Читать книгу The Insider - Ava McCarthy - Страница 14

11

‘Why do you want to hack?’

Thirteen-year-old Harry groped for an answer that would impress this dark, good-looking boy with the half-smile. She couldn’t think of one, so she just told the truth.

‘Because I can.’

She waited for his reaction, but there was none. Instead he seemed absorbed by the collection of soldering irons and screwdrivers that littered her bedroom shelves. He was dressed all in black, like a young priest, and his hair fell in a heavy fringe over thick brows. If only she wasn’t wearing her brown school uniform and ugly lace-up shoes.

Her mother had shown him up to her room, acting as though the FBI had landed on their doorstep. When he’d introduced himself as Dillon Fitzroy, an investigator with the Dublin Stock Exchange, a whisper of fear had tickled Harry’s spine.

She watched as he picked up one of the screwdrivers and tapped the business end against one hand.

‘So tell me, why Pirata?’ he said, referring to her hacker pseudonym.

‘Pi-rrata,’ corrected Harry, pronouncing the word with a rolling ‘r’ and rapid-fire delivery. ‘It’s Spanish for pirate.’

It suddenly sounded childish, but he nodded as though this were a sensible choice. He held her gaze, compressing his mouth into a neat smile. ‘Is it okay if I ask you these questions?’

She nodded and felt the heat rise in her cheeks. She sat down on the bed and glared at her chunky shoes, willing her fiery colour to subside. She was acutely aware of her mother standing on the other side of the door, listening to every word.

Dillon’s eyes swept the room, taking in the jumble of dismantled computer hardware and gutted radios. ‘Are you building something?’

She attempted a casual shrug. ‘Put me in a room with a box that has wires in it and I’ll take it apart.’ Then she bit her lip, regretting the flippant attitude. She was in trouble here, and she knew it.

Dillon wheeled out the chair from under her desk. There was a large red parcel on the seat. Harry snatched it out of his way and cradled it on her lap. He sat down facing her, arms folded.

‘You understand why I’m here, don’t you?’ he said.

Now they were getting to it. She stared at the floor. ‘Yeah.’

‘Mind if I take a look?’ He gestured towards her PC.

She shook her head, but he’d already turned round to face the screen. His fingers sped across the keyboard. Harry edged further along the bed until she was close enough to see what he was doing. Text flew up the screen as he browsed through her files and checked out her hacking tools.

‘Nice house you live in,’ he said, without looking at her.

Harry raised her eyebrows. ‘I suppose. We’ve only been here a year.’ She looked at the frothy white curtains and the lacy bed linen. It was a princess’s room. Absurd that she should still miss the poky converted attic she’d shared with Amaranta, with its narrow divans and the skipping rope her sister had stretched along the floor to demarcate her territory. But her dad had got this new job. Her mother harped on about how badly the Schrodinger job had ended, but her dad said this time everything would be different. He was right about that.

She turned back to Dillon to find him watching her. His gaze flicked over her school uniform and came to rest on the shoes that made her look like she had club feet. She closed her eyes in mortification.

‘Did you move schools too?’ he said, turning his attention back to her files.

Something gnawed at her insides the minute she thought about school. She shrugged, and made the kind of face that said it was no big deal.

‘Yeah, but I can handle it. Except all they talk about are skiing holidays and designer clothes.’ She lowered her voice and nodded towards the door. ‘Mum thinks I should be making more friends.’

‘Mums are hard to please.’

She darted a quick look at him. There was no hint of mockery in his dark eyes.

He indicated the package on her lap. ‘Christmas present?’

She shoved the parcel to one side. ‘It’s for my dad. Haven’t given it to him yet.’

‘He’s away?’

‘He played poker on Christmas Eve. He’ll probably turn up in a day or two.’

Dillon stopped what he was doing. ‘He missed Christmas?’

Harry shrugged. ‘He misses most Christmases.’

Dillon was silent for a moment. She shoved the parcel on to the bed, the contents rattling. She’d bought her father a full poker set: six hundred plastic chips, two decks of cards and a thick rule book, all stored in their own shiny black case. She’d saved up for it for months.

Dillon turned his attention back to the screen. His eyes narrowed as he worked through one of her files, and Harry peered at the screen to see what had caught his interest. It was the code for one of the hacker tools she had designed herself.

With a staccato flick of the keys, Dillon snapped the file shut and opened up another one. He scrolled down through it, and then stopped to examine it line by line. He gave a low whistle, his eyes riveted to the screen.

He pointed to a line in the code. ‘What’s this bit doing?’

Harry read through it and then started to explain her design, the words tumbling over each other in her impatience to communicate her ideas. She had to lean across him to reach the keyboard, and she became aware of the warmth of his body and the light spicy soap that he used.

