Cyber Knights 1.1

1

At first Gerdi Vanderloo did not take much notice of a red and yellow truck hauling an empty trailer as it slowly made its way between the stacks of containers waiting to be picked up or loaded onto ships. It wasn’t until the truck turned onto a quay and stopped next to an empty berth that he started to pay attention to it. Curious as to what the driver was doing there, Vanderloo leaned forward and focused on one of a dozen monitors he and the other employees of Antwerp’s port authority responsible for security relied upon to track the comings and goings of people, vehicles, and cargo within the port area.

“He’s lost,” the shift supervisor muttered as he watched Vanderloo switch from one CCTV camera to another in order to read the license plate of the truck.

“I expect that’s so,” Vanderloo muttered when he saw the truck was from the UK. “Still, I’d better have someone go out there and find out what he’s about.”

Had they not been warned to keep an eye open for unusual goings-on about the port area due to an ever-increasing number of containers being reported missing, Vanderloo’s supervisor would have told him to ignore the truck. But like Vanderloo, he wasn’t about to jeopardize his job by turning a blind eye to what was, in his mind, an obvious case of a Brit driver being either too proud or too stubborn to seek directions from a foreigner. The supervisor for the port’s security personnel assigned to the graveyard shift, and responsible for keeping an eye on things during the wee hours of the morning when everyone’s guard was down, liked his job. The idea of being cast out of the port’s central control room, where it was warm and dry, and reassigned to one of the patrols that roamed the port area day and night, rain or shine, or posted at one the of cramped booths located at every gate leading into and out of the port was not one he relished. So he said nothing as Vanderloo leaned forward and spoke into the mike that linked the port’s security personnel all safely nestled in the warm, well-lit control room to the officers whose job it was to the make sure there was nothing untoward going on in the dark shadows of containers stacked as high as a six-story building.

With his partner making his way cautiously along the left side of the British truck and his hand resting on the butt of his holstered pistol, Maurice Simenon advanced toward the driver’s door. When he reached it, Simenon took a moment to study the driver who, by all appearances, was sound asleep with his head resting on a jacket wedged between him and the door window. Despite the innocence of the scene, Simenon knew better than to let his guard down. So he tapped twice on the door with the knuckles of his left hand while tightening his grip on his pistol.

With a start, the driver jerked his head away from the door and gave it a quick shake before looking down at Simenon through the window.

Using his left hand, Simenon signaled the driver to lower his window.

“What’s the problem?” the driver asked even before he had his window all the way down.

“Could you step down from the truck,” Simenon replied in a manner that alerted Sean Farrell, a fifteen-year veteran driver for Northumberland Haulage, that the officer’s question was not a request.

Though he was not at all pleased at the prospect of leaving the comparative warmth of his truck’s cab and standing about in the damp, chilly early morning air, Farrell knew better than to argue with a man who had his hand wrapped around the butt of a pistol. That they were bona fide port security officers was a given. Besides having nothing of value other than his lorry to steal at the moment, not even the cheekiest hijacker would dare make a move on a truck this far into the port area that was parked in a well-lit area Farrell assumed was covered by multiple CCTV cameras. So he complied, taking his time to open his door and climb down lest he spook the officer.

“What are you doing here at this time of night?” Simenon asked in broken English as Farrell was offering up his passport, driver’s license, and port pass without waiting to be asked for them.

“Well, it’s like this, mate,” Farrell explained when he saw the security officer release his grip from his pistol’s butt in order to take his documents. “My boss back in Morpeth is something of a hard case. He’s getting tired of being told containers we’re supposed to be picking up here have gone missing. It’s not helpin’ that the insurance companies who have to pay up every time that happens are starting to suspect we’re the ones who are nicking the cargo. That’s why I’m here. My boss wants to make sure the ship our next consignment is on gets loaded straight off the boat and onto my trailer without anyone here being given a chance to lose it.”

Though that was not the way things were handled, it wasn’t Simenon’s responsibility to point this out to the Brit. Nor was he in a mood to waste his breath trying to, not at this time of the morning. As long as the man’s papers were in order and he was authorized to be in the port, Simenon saw no reason why he couldn’t allow the Englishman to stay where he was. The foreman responsible for overseeing the berthing and unloading of the ship due to berth along the stretch of quay they were on later in the day could handle that.

Having done all he intended to do at the moment, after handing Farrell back his documents and returning to his patrol car, Simenon informed Vanderloo there was nothing they needed to be concerned with before resuming his usual rounds.

It took some doing, a fair number of phone calls between him, his boss back in the UK, and the port authority, and several hours, but Sean Farrell managed to secure the container he’d been sent to fetch and clear it through customs. He was sitting in a line of other trucks that were waiting to be checked through at the last gate and exit the port when he couldn’t help but notice another truck, painted red and yellow in exactly the manner as his, was entering the yard. The idea Charles Mills, the owner of Northumberland Haulage, would send two trucks to Antwerp to fetch the only container he was aware they had due in here was simply too incredible for Farrell to fathom. Only when the second truck bearing the same livery as his pulled even and he was able to get a good look at the driver and a second man in its cab did Farrell realize what was going on.

Not knowing what else to do, Farrell threw the door of his truck open, stepped down onto the running board, and yelled at the pair of security officers at the gate who were inspecting the documents of another trucker farther up the line.

“Hey! Hey! You,” he shouted at the top of his lungs as he pointed at the other red and yellow truck that was speeding away. “Stop that truck.”

The startled officers at the gate didn’t have the time or the ability to do so, even if they understood what the problem was before the truck had passed into the port complex. They were, however, able to find out what had Farrell in a tizzy. Despite being unsure what was going on, they knew enough to put out a warning to all security personnel scattered about the port and manning the points of access to stop the speeding red and yellow truck that was now rampaging its way through the port area in search of a quick exit.

