A Philosophical Investigation: A Novel (15 page)

Chung smiled coolly and then stroked a keypad on the table.

‘I’ll try to keep it simple.’

‘Please.’

‘First of all, this was an outside job. When you log onto the system the main frame underneath this table records the transaction with a number and identifies which terminal was being used. Of course there are hundreds of such transactions every day, from any one of thirty-nine terminals in this building and the other four Lombroso facilities in Birmingham, Manchester, Newcastle and Glasgow.’ He pointed at the hologram in front of them. ‘This is one of today’s transactions: number 280213 - that’s the date; then the transaction number - 718393422; TRINITY - that’s yesterday’s password; and lastly 09 — that’s the terminal number. This one, as a matter of fact.

‘Now this was the laborious part: I programmed the computer to check back over all the system’s transactions for the last twelve months, to see if there were any made from an unspecified terminal. That is a terminal without an identifying number, and therefore outside any one of the five institute facilities. And what do you know? I found one, dated 221112.’

Jake nodded. ‘So you’re saying someone broke into the system on November 22nd last year.’

‘That’s right. Now this system is part of the ECDN, the European Community Data Network. It means that only someone with access to the ECDN could have broken into Lombroso. In other words, he could only have done it from any one of a dozen systems in the public sector. There’s no other way of doing it. ECDN is a private leased telecommunications line to which the public has no access.’

‘Then our suspect is quite probably a public sector employee.’

Chung nodded. ‘But here’s where he starts to get clever. The very fact that he was using a terminal outside the institute facilities was enough to trigger the system’s back-up security device. This is designed to stop the unauthorised person from going any further.’

‘Unauthorised?’ Jake frowned. ‘Didn’t he have an operator code and the day’s password?’

Chung pressed another key on the flat glass of the table, to reveal a list of transaction numbers. Jake could see one that was short of a couple of digits.

‘Yes, he did. The password he used was CHANDLER. But don’t ask me how he got it, I don’t know. Not yet anyway. No, he was unauthorised simply by virtue of his terminal lacking an identifying number on the system.’

Jake nodded. ‘Okay.’

‘The security device was a holographic of a three-headed dog.’

‘Cerberus,’ said Jake.

‘You know the program?’

‘No, but I know my classical literature.’

‘Yeah, well so did our burglar. That’s the trouble with these computer security people. They assume everyone is as ignorant as they are.’

‘Does that go for Doctor St Pierre as well?’

‘It goes especially for Doctor St Pierre,’ said Chung. ‘We had a lot of his kind in Hong Kong. Bloody stiffneck. Can only think down a straight line.’

‘I guess I’m to take it that our burglar managed to evade Cerberus, right?’

‘Evade?’ He grinned happily and quickly typed out a series of instructions.

The numbers disappeared from the air to be replaced by a lifesize graphic of a sleeping three-headed dog. From the look of the brute, Jake was glad it was asleep, hologram or not.

‘He drugged it,’ said Chung.

‘Drugged a computer-generated dog?’ Jake said incredulously. ‘How does one do that?’

‘Take too long to explain, but it’s a technique which goes under the generic name of Trojan Horse. There are lots of different sorts, but you get the general idea.’

‘Beware of Greeks bearing gifts, huh? Clever.’

Chung shook his head. ‘The really clever bit is still to come. You remember you questioned all the psychiatric counsellors? You asked if they might remember the codenames of some of the men who tested VMN-negative and who might have exhibited a greater amount of hostility to the program than others?’

‘Yes. There was a list. But it was just codenames. St Pierre said that the computer’s first decretal was to protect the confidentiality of their identities. He was adamant that the computer would not release their names and addresses.’

‘Even though the burglar managed to get it to do just that.’

Jake lit a cigarette. It was too early in the morning for anyone to concern themselves with a no-smoking ban. ‘I was going to get you to try and do the same thing when you’d finished tracking the breach,’ she said.

‘Then I’m already ahead of you,’ he said and then added, ‘Mind where you’re blowing that smoke. It interferes with the hologram.’

Jake held the cigarette behind her at arm’s length.

‘There is a separate list of all the codenames kept on another system which is not subject to Lombroso’s first decretal. Unfortunately it’s the codenames, and nothing else. Anyway, what I did was to take that list and use it to ask Lombroso a question.’

‘And that was?’

‘Well, you see, I kept thinking to myself, suppose it was my name in the Lombroso system files. Would I trust the system’s security? No way. So I’d want to try and erase my name and address pretty damn smartish. All I did was to confirm each name on my list of codenames as belonging to the primary file, in the suspicion that our man has already erased his identity.’

‘All right,’ Jake said expectantly.

‘One by one, that’s exactly what I did. And finally I found what I was looking for. Or didn’t find it, if you see what I mean. I typed in a codename which I knew for certain had been issued, and asked for a confirmation, only to be told that as far as the Lombroso system was concerned, no such codename existed.’ He paused for a moment, and then shrugged apologetically. ‘That’s when it happened.’

‘When what happened?’

‘Fucking logic bomb. Bastard left a booby trap which I triggered when I tried to confirm his codename.’

