So when George stood up and tapped on his glass, Frank sat up straighter. He listened impatiently as his boss welcomed the spouses, thanked the staff for their work that year, and told a joke at his own expense. At last, he began to make the announcement that Frank was waiting for.
And then it happened. One moment Frank was looking sideways to see the reaction on his daughter’s face when his name was called, and the next he was hearing someone else’s name ring out instead. And not just any name, but Rick Wellesley’s – “only out for himself” Rick, a self-satisfied slug of a middle-manager who had never had a creative thought in his life. Someone who had even briefly reported to Frank when he first came to work at the LoC. Rick Wellesley? How could this be happening?
But it was. There was Rick, standing and basking in the applause, glancing briefly and triumphantly in Frank’s direction. Frank was stunned, his face burning. And then he was angry. Without a word to his daughter, he stood up and marched to the bar, turning his back on the party as George finished his remarks. Knocking back another drink, Frank now felt foolish as well as angry. Everyone was probably looking at him, but he was afraid to turn around and find out. He sulked at the bar until Marla came looking for him.
Sitting now in his kitchen, Frank felt his face grow flush again. After all, everyone had expected the job to go to him. Then, with a wrenching feeling, he had a worse thought – what if no one had expected him to get the job? Maybe he was the only one in the whole damn department who hadn’t seen it coming. Maybe everyone had been laughing up their sleeves as they watched him bask in his expected glory, just waiting for his jaw to drop when he realized that he had been skunked by Rick.
Of course that had been the case, he thought wretchedly. He was sure of it.
* * *
And why not? What had he really done in the last twenty years? Sure, he’d become a star at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – “MIT” to anyone in the know. He’d enrolled at the age of sixteen after skipping two years of middle school. Not that skipping a few grades was unusual at MIT. As an undergraduate, he’d become part of Project Athena, an ambitious effort to create a distributed computing system for the whole university. Of course, the goal for the project’s corporate sponsors was to use MIT as a testbed. Later, they hoped to productize the design and make a ton of money.
For some reason, Frank had intuitively locked onto the security challenges that such a system would present. He already had privileges to use MIT’s gateway to the government-funded Advanced Research Projects Agency Network – the now-famous “ARPANET” that was the precursor to the Internet. Only select institutions had access to it then, but Frank immediately grasped where Project Athena and the ARPANET together could eventually lead. It hit him between the eyes that this was the start of something big. Linking terminals together around a campus was today’s goal, but the next step would be to connect those networks together, using ARPANET technology.
That sounded awesome, but how would you restrict access to any particular data to one person, and not let it be seen by everyone else? MIT was already a hotbed of hackers. If students were going to great lengths now to break into restricted sections of university computers just for fun, what would criminals, or enemy countries, not do to break into classified computers, once someone had linked them all together? Frank tackled that issue with gusto, if not discipline. He was a big picture guy, and what a big and exciting picture it was! The idea of wide area networks was brand new, and big ideas were needed to make sense of it all; the details could come later. When Frank graduated, he stayed on at MIT, nominally in a PhD program, but for all practical purposes he lived at a terminal in the Project Athena lab, surviving on coffee and code like so many other young computer engineering students back in the day.
Luckily for Frank, he found a mentor – an engineer on loan from one of the sponsoring companies. Surprisingly, the two hit it off, and the older man reined in the younger one enough to keep Frank’s ideas from flying off into too many directions at once. He also insisted that Frank get his best ideas recorded in some sort of coherent order. Often they talked until all hours, the older man channeling Frank’s enthusiasm and helping him follow his insights down the most productive paths.
Frank never completed his doctorate, but he did finish his Masters thesis – and by anyone’s account, it was brilliant. He anticipated just about every security challenge that would arise over the next twenty years as the Internet took off. He also suggested most of the solutions that were later refined and implemented to deal with a massively networked world. Even today, his thesis remained an obligatory foundational reference in just about every new network and Internet security paper that was written.
Frank’s thesis also brought him to the notice of the mysterious keepers of the MacArthur Fellows Program – the unknown judges that every year contact a select group of exceptional individuals they have decided, “show exceptional merit and promise for continued and enhanced creative work.”
Receiving a MacArthur Fellowship had been the high point of Frank’s professional career. But as a practical matter, it also brought an end to it, because the payments of $25,000 every three months for five years gave him the freedom to do whatever he wanted to without ever having to acquire the discipline of making his way in the world. It also allowed him to get married.
It was not helpful that what Frank wanted to do usually changed every other week. It wasn’t long before his work at Project Athena suffered. He no longer listened to his mentor, and his assigned tasks no longer got done. Instead, he plunged from one question that intrigued him to another, never getting very far along with any of them.
