“Yeah,” he said, “each covers half way.”
“No they don’t. By the time you stretch ten feet to get to the corner, there’s only forty feet of hose left at each end to put out a fire on a hundred foot long hall. There’s a twenty-foot gap left uncovered.”
I could see the moment he grasped the problem for himself, but he recovered quickly. “Don’t matter,” he insisted. “It passed inspection, so it’s compliant with local fire code.”
“Somehow, I doubt the inspector would have passed it if he’d realized the problem. Besides,” I reached past him to where he had his own copy of the Tolliver Corporation Safety Manual, and I opened it to the relevant page, “right here, the manual says, ‘In the event of a conflict between local regulations and this manual, the more stringent provision shall be followed.’ And over here,” I paged through to the fire safety section, “it says, ‘There must be a fixed fire hose with adequate length to reach all areas within occupied buildings, or a fire extinguisher within fifty feet.’ The length of the fire hose isn’t adequate. If you had to put out a fire in one of the center offices along the hallway, the hose wouldn’t reach.”
“No way is that a $24M safety suggestion,” he countered.
“It’s the same configuration through all the modular buildings,” I pointed out. “Eight firehoses times two levels times three buildings.”
“That’s forty-eight.” I could see him do the math. “That’s only a $480,000 suggestion, and they’d write you a check for $48,000.” He grimaced. That would be plenty to get him in hot water, if the story he told me about the maintenance tech was right, but he was forgetting something.
“They set the precedent with the overhead crane you told me about. That was one problem, but there were a couple dozen people in the area who could have been killed if it fell. There are fifty people working on each of those floors.”
He pulled out a calculator, but I already knew what it was going to tell him. “$24 million, or a $2.4 million check for the 2,400 safety-of-life suggestions I’ll be making. Straight out of your budget. Then, you have to fix the problem. Mounting thirty fire extinguishers one each in the middle of the affected hallway should take care of it. Easier and cheaper than upgrading to 75-foot hoses, I’d imagine.”
“Why the hell do you want to pass up a $2.4 million suggestion bonus check to go to Jekyll Island?”
“You and I both know there’s no way in hell Travis Tolliver is going to write a $2.4 million check to an intern. It’ll turn out that this is a special case where we don’t count all the people who might be impacted, or maybe interns aren’t eligible to get the check, or there’ll be some other excuse. The amount is too big to expect the company will pay up. The only real value this suggestion has is as leverage. The Civic Circle’s Social Justice Leadership Forum is the world’s best networking opportunity. I really want to go.”
He looked at the analysis on the white board. Trying to find a way out.
“Let me point something else out to you – an implication you might not have thought through yet.” Time for me to lay the final joker on the table. “You could fix it yourself. Buy and mount the fire extinguishers. I doubt the risk of a fire breaking out right in the center of the hall is that high, though. You could wait. There’s no good reason fire safety should be under the IT department. Push back. Get fire safety transferred back to facilities where it belongs. Wait a year, then point it out yourself. Or get someone else to point it out for you. Let the VP of Operations have to squirm.”
I saw him flash a malicious grin at the thought. Then he scowled back at me. “I take you to Jekyll Island, and you forget all about this suggestion. Is that the deal?”
“Yes, sir,” I confirmed.
He didn’t like it. “You’re on the team,” he conceded. I could tell he hated the fact I’d successfully blackmailed him.
I held out my hand to seal the deal.
“I’m not shaking your hand, Burdell. Get this straight. I’m going to work you to death on this job. And if you end up plugged in to life support, you better hope I don’t find I need to charge my cell phone. Now get out.”
I left.
I made it a few steps down the empty hall before letting loose with a fist pump.
I was going to join the Reactance on Jekyll Island. My risky gambit paid off.
* * *
Monday, I got an email from Roger saying he didn’t need help with his printer anymore, but to drop by next time I was wheeling through with my cart. Since he’d specifically mentioned the cart, I loaded it up with my tools and the empty printer box, and I headed over to his lab.
“Hi Pete,” he said with a smile when I popped my head through his door. “I’m going to be leaving TAGS soon.”
