The Genius Wars (10 page)

Inserting a vulnerability into such a well-defended system was going to be difficult.

‘I need to give our hacker a weak spot,’ he explained to his foster parents, after telling them about his plan. ‘I need to set a trap, so he’ll walk right into it without suspecting anything.’

Saul grunted. He was driving through a dim suburban labyrinth, heading towards Judith’s place; Cadel was sitting behind him, and Fiona was in the front passenger seat. Outside, pools of electric light illuminated bus stops and palm trees, red roofs and corner shops. Narrow slivers of parkland were full of exposed rock and scrubby, seaside groundcover.

The sand-blasted streets were empty of traffic.

‘What’s going to be really difficult is making this look like a genuine oversight, when everything else is so battened down,’ Cadel continued. But still there was no response from the detective, who remained very withdrawn, as if troubled by an ache in the guts.

Fiona was also quite subdued, though whether from anxiety or fatigue Cadel had no way of knowing.

‘I hope this doesn’t mean you’ll be staying up all night,’ she said dully. ‘Because I really don’t want that happening, Cadel.’

‘It won’t,’ he promised. ‘If a hacker tries to get in, he’ll trigger some sort of alarm. Maybe the fire alarm, or the motion sensor
alarm – something that’ll wake us up. All those alarms are connected to The Wife, so it won’t be too hard to manage.’

‘And what if he gets past your ambush? What if he fills the house with gas while we’re asleep?’ As Fiona stared at him, aghast, Saul reeled off a few more worst-case scenarios. ‘Suppose he starts a fire with some kinda short-circuit? Suppose he locks us in the panic room and turns off the air-con? If this guy is as good as you make out, don’t you think we’ll be running a pretty big risk?’

‘Oh, my God.’ Fiona was practically hyperventilating. ‘Is that possible?’

‘No,’ said Cadel. ‘Because he
won’t
get past the ambush. Don’t worry. I’ve thought about this.’

‘So I gather.’ Saul braked as he approached a stop sign. ‘Shame you didn’t share those thoughts with us back at the hospital.’

Cadel stiffened. He could sense what was coming, and opened his mouth to defend himself. But Fiona was too quick for him.

‘Maybe this isn’t such a good idea,’ she fretted. ‘Maybe we should go back home.’

‘But –’

‘The police can set up an ambush, can’t they?’ Fiona appealed to her husband. ‘What about Sid and Steve and all those other computer people? They’re
paid
to take risks.’

‘But Vee isn’t after them,’ Cadel broke in, before Saul could reply. ‘I told you. This is supposed to be a honey trap, and you can’t set a trap without bait.’ It was maddening, the way people kept missing the point – even intelligent people, like Fiona. Cadel had to remind himself that she was tired. He had to make allowances for the fact that she hadn’t been raised by Prosper English. He had to be patient, even though he felt like thumping the seat with his fist.

I’ve got to stay calm
, he thought.
I can’t get too upset, or I won’t be any good to anyone
. And aloud he said, ‘If Vee hijacked that wheelchair, then he’s been watching me. And if he’s been doing
that
,
then he’ll find out I’m at Judith’s place. But he won’t try anything if there’s a cybercrime team running in and out. He’s much too smart.’

There was a long pause. Saul had turned into Judith’s street, and was cruising along at a gentle pace, scanning the dimly lit street numbers. His headlights picked out a parked car here, a letter box there. Most of the fences were big and solid, made of stone or steel or rendered brick.

‘So Vee’s your man, is he?’ the detective said at last, in a neutral tone. Cadel gave a nod.

‘Either Vee or someone just as good,’ he confirmed.

‘If he’s as smart as you say, what makes you think he’ll fall for a honey trap?’ Saul pulled into Judith’s driveway. ‘What makes you think he won’t get suspicious, and stay well clear?’

‘He might,’ Cadel had to concede. ‘But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t give it a go. Because we have to get him. We
have
to. Otherwise he’ll try again.’ Cadel leaned forward, clutching the driver’s headrest. A rising sense of urgency – almost of panic – was making him shrill, so he took a few deep breaths to calm himself. ‘And we can’t keep living like this,’ he concluded. ‘Not any more. It’s got to stop.’

Fiona clicked her tongue. She had caught the note of desperation in his voice, and understood why it was there. ‘Oh, sweetie,’ she said, reaching around to press his hand. Beside her, Saul activated the garage remote. And as the wide, white, automated door in front of them lifted like a portcullis, he guided his car underneath it.

‘I’m so tired of the
surveillance
,’ Cadel went on. ‘I thought I was through with all that.’

