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  ‘All right, then. But before we go, I’ve got a final reminder for all of you.’ Baxter cast a pointed gaze around the table. ‘We’re approaching the crucial phase of the Panopticon Project, when we’ll have it fully up and running on a permanent basis. At the same time, the worst possible time, we’re under siege. I use the word advisedly. Our enemies are manoeuvring against us, we’re being probed for weaknesses, lined up for attack. I want no one here to doubt that we will respond to any direct threat with the amount of force needed to destroy it. Our responsibility, with its global implications, requires nothing less. Unfortunately our enemies are proliferating. The protest movement, with its rainbow coalition of low-lifes and anarchists, is pretty much a known quantity. The terrorist presence, of which we’ve had alarming indications, is much less identifiable and much more dangerous.

  We need to make sure everyone maintains the highest vigilance.

  Covertly, the same goes for the missing disk and whoever handles it. That is potentially the most destructive weapon that can be used against us. We cannot let that happen.’ He watched the nods of agreement. ‘So, all in all, the last thing we need on our patch is a rogue police officer. I’ll go along with the suggestion - for now - of inviting her onto the review panel. But, Luker, if she doesn’t toe the line all bets are off. We’ll deal with her as an active threat and do what’s necessary. Agreed?’

  Luker tossed Rita’s photo onto the table and turned to the director-general.

  ‘Agreed,’ he said.

  17

  In the dead of night, several hours after the committee members had reviewed the forces against them, a new enemy was preparing to launch a strike on the research base. He posed a threat they had not anticipated. There was no alert protocol in place to identify him. Although they knew his name, his background wasn’t political, militant or terrorist. And his plan of attack was neither paramilitary nor confrontational. He possessed no bombs, no guns and no conventional ammunition. His weapons of assault were electronic. And his target was the Panopticon Project. If he could crash its control system, disable or simply rip off and expose it, he would be satisfied. His motive was personal revenge. The aim was to inflict as much damage as possible and achieve a belated victory for his murdered lover, Rachel Macarthur. Frederick James Hopper, as he was known to the police -

  Freddy to his friends, Edge Freddy to fellow hackers - inhabited a twilight subculture whose methods were partly subversive, partly criminal. Throughout his volatile relationship with Rachel he’d paid scant attention to the protest movement. Even while being subjected to passionate arguments on the topic, he’d often found his mind wandering to issues more relevant to his own familiar territory, the environment of cyberspace. His distracted response had irked her almost as much as his lack of emotional commitment, and all her disappointments had come back to haunt him in the wake of her horrific death.

  The pain of his sudden loss had hit Freddy hard, together with the bitter realisation that he’d taken Rachel for granted. Being hauled in as a suspect by the police had compounded his sense of despair and triggered a prolonged binge. It dulled the trauma but produced a sickening haze as he ingested every drug that came to hand and drowned his self-recriminations in a sea of vodka.

  Eventually, after achieving a temporary oblivion, he surfaced to a new clarity. It allowed him to focus on one thing: the searing injustice of Rachel’s political assassination, for he had no doubts that was what she’d been the victim of. It transformed his grief into an aching need for vengeance.

  The countdown was beginning as Freddy turned his transit van onto the promenade by the docks. There was no one else about. The night was clear but humid, the sea frothing against breakwaters and jetties, the gleam of the harbour lights soaked up by the dark swell of the tide. He followed the road around the fringes of the town, past the tidal basin, coal-loading terminal, rail yards and coal storage, then drove onto the old industrial flats awaiting redevelopment. Most of the sites were abandoned - empty factories, offices, corrugated-iron sheds rusting behind chain-link fences. The row of hoardings had attracted an accumulation of weeds and wind-blown litter.

  Apart from a scrap-metal prowler the road was deserted as Freddy swung his van across a vacant sprawl of concrete and headed for a line of disused warehouses. He’d made his secret base in one of these. No one bothered him here. No one like corporate lawyers from software firms. No one like the law.

