Slater: Hi Nancy, Jim Slater.

Nancy: Jim, you found something didn't you?

Slater: We sure did. It looks like an echo or repeater program of some kind. It's buried deep in the code, Nancy, and it's embedded in a hundred different places. MEMOREX 333 must have some fantastic reverse engineering module. To tell you the truth, the guts of this system is a bunch of spaghetti code. It would have taken us months to make any change as invasive as this.

Nancy: What's the program do, Jim?

Slater: Looks like it grabs random money transfer transactions and echos them out to another recipient.

Nancy: That doubles the amounts withdrawn from the sending account, doesn't it?

Slater: Yeah, it just reuses the access codes from one transaction to pull a duplicate amount.

Nancy: Isn't that going to be obvious on the audit trail file?

Slater: It would be if the audit file was getting a record of each one, but he's blocked those somehow. We're still trying to find out how. In fact, I almost called you a few minutes ago to tell you everything was okay. We ran our audit checks and everything came out to the penny. If I hadn't done a visual inspection of the outbound records, we wouldn't have noticed this for a couple more days.

Nancy: Have you got them cut off now?

Slater: No, that's the bad news. We're getting the application programmers on it now, but it's going to take them at least a day to turn it off without messing everything else up.

Nancy: Then we have to stop it on the other end. Where's the money trail lead?

Slater: It's being deposited to a numbered account in the Bahamas. We've got somebody here trying to reach them now. I'm faxing you the specific ID numbers.

Nancy: We'll try to reach them, too. We've got one of the FBI guys still here. He may be able to help get their attention. How much money are we talking about?

Slater: If I had to guess I'd say about $75 million an hour. That means we've already sent out over $100 million.

Nancy: But since you found it and you know where the deposits are going, you just have them cancel the transactions tomorrow, right?

Slater: Unless the money gets moved to another bank first. It can become untraceable after two or three steps. If that happens, we'll have to pay with real money.

Nancy: What a nightmare. We better get off the phone and see what we can do to stop it. I'll talk to you soon, Jim.

Slater: Thanks, Nancy.


Agent West was not hard to convince of Dunn's complicity. Roger put the facts to him bluntly and Pete gave West a pitch for leniency toward Tony. Dunn's involvement put a lot of manipulating into perspective for the young FBI man. Instead of questioning his own decisions, he now realized that Dunn's directives were designed to keep them off the trail. The aura of invincibility was quickly returning to Agent West. He looked forward to clamping the cuffs on Dunn and emerging as the victor. West led the way to the office Dunn had been using as Roger and Pete followed along for the show they too were anticipating.

West: All right, let me do the talking when we get in there. I don't want you guys getting into back and forth arguments with Dunn. I want him to talk. Once he sees we've got him, he may decide to switch sides and work with us.

Roger: Yeah, and monkeys might come flying out of my. . .

Warwick: Let's get on with it, West.

Roger: My suggestion, West, is you make sure your bullets are fresh. This guy isn't the type to go down quietly.

West: Dunn, it's me Agent West.

West knocked on the door and simultaneously opened it while Roger and Pete waited a few feet down the hall.

West: Well, it looks like you're wrong, Tango. No struggle left in him.

Roger and Pete crowded up to the doorway where they could see Dunn's body in a pool of blood on the floor. Roger moved into the room looking around for clues of what had happened. There wasn't much of anything to go on. A moment later Nancy appeared at the door.

Nancy: Oh my god, is he. . .

Roger: Deader than the five-and-a-quarter-inch diskette.

Nancy: Who could have gotten in here to kill him?

The three men looked at each other simultaneously. They hadn't thought of that yet. No one could get in. Security still had the whole complex closed tight. Pete was suddenly worried about his friend Tony and excused himself quickly to check on him. West picked up the telephone and called upstairs to security. A minute later Pete returned as West hung up the phone.

Warwick: No sign of Tony in his office. It looks like he just walked away from his desk.

West: That's because he walked out the front door ten minutes ago.

Nancy: How did he get passed the security desk.

West: They said Dunn called up to okay it a minute before Tony left.

