Chapter 17

Three more days of soaking up the warm Spanish sun and working through the e-mails on the memory stick and Kenny finally finished his task. He now knew the full scope of what he had been ordered to do and could feel the heavy weight of guilt crushing down on his very soul. He knew that he had to be strong and put it all to one side if at all possible while he tried to track down his controller and bring him to justice.

Kenny took several hours to review the notes he had taken of the various technical things he had been ordered to do to protect the e-mail cache. He was fairly confident now that he could turn on the CPU from his old computer without losing control of it or risking more data being deleted. He would need to get his hands on some additional IT kit however. He also knew there was no option but to explore the computer if he was going to be able to follow the trail of the e-mail messages back to their source.

Now, so close to his prize, Kenny was nervous and he delayed the moment of truth. He swam a few laps of the pool in an effort to try to burn off some of the energy that he could feel fizzing around in his body but quickly gave up and pulled himself out and lay drying in the sunshine.

"Okay, there's still some risk that I won't be able to override the controls that have been put in place but I need to take that chance. The sooner I find out who is behind this, the quicker I can try to set the record straight. Come on MacGovern, let's get the finger out!"

Kenny was all action now. He made a quick trip into the nearby town of Fuengirola. The journey was an easy one - he took advantage of the nearby Torremuelle station and the efficient Spanish rail network. It was only a matter of minutes before he was descending the steps from the Fuengirola station and into the milling crowds of tourists.

He managed to avoid the seemingly never-ending army of touts who were trying to sell timeshares and picked up a Spanish phrase book to try to add to his laughable knowledge of the Spanish language. Kenny bypassed the open-air markets and the stalls selling tourist trash in his search for a store that sold IT equipment. While his old CPU had a built-in wireless network card, he knew he needed to buy other components before he would be able to access the Internet with it.

After just over an hour of wandering through the holiday crowds, Kenny stumbled across a store called EIB on a broad thoroughfare. He could see from the window displays that it was more than likely to have what he needed and he entered the shop.

The girl behind the cash desk was soon laughing at his attempts to speak in Spanish but the fact that he was at least making the effort meant that she was more than happy to try to help him. It turned out that Maria's English was all but perfect and she quickly convinced Kenny to put away his phrase book and simply tell her what he was looking for. She picked out a wireless hub/router and the various other pieces of kit that he needed and rang up the sale.

"It is good that you try my language," she said, "too many of the British are arrogant and don't do that. But, you need lots more practice!"

Maria's laugh softened her words and Kenny had to laugh along with her, as his Spanish had indeed been pretty pathetic.

"Gracias, Senorita," he smiled as he left the store with his purchases.

Kenny was able to find his way back to the rail station without too much trouble. The short ride back to Torremuelle was a relief as he enjoyed the cool of the air-conditioned train. Once back at the villa it didn't take him long to set up the new kit and the moment of truth was then upon him.

"Okay, this is it. Time to go phishing!"

Kenny laced his fingers together and straightened his arms, bending his fingers back until his knuckles cracked. He sat at the dining table and plugged the new monitor, keyboard and mouse into his old CPU. There was one final moment of hesitation before he pushed in the button to turn the computer on.

When the message appeared advising press F8 to interrupt start-up Kenny did so and interrupted the normal boot-up procedure. He typed away quickly on the keyboard and brought up some of the software and coding tools that he had designed and cached on the hard drive. The tools helped Kenny unpick the various pieces of code that his controller had ordered him to basically infect the operating system with. He removed the backdoor that enabled the controller to access the computer - that was still a big potential danger. After that he dismantled the various bombs and booby traps that he had set-up under orders and felt sure that the computer was now safe for him to use.

After a re-boot, Kenny let the start-up sequence go through its normal routine. Once that was done, he quickly brought up one of the utility tools he had developed himself and searched for deleted materials on the computer's hard disc.

"Yes! Not so clever now my little controller, are you?"

Kenny's utility programme had located all of the data that his controller had tried to delete. Unlike the method of deletion that Kenny favoured - the US DoD method - the controller hadn't done anything to overwrite those sectors of the hard drive where the deleted data had been. Kenny was able to use the 'ghost' of the original data to fully restore it.

