Chain of Evidence

CHAPTER 43

They needed Martinson’s password.

Driving a department-confiscated Lexus, Dart approached the employee parking lot entrance to Roxin at 2:30 A.M. He wore jeans, a sweater, and a windbreaker.

The lineman at the top of the phone pole, armed with a high-powered monocular, worked Narcotics but had done a good deal of undercover surveillance work. Across town, the worker down the manhole not far from the governor’s mansion was with SNET, and was awaiting court permission to tap into a high-speed data transmission line that serviced a remote computer terminal located in the study of Dr. Arielle Martinson’s home. Ginny had determined the existence of this remote terminal after questioning Dart thoroughly about the computers he had seen there. Bud Gorman’s check of SNET billing had confirmed it.

The unmarked black ERT step van was parked half a mile down the hill from Roxin, the team ready with black ladders to assault the facility’s west wall if necessary.

Haite was in the command van with two techies. Parked near Roxin’s main entrance, it had the rear left wheel jacked off the ground, and a number of tools lying nearby, as if abandoned with a flat tire. In fact, the all-wheel-drive vehicle could be driven right off the jack, if required.

In Dart’s left ear, a small earpiece kept him in touch with the command van, and thereby, Ginny and the spotter atop the phone pole. He wore taped to his chest a fiber-optic camera no thicker than a fountain pen and curved on a piece of flex so as to capture Dart’s point of view-an interesting twist demanded by the judge issuing the warrants. There were few guidelines for a hostile raid on a computer network. They were improvising.

As Dart pulled up to the unmanned security gate, he switched on the video recorder-no bigger than a Walkman-and spoke to the microphone clipped under the collar of his jacket. “Position one. I’m all yours, Gin.”

The techies inside the van were recording his every word.

Dart heard Ginny’s voice answer. Wearing a telephone headset at her kitchen table with two laptops in front of her, both connected to high-speed data lines, Ginny echoed “Position one” and said, “Here goes nothing.”

Dart wondered what this validation must feel like to her. She had hacked into Roxin’s mainframe with the permission of the court and at Dart’s request. In return for her cooperation, the court had agreed to expunge her criminal record, including taking her off probation. And now, with the law behind her, she was attempting to take control of the security area of Roxin’s computer and open the arm of the gate from a remote location miles away.

The security gate resembled the ones at car rental lots-a red and white horizontal bar prevented entry and a long row of sharp spikes, designed to puncture tires, inhibited exit.

Dart waited nervously for Ginny’s magic.

“Anything?” he heard her ask.

“No.”

“One second,” she said. “How ’bout this?”

The gate opened.

“Bingo!” Dart said as he drove through. “You’re a genius.”

“Let’s just hope I can get you back out,” she said, only half teasing.

At this hour, his was the only car in the lot. He drove toward the several-story block of glass and metal that attached at the north end to the giant dome. The place looked like an enormous glowing spaceship.

Dart switched off the headlights. “I’m facing the second door from the south end,” he informed Ginny. “There’s no number on it.”

“The stairways are to your right?” she asked.

The glassed-in stairways were clearly visible to him. “That’s right.”

“Correct,” confirmed the spotter, also listening in.

“I’ve got it,” she informed him. “I’ve logged you into the system under the employee name of Nealy. George Nealy. He’s listed as a biochemical engineer assigned to B-block-whatever that is. Did you get that?”

“George Nealy. B-block,” Dart answered. To get him in, Ginny had needed to choose an existing employee’s identity. If stopped by security, he would claim to have lost his ID card somewhere between the parking lot and wherever they caught up to him.

“Can you get me in?” he asked.

“Tell me when you’re at the door,” she answered.

Dart climbed out of the car, reckoning that by now the night security had been notified of Nealy’s use of the parking lot. Outside the door was a stainless steel device used to read ID cards. Dart had none.

Standing at the door, he said, “I’m here.”

“Stand by,” Ginny said in his ear.

Dart’s nerves were already shot. He had no idea how he would make it through the next half hour. He checked in both directions repeatedly.

“How ’bout that?” Ginny asked.

The security device’s blue-green LCD read:

INCORRECT SIGN-ON INFORMATION-PLEASE TRY AGAIN.

Dart tried to open the door. “No,” he informed her. He worried that she was in over her head. Completely unfamiliar with Roxin’s security system, she had to come to understand it all on the fly. Real time, as she called it.

“Stand by,” she repeated. “How ’bout that?” she inquired.

INCORRECT SIGN-ON INFORMATION-PLEASE TRY AGAIN.

“Negative,” Dart announced, sweat streaming from his armpits with the temperature one degree below freezing.

“This is lookout,” reported the man atop the phone pole. “I have an unidentified individual, on foot, heading south along the east side.”

Dart looked up. He could just make out a tiny black dot a hundred yards away. A security guard-and heading toward him.

“We have one more try,” Ginny explained. “If we fail, then Nealy will not be permitted inside, and if we’re to continue, I’ll have to check you into the parking lot under a different name and try again.”

INCORRECT SIGN-ON INFORMATION-ACCESS DENIED-PLEASE CONTACT THE SECURITY DESK-THANK YOU.

“We’re toast,” Dart announced.

“Unidentified individual is seventy yards and closing,” reported the lookout.

“The gate?” Ginny asked, panicked.

Dart looked over his shoulder. The entrance gate rose and fell.

“You got it.”

