by Robin Cook
Spencer pointed toward one of the windows, and Deborah walked over to it. Spencer followed.
“I want to apologize for last night,” Spencer said. “I hope I wasn’t too much of a bore. I’m afraid I don’t remember too much after we got to my home.”
“You certainly weren’t a bore,” Deborah said with a forced laugh, trying to make light of the situation. “You were very entertaining.”
“I’m not sure that’s a compliment,” Spencer said. “Of course, the worst part from my perspective is the lost opportunity.”
“I’m not sure I follow.”
“You know,” Spencer said lowering his voice even more, “with you and your roommate, Penelope.” He winked suggestively.
“Oh, right!” Deborah said, realizing he was making reference to the ridiculous ménage a trois fantasy. All at once she felt as put-off with Spencer as she’d felt earlier with Paul, but she held her tongue. Instead she said: “Her name is Prudence.”
“Of course,” Spencer said while tapping his forehead with the palm of his hand. “I don’t know why I have so much trouble remembering her name.”
“I don’t know either,” Deborah said. “But thank you for the apology for last night, even though it wasn’t necessary. Now, I better get back to work.” Deborah took a step back to her seat, but Spencer moved into her path blocking her progress.
“I thought we could try again tonight,” he said. “I promise to be more sensible with the wine. How about it?”
Deborah looked up into the man’s blue eyes. She sought for an appropriate response, which was difficult to find given the lack of respect she had developed for him. Considering the disagreement she’d witnessed the day before between Spencer and Paul, she had a sudden desire to say she’d just been asked out by his apparent rival in an attempt to fan intramural discord. Under the circumstances she thought it would be the quintessential putdown. But she held herself back. In view of what she and Joanna were trying to do, making an enemy of the founder was hardly prudent.
“No sense in taking two cars,” Spencer added when Deborah hesitated responding. “We could all meet in the parking lot around five-fifteen.”
“Not tonight, Spencer,” Deborah said in as sweet a voice as she could force herself to assume.
“Tomorrow then?” Spencer suggested.
“Let me get back to you on it,” Deborah said. “Joanna ... I mean Prudence and I need to catch up on our sleep.” Deborah felt a warmth wash over her and knew that she was blushing. It had been her only name slip, but it was a bad one in front of the clinic’s founder.
“Maybe on the weekend,” Spencer suggested, apparently unaware of Deborah’s blunder. “What do you think?”
“That’s a distinct possibility,” Deborah added quickly, trying to sound positive. “Partying for us is far better on a night when we don’t have to get up early the next morning.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Spencer said. “Then we could all sleep in.”
“Sleeping late sounds heavenly,” Deborah agreed generically.
“My direct dial number is triple eight,” Spencer said with another lascivious wink. “I’ll wait to hear from you.”
“I’ll be in touch,” Deborah responded, although she had no intention of actually doing so.
Spencer walked out of the lab. Deborah watched him go, then switching her attention to Mare, noticed the lab technician was still staring at her. Deborah shrugged as if to say there’s no accounting for the management’s behavior. Reclaiming her stool, she checked her watch. Thank goodness there wasn’t long to wait before she’d be meeting up with Joanna, and they could get on with what they were there for.
MAY 10, 2001
10:55 A.M.
AS ELEVEN O’CLOCK
neared, Joanna had considerably more respect for people doing office work. Although it was true she’d been working particularly hard to get the maximum amount done, data entry was more tiring than she’d imagined. The concentration necessary to keep from making a mistake was intense, and doing it day in and day out for three hundred sixty-five days a year was difficult to imagine.
At exactly five minutes before eleven, Joanna stood up and stretched. She smiled at her neighbor in the immediately adjacent cubicle to the south who’d stood up when she heard Joanna’s chair roll back. The woman proved to be rather nosy and had made it a point to look in on Joanna periodically throughout the morning. Her name—Gale Overlook—seemed fitting to Joanna.
