Chapter 6 #3
She’d also set up a history tracker on her data so she could see who had accessed it and when.
Fortunately, Vasquez had insisted that she store the research and work she was doing for him in an online database accessible only to his technical team. That had been another place Marta had inserted a backdoor into the data and added a history tracker there as well.
She brought up another tab in the browser and keyed in the URL for Vasquez’s data repository and entered through the backdoor.
It took several seconds before she could get in, and what she found made her gut clench.
Vasquez hadn’t wasted time bringing in another scientist. Someone had been working with the data, testing samples and documenting discoveries.
From what she could tell, whoever was doing it was getting dangerously close to discovering her sabotage.
Already, that person had adjusted the sequence in the binding protein.
But who was it?
The history only indicated an IP address. She’d need to trace that IP address back to the location and person it belonged to. That could take time. More time than she had.
She went into the WHO site where her data about the pathogen was stored and searched the history for anyone who had visited, excluding her own login ID.
She confined the search to the period of time in which she had been held captive.
There were only two hits against the data during that time.
She took a screenshot of the login names and expanded her search to the months between her dismissal from the CDC and her trip to Bogotá, where Vasquez’s men had snatched her.
Several login IDs came up. She took a screenshot of them as well.
One by one, she performed lookups of the login IDs, identifying the scientists or administrators who’d accessed her data.
The two who had looked at the information during her captivity were members of the WHO legal counsel.
They’d looked at the data shortly after Marta had been taken by Vasquez.
She’d bet they had gone in to find out what she knew that given someone else a reason to take her.
The people who’d accessed her research before she’d been taken included one of her former coworkers at the CDC.
One who’d escaped the mass layoffs. She wasn’t a research scientist but a project manager whose job had been to keep work on track to meet specific deadlines.
More than likely, she had been charged with determining which projects they could now work on with the extremely limited staff remaining in the organization.
Another ID belonged to a German scientist, Felix Krauss, with whom she had collaborated over a year ago about a similar, less deadly pathogen than the one she was now studying.
He’d been helpful, if a bit arrogant, about working with a female.
She’d put up with his misogynistic attitude in order to get the information and access to his findings.
They had been helpful, but not as detailed as her research had become.
When she tried to pull up his profile, she received an error, stating that the person was no longer with the WHO.
Marta searched the web for Felix Krauss.
Several articles cited his pandemic-related research, lauding his contributions in educating the public on protocols for staying safe.
Then she found an article from an internet-based magazine blasting Krauss for falsely alerting Europe to a pandemic that didn’t happen.
His research had been inconclusive, yet he’d raised the alarm anyway.
He’d been publicly humiliated, and WHO had claimed they hadn’t approved his announcement.
The date of the article was fairly recent—two months before Marta’s abduction.
His access to her data occurred after the online article and before he was fired from WHO.
Was Krauss the scientist Vasquez had recruited to finish Marta’s work?
One way to find out would be to trace the IP address of the person who’d been mucking around with the data on Vasquez’s repository.
“Find anything interesting?” Crusher’s voice jerked her out of her musings.
“Maybe,” she said and turned to face Crusher. “Do you have access to someone who can trace an IP address to its physical location?”
“Actually, I do. What’s the address?” He leaned over her shoulder as she brought up the screenshot of the IP address. He keyed it into the burner phone and sent a text. “The organization Royce and I work with has a dedicated computer guru who can perform miracles with a computer and the internet.”
“Even if the address has a virtual private network?”
Crusher nodded. “Swede and his team can do almost anything.”
“While he’s at it, could he look into Felix Krauss?”
“And he is…?” he asked as he keyed the name into his cell phone.
“A scientist who worked with the World Health Organization until recently.”
Crusher sent the text and glanced up. “You think he might be the guy Vasquez will use to continue your work on the virus?”
“When I started my research on this particular virus, I learned he’d previously worked on a similar virus.
We spoke. He shared his findings, and I moved on, digging deeper into my work.
I haven’t spoken with him since. But when I looked back at the data I uploaded onto the WHO database, I could see he’d accessed the data recently. ”
“How recently?”
“Before I was abducted.” She looked back at the monitor.
“While in captivity, Vasquez had me work in a secure, online database he’d had set up.
I was able to tap into it a moment ago. I could see where someone at the IP address I gave you has been in, mucking around with the data, making changes to my work and testing results.
” She turned back to Crusher. “Whoever’s doing it is getting closer to bypassing my fail-safe. ”
Crusher’s eyes narrowed. “Meaning?”
Her chest tightened. “Our timeframe just got shorter.”
“How short?”
“We have less than a two weeks before the virus is viable and its effects immediate.”