Now, stuck in a tail-back which from this point on the road seemed indefinitely long, she began to worry about being on time for her appointment. She was fully aware that this was simply an acceptable cover for her real worry, which was why she had an appointment in the first place. It was just after seven in the morning when her cellphone rang. Carla was just about to leave her apartment for her morning coffee with her father at the bar in Piazza Carlo Alberto. The phone call, at such an early hour, had to be bad news. She had two mobile phones, and this one was her work phone, supplied and paid for by her company. Therefore it was official and urgent, and Carla had a bad conscience, because the work she had been doing early that morning and the night before was certainly improper and quite possibly illegal. In an effort to put her tentative theories about unlicensed intruders on the DIA network to the test, she had decided to try to do a little ‘pinging’ herself. Armed with the information she already had, as the licensed installer, it had taken her little time to penetrate the various firewalls surrounding the system.
