Shadow Puppets (The Shadow 3)

"Oh, I invited her," said Graff. "I don't think you know Colonel Ng

uyen of the IF Digital Security Force."

"No," said Uphanad, rising to offer his hand. "I didn't even know your office existed. Per se."

She ignored his hand and gave a paper to Graff.

"Oh," he said, not reading it yet. "So we're in the clear in this room."

"The message did not use his log-on," she said.

Graff read the message. It consisted of a single word: "Off." The log-on was that of one of the orderlies from the docks.

The time in the message header showed it had been sent only a couple of minutes before. "So my friend is in the clear," said Graff.

"No sir," said Nguyen.

Uphanad, who had been looking relieved, now seemed baffled. "But I did not send it. How could I?"

Nguyen did not answer him, but spoke only to Graff. "It was sent from this console."

She walked over to the console and started to log back on.

"Let me do that," said Uphanad.

She turned around and there was a stun gun in her hand. "Stand against the wall," she said. "Hands in plain view."

Graff got up and opened the door. "Come on in," he said. Two more IF soldiers entered. "Please inspect Mr. Uphanad for weapons or other lethal items. And under no circumstances is he to be allowed to touch a computer. We wouldn't want him to activate a program wiping out critical materials."

"I don't know how this thing was done," said Uphanad, "but you're wrong about me."

Graff pointed to the console. "Nguyen is never wrong," he said. "She's even more methodical than you."

Uphanad watched. "She's signing on as me." And then, "She used my password. That's illegal!"

Nguyen called Graff over to look at the screen. "Normally, to log off, you press these two keys, you see? But he also pressed this one. With his little finger, so you wouldn't actually notice it had been pressed. That key sequence activated a resident program that sent the email, using a random selection from among the staff identities. It also launched the ordinary log-off sequence, so to you, it looked like you had just watched somebody log off in a perfectly normal way."

"So he had this ready to send at any time," said Graff.

"But when he did send it, it was within five minutes of the actual launch."

Graff and Nguyen turned around to look at Uphanad. Graff could see in his eyes that he saw he had been caught.

"So," said Graff, "how did Achilles get to you? You've never met him, I don't think. Surely he didn't form some attachment with you when he was here for a few days as a student."

"He has my family," said Uphanad, and he burst into tears.

"No no," said Graff. "Control yourself, act like a soldier, we have very little time here in which to correct your failure of judgment. Next time you'll know, if someone comes to you with a threat like this, you come to me."

"They said they'd know if I told you."

"Then you would tell me that, too," said Graff. "But, now you have told me. So let's make this thing work to our advantage. What happens when you send this second message?"

"I don't know," said Uphanad. "It doesn't matter anyway. She just sent it again. When they get the same message twice, they'll know something is wrong."

"Oh, they didn't get the message either time," said Graff. "We cut this console off. We cut off the whole station from earthside contact. Just as the shuttle never actually left."

The door opened yet again, and in came Peter, John Paul, and Theresa.