Genius Squad

  "If it is, we might be able to capture a return address, at least," Dot advised, as the whole infiltration team clustered around Cadel, bombarding him with information. Cadel had to concentrate hard, or he wouldn't have been able to absorb everything that was thrown at him. Lexi and Hamish and Devin filled him in on what was happening, interrupting one another in their eagerness to describe their overall strategy.

  Jerry, they said, had a laptop that he took home with him, but so far Cliff hadn't picked up any useful wireless transmissions. Dot's port-scanning software hadn't turned up a single useful IP address, either. The GenoME webpage had been erected in the no-man's-land between two GenoME firewalls; nevertheless, being a webpage, it had to receive http messages from the outside world. So Hamish hadn't found it hard to get through the bastion host.

  Since then, however, he'd been forced to tread very carefully.

  "I d-don't want to mangle the webpage, because it'll warn them we're here," he said. "And that inner firewall—it won't let anything in. So I'm trying to fake up a security patch that'll squeeze through and rewrite their PS."

  "He might even finish the job by next Christmas," Devin sneered. And Hamish flushed.

  "Just ignore D-Devin," he told Cadel. "Devin's such a script-kiddie, he couldn't write a program to save his life."

  "He is not a script-kiddie!" Lexi protested, firing up. "You take that back!" She seized a handful of Hamish's T-shirt, almost choking him. But before she could do any more damage, Judith addressed her from the other side of the room.

  "Hey!" Judith barked. "Enough of that!"

  Whereupon Lexi grudgingly released Hamish.

  "What if they launch a security probe?" said Cadel. Seated at his desk, hemmed in by bodies, he had been silently turning data over and over in his mind, assessing it, classifying it, and considering it from every angle. Glancing up, he addressed himself to Dot—who was standing calmly beside him. "Suppose they use Zac's e-mail address for sniffing around?" he asked. "Suppose they have a really good probe, and they get into our system?"

  "They won't," Dot replied. She explained that the squad would be monitoring Zac's false e-mail address on a "discrete" machine. This machine would be used as a decoy only. It had no links to any of the other machines in the War Room.

  "But what if they do sniff around?" Cadel pressed. He couldn't believe that no one had considered this possibility. "Is there anything for them to find?"

  "Oh, sure." Lexi jumped in to describe how she and Hamish and Cliff had concocted an entire virtual life for Zac's alias: fake interests, fake friends, fake credit history....

  "No, no. That's not what I'm saying." Cadel was conscious that Trader had rejoined their group, after briefly conversing with Tony and Judith. "If they send in a probe, and do some sniffing, then you can set up a honeytoken inside this honeytoken. They'll be wanting to extract information and download it. We can piggyback on that. They'll be capturing our probe along with the data." Cadel gazed around at a ring of skeptical expressions. "I've done it before," he insisted. "I can set it up myself."

  "We can't afford to alert them, Cadel." It was Trader who spoke. "If those GenoME people find out that we're interested—"

  "They won't. I swear."

  Trader and Dot exchanged glances. Then Trader checked his watch.

  "We don't have much time," he observed. "They could be logging in anytime after nine thirty."

  Cadel shrugged. "There's no harm in trying," he said, and Dot agreed.

  "We might as well," was her opinion.

  All eyes were now fixed on Trader, who chewed at his bottom lip.

  "All right," he said at last. "Cadel, see what you can do about tagging one of those decoy programs. Try to get the job done before GenoME uses our e-mail address. The rest of you can stick to what you've been working on."

  "Oh, but Trader!" Lexi groaned. "I wanted Cadel to help me!"

  "Tough luck," said Trader, shooing people away. Then he placed his hand on Cadel's shoulder and stooped until their eyes were level. "You won't let me down, will you?" he said. "If GenoME finds out about us, you'll be back at the Donkins' in no time."

  "I won't let you down," Cadel replied earnestly, and Trader laughed.

  "Christ," he said with a snort. "You're even better than I am, batting those baby blues." As he straightened, he released Cadel's shoulder in order to slap him on the back—so hard that Cadel nearly fell off his chair. "Well done, anyway. I knew you'd be an asset. If you have a question, ask Dot. She's coordinating the infiltration attacks."

