THE BROTHERHOOD (18 page)

The anchorman announced that a terrorist suspect had been arrested in Perth, and the accompanying footage showed a man being escorted to a van by heavily armed police.

We don’t yet have detailed information but a police spokesman has informed us the suspect in question has been arrested on terrorist charges. He allegedly stockpiled weapons planned for terrorist activities in populated areas around Perth and possibly other Australian cities. The Muslim convert had been being tracked by ASIO agents for some time and further arrests may follow.

Bill wondered whose sticky fingers were on this one.

‘A Muslim convert,’ Aazim scoffed. ‘They had to add that in as if it were a vital piece of information. As soon as he turned Muslim he became a terrorist.’ He grimaced with annoyance.

‘It’s another lost soul influenced by some clever people. He was probably brainwashed at some religious school in Pakistan.’

‘I don’t understand how someone can allow themselves to be so swept away like that.’

‘When did you realise there was something dodgy about Sam and that friend of yours?’ Bill asked.

‘I see your point. When Kareem was taken away by Sam’s men, I guess.’

‘So if it wasn’t for him you might’ve been on Sam’s team now.’

‘I felt part of something when I was with those people and I honestly understood their frustrations. I don’t know, I think just being there felt comforting. After my mother died my life came to a halt. It was devastating. I was lonely and full of anger. I missed her so much. Still do.’ Aazim’s face clouded at the memory of Sophia. ‘Rami was there for me when I was at my lowest. He mentioned a job opportunity and then he introduced me to Sam. Man, I really got sucked in.’

‘Don’t beat yourself up about it. Sam’s a ruthless man. You were manipulated, but luckily you were smart enough to realise it.’

‘I just wonder what he had in mind for me. I mean, what skills have I got apart from IT?’

‘What skills did this guy have until he was sent to Afghan training camps?’ Bill pointed to the TV. ‘You’d be amazed what people are capable of when they’re in a different state of mind.’

Chapter 18

Situated around one hundred and five kilometres northwest of Melbourne, Ballarat was originally a stock station. Its name derived from local Aboriginal dialect meaning ‘resting place’. With the discovery of gold in the early 1850s the town flourished and at one time it was one of the wealthiest districts in the country. Prospectors travelled from all over the world to try their luck in the goldmines, the wealth of the township evident in the grandeur of its buildings and public spaces. As gold reserves dried up the town successfully morphed from a mining centre into a hub of engineering and manufacturing. In the age of technology many large companies specifically chose to situate their data centres in Ballarat due to its proximity to Melbourne and the city’s developed infrastructure.

Aazim and Bill arrived at the Aust Global Fund disaster recovery site just after five and parked well outside the car park entrance in the emergency lane of the main road where they had a good view of all cars coming and going. On their right was the entrance to the business estate and the building itself, which was fenced off with plenty of land between it and its closest neighbour. Straight ahead was the small town of Buninyong.

The building, which took up a large area of land to their left, was single storeyed, dull grey, and had no signage but plenty of surveillance cameras. In fact, there were cameras placed on every roof corner and the boom gates had a card scanner. From a bird’s eye view the complex looked like an E, just as Aazim had described it to Bill. The surrounding area contained other businesses that bore signs of company names, and beyond that, hills and farmland sprawled to meet the forest.

Aazim couldn’t recall much of the floor plan but he gave Bill enough information about the corridors, hallways and turns so that he could form a picture of it.

‘Now what?’ Aazim asked as they waited in the car.

‘Now we wait for the cleaners and use them to get inside.’

Aazim gave him a worried look. ‘What will you do with them?’

‘Trust me, okay? When they arrive you stay in the car.’ Bill waited for Aazim’s response and received a hesitant nod.

After a few minutes a small truck appeared in the distance. As it drew closer, Bill could make out two occupants and the company logo, which confirmed they were the company cleaners. He reached for the PVC tape and got out of the car. Standing in the middle of the street, he waved down the driver as the car approached.

‘Can I help you?’ the driver asked.

Bill walked casually to the window and pulled out his gun. ‘Place both hands on the steering wheel.’ He reached in, turned off the ignition and took out the driver’s key.

