Spyder Web

14

Parnell chuckled quietly to himself.

‘Something funny, Ian?’ Roe asked, looking up from her laptop.An hour ago, she’d given up on trying to work during the long flight from London to Santo Domingo. Her computer screen now displayed a half-played game of solitaire.

‘I was just thinking that if one of us had acquired Mr Cole’s device a few years ago, we might never have met.’

‘Oh, I don’t know, Ian. We move in the same circles. I’m sure we would have bumped into each other at some point or another.’

‘Quite right,’ Parnell replied, amused at her double entendre.

A smile crossed Roe’s face as she thought about the first time she’d met British business consultant Ian Parnell. His light brown hair had been a little longer than it was now, and in place of the Savile Row suit and the Burberry shirt that was tailored so well to his lean five-ten body, he had worn a suit of black Gore-Tex then.

Five years ago, Alex Roe had been hired by a corporate client to acquire technology from a German competitor. The technology had to do with methods of very precise measurement, and the German competitor was apparently able to size very small things with greater accuracy than was her client. She’d entered the German firm’s research facility late one night, with the cleaning crew, and set out to locate the design documents relating to this device. While carefully negotiating a darkened room to avoid a night guard, Roe quite literally bumped into Parnell. Both quickly realized that they were working on the same assignment and decided to pool their resources and charge the client double. Since then, they had worked together on a variety of interesting and profitable projects.

The flight attendant arrived with a small bottle of champagne and two glasses.

‘A toast,’ Parnell offered, tapping the rim of Roe’s glass with his. ‘To the Holy Grail.’

‘Why the Holy Grail, Ian?’ Roe asked before sipping the effervescent beverage.

‘It’s what you’ve discovered, the Holy Grail of our profession. We are on the brink of acquiring a skeleton key, one that can unlock storehouses of information around the world.’

Their flight arrived in Santo Domingo in the late afternoon and, after clearing Dominican Customs and Immigration, they boarded a private helicopter for a short flight to Barahona. Parnell worked hard and he liked to enjoy the fruits of his labor; being whisked over the Dominican capital was one of life’s simple pleasures.

Roe soaked in the tropical atmosphere with delight as the helicopter raced westward over the sandy shoreline. Their destination was an exclusive resort that offered numerous amenities to its guests, including secluded beaches, all manner of water sports, five-star dining, and excellent accommodations. While these were enjoyable, the resort also met their far more crucial needs for privacy and flawless digital communication.

Bellhops collected their bags from the helicopter, hustling to beat the new guests to their rooms. The resort catered to wealthy tourists and the management frowned on anything less than impeccable service from its employees. Praise by a guest meant an additional bonus in the next pay envelope, and each employee worked hard to shine in front of the guests. Poor service — or worse, rude behavior — could result in disciplinary action ranging from a reprimand to job termination. With a long waiting list for job openings, the staff at Las Brisas rarely did anything to jeopardize their employment.

A woman in her mid-thirties with flowing black hair and a perfect figure stood waiting for them as they walked to the edge of the helipad.

‘Señor Parnell, Señorita Roe,’ she said with a warm smile, ‘welcome to Las Brisas. I am Delisa Santiago, the resort manager. If there is anything we can do to make your stay here more pleasant, please let me know.’

‘Ms Santiago,’ Parnell replied, ‘if Las Brisas lives up to its reputation, I’m certain that my associate and I will enjoy our holiday immensely.’

The manager pointed out items of interest along the walk to their bungalows. The resort’s lobby and walkways were decorated with various objects d’art, ranging from pre-Columbian to contemporary, gathered from around the Caribbean.

Mayan statuary was mixed in with islander masks and jewelry; artifacts of peace and war, of life and death, added a unique dimension to the resort. Objects that had once helped a community of people know the gods they worshiped and understand their place in creation had become decorations in a tropical playground for the wealthy.

Even though they’d made reservations only a week ago, Parnell had little trouble arranging two bungalows near the beach. Those holding the original reservations were provided accommodations elsewhere, with the management’s sincere apologies for ‘double-booking’ the room.