“Hold the phone,” she said.

The guard approached, now less than fifty yards away. The man waved, still too far for his face to be seen, and conversely, Dart’s could not be seen by him.

“We’re running out of headroom,” Dart warned.

Another few yards, and Dart’s face would be identifiable. How many Roxin employees would a security guard recognize?

“Joe?” she asked.

Dart read:

WELCOME: DR. JANET JORGENSON

The door clicked. Dart pulled on the handle. It opened.

The guard was twenty yards away. They could clearly see each other. You’ve got to think on your feet, Zeller had once schooled him. He’s an outside guard, Dart thought. Disarm his suspicion. Dart raised his voice and offered, “You want me to hold the door for you?”

The guard shook his head. “No, thanks,” he answered.

Dart stepped inside, his armpits soaked, his throat dry. The elevator was straight ahead; a door marked the stairs to his right. Not wanting to wait for an elevator car, and recalling from his earlier trip to Roxin that elevators also required security access, Dart chose to use the stairs. The door thumped shut behind him.

“Janet Jorgenson?” he complained into the microphone, climbing the stairs. His new identity had given him a sex change.

In his left ear he heard, “The name was immediately above Nealy’s on the list. What can I tell you?”

“Who am I?” Dart asked, although it didn’t matter-he couldn’t very well pose as Jorgenson.

“The thing is,” she explained, “the way the system works-the reason Nealy would not work back there-you have to be a certain security clearance to have access to all doors. Otherwise you’re supposed to take a particular door at a certain time of day. Nealy wasn’t being allowed in. Jorgenson’s got the run of the place-clearance five,” she told him.

“Who am I?” Dart repeated, feeling uneasy about this.

“Vice president and deputy director of R and D,” she said.

“You made me Martinson’s assistant?” Dart queried angrily. Security might notify Proctor of an unexpected late-night visit-if Proctor had any sense, he had his team on alert. Proctor was likely to know Martinson’s next-in-command, and it seemed to Dart he might question a visit by her at this wee hour of the morning, might see Dart’s ruse for what it was. It pushed him to hurry.

“This is seat-of-the-pants, Dartelli.” she sounded bitter.

He wondered what Haite was thinking as he heard two ex-lovers argue during a sting. He charged up the stairs as quickly as his bad ankle would carry him.

The lookout atop the phone pole reported, “The unidentified individual is inspecting the Lexus. He appears to be using a handheld communications device.”

“Scanning,” returned the voice of the dispatcher.

Dart continued up at a run, passing the door marked with a large “2.”

“We’ve intercepted the radio transmission,” the calm voice of the dispatcher said. “The individual called in the vehicle registration number and is awaiting callback. The sergeant is recommending that you abort operations at once. Repeat: Recommending you abort. Do you copy?” After a brief hesitation the dispatcher said, “Evacuation plan A as in Alpha. Do you copy?”

Plan A called for Dart to head on foot toward the ERT’s position, where the elite team would help him over the perimeter fence and to safety. All this was said not for Dart’s benefit but for that of whoever might be listening in to the unsecured frequency they were using. If Proctor’s people were in fact monitoring police radio transmissions-something Haite and Dart hoped was happening-then perhaps Dart’s arrival at Roxin would act as an invitation.

“I’m on the third floor,” Dart announced. Are you listening? he wondered. “A blue rectangle, a yellow triangle, and green circle,” he announced to Ginny.

“Blue, yellow, green,” she repeated. “Box, triangle, circle. Stand by.”

This office door, like every other, housed an ID reader to the right of the jamb. The cryptic code on the doors was playing to Roxin’s advantage. Ginny had to locate the specific door in the database. He waited impatiently. Finally he heard her say, “Try it.”

Dart pushed down on the door lever, and the locked door came open. “Got it!” he said brightly. “I’m in.”

Access to the office was certain to show on the security screens in the lobby. Ginny had been schooled not to attempt to shield Dart’s activities from these screens. Although it risked Dart’s getting caught, it also allowed security to inform Proctor, or other superiors, of Dart’s movements-something critical to the sting working.

The clock was now running and the trap set: the cheese was there for the taking. Dart slipped into a chair in front of a computer monitor, where a screen saver drew geometric patterns on the screen. He tapped the shift key, and the screen saver vanished, replaced by dozens of computer software icons.

“I’m at a terminal,” Dart announced softly.

“Well done, people,” Haite said for the benefit of anyone eavesdropping.

Joe Dart was on-line.

If Dart was right about Martinson’s scientific ego, then she had stored copies of the earlier clinical trial reports somewhere in the mainframe’s memory, and only Martinson herself could retrieve them. Ginny could not gain entrance to the password-protected file without the cooperation of Martinson herself.

By 2:00 AM, under the authority of a wire surveillance warrant, Martinson’s two unpublished home phone lines were being monitored. Under separate warrant, Terry Proctor’s residential lines were under tap-and-trace surveillance, forbidding recording but allowing the identification of phone numbers coming and going over the lines.

Since the inception of the surveillance, no traffic had been reported at Martinson’s. Records would later show that Proctor’s lines had been incredibly active that night.

“I’m logged on,” Dart announced for Ginny’s benefit. His hope was that, if not immediately, within minutes this radio traffic would be overheard by Proctor’s people and passed up to both Proctor and Martinson.

