The second perimeter

by Mike Lawson

  “Call that number, Mr. Miller,” she said. “A phone will ring in the Pentagon and someone with stars on his shoulders will explain to you why you want to be nice to me. Now I’m going to get a cup of coffee but I’ll be back in five minutes.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Emma, DeMarco, and Miller were inside the shipyard, walking toward the training facility. As they walked, Miller kept glancing over at Emma; whatever he’d been told by the man in the Pentagon had made an impression.

  To reach the training facility they had to traverse almost the entire length of the shipyard. The place was enormous and everything in it— the buildings, the equipment, the drydocks— was enormous. Miller said the shipyard’s machine shop was the biggest such facility west of the Mississippi River, and DeMarco believed him.

  Four of the shipyard’s drydocks held submarines being overhauled and one drydock held two submarines that were being dismantled. The sixth drydock, the largest one, was empty, but big wooden blocks were laid out in a pattern for a ship to set down on. A big ship— a Nimitz class aircraft carrier.

  Miller allowed them to look into a drydock holding a Trident submarine. A Trident submarine is five hundred and sixty feet long— almost the length of two football fields— and carries more weapons of mass destruction than most countries have in their entire arsenal. A Trident is a sleek, sinister-looking killing machine, and it wasn’t hard for DeMarco to imagine it sitting motionless beneath the waves, a missile hatch silently opening— and then the entire world being set on fire. But “Gee that thing’s big” was the only thing he said out loud and Emma just looked at him— like he was the first idiot to master understatement.

  Miller introduced them to Dave Whitfield’s boss, the person in charge of training the shipyard’s nuclear engineers. She was a handsome, dark-haired woman in her forties named Jane Shipley and she was even taller than Emma. Shipley showed them her domain, which consisted of several classrooms, study areas for the trainees, and the ubiquitous corporate cubicles where instructors and other personnel pounded away on computers.

  Shipley pointed out the cubicle where Mulherin and Norton worked. It was located on the front wall of the building and looked just like all the other cubicles: two desks, two chairs, two phones, two computers, one filing cabinet. DeMarco could tell that Emma wanted to yank open all the drawers, but she restrained herself.

  There was also a large walk-in vault at the rear of the training area, the type of vault you would find in a bank. DeMarco could see blueprints and big books— books the size of Bibles or phone books— on shelves inside the vault. A woman— half guard, half librarian— was posted at a desk near the vault.

  “What do you keep in there?” DeMarco asked Shipley.

  “Drawings of ships’ systems and components. The big books are reactor and steam plant manuals.”

  DeMarco remembered what Dave Whitfield had said: the reactor plant manuals told you how the ships’ reactors worked.

  Emma looked at the vault, then did a slow turn to take in the rest of the training complex. To Shipley, she said, “You have a lot of classified information in this facility, don’t you?”

  “Well, sure,” Shipley said. “Our engineers are trained primarily on three different classes of ships: Nimitz class aircraft carriers, Trident submarines, and Los Angeles class attack submarines. We can’t go running all around the shipyard every time we have to prepare a class or teach a course.”

  “I know,” Emma said. “But there’s so much information here, all in one place.” Before Shipley could respond, Emma said, “Are the manuals, those reactor plant manuals, are they on CDs?”

  Miller hesitated. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s the most efficient way to update them when they’re revised.”

  “CREM,” Emma said.

  It had sounded to DeMarco like Emma was either clearing her throat or uttering a heretofore unknown curse word.

  “What did you say?” DeMarco said.

  “CREM. They have CREM,” Emma said. Now the word sounded like a sexually transmitted disease. “Controlled removable electronic media. In other words, CDs and floppy discs that contain classified information. CDs that can be stolen and copied and e-mailed. CREM is a security officer’s nightmare, isn’t it, Mr. Miller?”

  Miller’s mouth took a hard set, bristling at Emma’s comment. “We control our classified material tighter than anybody in the business, lady,” he said. “Particularly since Los Alamos.”

  In July 2004, Emma explained to DeMarco later, two classified CDs were reported missing at the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Weapons Physics Directorate— a place that designs and experiments with nuclear bombs. This was the same facility that the Chinese had supposedly infiltrated in the 1990s, making off with design information related to thermonuclear warheads. The CDs lost at Los Alamos in 2004 may simply have been misplaced— stuck in the wrong file drawer or safe— or accidentally destroyed. Subsequent investigations showed that the people at the laboratory, most of them egghead scientists with skyscraper IQs, were incredibly absentminded when it came to controlling classified material. Or maybe the CDs weren’t lost or destroyed— maybe they were mailed to North Korea or Iran or some other equally unfriendly party.

