‘Richard Halliwell might have a big smile,’ Chuck Bolton was fond of saying, ‘but this is war and this country needs more than dental floss to defeat an enemy who’s hell bent on destroying our way of life.’
With just five primaries to go, the Republican Convention was going to be won and lost in the next few weeks. The photograph on the front page of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution showed Richard with his arm around Constance, campaigning in Louisiana. He’d dismissed the latest polls but Simone thought he looked to be in trouble and she decided she would give it one last try to get on the team. She picked up the phone and pressed the speed dial for Richard’s mobile.
‘Halliwell.’
‘Richard, it’s Simone,’ she said. Knowing that her name would have come up on Richard’s phone she kept her anger at his curt response in check. ‘I saw the vote tallies and I thought I’d let you know that the offer of help on your campaign is still open.’ Simone couldn’t remember feeling this powerless.
‘How many times do I have to say this, Simone. If it were up to me that would be fine,’ Halliwell said irritably. He wasn’t quite ready to fire her as he needed her to run things back in Atlanta, but the time was fast approaching. ‘I’ve discussed this with Esposito before. He’s given a flat no and you’ve as good as said it yourself, image is everything. I’m running a campaign on family values, and Constance is going to be in every photo opportunity we get. Unless there’s a problem down there, don’t interrupt the campaign.’ The line went dead.
Simone glared at the photograph. Despite Esposito’s instructions, the well-endowed blonde she had seen in some of the earlier campaign photographs was there again, almost out of shot. When Simone had asked what the woman’s role was Halliwell had been defensive. ‘For Christ’s sake, Simone,’ Halliwell had exploded. ‘She’s a political science graduate from Georgia University.’
The reminders of the man she had hoped she would one day accompany into the White House were everywhere. The previous month’s copy of Pharmaceutical, the industry’s major glossy magazine had a picture of Richard on the front cover. Simone had already read the article, but she picked up the magazine again and had begun to flick through it when a small advertisement in the classifieds caught her eye. ‘Executive Assistant For High Profile CEO’. The company wasn’t named but the job description seemed uncannily like the one she’d applied for eight years before; then she saw Richard’s private box number. Jealous and angry, Simone searched for the spare set of keys she had for Richard’s desk drawers. Up until now she’d never felt the need to search them but if there were any job applications in the drawers or in his safe, Simone was determined to find them.
Other than some of his personal papers, the first drawers drew a blank. In the larger bottom drawer, there was a file containing the folders from applicants for her job. The first five had been rejected. Probably wouldn’t come across, Simone thought angrily. The sixth file contained a letter of appointment as Executive Personal Assistant to Dr Richard Halliwell, Chief Executive Officer of Halliwell Pharmaceuticals. The letter was a copy of one that had been sent to Ms Sally McLeod. On the inside of the file was a photograph of a leggy blonde matching the one on the front page of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Simone pushed the button on the side of Halliwell’s desk. As the liquor cabinet swung out from the wall, she walked over and reached for the bottle of Chivas Regal.
CHAPTER 89
‘F rom the boys in imagery – Dr Amon al-Falid alias Dr Alan Ferraro,’ Curtis said darkly after they’d returned from the DDO briefing. The computer-enhanced photographs of the senior Halliwell executive matched the satellite images of the man beside agent Bill Crawford’s car in Peshawar. ‘Amon is a variation on the Egyptian Amun , meaning hidden, which is pretty bloody apt.’
‘Doesn’t seem much doubt there’s a link between al-Falid and the Taliban madrassas, but I wonder if that link extends to al-Qaeda?’ Imran mused.
‘We’re about to find out. I’ve asked young Corey Barrino to come up.’
‘An expert on al-Qaeda?’ Kate asked, puzzled as to how the CIA would have a young expert on the complex and sinister workings of the Islamic fundamentalists.
Curtis shook his head. ‘In a previous life he was a computer geek. Used to get his rocks off hacking into the Pentagon and NASA’s classified networks and leaving messages for them. He hacked into here once and left a message for the Director and I think you can still see the spot where the paperweight hit the wall. He got caught when he went into a big merchant bank. They wouldn’t accept their systems had been breached until he left a message for their CEO with a list of all his top clients’ bank account numbers and then the shit really hit the fan. Fortunately for us, after he served out his good behaviour bond, we found a better use for those talents and I’m hoping he might be able to get into Ferraro’s computer at Halliwell. The al-Falids of this world keep dual identities for a reason but sometimes they think they’re infallible and they keep encrypted files as well.’ Curtis was interrupted by a knock on the door.
‘That’ll be him. Corey, come on in. Professor Imran Sayed, Dr Kate Braithwaite – Corey Barrino.’
‘Hi, good to meet you,’ Kate said, holding out her hand.
‘Hi,’ Corey said shyly. Kate thought he looked about sixteen, but to be working for the CIA he was probably quite a bit older.
‘Any particular area you want in Halliwell,’ Corey asked after he’d taken over Curtis’ computer and dialed up the website.
‘Several but we’ll start with a Dr Alan Ferraro,’ Curtis said.
‘The Chief Financial Officer?’ Corey asked, his fingers tapping the keys.
‘He’s the one.’
‘Access Denied’ flashed up on the computer screen and Kate watched, fascinated, as Corey’s hands flew across the keyboard, a look of concentration on his face.
‘They’ve added a salt to the DES,’ Corey muttered, totally absorbed by the lines of numbers, letters and symbols that to Kate, as mathematically savvy as she was, looked like a jumble. ‘Salt to the DES?’ she whispered to Curtis, her inquiring mind frustrated that she didn’t have the vaguest idea of what Corey was talking about.
Curtis grinned. He’d had the same problem until Corey had put him through ‘Hacking 101’. ‘A “salt” is just another layer of data that makes it harder to crack the Data Encryption Standard or DES algorithm. It is two characters that are added to either end of a password. They can be chosen from upper- and lower-case letters of the alphabet or the numbers 0 to 9 or a full stop or a forward slash. With a choice of sixty-four characters either end, you get a possible 4096 different salts to use on your password, making it a lot harder for your average hacker.’
As Curtis already knew, and Kate and Imran were about to find out, Corey Barrino was anything but an ‘average hacker’. In real life, hackers were often shy but still sought recognition from their fellow hackers. If they managed to hack into a particularly sensitive target like the Pentagon or the CIA, as Corey had done back in the days when his handle was ‘Byte Blaster’, those feats would be posted on cybernet bulletin boards. Proof was provided by posting a piece of information that could only have been obtained from within that organisation’s system. The more protected the system, the greater the recognition. In the murky world of cyberspace ‘Byte Blaster’ had been a hero.
Corey ran a program that would have crashed most medium-sized networks but it only required a fraction of the big Cray computers in the CIA’s basement. In a matter of minutes, Corey had cracked Halliwell’s password file. Ferraro’s name was in clear but his password was encrypted. After several more minutes and millions of computations the blur on the screen suddenly stopped.