“It’s okay,” Sam said. “I’m not on a witch hunt. I’m just here following up some new information, and I want to make sure we tie up any loose ends.”
Sylvia Salisbury hesitated. She pursed her lips. Then she spoke. “It’s just that she was so healthy,” she said. “Vibrant. It really doesn’t seem right that a disease could kill her that quickly. Literally, it killed her overnight. I mean, you hear about people dying of diseases all the time. The elderly. People who have been sick for a while, who have weakened immune systems. You know, they catch pneumonia, and that’s it. Sometimes young children, too. Underdeveloped immune systems. But that wasn’t Janice. I don’t know that she ever missed a day of work until the day she died.”
“Do you think it could have been something other than a disease?”
“I’m trying not to draw any conclusions for you,” Sylvia Salisbury said, a serious expression on her face. “I’m just saying, the whole thing seemed… not right.”
27
David Swaringen was troubled. He couldn’t let it rest. It nagged at him. He was determined to figure out who was making life-and-death decisions for thousands of humans.
He pulled his regular shifts in the command center, then invented semi-plausible reasons to remain afterward, doing all he could to learn more about the way the NSA operation fit together. So far, he had learned about how the data was passed to and from the command center floor, and about the particular algorithms that helped handle the flow of information.
But each answer pointed to new questions. Each algorithm had its own set of parameters. Each of those parameters had to be finely tuned. Otherwise, the algorithms would produce junk. The list of potential terrorism suspects would be as long as the list of humans, if it were done wrong. Or there might be nobody on it at all. Or any combination of wrongs in between.
And Swaringen had still never seen the list. He had no idea how many names were on it. He knew only that the list showed up via courier in the ops center a couple of times every month, updated to reflect new changes. The biometric identification parameters associated with each person on the list were then fed into the automatic recognition systems that screened all of the video that streamed into the NSA command center.
That part Swaringen understood very well. It seemed very straightforward, if a little bit spooky. Orwell had no idea how right he was. And how wrong. The current surveillance establishment far surpassed any dystopian nightmares of yesteryear.
Swaringen’s attempts to ask Barter about the list had failed miserably. Not only had he obtained no answers, but he had received decidedly frosty non-responses. Swaringen felt he had pushed Barter as far as was prudent. Further, maybe.
So it came down to the courier. She was the link. If he were to learn anything further about the list, it would have to be through her.
Swaringen got ahold of the list of Penumbra-cleared personnel. Penumbra was the name of the program, but Penumbra was also something called a security caveat, a compartmented administrative construct that contained all the classified information associated with the top-secret program that Clark Barter ran.
There were close to fifty names on the Penumbra access list. But only three of them were female names.
The first two were shift workers in the video center. They never saw the list, and they never handled any classified information outside of the command center’s secure room.
The third name was Emily Green. She was a short lady, squat, overweight, besieged and beleaguered, with an air of being permanently overwhelmed by the activities of her daily life. She seemed frazzled, far less than put together.
She was the courier.
They found a secured room where they could talk about the classified information in the Penumbra program. Swaringen began the conversation as he had with the others. He told Emily Green that he wanted to understand more about the process, so that he could be better at his job, more efficient. Which was still mostly true. He told Emily that he had been into the IT center, to see how things worked, to see the server stacks that housed both the algorithms and the data that supported the ops center floor.
Emily Green’s eyebrows arched a bit. She seemed surprised. Angered, maybe.
“Should I not have visited the IT people?” Swaringen asked.
“I think that was within your security clearance,” the courier said.
“I’m certain that it was,” Swaringen said. “But you seem surprised.”
“It’s just that we really discourage people from asking questions outside of our area of responsibility. It’s a security risk.”
“How so?” Swaringen asked. “I’m supposed to stand in for Clark Barter during the times he’s called away. So I want to make sure that I thoroughly understand the operation. There’s a lot at stake, and I don’t want to make any mistakes. How is that a security risk?”
Emily Green looked conflicted. He could tell the conversation was making her uneasy. He got the sense that with her, secrecy was more than just process or necessity. It seemed more like a way of life for her, well beyond habit, maybe even a belief system. “I suppose it does make sense,” she said reluctantly. “I mean, it is a lot of responsibility.”
Swaringen nodded. “I’ve gained a lot of insight into how the system works, and how things fit together. But there’s one area where I still feel very ignorant. And it feels like an important area to me. So I was hoping maybe you could help me understand it better.”
“Maybe.” Emily Green turned her head and narrowed her eyes ever so slightly. Wariness, Swaringen saw.
He made his tone as gentle as possible. “You carry the suspect list down to the ops center a couple of times a month.”
The courier’s eyes widened in obvious alarm.
“Was I not supposed to know that?”
“It’s just not in your area of responsibility,” Emily Green said.
“I think it’s very much in my area of responsibility,” Swaringen said, doing his best to conceal his mounting frustration. “Like I said, I just want to understand the process. Can you tell me, where do you get the list?”
Emily shook her head. Her cheeks jiggled. Her brow contracted into a frown. “I really can’t talk about it.”