Both bungalows were identical in layout — each offering its occupant an entertaining area, a kitchenette and bar, a guest bedroom and bath, and a full master bedroom and bath with an ocean-view terrace. In looking about the rooms, Roe noticed that her luggage had already been delivered and set inside the walk-in closet. She found her toiletries and decided to cleanse the long flight from her body.

It seemed as if only seconds had passed when Roe heard a knock at the bathroom door. She turned the shower off and wrapped a hotel robe around her dripping body. Opening the door cautiously, she discovered Parnell standing at the bar, mixing a drink.

‘Ready for dinner?’ he asked lightly.

‘Not quite, but give me a couple of minutes. How’d you get in, anyway?’

Parnell fingered the gray plastic card key in his hand. ‘The manager, a wonderful woman, configured the keys to work on both of our suites. I figured you wouldn’t mind if I made a drink while I waited.’

‘Rather presumptuous of you, Ian. Make yourself at home. I’ll be out in a bit.’

Roe quickly blow-dried her shoulder-length brown hair. After she finished up in the bathroom, she selected a lightly colored cotton dress that appealed to her sense of style and tropical comfort.

‘When is Cole due to arrive?’ Parnell asked as he took another sip of his gin and tonic.

‘Around six, which leaves us about a half hour to kill.’

‘We could have a drink here or head to the dining room.’

‘I cast my vote for the dining room. I’m starved.’ Roe adjusted her dress in the mirror and mentally declared herself presentable. ‘Not to knock British Airways, but airline food is still airline food.We can leave word at the front desk for him to join us once he arrives.’

‘Very well,’ Parnell tossed back the remainder of his drink. ‘You know, I must admit that I’m rather excited to meet this Cole fellow. If everything you’ve told me is true, we may have found ourselves a golden goose.’

‘Hello, Michael,’ Roe said as Cole entered the restaurant lobby. Cole looked tan and rested.He wore a light cotton sweater over a golf shirt and a pair of khaki trousers. Slung from his shoulder was a small briefcase containing his laptop computer.

‘Hello, Alex. This is a nice place.’

‘Yes, it is,’ Roe replied; then she turned to Parnell. ‘Ian, this is Michael Cole.’

Parnell held his hand out and clasped Cole’s. Cole’s grip was firm, but not punishing. ‘It is a pleasure to meet you finally. Alex has spoken very highly of you and your work.’

‘Thank you. She’s told me a little about you, but I’d like to hear more.’

‘Well, that’s what tonight is about, a proper introduction.’

The tuxedo-clad maître d’approached. ‘Your table is ready,’ he announced in lightly accented English. ‘If you will please follow me.’

They were seated at a circular table near a large plateglass window with a view of the bay. The spectacular panorama caused all three to pause for a moment to take it all in.

‘If you think this is nice,’ Cole offered, ‘wait until you see the sunset.’

They took their seats at the table; Cole and Parnell sat opposite each other, with Roe in between. She recognized that, as this was their first meeting, her dining companions were sizing each other up. A waiter took their drink orders while another server filled their water glasses.

‘So, Michael, how has your holiday been?’

‘Great. Yesterday, I dove on a wreck of the Conde de Tolosa, up near Samana Bay. It was indescribable.’

‘Alex and I both do a little diving, don’t we?’

‘I’m not in Michael’s league, Ian,’ Roe added coyly. ‘I only dive in warm, tropical waters.’

‘Say,’ Parnell said brightly, ‘I’ve chartered a boat from the marina for the day after Christmas. Alex and I were going to do a little motoring about. Perhaps you’d like to join us and do a bit of diving?’

‘Sure. I plan to spend a few more days in the DR before I move on. The dive master who took me out to the wreck told me about a nice reef just south of here, due east of the beach at Baoruca. Nice scenery, and the water isn’t too cold.’

Roe smiled pleasantly.’Looks like I’ll have to rent some gear.’

Conversation at the table throughout the evening remained purely social, avoiding the evening’s real purpose. Parnell continued to play generous host, with Cole as his pleasant guest. A few hours later, they left very pleased with the chef ‘s culinary skills; the restaurant’s five-star rating was clearly an understatement.

