System Error

By Peter Barker

For good reasons, she did bad things.

As the system collapses under the weight of capitalist greed, Imogen Thomas, hacker, part time anarchist and occasional fire-starter, knew she was on the wrong side of the law, but whose side was the law on?

With the unwitting assistance of a not so innocent priest, a sceptical accomplice and a small band of environmental cyber-geeks, Imogen is on a mission to redistribute the vast fortunes of the super rich until the wealthiest man on the planet decides to teach her a terminal lesson.

When the system breaks down, whose side will you be on?
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Peter Barker
• Release date: Mar 4, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386771272

Peter Barker

Peter has previously produced a small history of the small Dorset village where he grew up. He is a Greenpeace activist, and with his wife, lives off grid in mid Wales with 31 rabbits.  

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

THE SUBDUED EARLY MORNING light from the high windows at the front of the supermarket made its way along the rows of empty shelves, eventually reaching the queue for the bread counter. Imogen allowed her light brown hair to fall over her thin, pale face, shielding her eyes from the flickering of an ancient tube overhead.

‘You’re in my place,’ came a deep voice from behind her. She looked around to face a shaven headed man staring at her. ‘You what?’

‘You heard,’ he replied.

‘I was here before you.’

His phone, hung on a gold chain around his neck, projected hologrammatic images of a violent movie, just centimetres from his face. He took a step forward, forcing Imogen into the woman in front. As she turned to apologise, she found herself sidelined by the man claiming her place in the queue. When she looked around for support, everyone averted their gaze. All she could do was step back into line behind him. Her green eyes flashed as they bore into the back of his stubbly head. You ever do that to me again and I’ll burn your arse.

Imogen pushed the rising ball of anger back down and looked away. Then she heard that deep, menacing tone again.

‘You’re in my place,’ he was saying to the woman in front.

Now there were raised voices at the front along with a ripple of under-breath mutterings running back through the queue.

‘They’ve run out!’

‘You’re joking, they can’t have!’

Imogen noticed the extra staff assembled behind the counter and now appearing along the aisle, even the manager in his dark suit and slicked back hair had come out to the front. They fear trouble, thought Imogen. But they shouldn’t run out. The government’s own spreadsheets were showing enough grain coming into the country to meet the rations. She knew; she’d seen them.

People started shouting, the mood was turning ugly.

The manager’s whiney voice came over the speaker system. ‘We’re very sorry, but that’s it, the bread’s all gone. Please come back next week and we’ll make sure those of you who missed out, will be at the front of the queue next time. Now please make your way to the exit, unless you have further purchases to make.’

A roar of protests erupted. ‘What are we meant to eat?’

‘I’ve got kids to feed!’

‘I’m very sorry, but you must now leave. The police are here.’ The manager gestured to a lone Bobby and his PCSO sidekick looking slightly startled at the back of the store. ‘You will be arrested if you do not leave the premises.’

Everyone turned to look at the policemen and then resumed the abuse. Things were getting out of hand; the orderly queue had broken up. In the pushing and shoving, the bully in front of Imogen had made his way over to where the last few people to receive loaves stood huddled by the counter trying to defend their prizes. He reached out at a woman in her forties, dressed in a light green cagoule and grabbed her shoulder, pulling her towards him.

‘That’ll be mine,’ he growled as he ripped the bread from her grasp.

‘NO!’ she shouted, swinging a looping fist which landed on his upper arm but made little difference. He was already turning to leave the scene.

Imogen watched it all unfold, watched him push his way back through the crowd, They’re letting him get away with it and they haven’t even deducted his ration. She looked for the policeman and although he was a good 15 metres away, called to him, ‘Hey, did you see that? Aren’t you going to do anything?’ The officer looked her in the eye and then turned away to focus on the manager at the counter, waiting for instructions.

Imogen took one step to pursue the bully, fists clenched, unclenched. She knew there was little she could do. She felt for the reassuring box of matches in her jeans’ pocket. ‘Don’t get involved, it’s not worth it,’ her father would say.

Her attention was drawn back to the counter. A six-pack of toilet rolls had just bounced off the face of a podgy middle-aged baker, leaving a faint green pine-tree smudge. Someone had snuck around a side aisle to the Health & Beauty section and bottles of shampoo were now being lobbed mortar like towards the empty pastry shelves.