  He pulled into the loading bay, jumped out and opened the back of the van. He eased out a large carton and carried it over to a set of metal stairs, steadied himself and climbed carefully to his warehouse loft. The upper storey resembled an electronic junk shop - tables and benches were crowded with various generations of computer terminals, and between the table legs was a spaghetti-mess of cables and wiring. A desk was cluttered with stacks of disks, and circuit boards spilled from metal cabinets. For his creature comforts there was a swivel chair, a coffee machine, a fridge and a double divan bed with a rumpled duvet.

  He swept aside the stale remains of a McDonald’s burger and slid the carton onto a coffee table. Then he knelt down, snapped open the cardboard flaps and tossed away the layers of foam plastic padding. A creased label fell out of the packaging, stamped with the words Property of the Australian Defence Force, but Freddy just kicked it under a bench. Inside the carton were the special components he’d been waiting for, including a helmet and gloves.

  He began to connect them to a computer control deck but his mobile phone interrupted him. He pulled it from his jacket pocket and checked the incoming number. He didn’t recognise it.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  A voice said, ‘Who do you think?’

  ‘Stonefish?’ asked Freddy.

  ‘Hi there, cowboy. Have you taken delivery?’

  ‘Half an hour ago. I’m wiring the helmet in now.’

  ‘Hey, go for it,’ said Stonefish. ‘Have you opened the little black box?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Open it.’

  Freddy did as he was told, prising open a container about the size of a glasses case. Wedged in the moulded interior was a type of device Freddy hadn’t seen before. He plucked it out and examined it, a solid multifaceted object in matt black with a metal connector protruding.

  ‘Okay, what am I holding?’ he asked. ‘And why is it a funny shape?’

  ‘That’s a military code-breaker, just developed,’ answered Stonefish, ‘and the shape is a dodecahedron, but I’ve no idea why. It’s designed to work with the helmet and gloves, and you’ll need to plug it into a self-powered hub.’

  ‘No problem.’

  ‘And watch your fingers. That’s a mean little combo you’ll be riding.’

  ‘Good.’ Freddy went back to connecting the helmet as he spoke. ‘And I’m going to test it tonight.’

  ‘By trying to crack Whitley Sands?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Maybe my arse. You can’t wait.’

  ‘Is that a problem?’

  ‘Not for me.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Freddy stopped his work on the helmet.

  ‘Are you sure the ADF can’t track this gear?’

  ‘You’ve got my guarantee.’

  ‘And that’s worth the horseshit it’s written on,’ said Freddy, resuming his task. ‘This helmet’s more lightweight than the last.’

  ‘Everything’s better. Gives you high-res VR. But watch your reflexes with the gloves. They’re hypersensitive. The whole package can make you dizzy, send you into a spin.’

  ‘You’ve tried it?’

  ‘Just briefly, on delivery. But it’s what you need to ride the code-breaker. Seriously though, Freddy, don’t get burnt. The Sands has got a vicious firewall. I’m reliably informed it’s equipped with feedback devices that can barbecue your brain.’

  ‘My brain’s already pan-fried.’ Freddy chuckled. ‘I won’t let the bastards get me. What about you, Stonefish? Where are you hiding these days?’

  �
�Somewhere I can’t be found.’

  ‘Why? Who’s on your case?’

  ‘People who enforce their copyright with an axe. People who -‘

  But he didn’t finish. Instead he said, ‘Rachel’s murder freaked me out, Freddy. That’s why I’m lying low. If you’re going after those pricks at the base, you’ve got my blessing. But a word of warning, watch your arse. Don’t ever let them catch you.’

  The call ended. Freddy put down his mobile and frowned.

  Stonefish’s obvious fear was unusual and unsettling but he wouldn’t let it divert him from his plan of attack. He took off his glasses to strap on the helmet, then hesitated. He stood up, a serious look on his face and a dryness in his mouth. He’d been carefully plotting this moment - the chance to bust into the core data of the research base. There was no need to rush it, but a definite need to psych himself up.

