Dark Tidings

Chapter 44 - An Information Haystack

"Got you," said Robinson when he was given the news.

He immediately dispatched a team to the man's last known address where they found a whole series of clues and leads amongst the debris of the recently abandoned apartment. Small teams were allocated to follow up each new lead.

In addition to feet on the street, they continued to use facial recognition technology, mobile phone records, credit card transaction analysis, CCTV fractional identification and a host of other hi-tech techniques to help them close in on their targets. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

A couple of discarded printouts of seaside hotels and ferry timetables found in the flat signalled Dover as their destination. Some credit card payments seemed to confirm it... the idiot was still using his credit card.

Half his agents were sent to Dover and another team was dispatched to France in case they'd jumped onto a ferry. There was plenty to check out, there were plenty of clues.

He sat in his office and stared at the photograph of Michael Phillips. What are you up to? Why are you so hard to find, yet you've left so many clues? Something was wrong. Could they be on an elaborate wild goose chase? But what else could he do? The leads were there and had to be followed, particularly those which related to Michael Phillips.

Once Phillips had been identified it didn't take long to find out every detail about him.

"He what?" He slammed his fists hard on his desk and glared at the agent who'd brought him the news.

"He worked in our computer department; a security specialist no less," repeated the agent.

"Bugger, how the hell did we allow that to happen?"

He didn't believe in coincidences. The scroll thieves and the bank theft were linked; he couldn't explain it yet but they were definitely linked. Phillips had perpetrated the fraud and he was in cahoots with the travellers. This guy was no mug; the bank's experts still hadn't worked out how to stop the money leak or how to repair the damage. Here was a dangerous opponent who shouldn't be underestimated, and he had magic on his side.

While a large contingent of the field agents followed through on the Dover and France angles, other smaller teams continued to gather evidence at the Ritz and at Michael's apartment. Collectively they were amassing huge quantities of material which all needed to be analysed. The sheer volume of intelligence was causing information overload. They were in danger of losing a vital piece of knowledge because it was buried in a mountain of dross. Even though this was a risk, they continued to gather CCTV footage and scour each of the hot areas for witnesses or evidence of strange occurrences.

A further, highly technical, group had been assembled and deployed to tackle the IIBE theft problem. This group included computer specialists, IIBE security personnel and, secretly, Occultus Populous software engineers. They were supplemented by teams, from other Council member organisations, who were working backwards from where the money had ended up. Check out the receiving accounts. See how they're all connected. The perpetrator must be linked in some way to these accounts, otherwise what was the point?

Finally, a crack team from Noviru was in place. After all, their software was meant to offer total protection so they were under immense pressure to find an answer.

The IIBE financial systems had now been shut down for nearly four hours and the world was taking notice. Statements and press releases had been issued about computer malfunctions but they would only hold up for a short period and then the panic would start with a potentially crippling effect on the world financial markets.

In total, there were over three thousand people dedicated to fixing the problem and finding Michael, Tung and Madrick. In fact, there were a lot more eyes hunting for them if you counted the outside agencies. The police, MI5 and border control, to name but a few, had their photographs so they were on the lookout too.

***

Buckingham surveyed the mountain of information which had been gathered. They'd made fantastic progress in a very short time. Crucially, they'd identified the three men; the two travellers from the past and their collaborator, Michael Phillips.

The IIBE system leak had been plugged. Well done, Noviru. Their team had spotted where Michael had disabled parts of their software. Once everything had been reinstated, the intelligent software cleansed the system. IIBE was up and running again but the fraud had allowed nearly three hundred billion pounds to flow out to accounts all over the globe. They'd already recovered about fifty billion but Buckingham knew the on-going recovery process would require an enormous amount of time and effort, and he accepted they'd never claw back all their funds.

The bank's reputation had suffered untold damage and this would get even worse once the story of the fraud got out, as it inevitably would. He'd deal with that particular difficulty when it arose. No point in fretting about it now.

They'd minimised the problem at IIBE but it had been a serious distraction. They needed to find the three men quickly but the trail seemed to have gone cold. They had mountains of information although no rock-solid leads. Time to allocate even more resources to the hunt, he had to find these men and the Scroll. And he needed to know why the time-travellers were working with Phillips to defraud IIBE.