Flightsuit (13 page)

Hack stood beside the river staring at Taylor's expensive car. 
Now we're getting somewhere
, he thought
.  I am going to catch you my too-smart friend and we will have a talk
. 

By nature, Hack held himself in constant self-control.  It allowed him to hide himself in one terrorist group after another for years of his life.  He contained a furnace of fury behind a cool and measured face, showing only what he chose.  Finding that his responsibilities had been compromised, he'd begun stacking dry wood in
a furnace that he would soon light.  He would decide when and where, but he already looked forward to the release. 
Taylor has some bad news coming
.

Hack wasn't sure when the aluminum forgery had been swapped for the real one.  The last measurement of electrical generation was three weeks ago.  Th
e measurements of that test correlated with the previously collected data, so he knew they had the real artifact at that point.  Sometime after, it had been stolen and now he had an idea who was responsible. 

In the two days since they discovered the
artifact theft Hack's team hardly rested.  Roberts had rushed into the break room carrying the artifact.  "Where is it?" Roberts demanded of him shaking the artifact in Hack's face.  Robert's face was red and patchy.  He'd been fired by promotion from his last research position for his inability to control his temper.  The NSA brought him on board the project anyway as he was the third-best in his field.  The first two were years deep in other top secret projects.  Roberts had been working through the protocols that Taylor had suggested and was becoming one of the more valuable team members, but he required more of Hack's attention than any three of the other researchers.  As long as he stayed morose and frustrated, he kept away from everyone else and produced good work.  When he was on the 'up' curve, he was unbearable, especially when he tried to be entertaining or engage with the others. 

Seeing Roberts carry the artifact into the break room, Hack stood slowly.  Tendons in his arm stretched the sleeve of his exercise shirt.  He wanted to reach up and snatch the artifact away but held himself straight and still. 

"Dr. Roberts! Do you realize that you've broken security protocol?  The artifact is never to be carried from room to room, except by security staff."  Hack clipped off each word as if he were reading it from procedure, looking first at Roberts then over his shoulder.  Sowyer burst into the break room behind Roberts. 

"Agent Sowyer, report!"

Sowyer wiped perspiration from his forehead with his fingers and caught his breath.  "Yes sir, Major Samuels," Sowyer started.

"It doesn't make…" Roberts started, in
terrupting.  Hack stopped him with a sharp glare, holding his hand up inches in front of Robert's mouth.  Socially inept as he was, Roberts picked up on Hack's fury.  He thought Hack's jaw might crumble his teeth.  He stopped talking and looked fearfully at Hack.

Hack left his hand in place to keep Roberts quiet and turned to Sowyer.

Sowyer seemed equally fearful.  "Sir.  I'm sorry.  He was in Study Room #2 doing electrical tests and suddenly pulled the artifact out of its fixture and ran out of the room.  We saw him leave the room from the monitor room and I chased in here after him."

Hack twisted his head slightly to the side and asked, "You didn't leave the monitor room with no one on watch, did you?"

Sowyer was surprised by the question.  "What?"

Hack took a breath, forcing himself to relax.  The creases in his forehead fell away as he opened his eyes wider.  "Who did you leave at the monitoring station to ensure this situation does not turn into something worse?"

Sowyer answered, "Um.  Sarah."  Hack's eyes squinted and Sowyer rushed to respond with protocol, "I mean Agent Walker, sir.  We were in there going over something when this happened." 

Hack wanted everyone back on protocol as quickly as possible.  He would be reviewing every action taken during this crisis with his team later during debrief and wanted to minimize mistakes.  "Good.  Agent Sowyer.  It's important that we follow the procedures we train under in the actual situations they are designed for.  The monitor room must be staffed at all times."

"Yes sir."

He turned back to Roberts, lowering his hand.  "Alright, now Dr. Roberts.  We are going to escort you back down to Study #2 and watch you put the artifact back into its security case.  Then we will talk about your concerns and get to the bottom of this incident."

Roberts raised the artifact and smashed the edge down on the metal table.  He asked, "You mean this?  This piece of junk?" 

