Beyond Belief

by Mark Lingane

  “I’m speechless.”

  “Like I said before, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Here, put on this VR unit.” He handed Joshua a set of wraparound sunglasses.

  “What about you?”

  “I’ll watch the monitors. I use the glasses enough during the day. Now, see the squiggly line, as you called it?”

  “Yeah.” Joshua nodded.

  “Watch.”

  The vision one inch in front of Joshua’s eyes changed. The distant line zoomed in until it appeared about a yard across. Suddenly he was in the city.

  “That’s me on my lunchtime walk,” Raphael said. “I’ll switch to real time and you can see where I went. There.”

  There were some clicks from the keyboard. The view sped up to walking pace. Joshua looked around at the little park in the Bureau grounds as he went on the lunchtime tour.

  “This is where I sit down for lunch. I sit there for a while so we’ll skip past this bit.”

  Lines flashed in front of Joshua’s eyes. Suddenly he was up and zipping through the park toward the main building.

  “What are all the colored lines?”

  “Those are other people. I’ll slow it down to normal speed again.” The scenery slowed to normal. “I meet up with a colleague in a minute.” The scenery stopped and another line, colored a hue of aqua, appeared in the vision. “Anyway, you get the idea.”

  “I certainly do. I’m surprised you don’t read everyone’s thoughts.”

  “Don’t be silly. We read their feelings.”

  “What? How on earth do you know what someone’s feeling?” Joshua said in a disbelieving tone.

  “How on earth indeed? We read their body temperatures. Those lines are different colors because people are feeling different things.”

  “And how is this done?”

  “You think that the sky is full of stars, man? Now we’ll do your name.” He typed in Joshua Richards and pressed enter.

  The view in front Joshua’s eyes flashed off for a fraction of a second. Then there was the faintest of sideways movements as if the world had stopped revolving for a sliver of a second, and he heard groaning from a very long way off.

  “What the hell was that,” Joshua said, taking off the glasses.

  “You felt that too. The lights dimmed and there was that sideways thing. Must’ve been a brownout or something. Damn. It’s crashed my machine.” Raphael pressed the break key until the prompt returned. “As I was saying, someone’s been coming in here and modifying files. You’ve seen level one. You wouldn’t be able to imagine level two. It starts to really pick up then. Or so I am told,” he added, looking hesitantly around the room.

  “Are you sure it’s internal? Couldn’t someone be hacking into it from the outside?”

  Raphael laughed. “Put it this way. If you got me the best, most high-tech computer gear around, and then got me ten of them, working twenty-four hours a day, it would still take over ten years to break the level-two code. Don’t think I haven’t looked into it. Any computer person worth their salt would.”

  “Is it physically possible to hack into the system from the outside?”

  “No. All the lines are one way. And the satellite link is even tighter. It would have to be another, more advanced country to have the kind of resources to do that kind of hack.”

  “You swear that this is an internal job?”

  Raphael nodded.

  “Either it’s someone who works here, or an infiltrator. How long has the information loss been going on?” Joshua asked.

  “It would’ve started about a week ago. Files have been disappearing on and off until about two days ago. Either they haven’t been in for two days or they’re getting better at not being found out.”

  “I’ve got an idea. Do you have a personnel officer here, or machine, or whatever?”

  “Yes. That’s Jenny. She’s good.”

  Jenny sat behind her mahogany desk looking faintly disgusted and slightly in shock at the sight of Joshua. He noted her tragic, fashion-victim appearance that owed more to a TV news presenter than an office executive.

  “What?” she said, trying to pry her attention away from his incredibly grubby coat.

  “How many people work here?” repeated Joshua in his most understanding tone.

  Jenny shook her head and opened up the file on her desk. Her finger flipped down the page. “In all,” she said, “we have fifty-two people on the payment thing.”

  “Do you have any unpaid staff or anyone who can gain access to this complex?”

  “We have a handful, five in all.”

  “How often do you get new staff in here?”

  She put the file down and leaned back in her chair. Her politically correct, scantily clad firemen wall calendar loomed over her. “On average, one every year or so. It’s not a frequent occurrence. No one recent, though. Hang on. What am I saying? We had a new executive start, oh, it wouldn’t be more than a week ago.”

  “Who?”

  “Sorry, I can’t tell you that.”

  “Could you describe this person?”

  “About five foot six, brown hair, young, energetic, enthusiastic, fairly bright. Twenty-two years of age.”

  “And sex?”

  “Female.”

  “Hmm. Really?”

  “No. It’s classified information.”

  After seeing Jenny’s face, he quickly added, “I doubt it’s such an obvious person. A new employee mucking around with top-secret files then skipping town, it’s too blatant.”

  He looked at the calendar behind Jenny. There was something very distracting about it. “Is there anyway someone could get in using the usual methods without attracting attention?”

  “What?”

  “How closely do you keep tabs on all your employees?”

  Jenny looked surprised. “We keep very tight records on everyone.”

  “Yes, I can see that. But do you keep tabs on behavior, like if someone doesn’t come in for a prolonged period of time, or if they come in too frequently or for too short or too long a time? That kind of thing.” He smiled.

