The Illuminati (41 page)
“You're the only one who can defeat you at chess,” Karen said admiringly as she put her arm around his waist. “I love you, Jeff Wells.”
Jeff was startled and pleased at the same time. “You do? So do I.”
“You can't love yourself, silly,” Karen teased.
“No . . .” he stammered. “I meant, I love you, too.”
“I know,” Karen whispered. “I was just waiting until you were sure you knew.”
“There is no way the message could have been faked, is there?” Karen asked Jeff after the terminal had been shut down.
“No. Only your father knew about the channel. It would be impossible for anyone else to know about it.”
“But what if they forced him to reveal the codes?” she asked, not really wanting to know if they had. She shook off a mental image of her father being druggedâor worse.
“They might have,” Jeff replied as he thought about it. “But what would they have to gain by warning us? Besides, what he said corroborates what we already knew to a large extent.”
“What are we going to do?” Karen whispered. She was nearly paralyzed with fear. The country was in chaos, her father was a virtual prisoner in his own lab, and now they were also in danger. It looked hopeless.
“We'll get out of this,” Jeff said, with a lot more confidence than he actually felt right then. “But we've got to be extremely careful. If anyone suspects we know what they're doing, we'll be locked up tighter than a sealed drum.
“They still need me right now, and as long as I can stall Dr. Loo and keep the Data-Net glitching a little bit, we'll be okay. In the meantime I'm going to do a little checking inside the system.”
“Can you do that without arousing suspicion?” Karen asked as she once again became the professional systems analyst. “I thought Data-Net kept a record of everything that goes on.”
“True.At least to some extent. But when I designed the system I built in some internal diagnostics that are not documented and are accessible only by my personal codes. I didn't want a system that was too autonomous. If indeed there are masses of people being transported and confined, there has to be a record of it in the network,” Jeff said, more to himself than Karen. He began typing in special codes to activate the internal diagnostics. “If there were meetings attended by several key players, I want to know if the new attorney general is one of them.”
With that, Jeff called up the file for Fred Lively, U.S. attorney general. The official file showed only the normal activities Lively had while head of the NCLU but, looking into the storage files, Jeff noted several additional charges to locations that were deleted from the official file. One entry was a telephone call to his headquarters from the conference center at Jekyll Island, Georgia.
“Mission accomplished!” Wells said as he spooled further into the files. “Old Fred is one of the Society's upper crust too. Now let's see what he's been up to lately . . . ”
“Karen, look at this!” Jeff said excitedly. “There has been a whole raft of calls to various locations since Lively became attorney general. Here are the calls to Livermore when we were picked up.”
The files showed calls to Sacramento, Livermore, and Los Angeles, all during the time when Jeff and Karen were en route to California.
“Hello . . .What's this?” Jeff asked out loud. “I'm going to run a trace on this number.”
Within seconds, Data-Net responded with correlation between the number in L.A. and the secret number of the CIA in Washington, D.C.
“It's a link with the CIA,” Jeff said jubilantly. He was really beginning to get into the game. Spooling though the internal CIA files, he found the number listed. The caption read: “Headquartersâsuspected terrorist, Juan Marques.”
“Lively was in constant contact with known terrorists,” Jeff said as he spooled further into the file. “And the CIA had a tap on the line all the time. Now why do you suppose they didn't tell the president? Could it be the president knew all along?”
“Wow, look at this,” he exclaimed as the next file came up. “It's an internal authorization to reroute nearly a hundred trains for official government use. I wonder who authorized it . . . and why?”
His fingers literally flew across the keyboard as he instructed the search routine to respond. Almost instantaneously the screen displayed the startling truth: “Authorization KAPUS.”
“KAPUS? What is that?” Karen asked as she stood mesmerized in front of the display.
“KAPUS is Kathy Alton, President, United States. Her code will access any appropriation within Data-Net. It's a change I saw the other day from one of Dr. Loo's new subroutines. It means she has a blank checkbook within the system.” Jeff then typed in, “Access authorized terminal.”
The computer responded: “Sub: 4.”
“Sub: 4,” Karen whispered as she watched the screen, “but that's . . .”
“That's Cal Rutland's terminal,” Jeff finished before she could. “He's been given the keys to the government.”
Jeff noticed an internal memo that had been rerouted and then the transfer deleted from the official file. Because Jeff had been storing all data in his diagnostic file as a cross check against the main operating system, the transfer was still noted.
“Dr. Loo is further along than I thought,” he said. “He has apparently found a way to delete permanent data from Data-Net, except that he didn't know about my backup storage.”
Jeff typed in a request to trace the transfer, and the computer responded: “Sub: 2.”
“Why, that's the president's terminal,” Karen said as she glanced down at the index of assigned terminals.
“Correction,” Jeff said quickly. “That was the previous president's terminal. President Alton had it removed from her office. She said she didn't need a terminal. Besides, look at the date.”
Karen gasped. “It's the day President Hunt was assassinated. Why would Cal Rutland move a memo from his terminal to President Hunt's on that day?”
