The Langley Profile

by Jack Bowie

  “Wilson, the IT manager. The InfoSec contractor arrived for the audit and Wilson’s worried.”

  “It’s just a goddamn security audit for chrissake. What’s he concerned about?”

  “He thinks the guy is asking too many questions. About operations and projects, not just reviewing policy and procedure manuals. That could be problematic, sir.”

  Rockwell had classified the whole investment boondoggle as a minor irritation but he couldn’t afford to ignore the alert. Whether or not the concern was real if Wilson was becoming agitated some action would need to be taken.

  “Who’s the consultant, some internal CIA guy?”

  “No, sir. He’s an independent. Wilson said his name is Braxton. I have prepared some preliminary background.” Penrose handed a thin manila folder to his boss. “I think you’ll find it interesting.”

  Rockwell opened the folder and slid his finger down the paragraphs.

  “You are correct as always, William.” Rockwell handed the folder back to his aide. “Get all the additional information you can find. Top priority. And have Samson come in.”

  “Yes, sir.” Penrose executed a flawless about-face and disappeared.

  Rockwell leaned back in his chair. His old friends had made an unusual choice for the audit. He could even guess who might be behind it.

  Could this contract also be a way to even some old scores? Potentially, but he would have to tread lightly.

  Chapter 7

  Omega Genomics, Boston, Massachusetts

  Wednesday, 7:50 a.m.

  Braxton arrived at Omega Genomics ten minutes before the meeting he had scheduled with Kerry McAllister. He had awakened at 6:00, unable to get the impending confrontation out of his mind. He doubted he would get another chance at the younger McAllister and now had a lot more questions than the ones in his preliminary plan.

  When he reached his desk, he found a small envelope with his name on the front. He tore it open, and a zip drive had fallen out. Attached to the drive was a sticky note that simply said, “As requested, Frank Wilson.”

  He stuck the drive in his pants pocket and walked out to the elevators.

  At 7:58 he arrived at Kerry McAllister’s office on the third floor. The door was open and he could see she was talking, rather animatedly, on the phone. He knocked and she looked up, then waved the consultant in. She said a quick goodbye and walked over to a small seating area in the corner of her office. Braxton followed her and took one of the black leather chairs.

  The office was a smaller version of her father’s. Her desk was more cluttered with folders and the bookshelves were crammed with technical references and research binders, but it had the same impersonal, sterile feel. Braxton counted three photographs, all showing father and daughter at what he assumed were science conventions.

  McAllister was dressed a bit more formally this morning: a pale pink cable-knit sweater, tailored black slacks, and black leather low-heeled shoes. She wore minimal makeup and no lipstick. The only familiar aspects from their first encounter were the blond ponytail and the endearing frown.

  She opened a folder, extracted Braxton’s business card and turned it over in her hands, examining it like a piece of alien artwork. “Cerberus Consulting. An interesting name, Mr. Braxton.”

  “Thank you. It’s the name of—”

  “Yes, Mr. Braxton,” McAllister immediately interrupted. “I went to college as well. In Greek mythology, Cerberus was a three-headed dog with a mane of snakes, the claws of a lion, and the tail of a serpent. I believe it guarded the entrance to Hades to prevent the dead from escaping and the living from entering. Is that how you see your activities?”

  Well, that’s one way to start a conversation.

  “If you mean protecting an organization’s assets, then yes, Kerry. I’m glad you see it as memorable.” He attempted a smile.

  McAllister grimaced. She closed the folder.

  “I believe you now have all the documents you requested, Mr. Braxton. And I understand Frank has provided some log files. What more do you need from me?”

  “Just trying to understand the basics of your operation. Mr. Wilson mentioned the importance of the programming staff. You seem to have quite a group. I assume that means quite a few software assets associated with Omega. These are kept under tight version control?”

  “Of course.” McAllister assumed her professorial tone. “Software is a critical component of the Omega sequencing process. You see, we don’t get a complete genome from the analysis engines. We sequence many short pieces of the whole DNA molecule. Those pieces must subsequently be aligned and integrated into a genome. We have developed a number of proprietary alignment algorithms. Then there’s the compression and decompression software and the indexing techniques to make it easier for users to save and retrieve the sequences when needed. You see, we provide a complete DNA sequence solution for our customers. All these applications have dedicated development teams and their programs are kept under strict configuration management and version control. The specific processes should be described in the policy manuals.”

  “Thank you,” Braxton replied. “I’m sure I will find the references. It was just a bit of a surprise to see the size of the group. The engineers are shared with ChildSafe?”

  McAllister paused and the familiar scowl quickly reappeared. “Why would you say that?”

  It was time to throw out the first probe. “In your father’s interview last night, he mentioned that ChildSafe doesn’t just keep the samples. You create and keep the sequences as well. Is that correct?”

  He had hit a nerve. McAllister’s face went blank. “I don’t see why ChildSafe is part of your evaluation,” she replied.

  Braxton decided to stretch his knowledge a bit. She obviously knew Wilson had already given him the data logs. “I didn’t think so at first either, Kerry. But it’s obvious from the logs that both your networks and servers are shared by the two companies. I would be remiss if my due diligence didn’t cover the Child Safe operations as well.”