Hack stared at him unable to believe he had just watched Roberts slam the artifact down.  Without waiting for a response, Roberts flung the artifact across the break room where it bounced off the side of a soft dri
nk machine before spinning to rest on the floor.

Hack looked at Roberts for a second, then grabbed his arm and slammed his face into the same table.  He twisted the arm up, adjusting until Roberts screamed out for him to please stop.  "Ok.  Dr. Roberts," he said bending over to put the words into Robert's ear "now you have my undivided attention.  Tell me what the problem is."

Robert's mouth was mashed against the table so Hack couldn't understand him the first time.  He pulled back enough to let Robert's mouth come off the table. 

Roberts said, "Fake!  It's a fake". 

An hour later, Hack sat in the security monitor station watching digital video recordings from the morning.  He'd watched the recordings several times already.  This time he focused only on the artifact.  He had five views inside each of the four Study Rooms.  One in each corner at ceiling level looking down and one from above the workbench directly overhead.  He watched Roberts working with the artifact, connecting it to the electrical fixture he used to measure current generation and then fiddling with his instruments for several minutes.  Hack fast-forwarded over the adjustment, keeping his eye on the artifact.  If it was momentarily obscured from one view, he stopped the video and moved his focus to an unobstructed view.  The direct overhead view was only obstructed twice.  Each time the artifact was clearly visible on the other cameras. 

Roberts clearly had no opportunity to swap out the artifact during this morning's session.  That was bad.  He had the other researchers examining the artifact in Study Room #3.  He glanced at the monitors.  He'd sent Sowyer into the actual room to be eyes-on and Walker was sitting beside him in the control room with orders to watch the live video feed from Study #3, while he reviewed the morning's incident in Study #2.

The problem is
, Hack thought,
if they find out its fake and it wasn't swapped out today, then when was it?
  They'd have to go through weeks of video,
or maybe months
he thought, feeling acid in his throat.

He'd locked Roberts in his own room, activating the security camera in there to monitor him.  That required a security override process.  The private rooms were configured for video surveillance but cameras were only activated in special circumstances.  Roberts was sleeping.  They'd given him sedatives and pain meds for his swollen cheek, which he'd gladly accepted. 

Roberts explained that when he discovered the artifact was just an aluminum forgery, he assumed that the government had just taken the original.  He thought Hack must be aware of the switch and was indignant. 

Hack gave orders that everyone would treat the artifact as authentic while they began testing it for confirmation.  Until they found out otherwise, they had to assume it was the real artifact and treat it carefully.  If they found out it was a fake, it was critical evidence and might lead them to whoever stole it.  So far, it didn't look good.  He'd asked Sowyer twice for updates via the earpiece and he'd responded with a headshake both times.

He pulled out a sheet to start an assignment roster for his security detail to begin reviewing the video starting backward from today.  He'd have them note time and date of anything warranting further review and go backward to the last point when the artifact was verifiably authentic.  The test logs were being collected and reviewed now.  Roberts had told him that his own most recent test was three weeks ago. 
I hope we have something more recent
, Hack thought,
that's too much video to go through in this detail.  It will take too long
.  He had to locate the artifact before word leaked out, or he'd be destroyed by this, national hero or not.

Two hours later, he stood up from the security console and stretched his aching back.  Agent Parrish sat down to begin his shift at the monitors.  Hack asked Parrish to take a break every fifteen minutes and walk around.  During his own rotation he'd found himself losing focus staring at the screen, watching the researchers and security team interact with the artifact on the surveillance video.  So far, he'd seen nothing out of the ordinary.  He'd watched the last four days backward so far.

He walked to his office, head down, thinking.  He was physically exhausted, but his mind raced ahead.  Taking the first turn at the monitors, he'd demonstrated the importance he put on the task, but he'd also needed the time to calm himself.  He needed a clear and collected thought process, not one that jumped from one point to another without tying conclusions together.  The hours behind the monitors settled him, and he headed back to his office to initiate additional steps.

