The Darkfall Switch (21 page)

‘What’s that?’ Foster asked.

Ballantyne cleared his throat. ‘Within the past few hours,’ he said, ‘Powerplant Dynamics have issued a software patch to their clients in the
UK. And we believe it’s gone out worldwide.’

‘They told us they were going to do that,’ Foster said, ‘when we met them in Denver.’

‘Indeed,’ Ballantyne replied.

Forsyth now spoke for the first time. ‘We’d like you to have a look at it, if you would, Foster,’ he said. ‘As soon as you can.’

‘That’ll be easy,’ Foster said. ‘I’ve already spoken to my contact at Queensborough and he said he’d tell me when he receives the patch. He wants me to look at it too.’

‘Good man!’ Forsyth said.

Foster looked at Margaret Andrews. He had never worked out her part in this whole saga. Now she had sat through their discussion, looking from one to another, saying nothing. Her expression showed concern. Or was it something else?

Soon afterwards, the meeting ended. They shook hands and went their separate ways.

Bill Kirkland leant over Foster’s shoulder and looked at the screen. Foster had found a message waiting for him when he returned to his houseboat, telling him that the software patch had arrived from Denver. He had rushed up to Queensborough and was now sitting at the control desk of the power station’s simulator.

‘I’ve reloaded the original software,’ Kirkland said. ‘After your last visit we discovered that the system in the simulator was different from the ones on the plant.’

Foster nodded. ‘It was minus the Darkfall routine. That self-erases when it’s invoked.’

‘Yes. So we downloaded the plant software into this.’ He tapped the disk.

‘Good,’ Foster said. ‘So what we’ve got here is exactly what was here before I invoked the Darkfall Switch?’

‘As far as I can tell, yes.’

‘OK. And you’ve got the new patch?’

‘Here.’ Kirkland handed him a shining silver disk.

Foster opened the drive, dropped the disk into it and pressed lightly on the drawer. It closed softly and after a few seconds a message appeared, saying that new software was about to be installed. After a further pause, another message appeared saying the installation was
ready and asking for confirmation to proceed. Foster clicked on the screen’s
YES
button and for an instant the screen went blank.

‘Of course,’ Kirkland said, while they waited, ‘on the real plant we’d only do that during a shutdown. With the plant down and idle.’

Then a new message appeared on the screen:

Once again, Foster clicked on
YES
.

The display switched to the command screen. Foster glanced at Kirkland and asked, ‘Shall I start it up?’ He was ready to initiate a simulated start-up of the generating unit, using the modified software.

Kirkland nodded his assent.

Under Foster’s control, the simulator began the process of starting up. In reality, on the real plant outside their window, all sorts of actions would have occurred as the start-up proceeded; valves would have opened and closed, pumps would have started and stopped. Here, all these actions were replicated in software.

But it wasn’t quite happening in real time. Foster had selected the option for making the start-up procedure run faster than it would have in real life. In reality, the huge machines in the plant outside their office would have needed to be gently warmed up to prevent the creation of damaging thermal stresses. The real start-up would have taken hours. Here, for the purposes of training, these delays could be eliminated.

Nevertheless, it was several minutes before the simulated plant was up and running, generating an imaginary few hundred megawatts of power. When it was complete, Kirkland took over from Foster at the desk and tried initiating several actions that would be common in real life.

‘It all seems OK,’ he confirmed after a while.

‘Good!’ Foster said. ‘Now let’s try to crash it.’

While Kirkland tapped at his keyboard, carefully scrutinizing the new displays that appeared at each click, Foster plugged his laptop into a port on the back of the control desk, slipped Matthews’ disk into the drive and set about following the steps Luke Proctor had taken at the outset of this affair and brought down the plant.

Now, nothing happened.

‘That’s OK,’ Foster said at the end of his work. ‘They do seem to have
fixed it.’

Kirkland gave an annoyed snort. ‘I could have done that myself,’ he said, staring at his own screen.

‘What’s that?’

‘I’ve been looking at the new software,’ Kirkland said, pointing at the screen. ‘It’s gone.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Gone!’ Kirkland said. ‘Look, here’s where the Darkfall Switch used to be. But now it’s gone.’

Foster peered at the screen before breathing, ‘The crafty sods.’

Then he looked up and asked, ‘If I hadn’t been around, what would you have done, Bill? When the disk with the patch landed on your desk?’

Kirkland found a single sheet of paper lying on the console and said, ‘This is the letter that came with the disk, Dan.’ Foster read it carefully. It said: ‘
Urgent Security Notification. A potentially dangerous security issue has been identified, and users of the Generation 300 system are advised to install the enclosed software update to their systems as a matter of urgency
.’

