Mark Abernethy - Second Strike

Like many spooks, Charlie had walked away when he’d had kids.

But he still did a lot of contract work for the Indonesian intelligence services, which was what Mac was after when they adjourned to Charlie’s offi ce after lunch.

‘What’s up, Mr Mac?’ he asked, leaning back in his leather executive chair.

‘Need to defeat a password key. What are you charging these days?’

‘What have you got?’ asked Charlie, lighting a smoke.

Pulling out his cash, Mac made a quick calculation of what he had in his hand. ‘Four fi fty, fi ve hundred US?’ he said, putting the cash on the desk.

‘Sounds fair,’ said Charlie, exhaling smoke at the open window that looked over the backyard.

Mac told Charlie about the Apple laptop on Grant’s desk at the Lar, and how much he wanted to get in there, have a nosey-poke.

He handed over Alex Grant’s business card and Charlie looked at it, turned it over and made a face. Then he put it on his desk, turned forty-fi ve degrees to his keyboard and screen, and tapped a key. The screen lit up and he looked back at the business card.

‘So, what have we got here? A website – a dot com, that’s always a good start. And an email address, a business domain address.’

‘That good?’ asked Mac.

‘It’s not good that this person is staying at the Lar. They have a government-level VPN – a virtual private network – and people sweeping it, looking for people like me.’

‘So it’s not just marketing?’

‘No – Shangri-La hotels are owned by the Kwok family and they use the same contractors that embassies and politicians use. Very paranoid. But fortunately, I know how to defeat most VPN walls,’ added Charlie, pointing to lines of white code on a black screen. ‘See, here are some rooms – ports – that are open and connected, and others are not.’

Mac leaned over, saw the code with the room number down the left-hand side of the list. ‘Where is this?’

‘Systems. We’re in the server that runs the hotel’s backbone and VPN. It’s the heart.’

‘Okay, let me think,’ said Mac, shutting his eyes for two seconds.

‘Room twenty-two-oh-two.’

Charlie scrolled down the lines of code and shook his head. ‘He’s not connected, not much we can do.’

‘Can’t you wake up his computer or something?’

‘Not in this hotel. You’re thinking about the old American phone network that let you do that. Besides, I don’t think our target is even plugged in.’

Mac nodded. ‘You’re right, he unplugs his computer when he fi nishes.’

Standing, Mac made to go. Investigating Naveed and the true ownership of NIME was going to have to happen the hard way.

‘I can’t take this, Mac,’ said Charlie, nodding at the cash.

‘Have it,’ said Mac, his mind now elsewhere.

Charlie dragged on the last of the cigarette, stubbed it in the ashtray and leaned forward with enthusiasm. ‘You say this Mr Grant has an Apple, right?’

‘Yep,’ said Mac.

Charlie typed on the keyboard as he looked at the business card.

‘What’s up, Charlie?’

‘Had an idea.’

Walking around the desk, Mac looked over Charlie’s shoulder.

‘There’s another way?’

‘If he’s got a Mac, then he might have a. mac account for his personal email, and his business mail might be linked to it when he travels.’

Charlie clicked on the browser and found a website that searched for email addresses. A whole list came back and he scrolled down through the various incarnations before he got to one that said alex. grant@mac. com and then Sydney, NSW, Australia.

‘Is that our guy?’ asked Charlie, jiggling his leg.

‘Looks like it,’ said Mac. ‘Is that good or bad?’

‘If he has a. mac email address then he probably has an iDisk account.’

‘What’s an iDisk account?’ asked Mac, watching as Charlie downloaded an application called iDisk Utility for Windows.

‘It’s Apple’s backup servers in California,’ said Charlie. ‘You subscribe to the service and you can back up into those servers from anywhere in the world and only you can access it. Your target might be backing up emails and documents to iDisk, especially when he travelling in Indonesia, yeah?’

When it was downloaded, Charlie double-clicked on iDisk Utility and input alex. grant into the username fi eld.

‘Now comes fun part,’ smiled Charlie, pulling out a drawer by his right thigh, withdrawing a black steel object the size of a cigar box, and plugging it into a USB port. A pale blue box came up on screen and Charlie typed some words into the boxes which were arranged in a list.

‘What’s this?’ asked Mac.

‘Password defeat,’ said Charlie, lighting a cigarette and slamming the lighter on the desk. ‘We put in what we know. You know his date of birth?’

Squinting, Mac tried to remember the fi le on Alex Grant. ‘He was born 1953 and I think it was November. Yep, November 1953, but I can’t remember the day.’

‘Kids? Pets? Wife? Phone number? Street address?’ asked Charlie.

‘You won’t believe this, but that’s what most passwords come down to.’

He couldn’t remember any other numbers associated with Grant, so he just added what he could. ‘Put in Bennelong and Thomas and Systems and Technology, okay?’

Charlie did, asking if there was anything more. Mac shook his head and Charlie clicked on the ‘run’ box to the right of the boxes where he’d typed in the information. A wheel spun in the middle of the pale blue box, stopping after just seven seconds when a red box sprang up with the white letters b e n n e l o n g arrayed along it, and the words defeat successful blinking above.

They were in. Alex Grant’s iDisk was a listing of about thirty folders and Mac asked Charlie to scroll the list. In the ‘N’ section they found one labelled NIME and another labelled NAVEED.

Mac’s heart rate escalated as he turned to Charlie. ‘That’s it? He uses Bennelong as his password?’

‘Yep. Remember it and you’ve got open access to Alex Grant’s iDisk.’

The Shangri-La’s room service guy brought a tennis racquet to the door and Mac tipped him, just as Diane emerged in her tennis shorts and blue tank.

He wanted her out fast so he could check on the Grant iDisk before seeing the Bennelong team at the lagoon bar at fi ve, but he sensed that she needed something from him, and he hoped that it was just friendship. There was a haughtiness and hardness to Diane, but vulnerability showed itself in small fl ashes. Beautiful women were pigeonholed at an early age and they had to fi ght to be taken seriously.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘I don’t think any less of you for doing the charm offensive on Vitogiannis.’

‘You don’t?’ she sparked up.

‘No, mate. Any more than you think I’m a sleazy little weasel for sneaking into people’s lives.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘Hmm, now you mention it, that is pretty sleazy.’

They both laughed, and an uneasy silence hung between them.

Mac had been so focused on his own hurt after Diane betrayed him with Peter Garrison – the CIA rogue – that he had missed the whole marriage thing. It wasn’t until the previous night that he’d seen how it must have been for her to have a man lying in her bed telling her how he had been about to propose marriage, but had decided not to.

He didn’t hate her. ‘Diane, it takes more than looks to do this job.’

‘You think?’

‘I -‘ he started.

‘Yes? Come on,’ she interrupted, moving closer, crossing her arms.

‘Well, there were always good sorts hanging around, but with you it was really about the laughs and the company, you know?’