Page 98 of No Questions Asked

“You’d better have a good report for me or you’re all fired.” He’d had enough of the stalling, the excuses, and the technical mumbo jumbo. How hard could it be to hack through one firewall?

“We do,” Vihaan said, exchanging a glance with Krish, his IT guru. “A really good report, brother.”

The band of tension around his neck loosened slightly. He had been encouraged by the fact the vaccine trials had come to a complete halt, but it didn’t do them any good if they couldn’t get the vaccine recipe. “Then what is it?”

“We’ve broken through the firewall and obtained access to the files you wanted. We’ve downloaded them all.”

“Do they contain the information on the vaccine recipe?”

Krish hesitated uncertainly. “Sir, I don’t know. I don’t think it’s prudent to open the files quite yet. They might contain a malware or viruses. My suggestion is to create a virtual server that’s offline from their current systems, transfer the files to the virtual server, and then carefully open and screen each file in that isolated environment.”

Arjun felt his blood pressure rise. “How long would that take?”

“Only a couple of days, but it would ensure that no one could plant hostile code into our systems.”

Arjun bolted up from his chair. “A couple of days? We don’t have time for that. Besides, think about it. They’re a nonprofit organization. They don’t have the money and aren’t sophisticated enough to do something like that. Open the damn files and get them to our scientists, so that they can tell me what we have.Now!”

“Sir, I must protest—” Krish started when Arjun cut him off.

“Do your job or I’ll find someone else who can.”

Krish immediately rose. “Yes, sir.”

“Now get to it. This is your number one priority. Donotfail me. Vihaan, stay a moment, please.”

After Krish had left, Arjun turned to his brother. He stuck a finger in Vihaan’s chest. “It’s your job to make sure he does what’s he’s supposed to. He doesn’t leave this building until it’s done. Are we clear?”

“Yes, brother.”

“Good, and once those files are open, get the information to the scientists at once.”

“Understood.”

As Vihaan headed out the door, Arjun picked up the phone to contact all of his investors about their recent breakthrough. It was about damn time. They’d finally struck gold, and now he needed to make sure everything was lined up perfectly for the grand finale.

Lexi

I still felt shaken by the conversation with Natelli and Lilith, but I had work to do. I pushed aside my emotions and focused.

While waiting for the alert from my computer regarding the files, I started doing more in-depth research on Pharma Star. I couldn’t find them listed on the National Stock Exchange of India, or any other exchange I could find, so I determined they must be privately held. A minute later I was able to find their corporate website in English. It didn’t provide much more than some marketing information. It did mention that they, nonspecifically, were working on solving some of “the world’s biggest problems” and they were on the threshold of commercializing an amazing discovery. The picture of the CEO was plastered on almost every page on the site. Arjun Singh.

I did a cursory security check of the site. It was adequate, but given how little content there was on the site, I suspected there wasn’t much behind the scenes. Besides, I wasn’t going to waste time there when I had another way to get deeper within their system and a lot faster.

I widened my search involving the company and came across several investigative reports written by a reporter from a newspaper in Mumbai. The author, Ajay Dewan, was a young journalist who had somehow stumbled upon some dirty tricks that Pharma Star had done in terms of providing faulty medical devices to Indian hospitals that largely served the poorer population. Subsequent articles by Dewan indicated Pharma Star had been suspiciously absolved of any wrongdoing by a leading Indian politician who had later been arrested in a huge political corruption scandal. It looked like the company hadn’t changed their ways much.

I’d just started reading another article when I received an alert ping from my laptop. I leaned forward, watching the data scroll across my screen.

Score.

The thieves had downloaded the files and my software was now worming its way deep into their system. When my bots were finished, I’d have an invisible backdoor. If the hackers came from Pharma Star, as I expected, I was going to take special pleasure in bringing them down.

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Slash

He returned to the research camp in a good mood. Martim was headed for prison.El Esqueletohad been captured, and his entire drug empire was about to tumble down. He’d sent Lexi some material he’d gathered from Martim’s laptop regarding his connection to the Vaccitex hackers in India, and now it was just a matter of time before they brought them down, too. To top it off, he’d had an intimate, unplanned, and private wedding to the woman he loved with no one in attendance he really knew, and it’d been the best night of his life.

Things were damn good.

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