Joanna had given a lot of thought to her plan; she knew what she would do first. With the scheduled rendezvous time with Deborah imminent, Joanna grabbed her purse, which contained the brute-force cracking software, her cell phone, and Wingate’s blue card. She headed down the aisle between the cubicles. Her destination was the computer network administrator’s work space. Her hope was to find him in his cubicle and for one simple reason: if he was in his cubicle he couldn’t be in the server room.
Earlier, in the midst of a minor anxiety attack about being caught in the server room, it had dawned on Joanna that probably the only person who ever went in there was Randy Porter. Consequently, if he was in his cubicle, she’d have little to fear.
A wave of relief spread through her as she passed his cubicle. He was at his keyboard. Turning left, she headed over to the main corridor. Deborah was there, at the designated rendezvous. About twenty feet beyond was the door to the hallway leading to the server room with its cardboard NO ADMITTANCE sign.
“I hope your morning was as interesting as mine,” Deborah said as Joanna came up and took a sip from the drinking fountain.
“Mine was about as interesting as watching paint dry,” Joanna said. She looked up and down the hall to make sure no one was paying any attention to them. “Nothing happened, but then again I didn’t want anything to happen.”
“We got asked out to dinner at the Barn twice more,” Deborah said proudly.
“Who asked you out this time?”
“Spencer Wingate for one. And he asked us out, not just me.”
“Did you see him in person?”
“I most certainly did. He came by the lab to apologize for passing out last night and then pleaded for a rematch. I told him I was busy but you were available.”
“Very funny!” Joanna said. “How did he look?”
“Not bad, considering,” Deborah said. “I don’t think he remembered much.”
“That’s understandable,” Joanna said. “I trust the blue card did not come up in your conversation.”
“Not a word.”
“Who else was hitting on you?”
“The second invitation was from Paul Saunders! Can you imagine going out with him?”
“Only in a fit of self-loathing,” Joanna said. “But I don’t believe for a minute I was included in that invitation, not from the way he was looking at you yesterday in his office.”
Deborah didn’t deny it. She glanced briefly up and down the corridor to make certain no one was paying them any attention. “Let’s get down to business,” she said, speaking more quietly. “Do you have any particular plan for our server room incursion or what?”
“I do,” Joanna said. She, too, lowered her voice and went on to tell Deborah her thoughts about Randy Porter.
“Great idea,” Deborah said. “To tell the truth I was concerned about how I was going to stand watch for you. Without a back exit from the server room, even if I let you know someone was coming in, there’d be no way for you to get out.”
“Precisely,” Joanna said. “Now all you have to do is let me know if Randy Porter leaves his cubicle. The moment he does, press TALK on your cell phone which you’ll set up dialed to mine. If my phone rings, I’ll get out of the server room right away.”
“Sounds like a good plan to me,” Deborah said. “Should we try it now?”
“I think so,” Joanna said. “If it doesn’t work for whatever reason, we can try again at lunch. If that doesn’t work, we’ll have another chance in the afternoon.
Otherwise we’ll have to come back tomorrow.”
“Let’s think positively,” Deborah said. She punched in Joanna’s number on her cell phone’s keypad. “I’m not wearing this dress another day in a row!”
“I checked on Randy Porter just before I came to meet you,” Joanna said. “He was in his cubicle. I think he was on the Internet, which should keep him occupied.”
“Do you have what you need?”
Joanna patted her purse. “I’ve got the software, David’s instructions, and Wingate’s blue card. Let’s hope the card works or we’re back to square one.”
“It should work,” Deborah said. “I’ll head down to admin now, and you just hang out right here. If Randy Porter is still sitting on his duff in his office, I’ll call you and let it ring twice. That’ll be the green light, and you go do your thing.”
The two women grasped hands for a moment. Then Deborah set briskly out walking down the corridor. When she reached the entrance to the administration area, she paused and looked back. Joanna was still at the water fountain leaning against the wall with her arms crossed. She waved and Deborah returned the gesture.
