Spyder Web

‘Maybe,’ he replied coyly, ‘but only if I grant you the rights to the story. I, of course, will retain the movie rights. I wonder whom we can get to play me.’

Roe gave him a reassuring hug. In public, he was the Rock of Gibraltar—exuding confidence and focused leadership. Pangen Research owed its very existence to the forty-two-year-old man in her arms.He was preparing to let his fledgling company go out into the world on its own. Like any parent when a child finally leaves home, he felt the same pride in his work and the same worries about the future.

‘Thanks, Alex, for everything. The past few weeks have been unbelievably tough for me. Your timing couldn’t have been any better.’

‘Actually, it’s an accident I came at all. I just happened to be available when NetWorth needed a piece on Pangen for a special issue. Freelancer’s motto: Have Computer, Will Travel. Discovering a long-lost love was an unexpected bonus. I am glad that I found you again.’

They held each other close in the morning light.’How did I ever let you get away?’

‘As I recall, you felt it would be best if we started seeing other people.’

‘That, Little Miss Smart-Ass, was a rhetorical question. You don’t answer those kinds of questions. You just nod your head politely.’ His expression softened as his thoughts retraced their shared history.

‘I know, Randy. Harvard and UCLA were half a world apart then.’ Her mouth curled into a light smirk as she peered into his eyes. ‘You didn’t have to take that scholarship.’

‘That’s right,’ Johnson replied as he slipped her off his lap and leapt onto a long coffee table in front of the couch, balancing himself as if he were riding the California surf. ‘I could’ve tossed my Harvard MBA and gone surfin’with you. “If everybody had an ocean, across the USA.”’

Roe laughed as Johnson butchered the Beach Boys classic and rode an imaginary curl of water across the den. Suddenly, she tackled him, and they both fell onto the couch.

‘What the hell was that?’ Johnson shouted as Roe smothered him with a pair of soft throw pillows.

‘Wipeout.’ She laughed in her best Valley girl imitation. ‘If you’re gonna surf, dude, you gotta, like, learn how to scope the waves and watch the curl or you’ll end up fish food.’

They held each other for several minutes, nibbling and kissing as the early-morning light streamed through the windows. Eventually, he gave her one last kiss and got up to ready himself for the day.

At the door, he turned and pointed toward her computer, whose colorful screen saver was randomly painting the active-matrix display. ‘Back to work, Hemingway. There’s an editor just waiting for your wonderful story, and I’ll be lucky to make the office by eight.’

‘Slave driver,’ Roe mumbled under her breath as she got up. ‘All right, I’ll be good and finish my story, but I’d rather blow it off and have fun with you today. At least we have this weekend.’ Roe planted a quick kiss on his cheek and swatted his behind. ‘Now off to work with you. All those lawyers and stockbrokers are waiting to pour tons of new money into Pangen, and you don’t want to disappoint them, do you?’

Johnson’s quiet demeanor barely covered the enthusiasm he felt. ‘That will be exciting. Do you think you can make it? I’d love to have you there.’

Alex tapped the keyboard, looked at the unfinished story, and shrugged her shoulders. ‘I don’t think I’ll be done with this in time, but I promise to watch your debut on CNN and write the appropriate closer for my piece. Editors just love it when my stories are timely.’

Johnson departed by cab, leaving Roe to refine her prose. At the appointed hour, the CNN commentator switched to live coverage on the trading floor, where a member of the exchange’s board formally welcomed Pangen Research to the roster of publicly traded companies.

In a brief announcement, Johnson confirmed rumors that the FDA had approved Pangen’s latest generation of retroviruses for clinical trials in human-gene-therapy research. Pangen Research gained seven points in the first thirty minutes of trading.

Roe completed her article with a brief description of the company’s frenzied debut on the New York Stock Exchange. She left a space for the final share price to be filled in later by the fact checkers. She then clicked on the appropriate icons to save the file and brought up the window for communications.

After a few keystrokes, she connected with the magazine’s editorial computer and delivered her story. The combined effect of the stock’s strong activity and the government’s regulatory blessing gave her Pangen story an excellent shot at the cover. She imagined Johnson’s surprise at receiving the ‘Biotech Special Issue’ with his handsome face smiling back at him.

With her article completed, Roe set to work on her next task. She hadn’t been completely truthful with Johnson about her reason for visiting Pangen, and this lack of honesty with an old friend bothered her. However, the piece for NetWorth provided an excellent cover for a more detailed search into Pangen’s corporate secrets.

Using a SCSI cable, she wired her laptop directly to Johnson’s home computer and activated a linkup program. Immediately, her machine began to sift through the data encoded on his hard drive, searching for the keys to the Pangen mainframe. Twenty minutes later, she cracked through the system security, posing as Pangen’s CFO.

The researchers at Pangen had provided her with as much access as she desired, access that allowed her to develop an excellent understanding of their operational strengths and weaknesses.After several months of working overtime, Pangen’s computer group had taken a welldeserved holiday to watch the day’s excitement.