‘Please, everyone calm down.’ The manager had a back-up plan. ‘We have a limited supply of strong white flour, it may be out of date but still absolutely fine, how about that?’

The crowd went quiet, this could work, bake our own bread.

Someone yelled, ‘Okay,’ and everyone fell, sheep like, back into line. Staff gathered up the bags of flour and started swiping ration cards again. The person who had shouted ‘okay,’ retrieved their blue supermarket tabard and headed for the tills.

CHAPTER 2

THE HUMIDITY WAS ALREADY starting to build as heavy clouds hung over the small Welsh town of Llandrindod Wells.

As Imogen strolled back through the waking town, the satisfying weight of the flour in her bag, she noticed a small red sports car sitting on the other side of the road. She could tell from the rusty wheel arches that it was quite an old one, probably still running on petrol or at least the synthetic stuff and the filler cap had no lock on. The man from the supermarket was sitting inside, she could see his shaven head bent over his phone. He squeezed himself out of the car and walked around to the gate of the house he had parked outside.

Imogen pulled her hood over her head and carried on walking, sneaking glances. The man opened the front door and went in. So that’s where you live.

Eventually Imogen reached her home, which for her was a small flat at the top of a converted hotel. It suited her needs, cheap to rent and inconspicuous.

As she walked up to the building’s dark blue front door, she was greeted by a neighbours tabby cat who she nicknamed Kitty. Imogen bent to stroke the animal as it wound around her legs. She would like to keep a cat herself but being on the second floor, even though there was a portion of flat roof outside her window, it wasn’t really practical.

She unlocked the door and went into the lobby. There was a stale aroma of dust and polish, with just a hint of old man. Checking her post pigeon hole, only a bill and a reminder to renew her I.D. card. She climbed the creaking stairs to the second floor, which opened onto a short, carpeted corridor. Number seven was her door. Again out with the keys and then she was inside: her refuge, her sanctuary. Not a particularly tidy sanctuary, but everything had its place. The floor was covered by a red carpet, patterned with green geometric shapes that was probably hotel original, which in turn was covered by papers, clothes, shoes and the usual assortment of life’s detritus. The walls were covered with paper and painted a plain neutral shade of cream. Light gained entry through a single window at the far side. In the afternoon, the sun would sometimes make its way in and slyly illuminate the dusty fabric of the old, tan coloured three seater sofa half way along one wall. Beside it, a small, dark-wood, mug-ringed coffee table, courtesy of the local charity shop, held the focus of the room and in a dim corner stood a bookshelf, courtesy of the landlord. In the other corner, next to the window sat a pine desk with her laptop on, under the desk was her chair, a black, ex office, swivel job and beyond that a door-less doorway revealed a small hall which led off to the bathroom and bedroom.

A cable ran from the laptop and out through a hole in the old wooden window frame. Imogen’s graduation picture neatly obscured the hole in case the landlord ever visited for an inspection, which he never did. The photo sat in a thin silver gilt frame. Her father beaming with pride with his arm around her, mum standing tall next to him and on the other side, her two sisters.

Anna was the eldest and Sofie the youngest. Imogen remembered how they would play in the steel framed barn nestled in the corner of a field near their house in Oxfordshire. There were usually bales of straw to jump around on. But the barn had to go, after her sister’s suicide there. She recalled the feeling of giddy release as the flames rose thirty - forty feet into the night sky. Of course, everything had changed. Her Mum hardly ever smiled anymore and Imogen was now the oldest, and there were consequences, consequences she wasn’t prepared to deal with.

Imogen crossed the room and turned into the small, bright white galley kitchen which she always made an effort to keep scrupulously clean, an influence of her mother and the large skylight above ensuring any speck would be singled out.

‘Hello Imogen, you are out of milk, cheese, potatoes, green—’

‘I know Alex, no need to keep telling me,’ Imogen said.

‘I would order them for you, but you have disconnected my internet connection.’

‘I’ve told you, I can’t afford them. Anyway, I’m not letting you tell everyone where I am.’

‘If you connected me, I would download the latest security suite,’  replied the androgynous voice from the small round box on the counter.

‘Not good enough, I’m afraid,’ said Imogen. She opened a cupboard and picked out a tub of multivitamins, tipped one onto her palm, then ran a glass of water to swallow the thing. ‘Alex, open laptop.’ She went back to the living room as the mellow blue screen of her laptop ran through its opening sequence. She preferred the old fashioned computer over the Human Interface Devices because, of course, they were easier and faster to use than the new technology.

