A Stainless Steel Rat Is Born

"Give me a terminal and I can rule the world, " he said, and such was the authority of his voice that I believed he could. "When I was young I delighted in all manner of operations to please the citizens of this planet. It was quite a thrill to intercept cash shipments while en route, then substitute my calling card for the bundles of bills. They never did find out how I did it..." "How did you?" "We were talking about computers." "Digress just this once, I beg of you. I promise to put the technique to good use. Perhaps, with your permission, even leave one of your cards." "That sounds an excellent idea. Baffle the current crop of coppers as thoroughly as I did their predecessors. I'll describe what happens-and perhaps you can discover for yourself how it was done. In the Central Mint, a wellguarded and ancient building with stone walls two meters thick, are located the giant safes filled with billions of bucks. When a shipment is to be made, guards and officials fill a bullion box, which is then locked and sealed while all present look on. Outside the building waits a convoy of coppers all guarding a single armored car. At a,given signal the car backs up against the armor-plated delivery door. Inside the building the steel inner door is opened, the box placed inside the armored chamber. This door is sealed before the outer one can be opened. The box then travels in the armored car to the linear train, where an armored wagon receives it. This has but the single door, which is locked and sealed and wired with countless alarms. Guards ride in a special chamber of each car as it shuttles through the linear network to the city needing the bucks. Here another armored car awaits, the box is removedstill sealed-placed in the car, and taken to the bank. Where it is opened-and found to contain only my card. " "Marvelous!" "Care to explain how it was done?" "You were one of the guards on the train..." "No." "Or drove the armored car..." "No." I racked my brains this way for an hour before he relented and explained. "All your suggestions have merit, but all are dangerous. You are far more physical than I ever was. In my operations I always preferred brains to brawn. The reason that I never had to break into the box and extract the money is that the box was empty when it left the building. Or rather it was weighted with bricks as well as my card. Can you guess now how it was done?" "Never left the building," I muttered, trying to stir my brain to life. "But it was loaded into the box, the box put into the truck... " "You are forgetting something." I snapped my fingers and leapt to my feet. "The wall, of course it had to be the wall. You gave me all the clues, I was just being dense. Old, made of stone, two meters thick!" "Exactly so. It took me four months to break in, I wore out three robots doing it, but I won out in the end. First I bought the building across the road from the mint and we tunneled under it. With pick and shovel. Very slow, very silent. Up through the foundations of the building and inside the wall. Which proved to have an outer and inner stone wall, and as is the building custom, it was filled with . rubble in between. Our diamond saws were never heard when we opened the side of the armored vault connecting the inside of the mint with the outside. The mechanism I installed could change boxes in one point oh five seconds. When the inner door was closed, the lock had to be thrown before the outer door could be opened. That was enough time, almost three seconds, to allow for the switch. They never did find out how I did it. The mechanism is still in place. But the operation was basically misdirection, along with a lot of digging. Computer crime is something else altogether. Basically it is an intellectual exercise." "But isn't computer theft almost impossible these days, with codes and interlocks?" "What man can code or lock, man can decode and unlock. Without leaving any trace. I will give you some examples. Let us begin with the rounding-ofi' caper, also called the salami. Here is how it works. Let us say that you have 8,000 bucks in the bank, in a savings account that earns eight percent a year. Your bank compounds your account weekly in order to get your business. Which means at the end of the first week your bank multiplies your balance by . 0015384 percent and adds this sum to your balance. Your balance has increased by 12. 30 bucks. Is that correct? Check it on your calculator. " I punched away at the sum and came up with the same answer. "Exactly twelve bucks and thirty centimes interest," I said proudly.