AWOL 2 Page 15

  ‘The banana-milkshake problem,’ Sam said, nodding.

  ‘Indeed. And the strength of the security also provides its flaw. I watched as some of Todd’s people arrived at their computers and started work. They didn’t type any passwords in. Todd is so convinced that nothing or nobody can get to that second layer and use it that he hasn’t implemented any security on it at all.’ He sniffed. ‘He probably dresses that up in some kind of caring, sharing language, saying that he wants all of his staff to have access to everything, so they feel trusted. In fact I think he said something like that while I was there.’

  ‘OK,’ Sam said, ‘if you can get in and access his “special” machines, then you can look for the information we need. How are you going to do that then?’

  ‘Sam’s right,’ Bex said. ‘I was wondering that too.’

  ‘That’s the trick,’ Kieron said. ‘Physical security at the Institute is managed using iris-recognition technology. The iris of each person’s eyes has a unique pattern of blood vessels. Staff going in through the main fence and into the buildings are recognised by their eye-print. We just have to use someone’s eye-print to get us in.’

  ‘Uh,’ Sam said, a wary expression on his face, ‘if that means what I think it means, count me out. I’ve seen that film, and it didn’t end well. Gross.’

  ‘We’re not going to cut someone’s eye out and use it,’ Kieron explained patiently. ‘We’re going to record their eye-print. Or, rather, we already have.’

  ‘All that time you spent looking into Judith’s eyes and smiling!’ Bex said as the realisation struck her; ‘you were letting the ARCC system get a good look at her irises.’ She paused. ‘Doesn’t explain why you got such a good look at her bum.’

  ‘What?’ Sam said. ‘You’ve got that recorded as well! Let me see!’

  Kieron felt his cheeks getting hot. ‘That was accidental!’ he protested. ‘I was behind her, and I was looking at the floor to make sure I didn’t trip over anything.’

  Before Sam could continue, Bex held up her hands. ‘OK, be that as it may, I think I can see another flaw in your scheme. We might have a recording of Judith’s eye-print, but what do we play it back on? You can hardly hold a laptop with a picture of an eye up to the scanner. Someone would notice.’

  ‘The resolution’s too low anyway,’ Kieron said. His stomach felt filled with lead. ‘Same applies to tablets, and to printout. The image has to be eye-sized, but 4K resolution.’

  ‘So we’re stuck,’ Sam challenged. ‘Unless you’re going to chat this Judith up and persuade her to take you back in.’ His face twisted, and he looked down at the ground. ‘You get to do all the fun bits.’

  ‘There’s only one way I can think of to get an eye-print at the right level of resolution,’ Kieron said quietly.

  ‘I forbid it,’ Bex said, standing up.

  Sam glanced between them. ‘I’m missing it again. Tell me!’ As neither of them spoke, he suddenly slapped a hand to his forehead. ‘Of course – the ARCC kit!’

  ‘I repeat,’ Bex said, low but forceful, ‘I forbid it.’

  ‘We have no choice,’ Kieron pointed out, wishing he could just accede to her order but knowing that he couldn’t. ‘The glasses I’ve been wearing don’t have the ability to project images on the lenses. That’s so nobody I’m talking to, or standing behind me, can see the image reflecting from them, which would give away the fact that they’re special. Only the glasses you’re wearing can do that. And we both know that those glasses have the highest image resolution it’s currently possible to get. They have to, because the images are so small. So – I take your glasses and use them to show Judith’s retinal image to the scanners.’

  ‘At least you can leave your ones behind,’ Bex said reluctantly, ‘so we can keep in contact.’

  Kieron shook his head. ‘Best if I take them as well. There’ll be a lot of data being flashed up, and I’ll need a way of recording it. We already know I can’t put a USB stick in Todd’s “special” machines, or email myself a file from them, because they’re bespoke systems behind a massive firewall.’

