Trading Reality (41 page)

There was a stunned silence from the programmers, and then they all broke into movement. Many of them looked worried. ‘God knows what we’ve lost,’ said Rachel. ‘No wonder the guys are scared.’

We went back into Rachel’s office, and she powered up Richard’s computer. I sat watching as her fingers flew over the keyboard, her eyes focused on the screen. After twenty minutes, she leaned back. ‘I can’t find anything here. It looks clean. Now, let’s try my machine.

‘Doogie broke into our systems once before,’ Rachel said, logging on to her own machine. ‘But he did that by dialling into our network from outside. So we tightened up our security. We have something called a firewall machine through which all communications with the outside world flow. It makes it much easier to guard against a remote attack on our system.’

She paused to stare at her screen for a moment. ‘But if he breaks in to the building itself, that’s a different thing entirely. Then he can pass files around the network from the inside.’

‘What might he have done?’

‘Oh God, who knows? He might have planted a virus that replicates itself from file to file in our network, and then takes the whole system down at some point in the future. That’s probably the worst case. Or he might have been searching our files looking for information. Or it might be something much more harmless than that. Last time all he did was produce a silly display hack.’

‘Display hack?’

‘Yes. The screen disappeared in flames and the words VIRTUAL HELL rose out of them. It was Doogie’s idea of a joke. He just wanted to show us he’d been into our system. It scared the shit out of us.’

Morning stretched into afternoon. People rushed about checking this and that, and passing round anti-virus disks. But no one found anything. A team of policemen arrived, Kerr among them. They couldn’t see any sign that the locks to the building had been forced. The front door was secured by a standard Chubb lock and an electronic access system. I arranged to have the lock changed, and more added. Keith became very worked up about how we could change the codes on the access system, but I took no notice. Anything electronic I assumed Doogie could break into. Steel, cylinders and tumblers I had more confidence in.

I looked in on Rachel at three. She pushed back her chair from the machine, and sighed.

‘Find anything?’

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘We’ve checked for every virus known to mankind. Of course, Doogie might have invented one himself, and that would be much harder to find.’

‘Perhaps he was just copying files.’

‘Maybe.’ She shook her head. ‘I wondered how he’d got hold of the Bergey letter that he used to blackmail Richard. Perhaps he just broke in then, too.’

‘So, do you think the network is OK?’

Rachel drew on her cigarette, thinking hard. ‘No. If Doogie got into my computer, he would leave something on it, even if it was just a display hack like the last one.’

‘But it looks like he hasn’t?’

Rachel shrugged.

I wondered what Doogie would want to do. Cripple FairSystems’ computer system was the obvious answer, but we had checked and found nothing.

‘Is there anything Doogie could have done to make his path into our system easier?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, it must be a real pain to physically break into the factory every time he wants to gain access to our computer. Is there any way he could have opened a path into our network past the firewall machine? So that he could just call in whenever he wanted without us knowing?’

Rachel’s eyes lit up. ‘You mean introduce a back door?’

‘Do I?’

‘Yes, you do,’ she said, and turned to her machine with renewed enthusiasm.

Two hours later, she came into my office with a broad smile on her face.

‘You were right! He installed a sophisticated packet sniffer!’

‘A packet sniffer?’

‘Yes. A packet sniffer can eavesdrop on all the information going around our network. Doogie’s was looking out for someone logging on as a super-user to the firewall machine. The packet sniffer would pick up their user ID and password. It would then use this information to set Doogie up as a super-user himself.’

‘And what’s a super-user?’

‘A super-user is someone who controls the computer. At the moment, Andy and I are the only two super-users on the firewall machine. If Doogie became a super-user as well, then he’d be able to bypass the firewall machine into our network without alerting anyone. He could look through our computers at his leisure.’

‘I see. Have you destroyed this packet sniffer?’

‘Andy’s dealing with it right now.’

‘So we’re safe?’

Rachel winced. ‘I hope so. But we can never be sure. And of course we don’t know what files he copied, if any.’

‘And he did waste almost a whole day of everyone’s time whilst we tried to work out what he’d done,’ I said.

Just then Kerr came in.

