Abuse of Power - Michael Savage [57]
“Let’s hope she hasn’t changed it,” he said.
Jack almost hoped she had, simply because he couldn’t believe how lax people were about their security. There were office towers in the city that changed their elevator passwords every twenty-four hours, but during that time handed them out to every pizza delivery man and overnight delivery service that came by. Unless he was honest or a complete moron, that gave potential intruders a full day to get in and out of so-called high-security buildings.
A moment later Karras was inside the network and zipping around it like a bee on a hillside. Opening a command window, he started typing again. It all looked like gibberish to Jack, so he just waited as Karras did his thing.
Tony said, “You got something to drink? This looks like it could take a while.”
Karras gestured. “Beer in the fridge. Make it two.”
“Three,” Jack said.
Tony disappeared around a corner, made some noise, then brought the beers and went back for a couple of dinette stools to sit on. They drank and watched as Karras typed, Jack trying not to think about how much jail time they’d all be facing if he got caught.
Karras seemed to read his mind.
“Don’t worry,” he said, “I’m covering my tracks as I go. They’ll never even know we were in here.”
“Famous last words.”
“An expression coined, I’m guessing, by someone who wasn’t very good at what he did,” Karras said.
A moment later Karras jabbed a key and a list of names filled the screen. “Gentlemen, I give you the employees of the San Francisco British consulate. You interested in anyone in particular?”
“Security staff,” Jack said. “I was hoping for ID photos.”
“I think I can arrange that.” Karras typed in a few key words and hit enter, then a dozen names and faces popped up. “There you have it. The SFBC security staff.”
Jack and Tony leaned forward, studying the photos. Jack didn’t see anyone who looked even remotely like the guy in sunglasses.
“You see him?” he asked Tony.
Tony shook his head then sipped his beer.
“Okay, so he’s not security. Let’s go through the rest of the staff, department by department. All the males.”
“Your wish is my command,” Karras said.
They spent the next few minutes going through each of the employee photos, working their way from the lowliest maintenance worker to the consul general himself.
Still no sign of Sunglasses.
“I guess we got it wrong,” Jack said to Tony.
“Or they’re MI6, which means they wouldn’t be in this system.” He turned to Karras. “Any chance you can hack into the British security services?”
Karras balked. “What did I say when we started—”
“That you like money and challenges. Another grand?”
Karras still didn’t bite. “You got a couple weeks and a safe house in Brazil? Those people have firewalls on top of firewalls and enough booby traps to discourage even the most aggressive attack. Getting past them would take a lot more than social engineering and, like I told you, I don’t do intelligence networks.”
Jack sighed. “So we’re at an impasse.”
“Not necessarily. This guy you’re looking for—what made you think he works for the consulate in the first place?”
“Long story.”
Karras took a sip of beer and nodded. “Sure, sure—need to know. But just because his file isn’t here today, doesn’t mean it wasn’t here yesterday or a week ago. Could be he quit or got fired.”
Jack immediately understood. “Archives.”
“Most organizations keep their employee files for years. I could go back a couple months, look for recent terminations.”
“Do it,” Jack told him.
Karras called up another command screen and went to work. A few moments later, he said, “Looks like there’s only been three terminations processed in the last year and a half. All female. But there is something a little strange here.”
“What?”
“Some data remnants that look like they were purged from the personnel database a little over a week ago. Could be an employee record and it might be your guy.”
“Can you access it?”
“Data only completely disappears when you nuke the drive. So, yeah, I’m pretty sure I can pull something up. But give me a few