Breaking and Entering

by Jeremy N. Smith

  “Can you hold the suitcase shut so I can zip it?” Alien asked Bruce at one a.m.

  He turned from his laptop, grinning broadly. “I’m going to Amsterdam,” he said.

  “What?” she said. “When?”

  “Now,” Bruce said. “Well, the first flight out. Come with! You need a vacation.”

  “I can’t,” Alien said. “Chain of custody. I have to drop the hard drives off in the U.S. tomorrow morning.”

  “C’mon—Mitch can take the hard drives back himself,” Bruce insisted. “And I bet I can get you a ticket. It’ll be really easy. Let me just try to change the flights.”

  Alien watched, speechless, as he called the front desk. “Yeah,” Bruce said. “Can you connect me to the Paris office of KLM? Merci.”

  He waited thirty seconds. “What?” Bruce cupped the receiver of the hotel phone. “Voice mail? How is a major airline not picking up the phone? Fucking France!”

  Bruce hung up.

  Mitch accompanied Alien to Charles de Gaulle Friday morning. They would fly to Boston and await instructions. At the airport security screening in Paris, he cut to the front of the line and pulled two guards aside, speaking softly and showing them some kind of letter pulled from his trench coat.

  Alien waited. Then, to her surprise, she was waved forward with her gear suitcase and two others—no X-ray necessary.

  Mitch flew first class. Alien and the hard drives and related evidence rode coach. She hoped to get a little sleep, but it was difficult to relax with everything in the bin above her.

  At U.S. customs in Boston, Mitch strode forward and showed another letter.

  “Bring your bag around, ma’am,” the officials said.

  “Wow,” Alien said, facing the exit doors of the airport a few minutes later.

  Mitch shrugged nonchalantly, as if there were nothing unusual about what had happened. “See you tomorrow.”

  They shook hands. Alien dug to find and turn on her phone.

  The second the welcome screen appeared, it rang.

  Richard was waiting impatiently when Alien pulled up behind him at the side of the foggy, freezing New Jersey Turnpike five hours later. Elite Defense was assembling a stateside team to pore over the gathered evidence, he’d said by phone. Work started this weekend in Diamond offices outside Philadelphia. Since he was already there, and had received the necessary clearance to enter before her, Alien should hop in her car and deliver the goods to him at the closest open stretch before the exit to Diamond on the turnpike.

  “This everything?” the Jedi asked when they’d transferred the last hard drive from her Volvo to his silver Audi.

  “One minute.” Alien was blind with fatigue but groped about in an outer suitcase pocket for the Tableau. “There,” she said. “Unless you want the label maker.”

  They signed chain-of-custody forms. Richard paused before leaving, however.

  “Book yourself a room at the DoubleTree and then meet us on-site tomorrow morning,” he said. “Seven a.m. We have to get the images pulled onto the system ASAP.”

  Alien had already spent a week in Diamond’s employ, but their office security procedures made it clear she was a stranger until proven otherwise. Pulling in at seven a.m. sharp on Saturday, Alien provided her driver’s license at a front guard’s station before being escorted to another station, where she was photographed, fingerprinted, and handprinted.

  Here Alien signed in and got a swipe badge and a sticker with her name and headshot printed on it.

  “The colors change based on the time of day,” the guard explained. “By seven p.m. it’ll be covered with red and blue lines. That means it’s expired.”

  Sticker in place by half past seven, Alien moved with her gear bag through a narrow guarded turnstile at the entrance to an eight-story redbrick operations center. Inside was a central courtyard with a fountain surrounded by chairs and tables. Alien turned right, as the guard had directed her, and swiped her badge at the inner door there, her entrance captured by surveillance cameras. The next door she wanted was in the middle of a long carpeted inner hall. To get inside, she palmed a handprint reader.

  Low, wide, thickset tables, as in a science lab, filled the windowless room. Spread out across the tables for sorting and examination were the labeled hard drives. As Alien entered, Richard and Jason, her fellow Agent, looked up from workstations running EnCase and FTK—multi-thousand-dollar commercial data recovery programs.