‘I know,’ Fiona sympathised.

‘It won’t stop unless we catch Prosper. We’ll never be safe, otherwise.’ Cadel tried to clear away the lump that was blocking his throat. ‘It could be you next. Or Judith. Or Gazo,’ he quavered. ‘It could be anyone. Anyone who has anything to do with me.’

‘Shh.’ Fiona patted his white-knuckled fingers. ‘We still don’t
know if this was an accident. And we
won’t
know until someone has a really good look at that wheelchair.’

‘It wasn’t an accident.’ Cadel refused to be comforted. ‘It was Prosper.’

‘I don’t blame you for thinking that, after what you’ve been through,’ Fiona said earnestly. ‘But you mustn’t let Prosper dominate your life, Cadel.’

At that precise moment, Saul killed the engine – and a sudden, dense silence enfolded them all. Though Judith’s garage had been designed to accommodate three cars, there were no other vehicles in sight: just a huge collection of junk. Cadel could see old paint tins and curtain rods, a stepladder, a leaf blower, a collection of plastic storage bins, a spool of cable, a broken chair, a golf bag and a whipper snipper. When Saul extinguished the headlights, this array of domestic debris remained clearly visible, thanks to Judith’s sensor-activated lighting system.

‘I’m not paranoid,’ Cadel declared, after a brief pause. ‘You think I’m overreacting –’

‘No. I don’t.’ Fiona turned in her seat to address him. ‘My concern is that you seem to feel responsible for all this. When you’re not.’

‘Of course I am!’ he spluttered. ‘I’m the target, aren’t I? And I’ve got a better chance of tracking down Prosper than anyone else has!’

All of a sudden, Saul spoke up. ‘You’re probably right.’ He was staring at the exposed brick wall beyond the windscreen, his hands at rest on the steering wheel. ‘And I realise how hard it is for you to trust other people, since it’s not the way you were raised. Apart from anything else, other people screw up, sometimes. Because they aren’t as clever as you are.’ Saul’s gaze shifted to the rear-view mirror. ‘All the same, you can’t win this on your own. Prosper has his cronies; you’re gonna need your own team. You can see that, can’t you? Without help, you’ll be fighting a losing battle.’

There was an unassailable logic to this argument, which Cadel couldn’t challenge. He didn’t even try. Instead he slumped
back against his seat, gathering up his computer bag as he did so. All at once he felt completely drained.

Saul pushed open the driver’s door.

‘Maybe I’d better check this place out, first,’ he proposed. ‘You should probably stay with the car.’

Cadel sighed.

‘You don’t have to worry,’ he said. ‘If Prosper was using hired guns, he wouldn’t have bothered to hijack Sonja’s wheelchair.’

Saul, however, was adamant. So while Cadel and Fiona waited, the detective carried out a careful inspection of Judith’s luxurious abode, from the cable-strewn attic space to the wine-storage cabinet under the stairs. It was a good fifteen minutes before Cadel was given an all-clear.

In the interim, he eavesdropped on a call that Fiona made to the hospital – where Judith had nothing new to report on Sonja’s condition.

It wasn’t until half-past nine that Cadel and Fiona finally left the garage, emerging into Judith’s enormous, gleaming foyer. Though it boasted a lavish chandelier, this room – like the rest of the house – was almost completely empty; while Judith had spent a great deal on electrical equipment, she wasn’t much interested in things like tables or bookshelves. Marooned on vast expanses of parquet and limestone, her few sticks of furniture looked small and cowed, like squatters in a museum.

Only Sonja’s ground-floor room was fully furnished. It had originally been designed as a study, and was as well supplied with bookshelves as it was poorly provided with built-in hanging space. Therefore, as well as her special bed, her chest of drawers, her desk, her bedside tables, and her elegant ash-veneer entertainment console (supporting a widescreen TV), Sonja’s room was crammed with several large wardrobes. It had also been decorated with a colourful assortment of posters, eye-puzzles, photographs, patchwork cushions and mathematical-print lampshades.

Her number-shaped candles, lined up along the windowsill, caught Cadel’s eye as he passed her bedroom. And they affected
him so painfully that he had to close the door before proceeding.

He couldn’t afford to break down – not yet.

Beyond the former library was an open-plan dining area. Next came the kitchen, beside which was tucked the cramped and windowless box (part pantry, part home office) that Judith used as a panic room. The walls of this room were lined with cupboards. A toilet had been concealed in one cupboard; the other was stocked with a sleeping bag, a first-aid kit, a toolbox, a torch, a microwave oven, a set of cutlery and some plastic dishes. All of this stuff had come with the house, along with the emergency food supply – which Judith had been raiding for a couple of years. Only the tinned food was left, and most of that was past its use-by date.

