Unauthorized Access (6 page)

“Don’t you worry about my men,” Shayna said. “Right now we need to figure out if Rob’s good enough to marry my number one girlfriend.”

“And how do you propose to do that?”

“We’ll use Shayna’s Test For A Good Man.”

“Oh, you have a test, do you?”

“Your mother didn’t give you one?”

“She must have forgotten.”

“Honestly,” Shayna said. “Sometimes I wonder how you white people survive long enough to reproduce.”

“We manage.”

Shayna pursed her lips and rubbed her chin for a few moments.

“It’s a multi-part test,” she said. “You ready?”

Lesley made a show of pushing aside her drink and napkins. She folded her hands on the table and looked directly at her friend.

“Shoot.”

“Has he ever bought you a gift when it wasn’t a special occasion?”

Lesley had to think about this one. “He brought me a bag of chocolate chip cookies once when I was freaking out over a sociology exam.”

Shayna raised one eyebrow. “Girl, that is totally underwhelming. But technically it’s a pass. I’ll give him a C-minus. Okay, question number two. Is there anything he doesn’t like to do, but he does it anyway because you want him to?”

“You’re saying a good man is one you can put under your thumb?”

“Nah, this just goes to the trainable aspect of the animal. Now answer the question.”

Lesley munched on a french fry as she tried to think of something. After a moment she said, “He’s been known to sit through an entire chick flick with me.”

“But only because you got to the theater and there was nothing on with guns in it, am I right?”

“Absolutely.”

“And I bet he bitched and complained so you’d know how lucky you were.”

“Oh yeah.”

Shayna nodded her head in apparent satisfaction. “Good. For a moment there I was worried he wasn’t male.”

“He is,” Lesley said. “I checked.”

Shayna’s voice dropped to a barely audible level. “Now for the most important part,” she said, her face grave. “Question number three. After you have a fight—” She pointed a finger. “And don’t even think about telling me that never happens. Now after you two claw each other’s eyes out, does he always apologize? Even if you were the one who was wrong?”

Lesley grinned again. “I don’t know about that, but I have to admit he’s pretty good at making up.”

“Oh, this is bad,” Shayna said.

“What?”

“He passed the test. You’re going to have to marry him.”

“Works for me.”

Shayna’s wide smile lit up her whole face. “Good. Now I can start planning how I’m going to embarrass your skinny ass at the stagette party.”

Lesley’s purse warbled with the sound that meant she had received a text message. She pulled out her cell phone and punched a button to bring up the message. The caller id said
Private Number
.

Go to the First Malden Bank right away. You’re going to find some angry customers. The bank lost their money.

* * *

Rob splashed water on his face and ran wet fingers through his hair in an effort to wake himself up. After toweling off, he returned to his cubicle and found a blank sheet of paper on the floor by his desk. He looked at it for a moment with his head cocked to one side. He had no recollection of dropping any paper—and for that matter he couldn’t remember having any blank sheets of paper on his desk.

The strange part was that this had happened before. Every so often he would find an envelope in the middle of his desk, a USB memory stick he had never seen before beside his computer keyboard or, as was the case this afternoon, a blank piece of paper lying around.

Rob shook his head. He was getting punchy after pulling his first all-nighter in years. He dropped the sheet into his recycle box, sat down and went back to work.

* * *

Tim huddled forward in his chair as he finished the text message to Lesley. If anyone happened to walk by his cubicle he didn’t want them to see him sending a message. He doubted anyone would be able to make the connection with Lesley receiving one at the same time, but still, there was no sense taking chances.

He slipped the cell phone back into his pocket. He had paid for it with cash, specifically so he would have an untraceable way to send messages like that one. Soon he and Lesley would have to look out for each other, and Tim knew she had been struggling for bigger stories. The media was sure to hear from their customers that there were problems at First Malden, so Lesley might as well be the first to arrive.

Not that the news people would have any idea about the true cause of all the excitement. Dysart and Kelleher had made it crystal clear that no hint about the sabotage was to be discussed with anyone outside their team. The public was to think any problems were strictly technical, just as Tim had predicted.

