I looked down and smiled at Kelly. She was happy as Larry, just as her dad would have been. Keeping well away from the windows, we walked to the other side of the open-plan area towards the glass door.
There was all the normal office stuff, a noticeboard with targets to be reached, pictures of salesman of the year and a thank-you card from somebody who’d just had a baby. Most desks had a small frame with pictures of the family, and everywhere I looked there were motivation posters, shit like ‘Winners never quit, Quitters never win’ or ‘You cannot discover new oceans until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore’. I had to stop and read them. The only one I’d ever seen was of a big pen of sheep all closed up together, and it said, ‘Either lead, follow, or get out of the way’. It was on the wall of the HQ of the SAS and had been there for years. It seemed to me to be the only one you needed.
We went through the glass doors. The corridor was about ten feet wide, with plain white walls and not a poster or pot plant in sight, just a large fire extinguisher near the door. The sudden brightness of the strip lighting made me close my eyes until they adjusted. There were no more doors, but about thirty feet further down was a T-junction. I could see offices. As we walked towards them, I put the bag down and motioned Kelly to stay with it. ‘Remember, don’t touch a thing!’
The handle on the door of each office was a large metal knob with a pin tumbler lock in the middle. I tested each one in turn, pulling the handle towards me so as not to make any noise, then gently trying to turn it. There were seven offices in this corridor area and all of them were locked. That was nothing special in itself, it just meant that I’d have to use the lock-pick gun on each one in turn.
I went back to the bag. Kelly was standing beside it, desperate for a job. I said, ‘Kelly, you’ve really got to help me now. I want you to stand where I tell you, and you’ve got to tell me if anyone’s coming, all right? I’ve got to do exactly what I did outside, and I still need your help, OK?’
I was getting nod after nod. I carried on, ‘It’s really important; it’s the most important job tonight. And we’ve both got to be really, really quiet, OK?’
Another nod. I moved her into position. ‘Your job is also to look after that bag, because there’s a lot of important stuff in it. If you see anything, just tap me on the shoulder like before.’
She nodded and I got out the lock-pick gun.
I got to the first door and started to squeeze. I opened it with the tension wrench and popped my head in, made sure I couldn’t see any windows and turned on the light. It was basically just one office, quite large, about twenty feet by fifteen feet, a couple of telephones, a picture of the worker’s wife, a couple of filing cabinets, very basic furniture. Nothing resembling what I was looking for. I didn’t check the filing cabinets; the first look is nothing more than a once-over; you don’t want to spend ages in one location only to find out that what you want is sitting on a desk in the room next door.
I didn’t relock the door because I might have to go back in. Leaving it ajar, I looked at Kelly, still at her post; I put my thumb up and she grinned. She had a big job to do.
I made entry into office number two. Exactly the same normal office shit: the year planner with different-coloured bits of tape on, signs stating that there was a strict no-smoking policy and individual mugs for coffee. People’s offices are a reflection of themselves; that’s why on a job like this it’s so important that nothing is left out of place. They would notice.
I carried on down the corridor and went to number three. The same. Four: the same. I was starting to feel like I was on a wild-goose chase.
Now for the other three offices; I crossed over the T, and as I passed Kelly she tried to look even more hard-working. I gave her another thumbs up and went to number five.
It was a much bigger office. There were two settees facing each other, with a coffee table in between and a neat scattering of magazines; a wooden drinks cabinet, smart wooden filing cabinets, framed diplomas and all sorts on the wall. But nothing that resembled the sort of thing I was looking for.
However, behind a large desk and leather swing chair, there was another door. I got the lock-pick gun working, and inside found filing cabinets, a fantastically expensive-looking leather-topped desk and a swivel chair. On the desk was a PC. It wasn’t connected to another computer and it wasn’t connected to a landline. There wasn’t even a telephone in the room. This could be where the key point was.
It could be a fibre-optic cable that’s controlling fixed Scud-launching sites in northern Iraq, or it could be just one small component in the control room of a nuclear power station, but a key point has to be protected. If it’s damaged, everything else is inoperable. It might not take 100 pounds of explosives to destroy a target; if you can identify the key point, then sometimes one blow from a two-pound ball hammer will do the trick. I quickly checked the remaining two offices and confirmed that this was the one I should be concentrating on.
I went back to the bag and got out the Polaroid camera. Kelly was still working for her gold star for best spy. I smiled. ‘I think I’ve found it, Kelly!’
She smiled back. She didn’t have a clue what I was talking about.
I took pictures of the outer office, of what the desktop looked like, a couple of panoramic shots of the area, the coffee table in detail, including the way the magazines were lying; the way that the stuff was set on the table, a picture of all the drawers. I took eight shots in all of the inside of the first office. I now knew exactly what it had looked like when I entered, so when we left I could make sure it looked exactly the same.
I laid the Polaroids in a row on the floor against the wall, just inside the office by the door. The rubbish from the prints went straight into my pockets.
Waiting for the photographs to come into focus, I put my head round the door to check on Kelly.
I went and picked up the bag and brought her with me into the bigger office. I said, ‘I want you to tell me when those pictures are all developed. Make sure you don’t touch a thing, but it’s really important that I know when those pictures are ready. Your daddy used to do this job.’
‘Did he?’
I closed the door behind us and jammed two wedges in place, then I moved into the second office and started taking more pictures. The contract cleaners hadn’t been in here. The other offices had empty bins, but these two offices hadn’t been touched; they obviously did those themselves, but not every day. Even more indication that this was a secure area. As I moved around this small room I saw a shredder beside the filing cabinet, and that confirmed it. What was being kept secure, however, I didn’t yet know. I put the second-room pictures on the floor and went back into the main office.
