Chapter 44 Chapter 42: An Apartment Somewhere in Rome

Paula drove to the address given by Anthony, not quite sure where to go.There were rows of apartments, and they waited at the door, and Anthony rang a bell. "You friend, how much do you know about him?" "Let me tell you this, he was the guy who turned up in the last case I did for my old superior. The kid was 14 years old and a real rebellious teenager. Since then, how should I say it, I've been his Spiritual guide, never lost touch." "Now he serves you, Father?" "Pola, if you don't ask me such direct questions, I can save myself from telling lies that you can see."

Five minutes later, Anthony's friend got up and let them in.The man was also a priest, a young priest.He let them into a small room with some cheap furniture.The room was very tidy, with two windows, both with Persian blinds, and a long table at one end with five hard drives and five monitors side by side.There were so many lights twinkling under the table, it was like a forest full of Christmas trees.At the other end of the room is a bed, the quilt on it has not been folded, obviously the owner of the bed was still sleeping a few minutes ago. "Albert, let me introduce Officer Paula Dicandi. We are working on a case together."

"Hi Father Albert." "Please just call me Albert." The young priest smiled and almost bared his teeth. "I'm sorry I'm a mess here, man, Anthony, what made you come to me at this hour? I don't want to play chess right now. You could have told me you were coming to Rome, I knew you were here last week , but I wish you would tell me the news yourself." "Albert was ordained a priest last year. He is an impulsive young man, but also a computer whiz. Now he is going to help us." "What are you doing here at this time? You old monster?"

"Albert, please. You have to save me face in front of the ladies." Anthony said, pretending to be offended, "We need you to provide a list." "What list?" "A list of every Vatican-accredited journalist." Albert's expression became serious. "This is not easy." "Don't be funny, Albert, you can get in and out of the Pentagon computer room as easily as you can go to the bathroom alone." "Nonsense," said Albert, but his smile gave him away. "Even if it is true, it has nothing to do with what you said. The Vatican intelligence system is like the city of Mordor in "The Lord of the Rings". You can't get in."

"Then let us try, Frodo twenty-six. I'm sure you've already paid a visit." "Shh - don't say my hacker code so loudly, are you crazy?" "Sorry." Albert looked serious, scratching his chin, where there were a few small red rashes.He looks at Anthony. "Must it be? You know I don't have permission. That's against the rules." Paula really wanted to know who would authorize such a thing. "Someone's life is threatened. Albert, we are people who never play cards according to common sense." Anthony glanced at Paula and asked her for help.

"Could you help us, Albert, have you entered before?" "Yes, Officer Paula, I entered once, but I didn't go very far. I swear I've never felt so fucking dangerous in my life. Pardon my words." "Relax, I've heard those words before. So what happened to you?" "They found out that I was invading, so they automatically activated a program and released two security dogs to follow me all the time." "What do you mean? You know I don't know anything about you." Albert cheered up, he liked to talk about his work. "There are two hidden servers waiting to deal with intruders. When I entered, they used all their strength to capture. One of the servers searched for my address everywhere, and the other started hunting with traps."

"Clip?" "For example, if you want to cross a ditch, there are many stones on the surface of the water. What the computer has to do is to remove these stones, so that I can put my feet on it and put some false information on it. It's like Troy with many heads. Trojan horse." Albert brought his guest a chair and a small table, and Paula sat at the table.Apparently he doesn't have many visitors.Then he sat himself down at the desk next to the computer. "Is that a virus?" "It's a very powerful virus. If I had gone one step further, its program would have wiped my hard drive and I was completely captured by it. That was the only time I used the crisis button."

Albert pointed to a red button, which looked very inconspicuous on the side of the largest monitor. The button was connected to a piece of wire buried under many wires. "what is this?" "That button can cut off the power on one floor here, and it will automatically restore after 10 minutes." Paula asked Albert why he had cut the power to the first floor instead of unplugging his own computer cord, but Albert had stopped listening to her and was staring at the monitor, fingers flying across the keyboard. , Anthony explained for him. "This information can be transmitted in seconds. If Albert crouched down and unplugged, he would lose many seconds. It would be very critical, you know what I mean?"

