Charles leaned closer to the camera.
“I do not know how the evidence against me was planted. Nor do I know the identity of the person who gave the order for my reputation to be destroyed, or the person who paid for this foul and cowardly act. That is something that I hope you will be able to discover. However, I am confident that this devilish deed was perpetrated by an organisation so secret that almost nobody knows of their existence and yet they have contracts with Governments throughout the world. They are a group of people that take no sides, offer no favours, show no conscience, and lack any moral compass; they simply work for the highest bidder. They must be stopped.”
Charles’s face filled the small screen.
“They call themselves ‘The Wrecking Crew’.”
THREE
The Wrecking Crew operated from an anonymous building in the center of an uninteresting field in a quiet corner of the British countryside. In a large room at the rear of the building, the man known as ‘The Fixer’ sat at the head of the conference table. He was impatiently tapping his pen as he read a report about the death of Charles Rathbone. Casually leaning against the wall behind and slightly towards each side of The Fixer stood two enormous men who acted as his bodyguards and enforcers; they were identical twins. With typically ironic humor, The Fixer called them ‘Kitten’ and ‘Bunny’ — although nobody else would dare to, particularly if they wished to avoid a slow and painful death.
Born in the former USSR and trained as Olympic wrestlers, both men were over six and a half feet tall and as wide as a door. They both wore identical dark suits that stretched ominously over their distended muscles. Their shaven heads emphasized their bulging foreheads and eyebrows, and added additional darkness to the cold dead eyes that were carefully watching the other occupants of the room. There were five other people around the table. They were the key team members of the Wrecking Crew. The Fixer, Kitten, and Bunny, were all voluntary members, but the other five were more like draftees; unwillingly called into action because of some past indiscretion.
To the right of The Fixer sat Becka. Petite at five-foot tall, and just twenty-seven years old — but with her bright orange hair, facial piercings, and tattoos on her arms and hands — she looked much younger. Becka was the Wrecking Crews’ computer hacker. A gifted mathematician and a graduate in computer science, Becka was steadily building a successful career with a top internet security firm when her rebellious nature and interest in accessing government secrets brought her to the attention of the authorities.
After a month in the remand center, Becka was staring at the wall and contemplating the depressing prospect of a long jail term without any recreational drugs, or computer access to break the boredom, when a handsome and extremely well dressed woman walked into her cell. With the prison guards standing at a respectful distance, the nameless woman made Becka an offer that was simply too good to refuse. The woman said that if Becka agreed to work for the Wrecking Crew, doing the very things that had just put her in jail, they would pay her an obscene salary, and the charges would simply get lost in the back of a filing cabinet.
Now five years later, aided by access to substantial resources, the latest computer equipment, a backdoor pass into the U.S. National Security Agency and the British Government’s Intelligence Agency, GCHQ, Becka had become one of the best hackers on the planet.
Sitting to Becka’s right was Norris Halpin founder and Chief Executive of ‘Dime’, one of the largest data mining and banking companies in the world. Halpin was an unremarkable man to look at. At around fifty years old, he was overweight, and balding, with thick eyeglasses and the pale complexion of someone who had spent too much time looking at computer screens — but he was also a visionary. Towards the end of the 1990’s, as the internet started to engage with every aspect of our lives, Norris Halpin was one of the first businessmen to recognize that our data history could have a value.
One day as he was stuffing yet another handful of pointless, unwanted, and irrelevant junk mail into his garbage can, he had a true ‘Eureka moment’. Although he had a real interest in computing, and money to spend, he had never received any offers or advertising from people who sold computer equipment. On the other hand, his mother had been sent several flyers by a local computer store, even though she was ninety-two years old, and frequently confused the television remote control with the telephone. Halpin suddenly realized that companies would be happy to pay for accurate marketing information, which was based on people’s actual interests and activities.
With the help of his roommate Felix, an unemployed university dropout, he wrote a rudimentary computer worm containing a simple algorithm that returned basic contact details for people showing an interest in computers. Armed with a 3.5-inch floppy disc of unsorted data, he approached the marketing manager of a large computer retailer. Although he clearly recognized the benefits of such targeted data, initially the marketing manager was resistant to this new idea, but in the end, Norris Halpin successfully closed the sale with the line, ‘Or if you prefer, I could sell it to your competitors?’
Even though his first sale earned only a few pounds, Halpin was convinced that he had hit on a sure-fire winner. The next morning he withdrew his savings, sold his collection of vinyl records, quit his job, and in partnership with Felix, founded DataMine. Five years later, with the name changed to the snappier ‘Dime’, the company’s turnover exceeded $1 million for the first time. To celebrate, Norris and Felix threw a party at a top Mayfair hotel. Inevitably, the festivity soon degenerated into a monumental three-day bender of booze, drugs, and prostitutes. On the fourth day, whilst inspecting the wreckage with the hotel manager, Halpin discovered his business partner slumped beneath the grand piano. Felix had died from a massive overdose of heroin; his body had lain unnoticed for two days, while the party raged on.
Norris Halpin was sitting in a waiting room at the police station, facing a damaging enquiry and possible jail time for supplying drugs and manslaughter, when a smartly dressed woman stepped into the room, and in a clipped and precise voice, made him an offer that was too good to refuse.
“I have some good news for you, Mr. Halpin. It seems that you were not at this party after all,” she said reading from the pages in a manila file, “it seems that you were playing golf in Scotland at that time. It seems there will be several witnesses to your golfing prowess. It seems that while you were playing golf in Scotland, poor Felix died from a massive heart attack. A tragic death in one so young, don’t you think? So this whole sordid affair can simply disappear, and you can get on with your life.”
Halpin stared at the woman in utter disbelief.
“I don’t understand, I… I… I don’t understand, I can’t even play golf, and I have never been to Scotland.”
The woman gave Halpin a gentle smile, as if she was explaining something to a child. She waved the manila file she was holding.
“Of course you were in Scotland, Mr. Halpin. It’s all here in this file, although there isn’t actually any mention of your prowess as a sportsman. Nevertheless, any minute now the charges will be dropped and you will be free to leave.”
Halpin looked at the woman with renewed interest.
“Go on,” he said cautiously, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“And in return for this little act of kindness, your company will undertake to conduct extensive covert data mining on behalf of a certain charitable organisation,” the woman said. “This will prove to be a convenient arrangement because, after tomorrow’s reading of Felix’s last will and testament, that charitable organisation will own a 51 % share of Dime.”