Authors: Robert Muchamore
Andy hated waiting around. Missions were OK
when his mind was occupied, but he had a nervous disposition and waiting always made him start thinking about stuff that could go wrong.
‘OK,’ Greg said when he’d finally accessed the keylogger data. ‘First session, last Friday week. Capital A R then lower case
i s t o t l e
followed by a hash, a percentage sign and the numbers five, three, one and eight.’
Andy was relieved that Windows accepted the password. ‘Never would have guessed that one,’
he gasped, as the desktop and taskbar appeared on screen.
The screen was specifically designed for high resolution work, which left the dozens of tiny icons looking like specks amidst the huge expanse of screen. Greg put his laptop on the carpet and passed Andy a ring-binder and CD-rom from his backpack.
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Andy placed the silver disc in a tray and let the Dell swallow it. A dialogue box popped up on screen and he clicked OK to install a forensic program designed by the securit y services, known as Window Breaker. The program froze time, ensuring that no time and date stamps were left when files were altered. It also enabled a back door into the Windows operating system that bypassed most Windows securit y protocols.
The second program on the CD was a Trojan horse. Once installed, MI5 would be able to access Kurt’s computer, remotely reading his files and monitoring all activit y. The instant the program was installed, Kurt’s anti-virus soft ware f lashed up a warning. Andy had fully expected this and the third program on the CD dealt with it by installing a patch that made the anti-virus turn a blind eye to the unwanted soft ware.
‘OK, that’s the soft ware installed,’ Andy smiled. ‘You’d better start hunting for the dreaded backups.’
Andy planned to spend most of the next three hours altering Kurt’s centrifuge design so that it wouldn’t work. Greg had to search the office and
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the rest of the house and overwrite any backup copies he could find with a doctored version of the original stolen file.
But this left MI5 with t wo major headaches. First, if Kurt looked back at any previous versions of his work for any reason he’d realise that the files had been tampered with. Second, there was no way of knowing whether Kurt had stashed an extra backup under the f loorboards, at a friend’s house, or even in a safet y deposit box on the other side of town.
All MI5 could do about this was cross their fingers, not let Lydon out of sight and move swiftly to arrest him if he began to suspect that he was under surveillance.
‘Remember,’ Andy said, ‘it’s a t went y-gigabyte file, so it won’t fit on a memory stick or a DVD. You’re only looking for backup hard drives.’
Greg sounded slightly irritated. ‘I know, Andy. I read the briefing too.’
He started off by running a search on the hard drives of Kurt Lydon’s twin servers as Andy opened Lydon’s AutoCAD soft ware and found the latest version of the centrifuge design. The 3D model
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comprised over three thousand parts and even on one of the fastest PCs available it took nearly t wo minutes to load.
Once Andy was sure that he’d opened the right file he plugged a portable hard drive into the USB
port on the front of the machine and made a duplicate copy. MI5 would st udy this file to establish how quickly Kurt was progressing with his simplified design.
By the time this was finished, Greg had
overwritten a file on the other PC and began searching drawers and shelves for backup drives. Andy now had to enter t he alterations
t hat would sabotage Kurt’s redesign work. A hundred and fort y-t hree parts had to be changed, and each one required up to a dozen individual alterations.
It was impossible to remember all of these, so one of Lydon’s former colleagues had made a checklist, complete with detailed instructions, screenshots and even printouts of specific menus within the sophisticated software. It was delicate work: one decimal point in the wrong place could leave an obvious f law in the design that would make Kurt
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Lydon suspicious and blow the whole operation. Andy put one hand over the spaceball and
another over the keyboard before muttering
‘Concentrate,’ to himself.
He opened the ring-binder and started to read:
Alteration one, locate part spacer bearing seventeen
. Andy navigated expertly with the spaceball, finding the part using the search tool, zooming in and then changing the display properties so that the wire frame outline of his target part was the only thing on screen.
