After a few minutes of contemplation, Molly came to a reluctant conclusion. There was no safe way she could get directly into Auroch or its subsidiaries. The barriers were too formidable. But every wall has a finite height and width. The Chinese had learned that with the Great Wall. So had the builders of the Maginot Line. If she couldn’t go through the cyber wall she could go over or around it.
The lavender eyes blinking behind the round lenses were the only outward sign of her inner excitement. She scrolled down the website. Her cursor came to rest on the section entitled ‘Corporate Responsibility.’ She reread the puff piece that had caught her eye on the first pass. Probably written by a committee of company public relations hacks, it was a surprising candid admission that Auroch could have been less than a good corporate citizen.
Without going into detail the piece described the damage some Auroch operations had caused. To demonstrate that the company had changed its ways, the article contained a list of two dozen environmental and green energy organizations that Auroch now sponsored. The benevolent attitude was at odds with the company’s history. The same corporation that destroyed the Oregon environmental non-profit in a few days’ time, was like a born-again sinner preaching Salvation.
She followed the links and read everything available about each non-profit. It was grinding, time-consuming work. She had to replenish her snacks a couple of times. Her computer-like memory stored every pertinent fact about each organization. One name blazed in her mind like a neon sign. She went back to the link for Fusion Technologies Research. FUTR for short.
Molly had noticed on the first run-through that FUTR had its headquarters at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She was about to pop a tortilla chip into her mouth but she stopped short. MIT was in Cambridge. The dude who’d attacked her and scared off Wheeling had been in Cambridge only a week before. Funny coincidence.
She dug into the FUTR website. The group had been created by some of the world’s leading scientists in the field of fusion power, in which atoms are joined together to produce heat that drives a turbine to produce energy. FUTR’s goal was to lay the groundwork for a clean energy source that would be cheap and plentiful. The organization coordinated a number of research labs experimenting with ways to harness the atomic reaction that powers the sun and the stars.
An MIT plasma physicist named Dr. Moncrieff Gardner was the chairman of FUTR. The photo of Dr. Gardner showed a middle-aged man with short pepper-and-salt hair, a friendly smile and intense blue eyes that looked as if they could see through solid objects. Molly got dizzy from reading his scientific accomplishments.
Under the photo was a message from Dr. Gardner reminding readers of FUTR’s annual conference at MIT. The conference was in a few days. The entire FUTR scientific board would attend. An announcement of global importance would be made at the conference, whose subject was: The FUTR of Energy. Dr. Gardner referred back to his first column, made at FUTR’s founding two years ago.
Molly clicked on the Archives. Summaries appeared of all Gardner’s past messages. His first outlined the non-profit’s goals, and said there hadn’t been such a concentration of intellectual power since the Manhattan Project scientific team developed the atomic bomb in a mere twenty-seven months. Gardner hoped this group accomplished its far more peaceful goal in twenty-four months.
She went back to a recent column under the title:
Auroch CEO: An Inspiration
Her frown deepened as she read the message that described in glowing terms how Viktor Salazar was sponsoring FUTR even though fossil fuel alternatives would damage his company. Gardner had enclosed the copy of a ‘thank you’ letter he wrote after a telephone conversation with Salazar. The letter said in part that, “the selfless example of Auroch would encourage other companies to come forward for the good of mankind.”
Molly looked up Gardner’s email and phone number on the website. With that information, it was a simple matter for her to hack into Gardner’s business and personal files and follow them to Salazar. The cyber watchdogs who defended Auroch would not expect an indirect assault. Just in case, she built a firewall to prevent her probe from being traced back to her.
Within minutes she had Salazar’s list of calls made from a mobile phone. There were hundreds. It would take days to analyze all the numbers. Instead, she used his phone to connect to his computer. File after file popped onto her screen. She clapped her hands like an excited child.
She skipped over the files identified by numbers and concentrated on a few labeled with corporate names. None had appeared on the Auroch website. She guessed that Salazar didn’t want it known that Auroch had links to these off-the-books outfits. She hesitated, wondering if these files had the same level of protection guarding the corporate portals. Salazar was careful, but from what she knew of the man, he was arrogant as well. He’d never dream that anyone could get this close to him.
She hoped.
She decided to take the chance. She rubbed her palms together in anticipation only to pull back. First, she’d reward herself in advance with a snack.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
Abby had no illusions about the challenge involved in rescuing Kalliste. The operation was somewhere between foolhardy and insane. If anyone could pull off a mission this dangerous, it would be Hawkins and Calvin. But they would need all the help she could provide.
While they were off on their separate errands, Abby had been alone in the galley of the boat. She sat hunched over a table that was covered with the notes and diagrams she had sketched out suggesting ways to penetrate the castle’s ramparts. She had blocked out the creaks and burbles the boat made as water nibbled at its hull, and was so intent on her work she didn’t hear the footfalls on deck.0
Sensing she was no longer alone, she turned and saw Hawkins standing at the bottom of the companionway.
“How long have you been there?” she said.
“Less than a minute. I didn’t want to startle you.”
“Sorry. I was totally engrossed.”
“So I see.” Hawkins pointed at the 3-D diagram of the castle slowly spinning on the computer screen. “That looks like Castillo de Huernos.”
“It’s a close rendition. I pulled the schematic together using the video you shot on your recon and combined it with material from the internet.”
He sat next to her and gazed at the diagram. “If attacking armies had this program back in the Middle Ages, not a castle in the land would be left standing.”
“Having a detailed picture of potential weak points would definitely have given the assaulting army an edge. They’d still have been stuck with the traditional siege tools. Fire, battering rams, catapults and starving to submission.”
“After you left, I did some research on Minoan construction. Their engineers were far ahead of their time when it came to urban hydraulics.”
“Moving water in and out of cities?”
“I’m talking about cities, palaces and villages. Thousands of years ago their plumbing was more advanced than what you’d find in Europe in the late 19th century. They had indoor bathrooms and bathtubs. Their water systems had aqueducts, cisterns, filtering systems, ways to collect rainwater, and terracotta pipes. They knew about gravity, flow and pipe pressure. They brought water in from rivers and springs, built distribution and disposal systems that worked quite well.”