Deborah couldn’t remember exactly where Randy Porter’s cubicle was in the gridlike maze that filled the old hospital ward. After a quick search of the area where she thought it would be and not finding it, she began a more systematic search. Eventually she found it and was happy to see Randy still sitting in front of his monitor. Deborah didn’t allow herself much of a look, but her impression was that he was playing a video game.
Deborah reached into her purse and pulled out her cell phone. With Joanna’s number already dialed, she pushed the TALK button. Holding it up to her ear she listened for two complete rings, then pressed END. She replaced the phone in her bag.
Keeping one eye on Randy Porter’s cubicle, she made her way over to the main corridor. There was no perfect spot where she could stand and not cause attention. Consequently, she had to keep moving.
JOANNA SWITCHED HER CELL-PHONE MODE FROM RINGER to vibration the moment she’d gotten Deborah’s signal. The noise made her jump even though she’d expected it. Clearly she was on edge.
After a furtive, final glance up and down the corridor to make sure no one was watching, she passed as quickly as possible through the NO ADMITTANCE door into the short hall beyond. As the door closed behind her, she found she was breathing heavily, as if she’d run a hundred yards. Her pulse soared. She was a little dizzy. All at once the reality of being an intruder enveloped her in a paralyzing rush. Belatedly Joanna realized she was not cut out for tasks like breaking into computer server rooms; actually doing it was far more psychologically demanding than planning it.
With her back against the door to the main hall, Joanna took a number of deep breaths. Combining the controlled respiration with a short reassuring soliloquy, she was able to calm herself down enough to proceed. Tentatively she moved forward, slowly at first but then gaining confidence when her dizziness faded. She reached the server room door. After one last look back at the door to the corridor, she reached into her purse and pulled out Wingate’s blue access card. Quickly she swiped it through the card swipe. Any residual concern she’d had about whether the card would work was dispelled with the mechanical click. She opened the door. In the next instant she was inside, hurrying over to the server console.
WHAT RANDY PORTER LIKED MOST ABOUT COMPUTERS WAS the games. He could play them all day and yearn for more when he got home at night. It was like an addiction. Sometimes he wouldn’t go to bed until three or four in the morning because with the World Wide Web someone was always up and willing to play. Even at 3:00 or 4:00 A.M. he hated to give up and only did so because he knew he’d be a total zombie at work the following day.
What was so good about his job at the Wingate Clinic was that he could indulge himself during office hours. It had been different back when he’d first been hired straight out of the University of Massachusetts. He’d had to put in long hours getting the Wingate local area network online. And then there’d been the demand for the best security available. That had required extra work and even some outside consulting. And finally there’d been the web page: that had taken a number of months to set up and then modify until everybody was happy. But now everything was humming along just fine, which meant there was little for him to do except be available for the occasional software or hardware glitch. Even those problems were usually because the individual involved was so dorky that they didn’t realize they were doing something incredibly stupid. Of course, Randy didn’t tell the individual that. He was always polite and pretended it was the machine’s fault.
Randy’s normal day began at his keyboard in his cubicle. With the help of Windows 2000 Active Directory, he checked to make sure all systems were running normally and all terminals were in a locked position. That generally took him about fifteen minutes.
After a coffee break he’d return to his cubicle for his morning gaming. To avoid being caught by Christine Parham, the office manager, he’d frequently move around to various workstations that were not in use. That made him hard to find on occasion, but that never led to any trouble since everybody thought he was off fixing someone’s computer.
On May 10th at 11:11 in the morning Randy was locked in mortal combat with a slippery, talented opponent with the moniker of SCREAMER. The game, Unreal Tournament, was Randy’s current favorite. And at that moment he was locked in a tense standoff in which he or SCREAMER would imminently be killed. Randy’s palms were damp from anxiety, but he pressed on, fully believing that his experience and expertise would give him the upper hand.
