He stopped the game and stared at me non-plussed. ‘Did I miss something. I thought I got all the invaders.’
‘Not the game, you idiot!’ I ranted. ‘We’ve come here to offer you a job. A very important job! I’m not going to talk to you while you’re playing a damned computer game!’
‘Man,’ he explained in simple terms. ‘You don’t understand. I’m a multi-player. I can do more than two things at once. I can listen to you and still play the game.’
‘Not while I’m talking to you!’ I told him point-blank. ‘When I talk you listen. Is that clear? Otherwise we’ll look somewhere else to take on the job.’
Reluctantly, he stopped the game and closed it down. ‘Okay, man. What’s on your mind?’
‘Before we discuss the matter, I want you to swear to secrecy. No one must ever know what we are planning. I want you to swear to secrecy. Do you understand what I’m saying?’
Devon looked towards Penny with an old-fashioned expression on his face. ‘Is this guy for real? I mean who’s he with… the CIA or something? Swear to secrecy! That’s rich! I ‘aint a priest or a doctor!’
‘I’m serious,’ I went on. ‘You cannot reveal anything that we say to another individual otherwise we shall all be in trouble. You cannot tell anyone… not even your mother!’
‘I don’t have a mother,’ he returned calmly.
I threw my hands in the air and turned to Penny. ‘Is this the best we can do? Is it really the best?’
‘He’s the right man for the job,’ she insisted adamantly, trying to hide the smile on her face in relation to the personality clash.
I looked directly into Devon’s eyes. ‘This conversation must be kept entirely confidential. Is that understood?’
‘If you say so, man,’ he replied casually. ‘You know, this is getting’ to be boring. Isn’t it time you cut to the chase and told me what it’s all about?’ He moved away slightly and sneezed ostensibly into his beard.
‘The target is an international company making military weapons,’ I told him.
‘Oh… Dandy Advanced Electronics,’ he returned without even blinking, cutting across my diplomatic approach like a hot knife through butter.
‘What makes you think it’s them?’ I demanded, irked that he should come to the right conclusion so quickly.
‘Well there’s only two major companies in the field and you wouldn’t dare to try to break into their computer systems. Anyway, Miss Smith works for Dandy. She told me so.’
‘All right,’ I continued with irritation. ‘You know it’s Dandy. I need some information from their computer but I don’t know how to do it.’
‘No sweat, man,’ he responded casually. ‘Lead me to the system and I’ll crack it. When do you wanna go?’
‘It’s not as easy as that. We have to break into the plant to get to the computer system. You can’t just walk in there as though you have the front door key.’
‘The other problem,’ cut in Penny, ‘is that the information is access barred and there are two passwords required to get into the system.’
Devon shrugged his shoulders aimlessly. ‘It takes a bit longer, that’s all.’
‘I’ll come clean with you,’ I confessed reluctantly. ‘The weaponry division runs off a separate computer system. We would have to get past a number of security checks before we even got to it.’
‘What information are you lookin’ for, man?’
‘Why do you have to know that now?’
‘Are we searchin’ hundreds of files or is it somethin’ simple… like a set of plans. It would help if I knew.’
The computer expert had an alarming way of reducing important matters to mere trivia. ‘It’s a set of plans. Will you help us get them?’
He smiled in an ugly fashion at Penny. ‘For this lady, I’d do anything… anything. Just say when you need me and I’ll come runnin’. I presume there’s a fat fee in all this. I mean I’ve just done three years in jug. If I get caught they’ll put me away for ever.’
‘Just leave that to me,’ related my secretary firmly. ‘You’ll be contacted within the next few days.’
A cold chill passed through my body as her words echoed in my mind. I had already witnessed how Penny Smith took care of people… often it was effected by a bullet in the head or in the heart. At other times, she ran them down in a motor car as she had done on the Jaffa dockside. She appeared to have no conscience about her actions whatsoever. In my opinion, Chris Devon should have been far more concerned about my secretary than he was about his probation.
Believing that the conversation with us had ended, he switched on his computer again manipulating the buttons on the console. ‘Is there anythin’ else you wanna know, man,’ he asked finally.
‘Just one thing before we go,’ I added. ‘I’ve been told how good you are but how good are you really. I mean our future lives are on the line here. I don’t want anything to go wrong.’
‘Man,’ he retorted without moving his eyes from the screen in front of him, ‘I’m the best!’ He paused for a moment before continuing. ‘You know I can get to level eight in this game with no sweat.’
‘If you’re so good how come you spent three years in jail?’ The words were fired at him like an arrow from a crossbow.
He stopped playing the video to look at me. ‘That’s the reason why I’m the best, man. You see I’m the only person in the world who broke through the scrambler telephone system. No one else could do it. In case you don’t know what it is, a scrambler system is one where people can talk secretly over the telephone and no one else can listen in. It’s unbreakable… security efficient. But I found a way to break in.’
My mind sought an answer to his boast. Who could it have been… a government department, MI5, a military establishment… perhaps the Bank of England? It had to be someone elevated for him to be sent to prison for three years. ‘And who’s telephone conversation did you unscramble?’ I attacked fiercely, trying to make him out to be a fool.
He paused for a moment while he eradicated a number of invaders falling out of the sky on the video. ‘It was stupid,’ he explained briefly. ‘I knew I shouldn’t have done it but it did wonders for my ego. I tapped into a conversation between the President of the United States and the President of Iraq.’
‘Did the conversation have anything to do with the Gulf War?’
‘Don’t ask me, man. I’m not interested in politics. Only computers. But they were talkin’ together like real buddies.’
My mind was reeling when we left him. He had opened the window to world politics I never knew existed. People often believed that treachery occurred at high levels. Even the media was kept in the dark. Now I understood why governments placed limitation on the release of information claiming to reveal that it was against the public interest for anyone to know. Eventually, the details came to light some fifty years on, after which it is too late to do anything about them and most of the perpetrators had probably gone to their maker. Of one thing I was certain… the quicker I obtained the information from the data banks of the computer in Dandy Advanced Electronics, the faster I would be free from danger. In addition, I would never have to face that awful person, Chris Devon, again!
Chapter Eight
Penny and I arrived at the offices of Dandy Advanced Electronics at nine o’clock the next morning. I had no fear of the threat presented by Primar that a letter had been sent to the Chairman concerned the false fact that I had stolen money from the company’s funds. I had no intention of starting work but wasted no time in putting a call in to John Packman, the director of the weaponry division. He wasn’t there at the time so I left a message for him to return the call. It was almost an hour when he came back to me.