The research facility was housed in a building that once produced small and medium-range missile systems and test equipment.  The manufacturing floor was concrete and covered with dust.  The larg
e work bays were carved into 60-foot sections by steel mesh cage walls.  Most of the cages were empty, the dust protected from cleaning crews by the cages.  The cages were unlocked twice a year for cleaning.  Sealed plastic and metal containers sat inside several of the cages.  These had not been opened in the time that Hack was assigned to the project.  His documentation didn't disclose anything about the contents.  He assumed they had nothing to do with his project, but he always withheld healthy skepticism when dealing with a superior's understanding of his "need to know".

The researchers worked in a building within a building at the far end of the giant manufacturing floor.  All of the artifact research was contained entirely within the interior building, which the researchers called the Matryoshka lab after the wooden
, stacking, round dolls of Russia. They'd printed ad hoc building signs and taped them over the official building number.  A few weeks after they'd put up the sign, Hack ordered an official metal sign that read "MATRYOSHKA LAB, B-171" and replaced the ad hoc signs. 

Hack walked between the dusty caged spaces with footsteps that echoed back from the darkness of the giant building. 

He'd given up the office space allocated for his use inside the Matryoshka Lab, wanting more distance between himself and the research team.  He saw numerous advantages to this approach.  Hack wanted the individual researchers to see each other as a team.  Hack believed teams were defined by exclusion rather than inclusion.  People always pulled themselves into collections of "us" and "them".  If he'd tried to blend with them, they'd have felt compelled to alienate a sub-group from within the team.  With himself and the security team as the outsiders, he could press all the researchers together anytime he chose simply by giving them a new policy or procedure they all could universally complain about. 

The previous project manager's office contributed to his failure.  When the building was a manufacturing shop floor, the plant managers worked in a long clubhouse with windows overlooking workers and operations.  He'd outfitted the clubhouse in luxury.  The visual significance was obvious to all.  He literally looked down on everyone else in the project.  When a meeting was required, he would call them to the clubhouse.  They'd walk from their research building down the long dusty aisles between cages with the project manager looking down on them as they approached.  He'd been replaced after a year.  Hack didn't know what that previous research team had been working on.  He knew it wasn't the artifact.  The NSA had used his hero status to win control of the artifact.  Considering how unique and amazing the artifact was, he could only wonder what the preceding team had been working on.

Hack had immediately seen the strategic disadvantage of the clubhouse and chose a different office for himself.  In the center of the great shop floor there was a small clean room.  It was glass-walled on all four sides.  Its bright lights made it look a little like an isolated diner inside the dark warehouse.  The clean room was used by the original occupants of the building.  They developed and tested printed circuit boards in this sterile environment.  It was ideal for Hack's needs.

It was apart from the research building but not ostentatious.  The glass walls around the circumference signaled transparency and openness.  Ironically, for a man whose career accomplishment required him to live a complete lie for months, Hack was open and straightforward.  He considered his understanding of human behavior and his ability to predict a person's actions to be his most useful asset, and he orchestrated outcomes by subtle leadership, dropping hints of ideas weeks ahead that he could draw out of the team later.  He'd worked with people who manipulated other people and saw what he did as completely different.  Manipulators tried to guide behavior in ways that were best for themselves without regard for outcomes that would benefit those around them.  Hack saw his own actions as those of a conductor, holding some instruments still for periods, pulling others in with small movements like the "come-forward" motion of two fingers.  The result
ing performance maximized the team's assets.  The process was as natural as breathing to him and came so easily that he maneuvered with unconscious strategy most of the time.

He walked to the clean room and stepped into the positive pressure of the airlock.  It was an old design, simple with a set of doors on the outside, a small entry area with pegs for coats and jackets and a small bench underneath.  The inner doors were mechanically blocked, by a metal rod, until the outer doors closed.  It wasn't an airlock in the sense of being waterproof or airtight.  It was just designed to prevent dust from entering the clean room. 