Foster shut his eyes briefly. ‘So you’d have done that at the next shutdown.’

‘Yup!’

‘And most plants are two-shifted these days,’ Foster observed. This meant that the power stations operated for two eight-hour periods every 24-hour day, and were shut down overnight.

‘Yes,’ Kirkland confirmed. ‘This arrived yesterday. So almost everybody will have installed the new software by now. In fact, I took a risk in holding back. If anything had happened – and sod’s law says it would have happened then – I would have been hanged, drawn and quartered for not following that instruction.’

‘But you got away with it,’ Foster said.

‘For once, yes.’

But while they were speaking a grim realization had begun to dawn on Foster. As it reached its conclusion, he shook his head in despair.

Even as they spoke, all remaining traces of the Darkfall subroutine were being removed from every affected power station around the world
.

The evidence he had hoped to collect was slipping out of his fingers at this very moment. Even if he acted fast, there was no way of stopping
users around the world from doing what Kirkland had just done.

The evidence was gone.

Foster was awakened from a deep sleep by the insistent ringing of his telephone. He had returned from Queensborough in a sombre mood, dejected that he had lost his battle – and, with it, probably the whole war. He had rung Grant and given him the bad news, then he’d prepared and eaten a light supper and gone to bed. He was feeling dog tired, and had soon fallen into a deep, dreamless sleep, which this annoying sound had now broken.

He growled in irritation and prayed that the caller would soon give up. But he or she didn’t, and the ordeal was ended only when the answering service cut in. He looked at his watch: it was only 6.30 a.m. Some people had no consideration for others, or any sense.

But his sleep had been broken and it was impossible to return to it, so, after a few moments, he climbed out of bed and sat with his elbows on his knees, holding his head in his hands as he tried to marshal his thoughts. It was futile; so after a few minutes he picked up the phone and looked at the display. It simply said ‘Number withheld’. Then he dialled the answering service, only to find that the caller had left no message.

He tossed it back on to the bed and rose. Time for a jog; that should help clear his head. He slipped on his running pants and vest and went out into the cold air. It was still fairly dark, but the sky was lightening to the east and there was enough light to let him enjoy the scenery as he set off.

At the end of the run he picked up
The Times
from his newsagent
before looping back to the boat. He boarded, tossed the newspaper on to the galley table, ground some coffee beans, put them into the percolator and switched it on before stripping off his clothes and going into the shower.

When he emerged he picked up the mobile phone, looked at the display again and cursed; he had missed a call while the shower had been running; again the display gave no indication of the caller’s name or number. He shrugged his shoulders, dressed and poured a coffee to drink while he cooked his breakfast.

He was reading the paper while eating breakfast when the mobile rang again. This time he connected and immediately recognized the caller’s voice: it was Joe Worzniak.

‘Good God!’ he exclaimed. ‘I didn’t expect to hear from you again.’

‘Just cut the crap, Foster,’ Worzniak growled. ‘We need to talk.’

Foster’s eyebrows arched upwards. ‘Go ahead?’

‘No. Face to face. I’m at Heathrow.’ Foster reeled back in shock. Worzniak, here, in Britain? But the American went on, ‘We gotta be fast. Tell me where we can meet, today; somewhere that’s absolutely secure.’

Foster thought feverishly.

‘There’s a café under the bridge at Richmond,’ he explained. ‘You’ll get there in half an hour in a cab.’

‘Richmond?’

Foster smiled. ‘Richmond upon Thames,’ he explained; he wouldn’t really want the American to be taken, expensively and fruitlessly, by a cab-driver to the other Richmond in Yorkshire. Not really. ‘On the river:’ he explained, ‘the Thames. The cab driver’ll know.’

‘OK. Just be there, Foster.’

His mobile rang again a while later. It was turning into a busy day.

This time the caller was Janet. ‘Am I out of favour, Dan?’ she asked.

‘No, why?’

‘We haven’t spoken for days, and I’m missing you.’

‘I’m popular today. Seems everybody wants to talk to me!’

‘What?’

He explained about the call from Worzniak and then asked where she was.

‘I’m on the train to Kingston,’ she replied.

He looked at his watch. ‘Already?’

‘Yes. I couldn’t sleep, Dan,’ she said. ‘Can we meet? Now?’

‘I’ve just told Joe I’ll meet him in under half an hour.’

‘Can’t I come along?’

He thought about it briefly, then said, ‘OK. Where’ve you got to?’

