Royal Heist by Lynda La Plante Page A

appropriated by criminal organizations. The May Day riots, which gathered protesters and support worldwide, had been almost exclusively organized on the Internet. Even the Mafia carried out cyber-meetings these days. Crime was committed behind a hidden web of corruption and orchestrated from a simple keyboard. A teenage hacker had broken into the U.S. defense system and another into the Bank of England. De Jersey was astonished that American institutions were so vulnerable and so accessible. In the aftermath of the recent terrorist attacks, there was more security everywhere, but the dangers in cyberspace continued unabated.
    Restricted information could be accessed through password-sniffing programs. Hackers disguised their computers rather than themselves to acquire sensitive information. Computer credit-card fraud was big business. De Jersey was concentrating so hard that he didn’t hear Christina walk in. She was carrying a shirt. “What on earth is this on your cuffs?” she asked. “It’s on the collar too.” She held up the shirt he had used as Philip Simmons, and he couldn’t think what to say.
    “It looks like makeup to me,” she said suspiciously.
    “You’ve caught me out,” he said.
    “What do you mean?”
    He grinned sheepishly. “It’s fake tan.”
    “What?” she said, taken aback.
    “Well, I looked so bloody pale I tried it out, but it turned me orange so I washed it off.”
    “Well, it’s ruined the shirt.”
    “Chuck it out, then.”
    She flicked it toward him. “You silly old sod—wait till I tell the girls how you were trying to impress this banker. No, don’t tell me, he was a woman!”
    “No, but he was twenty years younger than me.” He laughed.
    “You
will
be pale and feeble if you keep yourself holed up in here,” she said. “What on earth are you doing?”
    “Moving into the high-tech world. It’ll cut down on all that paperwork.”
    “Will it? But you don’t know what you’re doing, do you?”
    “I’m learning,” he said.
    “You should get Tom to help you, he’s doing a computer course.”
    “Tom who?”
    “The vicar’s son—Tom Knowles.”
    De Jersey looked at his computer. “Maybe you should get him to come over—sooner rather than later.”
    “I’ll do it now, then,” she said and left the room. De Jersey tapped the desk. He should have dumped the shirt before he came home. He would never have made a mistake like that in the past.
    A few moments later Christina was back. “Tom is ready, willing, and able. I said you’d pay him per hour.”
    Tom Knowles was training as an information technology tutor at a local college. He was small and skinny, and wore thick-rimmed glasses. He arrived promptly each morning at nine o’clock and stayed for two hours.
    One day he opened his laptop as usual and said to de Jersey, “Right, sir, last session you wanted to look into Web privacy. The best way to keep your personal data personal is by not giving it out in the first place. So, if I wanted total electronic privacy, I’d start with a made-up name or nickname for my e-mail account, using Hotmail or Yahoo!, for example. They’ll ask you for personal information, but there is nothing to say that you have to tell them the truth. Always skip any optional fields. If, however, you want to order things off the Net, you’ll have to give your address. If this is a concern, you can get a post-office box.”
    De Jersey nodded.
    “You may think that surfing the Net is an anonymous activity, but every Web site you contact keeps a record of your computer IP address. Combine that with your ISP’s logs, and you’re right in the spotlight.”
    De Jersey pursed his lips. “Are there ways to cover your tracks when you’re on-line?” he asked, staring at Tom’s small screen.
    “There are ways to hide behind someone else’s IP address, but I don’t know much about that. You’d have to talk to someone who’s more knowledgeable in that area.”
    “And what about these