Dart therefore had to slip up, making believable mistakes as he went. The Lexus-a car not registered to any Roxin employee-was part of that fiction; use of the police radio frequencies-impossible to scramble with so many participants involved-was also part of the ruse. Proctor had to be led to believe that Dart was close to uncovering Martinson’s files.

But so what? Dart doubted that Terry Proctor was aware of the existence of any such evidence. It seemed likely that once Zeller had blown open Martinston’s scam, Proctor would have advised her to destroy all evidence-he would have accepted Martinson’s word that she had done so. Only Martinson-and intuitively, Dart-knew the truth: No way would she destroy eleven years of research. Dart would have to enlighten Proctor, without it seeming intentional, and to sting him into panicking Martinson to finally destroy the evidence she held so dearly.

By necessity, Ginny was also part of the ruse, manipulating and monitoring and preparing to trap Martinson.

Most important was that Dart not allow himself to be discovered or abducted before completing the sting. To be caught was to fail.

“Logged on and awaiting instructions,” Dart repeated.

“Okay, Dart,” Ginny said, “here’s what I want you to do.”

Keystroke by keystroke, Ginny navigated Dart flawlessly through a hole in the upper-level security firewall that she herself had run only an hour earlier.

The Roxin Laboratories ROX NET logo, in gold and silver, sparkled on the screen, followed by a greeting and a cautionary non-disclosure statement warning of FBI investigation.

“I’m in,” Dart acknowledged.

“Enter the following,” Ginny instructed, rambling off a series of entries for Dart to duplicate.

He began typing furiously. Nervous, he made several mistakes and had to start again.

“Hold it,” Ginny said anxiously, now not having to play-act. “I’m seeing some movement within the facility.”

The lookout said, “I copy that. Lights have come on in the box.”

“I think they’re on to you, Joe,” Ginny said, her voice gripped in fear.

Dart took the news two different ways: If they were coming after him, then they knew he had broken into their computer and they knew where to find him-all of which was good, because Terry Proctor was certain to be notified; but he could not allow himself to be caught.

“I’m moving,” Dart announced. Dart left the room in a hurry, his sole mission for the next five to ten minutes to distance himself from security while maintaining the possibility of computer access. Roxin’s security computers were capable of tracking access on an office-by-office basis. The moment Dart had entered the office, the computer had registered that access and alerted the guards. Similarly, every time a security guard used his pass to enter a hallway, or an elevator, Ginny knew about it. The result was a kind of electronic cat-and-mouse-each side able to monitor the other’s movement.

Had Ginny been given days or weeks to override the security systems, she might have been capable of misleading security by creating false electronic clues for Dart’s whereabouts, thus giving him the advantage. But as it was, she was lucky to be able to monitor movements at all, and Dart was forced to keep on the move. Working against the security team was the facility’s all-glass design, for each time a hallway or office light went on, the lookout saw this and warned Dart of his pursuers’ location.

As he ran into the hall, Dart heard the lookout warn, “E-S ascending. Repeat: Eagle-Sam ascending. Copy?”

“Eagle-Sam. Copy,” Dart replied, already running down the hall in a northerly direction. For communications purposes, they had designated the structure’s four imposing elevator hubs east and west, south and north. East-south was the elevator bank nearest the parked car. Dart turned around and ran to the stairs adjacent to elevators E-N and descended to the second floor.

The complexity of the layout worked against Dart and in the favor of those who pursued him: He was a rat in a maze, and the keepers knew the way. Armed keepers, at that. Dart bounded down, pausing occasionally for the telltale sounds of anyone approaching, with a running dialogue in his ear as the lookout and Ginny both advised him of security’s location.

At 2:53 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, November 19, Dr. Arielle Martinson was recorded as logging onto Rox Net from a remote terminal in West Hartford. Ginny was right there with her.

Using a land-link telephone line that connected her to the common van via the only scrambled radio frequency available to HPD, she announced cryptically, “The fish is on the line,” just as she had been told to. “Access password,” she spelled, “is L-E-A-N-M-O-N-T.”

Ginny studied Martinson’s on-line movement, as her second laptop computer, patched into the high-speed data line by the SNET worker down the manhole outside the governor’s mansion, recorded Martinson’s every keystroke. Ginny divided her attention between the one laptop, monitoring security, and the other, monitoring Martinson. Rox Net’s central interface utilized both graphics and menus, allowing the user to click through desired addresses and functions. Martinson was clearly no stranger to the network. She moved quickly and flawlessly, often clicking her choice so fast that Ginny had no time to read or make note of it, though her laptop did record it.

Martinson’s first choice, selected from the welcoming menu, was for OTHER SERVICES. Ginny missed the names of the next two selections because of Martinson’s speed, but she caught the heading DAILY DIARY because it required a password. Martinson typed in: 1E2Q3T4Z, and Ginny wrote this down, despite the fact that the laptop continued to capture it all.

The CEO chose OPTIONS next, followed by SET DATE FUNCTION, and Ginny took note of it all because Martinson had to slow down to enter a date: June 14, 2000.

Ginny followed her with a computer hacker’s admiration. She had expected her to have used the network’s personal file area, a section devoted to an individual user’s personal storage. It was the logical location to upload information into the server. As a rule, network software restricted user storage to such limited areas, and only such areas, allowing the system operator to predict, control, secure, and maintain a specified amount of storage. Martinson had cleverly found another location that would allow the uploading of files, one that, through a series of passwords and now a date function, installed several secure gates in place, effectively locking the information away so that she, and only she, could access it.

