A. N. T. I. D. O. T. E. (15 page)

But I was wrong.

The last e-mail message she’d sent out was to Marcus Pardela himself. We all looked at each other but said nothing. I retrieved the message and everyone crowded around for a closer look.

Electronic Memo:Page 1 of 1

To: Marcus Pardela - MPARDELA

From: Sarah Irving - SIRVING

cc:

Status: Strictly Confidential

SUBJECT: COVER

I’m afraid I have bad news. My cover has been blown. This afternoon I found a copy of your confidential memo (sent to Joshua Shelby and copied to me) on my desk. It was obviously a warning but I don’t know who left it there. I don’t think whoever it was knows anything else but I think I should back out. I await your further instruction.

The silence in the room was deafening. Even though we all knew that someone at ANTIDOTE was a traitor, it was still a shock to see it like that.

‘What a rat!’ Halle fumed. ‘No, she’s lower than a rat. She’s a rat’s bum! We should let the others at ANTIDOTE know immediately.’

‘No, we can’t,’ I said quickly. ‘Not until we get my mum and Uncle Robert out of trouble.’

‘Sarah Irving.’ Julian whistled. ‘And she’s the ANTIDOTE spokesperson. Nine times out of ten when ANTIDOTE are mentioned on the telly, they show Sarah’s face.’

‘Can you imagine what will happen if all this comes
out
? ANTIDOTE will be finished,’ Halle said. ‘No more funding. No more support. Nothing.’

‘And that’s probably what Pardela is relying on,’ said Julian. ‘He must know that even when the others at ANTIDOTE learn the truth about Sarah, they’ll be loath to make it public.’

‘But what did Marcus Pardela hope to achieve?’ asked Nosh. ‘Sarah could let him know when ANTIDOTE were organizing protest marches against them and such like, but that was it.’

‘No, it’s more than that,’ I said slowly. ‘ANTIDOTE march against other companies, not just Shelby’s. If Sarah was just running things for Marcus Pardela then he could make sure they attacked his rivals more often than they did his company.’

‘And he could also get an instant list of all those people against his company,’ Julian added. ‘A list of ANTIDOTE supporters.’

We all fell silent, both impressed and appalled at the deviousness of Pardela’s antics. Nosh pointed to the screen. ‘When Sarah says that she doesn’t think the person who’s on to her “knows anything else” – what does she mean? What else is there to know?’

‘That’s a good question,’ I considered.

‘Isn’t that irrelevant?’ said Halle. ‘Surely what we need to think about now is how to use this information.’

Silence.

‘It’s not enough.’ Julian said at last. ‘It’s not enough
to
force Pardela’s hand. We need something more.’

‘We don’t have anything else.’ Halle shook her head.

‘We have all the files that contain my key words. There may be something in them?’ I suggested.

‘Can you print out all the information on it?’ Julian asked.

‘Yeah, but it’ll run to hundreds of pages,’ I said.

‘We’ll split all the pages between the four of us. That’ll make the task a bit easier,’ said Julian. ‘We can each read through the pages and see if we can find anything we can use.’

I turned back to the screen and typed in the command to send all the files copied across that day to the printer.

‘This is going to take some time,’ I said.

‘We’re on to the mole but, thanks to Sarah’s mail message, Marcus Pardela is also on to us. Each of us will have to go through our share of the printed-out pages, tonight.’

Nosh and I exchanged a glance. Nosh was right. It did feel like Julian was trying to take over. I suppose he thought that because he was the oldest he should be in charge. But I didn’t say anything. Thanks to him we now knew who the mole was.

‘Elliot, can you make me a copy of your e-mail capture software?’ Julian asked suddenly.

‘Surely we don’t need to read Rohan’s mail messages,’ I said. ‘We know Sarah’s the mole.’

‘I don’t want to load the program onto Rohan’s machine. I had someone else’s PC in mind.’

‘Whose?’ I asked.

‘I won’t say – in case I don’t manage it,’ Julian said mysteriously. ‘But if I do pull it off, we’ll have all the info we’ll ever need to stop Pardela in his tracks.’

