separate compartments. “I’m here to install new software upgrades for your local-area network.”
Fromm looked up at her, unable to conceal his bewilderment. “Now? But almost everyone here has already gone home for the night.”
“That’s precisely the point,” the young woman said pleasantly, still smiling.
“You see, to run the upgrades, it’s possible that I’ll have to shut down parts of your system for an hour or two. This way nobody is seriously inconvenienced or loses too much valuable computer time.”
“But you still need an official authorization for that,” Fromm muttered, fumbling quickly through the papers piled on his desk. He looked up at her in confusion. “And I don’t see any approval for this software upgrade. There’s nothing listed here. Plus, Herr Zentner, our IT specialist, is away on vacation for the next three weeks. Somewhere on the beach in Thailand, I think.”
“Lucky for him,” the auburn-haired woman said enviously. “I wish I could get away to the sun and sand, too.” She sighed. “Look, I don’t know why you don’t have the right paperwork. Someone, somewhere, must have fouled things up. Wiesbaden was supposed to have faxed all that here yesterday.”
She rummaged through one of the inner compartments of her attache case and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. “Here’s my copy. See?”
Chewing his lower lip nervously, the security guard got up from his chair.
He read quickly through the copy that she handed him. Written on official letterhead and signed by the director of the Information Technology Division, it ordered Computer Specialist Petra Vogel to conduct a systems software upgrade at the Bundeskriminalamt’s Nikolaiviertel office.
Fromm’s eyes brightened as he saw a discrepancy. “Here’s the problem!” he said, pointing to a telephone number appearing at the top of the document. “This was sent to the wrong place. Our fax number here ends in 46 46.
But your office in Wiesbaden sent this to 46 47 instead. That’s probably the number of a local bakery or a flower shop or something.”
The young woman leaned forw ard to take a look herself, bringing her face very close to his. He swallowed hard, suddenly feeling as though his shirt collar and tie were choking him. The fresh, clean floral scent of her perfume wafted into his flared nostrils.
“Unbelievable,” she murmured. “They muffed it. And now the office in Wiesbaden is closed until tomorrow morning.” She sighed. “So now what am I supposed to do? Go back to my hotel and kick up my heels while waiting for my director’s slow-witted secretary to untangle the mess he’s made?”
Fromm shrugged helplessly. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But I don’t see what else you can do.”
The auburn-haired woman sighed in regret. “That’s a shame.” With a slight pout, she began closing her attache case. “You see, I really wanted to finish this project tonight, so that I could take a day’s leave tomorrow, to explore more of Berlin.”
Fromm caught what he thought might be a subtle nuance in her words. He cleared his throat. “You have friends here to visit? Or family, perhaps?”
“As a matter of fact, no.” She looked meaningfully up at him from under her long, half-lowered eyelashes. “I had hoped to find a new friend. Someone who knows all the ins and outs here in Berlin. Someone who could show me around … maybe even take me to the most exciting new clubs.” Then she sighed. “But I guess I’ll be tied up here instead, just trying to finish the job before my train leaves?”
“No, no, Fraulein,” Fromm said in a strangled voice. “That won’t be necessary.” He held up her authorization letter. “Look, it’s simple enough. What I’ll do is make another copy of this for our records. Then we’ll just pretend it arrived by fax, as it should have. And then you can go ahead and finish your work this evening, as planned.”
“You could do that? Bend the rules that way for me, I mean?” the young woman asked.
“Oh, yes,” Fromm said expansively, puffing out his chest. “Absolutely. I’m the senior security officer on duty. So it’s not a problem. Not a problem at all.”
“That would be wonderful,” she said delightedly, smiling directly at him in a way that made his mouth go dry.
Twenty minutes later, at a landing on the building’s deserted fifth floor, the woman who called herself Petra Vogel stood watching Fromm clomp heavily back down the central staircase running all the way to the ground level. Once he was well out of sight, CIA officer Randi Russell wrinkled her nose in disgust. “What an idiot,” she murmured. “Luckily for me.”
Then she took a deep breath, mentally preparing herself for the risky work ahead. Now that she had vamped her way in through the castle gates, it was time to storm the inner keep. She dipped her hand into her coat and came out with a pair of skintight surgical gloves.
She slipped the gloves on, then turned and entered the room unlocked for her by the ever-helpful Otto Fromm. She carried a set of lockpicks that would have done the job, but it was nice not to have needed them. Even the most sophisticated picks left small scratches inside locks that would show up under close investigation. This operation depended on her getting in and out of the Nikolaiviertel building without leaving hard evidence behind that could tie the CIA to the strange and unexplained actions of the phony Petra Vogel.
Randi closed the door firmly behind her and then carefully examined the layout of the room. Humming and clicking softly, various pieces of compact electronic equipment?sophisticated servers, a modular hub, and routers- lined the walls, connected by a maze of cabling. This was the heart of the State Security Division’s local-area network. Every workstation, printer, and personal computer in the building was tied together by the hardware contained in this one room. Also from here, high-speed, high-security connections linked each office to the main computer systems, databases, and archives inside the BKA’s Wiesbaden headquarters.
She nodded in satisfaction. Phis was exactly where she needed to be. With Karl Zentner, the division’s IT specialist, still off on his long holiday in Thailand, it was unlikely that anyone else here in Berlin would waste much time poking around inside the computer network that he was responsible for maintaining. In the meantime, thanks to her forged ID card, fake paperwork, and Fromm’s over-inflated sexual ego, she had a free pass to try some in- depth digging of her own.
Randi checked her watch. At best, she would only have an hour or so before the balding BKA security guard took his next coffee break and came tramping up the stairs to pester her. It was time to get busy. She moved quickly to a workstation set up in one corner. Rows of well-thumbed software and hardware tech manuals stuffed full of yellow Post-It notes indicated that this must be where Zentner spent most of his time. She pulled up the nearest swivel chair, sat down at the machine, and opened her attache case.
Three of the six CD-ROMs it contained stored legitimate variations of the same information management, access, and retrieval programs used by the Bundeskriminalamt. Two were blanks. The sixth disc held something very different indeed, a piece of highly specialized and extremely advanced software prepared by the CIA’s Office of Research and Development.
Humming quietly to herself, she tapped the keyboard space bar, kicking Zentner’s flat-screen display out of sleep mode. A page topped by the BKA’s logo?a stylized German heraldic eagle with outstretched wings?appeared, welcoming her to the State Security Division’s local-area network. She slid the special CD-ROM into the appropriate drive. The computer whined softly, rapidly transferring information from the disc to its main hard drive. The default screen vanished.
For nearly a minute, Randi held her breath, waiting. Suddenly a small text box flashed onto the blank screen in front of her: DOWNLOAD COMPLETE. SYSTEM READY.
Her shoulder muscles tightened. Her eyes narrowed. Now to find out whether the Agency programmers who had written this code were worth more than their very modest government salaries and pensions. If not, what she was about to do would set off top-level computer security alarms from here to Wiesbaden and back again.
Frowning now as she concentrated, Randi leaned forward and carefully typed in a command of her own: ACTIVATE JANUS.
JANUS, code-named for the Roman god of gates, doors, and beginnings was a top-secret program devised by the CIA’s technical experts to surreptitiously break past or bypass the defenses and alarm systems of a targeted computer network. Once inside those defenses, it was designed to identify, retrieve, and decrypt all of the user identities and passwords stored in the system. And then, by allowing her to masquerade as any BKA staffer?from the lowliest file clerk right up to the agency director himself?the JANUS software should make it possible for Randi to snoop through any file contained in the Bundeskriminalamt’s most secret archives.