Jake frowned. ‘What the hell’s a logic bomb?’

‘It’s a fuck of a lot of money, that’s what it is. You see, it’s a program, with a delayed effect.’ He bit his lip. ‘With a delayed destructive effect.’

‘Oh Christ,’ breathed Jake. ‘You’re not telling me that this logic bomb, or whatever you call it, has trashed the whole system?’

‘Not exactly, no. I tried all my own special software. But by the time I found the right one and stopped the program replicating itself, one particular area of the system was badly damaged.’

‘Which particular area of the system?’

‘The VMN database.’

‘Shit.’

‘Not the whole thing. Just a percentage.’

‘How big a percentage?’

Chung shrugged. ‘Hard to say exactly. Maybe 30 to 40 per cent.’

‘What am I going to tell Gleitmann?’

‘It was bound to go off sooner or later,’ said Chung, with an uncomfortable sort of laugh. ‘The logic bomb was just sitting there, in the root memory, waiting for the trigger. Had it been anyone else who tripped it, the bomb would have trashed the whole disk. Lucky for them that I had the right software with me: a program I wrote myself, as a matter of fact. Sort of a vaccine if you like. It works against about 200 different types of virus.’ He nodded with some satisfaction. ‘Too right, lady. But for me the whole Lombroso Program would be forensic history. Think about that for a minute.’

‘I’ll do my best.’

‘Look on the bright side,’ he instructed her. ‘You know the date on which our burglar broke into the system. You know he must work in the public sector. You know he’s a smart boy where computers are concerned: maybe even got a record for other unauthorised system entries. You got his codename. You even got a counsellor who remembers him.’

‘Yes, just what was that codename?’

Chung consulted a sheet of paper. ‘Wittgenstein,’ he said. ‘Ludwig Wittgen-stein.’ He pronounced the surname with the accent on the second syllable and shook his head, grimacing. ‘If they gave me a codename like that I wouldn’t be surprised if I wanted to kill a few people myself.’

Jake wondered if Chung could be anti-Semitic and looked forward to the possibility of reminding him that she herself was Jewish. Not that it meant all that much to her, but she felt it might be fun to accuse him of racism.

‘And what’s wrong with it?’ she asked.

Chung looked away, trying to hide his grin. He seemed about to say one thing but then apparently changed his mind, laughed and said another: ‘Bit of a bloody mouthful, that’s all.’

So that was it, she thought. He had never heard of Ludwig Wittgenstein. He was embarrassed at his own ignorance. Not that she knew much about him herself, beyond a few basic items of biographical information of the kind that counts as good general knowledge. But she had a feeling that before this case was ended she was going to know a great deal more.

Names have power. The name of Jehovah, considered too sacred even to utter. Or Macbeth, never mentioned by superstitious, luvvy-duvvy theatre folk. At the name of Jesus,
every
knee shall bow. The name of the slough was Despond. Keats’s name was writ in water.

Names have numerological significance, too. Readers of Tolstoy’s War and Peace will recall that Pierre Bezukhov, under the influence of his brother Freemasons, manages to turn the name of
l’empereur
Napoleon into numbers, the sum of which equals 666. The name of the Beast, or the number of his name. Oh! breathe not his name, let it sleep in the shade where cold and unhonour’d his relics are laid.

In truth, this is more of a tract than a story, more of a journal than a piece of prose. I leave this manuscript, I do not know for whom; I no longer know what it is about:
stat rosa pristina nomme, nomina nuda tenemus.

WHEN JAKE HAD finished making her report to the Assistant Police Commissioner, Gilmour chewed his finger absently for a few seconds before uttering a profound sigh.

‘Does Professor Gleitmann know about this yet?’ he said wearily.

‘Yes, sir.’

Gilmour’s bushy eyebrows moved in to ask a silent question.

‘He wasn’t very pleased, sir,’ said Jake.

‘I can imagine. But you’re satisfied that it wasn’t Sergeant Chung’s fault, this logic bomb?’

‘Wholly satisfied, sir. Chung’s boss from the Computer Crime Unit has been over to the Institute to investigate exactly what happened. He has already confirmed Sergeant Chung’s account.’

‘Good. The last thing we want is the Home Office trying to post the blame for this one through our door.’

Gilmour leaned back in his chair and swivelled around to stare out of the window of his New Scotland Yard office. They were only a kilometre away from the Tate Gallery, the site of the last Lombroso murder. Somewhere overhead could be heard the sound of a police helicopter as it constantly patrolled the rooftops around the Home Office and the Houses of Parliament, looking out for terrorists or lone crackpots. Jake knew that aboard it were cameras powerful enough to have photographed the comb in her hair and quite possibly the string on her tampon, not to mention the sophisticated eavesdropping equipment the helicopter carried. The temptation to use this equipment was obvious and sometimes the Police Airborne Surveillance teams went too far. The newspapers were still full of the political scandal that had been the result of one airborne team having recorded the compromising conversation of two homosexual Members of Parliament as they sat eating their sandwiches in Parliament Square.