“Have you sent out an alert to the neighboring districts?”
“It’s been taken care of.”
“When can we have a meeting about this?”
“As soon as everyone comes back in.”
“It feels to me like this investigation is getting out of hand.”
“We’re not quite at that point,” Wallander said, and he didn’t bother to hide his irritation. “But feel free to relieve me of my responsibilities if you like. Hansson is the one who’s been in charge of the search operation.”
She had a few more questions, but Wallander had already turned his back and started walking away.
Martinsson and Alfredsson came in at five o’clock. Wallander and Modin met with them in one of the smaller conference rooms. Hansson had called to say there was still no trace of the man in the fog. No one knew exactly where Höglund was. Wallander barricaded the door to make sure no one could interrupt them. Modin’s computers were up and running.
“We’re going to go through everything from the beginning,” Wallander said when everyone had sat down.
“I’m not sure we can do that yet,” Alfredsson said. “There are too many things we can’t see clearly yet.”
Wallander turned to Modin.
“You said you had thought of something new,” he said.
“It’s hard to explain,” Modin said. “And I’m very hungry.”
Wallander felt irritated with him for the first time. Modin might be a computer whiz, but he was far from satisfactory in other respects.
“The food is on its way,” Wallander said. “If you need something right now we have good old Swedish rusks, and some leftover pizza. Take your pick.”
Modin got up and sat down in front of his computers. The others gathered behind him.
“It took me a while to figure all this out,” he began. “At first I was convinced that the number twenty that kept turning up had something to do with the year 2000. We already know that Y2K will cause a number of problems in many computer systems. But I never found the missing zeroes, and I also noticed that the countdown, whatever it’s for, looked like it was set to go off much sooner than the end of the year. So I concluded that it had to do with the twentieth of October instead.”
Alfredsson shook his head and looked like he wanted to protest, but Wallander held him back.
“Go on.”
“I started looking for the other pieces of the puzzle. We know something here proceeds from the left to the right. There is an end point, and that’s how we deduce that something is going to happen. But we don’t know what. I decided to surf the Web for information about the financial institutions we had already identified. The National Bank of Indonesia, the World Bank, the stockbroker in Seoul. I tried to see if they had anything in common — the point you’re always searching for.”
“What point would that be?”
“The point of weakness. The one spot where someone could enter the system without anyone noticing.”
“But there’s a lot of awareness about hackers these days,” Martinsson said. “And the business world is getting faster at responding to computer viruses when they emerge.”
“The United States already has the capacity to conduct computer wars,” Alfredsson said. “Earlier, the talk was about computer-programmed missiles, or ‘smart’ bombs. But soon that will be as antiquated as a cavalry. Now the goal is to dismantle the enemy’s networks and kill their missiles. Or better yet, to direct the enemy’s missiles against themselves.”
“Is this really true?” Wallander asked skeptically.
“It is definitely in the works,” Alfredsson said. “But we should also be honest about the fact that there are many things we just don’t know. Weapons systems are complicated.”
“Let’s return to Falk’s computer,” Wallander said. “Did you find those weak points?”
“I’m not sure,” Modin said hesitantly. “But I think there’s a way to see a connection between all of these institutions. They all have one thing in common.”
“And what is that?”
“They’re the cornerstones of the global financial network. If you compromised them enough, you’d be able to set in motion an economic crisis that could wipe out all of the world’s financial systems. The stockmarkets would crash. There’d be widespread panic. Everyone would rush to take out their money. Currency exchanges would go wild until no one could be sure what the rates should be.”
“And who would be interested in causing anything of this nature?”
Martinsson and Alfredsson spoke at the same time.
“Many people,” Alfredsson said. “It sounds like the highest form of terrorism imaginable. And there are many people out there eager to cause chaos and destruction.”
“Taking out the global financial network would be the ultimate act of sabotage.” Martinsson added.
“Does everyone in this room think that that’s what we’re looking at here? And that something like this is based in a computer in Ystad?” Wallander asked.
“It’s definitely something like this,” Martinsson said. “I’ve never come across anything like it before.”
“Is it harder to break into than the Pentagon?” Alfredsson asked.
Modin narrowed his eyes.
“It’s certainly not any less complicated.”
“I’m not sure how best to proceed in this kind of a situation,” Wallander said.
“I’ll talk to my people in Stockholm,” Alfredsson said. “I’ll send in a report that will later get sent on all over the world. We have to alert the institutions involved so that they can take precautions.”
“If it isn’t already too late,” Modin mumbled.
Everyone heard him, but no one made any comment. Alfredsson left the room in a hurry.
“I still have trouble believing it,” Wallander said.
“Well, whatever it is in Falk’s computer, there are people ready to kill in order to keep the system and countdown going,” Martinsson said.
Wallander pointed at Modin so that Martinsson would understand that he should choose his words with greater care.
“The question is what we can do,” Wallander said. “Is there anything we can do?”
“There’s often a button to push,” Modin said abruptly. “If you infect a computer system with a virus, you often hide it in an innocent and common command. But in order to set it off, several things have to come together at once. The commands often need to be carried out at a precise time, for example.”
“The best thing we can do now is carry on with what we’ve been doing,” Martinsson said. “We need to let the institutions know that they’re in danger of an attack so that they can inspect their security procedures. Alfredsson will handle the rest.”
Martinsson scribbled a few words on a piece of paper. He looked up at Wallander, who bent over to read them:
THE THREAT AGAINST MODIN IS SERIOUS.
Wallander nodded. Whoever had been spying on Modin from the road between the fields had known how important he was. Right now he was in the same situation that Sonja Hökberg had been in.
Wallander’s phone rang. Hansson was calling to let him know that the search for the attacker had not yet yielded any results. But they would continue unabated.
“How is Nyberg doing?”
“He’s already comparing fingerprints.”
Hansson was still out near Backåkra, where he would stay for now. He didn’t know where Höglund was.
They ended the conversation. Wallander tried to phone Höglund, but her phone was out of range.
There was a knock on the door, and Irene came in with a box.
“Here’s the food,” she said. “Who’s supposed to take care of the bill? I had to pay the delivery man out of my own pocket.”