The database of all his former pupils was soon back. He had of course taken some hours under the influence of his own mind-programme to recreate it already, but didn't mind one bit as it was possible his efforts wouldn't have restored absolutely every name. Recovering the original was also somehow more satisfying, a victory against his controller.

The other data he retrieved was also vitally important - the details of the offshore account for the Church of Cyberscience and the security and password details that controlled access to it. Kenny wasted no time in using these to call-up the option to change the password - purposefully cutting off any chance that his controller would be able to use or move the money.

Once he was happy that the data had all been recovered and the offshore funds secured, Kenny called up the directory with all of the stored e-mails from his controller. He had already tried to follow the return e-mail addresses using the back-up version of the e-mails from the memory stick and his laptop. That hadn't been successful, as his controller had clearly set up a very effective firewall. Kenny knew however, that the first message he had opened on this computer had sent an acknowledgement. That sent message would still be somewhere in his 'Sent Items' folder and Kenny hoped it would be the key to tracking his adversary down.

He found the acknowledgement that had been sent and clicked to open the message. Kenny's e-mail was always set up to have the 'Tracking' activated and he now clicked on that tab at the top of the screen to open the details. The screen showed who the recipient of the message was and when they had read it. Those simple few lines confirmed that this message had already passed through the controller's security and been read by him. The fact that the controller's firewall already 'knew' this message, had already vetted and accepted it, should mean that if he re-sent it, it would be accepted again.

Kenny wasted no time in opening up another directory that held more of his own work. He identified his best ever Trojan-horse virus programme. Disguising the virus as a simple link, he embedded it into the old e-mail message. One more click on his computer and the message was on its way to the controller for the second time - hopefully it would do its job and give him access to the controller's PC.

The controller was starting to lose patience. There had been nothing to suggest any progress had been achieved with regard to Kenny MacGovern. Days had now passed since Jason Welsh had been ordered to confess all to the police and since the Hamiltons had been directed to take action against the teacher.

Lifting the phone, the controller dialled the Hamiltons' number, intending to try to force something to happen.

"Hello?"

The controller recognised Duncan's voice.

"Duncan, have you heard of the Church of Cyberscience and what it can do for you?" the controller asked.

"Who the fuck is this? Are you taking the piss? Fuck off!!" Duncan barked harshly and cut the connection.

The controller held the handset out and stared at it in shock. The trigger phrase hadn't worked, Duncan hadn't responded to it. What the hell was going on?

"Shit! It's MacGovern! It has to be him. Somehow he's managed to get to the Hamiltons and he's changed the trigger. Oh fuck, if he's changed the Hamiltons does that mean he's changed everybody?"

The controller scrambled over to the computer and opened up the database. It was a simple matter to compose an e-mail that would substitute a new trigger phrase for the Church of Cyberscience one. Once that was achieved, the controller would stop MacGovern taking back his former pupils. Making up the new trigger phrase was easy but it was a much slower job sending it off to each of the names on the database individually. After sending the first few messages, the controller cursed.

"Stupid!! I should do a mail-merge from the database and do them all in a oner."

That still took almost forty minutes to complete and once the 'bulk' e-mail had been sent, the controller opened the e-mail programme just to confirm the mail-merge had worked. A check of the 'sent items' folder showed that the e-mail had indeed gone out. Switching over to the in-box showed a number of acknowledgements had already been received to show the recipients had read the message. The controller absently deleted these acknowledgements, including the 'rogue' one that Kenny had sent which was mixed in amongst the others.

While the delete key simply consigned all of the other acknowledgements to the controller's 'deleted items' folder, when applied to Kenny's message it also executed the code that activated the virus, setting it loose on the computer's operating system. The anti-virus protection didn't recognise Kenny's programme, as it wasn't one of those in its extensive library of known viruses. It therefore failed to stop the virus establishing a backdoor for its creator's use and also triggering a 'worm' that crawled deeper into the PC's systems to attach itself to some important command files.

When the controller sent another e-mail, the 'worm' took advantage of the outgoing message and attached itself to it, splitting itself off once through the firewall and immediately racing back to Kenny's computer with its host's IP address.