A colorful calendar filled Ginny’s screen with the date, June 14, 2000, highlighted in a small box. There was a To-Do list, complete with Preferences. A time-of-day work space for appointments and calls. A small spreadsheet to track cash and credit card expenses.

The calendar work space was left blank-a particularly clever move. Even if a hacker sleuthed the several passwords needed to reach this location, even if the hacker then arbitrarily landed ahead on June 14, in the year 2000, there was nothing to see, nothing that announced the prized information hidden within. Nothing but a single asterisk at the very bottom of the screen in a box marked MEMO.

Martinson clicked on MEMO.

An information box presented itself in the middle of the screen.

RESTRICTED BY PASSWORD

PLEASE ENTER 8-DIGIT ALPHANUMERIC

STRING

Ginny looked on as Martinson typed: L-A-T-E-R-I-N-5. The letters meant nothing to her.

The screen filled with the first page of a technical report. Ginny was momentarily distracted by the contents of this page. It had something to do with drug testing….

“I’ve got it!” she spoke into the phone. But Martinson caught her off-guard by suddenly selecting EDIT … DELETE. The screen responded.

MEMO IS 76 PAGES.

DELETE CONTENTS

(Y)es(N)o

Martinson moved too quickly. Before Ginny could notify the SNET workman to interrupt the transmission, Martinson sent the necessary “Y” down the high-speed transmission line.

Into the phone, Ginny shouted, “Disconnect!”

But the screen suddenly read:

DELETING CONTENTS IS

UNRECOVERABLE.

ARE YOU SURE?

(Y)es (N)o

This final protection device saved them.

“Disconnect!” Ginny shouted again.

But the blinking cursor, frozen in its position on the screen, told her that the SNET man had done his job. Martinson was disconnected.

“Ready,” Ginny informed Dart.

Although able to access the system’s security functions by modem-a necessity to allow people like Proctor to monitor functions from the field-Ginny had no modem access to this user-area side of the Roxin network. Access was restricted to actual terminal nodes, to prevent the kind of hacking that Ginny had in mind. Where the SNET man had managed to hard-wire Ginny the ability to monitor Martinson’s line, she lacked the necessary software cryptography to manipulate data.

That job was up to Dartelli.

Dart reached the second floor at the same time that the security guards pursuing him charged into the third floor office where he had been working.

He told Ginny the color code on the door that he was facing, and a moment later, when the small indicator light turned from red to green, he opened this door and entered a glassed-in area. Behind the wall of glass and a stainless steel entrance purification chamber, he saw a clean-room lab, with no computer terminal. The idea of breaking into a genetics lab did not thrill Dart; he turned around and hurried out, seeking another office.

The next door down was marked with a blue box, a yellow box, and two red circles. Ginny, believing she was getting the hang of things said, “You’re in.” Dart tried the door. It was locked. The blue-green characters marched across the reader:

ACCESS DENIED-PLEASE CONTACT SECURITY. THANK YOU.

“No good,” he announced.

“Try again,” she advised.

“Same thing.”

“Shit,” she said, “they’ve locked me out. We’re screwed!”

The computer’s security program had identified Ginny’s raid and blocked her access.

Dart stood there in the darkened corridor, his heart pounding in his chest, wondering what to do.

He couldn’t think clearly. It was as if, all at once, his mind went blank.

“E-S, descending by stairs. E-N, descending by stairs,” warned the lookout suddenly. “Eagle-Nova, descending. Eagle-Sam, descending. Do you copy?” The security team pursuing him had split up, coming toward him from both directions, leaving Dart sandwiched. Trapped. By Ginny’s attempting to gain him access, the computer had once again identified his location.

How many guards on the night watch? Dart wondered. One at the front security desk; one at the third-floor security desk; two, possibly four roamers. Four to six, total, he decided. If that number held, he guessed that the team sent to bring him in would be no larger than a pair-leave one man by the car, one to roam the west side of the building, and send two after him.

Dart glanced back at the reader.

ACCESS DENIED-PLEASE CONTACT SECURITY.

“Approaching the second floor,” the lookout reported.

In an attempt to divide and conquer, the pair had split, each taking one of the stairways. No doubt the computers had been used to shut down the elevators, in an attempt to bracket Dart into being caught.

“Lookout, how many in each stairway?” His feet began to carry him toward the south stairs, the closest to him. The plan formulated quickly in his mind: A security guard will carry a master “key,” a card allowing him access to the various rooms.

“One each,” returned the steady voice.

Perfect, Dart thought.

“Arriving second floor,” the lookout warned. Dart was on the second floor.

The door to the fire stairs was ten feet away. Five …

His only hope was surprise. A rent-a-cop in pursuit would be excited and probably poorly trained. He would be thinking that his target was attempting to run away and hide; he would be in a hurry.

A wedge of yellow light arced across the hallway floor as the guard opened the door to the stairs. This wedge spread open like a fan unfolding, illuminating the far wall.

A boot and a dark pant leg stepped through. The guard had gotten ahead of Dart by a fraction of a second. The other guard, at the far end of the hall, could not be far off.

Dart threw himself to the floor, diving for that leg as if it were home plate. He hooked his left arm out and snagged the leg as he slid past, pulling the stunned guard with him. The man went down, looking as if he’d hit a banana peel, all limbs in the air at once. A whoosh of air was expelled from his lungs.