Henry Delvauxe, a newly assigned officer with the Antwerp Port Authority, was the first to spot the truck in question and bring it to a halt simply by using his patrol car to block the intersection created by stacks of containers. Exiting the car, he signaled the two men seated in the truck’s cab to climb down using his left hand while gripping the handle of his pistol with his right, just as Maurice Simenon had done earlier that morning when confronting Farrell.

The two men in this truck, however, were not nearly as accommodating as the veteran British driver had been. To Delvaux’s astonishment, the passenger of the truck pulled an AK-47 he’d been holding just out of sight under the truck’s dashboard, leaned out the window of the passenger’s door, and let rip with a burst.

Only the haste with which the truck’s passenger had fired and the notoriously wicked climb AKs were known for when fired on full auto saved Henry Delvaux that day. Without having to give the matter a whit of thought, he knew he was sadly overmatched. So instead of foolishly standing his ground and engaging in a firefight he had no chance of winning, the Belgian security officer dived for cover behind a stack of containers.

The driver of the truck had no intention of waiting around for help to come to Delvaux or for his partner to take his time and aim before he fired again. Even before the gunman had ducked back into the cab, the driver slammed down on the accelerator, causing the truck to lurch forward and push Delvaux’s patrol car out of the way with ease, allowing the pair to continue their search for another way out of the port. As much as they were being paid to infiltrate the port using valid authorized economic operator certificates and a fallacious bill of lading that would have allowed them to exit the port hauling the container Sean Farrell had in tow, neither man was willing to give up his life for the people who’d sent them to steal a container that held a cargo more valuable monetarily than all the other contents of the containers it had been shipped with from Singapore combined.

2

The annoying chirp of a mobile phone was at odds with the soft, rhythmic patter of rain on canvas. In addition to waking him from a sound, peaceful sleep, it reminded Andy that repeated warnings to Tommy and Spence not to bother him whenever he traded his custom-tailored suits for the uniform of a Roman primus pilus centurion were not enough to keep them from reminding him of his twenty-first-century responsibilities. Grunting, he gently rubbed the sleep from his eyes with the fingertips of one hand even as he was reaching over to the small, rough-hewn camp table next to his cot and blindly groped about in search of the annoying mobile with his other one.

Without bothering to sit up, Andy clicked on the talk button as he was raising the mobile to his ear. “This had better be good,” he muttered, making no effort to keep his ire in check.

Karen Spencer’s voice struck Andy as being simply too bright and cheery for this time of morning as well as his current mood. “I’ve had a call from the owner of a haulage company in Northumberland who wants us to look into a problem he’s been having in Belgium.”

“I do hope for your sake this isn’t something that could have waited until Monday.”

“If I thought it could have waited until Monday, I would have told you on Monday when you decided to rejoin the modern world,” Spence shot back without hesitation in a calm, self-assured tone of voice.

Rather than being annoyed by her response, Andy couldn’t help but grin. Since returning from her coup in Milan, Karen Spencer had been a different girl. It was more than the way she dressed now, or grooming habits that were, as Tommy put it, “so un-Spence.” The young woman he’d come to depend on now possessed a degree of self-confidence that made her more than a key asset to Century Consultants. She had gone from being totally forgettable to someone who, in Andy’s eyes at least, was more than just attractive.

“Tell me, what’s so bloody important about this haulage company that you had to wake me up at…” Pulling his mobile away from his ear, Andy looked at the time showing at the top of its screen. “Do you realize what time it is?”

“Is it really that early?” Spence asked mockingly. “Golly, good gosh. I never would have guessed.”

“If you don’t give me a straight answer, young lady, you’re going to find it’s later than you think.”

“The owner of the haulage company is in a real bind,” Spence informed Andy as her voice took on a more matter-of-fact, down-to-business tone. “His insurance underwriters are threatening to cancel their policies with him in the next few days if he doesn’t provide them with proof that his company and its employees are not responsible for the loss of several shipments. Without insurance to cover both his drivers and the cargos they haul, a company like his can’t operate.”

“Sounds like a police matter to me,” Andy grunted. “Why isn’t he going to them?”

“It’s complicated,” Spence replied. “According to Charles Mills, the company’s owner, several containers his company was contracted to pick up at the port of Antwerp have simply disappeared after they’ve been offloaded and claimed by drivers who, according to the port authority, were his, something he denies.”

“I’m still not seeing what we can do.”

“Well, you could start by stopping in Morpeth after you’ve finished fending off the savage hordes you and all your little friends are facing and have a chat with Mills.”

As much as he hated it when Spence or Tommy made fun of his hobby, Andy never allowed them to see it. “Fine, fine,” he muttered. “Call him and tell him I’ll stop by midmorning on Monday. Then send me a phone number and an address.”

“Already done,” Spence chirped brightly.

“Is there anything else before I hang up?”

“Yes, there is. You be careful,” Spence advised mockingly. “While those weekend Picts you’re always running into might look like oversized Smurfs, I’ve read they can be quite mean when you piss them off.”

“Say good-bye, Spence.”

“Good-bye, Spence.”

After clicking off his mobile, Andy tossed it back onto the small table next to his cot and rolled over, determined to put Century Consultants and Charles Mills’ problem out of mind, at least for what was left of the weekend. They, and all the problems brought on by the advent of the twenty-first century, would still be there come Monday. They always were despite his best efforts to escape both by donning the panoply of a first-century Roman legionnaire and losing himself in the routine of ancient camp life.