  Because of what had happened at Los Alamos, the shipyard was ultracareful when it came to removable media. Miller explained that when an individual checked out a classified CD from the vault, the number of the CD was recorded— just like when you checked out a book from the library— and at the end of the day, the CD had to be returned to the vault. An inventory was done every day to make sure all the CDs had been returned— and if one was found missing, Miller’s security force went to high alert. The problem was CDs could be copied and their contents e-mailed. When Emma said this, both Miller and Shipley responded immediately.

  “No way,” they said, simultaneously. They explained that the shipyard’s computers were designed to prevent copying classified CDs and the shipyard’s firewall prevented classified material from being e-mailed out of the yard.

  “Humph,” was Emma’s response. “And Mulherin and Norton, I suppose they have access to these classified CDs?”

  “Yes,” Shipley said.

  “And do they use your computers or their own?”

  “You can’t bring personal computers into the yard,” Shipley said. “So their contract specified that they be given a work space here in the training facility and computers and phones. You saw their office. They needed the computers because a lot of the training materials— class outlines, course materials, exams— are on CDs or a secure network. But like I said, you can’t burn copies of classified CDs on our computers.”

  “I see,” Emma said.

  Shipley shook her head and said, “Mulherin and Norton are a couple of eight balls. I wouldn’t hire them to clean my blackboards. Why anybody would pay these guys to review my training program is beyond me.”

  “You know Dave Whitfield thought there was something, ah, funny about the work Mulherin and Norton were doing,” DeMarco said. He didn’t want to use the word “fraudulent.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Shipley said. “He complained to me about it.” She hesitated, then added, “Look, I think this review Carmody’s doing is a waste of time, and I’ve already told you what I think of Mulherin and Norton, but there isn’t anything illegal going on like Dave seemed to think. He was upset because these guys were making more money than he was, but…well, that’s just the way Dave was.”

  “What about Carmody?” Emma asked. “Does he spend much time here?”

  “No,” Shipley said. “He comes up here once in a while— to check on Norton and Mulherin, I guess— but he spends most of his time on the subs.”

  “Doing what?” Emma said.

  “Part of the training is the book stuff,” Shipley said, “which we do here, and part is shipboard. Carmody is supposedly watching the shipboard training, but my guys say that he seems to spend most of his time just bullshitting with the sailors.”

 
; “But he’s on board the submarines a lot,” Emma said. “On his own.”

  “Yeah,” Shipley said. “Is there a problem with that?”

  13

  Emma led DeMarco to a café on Bremerton’s waterfront. The place smelled of incense and flowers and served fifty varieties of herbal tea. The cheerful lady who ran the café sported John Lennon–style wire-rim glasses and had straight, gray hair that reached the small of her back. She wore what DeMarco thought of as a granny dress, a long shapeless thing as glamorous as a flour sack that touched the tops of her Birkenstock sandals. DeMarco had thought that hippies were extinct, but apparently not.

  Emma ordered an exotic tea, something with ginseng in it. DeMarco asked for coffee, then a Coke, then a plain old Lipton’s and each time was informed by the woman— not only a hippie but a health Nazi— that she didn’t stock such beverages. He settled for a glass of water; the happy Nazi put a slice of lemon in it.

  They took seats near a window where they could see the ferry terminal and watch the jumbo ferries from Seattle dock at the terminal in Bremerton.

  “I think Whitfield may have been right about Mulherin and Norton,” Emma said.

  “That they’re committing some kind of fraud?”

  “Not fraud,” Emma said. “Something else.”

  “What else? What are you talking about?”

  “Let’s look at everything Dave Whitfield said from a different perspective. He said Mulherin and Norton, two guys in debt, suddenly retire early and come into a lot of money and start buying things. Then you consider where they’ve been working, in a training facility loaded with classified materials. And then right after Whitfield calls you about them, he’s killed. So maybe Whitfield saw Mulherin or Norton doing something or overheard something and—”

  “Espionage? Is that what you’re saying, Emma?”

  Emma nodded her head slowly.

  DeMarco had never been near a spy in his life, at least not that he knew of. His normal assignments involved wayward politicians and greedy bureaucrats and being the middleman for deals that Mahoney didn’t want his fingerprints on. “You might be right,” he said to Emma, “but you saw the security in that place.”

  The shipyard’s perimeter was protected by tall fences topped with barbed wire; boats armed with machine guns patrolled the waterfront to keep watercraft— watercraft potentially filled with explosives— from approaching the drydocks or ships that were moored at the piers; armed guards manned entry gates and patrolled the grounds, and cameras were located in strategic spots. And these were just the security measures that were visible.

  People entering the shipyard were carefully controlled. The employees, the ones who worked on the nuclear ships, had to have a security clearance and they wore badges that had their pictures on the front and a magnetic strip on the back, like the strip on the back of a credit card. To enter the shipyard, workers had to show their badges to guards stationed at the gates and swipe the badges through bar-code readers to further confirm they were allowed to enter. Miller, the shipyard security chief, had said that random searches of backpacks and lunch boxes and vehicles were performed at all times, and if the national or regional threat level increased, everybody was searched, from the shipyard commander’s wife on down to the guy who mopped the cafeteria floor.