  Bex made a frustrated ‘tch,’ sound as she thought the logic through, but she nodded.

  ‘But that means,’ Sam said, working through the chain of logic, ‘that you’ll have the glasses Bex would have used to give you operational support, as well as the ones you’ve been using. You’ll be going in there with nobody at your back. And if you don’t come out, if you get caught, we won’t know what’s up or what you’ve found out.’

  ‘It’s a risk,’ Kieron said.

  ‘An unacceptable one,’ Bex insisted.

  Kieron shook his head. ‘We have to do this. It’s the job.’

  ‘Not your job! And I promised your mother I’d look after you.’

  ‘You were undercover,’ Kieron pointed out. ‘Promises made undercover don’t count. We have to do this. I’ve thought through all the options, and there’s no other solution. We have to do it this way.’

  He watched as Bex closed her eyes tight, as if she had a headache or was trying to brace herself for something unpleasant. ‘OK,’ she said eventually, and softly. ‘Have it your way. Take both pairs. But be careful, be quick and don’t take any unnecessary risks.’

  ‘I’m a coward,’ Kieron reassured her. ‘I’ve spent most of my childhood running away from bigger, stronger kids, and kids who don’t like the clothes I wear or the music I listen to. I would never take any unnecessary risks with my life. I’m not even keen on taking necessary ones.’

  There wasn’t much preparation. Sam suggested going out and buying some hair dye, or a red wig, so they could make Kieron look like everyone else who worked for Todd Zanderbergen, but Bex pointed out that they didn’t have time, and besides, they probably had local contractors and workmen popping in all the time who had different-coloured hair. Sam joined them in the car, and Bex stopped at a drive-through burger place so at least he and Kieron had something to eat. She didn’t have anything herself. Kieron thought he heard her mutter something like, ‘I’d rather stick knitting needles in my eyes.’ In fact, he thought it was the tastiest bacon cheeseburger he’d ever had.

  The drive to the Goldfinch Institute took about half an hour. It was getting late, and they hit the tail end of the rush-hour traffic. Kieron used the journey to work with the ARCC glasses, making an enlargement of Judith’s right eye and making sure that it showed up nice and clearly in the image in the lenses. She did, he had to admit, have beautiful eyes.

  By the time they got to the patch of tarmac outside the gates, nobody was around. The sun had gone down, leaving a red and purple stain spreading upwards from the horizon. The light reflected off the glass bulk of the buildings, casting a fiery glow across the sand.

  ‘What if people are working late?’ Sam asked from the back seat.

  ‘Judith told me that most of the employees have a special bus that picks them up in the centre of town and brings them out here, then drops them off again in the evening. That’s apparently because Todd is trying to cut down on vehicle emissions, but an added bonus is that it means people all have to leave at the same time, so they can get a ride home.’ He smiled. ‘It also means that Todd knows that nobody is getting in late or leaving early. He’s a bit of a control freak.’

  ‘I bet he doesn’t use the bus,’ Sam said.

  ‘No – he’s got a Harley-Davidson bike.’

  ‘Still,’ Sam pressed, ‘security guards? Cleaners? They might see you.’

  ‘And they’ll think I’m allowed to be there, on the basis that I obviously got past the eye scanners.’

  Kieron took a deep breath. ‘Having said that, if you guys hang around here for long, the guard will get suspicious. I’d better go.’

  ‘Good luck,’ Bex said. Sam just punched him in the back. ‘I’ll stay nearby, and I’ll swing past every half-hour to see if you need to be picked up.’

  Kieron got out of the car and walked towards the security turnstile, making sure that he was wear
ing one set of the ARCC glasses – the recording and transmitting ones – and holding the others – the ones that had the laser projectors to place images on the inside of the lenses. He turned and waved ostentatiously at the hire car, as if it was his mum who’d dropped him off. As he approached the turnstile, and as he heard the car drive away, with Bex beeping her horn in what hopefully sounded like a fond farewell, a security guard popped his head out of the cabin. It was a different guy to the one who’d been on earlier.

