Bad Intentions Read online

  'Sure,' said Finer. 'Everything will be OK. Just so long as we don't blink.'

  The Chairman leaned over the desk, fixing a piercing stare on Finer. 'I wanted you to know something, Ralph,' he said.

  'Yes?' the finance director replied evenly.

  'Taylor is a joke, a simple buffoon, a leg man, that's all.'

  'I've always thought so,' replied Finer, wondering what Sir Kurt was getting at.

  'I mean, if anything were to happen to me, you would be the man to take over,' continued the Chairman quietly. 'That is why I have always made sure you were involved in everything.'

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The trail had started late on Wednesday evening. Jack quietly left the hotel room, walked through the night for several blocks, and then slipped into a phone booth. He checked his pocket for change; there was more than £20 in coins. And he checked his watch. It was just after nine. The Turks and Caicos Islands were five hours behind London time; all the offices there should still be open.

  After collecting the number from International Directory Enquiries, Jack slipped a series of coins into the machine and placed the call. On reaching the operator at the First National Bank he asked to be put through to account enquiries.

  Jack gave his name to the enquiries office, and answered a series of questions to establish his identity as the sole shareholder in Nidorrob International Trading, a company registered on the island, with an account at this bank; the account Finer had set up to receive the money that came via Shane when he was first dragged into the counterfeiting plot. Jack asked first for the balance of the account. After a few moments the answer came back: £250,000. How long had the money been in the account? Jack asked. Ten days came the reply. And from whom was the payment made? The clerk had to check the files, and whilst he was waiting Jack fed another series of coins into the phone.

  'That payment was wired through from the account of HKS Pharmaceuticals Trading, a company registered in the British Virgin Islands,' replied the clerk.

  'Thanks,' said Jack, scribbling the name down on a piece of paper. 'One more thing, can I put stock trades through this account?'

  'Certainly, sir,' replied the clerk. 'We charge a one and a half per cent commission for non-advisory trades, plus a hundred US dollars for holding the stock certificates.'

  'Use the entire £250,000 to buy put options in Kizog,' said Jack. 'They are traded on the London and New York futures markets. Just execute at best price when the market opens.'

  'Certainly, sir,' replied the clerk. 'And when the trade is completed would you like me to contact you to advise on the price we dealt at?'

  'Don't worry about that,' said Jack. 'I'll call you.'

  He put the phone down, still wondering if the futures trade was the right move. He shrugged, and began walking back towards the hotel. Puck it, he told himself. If I am going to gamble Symonds's money on defeating Kizog, I may as well throw my own into the pot. If this doesn't work out, it won't do me much good anyway.

  On his return to the hotel, Jack lay down on the bed. His limbs ached and his head was throbbing, and he could feel the exhaustion catching up on him. He wanted to lift himself back to the desk, and get back to work on the computer. There was so little time left. But Tara told him to rest; he needed a few hours' sleep, she warned, or else he was in danger of collapse. Just give her the information, and she would spend the first part of the night rooting through the database for the evidence they needed. Reluctantly he conceded. They needed more material. And so far, he reflected, their excursions into the Kizog databases did not seem to have exposed them to any danger. The phreak was safe.

  Shane was on to his second Styrofoam cup; the first was already bulging with cigarette ends, and had been cast into the bin. Stile had been dismissed for the night; the man was starting to get on Shane's nerves, and anyway, he didn't have the stomach for this kind of work.

  As for Shane, he was doing just fine, or so he told himself. True, he admitted, the prey had proved harder to capture than he had expected. Amateurs they might be, but they had shown a streak of ruthless professionalism. The phreaking was good, he reflected. A nice touch. Their route into the network had made it look as if they would be easy to track, then turned out to be a feint. Very nice. They were playing for time, leading him astray. Understandable. Time was what they needed.

