Firewall - By Henning Mankell & Ebba Segerberg Page 0,155

its way," Wallander said. "If you need something right now we have good old Swedish rusks, and some leftover pizza. Take your pick."

Modin got up and sat down in front of his computers. The others gathered behind him.

"It took me a while to work this all out," he began. "At first I was convinced that the number 20 which kept turning up had something to do with the year 2000. We already know that Y2K will cause a number of problems in many computer systems. But I never found the missing zeroes, and I also noticed that the countdown looked as if it was set to go off much sooner than the end of the year. Whatever it involves. But I concluded that it had to do with October 20 instead."

Alfredsson shook his head and seemed to want to protest, but Wallander held him back.

"Go on."

"I started looking for the other pieces of the puzzle. We know something here proceeds from the left to the right. There is an end point and that's how we deduce that something is going to happen. But we don't know what. I decided to surf the Web for information about the financial institutions we had already identified. The National Bank of Indonesia, the World Bank, the stockbroker in Seoul. I tried to see if they had anything in common, the point one is always searching for."

"What point would that be?"

"The point of weakness. The one spot where someone could enter the system without anyone noticing."

"But there's a lot of awareness about hackers these days," Martinsson said. "And the business world is getting faster at responding to computer viruses when they emerge."

"The United States already has the capacity to conduct computer wars," Alfredsson said. "Earlier the talk has been about computer-programmed missiles, or 'smart' bombs. But soon that will be as antiquated as cavalry. Now the objective is to dismantle the enemy's networks and knock out their missiles. Or better yet, to direct the enemy's missiles against himself."

"Is this really true?" Wallander said, sceptically.

"It is definitely in the works," Alfredsson said. "But we should also be honest about the fact that there are many things we just don't know. Weapons systems are complicated."

"Let's get back to Falk's computer," Wallander said. "Did you find those weak points?"

"I'm not sure," Modin said hesitantly. "But I think there is a way to see a connection between all of these institutions. They do have one thing in common."

"And what is that?"

"They make up the cornerstones of the global financial network. If you compromised them enough you would be able to set in motion a crisis that could derail all of the world's financial systems. The stock markets would crash. There would be panic. Everyone would rush to take out their money. Currency exchanges would fluctuate wildly until no-one could be sure what the rates should be."

"And who would be interested in causing anything of this nature?"

Martinsson and Alfredsson spoke at the same time.

"Many people," Alfredsson said. "It sounds like the highest form of terrorism imaginable. And there are many people out there eager to cause chaos and destruction."

"Taking out the global financial network would be the ultimate act of sabotage." Martinsson said.

"Does everyone in this room think that that's what we're looking at here? And that something like this is housed in a computer in Ystad?" Wallander said.

"It's definitely something like this," Martinsson said. "I've never come across anything like it before."

"Is it harder to break into than the Pentagon?" Alfredsson said.

Modin narrowed his eyes. "It's certainly not less complicated."

"I'm not sure how best to proceed in this kind of a situation," Wallander said.

"I'll talk to my people in Stockholm," Alfredsson said. "I'll send in a report that will later get sent on all over the world. We have to alert the institutions involved so that they can take precautions."

"If it isn't already too late," Modin mumbled.

Everyone heard him, but no-one made any comment. Alfredsson left the room in a hurry.

"I still find it hard to credit," Wallander said.

"Well, whatever it is in Falk's computer, there are people ready to kill to keep the system and countdown going," Martinsson said.

Wallander gestured at Modin so that Martinsson would understand that he should choose his words with more care.

"The question is: what we can do?" Wallander said. "Is there anything we can do?"

"There's often a button to push," Modin said abruptly. "If you infect a computer system with a virus you often hide it in an innocent and common command. But