“Not just from his terminal,” Jeff said scanning the data. “He also moved one from Hunt's to his file . . . I know!”he exclaimed as the revelation hit him.“He changed a file from his terminal to the president's and transferred the president's file to his. Let's see . . .”
“Jeff, it's a speech written by President Hunt. But it's not the speech supplied by Cal Rutland to the press. Look, the president is exonerating the Christians from any complicity with the terrorists' attacks.”
“Yes, and I'll just bet the speech Rutland released is stored in the president's file for anyone who would care to check.”
With that, Jeff copied a hard copy of the memo to be sent to his DVD-II drive. Moments later it was sent and recorded.
“We need to get this information out,” Jeff said as he instructed Data-Net to print out a copy of all the locations to which the trains had been diverted. “I suspect these represent the camps where Americans are being held illegally. Now if we can just find a way to get this information public.”
Jeff sent a command to the compiler to reopen the channel to Livermore. A few seconds later the linkup was made. Once again Jeff communicated with Dr. Eison.
“I hate doing this,” he told Karen as he typed in his message. “When I designed this system we were still in the early stages of Data-Net so I didn't bother to build in any cloaking routines.”
“But I thought you said no one could tell that you were communicating through the central compiler,” Karen said apprehensively.
“True,” Jeff said as he continued to input data, “but any time the system is online, it stores the available access time. What it would show, if anyone chose to check, is that central processor time was being used without being logged to any particular user. That's impossible.”
“Oh, you worry too much about your machine,” Karen teased. She was feeling more lighthearted than she had in several weeks because now at least they had some hard evidence; all they had to do was get it out.
If Karen had known that in the central processor room Dr. Loo was busily engaged in trying to track down the mystery he had discovered, she would not have felt so lighthearted.
“Can you trace the source of the user?” Loo asked the programmer.
“No sir. It's the weirdest thing. It's like the CPU has slowed down by itself. I'd swear there was a program being compiled, except that we shut the compiler down.”
“You're sure there is nothing we have online using the machine time?” Loo asked as he was sorting through the possibilities in his mind.
“Positive, sir. We've even shut down the outside users. I'll bet the trouble line is ringing off the hook by now.”
Just as I suspected
, Kim Loo thought to himself.
Wells is the only person capable of bypassing the monitoring system and my traps. Somehow he has direct access to the compiler. I wonder what he's doing?
He dialed Cal Rutland's number.
“Yes,” Rutland answered. “What is it?”
“Mr. Rutland, we have a problem,” Loo said without emotion. “I believe Wells has a program running that can bypass the traps I have set. It is entirely possible that he is transmitting to someone outside the system.”
“What?” Rutland shouted over the phone. “Doctor, you keep monitoring. I'll check out Wells.”
“Very well,” Loo replied as he hung up.
This Wells is the best I've ever met
, he thought admiringly.
It is too bad he can't be recruited
.
Rutland hung up the phone and made his way directly to the lab in the basement, where Wells had set up his office. As he reached the door, he carefully turned the handle. “Locked,” he swore under his breath. He knew he wouldn't be able to sneak up on Wells.
Inside Jeff heard the click of the handle as it hit the lock. Immediately he punched the “clear” key on his console, and the program closed the channel and resumed normal operation.
Outside, Rutland knew he might as well play it cool. Wells was nobody's fool. He knocked on the door.
Karen opened the door and said calmly, “Oh, Mr. Rutland, it's you.
Please come in.”
If there was one thing Cal Rutland was good at, it was reading people. Karen's nonchalant manner told him that Loo's hunch was right. Wells was far too dangerous now. He and the girl had to be eliminated.
Within an hour, he was meeting with Amir Razzak in his office. Rutland knew it was the one place that was totally secure. “I believe Wells has become a liability we cannot afford,” Rutland told Razzak as soon as their meeting began.
“How so?” the dark man questioned as he pushed some papers into his briefcase. He was preparing to go to Israel to oversee the occupation. He would have preferred to postpone the problem with Wells, but he knew that Rutland had proved his worth many times in the last three years in analyzing people and situations.
“Dr. Loo is certain that Wells is communicating with someone outside the system.”
“Can he prove his accusations?” Razzak asked casually. “You know how these academic people are. They excel at professional jealousy above all else. Perhaps he wants to get rid of Wells so he can be the guru.”
“I have considered that,” Rutland said as he reached for the documents Loo had given him. “Dr. Loo has conclusive evidence that someone altered the main system's program. He is certain that Wells has enabled the Christians to use the system. We won't be able to control access until all of the ID scanners are in place.”
With that comment, Razzak's eyes narrowed. “He allowed the Christians to use the system after I ordered them eliminated?”
“Yes. Dr. Loo took a card from one of the people we picked up and ran it through the system. It was processed normally, but the transaction never appeared on any permanent files. Once the name was put into the detention file, showing the person was arrested, the system rejected his card. Apparently Wells enables the users until we arrest them, and then he disables their files. Until they are actually arrested, they have free access to the system and virtually unlimited credit.”