Northumberland Haulage was a modest, family run business that catered to the needs of other small businesses throughout North East England. “My grand-da started the company after the Second World War with his brother Clyde,” Charles Mills explained to Andy as he was leading him into an office cluttered with boxes, filing cabinets, and stacks of overstuffed manila folders covering just about every flat surface in the room. “That’s them and the first lorry they owned,” he informed Andy while pointing over his shoulder at a framed black-and-white photo hanging behind Mills’ desk. “It was a surplus Bedford QLD like the one grand-da drove during the war.

“They started with that one truck and a philosophy that no load was too small or distance too great,” he went on as Andy settled into the only seat next to Mills’ desk that didn’t have something stacked on it. “That kind of thinking is ideal for us up here. Many of the small businesses throughout Northumberland don’t import or export enough product to fill an entire shipping container. That’s why we’re so popular. We specialize in less-than-truckload shipping. We pick up a container that comes in from overseas at the port and haul it to our warehouse. There it’s unloaded, inventoried, and stored while the owners of the goods are notified that their portion of the shipment is here. Some prefer to come and pick it up themselves, others hire us to bring it to them using the smaller trucks and vans in our fleet.”

Though he had not asked Mills to go into detail about his company, Andy was glad the man was doing so. Mills’ detailed tutorial in the ins and outs of the shipping business gave Andy a clear idea of what his company did and how it operated. It was absolutely critical that he and his team understood what they were looking at and how all the pieces of a business they were working with fit together when the time came to sort through the computer-related problems Northumberland Haulage was experiencing, problems Mills had yet to delve into.

“Companies or merchants up here who import items from Asia or the Americas that are too bulky or expensive to ship by other means go through a brokerage firm in the country of origin that packs a container with shipments headed to the same general region until it’s filled,” Mills explained as tea was being served by a woman he introduced as his niece as well as the company’s secretary and receptionist. “The brokers then contract with a shipping company there, see to it the container is loaded on a ship, and forward the information and documentation to the receiving port and the haulage company that has been hired to pick up the container at the port. Well, in the case of this latest row, we had to trust the brokerage firm in Singapore we always do business with when we need to. My guess is that’s where our problems are coming from. You see, the foreign brokerage firm is the one who’s responsible for seeing that only those items that are listed on the shipping documents are packed into the containers we’ve been hired to pick up at our end. Our drivers don’t go through the containers, most of which are packed in tighter than a teenage girl in a summer ball dress.

“I take it someone in Singapore is adding a few extra items somewhere along the way,” Andy surmised before taking a sip of tea.

Mills shrugged. “That’s my guess. Starting three months ago, none of the containers originating from there that we were hired to pick up in Antwerp ever made it out of the port, at least not behind one of my trucks. Somehow the people who run that port managed to lose the container after it was offloaded and before the driver I sent to pick it up arrived there. It wasn’t until a truck being driven by my wife’s cousin, who’s also one of my most reliable drivers, ran headlong into a truck made to look like one of mine going into the port as he was leaving it that I realized what was really going on.”

Unsure where this was going, and eager to be on his way, Andy set his cup aside and clasped his hands together as he eased back in his seat. “This seems like a simple police matter to me.”

In response, Mills snorted as he rolled his eyes. “A police matter, yes. Simple, no. You see, the Antwerp port authority has washed its hands of the matter. They claim they’re innocent of mishandling the containers that have gone missing. They keep telling the authorities they have all the documentation they need to prove their innocence, which they handed over to the Belgium police. The Belgium police, finding no fault with the port authority based on the docs they were given, have opened an investigation into my company’s operations, one our own police is cooperating with. Well,” Mills explained as he threw his hands up, “as you can imagine, the underwriters who insure us are now refusing to do so until the matter is cleared up. And without the ability to insure our operations, no one in his right mind will hire us, which leaves us dead in the water.”

“So, what can Century Consultants do to help you?”

“My solicitor, who also happens to be the only son-in-law of mine who’s switched on, suggested we have someone who’s working for us look into the matter. Since so much of the coordination is done via the Internet, and the shipping and customs documents as well as the certificates used by drivers are computer generated, he thinks a company like yours is the very one we need to help us run this to ground.”

Before answering, Andy drew in a deep breath. He hated dealing with foreigners, especially anyone who was somehow connected to the European Union, people who had taken bureaucratic inefficiency to a whole new level. “I do hope you know this isn’t going to be easy.”

“Nowadays, what is?” Mills grunted in response.

“It’s going to take time, and it isn’t going to be cheap. Are you aware of what our services run?”

“I’m aware,” Mills replied calmly. “But if you can save a company that has been in my family for three generations, it’ll be worth every penny. Besides,” he added as his voice took on a mischievous tone. “You’re the only firm that does this sort of thing that isn’t run by a bunch of poncey bloody southerners or hires kids who are still living with their moms and dads.”

Having worked with more than a few northerners who had little use for anyone from the Home Counties, Andy couldn’t help but chuckle. “Well, if you’re looking for a crew that’s anything but, you came to the right people.”

3

To call Karen Spencer an Anglophile was a mistake. Those who did were immediately informed she was a tried-and-true, red, white, and blue ’Merican, through and through. It was a claim no one believed. Not even Tommy the Oblivious was taken in by her jingoistic rants. “I expect in another couple of years I’ll be able to get her to stop rooting for that team of hers and start following one that plays proper football.” While Andy suspected it would be a cold day in hell before Spence gave up following her precious New York Giants, he couldn’t help but smile at the excitement she made no effort to hide whenever a case he assigned to her provided an opportunity to travel to a part of the UK she’d not been to before.

Never one to pass up an opportunity to see more of a country that had been her home for the past several years, Spence avoided the motorways whenever she could, choosing instead to meander her way along B roads and country lanes, if for no other reason than to enjoy the Tolkienesque charm of the English countryside. As neither Andy nor Tommy was going up to Morpeth with her, she followed the trace of the Great North Road, stopping from time to time when she came upon something that struck her fancy.