Tim glanced at his watch again and saw it was finally two o’clock. A thrill of anticipation filled him. The spectacle should soon begin. He stood up and wandered over to Rob’s cubicle. Rob was hunched over his computer terminal, working away.

“Hey buddy,” Tim said. “How’re you holding up?”

Rob swiveled to face Tim and stretched.

“I’m completely wasted,” Rob said. “Usually by mid-afternoon I’m just getting my second wind, but not today.”

“Tell me about it. I haven’t pulled an all-nighter like that since my senior thesis was due.”

Rob rolled his stiff neck in a circle. “I slept for an hour or so leaned over my desk, but it wasn’t nearly enough.”

Tim noticed the blank sheet of paper wasn’t on the floor where he had planted it earlier. It was now in the recycle box. He made a mental note to return later and use the pair of tweezers he kept in his pocket to slip the paper into a large brown envelope. Then he would have one more item with Rob’s fingerprints for his collection. Tim didn’t know if he would need this one, but it never hurt to be prepared.

Paul Dees appeared beside Tim with an anxious look on his face.

“Did you get it too?” Dees asked Rob.

Rob looked puzzled. “Get what?”

“The email,” Dees said. “I got another one from the Financial Patriots a few minutes ago. Have a look and see if you got it too.”

Rob turned to his monitor and clicked on his email program.

“Yeah, I did,” he said

He opened the message.

Tim read the email over Rob’s shoulder, though he could have recited it from memory.

To the First Malden Bank:

The deadline of noon has come and gone. Obviously you ignored our warning. You had your chance, now you will get what you deserve.

Financial Patriots of America

“Holy shit,” Rob said. “What does they mean, we’ll get what we deserve?”

“It means another attack just happened,” Dees said.

Rob groaned.

“No. Same deal as before?”

Dees nodded. “I found a new scrambled file on the server. It’s bigger this time, big enough for thousands of accounts.”

“Oh man.”

Tim bit his lip to keep his satisfaction from showing. He mentally checked off another step in his plan as successfully completed.

“I’m not sure how many accounts are affected yet,” Dees said, “but Kelleher just called me and said the phone lines are already lighting up with angry customers. We may have to install sooner than we planned. How are you two coming with the code review?”

“Almost done,” Rob said.

Tim nodded. “Same with me,” he said.

“Then keep at it,” Dees said. “In a few minutes we’re getting everyone together for a status check. John wants to know what options he can offer Dysart.”

Dees strode away in the direction of Kelleher’s office.

“This bites,” Rob said. “We can forget about going home any time soon.”

Rob’s worry struck Tim as needless. Before long Rob would have all the idle time he could handle. Tim returned to his computer monitor, where he did his best to keep a satisfied grin off his face.

* * *

“There’s one,” Lesley said.

Shayna pulled the van into the open parking spot.

Lesley hopped out and waited while Shayna worked her magic in the back, selecting the equipment she needed. Shayna emerged after a few seconds and they hoofed it out of the parking garage.

“This feels weird,” Lesley said as they emerged onto the sidewalk. “It’s like I’m sneaking around to check out my uncle’s bank.”

“You’re just doing your job. And you tried calling him. It’s not your fault you couldn’t reach him.”

“I suppose, and it may turn out to be nothing.”

They rounded a corner onto Tremont Street and could see the entrance to the main branch of the First Malden Bank.

“I don’t see any other news crews,” Lesley said.

Shayna handed Lesley a microphone bearing a WNWB-TV logo.

“How do you want to handle this?” Shayna asked.

“Let’s stay outside for now, keep it low key, see what we can find out.”

“Lead on.”

Lesley walked over to a young man who had just emerged from the bank. He appeared to be in his twenties, with close-cropped hair and a small gold earring in his left ear.

“Excuse me. I’m Lesley McGrath with WNWB-TV News. Would you mind if I asked you a few questions?”

“Uh… I suppose.”

“We’d like to get it on camera if you don’t mind.”

He glanced at Shayna. “Sure.”

