Downtime - Marc Platt [32]
He rebooted and tried another system. Why did you join the Army? he wondered. So that you didn’t have to spend all day in the Moscow queues for employment or bread, he reminded himself. And if he was seconded out to the UN, because Russia had to send somebody as part of its commitment to the Security Council, that was OK too. Better than being sent to shoot people in Grozny.
Toni Diaz slid in beside him. She planted two fresh bottles of mineral water on his desk. ‘Well?’
‘Lousy,’ complained Bonderev. ‘Our intruder’s right inside the mainframe. All the servers are blocked so we can’t get at them. I think I’ll go back to Moscow now.’
‘Great,’ said Diaz. ‘I can’t go home to Mexico City. My granny would miss the Swiss chocolate.’
They sat and looked at the terminal screen. The can-canning glyphs had settled into a less manic, more stately berserker-mazurka. ‘I don’t know where to start,’ confessed Bonderev. ‘Where’s the DO?’
‘Nobody’s sure. But there’s a lift stuck between levels Eight and Nine.’
‘Crafty bugger!’
‘If he’s any sense, he’ll stay there,’ chanted Diaz.
Her pager bleeped. She glanced at Bonderev, who shrugged his knotted shoulders in defeat. She replaced one of his phones and then answered it with her code. ‘Sorry, he’s busy,’ she said, grimacing at the Russian. ‘No. It just chucked us all out.
We’re still trying to get back in...’ She paused and a look of astonished disbelief flooded into her eyes. ‘ Jesus Maria, you’re joking!’
She put her hand over the receiver and said flatly, ‘New York say they’re picking up top-security UNIT documents on the Internet!’
‘ Bozhe moj! What sort of documents?’
‘Personnel records. They want us to shut down completely.’
‘We can’t shut down,’ he snapped. ‘Not like that. We don’t know what damage it’ll do. This guy’s got a counter move for every situation. He could be leaving bombs and viruses all through the network.’
‘They’re frightened he’ll breach the defence systems.’
‘Ah.’ Bonderev lit another cigarette, while Diaz argued with New York. Finally she put the phone down. ‘They’re going to shut down anyway.’
‘We’ll see,’ he said slowly. ‘Of course, if our friend got in through the back door...’
‘Then why shouldn’t we?’ they chorused together.
They scrambled across the office to a spare terminal.
Bonderev began to laugh as he logged into the e-mail system.
‘This I always wanted to do. Hack my way into the biggest global security system.’
‘It’s your own system,’ commented Diaz.
‘Even better! Anyway I inherited it, so it’s not my fault.’
He was already pummelling his keyboard. Within seconds he was surfing. ‘Look at that!’ A series of menu windows was opening up already. ‘I’m in. That’s crazy.’
‘Someone’s going to have to rewrite the whole UNIT
caboodle.’
Bonderev was grinning in shock. ‘Oh, it’s back to index cards for us.’ He was in Overview by now. ‘Our friend can certainly teach us a thing or two. This is much quicker than usual. Look, he’s unzipped us like a banana! Torn right through.’
Overview displayed a graphic map of the entire network divided into coloured vertical blocks. It highlighted a white path that cut laterally across, jumping from system to system.
‘He’s using the liaison facility I set up,’ announced Bonderev proudly. ‘The one no one ever bothers with.’
‘He’s searching for something,’ said Diaz.
‘And he’s squirting everything he touches out into the Internet. Maybe he’s one of these open government crazies.’
Diaz nodded. ‘Probably British then.’
‘Look, it stops in Personnel Records. He’s still there.’
‘Can you get a fix?’
Bonderev was almost gurgling with pleasure. ‘Ach, my friend. We have you.’
There was a sudden surge of power around them and the lights came on full. ‘Oh, no,’ Diaz hissed.
Bonderev swore loudly. ‘He’s gone. And he turned the lights back on when he went.’ He flopped back in his chair, disgusted. ‘So close!’
‘You weren’t supposed to enjoy that,’ she said.
The terminal pinged at them. A tiny smiley face