Drew skimmed through the reports in his in-tray. He still had too many cases running at the same time and was expected to deliver results on all of them. The case that he was most focused on however, was the one involving Kenny MacGovern. For once there had initially been good co-operation with the various police forces on mainland Europe and he was already aware that MacGovern had driven through Belgium and France and on into Spain. The teacher's progress had been tracked using roadside cameras and Drew knew that he had gone to ground on Spain's Southern coast.

At that point the assistance from his European colleagues had faltered. Tracing the wanted teacher was clearly not a priority for the Spanish police and Drew's frustration was growing. There had been no new information on MacGovern for days now and Drew's request to be allowed to go to Spain had been refused by Chief Inspector Hugh Graham. For all he knew, MacGovern could already have left Spain - taking advantage of the busy Mediterranean fishing fleets to cross over into Africa or move further along the Med to Greece or Italy.

Drew suspected that the teacher had access to a great deal of cash and he knew that money opened many doors. The detective had to content himself with trying to second-guess what Kenny MacGovern was up to. Was he just trying to avoid being arrested again? Was he simply a fugitive or did he have some other objective in mind?

Kenny disciplined himself to remain in front of his PC once he had sent the virus out to do its job. He knew that if it worked he might only have a brief window of opportunity to take advantage of it. The 'worm' would broadcast the IP address of the computer it had infected every time an e-mail was sent from the host. The problem for Kenny was that he needed to have the IP address while the infected computer was still connected to the Internet if he was to use the backdoor that his Trojan-horse would have established.

He was super-confident in his own abilities and knew that he only needed a few minutes of access to set up a more permanent link to his target. The IP address and the first few minutes were the key therefore and he waited anxiously, checking his screen constantly for the worm's message.

Kenny blinked as a series of numbers suddenly appeared on his screen. [113.422.713.655.12956]

"Yes!" he cried aloud. His fingers flew quickly across the keyboard in front of him, as he stealthily contacted the port at that IP address, the port that his Trojan had opened up for him.

In moments Kenny was inside the other computer's operating system and he now showed all his skill and subtlety as a programmer. Everything he did was light-touch - there were no alarms to alert the user of the other PC that they had an intruder accessing their equipment. Another few keystrokes brought up a listing of all of the hardware that the other computer had installed. Kenny's smile grew when he saw the wireless card - that was a bonus. Using his own utility tools again, he quickly inserted a 'spur' into the IEXPLORE.exe file that controlled the remote PC's access to the Internet. Once that was done he knew he would be able to remain linked to the other PC even if its owner thought they had logged-off of the Internet. Access would only be lost now when the computer was completely turned off.

Kenny was careful not to do too much - running anything too powerful would use up the remote computer's processing capacity and slow its performance down. That would be a warning signal to whoever was at the other end and Kenny was determined to give them no hint of what he was up to. For now he contented himself with typing in the commands that copied the entire contents of the 'My Documents' folder from the other PC. Once that was done, Kenny severed his connection and sat back, sweat pouring from his forehead despite the air-conditioning inside the villa.

He could feel the excitement coursing through him at the prospect of identifying who his controller was. With any luck the personal files that were in the 'My Documents' folder would include something that identified the PCs owner. Kenny knew he might only be a few mouse clicks away from revealing who had been controlling his life, who had been ordering him around for years now. He took a deep breath to compose himself and then focused his attention on the computer once more.

There were a series of sub-folders set up within the My Documents folder - My Music, My Pictures, My Datasources and My eBooks. Kenny opened My Music and found hundreds of MP3 files. He browsed through the files, taking note of the names of the bands and finding himself complimenting the other on their taste. George Thoroughgood, AC/DC, Eric Clapton, BB King ... the list went on and most of them were bands that Kenny both knew and enjoyed himself. There was nothing there however, that gave any real clue as to the identity of the controller.

Kenny clicked on My datasources next and was presented with a series of files that he recognised as the files that made up his own database of former pupils. That at least removed any doubt that he had identified the correct computer. No one else would have a copy of that database. Now all he had to do was identify its owner.

My eBooks proved to be an empty folder and of no use whatsoever.

He had saved what he thought would be the most useful folder for last. He felt strongly that the My Pictures folder was probably the most likely to give him the answers he wanted - images of the computer's owner. Kenny clicked on it now and was dismayed to find that it too was empty. Apparently the user of the other PC wasn't big on storing images. Kenny cursed his misfortune.