by RV Raman
‘I agree…even if it means more work for me. We can pick up Harry any time we wish. We need him to lead us to the ones who actually stole the data. I would really like to know how they did it.’
‘So would I, Alex. So would I.’ Dhruvi picked up her phone and dialled a number. ‘Time to meet the MyMagicHat folks.’
Half an hour later, they were in Gautam’s house. Worried about potentially undetected bugs on the office premises, the youngest Puraria had decided not to discuss the data theft at MyMagicHat. The operation to track down the data thief would be run from his house, he had decided, while Nilay held fort at MyMagicHat.
‘There is no doubt that the data is genuine,’ Moin said. ‘All 10,000 transactions check out. I ran queries to compare the order numbers, item codes and delivery pin codes with the data in our systems. They all check out.’
‘Every single transaction?’ Dhruvi asked.
Moin nodded. ‘All of them. I’ve something more to tell you. There is a chance that Puneet was involved in the theft.’ Moin raised his hand as Dhruvi’s head jerked up. ‘It’s only a chance, a mere possibility. There’s nothing to suggest that he was.’
‘Better give me the details, Moin.’
Moin told her about the idea Nilay had had last night and their subsequent discussion. He concluded by saying, ‘All I’m trying to say is that Puneet was in a position to do it if he wished to. There is nothing to suggest that he actually misused his access privilege to steal data.’
‘Fair enough. Would you be in a position to take a more informed call if you had all the million transactions?’
Moin shook his head. ‘I don’t see how. Ten thousand or a million, the transactions by themselves won’t reveal anything about how they were stolen or who stole them.’
‘Okay. Let’s leave that aside for now.’ Dhruvi turned to Gautam. ‘We must try to get hold of the next person in the chain who, hopefully, is the one who stole the data. We need to move now, before Harry and his partner have second thoughts.’
Gautam nodded animatedly. ‘What do you suggest?’
‘We should force Harry to meet his partner. I’m assuming that Harry is only an agent, the guy who meets the buyer and sells the data. The person in possession of the million transactions is someone else, probably the thief himself. If our next request – or demand, if you like – is such that Harry will have to meet the other guy before he can fulfil the request, we’ll get the next link in the chain.’
‘Great! What if we do this?’ Moin was visibly excited. ‘What if we ask for a larger sample – say one lakh transactions – that is spread across the four weeks of September?’
‘How will that help?’
‘Don’t you see? The thief will then have to go back to the original data and pull out chunks of data for each week. Once he does that, he will then have to meet Harry to physically hand it over, because they wouldn’t want to leave an email trail.’
‘Why should Harry buy your story?’
‘I’ll tell him that the first sample convinced us that the data was genuine. However, we don’t know how useful it will be to us. Before we part with ₹20 or ₹30 lakhs, we want a larger sample to see how useful the data will be. The final offer for the million transactions will depend on how useful we think the data will be to us.’
‘Moin,’ Dhruvi said, her expression utterly serious, ‘I like you.’ Then her face split into a wide grin that made Moin blush. ‘That’s brilliant! It should work, provided the offer is attractive enough. Eh, Alex?’
Alex nodded gloomily.
‘At two rupees a transaction, the offer will be two lakhs rupees,’ Gautam said. ‘Will that be attractive enough?’
‘If Dirty Harry came for 30,000 rupees, he’ll come for two lakhs.’
‘Great! What do we do now?’
‘Wait for Harry to call. Even he wouldn’t be so dumb as to use the same number again.’
■
Dhruvi’s prediction turned out to be correct. When Harry called Moin in the afternoon, it was from another prepaid number. This time, Harry was in Koramangala.
Moin began negotiations by offering one rupee per transaction, but was unyielding in his demand for 25,000 transactions extracted from each of the four weeks. Only then, he explained, would they be able to judge how useful the data was. In return, he was willing to be a little accommodating on the price.