  Watching Trader walk away, Cadel thought: Sure. I'll ask Dot. And she'll e-mail me an answer, sometime.

  But he didn't utter the words aloud.

  He still didn't feel confident enough to speak his mind in such an unfamiliar environment.

  SEVENTEEN

  Zac returned to Clearview House after lunch. He had made his way back in a roundabout fashion, passing through shops and catching various forms of public transport. Cliff had told him to be careful, in case he was being followed.

  "But he wasn't," said Cliff. "I trailed him myself, and I didn't see a soul." Glancing around the War Room, he laughed his raspy laugh and gestured at Zac. "What do you think of the glasses? They're good, aren't they?"

  Zac wore ugly, black-framed glasses that had been repaired with sticky tape. His blond hair hung limp and unwashed around his ears, instead of being tied back neatly, as it usually was. His beard was untrimmed. His earring was gone. His clothes were drab and rather dirty.

  "Looks desperate enough, eh?" said Cliff. "No friends. No confidence. The perfect GenoME client."

  "So how did it go?" Trader was sitting with his arms folded, not far from Cadel. Everyone had stopped working. An air of excitement hung over the room. "Was there any trouble?"

  "No trouble," Cliff replied. He looked enormously pleased with himself—and with Zac. "It was textbook. This bloke should have been an actor."

  "It was easier than I thought," Zac mumbled. "No one tried to stop me from going to the toilet."

  "Oh, you went, did you?" Trader leaned forward, his eyes narrowed. "Did you get any pictures?"

  "They're downloaded," said Cliff, speaking for Zac. "You should check them out yourself. All I could see were a couple of sensors on the stairs—they must be turned off during the day." Cliff's report was directed at Trader, in a way that almost seemed to exclude the rest of the squad. "Good news is, the fire door hasn't been wired," Cliff continued. "If you head for the toilet that's in the stairwell, you could wedge open the fire door with something small, and get in after hours."

  "When the sensors would be on," Trader said.

  But Cliff shrugged. "If we knew what pulse those sensors were set at, we could work our way around them," he suggested. "It's just a matter of timing."

  Trader seemed unconvinced. "Where are the door hinges?" he inquired. "Are any of them in the stairwell?"

  "No." Cliff shook his head glumly. "We can't lift a single door off the wall. But the locks are electromagnetic. You might be able to do something with heat. A blowtorch, say."

  "I don't want to brute-force anything unless I have to," said Trader. At which point Hamish interrupted. He had been getting more and more restless, his knees jigging and his fingers twitching.

  "Did you see any computers?" he demanded of Zac, who pulled an apologetic face.

  "Not one," said Zac. "Not on the ground floor. The receptionist didn't have one. There were no computers in the interview rooms—I had a good look, on my way to the toilet."

  "The receptionist didn't have one?" Lexi sounded almost horrified, as if Zac had announced that the receptionist wore fetters, or a muzzle. "Why not?"

  Zac spread his hands.

  "I don't know," he said. "All she had was a phone and a diary."

  "That's weird," said Devin. "Man, that's weird." And Cadel felt disappointed.

  Was Devin really that slow?

  "It's not weird," said Cadel. "It's security conscious. Anybody
could walk in off the street. But if they did, they couldn't get into the upstairs offices, where the computers are. Not without a blowtorch." As everyone stared at him, he added, "Cliff just said so."

  There was a pause. Then Trader remarked, "He's right. Cadel's right. This a good indication of what we're up against. Our targets won't take any risks." His expression was unusually serious. "We should keep that in mind, people."

  "So what happened?" It was Lexi who now addressed Zac. She was obviously impatient for more details. "Did you meet Carolina?"

  "No," Zac replied.

  "What about Jerry?"

  Zac explained that he had met only the receptionist, a lab assistant, and a potentializer called Jill, who had been pretty and friendly and sympathetic. She had offered him refreshments—tea or coffee—before conducting him into one of the downstairs interview rooms. Here she had left him to fill out an application form. "It took about an hour," he said. "I didn't move from the spot, in case there was a camera somewhere. Jill kept popping in, anyway. To see how I was getting on."