Her whimsical wanderings came to an end the moment she crossed the threshold of Northumberland Haulage’s office. Having prepared to deal with the people there using the same no-nonsense approach she’d employed at TI Modeling, Spence found herself having to quickly adjust how she went about her business the second she met the owner.

Greeting her with a broad smile and a welcoming handshake only slightly less energetic than Tommy’s, Charlie Mills went out of his way to make her feel at home. “You must be the young lady Andy Webb said he was sending up to have a look at my computers,” he exclaimed broadly in an accent that tagged him as being a northerner. “I expect you’re needing a cuppa after driving all the way up from the Great Wen. I know I could use one.”

Without waiting for her to answer, Mills turned around and headed back toward his office past several abutting desks occupied by men and women Spence suspected were responsible for tending to the affairs of Northumberland Haulage. When he stopped at one of only two desks that was not paired off in the open space they’d been meandering through, Mills introduced Spence to the woman seated at it. “This is Sarah,” he declared as he waved his hand vaguely at a woman Spence’s age. “In addition to being my youngest daughter, she’s the one who really runs the business. She oversees that lot,” he declared as he stuck his thumb up over his shoulder to indicate the people he and Spence had just passed. “Everything from sorting out all the paperwork and documentation needed to make sure everything gets where it needs to go on time and under cost goes through her when she’s not off making sure I have lots of grandsons to take care of me when I’m too old to look after things here myself.”

Sarah responded to her father’s introduction by regarding him with a scathing glare. “You really know how to make a girl feel special, don’t you,” she groused before turning to Spence and extending her hand. “Just call me the curator.” When she saw the look on Spence’s face, Sarah grinned. “You’re going to find there isn’t a computer in this place that doesn’t belong in a museum somewhere,” she declared mockingly as she nodded her head toward the paired-off desks. “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear they found some of our computers in the back of that army surplus truck my great-granddad and his brother bought after the Second World War.”

“They work, don’t they?” Mills protested before Spence could say a word.

Sarah was having none of her father’s justification. “So does Big Ben, but that doesn’t mean we can skip investing in a better way of keeping track of time.”

“She’s been like this since she returned from university,” Mills grumbled as he turned toward Spence. “Always after me to buy this or that. ‘We’ll be able to do so much more, faster and easier,’ she says,” he muttered as he shook his head, telling Spence that there was something of a running dispute going on between father and Northumberland Haulage’s next generation of owners. “Be a darling, Sarah, and fetch us some tea. Then join us.”

With that, Mills continued on to his office even as Sarah took to rolling her eyes as they passed. “Yes, Papa. Whatever you say, Papa,” she muttered in a tone no different than one Spence had often used whenever she was not at all pleased by how her father was treating her.

Once they were all settled in his office and after Mills had explained the nature of his business in much the same way he had to Andy, Sarah told Spence of problems they were having with their computer systems she suspected were somehow related to the issue at hand, one she tried to explain to her father but was unable to get a man raised as part of a generation that ran on pistons and gears to understand. “After coming back from staying home with Little Charlie until he was old enough for Mum to look after him, I noticed e-mails were taking much longer to go back and forth than they had been before Little Charlie came along. At first I didn’t think anything of it. It was only when we started having problems with shipments going through Antwerp that I noticed some of the documents coming back to me weren’t matching up with copies of the originals I’d prepared. I ran the antivirus, security, and diagnostic programs we have, even one I bought on my own,” she added while glancing over at her father. “But found nothing more troubling than a game one of the lads had managed to download the second I started my maternity leave.”

Right off Spence suspected she knew what the problem was. “Who took your place while you were on maternity leave?” she asked cautiously, without bothering to explain why she was asking.

Mills answered before Sarah had a chance to. “There wasn’t anyone already working for us who had the skills needed to fill in for Sarah, so I had to go outside the family.”

“I contacted a temp agency in Newcastle to see if they had someone with the necessary skills and experience to deal with the odd assortment of computers we use here,” Sarah interjected. “They sent a young girl I guess wasn’t much older than you or I the very same day I called. She seemed to know her stuff.”

“Do you still have this woman’s name and how she can be contacted?” Spence asked as her apprehensions began to grow.

“Of course,” Mills replied before Sarah could in a tone of voice that told Spence her question had been the silliest thing he’d ever heard. “Bridgette, who handles all the secretarial duties around here and is my wife’s niece, will have that information.”

“I’ll need to have that,” Spence informed Mills before turning her attention back to Sarah. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to start with the computer she used.”

Sarah nodded. “That would be mine.”

“Is there another you can use while I root around in it?”

“There is, but first I’ll need to download some files from mine to a backup that’s even older than the one I rely on,” she added, even as she was giving her father a filthy look.

“No, don’t,” Spence proclaimed sharply. When she saw the startled expressions, she explained. “If, and that’s only an if, there is something that is on that computer that shouldn’t be there or it’s running a program that links it to another system outside this office, I don’t want you accidently transferring it to that system. Nor do I want you to use one of your other computers if that is possible.”

This caused Sarah to smile as she turned toward her father. “Well, how about that? Now will you pry open that wallet of yours and finally cop for the laptop I have been urging you to buy?”

“I’ll do no such thing,” Mills grumbled. “Use one of those computers that was in the shipment no one has claimed yet. Just make sure you wipe off everything concerning our affairs here when this young lady is finished with yours.”

Sarah pulled back in genuine horror. “We can’t do that.”

“And why not?” Mills declared imperiously as he drew himself up. “You yourself said there’s a question as to who ordered them, if anyone did. For all we know, some low-wage warehouseman in Singapore who couldn’t read the shipping documents printed in the Queen’s English packed them in our container by mistake. We may never know who they belong to.”

