Indispensable Party (Sasha McCandless Legal Thriller No. 4)

by Miller, Melissa F.

  “No, thanks,” the other woman said in a bright voice, “I’m all set. I did just make some, though. I thought you might need something to pick you up after your drive. The fresh stuff is in the kitchenette near the library.”

  “Thanks,” Connelly said. He shot Sasha an unreadable look before he left his office.

  Sasha and Grace sat in silence. Sasha on the leather couch; Grace draped across a chair, her legs crossed, the top leg swinging back and forth.

  They looked at each other.

  “So,” Grace said, “what do you think of the building?”

  “It’s impressive,” Sasha said. “I haven’t seen much of it, but I was surprised by how spread out it is.”

  Grace nodded. “We have more than one hundred employees working on-site, as well as a gym, a child care center, and a cafeteria. But, the majority of our employees are stationed at our various research and development centers, located throughout the world.” She spoke with the soothing, practiced tone of a tour guide.

  “How many R & D centers are there?” Sasha asked.

  Grace ticked them off on her fingers. “Four state side, and three foreign centers in England, France, and Switzerland. We also have manufacturing plants in Asia and South America.”

  “Can you give me an overview of how security is handled at each facility?” Sasha asked.

  “That’s a complicated question. I’m not sure where to start,” Grace said.

  “Okay, for instance, I noticed Connelly’s ID card is keyed to his office door. That seems like a piece of a pretty sophisticated, multi-layered system. I just wondered how it fit into the bigger picture.”

  “Well, as you recognized, it is a multi-layered system; and security is tailored to the needs and weaknesses of each part of the corporation. Here at headquarters each employee has an ID card that provides access to the building, the common areas, and the employee’s department. Accounting personnel cannot access human resources; HR can’t access security; and so on. But, with the exception of Leo’s office, the individual offices within a department are not secured.”

  “Why is his?” Sasha asked. She spotted a fresh legal pad on Connelly’s desk and grabbed it to jot down some notes.

  “The decision predates us. The system was in place when he was hired. Apparently, the Board of Directors thought it was important that the Chief Security Officer’s office be unbreachable.” Grace leaned in and said in a conspiratorial tone, “He thinks it’s overkill.”

  Sasha was sure he did. Connelly despised security theater—dramatic displays intended to create the impression of security without actually improving safety or security.

  “What about the research centers and the manufacturing plants?”

  “It depends. The R & D buildings are locked down pretty tightly; that’s where the patented information resides, after all. The manufacturing plants probably should be, to prevent theft, but the focus there is more on sterility and cleanliness,” Grace said.

  Sasha thought for a moment, then she asked, “What about your computer systems? Are they centralized?”

  “Yes.” Grace nodded and was about to continue, when they heard a bump against the door.

  Sasha looked up to see Connelly’s silhouette through the frosted glass door. He was turned to his side, juggling two mugs and his key card. She stood and started for the door, but Grace strode past her and pulled it open for him.

  “That freaking card reader . . .” he trailed off, shaking his head at the unnecessary security, and smiled his thanks to Grace.

  Sasha stood halfway between the door and the couch, feeling about as useful as the card reader.

  “Here you go. Strong and dark, like you like it,” Connelly said with a grin as he handed off one of the mugs to her.

  “Thanks.” She trailed him back to the couch and sat next to him.

  Grace waited for them to get situated with their mugs. Sasha took a long sip of coffee. Hot, and, as promised, strong and dark.

  She took another swallow then placed the mug on the side table to her right and picked up the notepad she’d stolen from Connelly’s desk.

  Grace looked at Connelly. “So, I was filling Sasha in on the security at the various locations. She had just asked about the computer systems. Should I continue or do you want to hear what happened?”

  Connelly combed a hand through his thick, ink-black hair, making it stand up in short spikes. “I’m awfully curious, but walk Sasha through the computer security first. She might need the background.”

  Sasha could tell Grace was bursting to tell them about the espionage, but she nodded and turned to Sasha.

  “So, all of our data is centralized on one intranet, which we run out of this building. All the various programs and databases for orders, purchases, shipments, everything resides on the intranet. We can tell who’s accessed what and when. An individual employee’s password only enables him or her to open or view documents that are required to perform the functions of his or her job. So, for instance, a billing clerk couldn’t open the marketing plan for one of our drugs.”

  “What about remote access to the systems? Can employees log in from home?” Sasha asked.

  “They can, but it’s discouraged. In addition, in order to do it, an employee would need to use a secure fob to log in, which provides a series of random, frequently changing numbers. Once logged in, access is terminated after four minutes of inactivity. So, if you log in, start working, then step away to go to the bathroom or get a snack, you would likely need to go through the sign in process again. It’s designed to keep the data secure and to disincentivize people from accessing files remotely.”

  Sasha nodded. It made sense. Protecting the company’s sensitive data probably outweighed efficiency concerns.

  Connelly and Grace shared a look.

  “What?” Sasha asked.

  Grace continued to stare at Connelly but didn’t speak.