There was no mistaking the gleam of satisfaction on Julian’s face at the thought of it.

‘Now that we know who the mole is, do I have to go back to ANTIDOTE tomorrow?’ Halle asked.

‘I don’t see why,’ I said. ‘Or maybe it would be better if you did go for a couple of days, in case Sarah gets suspicious.’

‘At least I can have a lie-in. They don’t need me until two o’clock tomorrow afternoon,’ Halle said.

As I saved all the acquired data onto Mum’s hard disk and deleted it off Halle’s memory stick so that it could be re-used, Julian asked, ‘Has anyone got any other suggestions?’

‘There’s still my mum’s phone,’ I admitted. ‘I’m sure there’s something on that. Something more than just the identity of the ANTIDOTE mole. But I haven’t managed to crack the password yet.’

‘But are you certain it’s got something on it that we can use?’ asked Julian.

I shook my head.

‘D’you think you’ll be able to crack the password – and soon?’ asked Julian.

All eyes were on me. I took a deep breath. ‘By tomorrow at the latest,’ I said.

And what’s more I would do it, too. I had to. I just had to.

MY EYES WERE
full of sand and poised precariously on two matchsticks. My whole head ached. Even my eyebrows were hurting. It was half past four in the morning and I hadn’t had one wink of sleep yet. Nosh had checked through the listings I’d given him and fallen asleep over an hour ago. I’d finished checking my print-outs about an hour ago and I never wanted to go through that again. I would’ve had more fun watching my fingernails grow.

Since then, I’d been trying to work out Mum’s password. And I have to admit, I was getting desperate. Maybe the eighteen letters in the password were the first eighteen letters of the alphabet? No. The last eighteen letters of the alphabet. Nope.

Without warning the bedroom door opened. It was Nosh’s dad. It was hard to say which one of us was more surprised.

‘Elliot? What on earth are you doing? You should’ve been asleep hours ago.’

‘I …I …’

‘Come on. Put down your toy. It’ll still be there when you wake up,’ said Nosh’s dad. ‘Besides, you won’t be too cute if you don’t get your beauty sleep, now will you?’

My face burning, I stretched up to switch off my bedside lamp, before scooting under the duvet.

‘Good night, Elliot.’

‘Good night.’

But the moment the light was off and the door closed, I sat bolt upright.

Eureka! I had it!

Switching on the bedside light again, I stared down at the screen telling myself that it couldn’t be that simple – could it? My fingers started to tremble as I tried yet another password:

ELLIOT YOU’RE CUTE

The screen cleared momentarily, then a load of new options appeared.
I was in
!

‘Yaahoo!’ I shouted. I quickly bit my lip as I remembered what time it was.

‘Whasamata?’ Nosh asked sleepily.

‘Nosh, wake up. I did it!’ I told him, waving the phone above my head.

He was instantly awake.

‘You didn’t.’ Nosh was impressed. ‘What was the password, then?’

‘That doesn’t matter,’ I dismissed. I certainly wasn’t
going
to tell him that! ‘The point is, we’re in.’

‘So what’s on it?’

I sat down at the edge of my bed and started going through the new stuff that had now appeared. Nosh came and sat beside me. There was a file called SHELBY stored in VAULT. The weird thing was that even though the file had only been recently copied, the file itself was two years old. Its creation date was two years ago. But as the name had caught my attention, I opened that one first.

But when I looked at the file contents, I could’ve howled. It was gobbledy-gook! Pure and utter gibberish!

‘What’s all that, then?’ Nosh asked.

‘The file has been computer coded,’ I replied. ‘And there’s no way I can decrypt the file without the original program.’

‘Is that an App on the phone too?’ Nosh asked.

