyphics on the screen, willing them to change into English before my eyes.
‘Come on, Elliot. We’re both dog-tired. Let’s get some sleep and maybe we’ll be able to do more in the morning.’
I was about to argue but my body made the decision for me. I was shattered.
‘OK!’ I sighed.
And we each got into our beds. Within seconds I was out.
Halle scrutinized the SHELBY file on Mum’s phone. Her lips drooped with frustration. She glared at Nosh and me as if we were doing it deliberately.
‘Is that it, then?’
I sighed. ‘I’m afraid so.’
‘Who’s Paul S. C. Darmare?’ Halle asked.
‘No idea.’
‘Does he work for Shelby’s, then?’
‘Haven’t a clue,’ I replied.
‘That’s a fat lot of use,’ Halle said with disgust.
‘Just because … I …’ My voice drifted to a stop.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Nosh.
‘Hang on. We’re not beaten yet. There are all kinds of coding and decoding programs on the Internet. Why don’t I try one of those?’ I said.
‘Will that work?’ Halle said, surprised.
‘We won’t know until we try it,’ I said.
‘What’re we waiting for?’ Halle grinned. ‘I’ve got a good feeling about this.’
Minutes later, we were in front of Mum’s PC and had logged on to the Internet. I did a search for any programs which encrypted and decrypted data files. A screenful of file names and locations appeared. As I printed off the list, I had another brainwave.
‘I’m really on form this morning! I must go without sleep more often,’ I grinned. ‘I’ve had an idea. Why don’t we check out the worldwide web page for Shelby’s?’
‘Check out the what?’ Nosh asked.
‘Most large companies have a website now. They give company details, advertise their services, show some of their most important staff – all that sort of stuff,’ I explained. ‘We might find Paul Darmare mentioned.’
‘Don’t forget his middle initials,’ said Halle.
I started searching for a Shelby’s page. More good luck was coming my way. Shelby and Pardela Pharmaceuticals were on the Internet. I scanned the screen but there was no mention of a Paul Darmare.
‘I’ll try calling up more information about Marcus Pardela,’ I said.
Using the mouse to click on Pardela’s name, we waited impatiently as, a few seconds later, three pages were downloaded. The moment I clicked on the first page, a video of Marcus Pardela’s smiling face started chatting on about how wonderful his company was. How they cared about people and the environment as any responsible company would. I almost puked! Pressing the mute button on my keyboard to shut him up, I then turned to the information all around the box that had his video image in it. It was like reading his CV. It talked about his qualifications, the schools he’d been to, and gave a lot of boring detail about how he and Joshua Shelby first started up the company almost twenty-five years before. At the end of the third page were some of his family details.
‘He’s got his priorities right,’ Halle said with disgust. ‘He talks about his family last.’
Nosh was the one who spotted it first.
‘Look at that! he said, quietly.
There, at the bottom of the screen, was a sentence that said:
* * *
Marcus Pardela is divorced with three children. Paul, Chandla and Julian.
* * *
‘Julian …’ Nosh said, stunned.
‘My Julian’s surname is Dulles, you trouble-stirring little weasel.’ Halle glared at Nosh.
‘Come off it, Nosh! It can’t be the same guy,’ I scoffed.
‘Click on their names. Let’s see what comes up,’ said Nosh.
I did as he suggested just to humour him. Moments later, what was obviously a family photograph appeared on the
screen. A girl with dark hair stood between two boys. From the look of it, the photo was about three or four years old, but there was no doubt about it. It was the same Julian. Halle’s boyfriend was Marcus Pardela’s son.
Halle looked as if she’d just been slapped. ‘I don’t believe it …’ she whispered.
‘It’s right there – in full colour,’ Nosh said furiously. ‘Your boyfriend is Pardela’s son. He’s probably been reporting everything we’ve said and done straight back to his dad.’
‘He wouldn’t do that.’ Halle’s eyes took on a steely glint. ‘Julian wouldn’t do that. I met him on an ANTIDOTE march, for goodness’ sake.’
As for me – it was as if every hope, every optimistic thought I’d allowed myself, had just been totally wiped out.
