‘Good morning, ladies,’ Nolan greeted the FBI agents as he entered the office with Grin.
‘Take a seat,’ Sean Kilkenny ordered, ‘I want you three to hear what the FBI just told me.’ Sean Kilkenny’s body language signaled loud and clear that the news was not good.
‘We appreciate your cooperation on this investigation,’ Ullrich began. ‘Without your efforts, we wouldn’t have been able to follow this hacker at all.’
So far so good, Nolan thought to himself.
‘In each of the telephone traces we initiated, we were unsuccessful in locating any unusual communications entering your network. Your monitoring made it easy for us to find out where he was going, but we still don’t know how he’s getting in. The lack of any incoming traffic to this building has led Agent Harbke and myself to believe that our suspect is operating from inside your computer network.’
Boom! The other shoe dropped with a resounding thud in Nolan’s mind. ‘You think our hacker is someone inside MARC?’
Ullrich didn’t appear the least bit defensive toward Nolan’s challenge. ‘Yes, it’s the only theory that fits the evidence thus far. We’re dealing with a very sophisticated computer penetration by a highly skilled individual. This is a person with advanced knowledge of networks and operating systems, a person capable of altering system records to hide his or her presence.’
‘Frankly speaking,’ Harbke added, ‘Agent Ullrich and I are very impressed by this individual. In our years of dealing with these types of crimes, we’ve never come across anyone quite this good.’
‘Son, they’ve requested a list of our employees and researchers with system access.’ Sean obviously didn’t like the idea that a member of his staff was a criminal hacker. ‘I want you and Grin to assemble the information they need.’
‘That list will be easy, but the two most likely suspects are sitting right here,’ Grin said, indicating Nolan and himself.
The possibility that they could be considered suspects had never dawned on Nolan until this moment. ‘True, nobody else around here knows the system like we do. There’s got to be someone else, though…’
Nolan’s line of thought was cut short by his beeper. He looked down to the device clipped to his waist to read off the number. ‘It’s the lab. Our hacker is making another run through the system. Ladies, you’re just in time for another live performance.’
Everyone bolted from the office and double-timed it to the MARC computer lab. Grin took up his station at the Cray, and Nolan sat in front of the laptop. The FBI agents and Nolan’s father watched over Nolan’s shoulder as the hacker began punching his way through computer systems.
‘Grin,’ Nolan called out, ‘can you bring up the internal network status?’
Grin was scanning rapidly through the network’s status screens. ‘One step ahead of you. Other than a couple of researchers, no one else is tied into the mainframe.’
‘Damn, how is this guy getting into the Cray?’ The situation didn’t make any sense at all to Nolan; the intruder had to be on one of the incoming communication lines. ‘Let’s drop those two off the system and see if that has any effect.’
‘I’m cutting them loose. Hope they’re not too mad at me.’ Grin sent out a ‘Thirty seconds to shutdown’ warning, which caused the MARC researchers to scramble to close their files before the network cut them off. Both were off the system with a second and a half to spare.
‘We’re all alone now,’ Grin announced. ‘Is our friend still there?’
‘Happily hacking away, but from where?’ There was puzzled disappointment in Nolan’s voice.
Special Agent Harbke wandered away from the rest, looking over the jury-rigged wiring connections behind the Cray. She followed the bundle of network fiber-optic cables as they emerged from the raised access floor like an orange tentacle reaching into the back of the Cray. Another bundle of thickly wrapped cables ran from the Cray into the floor and emerged in a glass-enclosed portion of the lab. Through the glass, she saw a metallic cube and two cylinders of liquid nitrogen.
‘I’m going to bring down the internal network, leaving only our line from here to campus up. If he’s inside MARC, we’ll know it real soon.’ Grin typed furiously, entering the commands that would sever the communication links between the mainframe and every PC inside the MARC complex. With MARC’s internal network down, the hacker could only be coming from the outside.
‘Is he gone yet?’ Grin asked as MARC’s internal network shut down.
The hacker was still cycling through their computer down to the university’s Main Computing Center. ‘Nope, he’s still there.’
‘Excuse me, Mr Grinelli,’ Harbke called out from across the lab, ‘but could you explain something to me?’
Grin turned to face Harbke, who stood in front of the MARC network connections. ‘Sure, but only if you call me Grin. What’s your question?’
‘The network line you’re tapped into is part of that bundle feeding into the back of the mainframe’-Harbke pointed to the orange-coated fiber-optic cables-‘and from there you can access campus or the outside world, correct?’
Grin’s eyes followed the cable bundle from the end connected to the mainframe until it disappeared into a floor tray. ‘Yeah, that’s right.’
Harbke then crouched down and pointed to a wellinsulated cable bundle that emerged from the floor. ‘Then what’s this super-cooled connection used for?’
‘You want to field that one, Kelsey?’ Grin asked.
Kelsey walked over to where Harbke stood looking at a spaghetti tangle of cables. ‘That’s a TBpS cable, which we use to carry-’
‘Terra Bytes per Second,’ Harbke completed the sentence. ‘But what’s it doing here? These are still experimental, and the fiber lines should be more than adequate to service this equipment.’
‘Adequate for what’s inside this room.’ Kelsey then turned toward the glass wall separating the main lab from her own. ‘Our TBpS cable connects the Cray to an experiment of mine in the next room.’
‘Where are you coming from?’ Grin’s frustrated shout drew everyone’s attention.
Nolan walked over and stood behind Grin’s chair to watch the screens over his shoulder. ‘What’s up?’
‘This guy is really good. I don’t have a clue how he’s getting over the network and through the Cray. I’ve isolated every communications feed I can find and he’s still out there. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he was here in the lab.’
‘That’s what I’m getting at,’ Harbke answered from beside the ITC line. ‘You’ve isolated the outside phone lines and campus network ties and come up empty. Grin has shut down the building, and we still have nothing. Your laptop is wired into this line, and it still says that the hacker is out there. If I read your wiring correctly, I’d say the only cable we haven’t looked at is this one.’
‘It can’t be the ITC cable,’ Kelsey argued. ‘It only goes from here to there. We can see the entire thing.’
Harbke didn’t look convinced, and she continued playing devil’s advocate. ‘Maybe, and maybe not. Did you put that cable in yourselves, or was it contracted out?’
‘We had the professionals install that cable,’ Grin replied. ‘I went to school for two weeks on it, but I wouldn’t want to try and put one in.’
Harbke knew she was grasping at straws and could sense the doubt in the others’ minds. ‘I know it’s a long shot, but we have to eliminate every possibility, no matter how remote.’
‘All right, we’ll give it a shot.’ Nolan slapped Grin on the shoulder. ‘Let’s get to it.’
Grin and Nolan spent the next ten minutes tapping into the ITC cable.
‘Here goes nothing,’ Nolan said.
The laptop displayed two windows, side by side. One depicted the information flowing through the Cray; the other reported on the ITC cable.
‘Nolan,’ Kelsey said with a touch of concern, ‘this shows the hacker’s on our ITC cable.’
‘Can’t be,’ Nolan said, ‘I must have gotten the wiring ass-backward.’
Nolan rechecked the laptop; he’d programmed everything correctly. ‘This is weird. The laptop thinks that it’s picking up our hacker on the ITC cable, but that’s impossible. I must have screwed this program up somehow.’
‘Well, let’s prove it once and for all.’ Grin reached down and yanked the monitor wires from the Cray’s network.
The first window on the laptop suddenly went blank and an error message appeared, indicating that the