“But you have to get the list from somewhere, right?”
“Yes, obviously. But I’m not allowed to talk about it. And these are questions you shouldn’t be asking.”
“But isn’t it classified under Penumbra? I mean, we’re both cleared for the program. So we can talk about it. There’s nothing wrong with having a conversation about the process, right?”
Emily Green shook her head again. “You’re making me very uncomfortable,” she said. “There are layers within Penumbra. If you were allowed to know about this, about the list and where it comes from, we would both know that already. They would have told us. But you’re not cleared for that information. That’s why I can’t talk about it.”
The courier rose. “I’m sorry, but I really can’t continue this conversation,” she said. “If and when you’re cleared for that level of information, I would be happy to explain everything to you. Until then, please don’t ask me any more questions.”
It was clear that David Swaringen was going to get nothing more out of the courier. She took security more than a little bit seriously. He had run into another brick wall.
Really, he had run into the same brick wall. Barter hadn’t cleared him to view the information necessary to do his job correctly. There were layers upon layers within Penumbra. Swaringen was cleared to some of them, but not all.
He wasn’t cleared to the most important one.
You could learn a lot just by paying attention, Swaringen decided. He decided to keep an eye on the courier. Obviously, Emily Green got the list from someplace. She didn’t conjure it from thin air. He wanted to know where.
Swaringen took more frequent breaks from the command center. He used the time to wander the halls around the operations center, venturing down unexplore
d corridors in the enormous NSA facility. He walked quickly, with a stern look on his face. Better to look busy and occupied. It would arouse less suspicion that way.
He was beginning to think it was a fool’s errand. The facility was staggeringly large. He could wander the hallways for months without intercepting Emily Green.
But he caught a lucky break. He spotted her leaving the restroom, courier bag in hand. Swaringen recognized her short, squat frame and her decades-old hairstyle. Her fat, lumpy ass looked like two tigers fighting in a gunny sack as she walked to the water fountain and bent over for a drink.
The courier bag hung by her side as she sipped. It must have been empty, Swaringen surmised, because you weren’t allowed to stop anyplace with a classified package on your person. You had to go directly between origin and destination, with no stops in between. It cut down on the likelihood that someone might lose a pouch full of classified information. Emily Green didn’t strike him as the kind to violate protocol of any sort by stopping in the bathroom while carrying a classified package.
Swaringen snuck a closer look at the courier bag. The zipper was open, and the padlock was unfastened. As he suspected, there was nothing in the pouch.
Emily Green finished drinking, wiped her mouth with a pudgy palm, turned toward Swaringen, and walked quickly down the hallway. Swaringen smiled and said hello as they passed. Emily Green’s greeting was a few notches below friendly. She oozed mistrust. She really did take her job seriously.
Swaringen turned down a side hallway, took a few steps, and stopped. He wanted to gain a little separation from the courier. He wanted to follow her unobserved. He counted to ten, hearing her heavy footfalls echo off of the hard floor tiles as she hustled down the main corridor.
He returned to the main hallway. He followed Emily Green at twenty paces, walking slowly and on the balls of his feet to avoid alerting her to his presence. The hall was otherwise unoccupied. Not unusual. The building housed thousands of employees, but never seemed crowded.
The courier stopped at a door on the left side of the corridor. There was a key-card reader fastened to the wall adjacent to the door, and a telephone on the wall above the keypad.
Swaringen expected Emily Green to swipe her badge, type in her PIN, and enter the vault. But she didn’t. Instead, she picked up the telephone on the wall adjacent to the door, dialed a five-digit extension, identified herself to whoever answered on the other end, and waited. Which meant that Emily Green wasn’t cleared to enter the room unescorted.
Interesting.
Layers upon layers.
The door opened. A hand extended from within. Swaringen’s angle down the hallway prevented him from seeing its owner.
Emily Green passed the empty courier bag to the person in the doorway.
Swaringen picked up his pace. He needed to see who Emily Green was talking to. He needed to read the person’s name on their ID badge, or at least to get a glimpse of their face before the door shut.
The hand disappeared, then reappeared. Swaringen saw more of the person within the secured room. A man. Tall and lanky. With a shiny, bald pate. He couldn’t make out the face.
Swaringen’s eye went to the man’s hand. It contained another courier pouch. This one was sealed and locked.
It contained classified information.
Emily Green signed a form and handed it to the tall, skinny man in the doorway.
She turned and continued down the hallway.
The door swung shut.
The man retreated within the secured room.
But not before Swaringen saw his face. Hawkish. Severe.
Familiar.
Someone Swaringen had met before.
The name escaped him, as did the context of their prior meeting. It was just beneath the surface of his consciousness. If someone had spoken the man’s name, Swaringen would have recognized it immediately.
Swaringen took note of the room number as he walked by. The placard next to the phone said Current Operations. As if there might have been a room somewhere else called Future Operations. Or Past Operations. It was the kind of nondescript non-name that spoke volumes.