  But they were getting closer, Shane decided. Much closer. So close that he could almost feel them. They had, he realised, riled him. So what? he told himself. He was now relishing the chase. And when the moment came to deal with them directly, it would not just be another violent chore. No. He would enjoy it.

  He had mastered the basic elements of the detection program, and the consultants in the US were also standing by, keeping their chips alert for evidence of another intrusion. So long as they came into the system again, this time the company would be ready and waiting. The net was closing.

  It was just after five in the morning, and Shane was catching a few moments' rest, when he was aroused by an icon flashing on the screen. The program had located another intrusion. Shane keyed in the instructions, and within moments, the answer came back that the hacking attempt was coming over the Internet from Arbex. Shane picked up the phone and spoke briefly to the telecoms engineers who were standing by. The line was live again, he told them. The call was tracked.

  It was time for them to start untangling the phreak.

  Jack had woken up early, his body refreshed and his mind clearer. He drank a couple of cups of coffee in quick succession, and felt ready to get back to work again. The nerves that had started to fray his mind last night were easing. They were closer now, and with the nearness of the resolution, he found to his surprise that he felt calmer. Soon it would all be over.

  Tara had done some good work over the past few hours. Getting into the database was one thing. Finding the information that you needed was something else. There were hundreds of thousands of riles in there, many of them random garbage. It was like trying to find your way through a maze; a maze with thousands of twists and turns.

  Jack was sure that his hunch was right. Kizog had to be shifting the money from the counterfeiting operation into the company somehow. And it had to be doing it through offshore accounts; that was the only way to maintain secrecy.

  Tara had been sifting through files, looking at them, deciding whether they were relevant or not, downloading anything that might be of some use. She had been looking at the code words Jack had given her, zeroing in on the offshore accounts that they felt were relevant. It was exhausting work, and her mind was starting to soften and her eyes droop. Jack stood behind her, and rubbed the back of her neck. 'You get some sleep now,' he told her firmly.

  She turned, stood, and kissed him gently on the lips. 'I think we are almost there,' she told him.

  It was just after nine on Thursday morning when the call came through directly to Shane. Tossing his cigarette into a coffee cup, he reached for the phone, his pleasure growing as he listened to what the engineers had to say. 'Good work,' he muttered into the receiver. Putting the phone down, he took the lift up to the fifth floor. He checked first in the Chairman's office, but the old man was not in yet. He would speak to him later. Next he checked the finance director's office. Finer was already at work, had been for more than an hour, and Fuller was with him.

  They appeared to be deep in conversation, but Shane could not hear what they were saying. He strode into the office, standing a couple of yards from the desk where Finer was sitting. 'Found them!' he barked. 'Trapped like flies.'

  Finer looked surprised. 'Where are they?' he asked.

  'Around Russell Square,' replied Shane briskly. 'Makes sense. Lots of cheap hotels. Plenty of tourists. Not many locals to notice you. One of the best areas in London to hide away.'

  'We have an address?' asked Fuller anxiously.

  Shane shook his head. 'The best the engineers could do is an exchange, the one that is being messed with. It covers all the numbers starting 3
17. They faxed through a map.'

  He passed over a sheet of paper. Finer looked down at it. 'A large area.'

  Shane shrugged. 'I reckon they will be staying in a hotel. Only simple way of getting accommodation at such short notice. And without having to give any sort of identification. They'll definitely be in a hotel.'

  'How many in the area?' asked Fuller.

  'Thirty or forty,' he answered quickly. 'Fifty maximum. No more than that.'

  Fuller stood up and walked across to Shane. 'We'd better make a start then,' she said. 'If we are to find them by tomorrow morning.'

  'I can handle this alone,' said Shane.

  Finer looked up at him. 'I think she should come with you,' he said. 'There are two of them, and she is useful back-up. We don't want to take any risks at this stage. Time is too precious for any screw-ups.'

  'Whatever,' snarled Shane. 'We are wasting time already.'