“And what are you going to say when someone does show up here looking for them?”

“You just leave that to me,” Mills countered reassuringly as he ignored the way his daughter was pinning him with a steady, unflinching stare. Instead, he returned to the matter at hand. “Is there any particular reason why it’s so important for my daughter to use another computer?” he asked Spence as it began to dawn on him something within his own company was amiss.

Not wishing to spook the man, not until she needed to, Spence put off sharing her suspicions. Instead, she sought to put Mills’ mind at ease by explaining her concerns in a manner she imagined he’d understand. “My boss is something of a perfectionist when it comes to running a problem like yours to ground. I may need to contact the temp you had in and see if she was experiencing the same problems Sarah has seen once I have a handle on it myself.” When she saw Mills was satisfied with this answer, Spence set aside her teacup and turned to Sarah. “Now, if you could, show me the system you use when dealing with requests, shipping invoices, bills of lading, and anything even remotely involved in the handling of cargo and talk me through them.”

“That’ll be easy.” Sarah snickered. “Like I said, the system and computers we rely on are almost as old as my father,” she added even as she was glancing at Mills out of the corner of her eye.

“They work, don’t they?” he replied in a tone that was just as playful.

“Aye, they do, most of the time thanks in no small part to spit, bailing wire, and an occasional appeal to the Almighty Himself,” Sarah replied. “Which is more than I can say about that no-good, lazy lout my sister married.”

“Kevin is a fine boy,” Mills shot back.

Unbowed, Sarah snorted. “Boy is right. If you come with me, Ms. Spencer, I’ll show you around.”

Unable to help herself, Spence chuckled. This, she thought, will be fun. It was an opinion she was able to hold on to until she began to root about Sarah’s computer and discovered her worst fears had been spot on.

Totally lost in what they were doing, both Andy and Tommy were startled when the office door flew open, banging loudly against the edge of the counter where the kettle and tin of biscuits were kept. Looking up, the two men watched as Spence rushed into the room, pausing only to slam the door shut by using her foot to boot it without bothering to look back.

Without a word, she made straight for her desk, where she dropped her travel bag and swung her laptop’s carrying case around, smoothly slipping it down off her shoulder onto the desk even as she was taking a seat. Hunching over, she turned her desktop computer on before unzipping her laptop case while she waited. Reaching in with one hand, she fished around in a pocket of the case. After pulling out a flash drive, she spun her chair about and tossed the flash drive over at Tommy, who had to move quicker than Andy was accustomed to seeing so he could catch it. “Take a look at what’s on the drive and tell me what you see,” she commanded before spinning back around and turning her full attention to her computer.

Flummoxed, Tommy blinked. “Oy, Tinker Bell! Who died and left you in charge?”

Spence didn’t bother looking up from her monitor as her fingers flew across her computer’s keyboard as she spoke. “If you want to keep me away from your desk armed with a trash bin, you’ll plug that flash drive in and get to work.”

Not at all sure how best to respond, Tommy glanced over at Andy. After watching Spence beaver away as if she were possessed and recognizing her behavior for what it was, since he himself often threw himself headlong into a problem in much the same way, Andy returned Tommy’s stare, cocking an eyebrow as he did so. “In the state she’s in, if you know what’s good for you, you’ll do as she says.”

Seeing he wasn’t going to win this round, Tommy sighed. “Do you mind telling me what I’m looking for?” he asked as he turned his attention back to Spence.

“You’ll know it the second you see it,” she shot back without skipping a beat as she continued to alternate between scrolling through a list of websites she’d pulled up on her monitor’s screen, selecting one and then inputting a query.

Pouting like a boy who’d been told to eat his veggies, Tommy loudly muttered to himself. “If you ask me, I kind of liked the old Spence better than this new high-maintenance version she brought back from Italy.” He saved the file he’d been working on and closed it before plugging the flash drive Spence had tossed over at him.

Andy chuckled as he went from watching Tommy in order to make sure he was doing as Spence had insisted and back over to a self-assured young woman who was becoming, to him, so much more than a valued employee. It was how he now viewed her, and what he should do about it, which worried him, for his background and training had left him woefully unprepared for the kind of workplace relationship he was seriously considering embarking upon.

4

The greeting Tommy got as he entered the Red Cow, even when there was business he needed to see to, always made him smile. On a weeknight like this there wasn’t a face in the pub he couldn’t put a name to. Nor was there anyone present who didn’t stop what they were doing and return his cocky little smirk or greet him as if he were a long-lost cousin home from the wars.

“Hey, Tommy, too bad about last Sunday,” the landlord, who often bet against Arsenal just to get Tommy’s goat, called out.

“That was luck, mate,” Tommy shot back even as he was glancing around the room, looking for the man he was supposed to meet. “That lot of yours won’t be doing that again anytime soon.”

“A fiver says they will next month.”

“You’re on,” Tommy replied after spotting a mate of his he’d served with in the Queen’s Dragoon Guards who was now working with MI5 as an analyst. With a nod, Tommy let Collin Carter know he’d seen him before heading over to the bar, ordering a pint, and then when served, heading over to join his friend.

After taking a moment to lightly touch their glasses in a silent toast to mates they’d served with who were no longer with them, and enjoying a long sip of beer, the two men set their pints aside and got right down to business. “Have ya got it?” Carter asked expectantly.

“Of course,” Tommy replied dismissively. “Were you able to track down the name I gave you?”

“Oh yeah,” Carter snipped. “I most certainly did. It also lit up my bosses’ eyes when the security system flagged that someone was rooting around in the file that name is associated with.”

Recognizing the look on his friend’s face and alerted by the tone of his voice, Tommy pushed his drink aside and leaned over the table. “Well?”

