Published by Hodder Children’s
Books, October 2005
2. TECHNIQUE
While Shak stepped behind Stein’s
desk and dropped the Venetian blind, James surveyed the office. It contained
nothing exciting: basic desk and chairs, two filing cabinets and a coat rack.
Shak used the lockgun to undo the metal cabinets, then began sifting through
the files. He was looking for any papers relating to George Stein’s
personal life, especially anything to do with his campaigning for
environmentalist groups.
James
sat at the desk and switched on Stein’s PC. While the computer booted up,
he pulled a miniature JVC notebook from his backpack and ran a network lead
between the two computers. Stein’s machine demanded a password, but James
wasn’t flustered. He started up a suite of hacking tools on his computer
and used it to run system diagnostics on Stein’s machine.
Once the software had
gleaned basic information about Stein’s hard drive and operating system,
James opened another module of the hacking software, which allowed him to view
all of Stein’s files.
‘Candy
from a baby,’ James smiled confidently.
Now
he could see the files, James clicked the Clone icon and the notebook
began copying the entire contents of Stein’s PC on to its hard drive.
‘How
much data’s he got?’ Shak asked, as he pulled out the second drawer
of the cabinet.
‘Eight-point-two
gigabytes. The progress bar says it’ll take six minutes to copy it all
across.’
While the computers went
about their business, James shifted some papers and stood on the desktop. He
reached up and pulled out the metal reflector covering the ceiling mounted
light fitting. The resulting cloud of dust tickled his nostrils as he studied
the line of fluorescent tubes above his head.
‘Cut
them off, Shak.’
Shak
leaned across and flipped the light switch. James reached into the fitting and
pulled the starter plug from one of the fluorescent tubes before jumping down.
He rummaged briefly inside his rucksack, emerging with an apparently identical
plastic fitting. But whereas the starter unit James removed cost less than a
pound, the replacement cost three thousand. It was a listening device, consisting
of a pinhead-sized microphone, a transmitter and a chip that could store five
hours of sound.
Light fittings are perfect
for locating listening devices. First because they’re usually located in
open space high above a room, where it’s easy to pick up sound. Second
because the device can easily be wired up to source electricity from the mains.
As
James went up at full stretch to replace the grille, he heard the ripping noise
he’d been dreading all morning. His trousers had cracked open around the
crotch seam, revealing a garish set of boxers.
Shak couldn’t help
smiling as he flipped the lights back on. ‘Nice shorts, J.’
‘Man,
that feels good,’ James gasped. ‘I might be able to have
children after all. What’s next?’
‘Keys,’
Shak reminded him.
‘Assuming
he’s left them in here,’ James said, as he walked towards the
jacket hanging up by the door.
He
fished a bunch of keys from Stein’s pocket, then grabbed a packet of wax
tablets from his rucksack. Meanwhile, Shak had found some interesting documents
in one of the filing cabinets and was copying the pages with a handheld
scanner.
The
wax tablets separated into two biscuit sized pieces. James sandwiched each of
Stein’s keys between a tablet, creating impressions that could be used to
make duplicates. By the time James had worked his way through the whole bunch,
the laptop had chimed, indicating that it had finished cloning.
James sat back in front of
the laptop and used the hacking suite to install spyware on Stein’s
machine. The spyware program would record every keystroke Stein typed and then
transmit it covertly over the internet to the MI5 monitoring station at
Caversham.
Shak had finished rummaging
through the filing cabinets. He grabbed a small metal box out of his backpack.
It was held together with bits of insulating tape and looked like the creation
of a mad professor. In fact, it had been built specifically to capture and
replicate the radio signal from the plipper that worked Stein’s car
alarm.
Shak turned the device on
by taping a wire to the top of an AA battery. He flipped a switch on the front
of the box to the receive position and asked James to press the plipper on
Stein’s car key. It took a couple of attempts before a green LED on the
front of the gadget flickered, indicating that the signal had been successfully
recorded.
‘Is that
everything?’ James asked.
Shak nodded as he checked
the time. ‘In the bag with six minutes to spare.’
James and Shak did a final
check, making sure they’d picked up their equipment and repositioned
everything exactly the way they’d found it. When the claxon sounded for
the lesson change, the boys darted outside and began heading down to the ground
floor. James was conscious of the growing split in his trousers, but none of
the zombiefied Trinity pupils seemed to notice.