Like many people whose intellectual abilities matured before their social skills, Frank developed an abrupt and assertive manner that helped mask his discomfort around others. That was unfortunate, because his new–found fame encouraged him to become even more obnoxious than ever. Soon, the other guys in the lab were annoyed with his failure to meet his commitments, and also sick of hearing his latest revelations about security – or about any other topic on which he had decided he was now an expert.
Eventually, it was his mentor who took Frank aside and told him that if he didn’t shape up, his days in the lab were numbered. Frank didn’t take that well. What right did some middle aged, middle-management type with a degree from a state school in the Midwest have to tell a certified Genius anything about anything?
Quite a lot, Frank now reflected, gazing at his closed laptop. Like the immature idiot he was then, he had cleared his things out of the Project Athena lab the same day his mentor had called him out and never returned. Eventually, the MacArthur Fellowship money ran dry, and with a wife and young daughter, Frank had to get more serious about working. Or at least he should have. For a while, his thesis and MacArthur reputation carried him from job to job. But when the bottom fell out of the economy, employers received a flood of great résumés for every job they posted.
By then, of course, Frank’s résumé was also getting pretty long in the tooth. He had no “continued and enhanced creative work” to show for his five years of subsidized, random behavior. He’d never published another paper, and it was others, and not Frank, who turned his thesis ideas into real protocols and products. As the jobs got scarce, reference checks counted a whole lot more, and the feedback about Frank always came back the same: brilliant, arrogant, unfocused, unreliable. That was more charitable than what his soon-to-be ex-wife had to say. But he hadn’t listened to her, either.
Frank usually tried not to think much about the years that followed: the start-up that had signed him up as Chief Technical Officer and the VCs that fired him; the time spent without a job at all; the rut he fell into for years after his wife moved out with their daughter, when he said the hell with everything and everybody. That time was a blur of punching the clock in whatever high school, small business or municipal IT department would take him on until he got fired again, then waiting until his unemployment ran
out before finding something else he could do in his sleep, until even that became too much to bother with.
Through all that time, though, industry insiders still sought Frank out, so he maintained a low-key consulting business on the side to make sure he could always cover his child support payments. Among the elite in the world of security, Frank still had the reputation of a wizard, able to come up with the kind of insights that would make the most impenetrable problems suddenly transparent. An emailed plea for help describing something dense and dark that had already defied all of the usual solutions would reliably generate a response from Frank an hour or two later, usually beginning, “It strikes me that…” and ending with, “I suggest you try….” Invariably, what Frank suggested worked. But requests for his ongoing assistance went unanswered.
It was his daughter Marla that finally set Frank back on his feet. One Friday when he was once again out of work, he picked her up for their weekend together. But something was wrong; his normally chatty preteen wasn’t saying a word. As they walked, she looked down at her feet. Then she looked up as if to ask him a question, only to look down again. After a while, Frank got irritated. “Marla, if there’s something you want to ask me, just ask it already!”
But Marla still paused. Finally she said, “Dad, you know I’m in a computer class now, don’t you? It’s something you have to take in seventh grade.”
“Yes,” he said, surprised. “So?”
“Well,” she said, and stopped. He waited, now curious.
“Well,” she started again, “today we went on a field trip to the computer department of a big company, and we all had to sign in and wear these name tag things. One of the people that worked there gave us a tour, and when she saw my name, she asked if I had a father named Frank, so of course I said yes.”
“Uh huh,” said Frank, not liking where this was going.
“Well…” Marla paused again, and then the words came rushing out. “She said that she went to school with you and you were the most brilliant person she had ever known and that you’d gotten a big award for being a genius and she wanted to know what you were doing now.” Marla stopped abruptly for a long moment. “And I didn’t know what to say.”
Frank wished this could be all over, and quickly.
But, Marla, of course, needed an answer. “Dad, the guide said you used to be somebody really important.”
Frank felt like he was dangling at the end of a rope, turning slowly in the breeze. He looked away, and tried to think what to say. What could he say? And then, with all of the disarming innocence of a child, Marla finished for him.
“Dad, she wasn’t telling the truth, was she?”
Frank couldn’t breathe. His daughter thought so little of him that she had to believe that the guide was thinking of someone else? Or was it that she would be too ashamed of what he had become to be able to deal with the truth? He felt sick.
By then, they were standing in front of the door of his cheap apartment building. The traffic rushed past the garbage cans and trash piled up on the curb, and Frank took it all in. The sights, the smells, his life – they all fit together perfectly, didn’t they? Still, he couldn’t think of a word to say.
Finally, Marla put her hand on his arm. “It’s okay, Dad,” she said softly. “Let’s go upstairs.”
That had been ten years ago. The following Monday he sucked it up and called his old mentor, George Marchand, and asked for a job. George was the head of the IT department at the Library of Congress now, and Frank called him out of the blue to ask if they could get together for coffee.
George had been as gracious as Frank had been uncomfortable. Frank had sent his résumé along by email, for what it was worth, and George cut straight to the chase after the opening pleasantries.