‘Earlsfield. I could’ve called you before I left the flat, but I thought you’d try and talk me out of meeting. I felt that you’d take pity on me if I was already on the way.’

He laughed.

‘All right. Come straight to the boat.’

Earlier, while he had been making his plans to meet Worzniak, he had given some thought to where it would be safe to meet. The American’s reference to needing somehere secure implied that he was at some sort of risk. If so, they would be safest on a boat. On land, any watchers or pursuers would be difficult to identify; on the river it would be harder for anybody to get near them, and far easier for him to spot them if they did manage it.

He loaded the breakfast dishes into the dishwasher and changed into a sweater and jeans. While he dressed he thought about the morning’s events and his plans. He wondered whether to call Grant and tell him what had happened but decided not to – not for the moment, at least.

He found a couple of light sweaters and put them on a seat. One was for Janet: it would be a little on the large size for her, but better than nothing as protection against the autumnal chill of the wind on the river.

When he heard the familiar sound of her footsteps on the gangway he picked up the sweaters, slipped one on and went out to greet her. She flung herself in his arms.

‘I want to be here with you, Dan,’ she said. ‘I’m missing you.’

He desperately wanted to hold her, but there was an urgent need for speed. There were other, far more pressing matters to be dealt with first.

‘Come with me,’ he said gently, passing her the other sweater. ‘Put this on. We’re taking the tender.’

‘The tender?’ she said, holding the garment up and smiling at it before putting it over her shoulders. As he’d known, it was too large for her but it would suffice.

He smiled, but said nothing and grasped her elbow, led her to the stern and stepped into the little boat – a snowy white Bullfrog 11.5 with twin Yamaha outboards. It included an additional fuel tank that he had fitted to provide an extended cruising range.

Janet looked down and slipped off her high-heeled shoes, gathering
them up in her hands before descending the little ladder under his guidance.

‘A boat trip,’ she said. ‘How nice!’

He started the outboards and untied the warps. As they motored out into the mainstream he explained his thought about the comparative safety of a boat.

‘So we’ll just meet him at the café?’ she asked.

‘Yep. Perhaps have a coffee. Then back on board.’

‘On board? You’re bringing him here?’

‘No. On board the tender. I’ll go downstream where we can keep an eye out for anybody who may be following. I’ll work out exactly where to go afterwards.’

She settled back in the stern and looked at the scenery slipping past as they headed down towards Teddington lock. At this hour there was little activity at the lock and they were quickly through, and Foster eased the throttle open as they entered the jurisdiction of the Port of London Authority.

At Richmond he tied up to mooring rings at the promenade and jumped ashore. Then he held out his hand and helped her get up alongside. There were only a few early strollers, dog-walkers and joggers in view and when they took up seats in the café there were just three other customers in the place. He went over to the counter and bought coffee.

While they waited, he asked seriously, ‘Has anything happened?’

She stared out of the window and spent some time gathering her thoughts before replying, ‘No. It’s just that I haven’t seen you for days. Then there’s Tina and Alex. They’re a strange couple – living their separate lives but being together still.’

‘They’ve been like that as long as I’ve known them.’

‘Me too. I suppose it’s a sort of happiness; but it wouldn’t be enough for me, Dan. I’d want more.’ She looked around to see that nobody was within earshot, and then gazed seriously into his eyes before quietly saying, ‘They don’t sleep together, you know. Well, they share the same bed, but that’s all.’

‘Yes, I do know. Alex told me once, back in Hong Kong. We were in a bar and he was in his cups.’

‘Tina says it isn’t anything new for married couples, or unusual. She says that in the past the landed gentry even had separate bedrooms.’

‘So I’ve heard,’ he said, grimacing. ‘But is she happy with the arrangement?’

She frowned. ‘I think so,’ she replied eventually. ‘Yes, in a strange way, I think she is. I suppose that, as far as she was concerned, sex was a messy, unpleasant business that could be dispensed with as soon as possible after they’d got married.’

‘God!’ he exclaimed. A man reading a newspaper nearby looked up, and then returned his attention to the paper.

‘She gets on with her socializing,’ Janet said quietly, ‘and he spends all his time with his model boats.’

‘Doesn’t she think about how he feels?’ he asked. ‘Isn’t she worried that he’ll take up with another woman some day?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve never asked.’

He scowled. ‘I’ve never asked Alex either.’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘that may be all right for them, but it wouldn’t be enough for me.’

‘You mean you’d want sex?’ he asked jokingly.

She gave an annoyed shake of her head. ‘No. It’s not just that. Loving each other, sharing things, being together as much as possible; that’s what I’d want.’