  The frown on McAllister’s face didn’t lessen. Time to offer a carrot.

  “I can’t imagine there will be any problems, though. Your security procedures are quite complete. Very impressive actually. You obviously take the protection of your client’s data very seriously.”

  “Thank you.” It was a grudging response. “We have spent a lot of time, and money, on our security infrastructure, Mr. Braxton. And to answer the obvious question, we started sequencing the samples a few years ago. This lets us respond more rapidly to match requests and provides protection from sample degradation. Plus we are able to provide important feedback on the Omega engine. We ‘eat our own dog food’ as your profession likes to say.”

  Another plausible explanation, except from what he remembered, identity matches weren’t performed on full sequences but on the repeat counts of nucleotide groups between genes. An analysis that was much simpler and faster. And the analysis that was used by CODIS—the Combined DNA Index System—in the US for identification. So why did they need to do the full sequences?

  “But ChildSafe doesn’t have clients, Mr. Braxton,” McAllister continued. “We hold our samples and profiles on behalf of families to protect their children from accidents and predators. It is our promise to them that these samples are kept in the highest regard. They deserve nothing less.”

  Braxton was momentarily taken aback by the gravity in McAllister’s tone. There was something very personal about ChildSafe to McAllister. And likely to her father. He wondered if he’d ever find out what it was.

  “I’m sure those families are very appreciative of your efforts, Kerry. And it must be exciting to have such an extensive database of DNA profiles for analysis.”

  He had said it as flatly as he could. The phrasing had been what had awakened him at six o’clock.

  Over the past years, Braxton had worked to develop his skills reading faces. He had studied the literature on non-verbal communication and micro-expression
s. Slattery still presented a challenge, of course, but he had been trained to deceive. Most of Braxton’s clients, on the other hand, only thought they were good liars. It was a skill that he had used to great advantage during business negotiations.

  He needn’t have wasted all the training for McAllister. Her face lit up like a Christmas tree. Figuratively speaking.

  “Let me be clear, Mr. Braxton. Our profiles are not some part of some secret research project. They are only accessed for legitimate law enforcement purposes.”

  He had his answer. Or at least the only one he would get today. Time to cool things off a bit. “Of course, Kerry. I didn’t mean to imply otherwise. I just wanted to be sure I understood the access log activity.”

  “Well, we do run data integrity tests fairly frequently. And refinement of the compression algorithms requires sampling of real data. I’m sure this will explain what you see in the logs.”

  Another plausible, if incomplete, answer. She is good.

  “I imagine. Mr. Wilson did mention your storage farms. Holding all those sequences helps explain that. You must have very large data sets. Doesn’t a single genome contain over three billion base pairs?”

  McAllister managed a small smile. Her face was actually pretty without the scowl. “You’ve been doing your homework, I see. But we don’t need to store that much. Only about point-three percent of the human genome is variable among individuals. That’s about ten million base pairs. And of that, most still adhere to a standard template. For any given individual there are very few differences.”

  “So I take it you only store the differences from this template? That should significantly reduce the data requirements.”

  “Correct. We have a model, the Advanced DNA Analytic Model, that describes a standard human genome. It is similar to the one developed by the Human Genome Project, but we have made some proprietary changes to minimize storage requirements. We only need to store the differences between the subject genome and this reference.”

  “ADAM, huh? Do you have an EVE?”

  Braxton’s attempt at humor fell flat. McAllister’s countenance returned to its unfriendly glower. Now he knew how interrogations felt from Slattery’s side of the table.

  “Yes, but our engineers have never come up with an adequate expansion of the acronym.” McAllister obviously blamed her staff for this significant lack of insight. “And EVE only involves one chromosome, so ADAM is still the primary reference. Coupled with the Humphrey-Khouri DNA encoding technique, we have reduced the storage requirements to under a megabyte per profile. Probably less than most dossiers you have on our citizens.”

  Well, at least McAllister’s dislike of him wasn’t personal. It appeared it extended to the CIA—her father’s investment partner. This wasn’t going to make his job any easier.

  “They’re not my dossiers, Kerry. I’m just a consultant working on a contract.”

  She shook her head. “Of course you are. But it is getting late and I have a lot of work waiting. Do you have any more questions or can you just go and get this damn audit completed?”

  “I can assure you I would like nothing better, Dr. McAllister. Er, Kerry.”

  McAllister opened her folder and glanced at the first page. “May I assume you intend to complete the audit on schedule?”

  “That is certainly my expectation. As I said, I haven’t found anything that suggests additional time will be required.”

  “Good. This investment is very important to my father. But I’m not sure that I can tolerate much more of your interference in our operations, Mr. Braxton. Please see that this audit is completed as quickly as possible.”

  * * *

  Slattery grabbed the handset of his secure line.

  “Slattery.”

  “Roger. It’s Ziv. Good morning.”

  Slattery turned away from his papers to pay attention to the call from his Mossad counterpart. It was unlike the spook to call without a purpose.

  “Ziv. Good to hear from you. I hope you have some news on the assassination.”

