Page 56 of Turn the Tide
Always have an excuse for your whereabouts.
Always control the situation; don’t get boxed in; stay on the offensive.
Always think before you speak; silence is better than slipping up or giving in.
Always stay alert, aware of your surroundings; own the street.
She jotted a note on a sticky pad. Movement in the hall had her gaze flickering up.
The mass exodus from the surrounding offices finally began—a procession to the break room one floor below to celebrate the birthday of the vice president of R&D.
A fellow apprentice, Tim Weber, ducked his head in her office. “Coming? I heard the cake is from Sweet Lab.”
A Sweet Lab cake meant an elaborate confectionery masterpiece for the eye and tongue. Her mouth salivated for the decadent slice of heaven she’d never taste.
“I’ll be along shortly,” she said, looking through him, beyond his boyish enthusiasm, her focus riveted on the woman across the hall. “I have to finish something for Mueller first.”
Ashley gestured to the memo on her computer screen. But she’d already printed and dropped the document on the desk of her fake boss, Dieter Mueller, who was at a lunch meeting.
“Hurry. It won’t last.” Tim’s eyes beamed, and he headed off behind the gaggle of suits.
Marie pressed a palm to her stomach. Her pallid face twisted in discomfort that, on a scale of one to ten, was about to skyrocket from a bearable four to an explosive twelve.
Poor thing wouldn’t have suffered if she’d been inclined to socialize.
Marie teetered to her feet. She doubled over and scurried toward the ladies’ room.
Sucking in a breath, Ashley tried to calm her jitters. It was now or never.
She removed the false chunky heels of her patent leather wing-tip shoes, her fingers tingling. After withdrawing the cool technological toys hidden inside, she clicked the heels—lined with a special material to shield the gadgets from the metal detectors in the lobby—back in place. She took the note she’d scribbled a few minutes ago, darted across the aisle into the office, and slapped the sticky on Marie’s monitor.
Surveilling the hall, Ashley pressed on to Hoffmann’s door.All clear.Nervous excitement gathered in a rush, raising goose bumps. She placed a device on the electronic lock.
The steady red light started blinking and turned green. She slipped inside Hoffmann’s office and crouched in front of the PC tower behind his desk. Her pulse was a hammer in her throat.
Electronic emissions were shielded from external intrusion, necessitating an insider. The computers were air-gapped—the entire corporate network was isolated from the Internet. As additional security, the computers used for research and development were physically kept in secure rooms and linked behind a separate firewall.
Cell phones and other gadgets with wireless connectivity were prohibited in the facility, eliminating the possibility of remote collection from across the hall using radio frequency signals and a mobile phone. She needed direct access to breach Hoffman’s system.
The PC tower had been modified and didn’t have any ports on the front, but the IT department had left one on the back covered by a steel plate that they could access to make updates. Ashley slid out the four-inch screwdriver—made from a synthetic polymer—hidden in her bra and quickly removed the plate.
She had two USB flash drives and took the device labeledFC Bayern—the name of a popular football or soccer team—in red and white across the top. It contained a thumb-sucking program that would infiltrate the hard drive, copy all the data, then crawl through the rest of the network seeking out any related files and catalog them. She inserted the small device that could hold up to one terabyte of data into Hoffmann’s computer.
An amber light flashed.
Copying one thousand gigs could take hours. Time she didn’t have. But Sanborn had assured her the infiltration program was lightning-fast and there wouldn’t be that much data to scrape. The buttload of storage space was just insurance.
Her gaze bounced between the flickering light and the hall. She waited, counting her heartbeats. One of her hands curled into a fist, nails digging into her palm, knuckles aching.
Come on. Come on. Finish.
The hall was still clear for now, but the knot in her stomach tightened.
Finally, the USB blinked green.
She swapped it with the yellow flash device markedBVB, after another team. This drive was infected with a malicious payload. The malware would send duplicates of the worm throughout the network by exploiting holes in the firewall, corrupting data while preventing its detection—ultimately erasing everything and crashing the entire system.
BGA was about to become theTitanicof biotech.