  “Hi,” she said, walking over. It took effort to summon the energy to smile, but Alien wanted to show that she was alert and ready.

  She read the labels of the hard drives they were studying. “Are these the images from the Bastille executives who left the bank to form their own firm?”

  Richard grunted. “Affirmative.”

  “Find anything?” said Alien.

  “Zeros,” said Jason, shaking his head.

  “You mean they wiped them?” said Alien. “Isn’t that suspicious?”

  “Could hurt the case, if the judge gets it,” Jason said. “Bruce said she’s not very tech savvy, though.”

  Three and a half weeks passed in Philadelphia. They worked continuous fourteen-hour days, seven a.m. to nine p.m. Supervised by Richard, Alien and Jason read Bastille employees’ email, reconstructed their Web browsing, copied their documents, and restored what had been deleted, bit by bit.

  During her absence from Fireberry, Alien scrambled to find friends and housemates to water her plants, feed her pets, and do her weekly food shopping for the residents. She didn’t even bother looking at brochures in the hotel for Independence Hall or the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She couldn’t see them, she knew, any more than she could have seen the Luxembourg Gardens or the Louvre when she’d been in Paris. Soon, any sense of the outside world receded, though she still worked with Jim via email to complete their research and pitch a presentation on it to different conferences.

  “Good news,” he wrote her one day, two weeks in. “We got a speaking slot at SCAN Capital.”

  Alien couldn’t wait.

  Near the end of March, Elite subcontracted with a new SCAN instructor, Elliot, to help the case. He was a bearded redhead, a onetime military medic with a broad jaw and burly linebacker’s build that made it appear as if his Clark Kent glasses were props.

  Late in the morning of his third day, Elliot slipped half a Ghirardelli dark chocolate bar across the lab table to Alien when Richard and Jason weren’t looking.

  Alien smiled briefly, pocketed the treat, and focused on her work. Every hour they were in the office, she knew, Elite billed Diamond two hundred dollars a head.

  Stealing a few minutes for lunch two hours later, they shared sandwiches in the courtyard.

  “Favorite Linux tool?” Elliot asked her.

  “Emacs!” Alien said. “Obviously.”

  Elliot clasped his hands to his heart. That night, he trailed Alien back to her hotel room. Elliot sidled close. “May I have the honor of offering you a foot massage?” he said.

  Alien rebuffed him as gently as she could. “SCAN Capital is this weekend,” she said. “I have to get ready.”

  The next night, nine thirty p.m., Richard, Jason, Alien, and Elliot gathered for dinner with Jules Ferris at a dimly lit downtown Philly steakhouse. By now Alien had the menu memorized, having come here with the guys at least a dozen times. “House salad,” she told the waiter.

  “Bone-in rib eye steak—rare—shrimp and grits, and a twenty-one-year-old Macallan,” said Elliot. “And”—in a wry, plummy voice—“bring the lady a cabernet.”

  The drinks arrived. Elliot tipped his glass toward Alien. “To your talk,” he said, as Jason and the Jedis poured themselves pints from a pitcher of beer.

  “Thanks.” Alien strummed her fingers on the white tablecloth. “Hey, I could really use a little time to polish the presentation,” she told Jules. “I haven’t had a day off since Paris. Not even on a weekend. Can I go home for a day before SCAN?”

  Jules turned t
o Richard, who shook his head without lifting his eyes from his porterhouse.

  “We need you on-site,” Jules said, with an apologetic shrug. “Your presentation is a voluntary commitment you made.”

  The waiter returned. “Your salad?” he said, delivering Alien’s plate.

  “Good news,” she overheard Jules say to Richard with obvious pleasure. “Diamond wants us here through May.”

  Alien sighed, thinking about all the chores she hadn’t done. And she also realized that the bills for her maxed-out credit cards would arrive before her next paycheck.

  Richard gloated. “This project is paying for my daughter’s college education,” he said.