Dart scrambled atop him, grabbed him by the hair, and snapped the man’s head down firmly against the hard floor. The sound of the contact instantly made Dart nauseated. The guard groaned sickeningly.

He’s alive. Thank god, Dart thought as he reached down and ripped the man’s credit-card-size pass from where it was clipped to his pocket. Dart flipped it over, establishing that it did, in fact, carry a magnetic stripe.

He had one shot, he realized. After that, they would block use of this card as well.

“Hold it! Stay where you are!” roared a voice from the far end of the hall.

Dart came to his feet and charged through the door and into the stairway. Down or up? he debated. His legs carried him up.

Behind him, in the hallway, he heard the fast-paced running of the guard coming in hot pursuit.

In his left ear he heard Ginny. “We gotta get this happening, Dart. We’re running out of time. And I mean fast.”

Dart ran all the way up to the top of the stairs and through to the hall, attempting to slow down his thoughts and concentrate. His adrenaline was his biggest enemy.

Using the guard’s card to enter a room would alert security to his location, and would, in turn, limit his chance to do what had to be done. It gave him an idea.

He slid the stolen card into the first security box he encountered. The light turned green. Dart spun the doorknob, threw the door open, and then quickly pulled it shut. He ran to the next security box, the next door, and followed the same procedure. And the next. One eye trained nervously on the fire stairs through which he had just come, he crossed the hall and used the card on two more offices, blocking the first with a pen to keep it from closing. The security computer would now show six offices accessed.

Backtracking, Dart entered through the door that he had blocked by the pen. He could hear the security man’s footfalls charging up the fire stairs. He had only a few seconds …

With the door open, he shoved his stolen card into the reader and began violently rocking the card back and forth. The sound of the feet stopped, Dart guessing the guard was standing immediately on the other side but was being more cautious than his partner below. Dart continued to wiggle the security card. It cracked along the left edge. With one tremendous effort, Dart tore the card straight across, leaving a significant piece of it down inside the reader, to prevent another card from being inserted.

He pushed the door firmly shut just as he heard the fire stairs door whine open. The guard was on the sixth floor with him.

Dart slipped into the first chair that fronted a terminal. He touched the space bar, and the screen saver cleared.

“Go,” he said to Ginny.

A voice interrupted and instructed, “The tiger’s in the garden.” Terry Proctor had arrived. Dart felt a chill run through him, right into his bowels. It was a huge risk for Proctor to come here in person, illustrating to Dart just how desperate the man was.

Dart pulled out the cellular, hoping for privacy-getting off the police frequency-pushed RECALL and SEND and a moment later, Ginny answered. “We’ve got less than two minutes. Now listen carefully …”

Level by level, Ginny steered Dart through the proper key combinations and necessary passwords. To ensure that Dart was on track, Ginny kept repeating anxiously, “What’s the title line? What’s the title line?” Dart would read the uppermost title and await the next instruction.

Out in the hallway, Dart heard the security guard open a door and then silence. He’ll have to search every office, Dart thought, realizing he had bought himself some time.

He could picture the operation continuing outside. Proctor’s arrival had triggered a third phase, independent of Dart: The lookout confirmed that Proctor had entered; the ERT team, dressed all in black, was presently scaling the walls of the compound, on their way to sealing the building’s exits. Proctor would be trapped.

This changed the dynamics-there was no predicting the behavior of a cornered animal.

“Are you listening?” an almost hysterical Ginny asked. She said, “L-A-T-E-R-I-N-5. Did you get that?”

Dart typed it in and hit the ENTER KEY.

The cover page of the clinical trial appeared on his screen. Dart felt a huge wash of relief. It was dated fourteen months earlier.

“The file is seventy-six pages long,” Ginny told him.

He heard a banging behind-the security guard was at his door.

“I’m not going to get out of here with this disk,” Dart informed her, realizing his situation. He had a disk in his pocket on which he was supposed to record the information; that seemed impossible now. After a long beat of silence, he asked, “Are you there?”

In his left ear he heard the dispatcher in the command van announce, “The garden is surrounded.” The ERT team was in place.

The security guard’s deep voice attempted to whisper a radioed request, but Dart overheard it through the door: “I need a master key, ASAP. Third floor.”

“Okay,” Ginny said into the cellular, “here’s what we’re going to do.” A fraction of a second later she snapped, “Oh shit, hang on. You’ve got visitors.”

Glancing toward the door, and knowing that the security guard was coming through it any second, Dart said, “I can’t hang on. There’s no time.”

“Mark the complete text. I’ll get back to you.”

“Ginny?” Dart shouted into the phone.

There was no answer.

Ginny’s second laptop alerted him the moment Martinson’s password was used to log on to the system. Many of the commonly used security soft-wares prevented the duplication of a password if one person was presently on the system. Ginny had hoped that was the case-that by Dart already being on the network, Martinson, or whomever Martinson had called, would be denied access. To her horror, the system allowed this other person access onto the network.

Dart guessed that this person was Terry Proctor and that he might even be in the lobby now, following Martinson’s instructions to erase the files.

Ginny felt helpless. The screen followed the intruder’s every move. He traveled past the main menu and along the route Ginny now knew only too well. In a matter of thirty to sixty seconds, the intruder would be on top of Dart; how the system would perform was anybody’s guess. Ginny’s guess was that it would freeze, locking up, and that only the system operator would be able to correct it. And the SYSOP worked for Martinson, which meant the files would never be seen again.

