Dekker was one of those for whom dawn brought the breath of the dead, making the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. In a brief moment of wakefulness between two successive nightmares, he thought he had seen the frequency scanner screen display a signal, but it was too quick to fix a position. Suddenly he leapt up and started giving orders.
In Raymond Kayn’s tent, Russell was laying out his boss’s clothes and urging him at least to take his red pill. Reluctantly Kayn agreed then spat it out when Russell wasn’t looking. He felt strangely calm. At last, the whole purpose of his sixty-eight years would be fulfilled.
In a more modest tent, Tommy Eichberg discreetly stuck his finger in his nose, scratched his behind, and walked to the bathroom looking for Brian Hanley. He needed his help to fix a piece they needed for the drill. They had to get through eight feet of wall but if they drilled from the top they could reduce some of the vertical pressure and then remove the stones by hand. If they worked quickly, they could be finished in six hours. Of course, it didn’t help that Hanley was nowhere to be found.
As for Huqan, he checked his watch. Over the past week he had worked out the best place from which to get a good view over the whole site. Now he waited for the soldiers to change shift. Waiting suited him fine. He had waited a lifetime.
74
NEW YORK
Wednesday, 19 July 2006. 11:41 p.m.
7456898123
The computer found the code in exactly two minutes and forty-three seconds. This was fortunate because Albert had been wrong in his calculations about how long it would take the guards to show up. The door at the end of the hall opened almost at the same time as that of the lift.
‘Hold it!’
Two of the guards and a policeman entered the hallway frowning, their guns drawn. They were not too happy about all the excitement. Albert and Orville threw themselves into the lift. They could hear the sound of feet running on the carpet and saw a hand reaching in to try to stop the lift. It missed by a few inches.
The door closed with a scratching noise. Outside they could make out the muffled voices of the guards.
‘How do you open this thing?’ the policeman said.
‘They won’t get far. This lift needs a special key to operate it. Nobody can make it go without it.’
‘Activate the emergency system you told me about.’
‘Yes, sir. Right away. It’ll be like shooting fish in a barrel.’
Orville felt his heart pounding as he turned to Albert.
‘Fuck, they’re going to get us!’
The priest was smiling.
‘What the hell’s the matter with you? Think of something,’ Orville hissed.
‘I already have. When we went into Kayn Tower’s computer system this morning, it was impossible to get to the electronic key in their system that makes the lift doors open.’
‘Fucking impossible,’ agreed Orville, who didn’t like being beaten by anything, but on this occasion had run into the mother of all firewalls.
‘You may be a great spy and you certainly know a few tricks… but you lack the one thing that is essential in a great hacker: lateral thinking,’ Albert said. He crossed his arms behind his head, as if he were relaxing in his living room. ‘When the doors are locked, you use the windows. Or in this case you change the sequence that determines the lift’s position, and the order of the floors. A simple step that wasn’t blocked. Now the Kayn computer thinks that the lift’s on the thirty-ninth floor instead of the thirty-eighth.’
‘So?’ said Orville, slightly annoyed by the priest’s bragging, but also curious.
‘Well, my friend, in this kind of situation all the emergency systems in this city make the lifts go down to the last available floor and then open the door.’
At that very moment, after a brief shudder, the lift started going up. They could hear the shocked guards yelling outside.
‘Up is down and down is up,’ Orville said, clapping his hands in the middle of a cloud of mint disinfectant. ‘You’re a genius.’
75
AL MUDAWWARA DESERT, JORDAN
Thursday, 20 July 2006. 6:43 a.m.
Fowler wasn’t ready to risk Andrea’s life again. Using the satellite phone without any precautions was insane.
It made no sense for someone with his experience to make the same error twice. This would be the third time.
The first had been the previous night. The priest had raised his eyes from his prayer book as the excavation team came out of the cave carrying the half-dead body of Professor Forrester. Andrea came running over to him and told him what had happened. The reporter said they were certain that a gold box lay hidden inside the cave, and Fowler no longer had any doubts. Taking advantage of the general excitement caused by the news, he had called Albert, who explained that he was going to try one last time to get information on the terrorist group and Huqan around midnight in New York, a couple of hours after dawn in Jordan. The call lasted exactly thirteen seconds.
The second one had taken place earlier that morning, when Fowler had jumped the gun and called. That call lasted six seconds. He doubted the scanner had time to work out where the signal came from.
The third call would take place in six and a half minutes’ time.
Albert, for God’s sake, don’t fail me.
76
NEW YORK
Wednesday, 19 July 2006. 11:45 p.m.
‘How do you think they’ll get in?’ Orville asked.
‘I guess they’ll bring a SWAT team and abseil down from the roof, probably shoot out the glass windows and all that shit.’
‘A SWAT team for a couple of unarmed burglars? Don’t you think that’s like using a tank to go after a couple of mice.’
‘Look at it this way, Orville: two strangers have broken into the private offices of a paranoid multimillionaire. You should be happy they’re not going to drop a bomb on us. Now let me concentrate. To be the only one who has access to this floor, Russell must have a very secure computer.’
‘Don’t tell me that after everything we’ve been through to get here you can’t get into his computer!’
‘I didn’t say that. I’m just saying it will take me at least ten more seconds.’
Albert wiped the sweat from his forehead then let his hands fly over the keyboard. Not even the best hacker in the world can get into a computer if it’s not linked to a server. That had been their problem from the beginning. They had tried everything to locate Russell’s computer within the Kayn network. It was impossible because in terms of systems, the computers on this floor didn’t belong to Kayn Tower. To his surprise, Albert found out that not only Russell but also Kayn used computers that were connected to the Internet and each other using 3G cards, two of the hundreds of thousands that were operating in New York City at the time. Without that crucial bit of information, Albert could have spent decades searching the Internet for two invisible computers.
They must pay more than five hundred dollars a day for their broadband usage not to mention the calls, Albert thought. I suppose that’s nothing when you’re worth millions. Especially when you can keep people like us at bay using such a simple trick.