  He turned away and strode from the room, Fuller following along behind him. In the doorway, Shane stopped, leant against the frame and cast Finer a bitter look. 'And there won't be any screw-ups,' he snapped.

  It had taken Jack all morning, but at last he felt that he was making progress. He started by scanning through the database, looking for references in the accounts for payments into or out of offshore deposits. There were plenty of them, and many, no doubt, would be quite innocent. Like any multinational company, Kizog maintained an intricate network of offshore subsidiaries; they were used for insurance, for employee pension plans, and for inter-company transfers, usually to switch profits from high-tax to low-tax regimes. Jack had checked through twenty-five, discarding each as of no further interest, before he began to smell any leads.

  The one advantage he had, he realised, was that these were internal company records; any accounts presented to the public or the tax authorities would doubtless show a quite different picture. These records were intended for internal use only, and depicted a much simpler portrait of the structure; they were not designed to deliberately confuse, as the public accounts often were.

  HKS Pharmaceuticals, needless to say, was not listed anywhere as a subsidiary of Kizog. That would have been too simple. Kizog, however, did appear to have a trading relationship with the company. Jack found the link where he least expected it; within the asset ledger, inside the property portfolio. A close examination of the records revealed that for the past four years Kizog had been consistently selling off a stream of properties owned around the world, then leasing them back from the new owners at peppercorn rents. The profits on the property sales were then booked into the accounts as revenues. And the new owner of the properties, paying far more than any of the buildings was really worth, was HKS Pharmaceuticals.

  Turning to the spreadsheet, Jack hurriedly keyed in the figures for the property disposals; beginning in 1990, the numbers rose rapidly each year, starting at just £50 million, and rising to £350 million in the final year. He compared the numbers to the shortfall in Kizog's government research revenues they had uncovered earlier. The match was perfect. The company was feeding money in from the counterfeiting operation to make up for the cash that was disappearing from its weapons research.

  Tara was still lying in bed, catching up on the sleep she had missed. 'I think we have found the link,' Jack whispered in her ear.

  She looked up drowsily. 'Proof?' she asked.

  'Linking the company directly to the counterfeiting operation,' Jack replied, pleasure evident in his voice.

  'Are you still on-line?' she asked anxiously. Jack nodded.

  'One more thing,' she continued. 'See if we can find out what happened to those scientists working on Ator.'

  The Chairman was sitting alone in his office. On the desk-top, his terminal had switched to a Reuters feed, and a display of FTSE stock prices covered the screen. The market had fallen by twenty points already today, and most of the screen was red, indicating the stocks where prices had fallen. His eyes moved to the Kizog share price, marked by the abbreviation 'KZG.L'; the price was down by fourteen pence, the first time it had fallen in several days. Using the mouse, the Chairman clicked on the asterisk next to the stock price. Instantly, the story Reuters was carrying flashed up on to the screen.

  KIZOG FALLS ON FUTURES TRADES

  London: 11:32 GMT: Shares in the British pharmaceuticals giant Kizog were under pressure this morning ahead of the conclusion of its contested take-over of Swiss rival Ocher due to be resolved tomorrow (Friday). Futures traders reported that a heavy put order from an overseas investor had prompted market makers to shift prices downwards. Analysts said, however, that Kizog was still expected to win the bid, and attributed the futures sales to investors covering positions after the heavy gains in the Kizog share price in recent weeks.

  The Chairman clicked off the story, and the screen returned to the FTSE index. Kizog was now down sixteen pence. On the other side of the desk, the phone was ringing. The Chairman picked it up and was told by his secretary that Simon Morrison was on the line. He told her to put him through. 'Anything serious on the futures market?' the Chairman asked at once.

  'We don't believe so,' replied Morrison. 'We haven't been able to identify the seller. Whoever it is, they are trading offshore, so it will be impossible to establish their identity. We don't think it's anything serious. There is only two or three hundred thousand being traded. Someone taking a wild punt that the bid is going to fail. They're wasting their money.'