Before he answered, Carter eased back in his seat, taking a drink as he studied the expectant look on his friend’s face, weighing, Tommy imagined, just how much he dare share with his friend. Only after deciding on what he hoped was a safe compromise, one that would be enough to satisfy Tommy and allow him to give up the computer components Tommy was exchanging for a little information, Carter also leaned over the table. “What I tell you needs to go no further than you.”

“Can’t promise you that,” Tommy shot back without a whit of hesitation.

“Well, it can’t become known you heard it from me, otherwise my boss will skin me alive and nail my arse to the wall of his office.”

“I can live with that.”

“And you need to tell me what caused you to ask about this woman. If you do come across something my lot needs to know about, you’re not to fuck about like you tend to, waiting to tell me what’s what.”

Now it was Tommy’s turn to consider just how much he was willing to share as he enjoyed a long sup of beer. Upon finally plonking his empty glass down on the table, he winked. “It’s like this, mate…”

Unlike Spence, Andy blitzed straight up the M1, then followed the A1 when he and Tommy headed to Morpeth to follow up on what Spence had discovered. For once she was not in the least bit put out at the thought of having Tommy go over what she’d done. Besides, the tasks Andy had given her left her little time to fret over a perceived slight. While going through public records, searching for insurance claims made by haulage companies for containers lost in the post of Antwerp was unglamorous, if it helped keep Charlie Mills’ company from going under, Spence was more than happy to do it.

Little time was wasted with preliminaries once Andy and Tommy reached the offices of Northumberland Haulage. While Tommy gave every computer and piece of equipment associated with them a thorough going-over in an effort to confirm what Spence had found, Andy headed down to Newcastle. There he managed to wean information about the temp they’d sent up to fill in for Mills’ daughter from the head of the employment agency by using an astute combination of bluff, guile, and hints that it would be best for the agency to cooperate with him rather than deal with a team of no-nonsense investigators from Special Branch who, he assured the agency, would carry out their assigned duties with all the finesse of a newly certified proctologist.

Upon Andy’s return to Morpeth, and before he sat down with Mills, Tommy took him on a tour of the computer systems Northumberland Haulage relied upon. “Like Spence said, it’s a real mishmash, the likes of which I haven’t seen in years,” Tommy pointed out. Tucked away in the corner of the main office was a reasonably new printer and two ancient tower computers on which a pair of equally ancient network devices were balanced. One of the computers had a tattered sticker identifying it as the company’s mail server, whilst the other was an old Windows NT 4 box that, against all odds, was still soldiering on as the primary domain controller that ran the network.

“The original network was set up by a local company twelve years ago. When that company went belly up, other than an occasional upgrade of a program, not much has been done to maintain it. At the moment the owner’s daughter, who has a working knowledge of computers but nothing more, is doing her damnedest to keep the whole thing up and running relying on little more than sticky tape and string.”

Like Tommy, Andy could do little more than sigh and shake his head as he studied the jury-rigged network that, like Charlie Mills himself, belonged to another era.

Only when he and Tommy had finished comparing notes and he was sure he had a handle on what had gone down did Andy sit down with Charlie Mills and go over what they had discovered.

“To start with, let me assure you I am convinced your company was not specifically targeted,” Andy began. “What happened here could have happened to any company like yours.” While he had hoped this preamble would make what he was about to tell Mills more palatable, the look on the man’s face told Andy he’d missed that mark by an Irish mile. So he hastened to finish.

“The woman who was hired to fill in for your daughter while she was on maternity leave was not who she claimed to be.” Rather than betray the trust Tommy’s friend had placed in him, Andy passed the woman off as nothing more than a bit player, a computer-savvy freelancer hired for this one job. “While she was here and had access to the company’s e-mail server with full administrator rights, she routed all your e-mail correspondence, both incoming and outgoing, to an overseas e-mail proxy service that was controlled by a gang that was looking to use containers as a means of importing items they wished to slip past customs.”

Pausing when he realized what he was telling Mills was gaining little purchase, Andy took a second to rephrase his explanation, taking it down a notch. “Everything coming into and out of this office was received by the people running the e-mail proxy service. When they saw e-mails containing coordinating instructions, bills of lading, and customs documents that fit their requirements, they doctored them before sending them onto the brokerage firm in Singapore. The people there, having no idea the documents had been altered, carried on as if they were valid and legal.”

Ever so slowly, Mills’ expression betrayed the stunned disbelief he felt over what he was hearing. Realizing he had little need to go into any more detail and wishing to get back to London as quickly as possible, Andy summed up how things had played out as best as he could. “With all the e-mail traffic concerning a shipment you were contracted to pick up at Antwerp, and the doctored documents in hand, the hijackers were able to pass themselves off as your people, pick up the container, and leave without anyone working for the Antwerp Port Authority being any the wiser.”

Easing back in his seat, Mills averted his gaze a moment as he took in everything he’d just heard and mulled it over. Only when he’d worked his way through it all in his own good time did he glance back up at Andy. “What can we do about this? I mean, this is a police matter.”

Like Spence, Andy had no wish to spook Mills by letting on it was far more than that. Instead he asked that he be given seventy-two hours. “There are some people in London I need to talk to, people who need to get on this. In the meantime, I’ll send Ms. Spencer back up here with the necessary wherewithal she’ll need to sort out you system, as well as recommendations on what you need to do to upgrade and secure it.”

Realizing he was in over his head, Mills didn’t bother to ask if that was going to be expensive. If anything, the only thing he was worried about at the moment was what his daughter would say when he told her she’d been right all along.

Tommy waited until they were headed back to London before he offered up his suggestion on what they needed to do. “First thing I say we do is turn this all over to the Home Office,” Tommy offered.

