Frank Schätzing - Limit

If you knew how, you could listen to the roar. Not by listening to every part of it at once. The information that coursed through the network was encoded of course, in bits and bytes. But if you knew the precise moment when a piece of information would be sent from A to B, you could record that transmission and then set to work painstakingly filtering out individual data packets, then you could apply powerful decoder programs to unlock the words and images inside. At the moment the system was fairly quiet, so that it was easy enough to isolate Norrington’s data packet right at the moment when he logged on. And Diane began her calculations.

Six minutes later, she had the eight-character password. It took her another three minutes to crack the software that had carried Norrington’s thumbscan to the central processors, and now she had his print as well.

Jericho stared at the prize. Now there was only one more hurdle to clear. Once logged on, nobody could log in again using the same personal data without raising a flag – no more than you could ring your own front doorbell while you were already inside in the living room.

They had to lock Norrington out again.

The chance came a little while later. Norrington was called to a pow-wow, but he spent a long time lingering near the workstations which gave him a view of his office. Edda Hoff chivvied him along. He hemmed and hawed, but finally gave up his watchpost and went into the room, not without casting one last, mistrustful look behind himself.

Jericho smiled at him.

He and Yoyo had switched places. One of the basic rules of surveillance was not to let the target see the same face the whole time. Now she was upstairs, waiting for his signal. The door to the conference room clicked shut. Unhurriedly, Jericho was on his way across to Norrington’s office when the conference-room door opened again, and Shaw emerged.

‘Owen,’ she called.

He stopped. He was ten, perhaps twelve steps from Norrington’s office. He could be going anywhere.

‘I think perhaps you should join the discussion. We’ve sifted some more data from Vogelaar’s dossier, material which has to do with your friend Xin, and the Zheng Group.’ She glanced about. ‘By the way, where are your colleagues?’

Jericho went over to join her.

‘Yoyo’s on Vic Thorn’s trail.’

Her habitual scowl softened to a smile. ‘Could be that you’ll be quicker about it than MI6 with your enquiries. And Tu Tian?’

‘We’ve given him the day off. He has a business to run.’

‘Splendid. God forbid that the Chinese economy should falter. The American crash was quite enough. Are you coming?’

‘Right away. Give me a minute.’

Shaw went back inside without quite closing the door. Jericho strolled casually back to Norrington’s office. Somebody at one of the workstations looked up at him, then back at the screen. Without stopping, Jericho stepped into the little room, logged Norrington out and then walked purposefully across to the other side, and to the conference rooms. Just before he joined the others, he sent Yoyo the agreed signal.

Straight away, she typed Norrington’s name. The system asked for authorisations. She entered the eight-character password, squirted Norrington’s thumbprint and waited.

The screen filled with icons.

‘There you go,’ Yoyo whispered, and told Diane to download Norrington’s personal data.

‘As you wish, Yoyo.’

Yoyo? How nice. Owen must have stored her voiceprint. She watched eagerly as Diane’s hard drive gulped down one data packet after another, holding her breath for the Download complete message.

Jericho was just as impatient, waiting for the signal that would tell him that the transfer had worked and that the false Norrington was now logged out. Once that happened, there was one more thing for him to do: leave the conference, go across to the office and log the deputy head of security back in, so that Norrington would not notice the theft later.

At that moment, Norrington stood up.

‘Excuse me,’ he said, smiled at the assembled talking heads, and left.

Jericho stared at his empty chair. Yoyo, he thought, what’s going on? Why’s it taking so long?

Should he leave too, and catch up with Norrington? Stop him from going into his office? What would that look like? Norrington was already on edge at the idea that the central computer had simply shut him out, and if Jericho took any action, he would certainly suspect trickery. Ill at ease, he resisted the urge. He sat there hoping for the all-important signal, and tried to look interested.

Ever since he could remember, Norrington had suffered gut-ache and stomach cramps whenever he was scared. He made for the toilet, sank down, grunting, and then left with a lighter step. He was at the door of the conference room, holding the handle in his hand, when all of a sudden he had the feeling that someone was staring at the back of his head. Not someone, something, some grinning, goggle-eyed bogeyman. He stopped dead, and whipped round towards his office.

Nobody there.

For a second he hesitated, but the whatever-it-was was still staring at him. Slowly he crossed the space, walked into his office and around his desk. Everything seemed to be in order. He tapped the touchscreen and tried to open one of his files.

Access denied.

Norrington stumbled backwards, looked around in a panic. What was happening here? A system error? Not on your life! He felt a trickle of ice creep up his spine as he remembered how Jericho had niggled at the matter of Vic Thorn, and what a stupid mistake he’d made in replying. Why hadn’t he just admitted that they’d been friends, good friends at that? What the hell would that prove, that he’d known Thorn, even if the guy turned out to be a terrorist a thousand times over?

He opened a login window and typed in his name.

The system told him that he was already logged in.

Download complete.

‘At last,’ Yoyo said, logged Norrington out and sent the message to Jericho’s phone.

Norrington stared at his screen.

Somebody was helping themselves to his data.

His fingers trembling, he tried again. This time the system accepted his codes and let him in, but he knew all the same that they had been through his files. They had got hold of his access data and they’d been spying on him.

They were onto him.

Norrington steepled his index fingers, and put them to his lips. He was fairly sure that he knew who ‘they’ were, but what could he do to stop them? Demand that Jericho’s computer be searched? Then the detective would cast his loyalty in doubt. Norrington would have to agree to a search of his own data if he didn’t want to arouse suspicion, and that would be the beginning of the end. Once they started to piece together his deleted emails—

One moment though. Jericho was sitting in the conference room. It might have been Jericho who had logged him out, but he could hardly have anything to do with what had just happened. One of the others, either Tu Tian or Chen Yuyun, was sitting in front of Jericho’s computer right now – what kind of stupid name had he given it? Diane? It was probably the girl. Hadn’t she been roaming through the control room just a while back, looking as though she had nothing better to do?

Yoyo. He had to get rid of her.

‘Andrew?’

He jumped. Edda Hoff. Pale and expressionless under her lacquered black pageboy cut. Expressionless? Really? Or wasn’t there rather a gleam in her eye, the sly look of someone watching a trap to see who will walk into it?