Broken Angel

Chapter Five

Abbey stood close to Haliwell, and sweat trickled down her spine. "Shit, there's a door in the bathroom."

Halliwell glared at the inspector. "You heard her. Go find."

The inspector shouted to his men to follow at he raced away. Moments later, he returned. "It's rusted solid; you'd need a JCB to open it." He lifted the noodles. "These are warm. Pound to a penny he's still here."

Halliwell descended the stairs and gave a casual glance to the banks of screens. "Cosy." A question formed in his mind. Which one is his?

Abbey anticipated his question and pointed. "It's still powered up, shift the mouse."

Halliwell shifted the red mouse to one side. Four monitors came to life. "Inspector, take a gander at this. He saw us coming."

"Hidden cameras. This guy's not stupid."

The screens flashed and displayed a message. Deny everything and touch nothing. The skull and crossed bones appeared. Two minutes later pictures of the first atomic bomb tests on Christmas Island flipped on and off, and the National Anthem played in the background. After five minutes, it reverted to the message.

Abbey rolled her eyes. "Don't touch the keyboard. He'll have set traps."

Halliwell nodded. "I'm not that stupid, but where is he?"

"There is no way out," said the inspector. "I guarantee, this place was sealed tight."

Halliwell stared at the inspector. "If you're right, he's still here. Rip this place apart. God knows what he's done."

"God might know, Sir, but I'm sure I don't." He shouted up the stairs, "Sergeant."

"Sir."

"Have your men search this place. There's a lunatic in here, and we need to find him." Four grey-clad men wearing body armour descended the stairs.

"Where do you want us to start, Sir?" asked the sergeant.

"Check the bathroom and work your way back. I'll start in the bedroom."

The men left as the inspector strode into the bedroom. He banged the walls, studied the ceiling, checking for anything out of the ordinary. He jumped on the new carpet and peered under the bed. The forty-watt ceiling light was useless. He left and returned with a torch, the lack of fluff under the bed made him curious. Then he saw something that focused his attention. With a heave, he lifted the bed and leant it against the wall. His jaw dropped when he saw the open manhole. "Bloody hell. This wasn't on the schematic... Boss."

"What?" asked Halliwell. He stepped forward for a better view and both men stared into the deep, dark shaft. "Have your men investigate where it leads."

The inspector nodded. "Yes, Sir."

Halliwell waited until two men entered the shaft and vanished into the dark. "Tell me the moment they find something. I'll contact the Yard and have Jacob Spink's photo and description circulated. I'll also demand the attendance of our computer geeks to check this lot."

The inspector listened on his radio to his men as they traversed the tunnel.

***

One-hour later two technical specialists from GCHQ arrived. With care, they disconnected each PC and removed the hard drives.

"What's your plan?" asked Halliwell.

The woman, who appeared youthful enough to be a student, lifted her head. She cleared her throat. "We take these back to our secure workshop and analyse the content."

"What do you hope to find?"

"Out there it's the wild west of hacking these days. A ten year old with a laptop can do it. This cowboy will have disguised his digital fingerprint and encrypted the programme, but we have the tools to bypass most things. For the moment, we can assume he penetrated missile sites. We have to find out if this nerd got lucky or he located an open door."

Halliwell ran his hand through his hair. "Rather you than me. It takes me ten minutes to send an email."

Kathy smiled. "We get paid for our ability. Our problem is that it's almost impossible to keep up with the pace of technological change. Everything is vulnerable to attack. I read a government report last week. On their probability scale it appears that the chance of anyone hacking into an ICBM recorded zero."

"Can you delete his programme?" Abbey asked.

Her eyes darted towards her. "I need to get into his mind and think as he does. Anything you can tell us might be useful?"

Abbey shrugged. "He created massive algorithms in his sleep. I can tell you he saved nothing to those drives. He uses proxy servers and the cloud. He protected everything with convoluted passwords. And before you ask, I don't know what they are."

The older technician dropped his tools into his bag. "Kathy, I've finished. It's time we returned to our dungeon and take this idiot out of the system."

Halliwell caught his gaze. "Can you?"

His eyes locked onto Halliwell. "We'll work on the problem, but if we can't, the shit hits the fan, and we're in more danger than you think."