“Oh?”
“Mr. Tolliver just spoke with me about it. After the DARPA funding fell through, the company thought they might be able to fund my work. It seems the company just doesn’t have the budget for it after all, though. There’s an opportunity to work at a lab in Nevada, but I decided it just wasn’t what I wanted to do.” He had a completely straight poker face on.
“What are you going to do?”
“I gave Travis my two-week notice and told him I was going to pursue a career in teaching. He seemed happy about it. He was willing to let me work out my two-week notice, and even said I could use my computer for resumes and continue using the company email after I leave.” I could see the twinkle in his eye.
Ha! I bet Travis Tolliver wanted Roger to keep using their corporate email. “How very thoughtful of him,” I replied. I’d lay odds I was going to find a request to set up an auto-forward for all Roger’s email to Travis Tolliver or one of his security goons when I got back to check my email.
Clearly, he was taking concerns about eavesdropping seriously, so I’d assume the same. “If you need any help clearing out all this junk…”
“Why, yes,” he took a few steps. “I could use some help.” His foot tapped on a box.
“I’ll get started right on it.” I picked up Roger’s box and slid it under the printer box.
Technically, I was supposed to be searched every time I entered and left the research wing. In practice, I was in and out so often, I could be confident no one would open the printer box to confirm there was really a printer in it. I went right on through and deposited the box in the server room.
I had time to make at least a couple more trips before lunch. I figured with the rest of the week ahead of me, I’d be able to clear out anything important Roger wanted to save.
I figured wrong.
On my next trip in, I passed Thorn going the opposite direction escorted by two security guys. We studiously ignored each other. I cached the empty printer box in the network closet in Thorn’s building in case I needed it.
Roger’s lab was locked and secured. He’d been “reassigned” to a different office. I made an excuse to swing by and say hello a couple days later. “Any plans for the weekend?” I asked.
“No,” Roger said, looking me in the eye. “I’m applying for some teaching positions and I need to be updating my résumé. I’ll probably just take it easy and hang out at a coffee shop.”
Chapter 8: A Familiar Scent
Security picked up dramatically at TAGS. We had an all hands meeting about some confidential material having been released to a competitor. All employees were reminded and advised not to speak with anyone, particularly about the TAGS robotics work. And there were now security screenings on entering and leaving the building. I was getting checked almost half the time when I entered or left. I was very glad I’d gotten Roger’s stuff out in the nick of time.
The Saturday drop at the coffee shop went well. Roger glanced in my direction as he came in, noting my table. I gathered my things, put on a cap and my sunglasses, and left. That night, he left a comment on the blog post I’d mentioned – Roger’s confirmation that he got my packet of instructions on how to set up secure email, and that he’d be in touch soon.
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When Sunday dawned though, I was on my way to Jekyll Island. Naturally, Mr. Humphreys stuck me with the job of driving the TAGS van full of equipment. I’d have stopped in Atlanta to catch up with Professor Chen and the Red Flower Tong, but Mr. Hung insisted all our plans were on track. The container was already on the way, and no personal meeting was required: “The waiter will deliver the fortune cookie as planned. Be sure the guest is ready.” All the other interns got to fly in the company jet. They were hanging out with Mr. Humphreys, Travis Tolliver, and a couple other senior TAGS executives by the pool at the Berkshire Inn, as I made my way up to the room I’d be sharing with Johnny Rice.
I tried not to be obvious, glancing furtively at the smoke detector as I set my bags down. The hotel room lighting was dim and the shades were drawn. I wondered. I tried Amit’s trick of taking a photo of myself with the smoke detector in the background, but my phone didn’t have a flash feature. In the poorly-lit room, all I got was a dark screen. Frustrated at the inconclusive test, I decided to be better safe than sorry. I’d assume the smoke detector was a camera, and they had me under observation. At least there wasn’t a smoke detector in the bathroom. I sent a text to Amit: “Stopped for gas at 2:15, arrived Berkshire Inn Jekyll Island just now.” I was actually staying in room 326, and the “time” was a simple one-digit-difference substitution – a bit lame, but OK for a one-time use. Amit was supposed to be arriving the next day with the rest of the Civic Youth contingent.