  Connelly turned toward Sasha. “Grace has strong feelings about the security of our electronic data. Despite all these safeguards, we are, in many ways, leaving our information wide open.”

  “How so?” Sasha asked.

  Grace piped up. “Many of our research scientists—most of them, in fact—have come to us from academia. They are in the habit of collaborating with colleagues all over the world by loading information to the cloud. They seem to think no one other than their fellow researchers would be interested enough to try to access it.” She shook her head at the naivety.

  “You mean they use Dropbox or something?” Sasha asked.

  “Dropbox, Boxy, Google Drive,” Connelly confirmed. “We’ve tried to explain to them that those sites are not sufficiently secure to house proprietary research and development material, but they don’t seem to believe us. They argue that at their universities, they were working in level four secure facilities and throwing this stuff up in the cloud, and no one objected.”

  Grace’s eyes took on a glint of steel. “And they continue to do it, even though it’s against corporate policy. I monitor those uploads myself. They just do whatever they want.”

  Sasha addressed Connelly. “That’s fairly serious. To claim that information is trade secret and entitled to legal protection, you guys have to take steps to actually protect it.”

  “I know,” he said. “Tate and I have argued with the head of R & D until our voices are hoarse. Those scientists are the company’s bread and butter. No one is going to make them do anything. So, right now, the best we can do is have Grace monitor their activity and hope none of their accounts get hacked.” He shrugged, helpless and frustrated, then said to Grace, “Please tell me that’s not what happened?”

  “No, it’s not. There’s a problem at the Pennsylvania DC.” Grace said.

  “DC, as in distribution center?” Sasha asked.

  “Right. I guess I didn’t mention it, did I?” Grace answered. “In addition to research and development centers and manufacturing facilities, we used to have regional distribution cen
ters—one on the West Coast, one in the South, one in the upper Midwest, and one in New Kensington, Pennsylvania, just outside Pittsburgh, which served the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. They were nothing more than warehouses. In recent years, the company moved to just in time production and closed the DCs.”

  “Just in time production?” Sasha asked again, scribbling as fast as she could.

  The learning curve for a client’s new business was always steep. But she’d found it was important to gather as much information at this stage as she could. Once litigation was underway, clients tended to assume their lawyers understood their business operations. Sasha had seen more than one instance of a case going south because an attorney misunderstood or never fully knew how a client ran its business. It hadn’t yet happened to her. And she wasn’t about to let Connelly’s company be the first.

  “Right. Instead of housing inventory, which gets costly, we’ve honed our systems so that we manufacture just enough of each of our drugs to fill the immediate demand. And as soon as they’re produced, we send them directly to the customer. It’s more efficient and less expensive than having pallets of drugs sitting around, potentially going out of date, while we wait for someone to place an order,” Connelly explained.

  “Okay, so if you closed all the distribution centers, how is there a problem at the Pennsylvania DC?” Sasha said, asking the obvious question.

  “We just reopened it for a special project. We have a government contract for a minimum of twenty-five million doses of a vaccine. Obviously, we can’t produce that amount instantly. And the government, being the government, can’t pay for it all at once either. So, as doses are manufactured, we’re going to ship them to the Pennsylvania DC and hold them. Each time we reach a million doses, we’re to invoice the feds, then they’ll send reservists from Fort Meade in Maryland to come pick up the vaccines,” Connelly explained.

  “The government’s going to stockpile vaccines at Fort Meade?” Sasha asked.

  “It’s a national security issue. We’re not talking about just any vaccine; this one provides immunity to the killer flu,” Grace explained.

  Sasha had reached the awkward part of an initial client meeting, where she had to admit she had no idea what the business people were talking about. Usually, the confession was well received, and the business people tripped all over themselves to be helpful and educate her. This time, she had a vague suspicion that Connelly might have told her all of this during one of their telephone conversations and she simply hadn’t focused on the details.

  She’d been busy the past several weeks. In her efforts to adjust to living alone again and to block out her disastrous foray into criminal defense work, she had taken on four complicated new cases and had been working hours that were long, even by her standards. On top of that, she’d been trying to fit everything into a four-day workweek so she could spend long weekends at the lake with Connelly. On the weekends that they hadn’t met up, she’d made it a point to get together with friends or spend time with her extended family. All that activity, on top of her workout routine, had kept her mind off Connelly’s absence and the outcome of her Lady Lawyer Killer case, but it left her somewhat absentminded. Now she was going to have to explain she had no idea what Connelly and Grace were talking about.

  “Let’s step back. The federal government has decided the flu is a matter of national security?” she said.

  Another look passed between Connelly and Grace.

  “It’s not just the flu, it’s the Doomsday virus—the killer flu. I know I told you about this,” Connelly said.

  “You did,” Sasha agreed quickly. “I just need a better understanding as your corporate attorney than I had as your girlfriend. Tell me everything you know about the Doomsday virus, okay? Pretend I don’t know anything.”

  “Okay,” he conceded. “After the bird and swine flu scares, researchers realized that a flu pandemic would be, for lack of a better word, devastating. The death toll would make historic plagues look like a joke, and the quarantines and panic that would result could cripple the global economy.”