When they entered Roe’s bungalow, she noticed a magnum of Dom Pérignon cradled in a vat of ice sitting beside three champagne glasses on the bar counter.

‘That’s for later,’ Parnell said, reading the question in her expression. ‘First, we have some business to attend to. Michael, are you prepared to go to work?’

‘Yes, I am.’ Cole walked over to the desk and pulled a notebook computer from his briefcase. ‘Alex, will you call the front desk and ask them to hold all your calls for the evening?’

‘Certainly.’

After Roe’s call, Cole plugged his modem cable into the suite’s data jack. He then powered up his computer and checked that everything was working properly.

‘Per our discussion a few weeks ago, I have regularly checked my E-mail at both Langley and Moy Electronics,’ Cole explained. ‘Tonight’s call will be a continuation of that pattern.’

As Cole spoke, he set the computer connection in motion. Upon receiving his command, the computer opened a phone line and began dialing the international prefix and phone number for Moy Electronics’ Chicagobased computer network. From the resort, Cole’s call was directed to the main telephone switching station in Santo Domingo, where a routing computer began looking for an open connection with a communications satellite in geosynchronous orbit over the equator. From the satellite, Cole’s call continued to a U.S. telephone relay station, which routed it to a switching station in Chicago. The switching station then located the unlisted business line and connected the call.

‘Good evening, Moy Electronics,’Cole said, responding to the computer’s on-screen greeting.

Parnell and Roe watched as Cole passed through the network’s security and successfully logged on to the system.

Once the Moy network screen came up on the laptop’s monitor, Cole rose and offered Roe the chair. ‘Your turn.’

Roe sat down, pulled a disk from her briefcase, and slipped it into the drive slot on the notebook’s front edge. From the disk, she loaded two programs into the Moy network computer’s memory. The first sent Cole’s user ID off into a diagnostic loop, while the second created a superuser with systemwide access.

‘Gentlemen,’ she announced, ‘we now have complete access to Moy Electronics and, since it’s Christmas Eve, I’ll bet we have the place to ourselves.’

““Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house/Not a creature was stirring — not even a mouse, ”’ Parnell recited, patting Roe on the shoulder. “‘The stockings were hung by the chimney with care/ In hopes that Saint Alex soon would be there.”’

‘I don’t think I’m quite the Santa that Moy Electronics hoped would slide down their chimney,’ Roe replied.

‘More like the Grinch Who Stole Christmas,’ Cole offered wryly.

‘Now now, Michael, Alex isn’t going to steal Moy’s Christmas. She’s just shopping for that perfect gift.’ The combination of jet lag, a few drinks, and the promise of untold riches propelled Parnell into a seasonably good mood. ‘Please proceed.’

‘The first thing we need to do is find a good home for our Spyder.’Roe began probing the system for internal safeguards and found only a few layers of security among the different areas of Moy’s operation. ‘Here we are, the order logs. Would anyone like a supercomputer?’

‘That might be a bit too cheeky,’ Parnell replied. ‘What else have they got?’

Skimming through the main order directory, Roe located the log for Gatekeeper shipments. She clicked on the icon and a new window appeared, which contained a spreadsheet of orders, production dates, shipping dates, and product costs.

‘Somewhere on here is our lucky winner,’ Roe said as she studied the list of Gatekeeper sites.

The first fifty orders were strictly government-agency retrofits — Gatekeepers specifically geared to provide an existing computer system with a new layer of protection. Early on, Parnell and Roe had decided that they would avoid planting a Spyder in a government computer. Parnell was adamant that his work remain exclusively in the private sector; he did not spy on governments and he would not work from inside a government computer. The private espionage business was dangerous enough without risking any unnecessary official entanglements.

‘Michael,’ Roe asked as she studied the information on the laptop’s screen, ‘I’ve just come across several Gatekeeper orders for Moy Electronics. Have they installed any yet?’