  "Did you answer all the questions?" Though Trader's tone was calm, his gaze was alert, and his posture tense. "You'd better tell us if you didn't."

  "I did," said Zac. "It went fine." He then related how, once he had finished his questionnaire, Jill had whisked it away while someone else took tissue samples from him. There had been a kind of medical cart in the interview room; one of the lab assistants had carried out the procedure, which had been conducted in a very professional and reassuring manner, right down to the white coat and latex gloves. Then Jill had returned, all bright eyed and bushy tailed. She had given Zac a complete rundown of the gene-plotting process and fee scale, informing him that his genetic code would be sent to "headquarters" for analysis, after which he should come back for another consultation—probably in about a week's time.

  She had also persuaded him to sign some kind of waiver, which he hadn't bothered to read.

  "After that, I went to the toilet," he recounted. "She didn't come with me. The bathroom was immaculate." He glanced at Cliff. "If you want to plant something in there, you're going to have to make sure it's invisible. Because whoever cleans that place doesn't miss a spot."

  "The potentializers do it," said Trader. He grinned at the sight of jaws dropping and eyes widening all around him. "It's true," he insisted. "They're rostered on. One night a week each."

  "The potentializers clean the toilets?" Judith exclaimed, roused from her extended silence. "Are you sure about that?"

  "Believe me, it was practically the first thing we looked at." Trader rearranged his long legs, which were stretched out in front of him. "Cleaners are always the weakest link," he explained. "That's probably why GenoME doesn't contract out its cleaning."

  "Man, those guys must be brainwashed," said Devin, in accents of disgust. "Or totally insane." Whereupon Lexi made a scornful noise.

  "Just because you never clean the toilets," she said, "doesn't mean that everyone who picks up a toilet brush is crazy."

  "I do too clean the toilets!" Devin snapped, firing up. And Hamish said sweetly, "She d-doesn't mean flushing it, Dev, she means cleaning it."

  Devin opened his mouth to deliver a stinging retort. Before he could proceed, however, a piercing beep caused every head to turn.

  The decoy computer was sounding its alarm.

  "Christ!" said Hamish. "We've caught 'em!"

  There was a mad rush to check the screen. Cadel couldn't compete against so many larger, heavier bodies. He hung back, reluctant to brave the scrum around the computer.

  Trader also hesitated. He stood for a moment, surveying the chaos with his hands on his hips. Then he called for "a bit of calm."

  "Step aside!" he ordered. "Don't touch anything!" He motioned to Cadel. "Go on, have a look," he said. "Go and stand beside Dot—she won't bite you."

  Obediently Cadel joined Dot, who had bagged the chair in front of the decoy. An e-mail had arrived from GenoME.org. It was sitting in front of them like a tiny, ticking time bomb. Cadel could have sworn that every letter was pulsing ominously.

  His heartbeat quickened.

  "Open it," he said, and Dot obliged. Everyone squinted at the message that flashed onto the screen; it was a standard greeting, welcoming "John McDonald" to GenoME—and it had come with an attachment.

  Cadel smiled.

  "There it is," he muttered. "It'll be in that attachment, you watch."

  "What will be?" asked Judith, and Devin replied, "The probe."

  "If there is a probe," said Dot. She sat with her finger poised over the mouse, peering up at Trader. "Shall I?" she queried.

  Trader nodded. And Dot opened the attachment.

  There followed such a surge of activity on the decoy hard drive that Cadel could feel it through the soles of his feet. On the screen, however, all was tranquil. GenoME had sent Zac a confirmation of his next appointment, a company manifesto, a questionnaire, and a kind of sales pitch outlining all the different services that GenoME could offer, from medical screenings to family counseling.

  "Leave it up," Cadel advised, upon inspecting the colorful pictures and reams of text. "We have to wait for a moment while they download..."He went on to explain that his probe was rather like the one designed by Hamish, except that it would disguise itself as a legitimate virus scan. Virus scans were constantly having to send out requests for virus-signature updates from the Internet. They were busy little things. That was why they so efficiently masked the activities of a program designed to dispatch regular packets of information to someone who wasn't authorized to receive them.

  "And here's the source address," said Cadel suddenly. He pointed at the screen, unconsciously tensing his muscles. "Look, see? It's our target."

