The Destroyer 077 - Coin of the Realm by Warren Murphy & Richard Sapir

Author:Warren Murphy & Richard Sapir [Murphy, Warren & Sapir, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Pulp Action
Publisher: PINNACLE BOOKS
Published: 2010-03-19T14:52:02.831000+00:00

Chapter 18

Smith trem­bled.

He lift­ed his long thin fin­gers from the Fol­croft ter­mi­nal key­board and they ac­tu­al­ly shook. He cleared his throat as he reached in­to the up­per-​right-​hand desk draw­er for re­lief.

The draw­er con­tained an as­sort­ment of antacids in tablet, liq­uid, and foam form, as­pirin in reg­ular, dou­ble-​strength, and chil­dren’s strength, and five bot­tles of Al­ka-​Seltzer. Af­ter a few mo­ments Smith de­cid­ed his headache both­ered him more than his ul­cer. He shook out three pink-​and-​or­ange chil­dren’s as­pirin tablets and chased them down with min­er­al wa­ter from his of­fice dis­penser.

He re­turned to the screen, rub­bing the spot be­tween his eyes where his eye­glass­es rest­ed on his nose, and where the headache seemed sit­uat­ed. His hands were steady again.

The screen stared back at him. The word “BLOCKED” flashed on and off in glow­ing green let­ters.

In all his years of CURE op­er­ations, Dr. Harold W. Smith had nev­er en­coun­tered such so­phis­ti­cat­ed meth­ods of deny­ing com­put­er ac­cess. He had searched So­cial Se­cu­ri­ty records for da­ta on the name James Church­ward.

The file ex­ist­ed. But he couldn’t get in­to it.

He logged in­to the re­gion­al IRS com­put­er banks around the coun­try. He nev­er learned if there was a file for the man be­cause, some­how, his re­quests were trans­ferred to an­oth­er com­put­er at an un­known lo­ca­tion. A key­board light flashed like an an­gry red eye, warn­ing Smith that his probe was be­ing back-​traced. Smith logged off hasti­ly.

All oth­er at­tempts to ac­cess rou­tine records on James Church­ward met with sim­ilar re­buffs. It was in­cred­ible. As if the per­son, al­though plain­ly in sev­er­al da­ta banks, did not ex­ist. Or was not sup­posed to ex­ist. In all cas­es, there wasn’t even an ac­cess code that would al­low some­one who was pre­sum­ably au­tho­rized to ac­cess those files. This left no doubt what­so­ev­er in Smith’s mind. Who­ev­er he was, James Church­ward was no or­di­nary man. These pro­grams were too so­phis­ti­cat­ed. Smith rec­og­nized the probe trans­fer­ral as a Moe­bius Siphon, a pro­gram he him­self had de­vised years ago for CURE pur­pos­es. Ob­vi­ous­ly he was deal­ing with an op­er­ation as so­phis­ti­cat­ed as his own.

Baf­fled by his com­put­er’s in­abil­ity to re­solve the prob­lem, Smith sent the ter­mi­nal hum­ming back in­to its desk well. Nor­mal CURE re­sources had failed. Smith had on­ly his own wits to fall back on.

He had to get in­to that house. Some­how.

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