Inside the clean room, low cubicle walls surrounded each agent's desk.  The core of the clean room had regular floor-to-ceiling walls.  It contained the restrooms and a small break room and galley.  Hack's office was on the other side of the clean room.  He had the full wall of the kitchen on one side and another wall bisecting half of his side of the clean room.  He'd had the large glass windows of the other two corners of his office replaced by smart glass.  If he needed privacy for video conferences or confidential discussions with staff, he could make the glass opaque with a switch built into his desk. 

Hack sat down at his desk with a paper list of ideas he'd jotted down while reviewing the surveillance monitors.  He started with a scan of incoming email.  One immediately caught his attention.  It was from a friend in the Transaction Surveillance Network division. 

They'd met on a beach in Florida two months after Cane Creek.  He'd recognized Hack from the news and introduced himself as Hack sat on a beach chair falling asleep for the third time that day (so far).  He welcomed Hack to the NSA, pulled up a chair and sat enthralled for the rest of the afternoon.  Neither had company and by evening they were laughing like old friends over beers.  He told Hack about the Transaction Surveillance Division and how every purchase made through U.S. banks and institutions was tracked and analyzed.  The next day on the beach, he pulled out a thin tablet and pulled up all Hack's purchases on a map.  At the bottom of the map, projected models of his salary and bank assets ran along a timeline.  The models could predict annual income by spending patterns.  The predictions showed his predicted salary over the last 10 years.  It was never more than 3% off.  He saw his projected salary in the next 10 years as well.  It was fascinating to see his life through the lens of his purchasing behavior.  The time spans while he was in deep cover with a terrorist group were bracketed under a translucent red panel.  He'd learned that the model had identified these sections as abnormal patterns.  His new friend told him that TSD information identified any out-of-pattern behavior.  The NSA could identify every undercover policeman and agent in the U.S. simply by the transaction models. 

When Hack began the artifact research assignment, he'd called on his friend to set some traps
.  The email indicated one had just been sprung.

The artifact was originally discovered by a hiker on the Appalachian Trail on the boundaries of Tennessee and North Carolina.  The Trail cut through the Cherokee National Forest which contained several significant marijuana patches.  Following the discovery of the artifact, the NSA volunteered low-level helicopter scans of the area to help state and National wildlife agencies track down patches in the surrounding mountains.  This provided cover for aerial scans of the area to look for artifact-like signatures.  Although a handful of potential signature hits were identified, site inspection by agents disguised as hikers rejected all of them.  Weeks later, when site searches were discontinued, the agents were relieved to turn their tents and hiking gear in. 

Even with the failure to find additional artifacts, Hack believed eventually more would be discovered in the area.  It was impossible to believe only one such artifact existed.  It was clearly not complete but a part broken from something else.  By itself, it served no discernable function.  Hack felt sooner or later something else would be discovered there and he wanted to know if that ever happened.  He knew enough about government operations to know that just because he had one piece, that whoever found another one would not likely come forward with it.  They'd set up a competing research lab just like his and keep their project secret hoping to produce results and take overall ownership of the project.  For all he knew, there could be three other agencies working independently on different artifacts even now.

So Hack had set a trap with the help of his friend.  He'd asked to receive an alert if any profile that looked like a government agent made a purchase of any kind in an area bounded by Johnson City Tennessee, Greeneville, Tennessee and Burnsville, North Carolina.  Since implementing the monitoring parameters, no profiles recognized as agents had reentered the region. 

He also decided to use the TSD monitoring for the researchers and his own security detail.  If any of the people who came in contact with the artifact entered the region, they'd likely be looking for something and Hack wanted to know about it.

He continually added to the target profiles.  Each Senator who saw the artifact was added to the list.  Everyone who came in contact with the artifact joined the profile.

When Ted Taylor filled up with gas and bought granola bars and snacks at a convenience store along I-26 last night, he'd triggered an alert.  Hack's friend hadn't automated the confidential alerts he'd requested since they didn't come through official channels.  They were just running under his own name.  As a result, he'd only sent the email to Hack this morning, giving Taylor a lot of time to move on.  Hack thanked his friend and asked that he set a separate monitor on all of Taylor's transactions.