‘No, or you wouldn’t be messing around inside their computer. The project called for the installation of Gatekeepers on computer networks as identified by NSA. Since the initial production run for the device is low, Moy Electronics pushed off upgrading in-house until late January.’

‘Keep looking,’ Parnell added while pouring another gin and tonic. ‘I don’t believe one of Moy’s computers would be suitable for our needs.’

Roe continued paging through the log entries until one for the Michigan Applied Research Consortium caught her eye. ‘Hmm, this MARC installation looks interesting.’

Parnell walked over from the bar. ‘Have you found something?’

‘Maybe.’ Roe clicked on the file icon and pulled up the detailed information of the order. ‘It says here that MARC is a semi-public venture that serves as a conduit between basic research at the university level and industrial applications. According to this narrative, they’re being backed by many of the top technology corporations in the world.’

‘How are they going to use their Gatekeeper?’ Cole asked.

Roe paged through the narrative to the order specifications. ‘It appears that MARC will be using their Gatekeeper as a means to control the flow of information between their existing Cray supercomputer and a new type of processor they’re testing. The new processor design is based on optics, rather than the conventional electronics used in standard computer chips.’

‘Sounds rather exotic,’ Parnell opined.

‘Does it say what else that Cray is connected to?’ Cole asked.

‘Yes,’ Roe replied as she clicked on the icon for the MARC network. A new window opened with graphic depiction of the entire MARC’s network, including the proposed placement from the Gatekeeper. ‘Will that do, Michael?’

Cole studied the image intently, imagining the flow of information over the network described on the screen in lines and symbols. ‘Yes, it’ll have access to the outside world. Let’s take a look at the external networks.’

Paging down through a list of other computer systems that were considered part of the MARC network, Roe discovered a list of scientific and corporate entities with the privileges on the MARC computer network.

‘Ian,’ Roe said, her voice quivering slightly, ‘I think you’ll want to take a look at this.’

Every major university, think tank, and corporate research center in the United States was tied into MARC. The thought of all that brainpower being accessible from one location brought a satisfied smile to Parnell’s face; his avarice was nearly palpable.

Roe glanced at the two men peering over her shoulders and laughed. ‘I believe we’ve found a home for our Spyder. Let’s find out when they want it.’

Clicking over to the production schedule, Roe learned that MARC’s Gatekeeper had already passed final testing and was scheduled for shipment in the first week in January. Roe made a note of the MARC Gatekeeper’s serial number and exited the order system.

‘Now that we have our site,’ Roe said, ‘it’s Michael’s turn to upgrade MARC’s Gatekeeper.’

Moy Electronics had spent a great deal of money during the last few years perfecting their automated production facility. The flexible factory was capable of switching product lines in a matter of days, where traditional factories might take weeks to retool for a new product. Dull, repetitive tasks had been handed over to industrial robots, allowing experienced factory workers to become the brains behind the tireless machines.

On Christmas Eve, only a skeleton crew of security officers and operations personnel were on duty; anyone who might be needed during an emergency was on call at home. The machines, which never slept, were in the middle of a preprogrammed production run when Cole and Roe loaded a new series of instructions into their memory.

Material-transport robot 43 had just finished delivering a pallet of components ready for shipment to the loading dock when it received new orders via the network of overlapping communication ‘cells’ mounted throughout the factory. Robot 43, an industrial robot that bore a strong resemblance to a metal footlocker, glided along the smooth concrete floor on four high-density rubber rollers. Its long, squat form was designed specifically to roll underneath freestanding storage carts and to carry those carts on four internal hydraulic jacks.

Forty-three’s new orders called for it to return to the warehouse and retrieve a package for the testing lab. As it stopped at the designated point in the warehouse, another robot fitted with a hydraulic double-jointed arm removed a box from a shelf twelve feet above the floor. With the package securely held by its fork-and-mandible collecting apparatus, the arm carefully lowered it onto 43’s back.

The warehouse central computer then instructed 43 to proceed to the testing laboratory with the crate.Many people would find such a fully automated factory disturbingly dark and quiet, even more so on the night before Christmas, but these thoughts never bothered robot 43. It simply received and executed commands from the warehouse computer, interrupting its day only to recharge its batteries.

