She could tell by the characteristic ‘Username:’ prompt that the operating system was VMS. This was both good and bad. On the one hand, there were many ways to circumvent VMS security once she was logged in. On the other hand, logging in without a valid username and password wasn’t going to be easy. And to make matters worse, she’d be disconnected after three bad attempts.
Her fingers hovered over the keys while she considered some likely account names and passwords. Best to stick to the obvious. She typed in ‘system’. At the ‘Password:’ prompt, she typed ‘manager’, and hit Enter. Immediately the ‘Username:’ prompt re-appeared, challenging her to try again.
Strike one.
Next she tried ‘system’ and ‘operator’.
Strike two.
She had one shot left. She flexed her fingers and in her mind ran through the passwords that had worked for her in the past: ‘syslib’, ‘sysmaint’, ‘operator’. All were good bets, but there were no guarantees. Even the username ‘system’ might be wrong.
Then another possibility struck her; she shook her head – no chance. But it was so unlikely, she decided to give it a try. She typed in the username ‘guest’, left the password blank and hit Enter. A message unravelled on the screen:
Welcome to the Dublin Stock Exchange VAX server.
And there on the next line, waiting politely for her instructions, was the coveted VMS $ prompt. She was logged in.
She sat back and grinned. Administrators would sometimes create an unprotected ‘Guest’ account for new or infrequent users, but the practice was highly insecure. She was beginning to realize that the weakest point in any system was a lazy administrator.
She rolled up the sleeves of her pyjamas and started to type, sidestepping security blocks and dodging her way further into the system. Every time one of her commands outwitted the other computer, she bounced up and down in her chair.
When she figured out that she was inside a database server, she wiggled a thumbs-up sign at the screen. Goody. Databases were full of interesting information. She rummaged through the files. The records seemed to represent financial transactions of some kind, but the details made little sense to her. Then she found a list of vaguely familiar acronyms: NLD, CHF, DEM, HKD. It wasn’t until she saw ESP in the list and recognized it as the symbol for the Spanish peseta that she understood what she was looking at. Foreign currency symbols. She must have stumbled on records of foreign exchange trades.
Harry scanned the data and blinked when she saw the sums of money involved. So many zeros. She itched to leave her mark, to let them know she’d been there. What harm could it do? With a flurry of fingers, she added a couple of zeros to some of the smaller trades.
Then she backtracked out of the system, shut down her modem connection and scampered into bed. But she couldn’t sleep. She’d slipped a little further into the black-hat world, and now she wondered what she’d started.
She didn’t have long to wait before she found out. The Stock Exchange discovered the security breach and recruited the services of an independent consultant to trace the source. The expert they hired was a twenty-one-year-old graduate who was a crackerjack in software security. It took him just a week to track her down.
His name was Dillon Fitzroy.
‘Tell me about KWC.’
Harry dragged her gaze away from the traffic and saw that Dillon was looking at her. KWC. Had that only been today?
She squirmed and made a face. ‘I screwed up.’
Dillon frowned. ‘What happened?’
‘In my defence, they were a bunch of jerks.’ Then she thought of Jude Tiernan, and something pecked at her conscience. Maybe she’d given him an unnecessarily hard time. ‘One of them had a go at me about my father. I got a bit, well …’
‘Don’t tell me. Mouthy?’
‘Sorry.’
‘Shit, Harry, that could have been an important account. I had to pull favours to get that meeting.’
‘Hey, you’re the one who prescribed the cathartic therapy, remember?’
He sighed. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll call them, see if I can patch things up.’
Harry didn’t answer. She let her head sink back against the seat and closed her eyes again. Her neck had started to ache and she guessed her body was covered in livid bruises that would hurt like hell in the morning.
‘You shouldn’t be alone tonight,’ Dillon said. ‘You’re still in shock.’
She kept her eyes closed. ‘I’m fine.’
‘Come back to my house. I’ve got brandy, food and a change of clothes, strictly in that order.’
Harry shot him a quick look. She’d never been to his home, but, according to Imogen’s sources, he lived in a gracious mansion in the Enniskerry countryside. Her sources also had him pegged as resolutely single, so Harry wondered where the change of women’s clothes would come from.
Under other circumstances, she might have allowed her curiosity to get the better of her, but right now, all she wanted was to close her apartment door behind her and think.
‘Thanks, but I’d be bad company,’ she said. ‘I just need to sleep.’
She felt his eyes scrutinize her face.
‘You know what he meant, don’t you?’ he said.
‘What?’
‘The guy in the train station, the Sorohan money, all that stuff.’ He flicked her a look in between watching the road. ‘It means something to you, doesn’t it?’
She shook her head and forced a shrug. ‘It was just some nutter.’
He regarded her for a moment, and then snapped his attention back to the traffic. ‘Suit yourself.’
His face had shut down on her. Hell. But she couldn’t do anything about it now. There were some aspects of her life she just wasn’t ready to open up about yet. At least not until she understood them better herself.
Dillon swung right into Raglan Road. Harry’s tension began to melt as they drove down the familiar tree-lined avenue. Victorian red-bricks stood guard on either side, some of them restored to elegant family homes but most converted into apartments. You could tell which ones were rented by the cracked paint on the sash windows.
Dillon peered out at them. ‘Which one is yours?’
Harry pointed to a corner house with a canary-yellow door. She’d smartened it up herself with a fresh coat of paint the week before. One of these days she’d buy her landlord out. Her profession paid well, and she’d accumulated enough savings now to start thinking about a mortgage.
Dillon slammed to a dead stop, scuffing the kerb. Harry hauled herself up out of the car and led the way through the front door.
The building had a basement and three floors, and Harry lived in an apartment at ground level. It had once been an elegant drawing room where butlers served tea. Now it was a place where Harry ate breakfast in bed any time she felt like it.
She trudged down the hall, aware of Dillon’s presence like a stalker behind her. They reached her apartment, and Harry froze. The door was open.
She edged up to the threshold,