“Slowly. The paper records are revealing very little, and we haven’t been able to hack into any of the computers yet.”
“What about the people arrested last night? Some must be users, aren’t they giving us their passwords?”
“Those we’ve talked to so far have been too scared; it appears that the systems are networked to somewhere outside so individual’s logins can be monitored and they don’t want to be known as the weakness.”
“But that also means someone could start wiping the information!”
Laura and Nat had been standing close by, looking about, but turned their attention to Cezar on hearing his sudden change of tone; he was clearly concerned.
“Yes, we know. Someone is already online from elsewhere. Those guys over there,” the man paused to point to a series of computer racks in a corner, “are rapidly trying to take a copy of everything from the servers. Once they’ve downloaded as much as they can, they will disconnect from the outside world in case the encryption prevents copies being taken.”
“Can the outside be traced?”
“Not yet. Some others are trying to back-trace the contact.”
“What about head office?”
The intense conversation had gripped Laura and Nat, even though they couldn’t understand. They merely waited impatiently until Cezar could let them know what was going on.
The man looked puzzled, so Cezar explained. “They could also try to hack into the network in the hopes of both accessing files and tracing the outside contact.”
“I can ask, but these guys are from head office.”
“Yes, but there will be greater processing power back there!”
“Good point.” The man took out his mobile phone to make a call and Cezar quickly explained what was going on and how the team was racing against time and an unknown remote user.
“All the more reason to lean on the users!” Nat’s sympathy for the captured workers was very low.
“Offer a few of the users protective custody in Britain,” Laura suggested. “If this is Emilio Arroz, I’m not surprised that he’s used scare tactics – we’ve come across it before. I’m sure we can make someone disappear.”
Cezar nodded and started making a few calls of his own.
“Oh I feel so useless!” Laura remarked to Nat as they wandered outside to wait for Cezar to drive back to the hotel for lunch and meet up with Rob.
* * *
By mid-afternoon, Laura and Nat had finished showing Rob around the production hall and residential block.
“Still no progress,” Laura sighed as they hovered around the administrative office area.
“Hacking into secure servers takes time,” Nat tried to soothe.
“Yes, but we don’t have time!”
Knowing that his friends didn’t like hanging around doing nothing and that they had already spent hours doing just that, Rob was keen to refocus them. “How about showing me the loading bay area and the vehicles?” he suggested.
Nat’s bored expression was echoed by Laura’s response, “Oh Rob, I’ll come with you, but am really not sure of the point.”
“Maps,” Rob explained as they walked, Nat tailing them for want of something to do. “The chemicals have to be delivered somewhere and from what Cezar has said, no instructions have been found in the admin office for the drivers.”
“True,” admitted Nat, “But that’s hardly going to tell us what the chemicals are going to be used for.”
“I tend to agree with Nat,” Laura commented. “Consider the levels of production here and the comparatively small quantity we found on the south coast – they are clearly spreading the deliveries and storage.”
“Agreed, but something doesn’t stack up with that thought process.”
“Oh, really?” Laura gave Rob a hard stare.
“Yes. If that were the case, there would be so many drop-off points that I am sure more would have been found.”
After a long fifteen minutes they grouped together again having been through every remaining vehicle. Standing in the storage area behind loading dock, they looked at the motley selection of papers they had gathered.
“Not much,” suggested Nat. “Maybe we should go back to the office, see if they’ve found anything yet.”
“Wait a moment,” Rob replied and started to rummage through piles of paper in the drawers of the desks in the room.
“Looks like rubbish!” Nat commented.
Gradually, Rob started to pull out road map after road map from various hanging files, all just sheets of paper, but each had an assortment of markings scrawled on.
“Maybe there is something here,” Laura said as she scanned a number of the sheets.
Nat peered over her shoulder as Rob continued to find even more sheets. “We need to group them by country,” he suggested. “I’m not geographer, but the language is a give-away!”
“Just like a jigsaw puzzle,” Rob remarked when he joined them fifteen minutes later with a final bundle of map extracts.
“Well don’t stand around gawping!” Laura chided. “Nat has made a start with Britain. You and I are covering Europe.”