The testing lab’s doors swung open as motion sensors detected 43’s approach. The robot glided in and stopped at the laboratory’s designated delivery station. An articulating robot arm swung around from the diagnostics bench and collected the package from 43’s back. New commands flowed over the cellular network and 43 rolled from the lab toward its next objective.

Inside the lab, several robotic arms, mounted on a ceiling track system, moved into place above the box. They removed the protective packaging, revealing a black cube-shaped chip mated to a 256-pin receptacle. A thin articulating arm, fitted with a pair of hooked nose pliers, swung down from the ceiling and extracted the black cube from the receptacle. The arm then set the cube into the socket connection on the face of a chip encoder.

Prior to his vacation, Cole had customized the original Spyder program instructions to include the contact points where it could reach Parnell and Roe in the outside world. This revised program now resided in the internal memory of the chip encoder.

On Cole’s command, the encoder ran a low-voltage signal across the chip’s internal memory, wiping the old program away. Once the internal memory was purged of the Gatekeeper code, a second signal began to flow through it, this one carrying the Spyder program.

After five minutes of loading and another ten of confirmation testing, the transfer was successfully completed. The articulating arm retrieved the chip and placed it back on the shipping receptacle. The other arms repacked the Gatekeeper and, right on cue, robot 43 returned to pick up the package.

‘The Spyder is on its way to Michigan,’ Cole said as he issued the command that sent 43 back to the warehouse.

‘Now we just need to tidy up a bit,’ Roe added. ‘Bring up the activity log for the lab robots.’

Cole clicked on a few icons and a spreadsheet list of time intervals and activities scrolled out onto a new window. The lab had been quiet tonight, other than their little memory transplant. Cole modified the lab robots’ work logs to list them as running self-diagnostic routines.

‘That should make it look like those robots have been sleeping all night. Now let’s see how 43 is doing.’

Robot 43 had completed its task and was heading back to a charging station in the warehouse.

‘Michael, I think 43 was feeling a little ill about the time we logged in,’ Roe suggested. ‘See if you can’t send it over to the maintenance shop with a malfunction.’

‘I think I can handle that,’ Cole replied.

Cole brought up robot 43’s maintenance history and noticed a recent failure of its hydraulic system.He copied the old entry into the current time slot, indicating that 43 had sensed a partial system failure and reported to the maintenance shop twenty minutes prior to their entry into the Moy computer system. Then he commanded the robot to report to the maintenance shop, where it would power down and wait for the day-shift mechanics to arrive.

‘Robot 43 is down with the flu.What next?’Cole asked.

Roe ran through a list she’d compiled while Cole was manipulating the automated factory. ‘The testing reports for the MARC Gatekeeper order; make sure they’re finalized and that the unit is listed as ready to ship.’

Cole punched through the order log, checking off the quality-assurance checks. On Friday, when the lead shipping clerk ran a report of items ready to ship, MARC’s Gatekeeper would be among the many items on the list.

‘That’s it,’ Roe commented. ‘All we can do now is cross our fingers and hope it works.’

‘It’ll work,’ Cole said, proud of his creation.

‘I believe that tonight’s efforts deserve a toast,’ Parnell announced triumphantly as he uncorked the champagne.

Cole, too, felt the glow from successfully stealing a Spyder.As Parnell poured out three flutes of champagne, Cole retrieved from his briefcase an envelope containing a printout of the Cormorant file. From day one at the CIA, he was told that information is power; tonight, he felt that power as he accepted the glass from Parnell.

‘To a prosperous New Year,’ Parnell offered.

Cole clinked his glass. ‘To the Spyder, may it make us all rich beyond our wildest dreams.’

Parnell, Roe, and Cole drained their glasses in the spirit of the moment; then Cole laid the envelope on the bar.

‘What’s this?’ Parnell asked as he refilled the glasses.

‘Something I picked up from the CIA that may have some bearing on the structure of our business relationship. Alex, why don’t you look it over first while I discuss profit sharing with Ian.’