When she finished, he looked at her for a long moment, his eyes searching her face. ‘Did you do all this yourself?’

‘Yes.’ Harry took a deep breath. ‘Can I ask you a question now?’

‘Sure.’ His eyes never left hers.

‘How did you find me?’

‘That was easy. You posted too many details of your exploit on the bulletin boards. Security guys monitor those things all the time, you know. Stay online long enough and we can track you down, too.’

Harry felt like an idiot. So simple. She’d been careless. But then, she wasn’t used to hiding.

Dillon tapped a few keys and closed down her files. Then he spun the chair so that he was facing her. He picked up the screwdriver again and began turning it end over end on the desk.

‘You interfered with trading records belonging to the Dublin Stock Exchange,’ he said. ‘Do you know what happened when they found the error?’

‘No.’

‘The database administrator almost lost his job.’ Dillon leaned forward, his face stern. ‘He’s only twenty-four and his wife is pregnant.’

Harry hung her head. Her skin crawled as though she had a nasty rash. ‘I didn’t think. It seemed such a small thing to do.’

Dillon shook his head. ‘You’re not just messing with computers here, you’re screwing up people’s lives.’

She couldn’t look at him. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘So tell me about the other systems you’ve damaged.’

She jerked her head up. ‘But I’ve never done anything like this before. I don’t damage things, I just look around.’

He watched her for a moment. She couldn’t tell if he believed her. Then he tossed the screwdriver on to the desk with a clatter and folded his arms, as though he’d made up his mind.

‘Okay, I’ve seen how you hack,’ he said. ‘Now I want to know why.’

‘But I’ve told you why.’

‘No, you haven’t. Your answer was a cop-out. Tell me again. Why do you want to hack?’

Harry’s mind went blank. What kind of answer was he looking for? She felt as if she was back at school, with the teacher asking a series of questions designed to lead her to a single answer. But what was it?

She tried to analyse how she felt when she started an exploit. ‘Okay, well, maybe I love to break into things and be somewhere I shouldn’t.’

‘So you like taking risks. Why? Does it make you feel powerful?’

Harry thought of the way the hairs stood to attention on the back of her neck whenever she felt close to cracking a system. She thought of the exhilaration that pumped into her bloodstream like a drug as she unlocked the final door into someone’s network. He was right. Hacking made her feel powerful in a way no other part of her life ever could. But there was something else.

She shook her head. ‘That’s part of it, I suppose. But mostly I just don’t believe people when they tell me I can’t break into a system. Just because it says it in the manual doesn’t make it true.’ She rubbed her nose, as if that would unscramble her thoughts. ‘I know there’s always a way in, if I stick at it long enough.’

‘So it’s about the technology? You want to find out what makes it tick?’

‘Yeah, in a way. It’s like … I dunno.’ She looked into his face. ‘It’s like finding the truth.’

Dillon’s eyes glowed and he sat very still. ‘That’s exactly what hacking is all about. The search for truth.’

Then he leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and clasped his hands in front of him. His face was inches from hers.

‘People think hacking is all about destruction, but nothing could be wider of the mark. It’s about exploring the technology, about pushing it to its limits and sharing the knowledge. A true hacker expands his mind beyond what’s in the books or what he’s been taught. He finds a way to do things when conventional thinking fails.’ Dillon locked eyes with hers. ‘Hacking is good. It’s people that are bad.’

He grasped her hands in his. A flash of heat shot through her and something jolted inside her chest.

‘Think of hacking as an attitude,’ he said. ‘We don’t just hack computers, we hack our whole lives.’ He squeezed her hands, pumping them for emphasis, and his eyes burned into hers. ‘Never let yourself be limited by what other people tell you. Never accept their version of how things have to be.’

Harry listened, mesmerized. Limited. That described how she felt every minute of her day. Boxed in by her mother, who was always so disappointed in her; labelled at school where she failed to measure up. With a flash of insight, Harry realized he was telling her how to cope with her life.

Without warning, Dillon dropped her hands and sat back, as though suddenly embarrassed at his own intensity. ‘End of lecture. Thanks for talking to me.’ He jumped to his feet and headed for the door. ‘I’ll see myself out.’

Harry stood up, dizzy at the sudden change. ‘But wait – what happens now?’

Dillon shrugged. ‘Probably nothing. I’ll need to inform your parents about everything you’ve been doing, but no one’s going to prosecute a thirteen-year-old girl. Do it again though, and you’ll be in trouble.’

He stood with his hand on the doorknob and looked over at her, his eyes still slightly feverish. ‘Someday I’ll have my own company, with the best engineers in the country.’ His lips twitched, and he winked at her. ‘Stay out of jail long enough and maybe I’ll hire you.’