The good news was that Berkshire Inns all ran Amit’s software, so we could easily penetrate and monitor the hotel network. The bad news was the hotel was on the south end of the island – a couple miles’ hike to the Jekyll Island Club Hotel. I hoped they’d put Amit up there, at the Jekyll Island Club Hotel, closer to the action, instead of at the Berkshire Inn.
By the time I’d dropped off my bag, texted Amit, and headed back to the pool, the TAGS group was gone. Great. I whipped out my laptop, and I set up a routine to randomly web browse some of my favorite sites in background. I’d check the downloaded pages later. With that for cover, I used Amit’s backdoor to log in to the Berkshire Inn’s network management system, and from there, got access to the reservation data. I copied the hotel’s local copy of the reservation database to my computer to take a closer look.
I pulled all the records for a month-long window around the Civic Circle’s Social Justice Leadership Forum. I sorted the reservations list by block size, and skimmed. Ah-ha! Civic Youth had a big block of rooms. That meant Amit was probably staying in the same hotel. There was a block of rooms reserved for TAGS, and some other vendors. I recognized the media company doing all the sound and video work. The theatrical company putting on the opening ceremony had a small block. Then, I noted some other blocks of a few rooms, followed by a long list of individual… what the heck?
Adam Weishaupt.
Say what? I blinked my eyes, convinced that somehow they weren’t working properly, but it was true. “Adam Weishaupt” had a reservation at the Berkshire Inn for room 129.
Adam Weishaupt was the founder of the Bavarian Illuminati, a secret society formed in 1776 to advance what they perceived as “Enlightenment” goals. Loosely aligned with the Freemasons, they fought against religious influence in society and may have had a hand in the founding of America, as well as the French Revolution. Mr. Hung claimed they’d been largely co-opted by the Civic Circle during a purge in the 1830s. No wait… that was the Masons. I was having trouble keeping my conspiracies straight.
Someone had a peculiar sense of humor.
I checked into the reservation record of this “Adam Weishaupt.” No credit card on file. Bill to account 37911133349. The reservation was for a room on the ground floor and… an arrival date of 1 January 2001 with a departure date of 31 December 2099! Flagged for permanent “do not disturb.” Housekeeping service only upon checkout or by request.
I checked the occupancy. The room wasn’t very frequently occupied, but when it was, the guests sometimes checked in and out in a matter of a few hours. There were a dozen check-ins in the last month, each followed by a housekeeping request. I copied the arrival and departure times, and then I pulled up the video surveillance from the lobby.
When the most recent guest arrived, there was a five-minute gap in the video around the time the guest checked in. I looked at the other records. In each case, there was a gap in the video right at the moment Mr. Weishaupt arrived. If they had set it up to stop recording video whenever Mr. Weishaupt checked in, I was out of luck. The video gap, though, started a couple of minutes before the check-in. That probably meant the video was recorded, but then erased later. How thoroughly? I wondered. I was going to need a lot more storage space than I had on my laptop.
I went out to the TAGS van in the parking lot, where I grabbed a company laptop and a big backup hard drive. I brought them back to my room, and I made a direct Ethernet connection to the network. I used the company laptop to log in to the hotel network using Amit’s backdoor. I set it to run a systematic disk copy on the hotel’s security video drive. If anyone noticed and asked, I thought up a plausible rationale about an “essential” networking test.
The usual way a file deletion works is to leave the actual data on the drive and just alter the address information. Often, the actual data is left behind. The disk copy I was running made an exact copy of the drive, including whatever stray data was left unindexed on the disk. There was a chance I might be able to recover the missing video. It was going to take a while to suck all the data over the hotel network, though.
First, I went back to Amit’s network security application to make sure my disk copy wouldn’t show up on the network logs. While that process was running, I logged back into the security system and started scanning for Mr. Weishaupt’s name. I saw no obvious scripts running. The relevant macros or commands might be stored in a database format within the surveillance app itself.