Dart couldn’t copy the text to a disk because the disk might be confiscated by the security guards and destroyed.

It left Ginny only one choice. Using a modem line, she was going to have to attempt to raid the system’s security firewall a second time, attempting to avoid her earlier mistake.

She picked up the phone and said to Dart, “Is the text marked?”

“I’m ready,” Dart said into the phone. He heard the sound of someone running. The master key-a real key, not some security card-was seconds away from being delivered.

Ginny said, “Go to the Edit menu. Select Cut.”

“Cut?” Dart barked. “You mean copy!”

“I said cut, Detective. Do it now.”

“But I’ll lose the file!” Dart protested.

“Edit. Cut!” Ginny ordered. “Do it now!”

Ginny’s eyes widened as she followed the activity on the second laptop. She watched as Proctor typed L-A-T …

“This is not up for discussion. Do it fucking now!”

Dart’s index finger hesitated above the button on the computer’s mouse. He felt a bead of sweat trickle down his jaw. He heard the key in the door. And then he heard that same key turn.

Cut would make the blocked text disappear. Does she know what she’s doing?

“Now!” he heard repeated in his ear.

His index finger punched the button automatically and the seventy-six pages of clinical trial reports disappeared from the screen.

“Thank God,” Ginny said through the phone. “Now,” she added, “if you want to see those files again, there’s something you’ve got to do-”

“Not right now,” Dart interrupted, dropping the cellular phone and springing out of the office chair and dragging it to the door just as the doorknob turned.

Dart blocked the door with his foot, flipped the chair upside down, wheels in the air, and wedged it inside the handle to prevent the door from opening.

He glanced up at the ceiling: large rectangular panes suspended by an angle-iron aluminum frame. It offered one possibility of escape.

The door came partially open, encountering the chair. The guards on the other side leaned their weight into it. The sound was deafening.

A bead of sweat slipped into Dart’s eyes, stinging him.

Dart considered going out the window. The golf-ball-like architecture crowned at the top of each module. Being on the top floor, this office’s windowpanes were more parallel to the ground than those of the floors below and would be easier to climb. Dart was not one for heights, but it seemed to offer him the fastest exit.

He took two steps toward the window and reached it before identifying the hollow thump underfoot. He stooped to inspect the source of that sound.

Behind him the office chair slipped. The door popped open two or three inches and several fingers appeared in the crack, groping to remove the chair.

Dart flung himself across the room, drove his shoulder into the door, and broke all four of the man’s fingers. An animal cry erupted from the far side of the door. Dart hiked the chair back into position and leaped over to the windows.

Along the office’s perimeter, a series of floor panels covered spaces created to house phone lines, transmission lines, computer cables, and electrical conduit. To allow easy access, the office carpet had not been glued here, and Dart pulled it back. He yanked up the first-floor panel and found himself staring down into a darkened dead space through a tangle of wires. Three feet below him was the suspended acoustical tile of a fifth-floor-office ceiling. Steel I-beams supported the floor of the office Dart was currently inside.

He didn’t hesitate. He sat down, forced his toes through the mesh of wires, and lowered himself down.

The door banged and the chair slipped again.

Dart kicked at the pressboard panel beneath him, broke it in pieces, and could see through to a desktop in the office below. He let go his purchase and fell through the dead space and down into the office below, landing awkwardly on the desk, driving a sharp pain into his injured ankle.

He heard the chair explode above him. They were inside.

Dart jumped off the desk, ignoring his pain, and ran for the door. A moment later he was running quickly toward the fire stairs, hoping he had enough of a lead.

“That sounded ugly,” the voice said in his left ear.

“Patch me through to Ginny,” Dart said. “I’ve lost the phone.” Like it or not, Proctor’s people would now hear every word.

On Ginny’s instructions, Dart headed for the bottom of the stairs. As Dart ran, she talked nonstop.

Ginny’s detected raid on the Roxin server had triggered the mainframe to adopt a defensive position, eliminating an outsider’s ability to access the machine through modem and pulling the system temporarily off-line. The situation could be reversed, but only from the SYSOP terminal inside Roxin’s data processing center, which Ginny guessed was likely to be located on the facility’s basement level.

“How can you possibly be sure about this?” Dart questioned on the run.

“There are three different systems they could be using, and I know every one of them. They all share the ability to take modem communications off-line. By definition, they cannot be put back on-line using software; they require someone to throw a physical switch-a button. It’s what keeps them secure. The front panels are all basically the same: some system indicators and either one or two buttons. I know the way this works, Joe. This is my area of expertise,” Ginny reminded. “You’re going to have to trust me. And listen, Joe, once we’re back on-line, I need a couple minutes, minimum.”

“What am I looking for?” He asked.

“It will be a plain vanilla box-maybe a stack of them, depending how many incoming lines there are. If there’s more than one, you’ll have to trip each master. The front panel will show a series of seven small lights across it, red probably; in all likelihood, only the farthest right-hand light will be lit. On the far right-hand side of the box itself will be a vertical stack of red lights-one for each incoming line-these are actually buttons, not lights. Below these lights,” she emphasized, “there is another button off by itself.” Then, editing herself, she said, “On two of the machines it is below. On the Black Box model it is above. But it will either read ‘Master,’ or ‘Group On-line,’ or ‘All.’”