‘Halle, if you didn’t want to help me, you should’ve just said so,’ I hissed at her. ‘You shouldn’t have set me up like that.’
‘I didn’t set you up. I swear I didn’t,’ Halle denied.
‘You must have known Julian’s surname – or couldn’t you put two and two together?’ I fumed.
‘Listen here, Elliot. Julian told me his surname was Dulles. He never said one word about being Marcus Pardela’s son.’
‘He and his dad must’ve had a real good laugh at us when he left last night.’ To my embarrassment, my eyes began to sting. I actually wanted to cry, which of course made me even madder at Halle. ‘How could you, Halle?’
‘You’re not listening to me!’ Halle shouted. ‘I didn’t know. Look, there must be some mistake.’
She pushed me to one side and moved in for a closer look at the screen.
‘There’s no mistake,’ Nosh said. ‘Anyone with half an eye could see it’s your boyfriend.’
The insistent peal of the doorbell was like cold water thrown over all of us.
Giving Halle a lasering look, Nosh headed downstairs. I was dishing out some nasty looks of my own. Not that Halle caught many of them. She was too busy staring in disbelief at the screen.
If seeing Julian on the screen was a shock, seeing him in person was an even bigger one. He stepped through the door and his querying expression turned into a frown.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.
Halle stood up and regarded him without saying a word.
‘Oh! You know,’ Julian said, quietly.
‘So it’s true.’ Halle’s voice gave an odd hic.
‘It’s true that I’m Marcus Pardela’s son. But that’s the only thing that’s true. Until last night, I hadn’t seen him in over three months.’
‘You saw him last night?’ Nosh asked.
Julian nodded.
‘Why?’ said Nosh belligerently.
‘I wanted to help Elliot and his family – so I went to my father’s flat, hoping I could copy his mail messages onto the gadget Elliot gave me,’ Julian explained. He dug into his jacket pocket and brought out the memory key. ‘Here you are, Elliot. I don’t know what’s on it but I hope it’s something you can use.’
‘Are we supposed to believe that?’ Nosh scoffed.
‘Yes, because it’s true.’ Julian’s voice raised just a fraction.
‘You said your name was Julian Dulles,’ said Halle.
‘It is. I started using my mother’s maiden name over four years ago when Mum and Dad got divorced.’
‘So when we first told you about Elliot’s mum and Shelby’s Pharmaceuticals, why didn’t you tell us who you really were then?’ Halle accused.
‘Because I really am Julian Dulles. Look, what is this? You’ve all decided that I’m guilty without even hearing my side of it.’
‘What did you tell your dad about Mum and Uncle Robert and me?’ I had to ask, although I couldn’t trust myself to speak without blubbing.
‘Nothing. Absolutely nothing. He doesn’t even know that I know you,’ Julian said earnestly. ‘Dad was in a rage because he’d just read Sarah Irving’s mail message and he knew the cat was out of the bag.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ said Nosh.
Halle and I didn’t say a word. We didn’t have to. Julian knew how we felt from our expressions. He lowered his head briefly and when he straightened up again, his eyes were bitter like a long, hard winter.
‘All my life I’ve been judged by what my father is and does and says. Is it any wonder I changed my name? And you, Halle, after all the time we’ve been together, I would’ve thought you’d know me better than that.’
Still no one spoke.
‘Thanks a lot – all of you.’ Julian placed the memory stick on the PC table and after one last bitter glance, he left the room.
Chapter Nineteen
The Real Deal
‘EXCUSE ME,’ HALLE said quietly.
As she headed out of the room, Nosh said, ‘He’s not worth it, Halle. He …’
‘Shut up, Nosh. Just shut up.’ Halle rounded on him.
It wasn’t so much her words as the tears running down her face that finally made Nosh keep quiet. Halle all but sprinted from the room. Moments later, the front door was slammed shut.
‘Nosh, I … if you don’t mind, I think I’d like to spend some time on my own,’ I told him.
‘It’s not my fault …’
‘I never said it was,’ I replied impatiently. ‘The whole world doesn’t revolve around you, you know.’
Nosh looked at me, then turned and left the room. Again, the front door was slammed shut. The moment I knew I was alone, I buried my head in my hands as I tried to collect my thoughts. Exactly how much had Julian been told, how much did he know about this whole business? I tried to gauge just how much he’d hurt us.