Select the fourth and sixth sprocket holes. Alter the
thread properties from one sixteenth of a millimetre to
one eighteenth of a millimetre. Rotate the object in
relationship to the Y-axis within the main design by
point zero seven of a degree.
It was brain numbing stuff and it wasn’t helped by Greg humming as he rif led noisily through a filing cabinet.
‘Dude,’ Andy said fiercely. ‘Shut up.’
Greg didn’t appreciate the tone, but he’d seen the complexit y of Andy’s instructions and didn’t envy his task. ‘Sorry mate,’ he said. ‘I’ll be done searching here in a minute anyway.’
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*
Two hours later, Andy sat at the giant screens rubbing tired eyes. Greg took a mouthful of Pepsi and popped a couple of M&Ms in his mouth. Greg had inspected the family PC and George’s laptop, but the only centrifuge design he’d found was an original stored on a backup hard drive on top of a kitchen cabinet.
To speed Andy’s task, Greg now stood alongside with the ring-binder, reading his instructions out loud. The operation wasn’t going badly and they were ahead of schedule, but the task required absolute concentration and it was three hours past when they’d normally be in bed.
‘Alteration one hundred,’ Greg said, sounding slightly triumphant because they’d finally progressed to a three-digit number. ‘Open the submodel of the motor unit G and alter the specification of the insulation . . .’
Greg didn’t finish because his phone started to vibrate. It was their mission controller.
‘How’s it going?’ John asked.
‘Not too shabby,’ Greg said. ‘It doesn’t look like Kurt’s too thorough about backing up his data and
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we should be finished inside an hour if we’re not interrupted.’
‘Out of luck on that score, I’m afraid,’ John said. ‘They’re triangulating the position of Sophie Lydon’s mobile phone in the control room on campus. She called for a cab a while back and it looks like she’ll be home in six to eight minutes.’
Greg glanced at his watch and saw that it was only half-past one. ‘Didn’t you tell me that the club was open till three?’
‘It might well be,’ John said. ‘But you don’t
have
to stay till closing time. Don’t get discouraged, you’ve got all the equipment and we made plans for an interruption. Wait until Sophie goes to sleep, then use the gas and the needle, like with her mother.’
‘I know the plan,’ Greg said reluctantly, before tapping Andy on the shoulder. ‘We’d better clear out.’
‘Bloody Sophie,’ Andy complained, as Greg snapped his phone shut. ‘Would have been so much simpler if she’d waited till we were done.’
The t wo boys stuck all their stuff back inside their packs, hurried back into George’s bedroom and threw their sleeping bags out on the f loor.
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Andy was tense, but he couldn’t help but see the funny side of Zhang’s loud snoring.
It was less than ten minutes, but it felt like ages before Sophie’s key rattled in the front door. She hurried down the hallway and used the downstairs toilet, before staggering upstairs, barefoot, with a bottle of Highland Spring water in one hand and her black heels hanging from the other.
Andy peeked out of the open doorway and saw that Sophie was drunk. Her head bopped to a tune in her mind and she was murmuring the line of a song to herself, over and over.
Instead of heading into her own room, Sophie ratcheted up the tension by poking her head inside George’s open door. Greg and Andy closed their eyes and kept dead still.
‘Ahh, the little geeks are sleeping,’ she muttered to herself, before giggling.
Sophie started to back out, but noticed Andy’s bag of M&Ms and a half-drunk can of beer on the carpet.
‘Mummy won’t be happy if she sees that, little brother,’ Sophie grinned, before tilting the can to take a swig.
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Andy and Greg weren’t sure if the can was drugged or alcohol-free, but it didn’t really matter because they needed to get on with the operation and couldn’t wait t wo hours to put Sophie to sleep. The beer was warm and f lat, so Sophie spat it out in disgust. Greg opened one eye slightly, and saw Sophie’s painted toenails on the carpet just a few centimetres away from his face.
‘I’ll teach you to mess with Mr Rabbit,’
Sophie slurred.