  “Let me tell you something about security systems,” Emma said to DeMarco. “Most systems— including the one at this shipyard— are primarily designed to keep the bad guys out. But once a worker has been vetted for a security clearance and given a badge, he’s in. And once he’s in, he’s trusted, and he has access to classified information, and most important, he knows how such information is protected.” Emma paused to sip her tea, then added, “And espionage isn’t the only possibility.”

  “What else is there?”

  “Sabotage. There are currently four nuclear-powered submarines being overhauled at the shipyard. Sabotaging one of these ships would have significant repercussions. Not only the cost to repair whatever was damaged, but fleet operations would be disrupted if a vessel had to be taken out of service for a significant amount of time, and work on all the other ships being overhauled would be delayed.”

  “It’s kinda hard to picture Mulherin and Norton as spies. I mean these guys, they’re just—”

  “Remember Aldrich Ames?” Emma asked.

  “The CIA guy?” DeMarco said.

  “Right,” Emma said. “Ames was probably the most damaging mole ever to penetrate a U.S. intelligence service. He was an alcoholic and poorly thought of by his coworkers. He was turned down for promotions, not all that bright, and openly flaunted the money he received from the Russians. In spite of all that, he fed CIA information to the KGB for almost ten years, and ten native Russians providing intelligence to the CIA died because of him. When you think about it, Mulherin and Norton bear a rather large resemblance to Aldrich Ames.”

  “What about Carmody?”

  “We don’t know anything about Phil Carmody,” Emma said and her lips compressed into a stubborn line that said they soon would.

  “Hell, even if they are spies, according to that tall gal up in the training area, what’s-her-name, Shipley, it’d be pretty hard to sneak anything classified out of that place. You sure as hell can’t sneak one of those big damn books out of that vault.”

  “I know,” Emma said.

  They sat in silence a moment until DeMarco said, “If all those security systems don’t keep the spies out, how do they get ’em?”

  “The first opportunity,” Emma said, “is the background checks performed when they issue a man or a woman a security clearance. That’s the time to see if they’re in financial trouble or susceptible to blackmail. But that’s not how spies are usually caught.” Emma gestured toward the shipyard, the eastern end of which was visible from the teahouse. “All that security— the fences, the cameras, the safes, the cyber locks— that’s the physical perimeter that protects the facility and its secrets. But there’s a second perimeter that’s just as visible but not as apparent— a human perimeter. The employees. Employees like Dave Whitfield watching their coworkers, looking for odd behavior, looking for something that stinks, as poor Dave put it. It’s the second perimeter that catches the spies.”

  Emma tipped her cup back and swallowed the remainder of her horrible, healthy tea. “There’s somebody I need to talk to,” she said. “I’ll see you later.”

  14

  I need some help here, Bill,” Emma said.

  Bill Smith— his real name— worked for Emma’s old outfit. He was five foot nine, slim, had curly dark hair, and wore glasses with heavy black frames. He didn’t look like an international spy; he looked, to his great dismay, very much like the older brother of a guy who did a national TV commercial, one that had been running for more than three years. He and Emma were sitting in a Denny’s restaurant and Emma winced as Smith poured half a pint of raspberry syrup over his waffles.

  “I can’t do it, Emma,” Smith said. “We’re more shorthanded right now than we were during the cold war.” Before Emma could object, he held out a forkful of waffle, red syrup running down the handle of the fork. “Wanna bite?” he said.

  “God, no,” Emma said. “I’m telling you, Bill, these guys are up to something. I can feel it.”

  “Have you talked to the Feebies about this feeling of yours?”

  “Yes. The Bureau assigned two young agents to Whitfield’s murder. The one in charge is not only greener than grass, he’s handling a caseload that would break a donkey’s back. He thinks the likelihood of espionage is pretty far-fetched…”

  “Which you have to agree it is,” Smith said.

  “…and he says he doesn’t have sufficient probable cause to get warrants to look into these guys’ finances or search their homes.”

  “Probable cause,” Smith said and made a sound that was half snort, half laugh. In Bill Smith’s normal line of work, probable cause was rarely, if ever, an impediment.

  �
�And as for Whitfield’s murder, he says they’re starting to think that poor schizophrenic really did it.”

  “Well maybe he did do it.”

  “He didn’t,” Emma said. Emma, as the old saying went, was sometimes wrong but never uncertain.

  “So what do you want?” Smith said.

  “I want someone from research to check these people out, particularly Carmody. And I want to borrow a computer guy to tell me how they could trick the shipyard’s IT security. And I need a team, just a small one. I want these guys followed for a while and their houses searched. I particularly want Carmody’s place sniffed for explosives and spyware.”