It was my fault. I should never have involved so many people in this. Taking a deep breath, then another, I sat back in my chair. It was no good beating myself up about it. I had to decide what to do next to help Mum. If I could do that then the last few days wouldn’t have been a total waste. I sensed the key to all this was the coded file on Mum’s phone. I loaded the SHELBY file back up onto the PC and started sussing out the free decoding programs that were scattered across the Internet. When I found a likely-looking program, I download it onto Mum’s hard disk and tried running it on the SHELBY file.
The first few programs I tried were no good at all. They just asked for a decryption password. They assumed that you were the one who had coded the file and that you were now trying to decode it again. What I wanted was a deciphering program – a password cracker!
The next few I tried must’ve been put on the Internet for a joke. They were useless. I could’ve written better decoders than that in one minute flat. I was getting nowhere! I took a break and went downstairs for some orange juice. When I got back, I just sat for a bit staring at the gibberish on the screen, like I could make sense of it by sheer willpower. And then I spotted it! Near the top of the file, a sequence of characters that I recognized. My heart started beating a little faster and my hands were getting sweaty with excitement. I grabbed the first file I could find, a letter Mum wrote to British Telecom, and checked out the header. Yes! I was right. It was a standard header. So it wasn’t some secret code, it was just a normal document. I opened the SHELBY file from the PC’s word processor … and it asked for a password! I nearly screamed with frustration. If I never saw another password again … and then I remembered. Mum already had a program that hacked word processor and spreadsheet passwords. She had bought it last year when she forgot the password to some document she was writing. I searched around until I found it, and ran it on the SHELBY file. It took two seconds to tell me that the password was ‘eJ3kAW4vzTttz’. That didn’t seem very likely – but I tried it anyway. It worked! It actually worked! I must’ve been grinning from ear-to-ear as I started to read the decrypted document. It was the last page of a report of some kind that was something to do with accounting but I couldn’t make head nor tail of it. The title of the report – PROJECTED EXPENDITURE – was about the only bit that didn’t immediately whizz over my head. There had to be something to
this file – something that made Shelby’s desperate to get my mum and uncle out of the picture. I leaned forward for a closer look. One bit of the report showed what the rent per year would be at a particular address. The address rang all kinds of bells in my head. Slowly, I realized why.
It was the address of the ANTIDOTE office.
This was obviously a report written by someone when ANTIDOTE was first started up. At the bottom of the report, just above Paul Darmare’s name was the line:
PROJECT APPROVED: BUDGET APPROVED.
The rest of the file had things in it like future staff salaries and the cost of office equipment, etc. Was this really the file that so many people were trying to get their hands on? Why? I looked at the name at the bottom of the report. Paul S. C. Darmare. I went downstairs and phoned the ANTIDOTE office.
‘Hi. Can I speak to Paul Darmare, please?’ I asked in my best grown-up voice.
‘Who?’ The woman’s voice at the other end of the phone asked. It sounded like Sarah Irving. I had to really resist the temptation to accuse her over the phone.
‘Paul Darmare,’ I repeated, stonily.
‘We don’t have anyone here by that name,’ Sarah said.
‘How long ago did he leave your company, then?’ I said.
‘We’ve never had a Paul Darmare working here. Who is this?’
‘But Paul Darmare is the one who set up your organization,’ I said, confused.
‘No, we received our major funding from an anonymous source,’ said Sarah. ‘Who is this?’
‘It doesn’t matter. Sorry to bother you. Bye.’ I put the phone down before the woman could ask me any more questions.
So who was Paul Darmare?
I trudged back upstairs, deep in thought. Paul S. C. Darmare … Every time I sorted out one problem, two more popped up in its place.
‘Come on, Elliot!’ I muttered. ‘Think!’
Once I was in front of the PC again, I saw the memory key Julian had left behind. Should I risk it? It could be a booby trap and wipe out every piece of information on Mum’s hard disk … I picked it up, turning it over and over in my hands. Maybe we had been unfair …? But it was such a shock. And just suppose it contained his dad’s mail messages, just as Julian had said.