Paula understood half of what the two men were saying, and was not too interested.The most important thing now is to find that Spanish reporter, and if they need to do it, do it.Anyway, the sooner the better.The two priests had apparently done this before. "What is he going to do now?" "He would bring up a screen, and I don't know exactly how he did it, but I do know that he connected his computer with hundreds of other computers, formed a long queue, and finally reached the Vatican's network system. This kind of The more complex the camouflage, the better, and it will take them longer to find Albert's computer, but there is a buffer zone that is absolutely insurmountable. Each computer should only know the previous computer it was connected to, It's the computer in front that allows it to link, and only knows the name of this computer when they link. That way, if the link is disturbed before they find Albert, they can't find anything."

The rhythmic sound on the keyboard lasted for a quarter of an hour.About every minute or so a red dot on a world map is connected to a computer.There are now hundreds of red lights on it, covering much of Europe, as well as North Africa, the United States, Canada and Japan.Paula found that the density of red lights was particularly high in rich countries, whereas in Africa there were only one or two.There are a dozen more in Latin America. "Every red dot you see on that monitor is a computer that Albert used to link, in sequence, to access the Vatican's system. The more geographically distant the links, the more effective the sequence .”

"How does he know that one of these computers is not turned off at this time, will that affect the whole process?" "I have records on every computer," Albert's voice seemed distant.His fingers were still flying across the keyboard. "I try to use computers that don't shut down as much as possible, these days with file sharing programs that allow a lot of people to download music and pornography day and night without shutting down. These computers are the best for connecting to our sequence. My favorite One of them is..." He named a very well-known political figure in Europe. "The old guy likes to see pictures of young girls with horses, and I get him pictures of golfers every now and then, God forbid that twisted mind." "Then you are not afraid to substitute one evil for another?" Albert laughed when he heard Anthony's joke, but he didn't take his eyes off the screen and his hands didn't stay idle.Finally he caught his breath. "We're going in soon. But I warn you, we can't copy anything. The system I use is a computer that serves me, and once it exceeds a certain number of kilobytes, it will automatically clear the information. So you better remember Well, now they have 60 seconds until they spot us." Anthony and Paula nodded.Anthony directed Albert to start searching. "Okay, we're going in." "Go to the press room, Albert." "Okay, here we are." "Looking for a list of authorized media." About two miles away, in the basement of the Vatican's office building, the "archangel," one of the Vatican's secure computer systems, is at work.It automatically detects that a foreign computer has entered the system from the jobs it runs every day.It starts a program immediately, and the first computer activates the other, this one is called "San Marco", both of which are Cray supercomputers, which can execute hundreds of millions of instructions per second.Each is worth $250,000.Now both are running simultaneously, counting and searching for intruders. The alarm light on the main monitor came on, and Albert pouted. "Oh, here they come. We don't have a minute. There's no authorization for this." Paula tensed up.She saw the red lights on the world map start to go off one by one.There were hundreds at first, but they are disappearing rapidly. "Press pass." "Not found, oh my god, 40 seconds to go." "Why don't we call it the media group?" Paula suggested. "Found it, there are 30 seconds left." A list appeared on the screen, which was a database. "Damn, there are more than 3,000 units here!" "Search by country, bring up Spain." "Okay, 20 seconds left." "Damn, there are no photos here, how many names are there?" "More than 50, there are still 15 seconds." Now there are only 30 red dots left on that world map. 3 went out again. "Exclude men's names, and only check the list of girls, in order of age." "Alright, 10 seconds left!" Paula's hands were clenched into fists.Albert took one hand off the keyboard and reached for the red alarm button.He tapped on the keyboard with his other hand, big drops of sweat dripping from his brow. "Okay, it's the end, there are 5 seconds left, Anthony!" Anthony and Paula struggle to remember the names on the screen.Before they finished watching, Albert had already pressed the red button.The screens in the entire apartment went black all of a sudden. "Albert," said Anthony in the dark. "What, Anthony?" "Have you no candles?" "You should know I never use those analog systems, Anthony."

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