  "So what do we do now?" Lexi asked. At which point Dot rose, abruptly vacating her chair.

  "Now it's Cadel's turn," she said. And when he hesitated, Trader backed her up.

  "Go on, Cadel. You found the target. You deserve the first shot."

  Flushing, Cadel obeyed. He slid into Dot's seat and plunged into a virtual world of format strings and stack frames. During the next fifteen minutes, while everyone waited in silence, he surreptitiously took over the GenoME machine. But he didn't start to plunder it immediately.

  "We should hold back a while," he suggested, appealing to Trader. "They'll be on high alert, while they're infiltrating a new system. It'll be safer if we take things slowly."

  "He's right," Dot declared, and Hamish nodded. No one, in fact, was tempted to disagree.

  So Trader ordered a thirty-minute break.

  "I want this machine monitored, though," he warned. "I don't want it touched, but I want it monitored. Who's going to keep an eye on it?"

  Half a dozen hands shot up, Judith's among them. Cadel hoped that she wouldn't be chosen. He wasn't sure that she had skills enough for the job.

  "What about you, Cadel?" Trader was gazing down at him, smiling an indulgent smile. "Aren't you going to volunteer? It's your probe, isn't it?"

  Cadel shifted awkwardly. He had a proposal to make and had been hoping to make it quietly, in a corner somewhere. He didn't want to start throwing his weight around so soon. It would look as if he were showing off.

  And he knew what could happen to a person who was always showing off.

  "Uh—sure," he said. "I'll do it if you like. I just..." He paused.

  "What?"

  "I just wanted to ask you something."

  "Go ahead, then. Ask away." Trader nodded at Hamish. "Watch that screen for me in the meantime, will you?"

  Cadel sprang to his feet, allowing Hamish to occupy the swivel chair. An inquisitive silence had fallen. Looking around, Cadel saw that everyone was staring at him—everyone, that is, except Hamish.

  Hamish was staring at the decoy machine.

  "It's just an idea I had," Cadel remarked hesitantly. "I've never done it before, but it should be possible."

  "Go on," said Trader.

  "Well
—we don't know whose computer we've found. And we won't know until we start inspecting its files. But we do know it's got a speaker in it."

  "So?" said Devin

  "So if you want me to, I can reprogram that speaker and turn it into a microphone. From here." When no comment was forthcoming, Cadel added, "What I mean is, it would receive sounds instead of transmitting them."

  Still no one responded. Cadel broke into a sweat. Surely somebody must have understood him?

  "We'd be able to eavesdrop on nearby conversations," he pointed out, just as Lexi giggled with excitement. She turned to her brother.

  "Can you believe it?" she squealed. "Can you believe this guy?"

  Trader was frowning. The smile had been wiped clean off his face.

  "Are you serious?" he said sharply, addressing Cadel. "Can you really do that?"

  "I think so."

  "You'd need to record it all," Hamish submitted, without taking his eyes off the decoy screen.

  "I know." Cadel had ideas about that, too. "But we shouldn't rig the speaker until we've downloaded everything we can. In case there's a problem."

  Lexi and Devin nodded in agreement. Tony rubbed his chin. Judith looked inquiringly at Cliff, who in turn looked at Trader.

  "What do you reckon?" said Cliff.

  "What do I reckon?" Trader's eyes creased at the corners. "I reckon we've hit the jackpot." And he whacked Cadel across the shoulder, enthusiastically.

  Then he started to fire orders around the room.

  "Last-minute change to the meal roster," he announced. "I want Judith and Tony taking care of dinner tonight. Dot can be in charge of data gathering, and Cadel can be in charge of Operation Microphone. Forget everything else. We want that data analyzed and we want that mike installed, pronto."

  "Aye, aye, sir!" Hamish saluted.

  "Zac, I want a detailed report on your visit." Trader was still reeling off instructions. "Judith, once that data starts coming in, you're going to be busy, so I want you to review all your preparations for Sonja's arrival now. You two..." He gestured at the twins. "You're in charge of data transfer. I want it antiseptic. Triple-checked. I don't want any direct link between this compromised computer and our own system. Is that clear? I want air-gap protection."