A single wheeled typist’s chair sat in front of a built-in desk, flanked on both sides by stacked shelves of technology.

‘I hope you’re not going to stay up all night, patrolling the exits,’ Cadel remarked, as he settled in front of The Wife. He was speaking to Saul, who had dragged a kitchen stool into the panic room, and was perched on top of it. ‘Because you don’t have to. If there’s an attack, it’ll come through the Internet. Not through a smashed window.’

‘We’ll see,’ Saul replied cryptically.

‘I doubt that Gazo will be much good to us, either,’ Cadel continued, tapping out codes and passwords. Numbers unrolled across the screen in front of him. Panels blinked on and off. Layer by layer, he worked down into the core of Judith’s network, while he toyed with the idea of tweaking the collision resistance in a cryptographic hash function. Would Vee be tempted to launch a length extension attack? ‘Gazo could fell an army at fifty paces,’ he muttered, ‘but that’s not much good if we’re up against a hacker in Hong Kong.’

‘Hong Kong?’ Saul echoed.

Cadel shrugged.

‘Somewhere that’s not Sydney,’ he amended. ‘Somewhere that’s a long way from here.’ And then he saw it.

There. Right there, in the back trace.

‘That might be true,’ Saul was saying. ‘But until we’ve established that you need protective custody –’ All at once he stopped, having caught sight of Cadel’s expression. ‘What’s up? Cadel?’

‘Oh, shit.’

‘Is there a problem?’

‘Somebody was in here.’ Cadel couldn’t believe his eyes. ‘Somebody got past my firewalls!’

‘Cadel.’ Saul rose. ‘Leave it. Don’t touch it.’

‘This is crazy!’ Cadel cried, ignoring him. ‘How could –? Unless Judith’s to blame.’

‘Cadel,’ Saul repeated. He grabbed Cadel’s shoulder, but was shaken off.

So he moved towards the power supply.

‘Don’t!’ Cadel barked. ‘Just let me do this!’

‘It’s not safe.’

‘Yes, it is. He can’t electrocute me. I have to see what’s happened.’ Peering at the screen, Cadel scowled as he began to check Judith’s programs. All of them had been hijacked by a piece of malware designed to reroute commands and disable passwords. It had rummaged through bitmaps and subroutines. It had seized control of the operating system.

It had turned on the CCTV cameras – and the microphones, as well.

‘Oh, Christ,’ Cadel groaned.

‘What?’ By now Saul was gripping the back of Cadel’s chair. ‘Tell me.’

‘He’s been eavesdropping.’

‘What?’

‘Whoever built this house wanted a sound-recording facility,’ Cadel explained, frantically jabbing at the keyboard.
Click-click. Click-click-click-click-click.
‘Judith told me about it. The original owners were paranoid. They liked to know what their cleaners were saying, and whether they were using the phone or the TV … stuff like that.’ He paused for a moment, glancing around at
Saul. ‘Judith had the mikes disabled, but they’re on, now. And so are the cameras.’

The detective hissed. Then he straightened, and yelled ‘
Fiona!
’ before addressing Cadel in a voice that was barely audible.

‘Can you switch them off again?’

‘You bet,’ Cadel replied. ‘I’m pulling the plug.’

‘
Fiona
!’

‘I might as well, since he’s going to find out I’ve been in here anyway.’ Grimly Cadel began the process of diagnosis and deletion – without backing up. He simply didn’t have the time. ‘I reckon it’s Vee,’ he muttered. ‘Because he’s using a chatroom bot. And I recognise the privilege escalation exploit.’ This fact in itself was infuriating. It meant that all his good work had been overthrown by Judith’s carelessness. ‘I mean, how can I possibly patch something like this when Judith comes along afterwards and stuffs it up?’ he burst out. ‘I
told
her not to use the same damn password on e-commerce sites!’

‘What is it?’ All at once Fiona appeared, framed in the doorway. She was clutching a toothbrush. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘This system’s infested,’ Cadel replied. And Saul said, ‘We have to leave.’

‘What?’

‘Not yet.’ Cadel didn’t take his eyes off the data unfolding in front of him. ‘There’s no need to panic. I just disconnected, so we’re not exposed any more. I don’t think.’ (Though that would have to be confirmed to his full satisfaction.) ‘You should call Sid and Steve,’ he added. ‘Tell them there’s an IRC bot that Vee might be accessing any minute. Tell them it’s fresh.’