  ‘You OK, sir?’ he called. ‘Working late?’

  ‘Conference call with Europe,’ Kieron called back, trying to approximate an American accent. ‘They don’t keep the same hours as us.’

  ‘Really?’ The guard looked puzzled. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Search me!’ Kieron gulped as he realised that that was the very last thing he wanted the guard to do. ‘Have a good evening!’

  ‘You too, sir.’ The man disappeared, and Kieron held the ARCC glasses in his hand up to the scanner, muttering a quick prayer under his breath. The scanner was just a simple weatherproof box with a circular grey rubber ring on the front designed to cup the eye socket. It also had the convenient side effect of concealing his head from anyone in the guards’ cabin.

  Nothing happened.

  He pushed at the turnstile, in case it had released silently, but it didn’t budge.

  He panicked, and pulled the glasses away and then put them back against the rubber ring, just in case.

  Still nothing happened. No click, no movement in the turnstile. He looked around for a keypad. Had he missed a keypad? Was there a code that needed to be typed in as well?

  No keypad. Why would there be, when the person’s eye was actually there, and the security guard could check that they weren’t being forced to operate the turnstile by someone else?

  What was he doing wrong?

  He looked at the glasses in his hand, and suddenly realised. He’d been holding them up as if there was a face behind them, with the outward curve of the lens next to the scanner, but the projected image was on the inside, of course. Quickly he turned the glasses over, and pressed the inside of the lens against the rubber ring.

  He heard a quiet click. This time when he pushed the turnstile, it began to turn.

  Within moments he was inside the outer fence. The second scanner, on the second inner fence, worked just as quickly, now he knew what he was doing.

  The second turnstile worked just as smoothly as the first, and he began to walk towards the nearest building. Nobody else was around, but he had the feeling that someone was watching him from behind the mirrored glass. Someone who was waiting for him to get within range before they struck.

  He followed the same route the golf buggy had taken him that morning – down glass canyons to the central building, where Todd’s office was located. He could probably do what he needed to do from any computer in any building on the site, but he felt safer on territory he’d already seen.

  The door to the main block didn’t swish open for him until he used the glasses for a third time, on a scanner just to one side. An additional level of security when most people had left, he supposed.

  He walked past the deserted reception desk to the hidden doors of the lifts. When one slid open, he stepped inside and said, ‘Fifth floor, please,’ and then cursed himself for adding the ‘please’. How British could you get – being polite to a lift?

  When he stepped out on the fifth floor he consciously stopped himself from saying thank you.

  Todd’s glass-walled office was deserted – thank God. Kieron wondered briefly if he should actually use Todd’s computer, but he might disturb something that Todd would spot. Best use another desk. As far as he could tell, all the staff hot-desked. There were no knick-knacks, photographs or even pens and pencils on the desks to disturb. They were completely characterless.

  He sat on the nearest ball, and bounced a couple of times experimentally. On another day, in another place, he and Sam could probably have fun on those things, but not now and not here, he told himself sternly. Now that he had got through the security, he was beginning to enjoy himself.

  The computer sat there, looking subtly different from anything he’d seen before. Maybe it was the aspect ratio of the screen – tall and thin, rather than short and wide. Or maybe it was the material the case was built from, which looked more organic than artificial – compressed hemp maybe, knowing Todd.

  Tentatively he switched it on.

  A scattering of tiny motes of light appeared on the screen, swirling in apparent random motion that slowly resolved itself into a movement towards the centre. There they formed an image of Todd Zanderbergen’s face and the words Goldfinch Institute – Secure System.

  He glanced at the desk. Keyboard, yes, but no mouse. In its place sat a circular grey pad. Probably a trackpad. Wireless, apparently, as it had no cable – just like the keyboard. If he ran his fingers across it, a pointer should appear on the screen. Should.