When Harry threw a tantrum, Moin reminded him that the final offer would be between ₹20 and ₹30 lakhs, depending on how useful the data was. After three breaks in the conversation, during which Harry must have consulted his partner, the deal was struck – two lakhs in four bundles of five hundred rupee notes. Harry was to call him the next day to tell him when and where the exchange would take place.
‘Your part is largely done, Moin,’ Dhruvi said, when the call ended.
Her face was serious and Alex was no longer looking mournful.
‘But I need you and Mr Puraria to be available on the phone, till this thing is finished. It’s unlikely that Harry will call you again today, but if he does, let me know at once.’
‘We’ve got Harry’s regular mobile number,’ Alex said abruptly, a phone held against one ear.
‘Was it one of the five numbers you had shortlisted?’
Alex nodded with a pleased look on his face. ‘There’s more. Harry called the same number during each of the three breaks in his conversation with Moin.’
‘His partner, the data thief! Good work, Alex! Where is he?’
‘The partner? Jayanagar.’
‘Ah! The computer shop Harry visits often!’
■
Harry remained in his little flat for the rest of the day. It was approaching 9 p.m. when he kicked his bike to life and started out. Three kilometres away in Jayanagar, Dhruvi and Alex sat in the back of an unmarked van with two men who were wearing headphones and staring at screens. The van was parked a stone’s throw away from a four-storey building that housed shops and other small commercial establishments. On the first floor of the right wing was the computer shop owned by Harry’s partner, a man named Manoj.
‘Harry’s on the move,’ one of the men wearing headphones announced. ‘Heading this way.’
‘Alert the men,’ Dhruvi said softly, checking the pistol in her belt. ‘They are to cover both the staircases in the right wing. Two men at each staircase, but they should move in only after Harry goes up to the shop.’
She was now in full uniform, something one rarely found her wearing. Alex, too, was in uniform today.
Around her van, many commercial establishments had closed for the day and traffic was dwindling. A few shops remained open, but they too would be shutting soon. The parking lot in front of the building, chock-a-block with vehicles during the day, now lay largely vacant. Harry would have little trouble parking his bike close to one of the stairways.
‘He has turned the corner,’ the man with the headphones alerted them. ‘He should be here in less than a minute.’
‘Start the van,’ Dhruvi directed, staring out of a window that opened on to the road along which Harry would approach.
Presently, a bike appeared under the streetlamps and slowed down as it approached the building. It swung into the parking lot and the helmetless rider jumped off. With nary a glance around, he hurried to the staircase and began climbing up, taking two steps at a time. Moments later, a pair of plainclothesmen entered the stairwell and went up to the landing located midway on the staircase.
‘To the parking lot,’ Dhruvi said and the van slid forward, parking in such a way that Harry wouldn’t be able to jump back on his bike and ride away.
Dhruvi and Alex alighted from the van and made for the stairway. Four armed constables emerged from another van that had just driven up and followed them up the stairs.
On the first floor, between the two staircases, were four doors. Two of them were shut and shuttered. From the two open doors, light spilled into the dim corridor. The open door closest to them be
longed to a taxi operator and would remain open all night. The other door, further down the corridor, was their target; it led to Manoj’s computer shop.
Dhruvi walked past the taxi operator and slowed down as she approached the open door of the computer shop. She gestured to two of the armed constables, who went past the computer shop to take up position a few feet beyond the door. The other two constables came behind her and Alex, and halted a few feet short of the door. Both sides of the corridor were now blocked for anyone who might attempt to flee from the computer shop. Even if he got past the constables, the plainclothesmen in the stairwell would stop him.
Dhruvi took a deep breath and drew her pistol with her favoured left hand. She heard a scraping sound beside her and knew that Alex had drawn his pistol too.
Moving swiftly, she stepped into the computer shop, with the pistol held steady at her waist. Alex moved in close behind and came to stand beside her.