‘You don’t mind being an old man’s darling.’

She shook her head angrily. ‘I’ve never thought that age matters,’ she said. ‘You know that.’

‘I know.’

‘Anyway, the longer I spent away from you, the more I missed you. And suddenly, one night at Tina’s, watching them eating, living their separate lives, I realized that I needed you.’

He shook his head, but further discussion was interrupted by the appearance of Worzniak in the doorway.

The American’s bulk blocked out most of the daylight as he stood at the door and peered into the gloom. He spotted them and came over.

‘I’m normally glad to see people, Joe,’ Foster said, not bothering to stand, ‘but in your case I’ll make an exception.’

‘Ha, ha!’ Worzniak grunted bitterly before heading to the counter. He had worked out that Foster wasn’t about to buy him a drink. It hadn’t been difficult.

When he returned with his drink and sat down, Foster looked at him carefully. Worzniak looked tired and dishevelled: his face was grey, his
eyes bloodshot. His suit and shirt were crumpled and his tie was hanging partly open around his massive neck, low under his chin.

‘You know, Foster,’ he said, ‘you’ve really, really fucked up my life this time.’

‘We’ve been over this before, Joe,’ Foster replied in a bored tone. ‘Whatever mess you’re in, you brought it on yourself, all on your own.’

‘No. It was all goin’ real sweet.’

‘You mean, you were able to kill a couple of people – one just a boy – and all was
sweet
. And you tried to murder us as well: was that
sweet
too?’

The American glowered at him. ‘I told you,’ he said, ‘I don’t know anything about those things. But you? You should have backed off at the beginning.’

Foster shook his head in amazement at that denial before countering the accusation. ‘Come off it, Joe,’ he said. ‘You know and I know that young Luke Proctor’s fate was sealed as soon as you found out about him. I guess, in the sense that we told your people about him, that we were in a way responsible. But that’s no reason to murder him. And then, to suggest that it was our fault – my fault – that’s crazy.’

Worzniak picked up his cup and took a long noisy drink. ‘Let’s move on,’ he started. He’d clearly decided not to counter any more argument.

‘Yes indeed,’ Foster agreed.

‘I’m in a fuckin’ awful mess,’ Worzniak said. His voice was quiet and he kept his eyes fixed firmly on the cup in his hands. ‘They’ve suddenly cut me off. All the things I’d started – they’ve been stopped. And then I saw the light: if I stayed in the States any longer my life wouldn’t have been worth a nickel. Give it time and it won’t be any better here.’

‘How come?’

Worzniak looked around at the other tables. A few more people had entered the café, but it was by no means crowded. All the same, he clearly felt unsafe and said, ‘We can’t talk here. Let’s go somewhere safe.’

‘I’ve brought the tender down,’ Foster said. ‘We can talk there.’

‘Tender? Down?’

Foster decided it would be too complicated to explain about the flow of the Thames downstream from Kingston so he merely said, ‘A boat. It’s outside.’

As they motored away from Richmond half-lock, Foster eased back the throttle. Worzniak, standing beside him, looked interestedly at the passing trees. ‘Jeez,’ he said, his earlier worries momentarily forgotten. ‘This is great!’

‘It is,’ Foster agreed. ‘And it’s as secure as anything. We’ll easily spot anybody who tries to follow us.’

He looked back at Janet and winked. She responded with a smile. Then she pointed at a pub on the bank to their left and said, ‘Isn’t that the London Apprentice?’

‘Yes it is. Know it?’

‘Use to be one of my favourites, when….’

Her voice tailed off, leaving Foster to guess that she had frequented it in her wild, post-marriage days. That would be about right; it was a lively place.

‘It looks very different from down here,’ she commented.

Foster turned to Worzniak, for whom boating was clearly an entirely new experience. But it was time to move on with the work in hand. ‘All right, Joe,’ he started, ‘tell me all about it.’

‘Not now,’ Worzniak said. ‘I’ll tell your people about it when I’ve got cast-iron guarantees for my future.’

Foster shook his head. He was keeping a wary eye on the waters ahead as they went under Kew Bridge. They were now in the full tidal reach of the river and it was just before high water, so they were still going against the weak incoming stream. There was always a risk of hitting driftwood here and he didn’t want to risk any damage to the tender’s propellers.

‘So what’s happened now?’ he asked. ‘Why the change of mind?’

‘It was that kid,’ Worzniak said. ‘When the London thing happened it made everybody jumpy. Then your people – you – tracked it down to the kid. We had to take out the possibility of you finding out about it before we had time to deal with the situation.’