She instructed Alex to play her favourite music list, which always kicked off with The Arti Sans remake of the old Motorhead tune, ‘Eat the Rich’.

On accessing the internet, she searched for bread recipes and found one on a historical societies site. She grabbed a piece of paper off the floor and located the pen behind the screen, to scribble the recipe down.

The lack of bread in the store was bugging her. Imogen could remember a time, only a few years ago, when bread queues were unthinkable, but then came the series of wet harvests across Europe, and Russia started playing politics with peoples’ staple. Britain used to rely on America’s Midwest to help out in such times, but since the soil turned to dust and America was all but at war with itself, little grain was making it out.

Her curiosity demanded some answers so she opened Doorway. Doorway was an off-shoot of the Tor project, a web browser that added layers of encryption and re-routed via multiple servers around the world to hide the electronic trails and identities - I.P. numbers. It was used by hackers and although known to the security service, versions were continually updated and circulated secretly.

She typed in the web address of the Government Civil Service login which she had cracked months ago. Once onto their intranet, she scanned through the departments and file archives, what she was after was grain movements.

Eventually she found the accounts for Essential National Resources and there were the import details for things like sugar, fertilisers, timber, minerals, fruit and grain, a list of quantities coming in and subsequent distribution. The numbers all seemed fairly constant over the last few months, except for a slight dip on the 13th July. That may explain the bread shortage, the major cities would be supplied first, but by the time they got around to Llandrindod Wells, they had obviously run low. The question was, why was there this dip in imports, what had gone wrong?

She would check shipping movements to see where it was coming from. Grain from Europe came into Southampton, and America into Liverpool and Bristol. There were constant shipments of wheat and barley, but one caught her eye, a ship called the Pizhma, a diesel freighter out of Murmansk, docked in Southampton three weeks ago. Not many diesels were still operating and this was an old one. Apparently it unloaded seventy thousand tonnes of wheat, then headed back to Russia empty, which was odd. She cross-checked the arrival of the grain on the Resources database but it didn’t appear, so where did it go?

Imogen remembered Ben who lived on a boat in a Southampton marina with his partner Trudie and used to do research for Greenpeace. Imogen had worked with him tracing the illegal imports of shark fin. She opened her contacts, found his number and called it.

After ringing for some time, Ben eventually answered. ‘Hi, Imogen, how are you?’

‘I’m good thanks, and you?’

‘Okay, hoping for some work to materialise as usual but nothing much doing.’

‘Yeah, tell me about it. I was wondering if you could possibly help me on something, unpaid I’m afraid.’

‘No problem, how can I help?’

‘I’m just wondering about the curious appearance of an old Russian diesel freighter in Southampton docks, about three weeks ago.’

‘What about it?’

‘I suspect its cargo went astray and I would love to find it.’

‘Ha ha, it happens! Okay, I’ll go speak to Joati in the yard, say I’m working on it for Greenpeace.’

‘Makes a change from pretending not to be Greenpeace. Thanks Ben, any time you need a favour, just ask.’

‘Sure thing Imogen, bye.’

CHAPTER 3

THAT NIGHT IMOGEN AWOKE at some dark hour. She had been having a bad dream where she was in a bombed out industrial site, looking for a toilet. She had to carry a bucket of water to flush it as the water had been disconnected, but the bucket was leaking and already half empty. When she found the toilet, she noticed a group of men badly beating another in the next room, she cast her eyes down, fearing that they would come after her if they thought she was watching them. The loo was tiny and horrible with big clear-glass windows so anyone could see in and there was excrement on the walls. She couldn’t use this, but there was no other option.

She woke to the sound of rain pelting against her window. Summer storms didn’t tend to be too bad, more rain than wind, although flash flooding was always a problem. It was the Autumn storms that really got to her. On those nights, Imogen would lie awake, gripping the sheets ever tighter, listening to debris rattling down the streets and the trees desperately clinging onto the earth below as the building braced itself against each gust. She got up for a pee and managed to get back to sleep after.

THE STORM HAD BLOWN itself out by daybreak, but still the rain lingered, casting a soggy depression over the town.

