GENESIS (GODS CHAIN) (30 page)

Ciriaco stood up
,
bent over the side of his desk and touched Francesca’s wrist tenderly.
Looking deep into her sensual brown eyes
, he said:

‘I would not have had it any other way
,
Francesca
.
I
ndeed
,
it was my,
u
h, pleasure
.
’
He
squeez
ed
her
h
and gently. ‘Maybe we could catch a
c
appuccino later
,
after work?’
his voice was
like
that of
a little boy who had stolen a sweet and was caught by the shopkeeper
:
What do you say, come on
!
F
or me, eh?
 

‘So
,
who was manning the
h
elpdesk
Wednesday
evening
,
then?’
Francesca said suddenly,
avoiding
his question and remembering her confusion
.

Ciriaco’s
face changed slightly
—he looked
taken aback, disappointed.
It was his turn to blush and
he
answered in a low
tone
.
His green eyes stared at her
somewhat
boyish
ly.

‘It was me
,
but I left a little early
.
D
o not tell anyone, please Francesca.’

‘Si
,
’
she answered quickly,
her heart rac
ing at the thought of a
new romance.

‘
Grazie
for not
telling anyone,
Francesca
,
’
he said,
looking a little embarrassed.

‘No,
s
i
,’ she brushed off his gratitude.
‘How
about 7:15
p.m.
tonight, at
C
afé Dabbruzzi’s
,
just outside the city. You know
the place
....
We can talk about forgiving your absence last night
then
.’ Fran
cesca
laughed.

‘
Si, si
,
I will be there
,
’
Ciriaco
said with a
look
of
amaze
ment
; he
almost fell back onto
his
chair.
H
e
watched as Francesca
walk
ed
away from him with
a
light if not flighty bounce in her step.

There were a few helpdesk calls
al
ready in his call queue.
‘
Si,
IOR Helpdesk
,’ he said in a friendly tone as he
fielded another call for the Vatican Bank.
‘Ciriaco speaking, how can
I
help you?’

Smiling happily a
s she sat
down at her console
,
Francesca began tapping in
to the database
.
She
felt energetic and full of life.
Good to go
,
g
irl!
Good to go!
she cheered herself on.
Looking over to her right,
she saw that
Jonathan
had already arrived.
Her smile disappeared as she
focused intimately
on
her immediate technical responsibilities.

Still, she couldn’t help but look over at the contractor from time to time.
Jonathan’s desk was unusually untidy
—in fact,
i
t was an absolute mess
.
H
ardcopy lay all over the area
,
and a few sheets
were
scattered on the floor near his desk.
He looked
intense
ly
busy
as he read
through reams of computer program printouts
, s
crutinising each character, head down and roving left to right quickly.
Francesca wondered what had gone
wrong.

**********

Paulina’s major responsibility was to
maintain
Noah and
the Vatican’s f
ire-wall
.
Noah was a critical and a sensitive
s
erver used for performing security checks on people
.
The Vatican spen
t
serious money on
security
,
believing that
confidentiality and privacy was paramount
to a successful organisation
.
Therefore, o
nly Internal Audit (
VIA
)
p
ersonnel and a few more senior
personnel had
access to Noah.
Access was permitted only through the o
perat
ion of
a computer application called Prayer-Seeker
,
or “
PS”
for short
.

The system unified various searching applications
,
engines and
s
piders
,
using inherent heuristic techniques in one user interface. By utilising artificial intelligence techniques
with
AI language Prolog 2010 processing algorithms
and
lightning speed multiprocessor threading
, Paulina could
find out just about anything about any
person
or
organisation
.
Noah
could probably tell you what colour of underwear a person
is
wear
ing,
if you asked it to.

Probes and targeting Applets
were
sent out to interrogate foreign systems
and discovered
ma
n
y things, most
of which was
rubbish
,
and
then sort
ed
the debris in
to a  comprehensive collection
,
much
like
how
trash
that’s been
taken to the dump
will be sorted through by people interested in garnering information from un
-
shredded documents
.
It was a
ll perfectly
legal due to new data protection legislation passed this year in the EEC.

The program could second
-
guess decisions made by individuals and company directors with a
n uncanny
degree of accuracy
; it would be a
very powerful application if it f
e
ll into the wrong hands.
Francesca looked around for Paulina
, feeling her head being
nipped
at the mere thought
of all the possible and dire consequences of any security breach
to
her system.

I will speak with Paulina
as soon as
she arrives
,
Francesca
decided.
I’ll do my morning checks first
,
but there is certainly a big security breach on “Noah”.
A hole in this ship and the
a
rc will sink.
...

If
the server is really
compromised
,
then the shit will hit the fan at all levels
—
personally, morally and politically!
she groaned a little as she thought about it.
It will be difficult to keep
it
out
of
the papers
....
The wrath of God will smite this department with an iron fist
,
for sure
.
The Vatican
Gendarmerie
will need to be informed.
...