“Is it a real e-mail with a note from me?” Sula had a little guilt about sending a Trojan horse to a friend at Prolabs.
Paul laughed. “Hell no. Nothing traceable. I’ll send it from an anonymous hotmail account. I just need an e- mail address.”
Sula considered her options. “Will the IT people at Prolabs detect the embedded file? Will they be able to track its source?”
Paul shrugged. “Maybe. Eventually. I doubt if they get much activity. They’re probably pretty complacent.”
“Send it to Karl Rudker. That’s K, R, U, D, K, E, R at Prolabs. com.”
“Perfect. He’ll have no one to blame for it.”
Sula watched over Paul’s shoulder as he created a phony e-mail about a vacation resort. In the subject line, he typed: For top. level pharma execs only. Then he accessed a program stored on his hard drive.
“You have such a program on hand?”
“The guys at EFN are compulsive code writers and they like to keep me in the loop. I never, make that rarely, use any of the programs they create.”
“They’re just snoopers, right? They don’t send out worms or viruses over the internet do they?”
“Oh no. They hate that crap as much as everyone else. Maybe more. Ready?”
“Sure.”
Paul pressed Send and Sula felt a shiver of excitement. She wasn’t sure if it was the idea of getting into places where she didn’t belong or using Rudker to sabotage himself.
Paul turned and grinned at her. “That e-mail is now being routed through hundreds of internet providers, so no one will ever trace it back to me. Now, let’s take a look at their mainframe and see if they have any vulnerabilities.”
She watched him type in an ftp:// address, then in rapid-fire motion, click through a Prolabs’ site she’d never seen. The screen changed rapidly and Sula found it hard to keep her eyes on the monitor. It was like watching a speeded-up online computer class.
“I’ll park a port scanner outside the main server to monitor all the VPN activity. Sooner or later, we’ll pick up a password.” Paul tried to sound casual, but she could tell he was psyched. Sula found it hard to stay tuned in. She was not a techie. She’d taken website development classes just to be ready for any workplace, but she used her computer to write, look for information online, read blogs, and send e-mails.
She wandered over to the window. A group of young men gathered in the parking lot behind the apartments. They passed a joint and talked loudly. With their blue jeans, black sweatshirts, and dark hair, only their faces were illuminated under the darkening sky. For a moment, Sula envied their carefree lives. She walked back to where Paul was clicking away.
“Next we try the back door. What other websites or FTPs would Prolabs be linked to?”
“You mean like FDA? For transferring clinical trial data?”
“Exactly.” Paul snapped his fingers and pointed at her. “Except not the Food and Drug Administration. I think they might be a little tough to get into and a little pissed off if they caught me trying.”
Sula gave it some thought. “The company’s websites are linked to a lot of disease management sites and PhRMA of course. But Prolabs doesn’t send data to any site that I know of.” She stopped, realizing that wasn’t true. “Except clinical trial sites and TrialWatch, which gathers data on all clinical studies.”
Paul quickly found the TrialWatch site. The home page was divided into two sides: one for patients looking for trials and one for doctors. “What’s the name of the drug again?”
“Nexapra.”
Paul typed as Sula spelled it for him. He used a scroll bar to select Oregon as a location. Two clinical investigator names and locations appeared onscreen, one in Eugene and one in Portland.
“Print that page, please.” Sula wasn’t sure what she would do with the information, but it pleased her to have it. “Plug in Puerto Rico and see if anything comes up.”
The location wasn’t on the scroll bar, so Paul typed it into the space. As his GE four-in-one printed out the first page, Dr. David Hernandez and all his contact information came into view.
“I’ll be damned.” This information pleased her even more. “Print that too.”
Paul was already on it.
“What now?”
“I’ll play around on this site for a while to see if it has any cracks in its structure. But mostly, we wait. Both of our snoop programs may take a few days to generate a usable password.”
“I thought hacking websites was instant, in and out.”
“I’m using old-school stuff. I’m not current because I don’t do this anymore, remember, except as a favor for a friend.” Paul grinned.
“Thanks, Paul.”
“No problem. This is the most fun I’ve had in weeks.”
“Do you mind if I get out of here? I’m still exhausted from not sleeping last night.”
“I’ll call you as soon as I get into the R amp;D database.”
Sula folded the printouts and slipped them into her purse. She was still amazed by the information that could be gathered online in twenty minutes or less. She kissed Paul’s forehead, then headed back across town.
At home when she plugged her cell phone into the charger, she realized she’d missed a call. She connected to voice mail and braced herself, thinking Rudker may have left an intimidating message.
Instead, a pleasant male voice said, “Hi Sula. This is Aaron DeSpain. We had the little fender bender the other day. I’m calling to see if you’d like to get together for coffee or something. If you do, I’m at 686-4597.”
Chapter 19
Monday, April 19th, 2:10 p. m
Trina’s phone rang, breaking her concentration. She wanted to ignore it and keep working on her story, but she could no more ignore a ringing phone than she could go on the air without makeup. She believed in the ripple effect of everything she did or didn’t do. The one time she didn’t answer the phone, she would miss the hottest story of the year. The one time she didn’t look her best, a talent scout would be watching her newscast. She picked up the phone.
“Trina Waterman,” she said with a touch of impatience.
“This is Allen Sebring with the accounting firm of Anderson and Shire. I think I have a story for you. Will you meet me this afternoon?”
“I can’t make it today. I’m on deadline. What’s the story?” She had no time for this, and yet she was intrigued.
“I can’t talk about it over the phone, but I guarantee, you’ll like the lead.”
“Tomorrow morning at 10:30. Starbucks on the corner of 7th and Washington. You know what I look like, right?”
“Of course. But I need to do this now, before I lose my courage.”
Trina couldn’t resist. He seemed to be suffering from the stress holding it all in, and she loved a ripe story.
“Okay. Same place, in forty minutes.”
“Thanks. See you then.”
Trina would have liked to walk the short mile to the coffee shop-any opportunity to exercise-but she didn’t have time today. She spent another ten minutes crafting her follow-up report about the murdered woman found near the river, then hurriedly ate the fruit salad she’d brought for lunch.
This better be good, she thought as she headed out.
Allen Sebring didn’t look like an accountant. He was tall and thin with a long angular face. Hunched over the small coffee shop table, Trina thought if he swapped his brown tweed jacket for a black overcoat, he could play Lurch. Out of habit, she visualized him from the lens of a camera. Compelling, in a freak show sort of way, she