“Master, Group On-line, or All,” he repeated.

“Yes. And that is the one you want. One or more of those masters is going to be red. When you push it, it will change to green or amber. At that point we’re back on-line.” She asked, “Is that enough of a description?”

“Sounds good.”

“You can describe things to me and ask, once you’re there.”

“I missed that last bit,” Dart said, finally arriving at the bottom of the stairs. Ginny repeated herself. “Okay,” Dart said, cowering from the time pressure. “I’m on the basement level. What room am I looking for?”

“Data Processing,” Ginny replied.

Dart reevaluated his situation. There were, at the very minimum, three guards after him. Proctor, and anyone accompanying him, had to be thrown into the mix. That made four or more after him. They had lost track of him. With Proctor running things, Dart felt certain they would do the smart thing: conduct a floor-by-floor search. At the same time, at least one guard would watch the computer, monitoring the system to see if Dart attempted to use a security card to gain access anywhere. This person would guide the search team.

The voice of the lookout scratched into Dart’s ear like fingernails down a blackboard. “They’re taking their time, but they’re working their way down. I’m showing them at the second floor.”

By going to the basement level he had, in all likelihood, trapped himself.

He ran down the hall where, instead of the cryptic color system, the doors actually carried titles. Several were marked SERVICE PERSONNEL ONLY. Another read FOOD SERVICES. He passed two bathrooms. Something marked HIGH VOLTAGE DO NOT ENTER.

Dart turned right down a long corridor. The basement was a rabbit warren. He passed a door marked TECHNICAL SERVICES.

“Ginny?” he said into the air.

“Right here.” She spoke into his ear.

“I’m looking at Technical Services. Haven’t seen anything like Data Processing.”

“Basement level?”

“Right.”

“Security?”

“You bet,” Dart confirmed, wondering how he could get inside.

“Check the crack below the door,” Ginny advised. “The gap at the bottom of the door. Cold air sinks,” he said. “The computer room will be real cold.”

Dart dropped to his knees and poked his fingers through. “You got it. Real cold.”

“Let’s give it a try,” she said.

Dart stood back up, his knees killing him. He stared at the door in confusion. It was a heavy steel door, and it was locked. He pulled his gun out of his holster. It was all he could think of.

“Whatever you do,” Ginny said, as if standing there, “don’t break that door down.”

“I have to,” Dart replied.

“You can’t. Same reason we can’t have your bad boys breaking in,” she said, referring to the ERT team. “That kind of illegal access will cause the mainframe to suspend. The only person able to undo that is the SYSOP himself.”

“Shit,” Dart replied. He glanced up: acoustic panels. “Hold on,” Dart said.

“You need a security card,” Ginny advised. “It’s the only way. Trust me.”

“Maybe not,” Dart corrected, heading back down the hallway toward the bathrooms that he had passed.

The lookout interrupted and said, “They’re descending fire stairs, north and south, approaching level one.”

Dart pushed into the mens room and flicked on the light. He glanced up: acoustical panels hung in a suspended frame. He ran back into the hallway, down to the intersection of the other corridor and made a mental note of distance and angle. He returned to the bathroom, pulled himself up onto the sink’s countertop, and pushed up on the panel. It moved out of his way.

“I’m going for it,” Dart announced.

“Going for what?”

“We’ll see.”

Securing a hand-hold on a pipe within the area above the suspended ceiling, Dart hooked a foot over the stall partition and pulled himself up and through. The dead space occupied an area about four feet high-above Dart was the support structure for the first floor; below, the suspended ceiling through which he had just entered. The area was claustrophobic and vast; hallway ceiling fixtures threw enough light around for Dart to see a series of black plastic plumbing pipes and heavy steel sprinkler pipes that were suspended from the overhead I-beams. He took the time to replace the acoustic panel he had come through to hide the way he had come. He hoped the security team would pass up the men’s room and continue their search elsewhere on another level.

The flimsy false ceiling, supported by strands of twisted wire, was not strong enough to hold him. Dart, flat on his stomach, distributed his weight between a plumbing pipe, where he hooked his left leg, and a fire sprinkler holding his right, his fingers groping for purchase on the overhead I-beams. If he slipped and fell, he would crash down into whatever room and unseen hazards lay below.

The parallel pipes were his only support, and he had to stay with them despite the fact that they appeared to follow the direction of the hallway-east, west-rather than the angle that Dart had projected to reach the computer room. He crawled carefully, all the while attempting to maintain his bearings. The pipes and conduit were suspended by metal plumber’s “tape” and lengths of wire, requiring Dart to pause and navigate around them, reaching around each obstruction, taking hold of one pipe and shifting his weight onto the opposing one.

Dart suddenly realized he heard only static in his left ear. Either the radio had gone dead or the combination of the sublevel basement and the abundance of metal was causing interference. If he wasn’t hearing them, then they weren’t hearing him. He had to hurry. If the command van lost track of him for too long they would order the ERT team to hit the building, and according to Ginny such unauthorized entry would shut down the mainframe, rendering it inaccessible, the files lost.

A series of lights came on, immediately to Dart’s left, blinding him. At the same time, he heard the frantic footfalls of people running immediately below him-close enough to touch. Dart remained still as two men stopped directly beneath him, and he recognized the tension-filled voice of Terry Proctor.

“Doesn’t make sense,” Proctor said, out of breath.

“Maybe he can get inside the rooms without the system knowing it,” the man with him suggested.