‘Find anything?’ I asked.

‘No. Nothing yet. And I’m not hopeful. All we’ve got is your ID, for what it’s worth.’

‘I saw him!’ I said.

Kerr rubbed his eyes. ‘No. You saw a figure who you thought was Miss Walker. That’s not going to go very far in court, believe me.’

I believed him. ‘So aren’t you going to bring him in?’

‘Oh aye. We’ve got a team waiting outside his flat now. And when I’ve got him, I’ll find out what the hell he’s up to.’

‘Any luck with our friend David Baker?’

‘He’s almost as bad as Fisher,’ said Kerr. ‘He’s got a lawyer. He won’t answer any questions. His excuse is he’s putting together a wrongful dismissal case that you’ll be hearing about shortly.’

He collapsed into a chair. ‘I don’t know. Fisher’s still my favourite. If only he hadn’t been logged on to the computer network at the time of your brother’s murder.’

I looked at Rachel. ‘That’s easily faked,’ she said.

Kerr sat up. ‘But he showed us passwords, addresses, everything.’

‘Believe me,’ said Rachel. ‘Doogie and his friends could fake that. If you show me what you’ve got, I’ll show you how.’

Kerr rubbed his hands. ‘I’ll do that. You know,’ he said, smiling for the first time, ‘I think we’re getting closer.’

The Fife Constabulary’s eye was now firmly on Doogie Fisher.

Just after Kerr left, my computer beeped at me. It was an email.

The factory was buzzing. Everyone worked over the weekend, even though they knew the chances of overtime pay were negligible. I was there Saturday and Sunday, too. There was a lot to do. And I was glad of an excuse not to see Karen in London.

I spoke to her briefly on the phone; we were polite but cold. I decided not to tell her about my meeting in London. I hoped I would be able to get down and back in a day, and avoid spending the night with her. I was still angry about her vote at the EGM.

I spoke to Kerr. They’d arrested Doogie and searched his flat, including his computer. They had found nothing incriminating. They’d kept him in the police station for twenty-four hours, and then they’d had to let him go. The evidence was just too thin, even for a charge of breaking and entering. Kerr sounded even gloomier than usual.

We received no reply from Sega, but a fax arrived from Nintendo on Saturday morning. It said they wanted to talk, nothing more. I hoped it would be enough.

Rachel and I flew to Heathrow early on Monday morning. I wanted to catch Steve Schwartz before our meeting with Onada. It was good to have Rachel with me; I needed an ally.

We took the tube into the City. When we arrived at Harrison Brothers’ offices I talked the security guard into giving Rachel a visitor’s pass and took a lift up to the trading room on the second floor. I looked over to Karen’s desk. Fortunately, her chair was empty.

Jack Tenko’s chair was empty too. So was his desk. All his papers and belongings were gone. As Karen had said, he was history.

Steve was absorbed in his graphs, and didn’t take any notice of me for five minutes, beyond a brief wave of his hand. He was using a mouse to draw a web of support and resistance lines on the graph of one of the stocks in which he had a big position. Steve didn’t believe absolutely in what his charts told him, but he always wanted to know what they said nonetheless.

Rachel watched fascinated. I could see her brain whirring, trying to work out exactly what Steve was doing.

When he had finished, I introduced him to Rachel. He smiled politely, and was immediately bombarded with questions on what he’d been doing and why, and whether he was doing any non-linear analysis, and if not, why not.

Steve seemed to enjoy the interrogation session, and I realised it would go on all day unless I put a stop to it.

‘You said you had something for me, Steve.’

‘Oh, yes,’ he said, bringing his mind back to me. His face clouded and he leaned forward, looking over his shoulder. No one was taking any notice of us.

His voice fell to a whisper. ‘It’s about your friend Hartman. It looks like the SEC are after him.’

‘That doesn’t surprise me.’ The SEC was responsible for tracking down securities fraud and insider dealing in the United States. From what I had heard of him, Hartman would be a natural target.

‘No, I mean they’re really close. There’s a guy I know at Bloomfield Weiss who’s been subpoenaed to provide information on all his trades in Futurenet with Hartman and a bunch of obscure offshore funds. The word on the street is, stay clear of dealing with the guy. None of us wants to get implicated in this sort of thing after the Boesky business.’