Lesley waited for Shayna to shoulder the camera. She positioned herself to one side so Shayna could focus on the young man’s face. At Shayna’s nod, she began.

“Hi. What’s your name?”

“Tom Hennebury.”

“We understand that some customers of the bank might be experiencing difficulties today. Do you know anything about this?”

“Yeah, it’s unbelievable. The bank lost my money.”

“How so?”

“I deposited a couple of thousand dollars this morning but when I came back after lunch for some extra cash it was all gone.”

“What do mean by ‘gone’?”

“Just what I said. Gone. The balance was back to what it was this morning before I put the money in. I’m going to college, see, and it was a check from my Dad. I have to live on it until Christmas. Without that money, I’m screwed.”

Lesley could see Shayna grin from behind the camera.

“So I got a statement out of the bank machine,” the man continued, “and it didn’t show anything for today.”

“Do you have any idea what might have caused this?” Lesley asked.

“I asked one of the tellers,” he said, “but I couldn’t get a straight answer. They put the money back in my account after I showed them my receipts, but what if I had thrown them away? There’s something screwy going on here and I’m not the only one who’s upset about it. You should have seen the guy ahead of me. He was really pissed—started yelling that he was going to take his business elsewhere.”

“Are you thinking of switching banks?”

“It’s possible. I’ll wait and see how things pan out.”

“Okay,” Lesley said. “Thank you for your help, Mr. Hennebury.”

After the man walked away, Lesley said, “Rob was hauled in last night to deal with an emergency. I wonder if this is related. Maybe their computers messed up or something.”

“You want to call him?”

“Good idea.”

Lesley pulled out her cell phone and dialed. After a few seconds she closed the phone.

“He’s not answering,” she said.

“Whatever’s going on,” Shayna said, “sounds like your Uncle Stan has major problems.”

“Only one way to find out,” Lesley said. She opened the phone and started dialing again.

* * *

Dysart’s temples throbbed as he glared at Kelleher, who stood in front of his desk like a schoolboy hauled into the principal’s office. Dysart tapped a pen on his desk in agitation.

“Your job,” he said, “is to provide solutions. All you’ve done for the past twenty-four hours is present me with problems.”

“The good news,” Kelleher said, “is that we’ve been doing extra backups today, so we should be able to repair most of the damage.”

“But not all.”

Kelleher sat down in one of the chairs in front of the desk.

“No,” he said. “The most recent backup copy was made at noon, so we’re still missing about two hours worth of transactions.”

“Dammit,” Dysart said. He slammed the pen down on the desk in disgust. “So much for all your fancy disaster recovery plans.”

“We pretty much have recovered. We still think AMS is causing the problem, but the new executable is good to go. Installing it should prevent any more problems.”

“Then do it. Right away.”

“And once that’s done,” Kelleher said, “business goes on as normal. The vast majority of accounts will be perfectly up-to-date. The only problem will be for the accounts that had transactions between noon and two o’clock today.”

“Which is still a huge number of customers,” Dysart said.

“True, but even they can perform transactions right away. AMS will give them an incorrect balance at first, and then we can adjust the accounts manually as those customers come in to complain. Before long we’ll have most of the affected accounts fixed as well.”

The intercom buzzed. Dysart ignored it.

“You might think you’re making progress,” Dysart said, “but all the stuff you’ve talked about does nothing to solve our real problem, which is customer perception. Either we’ve fixed all the problems—and I mean absolutely all—or we haven’t.”

Kelleher sighed. “You know the answer to that one.”

“Then it doesn’t matter if we can conduct business as usual. We’re still the bank that lost our customers’ money.”

“The only way we’re going to recover all the data is to get the keyword. That means finding whoever’s behind the attack.”

The intercom buzzed again, longer this time.

Dysart jabbed the button. “What?”

“Phone call on line one, Mr. Dysart.”

“Not now Mary.”

“I think you need to take this one, sir.”

Mary had been with him for nine years and he trusted her judgment as much as anyone at the bank. “Fine, I’ll take it,” he said into the intercom.