The stock offering also coincided with a major medical conference on human genetics in Washington, a meeting that had drawn most of the company’s research staff away from their lab-office complex, leaving only a skeleton crew behind to keep things running.Roe knew that there would never be a better opportunity to steal Pangen’s secrets than today.

She located the scientific-research libraries and issued a backup command to the host computer. The dedicated data line from Johnson’s home into Pangen’s computer network allowed Roe to take information as fast as her computer could handle it.

In seconds, the magneto-optic disk drive attached to her laptop began to spin, absorbing megabytes of information. In less than an hour, the sum of Pangen’s intellectual wealth lay on three blue-green disks.

Since Roe’s connection to Pangen’s computer flowed over a dedicated data line, one that logged total time usage rather than individual calls, there was no need for her to access the phone company’s billing computer to erase any record of the call. The host computer, on the other hand, did record the time she logged in and how long she remained connected. That record held the only evidence that Pangen’s computer system had been accessed.

Roe released two programs into Pangen’s network. The first modified the network’s system security, giving her access to the internal record-keeping files. After editing those files to remove all traces of her presence, she triggered the second. In less than a minute, the program logged Roe off the system, returned Pangen’s network to its original configuration, and erased itself from memory.

Confident that she’d left no evidence of her intrusion, Roe disconnected the two machines and prepared to transfer the stolen information. Unlike the old days of le Carré-style espionage, there was no need for her to skulk around town in a trench coat to leave her stolen secrets in a hollowed-out tree trunk. No, in the modern world of espionage, a spy need only encrypt her data well and transmit it electronically.

Roe’s transfer program incorporated a series of datacompression and encryption algorithms that left the stolen files looking more like random noise than any kind of coherent information. Once retrieved, an inverse series of the same algorithms returned the files to their original state. For images and digitized photographs, this process would cause a minor loss of clarity; for text and purely alphanumeric data, the retrieved files were identical to the originals.

Roe dialed into a local Internet server to keep Johnson’s phone bill clear of a suspicious long-distance call. From there, she meandered through several other computer networks, carefully covering her electronic trail, before accessing a computer in the London office of business consultant Ian Parnell.

Once the data transfer was in process, Roe flipped on her cellular phone and dialed Parnell’s office.

‘Parnell Associates.How may I direct your call?’Parnell’s assistant answered with cool British formality.

‘Hi, Paulette. It’s Alex. Is Ian in?’

‘No. He’s taking advantage of this lovely day on his boat. Hold on for a moment and I’ll see if I can reach him.’

Roe waited, listening to the antiseptic Muzak that filled the receiver beside her ear. Parnell certainly enjoyed his toys, the most prized of which was a deep metallic blue, offshore racing boat christened Merlin. She’d accompanied Parnell on several outings on the Thames and knew that he took his boat out on any fair day that London offered. Her brief visit to musical purgatory ended with Parnell’s voice shouting over the roar of Merlin’s engines.

‘What’s the good word, Alex?’

‘The information is en route as we speak. It’s everything your clients asked for.’

‘Absolutely smashing. I’ll post your final payment by the end of business today.’ Parnell’s voice returned to normal as the sound of the engines faded. ‘How’s your schedule looking for the next couple of weeks?’

‘Other than a long ski weekend in Vermont with an old friend, nothing special.’A smiling picture of Johnson gazed back at her from the desktop.

‘I’ve got another research project, one that I think you would be perfect for, if you’re interested. It’s worth fifty percent of a six-figure fee.’

‘You’ve got my attention, Ian.’

‘Good. An old client of mine, an electronics manufacturer in Hong Kong, has requested a little research into his main competitor’s new product line. I’ll E-mail you the background materials—usual encryption. Give me a call after you’ve had a chance to look them over, and we’ll discuss specifics.’

The file transfer ended and Roe logged off the various systems she had used to cover her tracks. It still amazed her how much easier, and safer, computers made espionage. Even though circumstances occasionally required that she physically break into the places that she was ‘researching,’ Roe found that she could complete most of her assignments by posing as a journalist or by using a computer and modem. The free flow of information in open, high-tech countries allowed them to outpace the more restrictive nations in nearly every measure of progress. This openness also made her job as an industrial spy much easier.

She felt a small twinge of guilt at the thought of stealing the information from her old flame’s fledgling company, but she suppressed that reaction. She had harmed no one, and in a few years’ time, most of Pangen’s secrets would be well documented in scientific journals. Her consulting relationship with Ian Parnell simply allowed her to cash in on the impatience of Pangen’s wealthiest rival.

4 (#ulink_239e302f-e949-5737-8179-148b1d6048ea)

ROOSEVELT ROADS NAVAL STATION, PUERTO RICO

The surf rolled in against the beach, four-foot waves cresting and crashing with a dull roar and the hiss of briny foam. The sky was partly overcast as the remnants of a late-season tropical storm drifted over the Caribbean island.

The long stretch of beach along Puerto Rico’s eastern coastline was deserted, not because of the weather but because this area was off-limits. Traditional naval operations controlled a majority of the base real estate. The untamed jungle, just north of the docks and support facilities, was home to Navy Special Warfare Unit Three. It was here that Nolan Kilkenny’s squad of SEALs had been sent to prepare for their mission.