A Calculated Risk, Katherine Neville [english novels for students txt] 📗

in his golden voice, that the Bank of the World was calling, and they’d jump to. Money talks—and the bank was as rich as Croesus, even in a bear market.

Pavel buzzed me back with the news that the security head was on the line. “He’s a veep, and the guy’s name—I swear—is Mr. Peacock.”

“Yes, Ms. Banks,” Peacock’s voice bounded exuberantly over the line. (New York bankers always address you as “Ms.”—they’re really with it in New York.) “We do use Theory Z here; we use a quality circle to test all our systems. We put our best and brightest in this group.”

According to Mr. Peacock, his quality circle was trying to break through security and fiddle about with the money—trying to trick the security and control systems, to see if they were smart enough to catch them. The reports of his findings must have been pretty hot stuff.

“For security testing, the name of our quality circle is the SADO team,” he told me. “It stands for Search and Destroy On-line!” He bellowed with laughter. (A trait in our industry is to turn everything into an acronym. I refer to this as the BOME—the Bane of My Existence.)

“So far,” he went on, “we’ve managed to crack our confidential customer password files, we’ve pulled off two active taps, and we planted a logic bomb only last week—we’re still waiting for the explosion! Ha-ha.”

These things were far from mysterious; an active tap means you tap into a phone line while data (read “money”) is being moved, and alter the transaction—change the amount, or make it payable to your account—as opposed to a passive tap, where you “borrow” someone’s bank account number and password and take his money.

A logic bomb is more interesting, but you must have access to the computer to do it; you fix the system so that at a certain moment in the future it will suddenly do something it’s never done before—like depositing money in your account, as a random example.

I was glad Mr. Peacock was so eager to share his experience with a total stranger. But I’d learned what I needed to know, and it had little to do with the success of his work.

I’d be sending out a new proposal tonight. A new idea deserved a new audience—and this one was a dilly: the Managing Committee, the group of big cheeses who decided how budgets would be spent at the bank. Their authority transcended all departments—including Kiwi’s—and though he didn’t sit on the committee, his boss was its chairman.

Using the information Charles had provided me the night before, I built my case. Were they concerned about the defenseless position of our systems? They should be, I told them—even a six-year-old kid could crack our files! But known computer crimes were only the tip of the iceberg; how many crimes had gone unreported? Bankers ought to know the answer to that better than anyone, I thought. They were the ones who didn’t report the crimes. Depositors wouldn’t like to learn that the cash they thought was behind twelve feet of concrete and steel was in fact being shot around the world on telephone wires, with all the security of a transatlantic call.

Once I’d whipped up their fears, I hit high gear: we had the technique, right here at the bank, to solve this dire problem—Theory Z, that wonderful method used so successfully by the Japanese!—a technique that was now official policy, with rave reviews, at major New York banks like United Trust. If the Managing Committee would approve my funding, I’d personally pick the experts and break into our own security, just like that. After all—how else was I going to do it?

I felt wonderful as I handed the proposal to Pavel in an envelope and asked him to stamp every copy urgent and confidential, and to get them out that night. I was confident no one on the committee would oppose it—it found use for a new theory and solved an old problem. Opposing it would be like putting the squelch on mothers and apple pie. Far from being victimized or suspected as a potential thief, I might actually be awarded laurels for ripping off the money and then handing it back with a flourish: Verity Banks, electronic bankette.

I’d avoided Kiwi by staying locked in my office all day. At eight P.M., I pulled on my trench coat, stuffed my work in my shoulder bag, and took the elevator down to the garage. It was dark and deserted, but I knew there were seeing-eye cameras everywhere, so if someone mugged me, the guys upstairs at the security desk could watch it in comfort. I drove up the ramp, popped my badge in the scanner, waited for the big steel gates to swing open, then drove through the fog-thick streets toward home.

When I pulled up before my building, the black streets were still wet with rain. It took quite a while to find a parking slot, but at last I got inside the lighted marble foyer and took the elevator to the penthouse.

I never turned on the lights when I came home. I loved to see the silhouettes of my myriad orchids against the distant lights of the city. Almost everything in my apartment was white—the plumpy sofas, the thick carpets, the lacquered étagères. The tables were thick wedges of glass, and on them were big glass bowls floating white gardenias.

Entering the apartment, one had the feeling of falling through space. The city glittered and shimmered in perpetual mist through the walls of glass, and the white orchids tumbled everywhere, like a jungle climbing up through a cloud.

As much as I loved it, I rarely brought others here. My apartment got mixed reviews and I knew many thought it was a mausoleum or museum to my own isolation. The white womb. And in a way, that’s exactly what it was. I’d worked my ass off for everything I’d earned. And I spent it on what I valued—peace and