There was a sudden unexpected beep. Randy reacted by practically leaping out of his ergonomic chair. At the bottom right-hand corner of his screen a small window had popped up. Within the window the words SERVER ROOM BREACHED were blinking insistently. Before Randy could respond to this prompt, he heard a fateful zapping noise that yanked his attention back to the main window. To his chagrin the view was a virtual ceiling. A second later his adversary’s face appeared, peering down at him with a gloating smile. It took less time than a Pentium 4 processor for Randy’s brain to compute that he’d been killed.
“Crap!” Randy muttered. It was the first time he’d been killed for over a week, and it was a letdown, big time. Irritably he looked back at the blinking window responsible for distracting his attention at such a critical juncture. Someone had opened the server room door. Randy didn’t like anyone going into the server room and monkeying around. He considered it his domain. There was no reason for anybody to be in there unless it was IBM servicing the equipment, and if that happened it was his responsibility to be in there with them.
Randy exited from Unreal Tournament and pushed his joystick around behind the monitor so it was less obvious. Then he stood up. He was going to see who the hell was in the server room. Whoever it was, was responsible for getting him killed.
WHEN THE CELL PHONE’S VIBRATION WENT OFF, JOANNA’S heart leaped into her mouth. She’d been struggling with her anxiety from the moment she’d come through the outer server room door. She’d found herself clumsy at the keyboard. It took her longer to carry out simple tasks, which only made her more anxious—and worse still at the keys.
Assuming the call was Deborah, Joanna knew she had only seconds to get out of the server room before Randy Porter appeared. Still all thumbs, she began exiting the system. All she had to do was cancel out the windows she’d brought up onto the screen, but it seemed to take forever since her movement with the mouse was so jerky. Finally the last window disappeared, leaving the screen blank. Quickly Joanna tossed the cracking software back into her purse; she’d had yet to insert the CD into the drive. Her phone had gone off only minutes after she’d sat down at the server-room console, and she had only been in the initial stages of giving herself access.
Frantically she snatched her purse from the desktop and dashed over to the server room door. But the second she opened it she heard the telltale sound
of the outer door opening. In total panic, Joanna let go of the door she was holding and took a step backward. She felt desperate and completely trapped. With no other choice, she darted back around the vertically oriented electronic units each about the size of a shallow, four-drawer file cabinet. Scrunching down in a tight ball behind the farthest unit, she tried to make herself as small as possible. It was hardly a hiding place, but she had no other choice.
Joanna’s heart was beating so hard she was certain that whoever was coming would be able to hear it. It was literally pulsing in her ears. She could feel perspiration appear within her clutched fists, which were pressed against her cheeks. She tried to prepare herself for being discovered by thinking of what she would say. The problem was, there was absolutely nothing that she could say.
FROM THE MOMENT RANDY HAD LEFT HIS CUBICLE ENROUTE to the server room, he’d been silently venting his anger. He was upset more for having been interrupted and subsequently killed than for someone going into his server room. By the time he arrived on the scene, he was thinking more of getting back to Unreal Tournament and rechallenging SCREAMER than yelling at the person who’d violated his domain.
“What the blazes?” Randy questioned when he came on the open server-room door and the empty room beyond. He looked back at the outer door to the corridor which he’d left ajar, wondering how whoever had been in the server room had gotten out. His eyes then breezed around the inside of the server room for a second time. All was in order. He looked at the server room console. It too was as he’d left it, with the monitor displaying its screen saver. Then he grasped the door and swung it back and forth on its hinges. What had suddenly occurred to him was the possibility that when he’d last been in the room, he’d not closed the door completely, and it had just swung open.
With a shrug, Randy pulled the door closed. He heard the reassuring click and then tried to push it open again. It stayed firmly locked. With a final shrug, he turned around, and with the intent of getting back to his cubicle and SCREAMER, he hurried back out into the hallway.