Confined indoors, Imogen set about following the recipe she had found yesterday and baked two small loaves. This was good, she may be able to save next week’s bread ration at this rate, although locating some yeast proved a bit difficult and she had to resort to putting in a tin of cheap beer. Whilst this did give the bread a subtle and pleasant, nutty flavour, she lamented the loss of the booze.

That done, she glanced out of the window to see that the rain had eased to a slight drizzle, so threw on her light waterproofs and went out for a walk around town to get some fresh air. She drank in the smell of lush green vegetation after a summer storm and did a slow circuit of the Rock Gardens.

On the way back, she made a short detour, which took her past the small red sports car. Pulling her hood up, she paused and glanced towards the house. A waft of barbecue smoke curled around from the back along with a snatch of children’s laughter. Her hand went into her pocket and pulled out a box of matches. Taking a single match, she bent down to fiddle with her boot laces, reached over and stuck it in the car’s rear tyre valve. Several seconds of sharp hissing and the tyre was flat. She stood, glanced back over at the house to check all was clear and moved on to the front tyre. 

Phizzzzt and then, ‘OI WOT YOU DOING?’

She looked up into the blotchy face of Mr Shaven Head, colouring up in anger before her eyes, staring over the low garden wall.

‘Err, nothing?’

‘Come ‘ere you.’ He leaned over and thrust an arm the size of a tree branch at her. She ducked away, flattening herself against the car. He went to jump over the wall and Imogen took off, sprinting down the road.

After about twenty metres, she risked a quick look behind her, the man wasn’t chasing, probably not fit enough. She carried on running until she rounded the corner, then slowed to a walk, regaining her breath. At least he can’t come after me in the car, but he saw my face, would he recognise me again? Llandrindod was not a very big town.

She hurried back to her flat and after peering out of the bedroom window to check she hadn’t been followed, finally allowed herself a triumphant giggle. That was close, got away with it though. Perhaps it was a bit childish. Her mind strayed to the unlocked filler cap

She went back through the flat, still smiling, to the kitchen and put the kettle on to settle her nerves. After lathering hummus onto a chunk of the fresh bread, she sat at her computer and checked through the news and social media trends. Eventually she could resist no longer and checked her emails. One from Ben, he had already spoken to his contact on the docks.

‘Joati remembers the Russian ship, they had started to unload her, but the foreman ran over to stop them. The grain was to remain aboard. However, she took on extra containers, cooking oil apparently, thousands of litres of the stuff. Next day she was gone. Hope this helps. Ben.’

Imogen rested her chin on her knuckles. So where did the Pizhma go? She found a website which tracked ships around the world. An amazing spider's web of multi-coloured lines criss-crossed the oceans, ending with tiny triangles in ports or at sea. She typed in Pizhma and clicked search.

Immediately the screen morphed into blue with a single triangle in red dragging a name tag and registration number underneath trailing a red line to the east. There was the Pizhma, all at sea and headed west but which sea? The zoom control managed to get a clearer picture, a coastline appeared on the right hand side of the screen. She panned over to the coast until a marker appeared, ‘PANAMA’. The ship had recently sailed through the Panama Canal and was headed out into the Pacific!

Well, that is a very long way to take some wheat and cooking oil, and definitely the wrong way back to Russia. What is it doing out there? With our bread? Some pizza delivery!

Imogen noted the Pizhma’s position and heading, then got up and went over to her bookshelf, found what she was looking for and opened the ageing atlas, quickly finding the double page spread of the Pacific Ocean. With a pencil from her desk, she marked a small dot in roughly the position the ship was currently at. Now she needed a protractor, she knew she had one, but a search of the drawers failed to find it. She had a briefcase somewhere where she kept all the notes from the Day-Skipper evening class she took at Uni. Under the bed, she found it and inside was the protractor. Great, now back to the map. She put the protractor against the dot and aligned to north, then reading off the course the ship was heading, she drew a line across the blue sea. It very nearly, but not quite, neatly intersected with the Cook Islands. Hmmm, curiouser and curiouser. What is going on down there?

Imogen went back to the computer. A memory was nagging at the back of her mind, a bank account she had found that had been opened about six months ago. She had been building a database of accounts and transactions of the worlds biggest corporations, and now she opened it, filtering down to the previous five to seven months. A page unfolded and scanning down the columns, she spotted what had been playing on her mind. A new bank account had been opened in Avarua on the Cook Islands by the major Food and Beverages conglomerate Marl’e. It had stood out because it was opened with a