Smiling mischievously, she poured Andy’s
M&Ms on to the carpet near the doorway and then crunched them under her heel. Once they were nicely mashed she tipped the remainder of the beer on to the brightly-coloured mess. Even if the liquid dried up by morning, a multicoloured stain and the distinctive smell of beer would remain.
‘Talk your way out of that one, Georgie boy,’
Sophie said quietly.
She gave her bum a jubilant wiggle and laughed drunkenly as she staggered out and grabbed the handle of her bedroom door, but it was still locked from earlier.
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Greg and Andy realised the same thing at the same time: George’s mum had hidden the key so that the boys couldn’t get back into Sophie’s room. The only way Sophie could get into her room would be to ask her mum where the key was and if Sophie went into her mum’s room and found that she wouldn’t wake up she’d scream the house down.
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9. PLANS
There was a lot at stake: a corrupt scientist, a centrifuge design worth millions, the chance to infiltrate the highest levels of the Dark Sun network and the opportunit y to stop some crazed dictator or terrorist getting their hands on a nuclear bomb a few years down the line.
Greg and Andy hoped some scenario from their training would leap out with a solution, but all they felt was blind panic as Sophie headed drunkenly down the hallway towards her mother’s bedroom.
‘Try unlocking her door,’ Greg whispered to Andy, as he darted out into the hallway. ‘Hey Sophie. What’s up?’
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Sophie put a hand on her hip and looked at Greg as if he was something nast y on the bottom of her shoe. ‘Piss off back to bed,’ she tutted.
‘I saw what you just did with the M&Ms,’ Greg warned. ‘I had one eye open the whole time.’
Sophie shrugged. ‘My mum’s never gonna
believe you.’
‘She might,’ Greg said, as he stopped walking half a metre from Sophie. He didn’t have a clue what to say, so he blurted the first thing that came into his head. ‘I might forget all about it if you give us a quick snog.’
Sophie tutted incredulously. ‘In your dreams, pervert.’
‘Come on,’ Greg said. He was about the same height as Sophie and he put his hand on her shoulder. ‘Just a quick Frenchie.’
‘EUGHH!’ Sophie shuddered, before giving
Greg a t wo-handed push. ‘Touch me again and I’ll knock your block off.’
Down the hallway, Andy turned his body so that Sophie couldn’t see what he was up to as he worked on her door with the lock gun. Sophie felt intimidated as she backed up towards the chest
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near the staircase: Greg was only twelve, but he looked strong and she knew that he’d seen off t wo Year Ten boys.
Greg sensed Sophie’s fear and took a step back. ‘I’m only messing,’ he said. ‘I’m not gonna hurt you.’
‘Ta-da!’ Andy said, from down the hallway, throwing the lock gun back into George’s room as he pushed Sophie’s door open.
‘Sorted,’ Greg smiled, as he looked down the hallway. ‘Now you don’t need to wake your mum up.’
But the booze in Sophie’s bloodstream made her paranoid and Greg’s attempt at blackmail, followed by a sudden eagerness to please, was totally creeping her out. The instant Greg turned to look back at Andy, she grabbed a vase off the cabinet at the top of the stairs.
Greg saw it move out the corner of his eye, but Sophie was fast and brought the vase down hard over the back of his head. It didn’t break over his skull, but slipped from Sophie’s grasp and shattered on the wooden acorn at the top of the stair rail.
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‘Keep your hands off me, weirdo,’ Sophie
screamed, as she followed up with a remarkably well-aimed Karate kick.
Even two years of the best combat training can’t protect you when you’re taken by surprise. Greg doubled over and groaned with pain as Sophie stormed down the hallway towards Andy.
‘Where’s the key?’ Sophie demanded. ‘I swear, if you guys have touched
anything
inside my room . . .’
‘There’s no key,’ Andy said. ‘I just know how to pick locks.’
‘You’re so full of it,’ Sophie screamed. She felt confident after f lattening Greg and gave Andy an almight y shove.
‘Gimme my key,’ Sophie shouted, as she
launched a full f ledged assault by trying to knee Andy in the stomach.