“That’s a given,” Andy replied dryly. “This is way above our pay grades.”

“While that may be true, what about Charlie Mills and his company? You know as well as I do it’ll take forever for anyone associated with HMG to sort this out. By then a small company like his, one that doesn’t have the deep pockets or a cozy relationship with a big-name insurer that’s willing to cut him some slack, will have lost the last of his coverage, not to mention his reputation. We need to figure out a way of keeping that from happening in double-quick time.”

Having become far more involved on a personal level in this case than he liked, Andy didn’t answer right off as he mulled over the problem. “You know, for once you’re right,” he finally admitted. “We’ve got to do more than simply say, ‘Well, there it is, mate. Good luck.’”

“Any bright ideas how we can help, boss?”

Again Andy lapsed into silence as he ran through a number of options, weighing each one in turn. Ever so slowly he discarded all but one. As much as he hated the idea of going to Edward Telford and asking him for a favor, not after the way he had conned them into taking on the Mullins’ case and then leaving them high and dry when things became complicated, Andy sadly concluded the only way he could speed things up was to call for some divine intervention, or the closest thing to it here in Middle Earth.

Drawing in a deep breath, while keeping one eye on the road, Andy scrolled through his mobile’s directory and selected Edward Telford’s number. Sporting an impish grin, Tommy watched in silence as his boss prepared to feast on crow.

5

At lunch the next day, Edward Telford was the epitome of affability, never mentioning once the previous evening’s call, or the events best forgotten in New York. After hearing what Andy had to say, Telford nodded. “Seeing to it the right people get involved straight off the mark won’t be a problem,” he mused. “Unfortunately, even then, this is going to take time,” he quickly added.

“Time is something Charlie Mills and Northumberland Haulage don’t have. Once his insurance underwriters dump him, he’ll have to cease operations,” Andy pointed out as he reached for his drink.

“You do know there is something you can do that could very well have an immediate effect, one that will not only cause the people looking into this problem to move out with a purpose, but go far to salvage your client’s reputation in the eyes of his clients. It’s something I do every now and then.”

“What?” Andy asked as he eyed Telford after taking a sip of his drink. “Blame your predecessor?”

“Well, there is that,” Telford replied with a straight face. “What I was thinking of is using the media to highlight poor old Charlie’s blight. The media loves nothing more than battering hardworking government officials like me with a sob story in which some poor bloke is getting shafted by either a heartless bureaucrat or corporate trolls.”

“You’re not suggesting I go to Sue Oliver with this, are you?” Andy asked, doing little to hide the hint of a whine in his voice.

“If you’re going to get something done quickly enough to make a difference for your client, I don’t see that you have a choice. Oliver and her rag are a sucker for this kind of story.”

Andy sighed before taking a drink. “You know what she’s going to think. She’s going to think I’m interested in her.”

Unable to help himself, Telford chuckled. “Hey, better you than me, mate.”

“Well, shit. Before I call her I need another drink,” Andy muttered.

“While you’re at it, order one for me as well.”

“Who’s paying?”

“You are,” Telford replied brightly as he lifted his near-empty glass in a salute to Andy. “Consider it my fee for services rendered.”

“What the hell, why not?” Turning, he waved down the barmaid. “Two more of the same when you have the chance, Doris.”

Holding his glass up, Telford called out before the barmaid had a chance to turn away. “Make his a double. He’s going to need it.”

The image of Charles Mills on the TV, standing in front of one of his red and yellow trucks as a BBC reporter introduced her story, brought a smile to Spence’s face. To have the opportunity to see one of the cases she’d worked on brought to a successful and satisfactory end was pleasing. To see her efforts rewarded in such a manner was, as DS Marbury once put it, “Glorious.”

“In the wake of the story broken by Sue Oliver in the Sun, what started as an investigation into the smuggling of drugs through the port of Antwerp has turned into something of a nationwide scandal involving insurance fraud,” the television journalist declared in an ominous tone of voice meant to impart the gravity of her story. “Were it not for the efforts of Charles Mills, owner of Northumberland Haulage, the flow of drugs into the UK and the manner with which large, corporate-owned firms were not only turning a blind eye to the way their trucks were being used by Asian drug cartels but actually profiting from it, would never have come to light.”

“That’s a load of bollocks,” Tommy muttered as he watched the same report from his desk. “I expect in time some silly sod would have either figured it out or stumbled upon what was really going on.”

Glancing over at Tommy, who was hunkered down behind a desk strewn with an odd assortment of parts he’d gutted from an old computer, Spence caught his attention. “But it wasn’t some silly sod who figured it out,” she murmured amiably. “I did.”

For a long, tense moment Tommy returned Spence’s stare, wondering if he should put into words the thought that was going through his mind, that her comment proved his point regarding a silly sod accidently stumbling upon the way insurance companies, large trucking firms, and the Antwerp port authority were chalking up the loss of containers and their cargos as being nothing more than the cost of doing business and profiting from it was valid. Only the sound of Andy clearing his throat kept him from doing so.

Glancing over at him, Tommy did his best to play innocent, an act Andy did not buy into. Deciding it was best to let the matter drop, Tommy turned his attention back to what he’d been doing while Spence, pleased there’d be no further interruptions, returned to watching the TV, grinning to herself as she listened to how Mills took every opportunity that came his way to drive home the point his company was a family run affair, one that catered to the needs of small businesses like his throughout the north of England. It was a reminder to her that what she was doing was not nearly as cold and detached as some thought. Everything she, Andy, and even Tommy did touched the lives of people, real people who were struggling to do more than survive in a world that was becoming dominated by technology few who relied upon it comprehended. With a little help from her, as well as a spot of luck, Spence had managed to turn Charles Mills from being a victim of the technology to being its master.

