“Our client’s system was hacked soon after that party. That was bad
in itself since Wesseling & Kröger had paid good money to prevent exactly such a thing. But it got worse. Apparently the hacker was after the data for a new product that was about to be patented. And shortly afterward, a rival company applied for a patent on a product that was damn close to the prototype Wesseling & Kröger had developed over several years. They suffered a loss in the hundreds of millions.” He stopped and looked out the window.
62
Dead Woods
Raindrops were racing down the windowpane and beyond one
could see the skyline of City Nord. “My software was called the point of entry for the hacker attack. I couldn’t believe it when they told me.
I knew I’d done good work. The mistake must have been made by the
client. An unauthorized user or a mole for the rival company must
have played around with the settings. Or the competition had found
another way to get hold of the data.” He sighed. “The matter was,
of course, investigated. It was established that the . . . mistake was made on our side. And I was the person responsible for the security
loophole.”
“Why was the mistake not discovered earlier?” asked Lina. “With
such an important order, didn’t you check the program one more time
before handing it over to the client?”
Jensen slowly raised his head. “It’s not that simple. A program
like that is incredibly large and consists of thousands of individual sequences. I didn’t write every single one of them myself, of course, but made use of existing modules for part of them—customizing them for
the client. And Daniel Vogler, our second programmer, also looked at the source code every now and then. After all, it’s clear to everyone that mistakes can happen. But he never noticed any problem.”
“And why,” Max interjected, “do you accuse Philip Birkner of hav-
ing ruined you? He was the one, after all, who had to declare bank-
ruptcy. He could just as well have blamed you for ruining him.”
Jensen laughed bitterly. “He has. He accused me of creating the
security gap on purpose.” He inhaled deeply. “But I didn’t. After all, I’m no novice and I know what’s what. I’d never have made such a stupid mistake, but Philip didn’t believe me and even reported me to the police when the patent theft became public knowledge. But I didn’t do it,” he repeated.
“Is there a way to establish that the mistake was made on purpose?”
Lina asked. “I mean, everybody can make a mistake, and—”
63
Maria C. Poets
“Sure, everybody makes mistakes,” Jensen said mockingly, “but I
swear, I would’ve noticed a mistake like that. Even a first-year student would’ve noticed it. Besides, why did the rival firm hack the system exactly then? The mistake would have been detected at the next scheduled update, at the latest.” He drew another deep breath. “Someone
must have manipulated the source code when the software was already
installed at the customers’ site but before the first update. That left only Philip, Daniel, and me. Since it wasn’t me, there’s only Philip and Daniel.”
Max and Lina exchanged a glance. This man was quite convincing
as a wrongly accused victim, but was that what he was?
“Wesseling & Kröger demanded compensation for the entire loss
from Philip,” Jensen continued, “and repayment of what they had paid for the lousy software—even though it ran perfectly. Philip tried to blame me for everything, but Inoware went under nevertheless.” Frank Jensen was staring at the table in front of him without actually seeing anything. “Four months after the five-year jubilee, the business was gone. All twelve employees were out on the street. Philip was the first to get a new job.” Jensen laughed bitterly. “Philip of all people.”
All other staff members eventually found employment, but it
looked bleak for Frank Jensen. The disaster was widely discussed in the industry and the name that was mentioned in the same breath with
patent theft was Frank Jensen. It didn’t matter how loudly he protested his innocence. If it even came to a job interview, the moment Inoware was mentioned, he could hear the “click” on the other side of the table and it was over. It did not help that he was still under investigation for industrial espionage.
“Why was Philip Birkner so sure you were the one who manipu-
lated the data?” Max asked. “Couldn’t it also have been your colleague, Daniel Vogler?”
“That’s what I tried to explain to Philip, but he said that there was no way Daniel was involved; money and