“You know I’ll need to bring you in at the bottom, Frank. Can you deal with that?”
Frank was prepared. “Sure, sure, George. I’ll be fine with that.” George nodded, brows furrowed. Then he changed the topic.
“How’s that cute goddaughter of mine these days? I can’t even remember the last time I saw Marla.”
“She’s great,” said Frank, suddenly determined; it helped to remember why he was sitting there. “Just great. We get together every weekend. She’s in seventh grade now. She’s smart as a whip and gets straight As.”
They chatted about family for a few more minutes, and then George looked at his watch. They both stood up, and shook hands.
“I won’t let you down,” Frank said as he looked George in the eye for the first time.
“I know you won’t,” his new boss said. But Frank could tell he was only being polite.
* * *
Sitting in his kitchen, Frank reflected that he’d been as good as his word. But not much better, he made himself admit. Yes, he’d rarely missed a day of work, and no one could say he hadn’t earned his paycheck. And yes, he’d earned every promotion he’d been given.
But the promotions had been few, and the last one had been awarded seven years ago. Frank still had tremendous insights into IT architecture, and he remained as interested as ever in new developments in security. His cubicle at the LoC was stacked high with articles covered in scribbled notes, and he read voraciously online as well. For anyone in the office with a thorny problem, Frank was the go-to guy who could always solve it, provided he was allowed to tackle it alone. Sitting at a keyboard, Frank was still The Man – the tougher the problem the better, just bring it on.
Three hours, eight hours or twenty hours later, he’d still be turning it over in his mind until suddenly an elegant and creative solution would spring to mind.
Management level work, though, was something else again. Every time George gave him a shot at a long term project with a couple of others to supervise, Frank could never pull it all together.
Half the time, he’d be up in the clouds thinking big thoughts that went beyond the task at hand, and the rest of the time he’d be down in the weeds, diving down rat holes to solve problems that could easily be ignored. The folks he was supposed to be supervising never knew what they would be doing from one day to the next, or what, if anything, Frank did with the work they submitted. Inevitably, George would have to take the project back. It didn’t take long before the big projects stopped coming, and Frank settled into the solitary niche where he had stayed ever since.
He wasn’t done beating himself up, though. Admit it, he demanded, you were relieved when the projects stopped coming. You’ve been marking time for years now, and that’s all you’ll ever do. What right did you have to think George would throw this project your way?
But this had been a security project, damn it. That (and the drinks he’d had last night) were what had led him to corner George later on in the cloakroom.
“I’m sorry, Frank,” George had said, wrapping his scarf around his neck. “I thought about letting you know ahead of time, and then I didn’t. I guess I should have.”
“That’s not the point, George! Rick can’t find his own ass with both hands in a well-lit room. What were you thinking?”
George buttoned his overcoat, and reached for his hat. “Of course Rick can’t hold a candle to you when it comes to security, Frank. There’s nobody I’ve ever worked with who has the insight and ideas that you do. And everybody knows nobody covers his butt like Rick.”
Frank let his breath out with a rush of exasperation as George settled his hat on his head. “So then why did you pick him?”
George squared off to Frank as he pulled on his gloves, looking him straight in the eye.
“Frank, you may know security, but when it comes to understanding people and how to manage them, you haven’t got a clue. Yes, Rick is one hell of a weasel. But you can always rely on a weasel to watch out for himself. That means that if you give him a job to do and tell him his job is on the line, well, by hook or by crook, he’ll get it done. And I can’t say that about you.”
Well, what could Frank say to that? He’d asked George for a
n explanation and now he’d have to listen to it.
“How many chances have I given you over the years, Frank? I can’t remember, can you?” Frank looked away.
“You’re twice as smart as I am,” George continued. “You should have had my job by now! But that’s never going to happen unless you grow up and learn how to perform. If you thought I’d stick my neck out for you with Chairman Steele grandstanding in the House, looking for the next poor bastard to eviscerate in front of the cameras during a public committee meeting, well, you’re just delusional. Good night, Frank.”
There hadn’t been anything Frank could say to that, of course, so he was relieved when George turned and walked away. Furious at himself, Rick and George, in that order, he stalked back to the bar.
Frank decided that was as much of the night before as he was up to reliving; he’d leave the scene with Rick for his next exercise in psychological self-flagellation. It had all escalated so stereotypically anyway; Rick’s approach and his smarmy condescension, Frank’s insult in response. Okay, enough.
He felt the anger well up again, and with it, a sudden sense of purpose. Screw the jerk; just because Rick got the project didn’t mean that Frank couldn’t still show him up. After all, Frank had been so sure he had the spot in the bag that he’d already started writing up a proposal with his plan of attack outlined. No way was Rick going to be able to pull this job off; George would realize that soon enough, and then there’d be no one to turn to but Frank.
The Alexandria Project: A Tale of Treachery and Technology (Frank Adversego Thrillers Book 1) Page 2