Chapter Twenty-Nine
(Thursday Afternoon—Johnny)
Johnny watched Danny leave with the guy in the brown suit. It was 2:35 by the wall clock, and if Danny really had that four-thirty appointment in the Staples Mall, he probably wouldn’t be back until tomorrow.
If Johnny was going into Danny’s office, his two options were to wait until the place emptied out or to go in while people were still around. And who was he kidding? Of course he would do it. The idea of looking around and finding something the NSA wanted to keep hidden was irresistible.
Besides, Owen had asked him to. Johnny had learned a lot from Owen, and self-diagnosed a mild case of hero worship long ago. Well, he’d also like to teach Owen a thing or two…but there wasn’t much chance of it. Unless Owen got really drunk.
Probably not even then. Scruples could be a pain in the ass sometimes.
Johnny shook his head, grinning. Down, boy. Focus. Danny’s office, the NSA. Not date rape.
Was it still date rape if you weren’t really on a date?
Never mind.
Danny’s office. What excuse could he use for being in there? Well…Danny had been talking about wanting to see a functioning prototype, hadn’t he? The guys were actually pretty close to finishing their current project. But the components they were working on were pretty much invisible to users of the software. It was all behind-the-scenes stuff.
But maybe that was okay. If he claimed management had a bug up their collective butt and insisted that the current schedule be accelerated, Johnny could probably get his team to whip something up. Then he could fake some graphs that would look meaningful to non-programmers and take them into Danny’s office with him. If anyone spotted him, he could claim he was leaving important data, and he’d actually have something to leave, so it would all work out. That story and the one he gave the programmers would back each other up. If necessary, he could tell Danny privately that the guys had needed a little push.
The programmers actually did seem a little complacent lately. It happened a lot when large projects neared completion—once the guys were fairly sure what they were building would work, they lost focus. Johnny liked to break the work up into short cycles, so the quick turnaround kept them interested, but with new requirements pouring in almost daily the schedule had begun to slip.
He stood up. Torres and Yang were walking down the aisle, chattering about something they’d seen in a Buffy the Vampire Slayer rerun last night. Yeah, definitely time for a shove. “Guys!”
They stopped, surprised into a momentary silence. “Go get everybody,” he told them. He loved saying that. He never had to specify that he only meant programmers. To them, nobody else really mattered. “We need to have a meeting in the Orange Room. Five minutes.” They nodded and walked off, still talking about Buffy.
Johnny got up to go to his meeting, laughing to himself. The whole scheme was slightly underhanded, but actually not a bad idea.
Danny tended to clearly remember only the blue-sky discussions of what their software might eventually do…someday. He sort of forgot that what they had so far was more, well, specific.
If Johnny could kick the programmers into high gear, and then bring Danny down to earth a bit while presenting the data as a triumphant advance, it would be a good thing all around.
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Shiver on the Sky Page 46