  “Always straight to the point, Roger. I’m doing just fine by the way. They haven’t booted me out yet, although there are those in the Knesset that would be quite pleased if I simply disappeared.”

  Shit. Bloom must be under merciless pressure after the assassination. He needs support, not interrogation.

  And I come off like some asshole bureaucrat.

  “My apologies, Ziv. I can’t imagine the demands that must be on the Mossad. I’m very glad you’re holding the fort. Besides, who else would keep me supplied in those exceptional kosher olives for my three martini lunches?”

  “Ah, Roger. Your compassion knows no bounds.”

  “How can we help, my friend?”

  “Unfortunately there is not much more that can be done. We closed the borders to children as rapidly as we could, but that has so far been unproductive. And the pressure on releasing the restriction grows by the day. It’s possible the assassin is still here, but my gut believes he is long gone.”

  Slattery agreed with his friend’s evaluation. The hit team’s exit would have been well-planned in advance.

  “I’ve read the updates but is there anything else? Any additional information on the actor behind the assassination?”

  “Nothing. The father appeared unremarkable, although we do believe both he and his son were American, or at least spent many years with you. The cultural traits were quite pronounced. His background was completely bogus, of course. You have their general descriptions. There were no pictures of the father and the only photographs of the child are from the news video.”

  Great. But this was not some wacko American out to kill Muslims. It was a well-planned, well-funded, assassination. All pointing back to Slattery’s side of the Atlantic.

  “There is one new development,” Bloom added. “We were able to secure some DNA of the son from his home. Our labs say it’s pretty degraded and incomplete, but we have it. It might be useful for an eventual comparison. You don’t happen to have a magic database of assassins under the age of fourteen, by any chance?”

  “Sorry, Ziv. Nope.” He knew Bloom was pulling his chain but they needed to find some way to make progress. Who else would help? “Have you checked with Interpol?”

  “Yes. They now have custody of the sample, but there’s not much they can do either.”

  Slattery shook his head. “Understood. Thank you for the update. We’ll keep working through our facial-rec databases, but children’s features change so fast, I’m not optimistic. Wish we could do more.”

  “Thank you, Roger. I know you are just as motivated to solve this riddle as I am. And given the possible ramifications, maybe more. Talk to you later.”

  “Goodbye, Ziv. Please do stay in touch. And watch your back, my friend.”

  Slattery terminated the call.

  “Ramifications.” The possible connection to the treaty signatories had not been lost on the Mossad agent. Slattery knew alerts had gone out to all the other parties, including President Matthews. Whether they were taken seriously was the Secret Service’s problem. For now.

  He hoped the assassination was a solitary event but feared this was wishful thinking.

  Chapter 8

  Omega Genomics, Boston, Massachusetts

  Wednesday, 10:00 a.m.

  When he returned to his cubicle, Braxton pulled the flash drive from his pocket. McAllister had tried to explain—or perhaps justify—what he was about to see, but he didn’t trust the pat answers. He plugged the drive into his laptop and reviewed the contents. All the files he had requested from Wilson seemed to be present. Of course, he couldn’t be sure they weren’t doctored in some way, but that was taking his paranoia too far.

  He listed the file names on a sheet of paper and opened the first. It was going to be a long day.

  He was buried in an unending list of server farm statistics when a familiar voice broke his concentration.

  “How’s it going, Mister Consulta
nt?”

  Braxton looked up and saw O’Connor leaning against the end of the partition at the entrance to his cubicle. Today she was wearing tan slacks and a blue silk blouse with one button too many undone. She certainly knew how to get attention.

  “Good morning, Colleen,” he replied. “What brings you down here with the worker bees?”

  “Just slumming, Adam. It is okay if I call you that I hope?”

  “Certainly. And I do appreciate your stopping by. It’s nice to get a little break.”

  “I was hoping you’d say that. A few of us are heading across the river for lunch. Would you like to join in?”

  It was tempting, but the analysis of the network logs was taking longer than he had planned. Omega Genomics was a far more complex organization than he had expected, especially with the co-mingling of the ChildSafe operation. He was still having trouble understanding all the interactions between the two companies. And the deadline for that bonus kept getting closer.

  Plus he had a standing rule to not get involved with his client’s employees.

  “Sorry, Colleen. It sounds really nice, but I’m afraid today is all work. I’ll grab something downstairs at the cafeteria. Thanks for asking though.”

  She cocked her head and tried, unsuccessfully, to imitate a frown. “Your loss, guy. But don’t think that’s going to keep me from asking you out again.”

  O’Connor spun on her three-inch heels and headed down the aisle. Braxton would have sworn she added a little extra sway to her hips as she walked away.

  He sighed and went back to the endless log entries on the laptop’s screen.

  * * *

  By four o’clock Braxton had finally finished the preliminary analysis of the logs. From an external security standpoint, everything looked normal. No intrusions or covert attacks.

  The internal access patterns of the logs were bothering him though. Application logs were records of what computer programs were run at what times. Just like a company’s personnel access logs would tell when an employee entered an area and when they left, the application logs told when an application program was started, and when it finished. In a complex environment like Omega’s, the logs contained additional information about who started the job, from what terminal, on what system it ran, etc., but the idea was still what was run when.