‘What’s going on?’ the man shrieked.

‘Don’t talk and keep your hands where I can see them. I want both of you to come out the same side.’ The cleaners froze, unsure whether he was having them on. ‘I said get out of the car!’ Bill yelled into the driver’s face, jolting him into action. He unlatched the back door of the van, instructing the cleaners to get in and take off their clothes.

Aazim had remained in the car as told, the sick feeling in his stomach returning. Bill signalled to him to get in the van. Fumbling with his notes and thermal imaging camera, he hurried to join Bill.

Using the cleaners’ security tag, Bill swiped the card reader and the boom gate’s long arm rose. He parked in a far corner of the parking lot and they got out, dressed in the cleaners’ blue overalls. Aazim wasn’t happy with Bill’s methods of persuasion but was glad no one had been hurt and he hadn’t had to get involved. The tags gave them access to all areas except for the data room that contained AccountClass01Bak backup server. If they wanted to go in there, they’d need to be accompanied by a security guard. And only one cleaner at a time was allowed access.

‘Remember, stay calm and stick to what we planned, okay?’ Bill whispered to Aazim as they walked past the security desk. Carrying buckets, mops and other cleaning equipment, they drew no attention from employees finishing their work day.

‘Hey!’ the security guard called out.

Aazim’s heart was in his throat. He and Bill stopped and turned.

‘Who are you guys? Where are John and Vinh?’

‘Alex and Andrew.’ Bill waved the security tag, covering the face and name with his thumb. ‘We swapped for this week, mate. They’re doing head office.’

‘You have to sign in when you start your shift, you guys should know that.’ The guard looked annoyed and tapped the clipboard.

‘Yeah, sorry about that, it’s not our usual run, a shift change from head office.’

They signed in their fake names and walked through. Aazim led the way via a maze of corridors until he reached a door labelled Cleaning Equipment. He opened it and wheeled out a trolley, and they continued deeper inside the building. They reached two doors: the first was labelled Data Room but the second didn’t display any signs.

‘This is it.’ Aazim pointed to the second, solid-looking door.

Bill wheeled the trolley opposite the door and out of camera view. He reached into one of the buckets and pulled out the thermal-imaging device that he’d concealed in rags. He turned the bucket upside down and placed it in the trolley, situating the camera on top of it. After some careful adjustments he pointed it directly at the keypad. He switched it on and made sure the crosshair on the display was centred on the keys.

‘Okay, Az, it’s set.’

‘Right.’

Bill took a mop and walked through the hallway back to reception. He approached the security guard and asked if he could clean the room where the accounts server was.

‘Wait here. Greg, can you come to the front?’ the guard said into a receiver.

Greg? Who was Greg? There was only supposed to be one guard.

A six-foot giant with a mean look, thick hands and a flattened nose, appeared from around the corner and walked towards Bill. He nodded.

‘Greg here will take you to the accounts room,’ said the first guard as he returned to the camera monitors.

Greg escorted Bill and no words were exchanged, which suited Bill fine. The large man was built like a brick, but his light tread told Bill he carried himself well, a trait common to boxers. They passed a room where Aazim was mopping the floor with his back turned. Greg was about to press the code in the keypad but had shifted his large frame in front of the imaging device.

Bill knocked over a bucket containing cleaning liquid, the contents spilling over the guard’s shoes. ‘Oh shit, sorry mate, I tripped over my own feet. I’m such a clumsy idiot.’

The guard jumped out of the way and gave him a frown that could have melted steel. Bill went back to the trolley and took out a ‘wet floor’ sign, placing it in the middle of the spill and effectively forcing the guard to move to one side to key in the code, in direct line with the camera.

Aazim stuck his head out from the room he was cleaning and saw the two disappear. He left the room and walked to the camera: imprints of the keys were clearly visible on the display screen. He pressed the pause button and froze the image, covered the device and went back to mopping floors.

Ten minutes later the door opened again. The guard seemed to be impatient to shut it behind him and get on his way.

‘Thanks, Greg.’ Bill waved to the man, who walked off without responding.