Andy waited until the story concerning the Northumberland Haulage case was over before calling out to Spence. “I’m still waiting for you to input your travel expenses for that case. I can’t close the file on it until you do so.”

Sitting up, Spence gave her head a quick shake. Having been permitted by Andy a moment to bask in the glory of her latest coup, it was time to move on. There were other cases involving people like Charles Mills that needed her attention, as well as deciding what she and Pamela Dutton would do on Friday night. A movie perhaps, watched in the comfort of her flat might not be a bad idea. Having spent the previous week wandering about the wilds of northern England slaying electronic dragons had been wearing. She suspected Pamela, who’d been involved in a major photo shoot for the designer she was working for, could use a bit of downtime as well.

With that settled, Spence picked up the remote, clicked off the TV set across the room from her, and went back to work.

THE HAUNTED PORT: THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY

This was one of Jenny’s ideas. She came up with it after reading an October 16, 2013, BBC story entitled “Police Warning After Drug Traffickers’ Cyber-attack.” It concerned containers that had arrived in the port of Antwerp but somehow disappeared. As it turns out, they didn’t really disappear. They were simply taken out of the port by Dutch drug traffickers who were receiving their drugs from South America hidden in containers shipped to the port of Antwerp. The traffickers in Europe simply had to be told by the South American shippers what container the drugs had been packed in and provide them with the necessary documentation. All they, the Dutch connection, needed to do was pick up the container before the legitimate haulage company hired to fetch the container with the drugs hidden along with other products was able to pick up the container.

The case was finally solved when a legitimate driver picked up a container holding drugs. He was later intercepted by the drug traffickers who were after the same container and shot. The whole scheme was found to involve hacks into the system used to regulate and control the international transportation of goods via containers. As you can see, we really didn’t need to strain our imaginations to come up with this story.

HAROLD COYLE

THE HAUNTED PORT: THE TECHNOLOGY BEHIND THE STORY

Though not a technology, understanding how international trade is conducted can show us how criminals can take advantage of the process to smuggle undocumented goods around the globe or carry out acts of terror. The following is a brief tutorial on the mechanics of international trade as it relates to this case.

Companies or local merchants that wish to purchase products in bulk from a foreign source place an order with that source. When the shipment is ready, if it cannot be sent via the mail or a service like FedEx, the source contracts with a local transportation brokerage firm, which arranges for the product to be picked up, taken to a shipping company in the country of origin, and prepared for shipment.

Services provided by the brokerage firm or local haulage company include preparation of all documentation required by handlers, haulers, and custom officials along the way. Copies of this documentation are then forwarded to everyone who will be handling the container in which the product is packed as well as the company or merchant who purchased the product.

If the product is not enough to fill a container, it is put in a container with other items bound for the same region or city. A small shipment that is not enough to fill a container is classified as a less than truckload, or LTL. Once the haulage company in the country of origin has completed the necessary documents and filled a container with items bound for the same region or city, it hauls the container to a port where it is loaded on a ship. Once the ship arrives at the receiving port, the container is picked up by another haulage company, which then takes it to either a regional distribution center or its own facilities, where the container is emptied and the contents are stored until the company or merchant who purchased the product is notified their shipment has arrived in country. They are then responsible for coming by to pick it up themselves or arrange for another local service to deliver it.

Almost all of the coordination is done via the Internet, with a fair number of people involved in handling the container having access to it and the items being shipped. Few of them ever meet face-to-face. As a result, there are numerous opportunities for mischief. And since items purchased in Asia and bound for the UK can pass through the jurisdiction of several different nations and organizations like the Antwerp Port Authority, finding one agency that is able to conduct a thorough investigation when a shipment goes missing from point of origin to destination is, well, as easy as finding an honest person in Congress.

Northumberland Haulage is not that unusual for a small business. A mix of old technology and inexperienced IT staff made it a prime target for organized crime, and the days when they only went after big companies are long gone. There has also been a worrying trend of organized crime not just working to subvert a company’s IT staff but placing their own people inside a target company. Here’s how the attack worked.

The attacker gains access to the company’s e-mail server with administrator rights. This could have been done either through an external hack or, as in this case, through temporary staff the company hired to cover for sickness or maternity leave who offers to “help” with the IT that has been “playing up” then disappears a month or so later.

The company’s e-mail is now set up to route everything through an e-mail proxy service under the control of the attacker but whose address is remarkably similar to the real service the company had originally signed up to. The majority of routine e-mail is now just forwarded after a copy is taken. However, if the e-mail is going to or coming from certain addresses, it is delayed and the attacker is alerted so he can modify the e-mail. In addition, the proxy also scans for certain keywords such as security, theft, loss, bill of lading, police, or insurance, for example.

The attacker is also smart, so he does protect the company’s e-mail from spam and phishing attacks from everyone else. After all, he doesn’t want anyone else messing up his golden goose!

One of the reasons for the delay is that the e-mail proxy server is actually located in what is referred to as a “bulletproof” hosting provider in Eastern Europe.

The attacker now sees a copy of everything coming into and out of the company. He gets copies of all bills of lading, advice of shipment arrivals, details of ferry bookings for the drivers, and invoices.

The attacker gets into a routine. With a copy of the paperwork he knows when loads are being put together, where it’s due to arrive, and when it will be at the port. If he’s really switched on and wants to make sure there are no chance run-ins with the actual driver, as occurred in this story, he even knows which ferry the driver is taking to collect them.

He can let things through, delay things, or even amend documents to show a later collection time if the usual ferry schedules don’t allow him enough time to collect first.

That’s it in a nutshell. At its heart, it’s basically a man-in-the-middle e-mail attack.

JENNIFER ELLIS