There was a long pause. Dart could feel Proctor thinking, putting himself in Dart’s position. Proctor said, “We stay with the plan: All rooms that aren’t secure get a thorough search.”

Dart heard the men separate. The guard said to Proctor, “Where are you going? There’s nothing down that way.”

“I need to do something,” Proctor said. “Just do your fucking job,” he chastised.

Rent-a-cops, Dart thought, with equal disdain.

As far as Joe could tell, the guard headed back down toward the bathrooms while Proctor hurried up the corridor. The noise level in the tight space was amazing; despite their name, the acoustic panels did little to muffle any of the sounds. When the guard entered the men’s room, twenty feet behind Dart, every sound could be heard. The man stopped to urinate, and Dart could hear him work his zipper fly. He banged the stall door open. A moment later he was inspecting the women’s room. Not long after, Dart heard the clatter of brooms and mops and knew the guard was in a custodial closet. The detective used the cover of this noise to continue. With the hallway lights ablaze, he could see throughout the tight crawl space, and he plotted which pairs of pipes might support him en route to the computer room.

“… just guard it,” he heard Proctor say somewhere off ahead of him.

“I’m good at finding people,” a deep voice replied. “This is a waste of my talents.”

“Listen, Alverez, if you had any talent, we wouldn’t be here,” Proctor objected.

“You gonna insult me,” the man objected, “and I won’t do the business for you.”

“Do not fuck with me. Get in there and stay there. If and when we need your talents, I’ll send someone for you.”

“He won’t talk, and he won’t walk,” the other man said. “I owe this fucker.”

Dart felt a chill pass through him. Alverez, the man Zeller had wanted to avoid, was guarding the computer room.

Alverez continued. “Make it look like he took a tumble down some stairs. No problem.”

“Down, Rambo,” Proctor said disparagingly. “Just guard the fucking room.”

“Ain’t no problem.”

“And you don’t leave for any reason,” Proctor added.

Dart heard a door open and thump shut. It seemed twenty to thirty feet to his right. The computer room. He studied the pipes to see how to make it over there, then he plotted a course straight ahead ten feet that connected with a single sprinkler pipe he would use to take him over the room. Minutes later, he crossed over to that single pipe. He put his butt on it, his feet out in front of him, hands overhead on an I-beam and, lying back, scooted himself forward a few inches at a time.

Alverez, he was thinking, hearing Zeller’s voice: A guy hired to break my knees.

Without thought, Dart automatically reached down to pat the weapon that Haite had issued him, to make sure it was still there. In the process, he lost his balance, his left hand slipping off the I-beam. He reached out instinctively to block his fall and punched his right hand through an acoustical panel as his left hand saved him. He froze, dangling.

“Billy?” he heard a voice call out. “Hey, Billy? That you?”

Footsteps coming toward him.

Dart was looking down onto a set of plastic recycling bins, just on the other side of the wall from the corridor. He gently fingered the broken piece of panel that hung like a flap and drew it back up silently, partially patching his error.

The footsteps went past him. “Billy?” the voice called out again, growing more distant. He heard a walkie-talkie belch as this man complained, “Whoever’s up on one is making too much fucking noise. Keep it down up there.” A second later a heavy door thumped shut and Dart imagined that this man had left the basement. For good? Dart wondered. Or to get some backup?

He pulled himself back up and continued down the pipe, his butt sore, his fingers cramping. Each of the iron clamps and supports that hung the sprinkler system from the I-beams presented Dart with an obstacle around which he had to maneuver. Five minutes later, he was directly over the computer room, the only sounds the scraping shoes of Alverez as he paced, a bulldog confined to his pen.

All at once, the space went dark again-the basement hallway lights had timed out and had turned themselves off. The only light came in cones and shafts as it escaped the computer room below from holes created to carry conduit and computer and telephone cables. Dart allowed time for his eyes to adjust and then edged forward toward the nearest peephole.

The pipe shifted in a way that Dart had not experienced, a subtle movement that he didn’t understand until he heard a regular ticking sound. He sourced that sound and discovered a leak directly beneath him-a pipe joint had failed under his weight. The sprinkler water dripped like the ticking of a clock. In a moment it would seep through the panel and begin dripping into the room where Alverez paced. Dart reached down and ran his hand along the underside of the pipe, smearing the leaking water, and briefly stopping the drip.

With his hand still on the pipe, he craned himself down to get a look through the peephole, the escaping light flooding his face.

It was no use: He couldn’t control the leak.

Drip … drip … drip … It started up again.

Through the hole in the ceiling panel, he could make out a pair of large boxes the size of small refrigerators, and the corner edge of a desk. Directly below him was vinyl tile flooring. As he was peering down through the hole, he saw the first drop of water, like a small jewel, cascade from the ceiling to the floor, where it exploded.

Another. And another.

Dart worked his hand on the pipe furiously, to try to stop it, but the break was worse, the flow greater. The cold water seeped through his fingers and down to the room below.

Ironically, Alverez came over to inspect the leak. It was as if Dart had issued the man an invitation. And in a heartbeat, Dart understood what had to happen. There was no time to plan, to organize, to waste. Zeller would have called this a hot spot-an instant in time that demands reaction, not thought or consideration, one of those opportunities that comes around only once, and to think about it is to lose it.

Alverez stepped beneath the leak.

Joe Dart let go his grip, and jumped.