  The picture on the screen had changed now to something that looked like a blend of the Windows, iOS and Android home screens: icons set against a background that seemed to show a close-up of a rock face complete with cracks and patches of orange lichen.

  He scanned the icons. They seemed to be fairly standard – file explorers, word-processing programs, spreadsheets and so on. So far, so basic.

  Experimentally Kieron played around with the computer, moving the pointer (crosshairs rather than an arrow) testing the trackpad and opening up various programs. The underlying logic of the system was no different from any other operating system he’d ever used: the cake was the same, even if the icing and decoration were different.

  It took him about half an hour to find his way to the Goldfinch Institute’s personnel records. They took the form of a fairly comprehensive database containing all the information one might possibly want to know about every person who had ever worked there and several things that nobody would ever want to know – name, address, date of birth, date of joining the company, date of leaving the company (if appropriate), salary, passport numbers, driving licence, criminal convictions, credit score, race, sexual orientation, status and number of partners and of children, favourite colour, score on several popular personality tests … Kieron had suspected Todd Zanderbergen had control issues, and this confirmed it. He seemed to want to know everything.

  Swapping the passive ARCC glasses for the active ones, he quickly checked the information Bex had obtained from the medical examiner’s office. Unfortunately he had no way of transferring the information from the glasses to the Institute’s computer, so he had to type the names in by hand and check them against the database. It took him another half an hour, but eventually he had a list.

  He scanned the screen intently.

  Yes, the thirty-five employees who had died of heart attacks on the Goldfinch Institute premises last year were all listed. Very neatly, with no emotion. Kieron looked down the list of names – each one of which, he had to remind himself, was a real person, with friends, relatives, loved ones. He searched for any common thread, any similarity that might explain why they all died in the same way at the same place and time.

  And he discovered something. Actually, two things.

  The first was that each one of those thirty-five employees was listed as having died not at the Goldfinch Institute premises in Albuquerque, which is what the medical examiner’s records had said, but at one of the Institute’s research laboratories – specifically one just outside Tel Aviv, in Israel. Kieron hadn’t even realised the Goldfinch Institute had a facility in Israel. It hadn’t been flagged up on any of the information he’d researched for Bex a few days before. But that’s where they’d all died.

  The second one – and this took a while to spot – was that each one had Eastern European heritage. It was the names that gave it away on some of them – lots of surnames ending in -ski, -vitch, -vic, -nvotny, –iak and suchlike. Once he’d spotted that, checking the others revealed that alth
ough their names seemed neutral, they had Russian, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Lithuanian or some other Eastern European parents or grandparents but had changed their names, either through marriage or to fit in better in America.

  Thirty-five deaths, all of employees of the same company, all of the same cause, all in the same place, and all with families originating from Eastern Europe. What were the odds? What did it all mean?

  He leaned back in his seat, almost overbalancing when he realised that there was no back to it and he was sitting on an inflated ball. He regained his balance by flailing his arms around and throwing his weight forward so that he fell across the keyboard.

  ‘Thank God there wasn’t anyone around to see that,’ he said.

  ‘That,’ a voice said behind him, ‘is where you’re wrong.’

  It felt as if someone had poured freezing cold water from a jug, along with the ice cubes, down Kieron’s back. He turned slowly. The stability ball squeaked as he moved, ruining the cool, smooth effect he’d been trying to achieve.

  Tara Gallagher stood behind him, a security guard on either side of her. They were armed, and their hands were on their weapons.

  ‘If I said I thought I’d left something behind and I’d just popped back to get it, would you believe me?’ he asked. On the outside he was being flippant, but on the inside he was panicking. Not only had he been caught red-handed, but he had no way of letting Bex know what had happened. He had both sets of ARCC glasses.

  That thought prompted him to remove the pair he was wearing and slip them casually into his jacket pocket, next to the other set. He didn’t want Tara noticing anything strange about them.