  Alien stabbed lettuce as the Jedis clinked glasses.

  Alien squinted as she stepped off the podium following her SCAN Capital presentation late Saturday afternoon, captured by flashing cameras and a videographer.

  “Are the techniques you just demonstrated real-world issues?” a reporter questioned her.

  “Deleting data doesn’t erase it,” Alien said. “If you haven’t used DoD-approved standards to destroy any unencrypted data, assume that someone else can read it.”

  I know, she thought, because I was up late last night undeleting the last ten years of a French bank officer’s emails.

  Other members of the overflow audience approached. “Can you share code?” the first one asked.

  “Not yet,” Jim said, stepping between them and Alien. “We’re waiting for the green light from one last vendor that’s about to release a fix,” he told them. “In the meantime, users have been warned.”

  “But we are planning on releasing it as an open source project,” said Alien. “Stay tuned.”

  She handed Jim the presentation laptop to carry. “I go back to Philly tomorrow afternoon,” Alien whispered.

  “Meet you in your room at nine,” he said.

  Alien threw a bathrobe over the television screen in her hotel room. She showered and changed into a purple satin negligee. More out of compulsion than need, Alien checked her laptop for any Diamond updates. At eight p.m. she ordered room service for two. The food came at nine.

  Nine thirty p.m. No Jim.

  She texted. No answer. She called. Voice mail.

  Ten p.m. No longer hungry, she wheeled the room service cart into a corner of the room. Alien showered again.

  Midnight. Knocking. Alien closed her laptop and opened the door.

  “Can you share code?” her partner joked as he hugged her.

  Alien pushed Jim away.

  Her eyes and cheeks burned. Tears.

  “Is this”—she waved back and forth between them—“just for fun?”

  Jim paused, startled, before answering. “Of course not,” he said finally. Then, as if to cover up the delay, he reached to clasp Alien’s hands.

  “I’m sorry,” said Jim. “It’s my wife’s birthday. She was upset.”

  Alien rubbed her temples. Her head hurt, listening to him.

  I’m an idiot, she thought.

  Where is this going?

  Somehow, he talked her into sex. What was once so electric—to hold Jim, and be held by him—now felt terrible. Alien felt used and dirty afterward. When she woke up the next morning, she was naked and alone in the bed. The clock radio said nine a.m.

  Jim stood by the hotel room window, showered and dressed. He fidgeted with the blind, apologizing to someone on the phone.

  “I’m sorry,” Alien heard him say. “I know it’s important. I’ll be back—soon.”

  She sat up, rustling the comforter. Jim turned, startled, said quickly, “I have to go,” and hung up.

  “Who was that?” asked Alien. But she already knew.

  Jim gathered his things. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I have to go home.”

  Alien sat up in the bed, her arms around her knees. “Me too,” she said.

  Seven a.m., the Monday after SCAN, Alien began cataloging emails again in the Diamond forensics office, but kept an eye on the door.

  Richard entered shortly before nine a.m., still on a phone call. Alien approached him anyway. “Can we talk?” she mouthed, exhausted.

  Richard put her off with a raised palm.

  “Please,” begged Alien.

  He cupped the phone. “Later,” Richard said.

  “How about lunch?”

  He nodded.

  Alien waited until noon before trying again. She was talking to Elliot, waiting for a fresh hard drive scan to finish, when she saw Richard walking out.

  “Wait!” Alien called, following him to the courtyard. “Now?” she asked. “Five minutes?”

  Richard didn’t even slow. “Later,” he repeated. “I’ll find you.”

  Alien tried again, texting Richard mid-afternoon. No reply.

  She called Bruce.

  “I don’t feel well,” said Alien. “I need a break.”

  “Talk to the Jedi on-site,” he said.

  At five p.m. Richard was busy at his laptop, trying to finish a report on a different project. She couldn’t wait any longer.

  “Richard?” Alien asked.

  He waved her off. “Not now.”

  I can’t stand it.

  Alien grabbed her things. Then she walked up to Richard, interrupting him.