At
the main entrance of the school building the boys stepped outdoors and turned
left, heading down a gentle ramp towards a recently built sports complex that
had a teacher’s car park beneath it.
The boys caught a whiff of
sweat as they passed the entrance to a changing area where a group of year ten
boys were getting ready for PE. They headed down a corridor lined with historic
photos of Trinity rugby teams. After reaching the door leading into the
teachers’ car park, James did a full three-sixty check before they passed
under the Staff Only sign and down a flight of bare concrete steps.
Everything looked new, with scarcely a tyre mark on yellow lines dividing up
the parking bays.
The boys quickly identified
Stein’s silver hatchback. Shak pulled the metal box out of his blazer and
flipped the switch across to transmit mode. James slotted a dealer’s key
in the driver’s side door. This key was designed to open any car of this
model, but it didn’t contain the embedded microchip necessary to silence
the alarm.
‘Ready?’
James asked, waiting for Shak to nod. ‘Three, two, one - turn.’
There was a fleeting squeal
from the alarm in the instant between James turning the key and Shak cancelling
it with the gadget. James dived into the driver’s seat and reached across
to pull up the little mushroom on the passenger door. By the time Shak climbed
in, James had reclined his seat. He pulled the clear cover off the vanity light
and unscrewed the tiny bulb and the silver plastic fitting in which it was mounted.
Shak reached up and pushed in a specially constructed replacement that
contained a listening device. Once it was clipped into place, James replaced
the bulb and the outer cover.
Shak briefly rummaged
inside the glove box, checking out the various receipts and scraps of paper for
anything interesting. He laid a couple of bits out flat on the glove box lid
and copied them with the handheld scanner. James searched over in the rear
seats and in the driver’s door cubby, but all he found was a road atlas
and a mass of crumpled paper cups.
‘Is that it?’
James asked, as he hit the recline lever, making his seat spring back up.
Shak nodded. ‘Now we
just have to make it out of here without getting busted.’
James opened the car door,
but as he stepped out, he noticed a reedy female outline emerging at the bottom
of the staircase.
‘Damn,’ James
whispered, as he quietly pulled up the car door.
Shak sneaked a glance at
the beanpole woman as she lit up a cigarette and puffed as though her life
depended on it. The boys had no option but to crouch down low in their seats
until she went back upstairs.
They gave it a couple of
minutes before following after her. The mission plan called for the boys to
hide in a desolate area behind the sports centre for the remaining half-hour of
the school day, when they’d be able to walk out of the front gates
alongside the real pupils.
As they re-passed the
changing rooms, James noticed that the PE teacher hadn’t locked the door
when the kids had gone into the gym. Tantalisingly, more than a dozen pairs of
the orange piped Trinity trousers were scattered about the room.
‘Keep an eye
out,’ James said. ‘I’m gonna whip me some trousers.’
Shak wasn’t exactly
happy about James taking an unnecessary risk, but realised that he
wouldn’t have wanted to travel back to Campus with a giant crack in his
trousers either.
James passed by the first
few pairs. He was slightly above average size for thirteen, but these year ten
kids were still bigger. James eventually found a pair that looked right. He ripped
off his shoes and quickly slipped into them. Realising that there wasn’t
time to transfer everything between the two pairs of trousers, he balled up the
ripped pair and crammed them into his backpack on top of everything else.
James stepped out of the
changing room and started walking back the way they’d come.
‘Wait,’ Shak
said.
James turned back.
‘What’s up?’
‘Nothing. It’s
just, while you were changing, I looked through the window and realised
what’s on the other side of that door. Instead of walking out the front
and all the way around the edge of the building, we can go out through
there.’
James stepped across the
corridor and peered through the frosted glass in the door. It clearly led
directly to the back of the building.
James shrugged. ‘Why
not?’
He pushed down on the
handle and nudged the door open with his shoulder. As he did, a loud buzzing
sound broke out from a plastic box above their heads. The boy’s exchanged
a shocked look, as a burly PE teacher came steaming out of the gymnasium
towards them.
‘What the hell
are you two playing at?’
‘Run?’ James
asked.
Shak didn’t answer,
James just heard a squeal of shoe leather as his friend set off towards the
entrance at full pelt.