  Freddy put his glasses back on, walked over to the fridge and got out a Coke. He yanked open the ring-pull and drank from the can. When he’d finished he tossed it into an empty packing crate and ran his fingers through his untidy straw-coloured hair. He felt like a combat pilot about to take a low-altitude flight over enemy territory. He could almost fit the role. Tall, precocious, youthful-looking, with the instincts of a daredevil and the brinkmanship of a gambler. Despite his precarious existence in the cybertech underworld, Freddy possessed a sort of street nobility - a hacker who could be trusted to deliver, a hustler with brains as well as a prodigious capacity for vodka.

  He stood there, hands on hips, his khaki shirt hanging out over the back of his jeans, the laces unravelling on his Nikes and a look of fierce anticipation on his face. He peeled off his shirt and slung it on the bed. Then he tossed aside the glasses, strapped on the helmet and pulled on the data-gloves encrusted with sensors.

  As he eased back in his swivel chair, the tiny display screen inside the helmet lit up in his eyes, and the air pads in the gloves gave him the feel of his control deck. Now he was ready - wired into his personal flight simulator. It would take him on a trip into the alternative reality of computer graphics.

  18

  Rita got up from the bed, opened the mini-bar and helped herself to bottled water. She carried it out to the balcony and drank it, her sudden thirst the result of whisky and a touch of dehydration. The moon hung, huge and flesh-coloured, over the Coral Sea. It cast a lurid glow among the dark outlines of the islands and threw the massive silhouette of the US aircraft carrier into sharp relief.

  She thumped the balcony rail with her fist. What angered her most was the contempt with which she’d been treated. Even as a police officer, from the moment she’d been handcuffed until she’d driven out of the gates at the base, she had no protection under the law. And the security director, Maddox, trying to intimidate her, getting in her face, letting her know there was nothing she could do about it. What made him think he was entitled to behave that way? Who condoned such disregard for basic human rights?

  Something was very wrong. Something had to be done about it. Rita took a deep breath and decided that the heavy-handed methods intended to frighten her off would do the very opposite.

  It pointed to the oppressive use of force, a frontier lawlessness, that could not be tolerated in a modern democracy.

  Yet she had to be careful. With that thought in mind she returned to the laptop and did a series of searches on Whitley, the base and the military reserve in tandem with any names that were relevant - Maddox, Willis Baxter, Steinberg, Rachel Macarthur.

  There wasn’t much of interest to show for it, and nothing new.

  Finally she did a search on Audrey Zillman, but the only hits she got were from the Cambridge era. There were academic and scientific pieces which Rita found technically obscure. But there was one news item and a photo accompanying it.

  The article, from the previous decade, reported on the experiments Professor Zillman was conducting with computer-linked neural implants. The microchips interfaced directly with her brain cells. It was the very stuff that Byron had lectured eloquently about. Here, too, was the image of the twenty-nine-year-old woman who’d been his lover. And yes, she was striking, her face intense, her dark hair tied back, leaning against banks of electronics almost suggestively, the angle highlighting the imposing curves of her figure. She may have been ‘brilliant’ and ‘inspiring’, as Byron had found her, but Rita saw something else as well. This woman was scary.

  19

  It was like being on a space mission. But instead of flying towards the stars, Freddy was navigating through a 3-D cosmos of geometric patterns. He was seeing the architectures of the net from the inside - websites, nodes - the way a computer sees them. He felt he had cybernetic vision.

  His flight was the product of microtechnology. Tiny cathode-ray tubes projected images onto the display screen inside his helmet.

  From there, a holographic mirror reflected three-dimensional views into his eyes. His eye motion was tracked by bouncing infra-red light from his irises into a miniature TV camera. The computer followed the movements of his head and hands via electrical signals induced in magnetic detectors in the helmet and gloves. And he steered his course by simulated touch on the computer-generated surface of a control panel.

