The Peccavi File
by Howard E. Adkins
Category: Fiction

Martin Thorpe is a Finance student at Berkeley. Recently orphaned when his parents were killed in an auto accident, his only blood relative is Harry Rowe. Rowe is the wealthy C.E.O. of a company that searches out and destroys computer viruses, NetPro, Inc. Married to a very beautiful and youthful wife, Pamela, who is nearly as young as Martin, Rowe has always been so Bohemian that he has been a virtual outcast from Martins family. When Martin makes a Christmas visit to the Rowe mansion hoping to become better acquainted with the Rowes, Harry is murdered. His dying word is peccavi. The F.B.I. has had an interest in Harry because it, in the personage of Special Agent Teresa Kingsley, thinks that he or his colleagues might be involved in causing the bankruptcy of several companies, the failure of each being precipitated by virus-spawned destruction of the companys computer system. After much puzzlement and searching, young Thorpe finds that peccavi is the password to an obscure computer file belonging to Harry. On opening the file, he discovers that it contains a curious series of numbers and letters, undoubtedly an code of some type, but one that neither the F.B.I. nor the National Security Agency can break. Meanwhile Pamela, Rowes youthful widow, is making a serious flirtation with Thorpe. Somewhat callow, he resists but not long nor successfully. The reader now learns that the Exeter hedge fund with its Mafia connections, is involved with the computer viruses, with the resultant company failures, and even in the murder of Harry Rowe. Moreover, Exeter is being deprived of profits because some unknown person has been contacting companies that have had viruses implanted but as yet not activated. For a very high price, this unknown person has supplied various companies with their particular virus signature. The result is that then the virus can be isolated and removed before it causes harm and that company is no longer a potential profit source to Exeter whose shorts and puts and derivatives are all geared to gain from the bankruptcy of that firm. A number of murders now are committed as Exeter tries to eliminate any person who could possibly have the knowledge or access to sufficient information to carry out this elaborate blackmail scheme. Thorpe and Special Agent Kingsley take separate but parallel courses of analysis and investigation. Gradually it becomes clear that Harry Rowe had indeed been the brains behind the implantation of very sophisticated stealth viruses in the computers of a number of companies and had gained significant wealth from his past efforts. Next, the Reader learns from the Rowe lawyer that Harrys offshore accounts total nearly $40,000,000 and that, as Pamela had earlier suspected, this money is going to be left to his nephew, Martin Thorpe, instead of being hers to inherit. Martin is unaware of this impending good fortune. As all but one of Harrys partners and their spouses are killed at the behest of Exeter and a murder attempt is made on Rowes widow, Kingsley finally locates an offshore account in Belize belonging to Pamela. Suspicion supplants sympathy for her. When Pamela is convinced that the F.B.I. suspects her and is closing in, she attempts to flee by herself to Buenos Aires. How involved was she in Harry Rowes murder? Can she identify and implicate individuals in the Exeter Fund? Is she the blackmailer of companies that have bought their liberation from the stealth viruses? If so, does she possess the $26,000,000 the various companies have paid? Can companies already infected with the viruses that are as yet not triggered be saved? Does Pamela know the key to the Peccavi code and have the information to neutralize it? Was the desire to share his anticipated inh