  Jenny sighed. “Even though we keep a log of all the times a person clocks in and out, and their every movement outside their offices, when and to where if they make a call, vocal or otherwise, what data they enter on their terminals, every conversation that’s recorded and all the constant surveillance of the corridors, as specified by regulation one forty-seven b, part two, lovingly enforced by your friend, Mr. Raphael …”

  She indicated Raphael, who was sitting on the bench at the back of the room. He smiled and waved.

  “… we don’t check them on a regular basis,” she said, “as we, even here, allow some semblance of privacy for what we wish to call our employees.”

  “So let me clarify this. Please bear with me as I work through this and do correct me if my information is ill informed. Are you telling me you go to all this effort to keep an eye on what everyone does then do nothing about it? And you, after calling me in to help, will give no information out regarding, well, anything?”

  “Rules are rules, Mr. … sorry, what was your name again?” She glared at him suspiciously.

  “Richards.”

  “Richards, yes. I may make a note of that.”

  “Tell me,” Joshua asked when the two men were back in Raphael’s office, “does anyone like her?”

  “Professionally, no. Socially, not to my knowledge, even though some of the guys find the idea of giving the hard bitch a good one, if you know what I mean, rather appealing. I think there’s something Freudian in it. A glam chick like that in a position of power. You tell me.”

  “I think you all watch too much television. I’m going to need a list of all the people who’ve come into the building since the first file went missing and their address and how long they’ve been working here. It looks like I’m going to do a bit of snooping.”

  “Are you serious? I can’t authorize that kind of information, especially if it’s leavi
ng the building.”

  Joshua looked at him levelly. “Do you want me to help or not?”

  Raphael drummed his fingers on his table and looked sidelong at Joshua for a minute. He sighed and shook his head. Leaning back, he opened his top drawer and withdrew a piece of paper. Taking a pen from his top pocket, he wrote on the paper and handed it to Joshua. Joshua read it and nodded. He scribbled something below Raphael’s scribble, and handed it back. Raphael read it and shook his head, scribbled something else, drew a line back up to his first scribble, and underlined a word. Twice. He handed the piece of paper over. Joshua shook his head and started to write a sentence. He ran out of space so he turned the paper over and continued. He too drew an arrow back to a previous scribble, and placed stars on each side of the important information. He then handed it back to Raphael.

  Finally Raphael nodded and stood. He motioned toward the door.

  “We’d better get you out of here as your business has concluded. It’s such a pity that we can no longer be of any service.” Raphael sounded only slightly strained.

  Joshua rose. Picking up the thread, he replied, “I’m sorry I could be of no further assistance. Thank you for your time anyway.”

  With Raphael leading they both left the room and the security cameras turned to watch them go. Their badges beeped as they walked toward the building’s entrance.

  “Should they be beeping like this?” Joshua asked.

  “Yes.”

  Joshua knew that was all he was going to get and let it go at that.

  At one point, along a corridor that looked no different to any of the others, Raphael threw his arm out and motioned for Joshua to stop. There was a terminal to his right. Raphael keyed in some data at blinding speed. Once finished he motioned to continue on.

  As they approached the door at the end of the corridor a red light flashed and the doors refused to open.

  A semi-mechanical voice asked, “REASON FOR DELAY?”

  “My shoelace became untied,” Raphael responded.

  “CLOTHING ADJUSTMENT REGISTERED. FIFTH FOR WEEK. WARNING: ONLY TWO IN RESERVE. PROCEED.”

  To Joshua’s recollection, Raphael was taking a long and complex route to the front door but all became a little clearer when Raphael picked up something white from a particularly dull corridor.

  “Tell me, Mr. Richards, do you like fairytales?”

  “No.”

  “I’m a big fan. I like Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Oh well. How about opera, you like that? I like the big long German ones.”

  “No. More of a nature documentary person.”

  “Oh well, I’m sure you’ll work it out. Oh, here we are at the security gate.”

  Raphael saw him to the front door. Joshua turned to leave, but his foot failed to move. He looked down and Raphael’s shoe was pressing down on his boot.

  “Your shoelace seems to have come undone. You should tie it up before you go. Health and safety and all that.’ Raphael kept his gaze fixed on Joshua’s eyes.

  As Joshua bent down he felt something lodge under his coat.

  Raphael leaned close to him and whispered, “Mr. Richards, I cannot express how important it is that you never lose sight of that information. I’m breaking an unbelievable number of rules giving them to you but this is of universal importance. Maybe even greater.”

  Joshua left the building and the thick steel door slid closed with a sound that made it obvious he was no longer welcome inside.

  22

  JOSHUA LAID OUT THE data on his table. It was a big thumping square of jumbled characters, but he had deciphered the linear diophantine equation before he got home. Swiss RSA encryption. German Goldilocks indeed. It contained more names than he had hoped for: thirty people. He would have to think smart about this.

  He picked up a red pencil and tapped it on the table. If this person had any brain at all they would be covering their tracks and modifying their own records. If they were going into the complex and altering records, they would have to be subtle about it. It would be someone who was trusted, someone who had been there a long time and had a lot to lose if they were caught. It couldn’t be anyone young or someone who had only been there a short period.