The video gaps correlated exactly to the check-in times in the reservation database. I wondered if I could approach the problem from a different direction. I checked the keycard logs for when keys to Mr. Weishaupt’s rooms had been prepared. They were always close to the check-in times, of course, but didn’t correlate exactly. Near as I could figure, exactly two and a half minutes after Mr. Weishaupt checked in, some process erased the five-minute window of video. I wrote a script to copy the minute of video immediately surrounding the keycard write.
I’d done all I could. Maybe Amit would have an idea or two. While I was in the system, I got codes to make a couple of universal keycards so I could open any door in the hotel, if I needed to.
Johnny was apologetic when he got back, “I’m sorry, Pete. I figured someone told you where we were heading and we’d see you at dinner.”
“Mr. Humphreys has a chip on his shoulder where I’m concerned,” I explained. “He didn’t want to bring me along.”
“What happened?” Johnny looked curiously at me.
“I can’t really discuss it. Keep me in the loop as best you can though, OK?”
“Sure thing,” Johnny agreed. “We’re all supposed to meet in the hotel lobby for the complimentary breakfast and work assignments at 6:30 in the morning.”
“Thanks.”
“I can’t believe we’re actually getting paid to work at an ocean resort!” Johnny brushed his teeth and changed shirts.
“Heading out again?”
“Yeah,” he acknowledged. “Don’t wait up for me, OK?”
“If you say so.”
* * *
The next morning, Johnny still wasn’t back. I got up early and checked the video drive backup. Looked like the copying process was still running, but I didn’t have time to work on it just then.
I took a quick early morning run along the trail leading in the direction of the Jekyll Island Club Hotel. On my way back, I saw a familiar face running toward me, but I couldn’t quite place it. I felt a vague unease. It wasn’t until he was almost upon me that I recognized
him. I felt a burst of adrenaline. Unable to decide in that split second between flee or fight, I compromised by running past him.
It was the face that had haunted my dreams for nearly two years: Special Agent Wilson. The Civic Circle’s leading troubleshooter killed my parents and would have killed Professor Chen and Brandy, if I hadn’t saved them both first. I hadn’t seen him or his silent partner in person since their interrogation of me, the morning after they’d killed my parents. My heart pounded as I sprinted the last quarter mile back to the hotel. I suppose I should have been expecting him to show up to the Civic Circle’s Social Justice Leadership Forum, but it still came as an unpleasant surprise.
After I showered and dressed, I headed down for breakfast. I found Johnny at breakfast sitting cozily next to Kirin. Ah-ha. I think I had a good idea where he spent the evening. Since she was the only girl on our team, Kirin had a room to herself.
Mr. Humphreys directed most of the gang to head up to the Convention Center in the Beach Village to help with the installation of some new network hardware in the Convention Center Ballroom.
“Burdell,” he growled. “You’re with me.”
It turned out the hotel had an attached warehouse – a familiar acrid smell hit my nose as soon as we came in. A dozen 55-gallon drums were set aside in a fenced off area – “Pool Chemicals Keep Out” read the sign. The 55-gallon drums were labelled “muriatic acid.” Muriatic acid is just another term for hydrochloric acid. In principle, I could see it being used to keep a pool chlorinated, but more than six hundred gallons of the stuff? I’d helped Amit regulate the chlorine in the pool at his folks’ hotel back in Sherman, Tennessee. We’d use some test strips and add a few pellets of chemical when it got low. Hundreds of gallons of acid seemed like complete overkill.
There was an IT room off to one side. It was well-ventilated and air conditioned. A huge bundle of cables came out near a server rack. Mr. Humphreys put me to work connecting Ethernet cables into a patch panel while he ran off somewhere. The work was simple. I kept at it diligently, but I was lost in thought. Why on earth would the hotel need such an immense quantity of acid? The stuff was dangerous. It could dissolve almost anything. Judging by the smell, it probably had dissolved or leaked from at least one of the barrels. I couldn’t imagine using concentrated muriatic acid to treat a pool – maybe strip the concrete clean beside it, but not treat the pool water. A little bit would go a long way, and the quantity stored here was incredible.
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