The room turned out to be a long one, with the way barred by a counter that stretched across much of its width. Where the counter ended to their left was a two-foot gap, the only entry into the space beyond. Two doors – one at the far end of the room and another in the left wall beyond the counter – were the other exits from the room. The door in the left wall, which presumably led to another room, was open. The other door, a narrow one at the far end of the room, which opened out on to a tiny balcony, was shut. An earlier survey of the building’s exterior had revealed that most of the shops used the tiny balcony for the outdoor units of their air conditioners.
Two men sat at desks beyond the counter. One of them was working on a disassembled laptop in front of him, while the other was lounging in a chair and looking through the door into the adjacent room. From that room came the murmur of male voices speaking in English.
As soon as Dhruvi and Alex entered, the two men in the room turned to look at them. While the man repairing the laptop gaped, the other man paled and sprang to his feet, shock writ large on his face.
‘Manoj!’ he called out, backing away.
Abruptly, the voices in the other room fell silent.
The next moment, two heads appeared in the doorway. An instant later, they disappeared back into the other room and sounds of frantic footsteps sounded.
Dhruvi sized up the situation in an instant. Manoj was the name of the shop owner – who was, possibly, the next link in the chain. Having seen the video footage of Alex’s meeting with Harry at Majestic, she had instantly recognized the man’s face when he peeped out of the room adjoining the one in which they now stood. The second face must have been Manoj’s.
If Manoj and Harry managed to shut the door between the two rooms, they could destroy the stolen data and any other evidence that might be useful in convicting them.
‘Alex!’ Dhruvi called out sharply, covering with her pistol the two other men in the room where they stood.
Alex was already moving. Moments before they entered the shop, he had shed like a discarded coat the illusion of lethargy he habitually carried around; his movements were now swift and sure. In an instant, he was past the counter and at the connecting door to the other room. Just as he reached the door, Harry tried to shut it. Alex put his foot in the way.
Meanwhile, two constables from the corridor outside had entered the room. Seeing Alex struggling to keep the door open, they rushed in and slammed their shoulders into the door.
By this time, the man who had called out to Manoj had retreated to the balcony door. He now yanked it open and went through.
‘Stop!’ Dhruvi yelled, pointing the pistol at him.
But to no avail. The man disappeared into the dark balcony outside even as she pointed her pistol at him. Unable to pull the trigger at an unarmed man, she did the next best thing – she went after him.
As she vaulted over the counter that stood in the way, Dhruvi heard scraping noises from the balcony. A couple of seconds later, a loud thud reached her ears, as if something heavy had fallen. With the man who had been repairing a laptop riveted to his chair in shock, Dhruvi darted to the tiny balcony and found it empty. On the ground below, she spotted the man who had jumped off to escape the police. He was limping away.
‘Stop!’ she called again.
Even as she pulled out the police whistle and blew it, the limping man turned the corner of the building and vanished. She barked into her walkie-talkie, giving instructions to the policemen outside to pursue him. But she knew that it was too late.
Kicking herself mentally for not having covered the balcony, she returned to the main room. The man with the laptop hadn’t budged from his place, but Alex and the two constables had now entered the adjacent room. The other two constables stood blocking the shop entrance. She got one of them to guard the man repairing the laptop, in case he too decided to take the balcony route, and went into the adjacent room.
Two men with sullen expressions stood against a wall, with the constables covering them. On a table was a desktop computer connected to a grey metal box. Beside it was a rectangular plastic box that resembled the cover of a cassette tape, except that the dimensions were all wrong. Peering into a large open envelope lying beside it, she saw two more plastic boxes; but they were not empty. In them were tape cartridges.
Dhruvi smiled with grim satisfaction as she photographed the table with her mobile phone and sent the images to Moin. A minute later, her phone rang.
‘It’s a tape cartridge that is used to backup data from servers,’ Moin said.
‘And the box attached to the computer?’ she asked.
‘A tape drive.’
‘Thought as much. I’ll call you later. I need to wrap things up here.’
She hung up and called her cyber crime colleagues, who were waiting a short distance away.
Chapter 13
‘This is from the data centre!’ Moin exclaimed, studying the tape cartridges Dhruvi had recovered from Manoj’s shop.