Roger: He must have forced Dunn to call just before he shot him. The kid is in deeper than we thought, Pete.

Warwick: Deeper all the time. Now it's murder.

West: We know which car he took. I've got the highway patrol on it already. I'll also send people to his place and to the airports. We'll get him.

Nancy: We need your help on something else, too.

Nancy had just finished talking to Slater and was anxious to let the others know how the whole plan fit together. She didn't know who was giving the orders, but Roger filled that in for her with the information Tony had given them. Now they had to figure out what to do about The Bank of The Bahamas. Nancy wished she had gotten her news to Spike before he left.

With these details now clear, Agent West went to work. He phoned Washington and had them put him through to anyone they could find at The Bank of The Bahamas. After five minutes on hold, the FBI operator apologized for the delay and said the connection was the best he could find.

West: Hello, this is Special Agent West with The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation. Who am I speaking to please?

Penderkorn: Jane Penderkorn, here mon. Hello to the United States. Where are you calling from?

West: I'm calling from California. We have an emergency.

Penderkorn: California! Oooh, fantastic mon. Hollywood, yes??? Movie stars???

West: This woman must be hammered. I don't believe it!

Penderkorn: Maybe you send Jane Penderkorn autograph, yes??? Movie star autograph and picture, too? David Hasselhoff, Baywatch TV, Island girls' favorite, mon.

West: I say again Ms. Penderkorn, we have an emergency. You work for the Bank, do you not?

Penderkorn: Jane Penderkorn works at the bank tomorrow. Tonight she dances to the rhythm, mon.

West: Is there someone else at the bank I can talk to?

Penderkorn: Someone else??? Yes! Yes! Hold on, my brother John is here. He likes Pamela Anderson, maybe you send her autograph, too?

West slammed down the phone in disgust. Was he ever going to get any respect?

West: I don't know how any business survives down there. Looks like we're on our own.

As the festivities in Nassau grew, so too did the media frenzy in The Big Apple. Fortunately for Spike Webb, his cyberspace search for the trail of a misguided and dying software agent was not influenced by the state of confusion that now existed in the real world. With no recent locator information on MEMOREX 333, Spike had no place to start his search. So he tried the network vicinity of The New York Federal Reserve Bank and started a network search fanning out from there.

Spike's hope was that 333 had already paid a visit to the bank in order to prepare for the assault. With not much time lost, Spike picked up a network transfer pattern that mapped very closely to the one he had seen early that morning as he followed MEMOREX 333 away from the AFX attack site. It quickly jolted Spike's mind back to the end of that excursion when 333 nearly killed him. The agent program had appeared from out of nowhere and was on the attack before Spike knew he was there. Spike had nothing new to prevent that same surprise from happening again. Could he afford the time to proceed slowly? Unfortunately, he could not.

Spike took the opposite tactic. He pushed himself through the series of system-to-system links trailing behind MEMOREX 333 as fast as he could. Spike could undoubtedly outrun the much larger program across the Net. If he was fast enough, he would catch the beast before 333 could prepare a trap for him. As Spike skipped from node to node, he could see the network log entries of his prey on each system. The time-stamped records flew by like milepost markers on the freeway. The distance between them in time was closing fast and Spike slowed as he realized that the next node would bring them together again. This time on the server of a check clearinghouse in Cleveland, Ohio.

Spike entered the system disguising his own process identifier string. He was glad to see the host was an old, slow DEC VAX. 333's blinding attack speed would not be as great an advantage over Spike. It was then that Spike realized he hadn't done any further test firings of his new weapon. He wished he had, but knew there was no turning back now. Spike could feel MEMOREX 333 running an initial scan across him. The disguised process ID would not fool 333's secondary categorization algorithms. The scan had already given it all the data it needed to realize what Spike was. As 333 processed the scan, Spike shouldered the weapon and fired. Nothing. Spike reinitialized the interface routine and fired again. Still nothing.

His frustration was swapped out of memory and replaced with pure fear as he felt 333 lineup and lock-on him. Spike was cornered again. This time, he knew, there would be no mercy.



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