Looking over her shoulder I asked, ‘How’s it going?’
‘One’s nearly ready, look!’
‘Great. What Daddy does also is collect the other pictures.’ I pointed to the ones next door on the carpet. ‘But one at a time, and put them in a nice long line just here.’ I showed her that I wanted them against the wall. ‘Can you manage that?’
‘Yeah, OK.’ She walked off.
I went back next door and had a quick look at the PC. It was already on but asleep. Kelly was walking in and out, carrying one picture at a time as if it was a bomb.
I pressed the return key on the keyboard; I didn’t want to touch the mouse because maybe it was positioned as a tell-tale. The screen came alive with Windows 95 and the Microsoft sound – which pleased me, because I’d have been struggling with anything else.
I went back to Kelly, who was still staring at the pictures in the other office.
‘Look,’ she said, ‘some more are ready!’
I nodded as I delved into the bag for the disk with the sniffer program. I wasn’t as good with computers as sixteen-year-olds in London who hack into the USAF computer defence system, but I knew how to use one of these. All you have to do is insert a floppy and off it goes, rooting into passwords, infiltrating programs. There’s nothing they can’t get into.
I got up and turned towards the back office. ‘Won’t be long,’ I smiled. ‘Come and tell me when they’re ready to look at.’
Eyes glued to the pictures, she just nodded. As I walked back in I looked at the tracks our feet had brushed in the carpet. I’d smooth it out again once we had finished.
I put the disk in and started it. The wonderful thing about this particular program was that you had to answer just two questions. There was a
wup!
sound and the first one came up.
‘Do you want to proceed with X1222? Yes – Y or No – N.’
I pressed the Y key. Off it went again, disk whirring and clicking.
A progress bar came up as the machine clicked away. The next stage would take a few minutes.
I looked at the filing cabinet; it was going to be a piece of piss to get into.
I went to the bag and retrieved what was officially called the ‘surreptitious entry kit’, but which to me was just the pick and rakes wallet. It was a small, black leather case that contained a general assortment of tools designed for the efficient opening of most pin tumbler, wafer, lever and double-sided locks. Among the sixty bits and pieces were full, half and three-quarter rakes, diamond-tip picks, single, double and half-double ball picks; light, medium and heavyweight tension wrenches of various lengths and styles; hook-and saw-type broken-key extractors, probes, feeler pick, needle pick and double-ball rake. Don’t leave home without it!
The progress bar was showing the program was just halfway through a process, so I started on the filing cabinets with a feeler pick. It was a standard lock and opened easily. The contents meant nothing to me. They seemed to be spreadsheets and documents with itemized bills and invoices.
I looked at the screen. Nearly at the end of the progress bar.
The bloke who’d produced the sniffer program was a rave-attending, Ecstasy-taking eighteen-year-old whizz-kid who was so into body piercing he had half of British Steel hanging out of his face. He dressed as if he was homeless and had a shaven head – but that was only after we’d been taking the piss out of his close-cropped effort with a star dyed on the top. The government had been spending hundreds of thousands of pounds trying to develop ways to get into computer programs, only to discover, after he had got arrested on some unrelated charge, that this eighteen-year-old had come up with the greatest sniffer program ever written. His weekly Giro suddenly started looking like a cheque from the National Lottery, and he spent a lot of time at GCHQ.
Wup!
The progress bar was complete. Up came a little box which said, ‘Password: So0}Ssh1time!’ Full marks to them for originality; normally it was something like a spouse’s nickname, a family member’s date of birth, or a number plate. Then up came, ‘Do you want to proceed? Yes – Y, No – N’.
Fucking right I did! I hit the Y key and was into the machine. I went to the bag and I got out the portable back-up drive and cables and a handful of high-capacity back-up disks.
I went to the back of the machine and had a good look at the state of play. I connected the drive leads and plugged it into the mains. I was going to copy everything: programs, system files, applications, the lot.
I now had to move the mouse. I took a Polaroid of its position on the mousepad but still studied it before moving it.
I clicked the box to select the back-up of all files, and it whirred into action, sucking information on to the back-up disks. I went back to the filing cabinets and had another mooch around, not really knowing what I was looking at, just trying to see if there was anything I recognized.
Wup!
The prompt came up, telling me the sniffer software needed another instruction. It had been working out another password and wanted to know whether to proceed.
I hit the Y key.
The machines whirred again. I looked at Kelly. She was still standing by the photos, but playing a game with an imaginary companion. Just like her dad; give her a job to do and she’d forget it.
‘Kelly, I want you to come with me. If that machine asks me a question again I might not see it – will you look out for it?’
‘OK.’ It wasn’t as exciting a job as she’d been hoping for.
As she sat on the floor with her back against the wall, she looked up at me and said, ‘Nick, I need the bathroom.’
‘Yeah, in a minute, we’ll be finished soon.’ It was exactly as I remembered as a kid, sitting in the car and adults not taking me seriously: ‘We’ll be there soon, Nick, just around the corner.’
She’d be all right. I said, ‘I’ll take you in a minute.’
Wup!
I pressed the Y key.
Kelly said again, ‘I really have, I’ve got to go to the bathroom.’
I couldn’t think of the right words for a seven-year-old. In the end I said, ‘Do you want to go big toilet or little toilet?’
She looked at me blankly. What could I do? Using the toilet at a location like this is always a big no-no, because of the compromise factor from noise and visible remains. What you enter with must come out with you, which was why I’d bought an orange-juice bottle to piss into and cling film for anything else. I couldn’t imagine getting Kelly to piss in the bottle while I held the film under her bum. That was one thing her dad could do that she couldn’t tonight.