He looked forward down the corridor. Emily Green had disappeared around a corner up ahead, but he could hear her heavy, plodding footfalls.
He had a good idea where she was headed next. At least, he thought he did. And if he was right, it would confirm the contents of the sealed bag. She was headed to the basement.
Emily Green would undoubtedly take the elevator. She was overweight and didn’t move very well.
Swaringen took the stairs. He bounded down two at a time. He was timing things in his head, and he figured he had a good twenty seconds on her. The elevators weren’t fast, and while the courier had a head start, he figured he’d already more than made up for it.
He emerged from the stairwell onto the below-ground floor, maneuvered down a short hallway, crossed another long corridor, and finally arrived at the operations center doorway.
He badged himself in, took his seat next to Clark Barter, and waited.
Which was when it came to him. James Alcorn. That was the man’s name. It arrived in his brain in a flash. Swaringen had met the hawkish, severe, unfriendly guy with the dead-fish handshake before.
In Clark Barter’s office.
Where James Alcorn had retrieved something from Barter, something marked TOP SECRET.
Less than a minute later, the courier appeared, classified document pouch clutched in her plump hand like a prized possession. She handed it to a technician, who unlocked and unzipped it.
Inside was an envelope. Bright red, with TOP SECRET written on it in large, serious letters.
The technician sliced open the envelope. A data drive fell out.
Swaringen’s heart pounded in his chest.
The list.
From the courier. Via James Alcorn.
Who got it from Clark Barter.
Which made Swaringen feel sick.
Because it made Clark Barter judge, jury, and executioner.
28
Sam turned the pieces over in her head. A national security group, ostensibly meeting about national security items, had Janice Everman hopping during the weeks leading up to her death. She was summoned to various meetings, and afterward, she had many hours of computer work to do in a classified vault.
Undoubtedly, she had been asked to render a legal opinion regarding a particular classified program, or maybe a collection of them. It was the only plausible explanation. Why else would the Department of Justice have anything to do with NSA, CIA, and the Department of Homeland Security?
Sam frowned. It bothered her that there were no individuals associated with any of the meetings. Bureaucrats senior enough to rate an executive assistant invariably knew how to play the game. You were promoted only if people — important people — knew your name. People learned your name by seeing it, over and over again. So seasoned bureaucrats never missed an opportunity to associate their name with high-profile work. And anything involving a handful of three-letter agencies was undoubtedly big. Bigger than big, in fact.
So why weren’t people’s names plastered all over each others’ calendars? Why weren’t they marketing themselves, posturing for the next big job?
Maybe they couldn’t. Maybe they weren’t allowed to associate themselves with the effort due to security concerns.
Or maybe they were afraid to be associated with whatever was going on. Maybe it was controversial. Toxic, or radioactive, as the bureaucrats said. Dirty work, with the potential for big, ugly, messy blowback.
If that were the case, then nobody would want to be caught within a mile of any of the meetings. Movers and shakers would launder the evidence of their participation. Not much would be said about the gatherings, no minutes would circulate before or after, and the calendar coordination would happen very discreetly. Maybe even secretly.
Sam pursed her lips.
Maybe it was nothing. Maybe it was just administr
ative laziness that kept all those names off of the attendee lists. A kind of administrative shorthand. Maybe Sylvia Salisbury didn’t put any names on that list because it just wasn’t necessary. The National Security Policy Group was just another set of drumbeat meetings in an endless stream of drumbeat meetings. You had to have an iron ass to be a bureaucrat. You spent all day sitting on it, shuffling papers or listening to people reading from their slide presentations. Maybe it was just business as usual, too unremarkable for specifics.
But probably not. Self-promotion was a powerful motivator. People wanted to see and be seen. They wanted their names circulated. They wanted to be talked about, associated with big things, groomed for big things, hired for big things.
Sam sighed. “Hell if I know,” she said to no one in particular as she unlocked her car.
She drove home. Brock was taking a nap. She took off her clothes, climbed in bed next to him, climbed on top of him. She woke him up and had her way with him.
She dozed fitfully for an hour afterward.
And then she rose, packed her bag, kissed Brock on the lips, and bade him farewell.
“Boston?”
“Just for a couple of days,” Sam said.
“Promise me you’ll be careful,” he said. “No risks.”
“I promise,” Sam lied.
The flight was uneventful. Sam spotted no watchers. Dan Gable accompanied her on the trip. They took separate flights, to lower the probability of being tracked, to complicate the problem for the opposition.
Since her return from Budapest, Sam had noticed no surveillance. But DC was a horrendously crowded city, and surveillance was much harder to spot.
And there was also the matter of all of those video cameras. Hack into the right system, and there was no need to hire a goon in sunglasses to keep tabs on someone. There were enough video cameras around the city to do the job much more efficiently, and with a much lower probability of being caught.
Sam figured Boston was much the same, although she knew the camera density was significantly lower than in the nation’s capital. There were fewer self-important people in Boston. At least, the self-important people in Boston didn’t have their fingers on the nation’s purse strings. They’d have to buy their own security.
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