  Sasha tried not to let her skepticism show on her face. It sounded like Y2K hysteria all over again.

  But Connelly knew her too well. “It’s a very real threat, Sasha. So real, in fact, that the government became concerned about bioterrorism.”

  “We’re worried someone will use the flu as a weapon?” she asked.

  “Right,” Grace confirmed. “So, we decided to develop it first.”

  “What?” Sasha cocked her head.

  “The National Institutes of Health funded a study to combine the three most severe naturally occurring flu strains into a mutant superflu,” Grace said, her tone neutral.

  Sasha gasped despite herself. “We made it? On purpose?”

  “We did. But, the resultant flu wasn’t highly contagious. It was difficult to transmit,” Connelly explained.

  “Oh, that’s good,” Sasha said.

  Connelly continued, “So, the NIH funded another study to see whether the new flu virus could be genetically modified to make it more contagious.”

  “What? Why?”

  Connelly put down his coffee mug and threw up his hands. “I don’t know why, Sasha. I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  “Did it work?” Sasha asked. She was almost numb with disbelief.

  “Oh, it worked all right. The new strain, which is what the press is talking about when they refer to the killer flu, is not only capable of airborne transmission, making it very easy to pass among humans, it’s more virulent. Researchers have created an extremely contagious, deadly flu virus,” Connelly said, reaching across the couch and taking her free hand in his. “I guess I downplayed all this when I talked to you about the vaccine, but it’s been all over the news.”

  Sasha had been avoiding the news in the aftermath of her own infamy but was too stunned to form a response for a moment. Then, she said, “But you guys have a vaccine that will work against it?”

  Grace smiled reassuringly at her. “We do. It was quite a challenge, because after the researchers announced they’d concocted the killer flu, the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity forbid them from publishing their results, citing national security. That made it virtually impossible to work on an effective vaccine until we hired away some members of the research team. And, we had to take the unusual step of using a small amount of a live virus that’s as close to the Doomsday virus as we could manage instead of a killed virus to make the vaccine.”

  “But it works?” Sasha asked.

  “It works in ferrets,” Connelly said, rubbing the skin between her right thumb and index finger with his. “Ferrets, apparently, are close to humans in germ transmission.”

  “Okay.” Sasha figured that fact was no less believable than anything else she’d heard. “So, the government wants to buy millions of doses of a vaccine that works in ferrets to protect us from a deadly flu that it created.”

  “Basically,” Connelly said.

  “And you’re making it as fast as you can and sending it to this distribution center in Pennsylvania to await pick up by army reservists,” she continued, grateful for Connelly’s warm hand in hers. She gave it a squeeze.

  “You’re all caught up,” Grace said. “Now, do you want to hear the problem?”

  “Yes,” Connelly and Sasha said in unison.

  “ViraGene has a mole in the DC,” Grace said. She leaned forward, and Sasha recognized excitement shining in the woman’s brilliant blue eyes.

  Connelly’s hand tightened over Sasha’s as he said, “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Ben Davenport called me shortly after six o’clock this evening. He said he’d had an unsettling encounter with one of the clerks—a woman named Celia Gerig, who started working for us the Monday before last. Her job responsibility is to check in the pallets when they arrive at the warehouse, count them, and shrink wrap them to await pick up.”

  “
Ben is the distribution center manager. He seems like a good guy and a straight shooter,” Connelly interjected for Sasha’s benefit.

  “Anyway, Ben ran into Celia in the parking lot. Her car battery was dead, so he gave her a jump. As he explained it, she seemed edgy or nervous. He didn’t go into detail except to say that the conversation left him with the strong feeling that something was wrong.”

  Grace seemed apologetic about the amorphous nature of Ben’s report, but Sasha just nodded. Intuition was real, as far as Sasha was concerned, and had saved her life on more than one occasion. Whenever her gut told her something was off, she listened. Her Krav Maga instructor had a saying that the human brain has the remarkable ability to know things it doesn’t know it knows.

  “Tell me you didn’t drag me all the way in here because Ben had a bad feeling,” Connelly said.

  Grace briefly twisted her mouth into the expression disbelieving underlings reserved for mildly insulting questions from their neurotic bosses. Sasha recognized it well from her years at Prescott & Talbott. She had given it to her share of partners in response to questions confirming that she’d cite checked the cases in a brief or served all the parties of record.

  After a moment, she answered. “No, Leo. Ben was concerned enough to go back into the office and pull her personnel file. It looks like Human Resources confirmed her social security number against the government database, and it checked out, but they hadn’t yet gotten around to checking her references.”

  Sasha saw Connelly’s eyes flash, but his expression remained impassive.

  Grace must have picked up on the flicker of anger, too.

  “I know. I called Jessica at home to find out why. She said they’re backlogged with all the new hires to get the warehouse open. They’re running the socials as they get them, but they can only check so many references a day, and Gerig was a low priority.”

  “She should have told us. We’d have authorized overtime,” Connelly said in a flat tone.