  He drew lines through the names of those who were disqualified by this way of thinking.

  It would be someone not too high up in the organization. It couldn’t be too obvious. That ruled out another five.

  Now he was down to seven. He could work with that. Five men and two women. Gender stereotyping told him it probably wasn’t a woman—not in this case anyway. He crossed off two more names.

  Five names were left and, if luck were with him, one would be the culprit. He wrote down the five names in his notebook with their addresses, grabbed his coat and dashed for the stairs.

  The first two lived quite close to each other in a humdrum suburb full of nice homes, and families walking their dogs and playing in the parks. Tricycles sprouted from front lawns like weeds. Joshua felt ill at the sight of all the wholesome family-ness.

  The first name on the list was Alf Cabbage. Married with two children, both young. Joshua watched a man he assumed was Cabbage playing in the front lawn with two children. Cabbage was middle aged and balding. He was thin, but he was showing signs of too many college parties from younger days. Cabbage retired to the narrow porch covered by a wooden veranda and sat in a swinging chair. A woman Joshua assumed was his wife came out with some lemonade on a tray.

  Joshua scratched the name off the list. No one this boring would have the imagination required to be a miscreant. He couldn’t believe people actually lived like that. Did they wind themselves up before they got up in the morning? They were an unlucky lot. Then the cynical side of Joshua retreated a bit. On second thoughts maybe he was the unlucky one. He was the one without the nice home with a loving family. The sun didn’t need to shine for these people.

  He rammed his hands in his pockets and slunk off down the street in search of Joseph Keller, the second name on the list.

  Keller’s home was even worse than Cabbage’s. It had a pretty rose garden, and a hedge as a front fence neatly trimmed to within an inch of its life. There were pink plaster flamingos standing near an ornamental pond housing some large domesticated fish. A large oak tree had a swing hanging from a stout branch. It was so neat Joshua wanted to scream. There was, however, no sign of life. This showed potential.

  A neighbor was out in his garden. Joshua walked down the street, making sure he was completely visible to the weeder. He knocked on Keller’s front door and looked around theatrically when no answer was forthcoming. The house entrance was on the side and not easily seen from the street. A car passed by slowly.

  He wandered over to the neighbor. “Excuse me.”

  “Yes?” The man neighbor stood up from his roses.

  “My name is Alan Raphael. Is Joe home?”

  “No, he’s away.”

  “Well, isn’t that the most darned thing. I just got into town and thought I’d catch up with him, and he’s out. Is it just for the weekend?”

  “No.”

  “Ah.” So it’s going to be like that, is it? he thought. Well, let’s see who wins, shall we? “Has he been gone long?”

  “It’s been a couple of months, but he’s due back very soon. Possibly even tonight,” the neighbor quickly added. “Known Joe long?”

  “Long? We’re old college buddies, Joe and me.”

  “That’s odd. He never said anything about college to me.”

  “Perhaps he doesn’t remember much of it. You know, all those drinking parties. Those were the days.”

  “Drinking parties, you say. Now that’s odd, with Joe being a Mormon and all.”

  “Well, he wasn’t always. I’d better be going. Could you tell Joe I’m in town and ask if he could give me a call? It’s the same old number. Well, goodbye. I hope the roses come up well this year.” Joshua spoke as quickly as he could and retreated down the garden path.

  “They’re
chrysanthemums,” said the neighbor under his breath. “Bloody Mormons don’t know anything.”

  Joshua considered his information. Old Joe Keller wasn’t a likely contender. His detective senses dismissed him. If he had been away for two months then it was unlikely he would make the special effort to go into work and do illegal things. Joseph Keller was crossed off the list.

  The third name had Joshua interested. David Lester. He lived uptown. Way uptown. So uptown social climbers needed oxygen tanks. Even the suburban bus was on time, and it had a real person driving it.

  Joshua consulted the list to see what position David Lester occupied in the Bureau. Programmer. Either programmers were suddenly worth more, or things were afoot.

  The manicured street verges and swept roads undulated dramatically through the low hills. Even the rain seemed polite. Joshua walked for several blocks until he came to Lester’s street. Joshua was expecting a white mansion with a long curving driveway that led up to the house or, alternatively, the stables. Grand oaks would droop over the drive, creating a picturesque arch and drop browning leaves onto the ground. There could possibly even be a deer running free within the grounds. It was that kind of suburb.

  As Joshua made his way along the street he discovered that there was, however, nothing where the mansion should have been. It was splendid in its absence. The deer was noticeable by its invisibility. A large amount of rubble that could have once been a white mansion occupied a large area. Workmen were still on site and were busying themselves around the tea trolley. A radio was blaring.

  He wandered up to the nearest worker, whose flannelette shirt flapped open revealing the latest heavy-metal band popular among people ten years his junior. Rain drizzled off his yellow hard hat and into his cup of tea.

  “Where can I find the foreman?” Joshua asked him.

  “No. We only got-a three-a peoples ’ere,” he said in a mock Italian accent.

  Joshua was prepared to wait for as long as it took to get the answer.