  “I’m working normal business hours today,” Alien announced, staring the former air force officer square in the eye. He was clearly startled. For an instant, he looked almost scared.

  She turned and left, exiting the stale air of the forensics lab, rolling her bag through the carpeted security office, out the main hallway, through the turnstiles, out the front door, and into the cold gray evening, her trench coat flapping behind her. She took a deep breath, enjoying the first thin sliver of sun she’d felt in weeks.

  Alien had never felt so free.

  She was still sitting in her Volvo in the parking lot, breathing hard, watching her headshot sticker molt, when Bruce called twenty minutes later.

  “Take a couple of days off,” he said.

  “Cool,” Alien answered. “Thanks so much.”

  She drove home to Fireberry, stopping only once en route, at Star Market, to pick up groceries.

  Late Wednesday morning, her phone rang. Alien, in the middle of making an old-fashioned mix CD for friends, reached to check it: Bruce.

  “Hello?” she said.

  “Hey,” he said tersely. “Melinda is on the line with me.”

  Alien tensed.

  “Your position at Elite Defense has been terminated effective immediately,” Bruce said. “Thank you for your work. We wish you the best. Melinda will fill you in on the next steps.”

  As she listened to Melinda, Alien checked her Elite Defense account.

  Her password didn’t work.

  Shortly after she got off the phone, the doorbell rang. Alien walked downstairs.

  Outside, a FedEx guy awaited her, white truck idling behind him, empty cardboard box in hand. “Elizabeth Tessman?” he asked.

  “Can I help you?” Alien asked.

  “I’m here to pick up a computer.” He looked down and handed her the empty carton with a destination address of the Elite Defense P.O. box. “You ordered this?”

  Alien took the box and smiled grimly. Go fuck yourself, she wanted to say. But it wasn’t his fault.

  “I didn’t order it,” she said.

  Alien closed the door.

  The phone rang. It was Melinda. Alien ignored it. Then it rang again—Bruce. She turned the phone off. Alien trudged upstairs.

  Her lava lamp bubbled beside her laptop on the desk where she worked. Above were bolted remnants of hydroponics equipment Tanner had set up while they were dating. Clothes, CDs, art supplies, and Go set pieces littered the floor.

  Alien sat there for five hours without a break. She organized the Elite Defense data by client: Castle, the airline, Cheeseburger, the state government, Neptune, the Pentagon, Diamond, and so on. Alien transferred these from the laptop to an external hard drive on
the desk, the one spare from the Paris trip. Then she wiped the laptop seven times, per U.S. Department of Defense InfoSec standards, reinstalled the operating system, and transferred back the client files, encrypted so that only the Jedis could open and read them.

  The result was the same Agent’s computer it had been before Bruce’s phone call, only this time with every trace of the former Agent herself eliminated.

  Alien wiped the backup drive. To the laptop she taped a sticky note with the login password.

  Her last act for Elite Defense was emailing Melinda from her personal account.

  “Feel free to reschedule your pickup,” Alien wrote.

  It was six p.m. when the white van drove off again. Alien opened her top-right desk drawer. She took her bent spoon pin and tossed it inside.

  Alien cried. She was twenty-seven years old and her dream career was over. She pictured Bruce at the bar at a SCAN conference, talking to another guy. She had potential, he was saying, and we gave her technical work. But she couldn’t cut it.

  Hours passed. At four a.m., Alien went down to the Fireberry living room. After sitting on the sofa for twenty minutes looking at her shadowy reflection in the window, she felt for her phone in the pocket of her fuzzy pink bathrobe. She scrolled up and down her contacts. There were Bruce and Jim, Tanner and other boyfriends, Eddie and Piñon.

  Alien found the contact she was looking for and hit the bright green button to dial.

  “Hello?” a man answered. “Elizabeth, is that you?”

  And then a woman, in the background: “Ask her if anything’s wrong.”

  “Mom? Dad?” Alien said in a small voice. “I failed.”

  // Part IV:

  Owner’s Manual