‘Sure, Moin?’
‘Absolutely. See these stickers?’ He pointed to small logos stuck in a corner of the labels and on the cartridge cases. ‘It is the data centre’s logo.’
‘Cartridges stolen from the data centre?’
Moin shrugged. ‘I presume so. What did the men you arrested have to say?’
‘Nothing.’ Dhruvi shook her head thoughtfully, as she turned over a cartridge in her hand, examining it from all sides. ‘They’re keeping mum. I expect a lawyer to show up soon, claiming to represent them.’
‘Can’t you make them talk before that happens?’ Gautam asked impatiently.
‘And have them accuse us of arm-twisting and abuse of power, Mr Puraria? This has the makings of a white-collar crime. I need to proceed carefully.’
‘I tried making them talk,’ Alex interjected. ‘But this guy Manoj knows the game. He’s told Harry to clam up.’
‘I don’t understand it,’ Gautam said, shaking his head. ‘Harry seems to be an amateur, but the other guy’s obviously a pro.’
‘Manoj made a mistake in using Harry,’ Dhruvi responded. ‘I think they were completely taken in by Moin and believed him to be a competitor. It never occurred to them that he might be from MyMagicHat. They’re still puzzled about how they got caught.’
‘What else did you recover from the shop?’
‘We found the original file with over a million transactions, a copy of the sample Harry gave you on Sunday and the second sample they were going to give you tomorrow – the one with one lakh transactions. I’m sure there’s a lot more that our cyber lab will find on the computer. The lab guys also said that the tape cartridges could be a gold mine of information.’
‘Oh yes!’ Moin nodded. ‘Three cartridges can hold tons of data.’
‘Yeah, but the lab guys were saying that they were having problems retrieving it. Apparently, the file index on the tape shows no files, but there is data in the rest of the tape.’
‘What on earth does that mean?’ Gautam turned a bewildered gaze on Moin. ‘In plain English, if
you will.’
‘Well, a tape cartridge houses a reel of tape that is incredibly long. Along its considerable length, it can store terabytes of data. That would mean a large number of files. For the computer to know which file lies where along the length of the tape reel, it maintains an index of the files, with which it can quickly access files without having to read the entire reel. Using this index, it can go directly to the file it wants. This is the index we are talking about.
‘Now when a file is to be deleted, only the corresponding entry in the index is deleted. The data resident in the file is usually not physically erased unless one “wipes” the tape. As a result, a deleted file can be recovered if the index is reconstructed. It is also possible to retrieve data from deleted files by reading the entire tape. It is very similar to the “undo” facility on your laptop.’
‘But how would that work for backups of databases?’ Dhruvi interjected. ‘Even if you manage to retrieve a deleted database from the tape, it won’t be in the form of a readable text file. It’ll be gibberish.’
‘That’s right!’ Moin frowned deeply. ‘If it’s not a database, what is it?’
‘It is some kind of a transaction file, I guess?’ Dhruvi was studying his troubled face.
‘Yes, but that’s what I am struggling with, Inspector. There is no such transaction file in our front-end system.’
‘How sure are you about that?’ Dhruvi’s searching gaze was still on Moin.
‘Look,’ he snapped, showing a rare sign of exasperation, ‘I know our system very well. I designed a good part of the recent additions myself. Orders flow through to the back-end as soon as they are created. They are not bunched up into a transaction file, as was the case with some older systems. That means that there can be no transaction file that collects a million transactions.’
‘Then it comes back to what you said yesterday morning,’ Dhruvi said slowly. ‘Did someone create the file using the query facility? Did someone compile details of over a million orders into a text file?’
‘Why?’ Gautam snapped. ‘Who?’
‘We don’t know.’ Dhruvi shook her head. ‘But there is another key question we need to address: how did such a file end up in a tape cartridge at the data centre? If Puneet or anyone else at MyMagicHat created the file through a query, it would be on his laptop or on a computer at MyMagicHat. Not at the data centre. Is that right, Moin?’