  Freddy marvelled at the cleverness of the technology - and immediately forgot it. He was too busy exploring, quite literally, new dimensions. Just as he’d been promised, the high-resolution VR graphics showed him databases as he’d never seen them before. His surroundings were spectacular. Surreal clusters of spheres, cubes, pyramids - glowing in fluorescent reds and ambers. Networks linked by pulsing filaments of emerald light.

  The luminous structures floating in a vast blackness of space that belonged to a different universe. And Freddy was speeding through the void like an alien probe.

  ‘Wow, like doing maths on acid,’ he said to himself.

  It took him a while to get the feel for his cyberflight. The simulated control panel responded sharply to the sensors in his gloves, and he was having to make rapid adjustments to his speed and direction. When he banked too quickly a hollow shock hit him below the ribcage, as though he’d just dropped off a roller-coaster. And when he pulled up too suddenly he felt the chilling vertigo of staring into an infinite chasm. Slowly he learnt how to handle the keypad and give himself a gentler ride.

  Before using the code-breaker he decided to lay a false trail.

  With a surge of acceleration, he flew directly at a sodium-glowing cube and burst through it in a blaze of light. He’d just gone through a node in Singapore. It made him laugh. He felt like a human comet. He performed a rapid switch-back and went through two more starbursts - Edinburgh and Toronto - before swooping in on the Australian constellations.

  For his first breakin he decided on a relatively easy target, and homed in on the nearest shape, a dense concentration of data in the form of a silver hexagon. As he connected with it, his computer interfaced with the core data of a bank in Sydney. That’s when he powered in the code-breaker. Immediately he was decrypting and scanning the bank’s confidential files. Rows of figures were scrolling swiftly past his eyes. He punched into the fattest deposits and took lumps out of them with transfer orders, the credit dropping into half a dozen accounts he kept at different places online under a variety of coded identities. He skimmed off $100,000 - not bad for two minutes’ work - then clicked out.

  As he lifted off from the hexagon, the geometric firmament unfolded around him again. He was flying with confidence now, calmer and richer, ready to crack a tougher target. He zoomed past the foreground clusters and headed for a towering spiral galaxy of phosphorescent white - the defence database. As he closed in for a cautious pass, the huge gleaming structure filled his field of vision.

  To lock on at the wrong place would be extremely dangerous.

  This was no commercial security bank computer, but a military system bristling with electronic sentinels. It wasn’t just the danger of being caught out and identified; he’d long been p
repared for a squad of security police charging into his loft. But he was risking more than that if the rumours at the Diamond were right, rumours that Stonefish was convinced were based on fact. Stories of lethal feedback. Automatic defence programs built into the computer system. Surges of electricity that could grill you at your terminal, your fingers glued to a melted keyboard. And for those audacious enough to bust in using a VR helmet, the punishments could be more exotic. Stuff that left you brain-damaged or gasping in an induced epileptic fit. Or froze you in a cataleptic seizure till the military heavies smashed down your door. Or sent you into a hypnotic trance. You got up and put on your hat and walked out your front door, smiling to the neighbours, and strolled down to the nearest railway cutting and jumped in front of a train.

  Freddy wasn’t sure how much was vivid imagination and how much was technically feasible, but he wasn’t going to bet his life on the difference. If the worst was true, he calculated he had a few seconds’ grace. At the first sign of anything coming up at him, he’d throw off the gloves and helmet, and race down to the loading bay. That’s where his dented second-hand Land Rover Discovery was waiting, with its tank full and its curtained rear serving as a makeshift mobile home. For an even quicker getaway, he could leap from the fire escape stairs to his Yamaha FJ-1200, which was always propped in position by the back door of the warehouse.

  He was orbiting the vast helix of white light, drifting closer, drawn as if by a force of gravity, or fascination. This was the citadel he wanted to storm - the defence network that interlinked command centres, military intelligence posts, monitoring facilities and research bases, including Whitley Sands. Several months ago, a successful hack had provided Freddy with an opening set of codes that he’d managed to poach from the home work station of a level-six employee. But each time he was on the brink of getting in, he was shut out. His software couldn’t decode fast enough.