  'Fine, fine,' said the Chairman. 'What else?'

  'One matter of some urgency has cropped up,' said Morrison edgily. 'The Bank of England want a meeting tomorrow morning.'

  The Chairman paused. 'The Bank?' he replied at length. 'Why?'

  'Apparently Zurich Financial requested it,' said Morrison. 'A last-ditch bid by Ocher to stop the bid, I believe. They wouldn't give any details, but we have to see the Deputy Governor at ten. I'm afraid we'll have to be there.'

  The Chairman sighed. 'Then we'd better go.'

  'Is there anything we haven't thought of that Ocher could dredge up?' asked Morrison. 'It is best to be prepared for these occasions.'

  The Chairman paused. 'Nothing at all,' he replied calmly. 'Absolutely nothing.'

  Jack could feel Tara's presence behind him, and could just hear her sipping on her coffee, but he was too engrossed in the information scrolling across his terminal to turn to face her.

  At her suggestion, he had started rooting through the databases to see what he could discover about the three scientists who had died whilst investigating the origins of Ator. He had shut down the accounting records, certain that he would find nothing there. For a moment he had been lost where to look next. He tried calling up the directories but there were hundreds of them; how many documents Kizog kept stored on its mainframes it was impossible to say, but it could run into millions. The solution turned out to be simpler than he could have imagined. He keyed up a word search, and tapped the name Hans Gerter into the terminal. After seven minutes of searching, the computer replied that it had one document containing that name. 'Read,' typed Jack. 'Access denied,' responded the machine. 'Shit,' Jack muttered under his breath.

  Leaning over his shoulder, Tara's fingers moved across the keyboard, tapping in a line of code she had used earlier to break through the firewall. Within moments they found themselves back in the same directory. 'Read,' Jack keyed into the machine once more. This time the document sprang to life. Tara rested against the back of the chair whilst they both read.

  E-mail: from the office of Dr Peter Scott to the office of the Chairman: secure system: access restricted: time delivered: 14:03: 28/6/93

  I have learnt that a researcher from Roche called Hans Gerter is to deliver a paper at a symposium on Ator next month, where he will argue that the virus might have its origins as a biological weapon. I don't believe that he has any direct evidence of this, but is merely working backwards from the impact of the disease and from its transmission mechanism. Obviously as research into the virus intensi
fies, this view is likely to gain wider currency. It is important that we move forward in resolving this problem.

  Jack scrolled forward, searching to see if he could find a reply.

  E-mail: from the office of the Chairman to the office of Dr Peter Scott: secure system: access restricted: time delivered: 16:10: 28/6/93

  Message received and implications understood. Rest assured, this matter is being dealt with urgently.

  Tara stepped back from the screen. 'They murdered them,' she said quietly.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Julian Symonds paced anxiously around his ornate office on the seventeenth floor of the bank's London headquarters. He glanced at his watch. Already it was almost eleven, and so far there was no word from Borrodin. For the first time, doubts about the wisdom of his defence were starting to creep into his mind. There was no dishonour in watching your client be defeated by a wall of money. But this had the makings of a fiasco.

  Arranging the meeting with the Bank of England had not been easy. At first their officials had been dismissive, suggesting that he present a written dossier of his evidence first. There was no time for that, he knew. A phone call to the Ocher chairman in Basle had triggered their change of heart; he had called his foreign minister, who had called the ambassador in London, who had submitted a direct, though confidential, request that the meeting be convened.

  We're pressing the right buttons, thought Symonds. But can they deliver? If not, my reputation will be finished.

  His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of his intercom. 'I have a Mr Borrodin on the line,' announced his secretary.

  Symonds grabbed the phone. 'Ten o'clock tomorrow morning,' he said instantly. 'At the Bank of England with the Deputy Governor. And let's hope to God that what you have is convincing.'

  'It will be,' Jack replied calmly.

  'It has to be proof, not conjecture,' said Symonds anxiously.