I checked but there was no file that even came close to doing that. I went back into the coded SHELBY file and scrolled down it, hoping against hope that the whole thing wouldn’t be encrypted. It was. I checked every other file in VAULT. Mum had a number of what she called ‘case files’ which were like something out of Sherlock Holmes. Like when such and such a person had entered a restaurant, or where another person kept their safe. They made Mum seem more like a private investigator than a secretary, but then I knew she wasn’t
a
secretary. She’d told me so herself. I went through every other file, but there was nothing else about Shelby’s. Nosh could see how disappointed I was. The only other interesting file was a really short one. It just had a single name in it – Paul S. C. Darmare, with no comments or anything. But I could see that the file had been created on the phone just fifteen seconds after the SHELBY file had been copied onto it – so were they connected somehow?

‘The SHELBY file and the Paul S. C. Darmare file were copied onto the phone on the same day that Mum … that Uncle Robert was arrested,’ I said. ‘Why would she want to download a file that’s over two years old?’ I stared at the hieroglyphics on the screen, willing them to change into English before my eyes.

‘Come on, Elliot. We’re both dog-tired. Let’s get some sleep and maybe we’ll be able to do more in the morning.’

I was about to argue but my body made the decision for me. I was shattered.

‘OK!’ I sighed.

And we each got into our beds. Within seconds I was out.

Halle scrutinized the SHELBY file on Mum’s phone. Her lips drooped with frustration. She glared at Nosh and me as if we were doing it deliberately.

‘Is that it, then?’

I sighed. ‘I’m afraid so.’

‘Who’s Paul S. C. Darmare?’ Halle asked.

‘No idea.’

‘Does he work for Shelby’s, then?’

‘Haven’t a clue,’ I replied.

‘That’s a fat lot of use,’ Halle said with disgust.

‘Just because … I …’ My voice drifted to a stop.

‘What’s the matter?’ asked Nosh.

‘Hang on. We’re not beaten yet. There are all kinds of coding and decoding programs on the Internet. Why don’t I try one of those?’ I said.

‘Will that work?’ Halle said, surprised.

‘We won’t know until we try it,’ I said.

‘What’re we waiting for?’ Halle grinned. ‘I’ve got a good feeling about this.’

Minutes later, we were in front of Mum’s PC and had logged on to the Internet. I did a search for any programs which encrypted and decrypted data files. A screenful of file names and locations appeared. As I printed off the list, I had another brainwave.

‘I’m really on form this morning! I must go without sleep more often,’ I grinned. ‘I’ve had an idea. Why don’t we check out the worldwide web page for Shelby’s?’

‘Check out the what?’ Nosh asked.

‘Most large companies have a website now. They give company details, advertise their services, show some of their most important staff – all that sort of stuff,’ I explained. ‘We might find Paul Darmare mentioned.’

‘Don’t forget his middle initials,’ said Halle.

I started searching for a Shelby’s page. More good luck was coming my way. Shelby and Pardela Pharmaceuticals were on the Internet. I scanned the screen but there was no mention of a Paul Darmare.

‘I’ll try calling up more information about Marcus Pardela,’ I said.

Using the mouse to click on Pardela’s name, we waited impatiently as, a few seconds later, three pages were downloaded. The moment I clicked on the first page, a video of Marcus Pardela’s smiling face started chatting on about how wonderful his company was. How they cared about people and the environment as any responsible company would. I almost puked! Pressing the mute button on my keyboard to shut him up, I then turned to the information all around the box that had his video image in it. It was like reading his CV. It talked about his qualifications, the schools he’d been to, and gave a lot of boring detail about how he and Joshua Shelby first started up the company almost twenty-five years before. At the end of the third page were some of his family details.

‘He’s got his priorities right,’ Halle said with disgust. ‘He talks about his family last.’

Nosh was the one who spotted it first.

‘Look at that! he said, quietly.

There, at the bottom of the screen, was a sentence that said:

‘Julian …’ Nosh said, stunned.

‘My Julian’s surname is Dulles, you trouble-stirring little weasel.’ Halle glared at Nosh.

‘Come off it, Nosh! It can’t be the same guy,’ I scoffed.

‘Click on their names. Let’s see what comes up,’ said Nosh.