Aazim left his cleaning and joined him.

‘I thought there was only supposed to be one guard,’ Bill said.

‘I thought there was.’

‘Forget it. Did you get it?’

‘Yeah, I think it’s good.’

They went over to the trolley and picked up the device. Satisfied with the result, Bill handed it to Aazim.

‘Give me thirty seconds before you try it. I’ll go to the front desk and distract the guard. He’s got a direct view of this door and if he sees you walking in we’ll have Greg to deal with.’ He looked at his watch and gave Aazim a sign to count down.

Bill approached the reception desk from the side so that he had a view of the monitors. He could see a number of screens displaying images from various locations and one of them had an angle on the data room.

‘Excuse me, mate, do you know where John and Vinh keep the toilet paper? We didn’t bring enough with us and there’s none in the supply room.’ As the guard swung around, Bill looked past him and made out Aazim’s image on one of the screens.

‘There’s another supply room on the west side of the building,’ the guard said, about to face the screens again.

Bill quickly said, ‘Which side is that?’

The man pointed. ‘East is the direction you came from, and west is on the opposite end. All sides are clearly marked on the walls.’ The guard wasn’t impressed with Bill’s apparent stupidity.

‘Oh yeah, I see it now.’ Aazim was still in the shot and needed more time. ‘Just one more question. Do you know where we can get a decent meal in this town? We haven’t been to Ballarat before and we want to grab something to eat on our way home. Sick of junk food, you know what I mean?’

‘Depends on what you want.’

Bill took his time answering and finally replied, ‘Chinese or maybe Indian.’

‘There’s plenty of that in town. Just head towards the centre and you’ll find something,’ the guard drawled lazily.

Bill saw that Aazim was no longer in view. ‘Thanks a lot,’ he said and shuffled off to get the toilet paper he didn’t need. Looking at his watch he saw that they had less than two hours to get what they’d come for. Any longer and the guards would get suspicious.

Inside the accounts room the familiar noise of electronics put Aazim at ease. He would have given anything to go back to his daily tasks of maintaining servers and fixing bugs. The room was much smaller than the main data centre of Aust Global Fund: four by four metres with two server racks full of hardware. Each rack, about the size of a fridge, was designed to hold anywhere between two and twenty servers. It was well lit, cool, and as sterile as an operating theatre.

It took him a few minutes to locate AccountsClass01Bak. He pulled up the only seat available and grabbed the keyboard. Taking a deep breath he pressed a key and a box appeared with login and password fields. He made a note of the time and began his first login attempt. Five incorrect entries and the console would lock up, barring access for three hours. Every IT department had system accounts and that was what he planned to use. They were username and password credentials associated with programs as opposed to employee names reserved for servers running specific tasks that needed to gain access to other servers. Their use was restricted but a handful of entrusted administrators knew the login details and Aazim was one of them.

He tried with the first account and saw LOGIN FAILURE on the screen. Still confident, he entered the second one and got the same result. A little worried now, he tried the third and the same message appeared.

‘Come on, don’t do this to me,’ he muttered and slowly pressed the last character of the fourth account. To his horror the same message flashed: the passwords of all four accounts had been changed.

To allay his panic he took a deep breath and tried to clear his head. He had one more login attempt and if he got it wrong it was all over. Suddenly an idea came to him. It seemed unlikely but it was worth a shot. He typed
TestBackupServ01
for the username and
StartSched01
for the password field. A test account he’d used once when a problem appeared in the backup process, he had created it for temporary use but had forgotten to remove it from the system.

The screen changed and the Oracle icons appeared.

It was a satisfying moment but a greater challenge awaited: cracking the Oracle password and downloading SWIFT data. He reached into the overalls and pulled out the Softbreach report along with a couple of USB flash drives he had bought at the internet cafe. On one of them he had downloaded the cracking tools known as Brute Force and Dictionary Attack. He wasn’t sure which would be more effective. Brute Force ran computations of all possible passwords up to a certain number of characters, and Dictionary Attack would target typically chosen words that would eventually guess the correct password. The latter compared the hashed value to a hashed dictionary word and matched the characters.