‘What’s Futurenet?’ I asked.

‘It’s some company involved in communications software in Seattle. It was bought by Jenson Computer last year. It was obvious that there was something funny going on in the stock before the takeover announcement.’

‘I’ve heard of them,’ Rachel said. ‘They do software for wide area networks. But we don’t use them.’

‘Keep all this to yourself,’ Steve whispered.

‘OK,’ I nodded. ‘Thank you.’ I turned to Steve’s screens. ‘Can I have a look at a graph of our share price.’

‘Sure.’ Steve tapped a few keys, his computer’s guts whirred and ground quietly, and a graph of the FairSystems share price action appeared.

‘It’s firm,’ he said, ‘Look.’

And indeed it was. The price had reached six dollars at the time of the EGM and then slipped to five. Since then it had risen back up to six. Tall thin bars under the line of the graph indicated that this movement had been on the back of decent volume.

‘Someone’s still accumulating stock,’ said Steve. ‘I’m sure of it.’

‘Jenson Computer?’

‘Could be. You’ll soon hear about it if it is them. They have to tell the SEC. Unless they’re buying through untraceable nominees. Or through Hartman’s network.’

‘You said it was Jenson Computer who bought Futurenet?’

‘That’s right.’

‘And what happened to Futurenet afterwards?’

Rachel answered. ‘They fired a third of the staff. They had just opened a factory in Greenock, which was closed down. A lot of their best people left of their own accord. Not a happy place.’

‘Well, that’s not going to happen to us,’ I said with determination.

I asked Rachel to stay with Steve for a couple of minutes, and nipped over to the far side of the room. There was a flurry of activity; Harrison Brothers was just launching a new eurobond issue. I realised how much I missed the buzz, the restrained excitement, the feeling that anything could happen at any time. Greg was on the phone, and waved to me as I walked past. I had a quick chat with Ed. The Italian trade was going well; the bonds were up to ninety-seven and a half. Ed gave me a quick look at the monthly P&L numbers. We were already over two million dollars up! Very satisfying.

Bob Forrester strolled into the trading room. He noticed me, and came over. ‘Good to see you here, Mark. I’m glad you haven’t forgotten us,’ he boomed.

‘Things seem to be going pretty well here without me,’ I said, nodding at the P&L.

‘Yeah, Ed’s doing well. But we need you back, Mark. We’re behind budget for the year, and I can’t afford to have you out of action much longer.’

‘I thought I had until the first of August.’

‘I’m sorry, Mark. I need you back next week.’

It was a statement, not a request or even an order.

‘I can’t do it. FairSystems is in a delicate situation. I really can’t leave it.’

Bob looked at me closely. I held his gaze. He knew I wasn’t going to back down.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘Three weeks, and I want you back at your desk, or you’ll find someone else sitting in it when you do show up,’ and he turned on his heel and walked out.

That was all I needed! Especially with the extra debt burden I had just taken on. If I lost my job, it wouldn’t be so easy to get another one. Being out of the market for even a couple of months would make a difference.

Well, I didn’t have time to worry about that now.

Onada Industries’ UK headquarters was just off Hammersmith Broadway. The building was small, square, and very modern. Inside, everything was square and very modern as well. Most of the employees seemed to be young English men or women with polite, efficient smiles. I sighted one Japanese hurrying down a corridor in the distance.

We were shown up to a conference room. It was sparsely, but expensively furnished in cherry and light oak. The lighting was indirect, reflecting off the glowing white walls. One wall was made of glass, and provided a one-way view of the reception area. From the outside it had seemed to be green and smoky. Rachel and I sat down.

Rachel was looking smart, at least for her. Her jeans were black, not blue, and didn’t have any holes in them. It was probably her best jersey, lambswool, and not nearly as baggy as her others. For once it was possible to see her slender legs and full figure; in fact, it was impossible to miss them. Her hair was tied back from her face, revealing her ears, and slim neck. The dim, indirect lighting of the room made her skin glow in a way that reminded me of that evening in her flat in Glenrothes.