Paranoia (13 page)

This was not good.

But there were other ways to crack the password. I’d gone through hours of training on that, and they’d supplied me with some equipment that was almost idiotproof. I wasn’t a computer hacker or anything, but I was decent at computers—enough to get into a world of trouble back at Wyatt, right?—and the stuff they gave me was ridiculously easy to install.

Basically, it was a device called a “keystroke logger.” These things secretly record every keystroke a computer’s user makes.

They can be software, like computer programs, or actual hardware devices. But you had to be careful about installing the software versions, because you never knew how closely the corporation’s network systems were being monitored; they might be able to detect it. So Arnold Meacham urged me to use the equipment.

He’d given me an assortment of little toys. One was a tiny cable connector that got plugged in between a computer keyboard and the PC. You’d never notice it. It had a chip embedded in it that recorded and stored up to two million keystrokes. You just came back later and took it off the target’s computer, and you had a record of everything the person had typed in.

In a total of about ten seconds, I unplugged Nora’s keyboard, attached it to the little Keyghost thing, and then plugged that into her computer. She’d never see it, and in a couple of days I’d come back and get it.

But I wasn’t going to leave her office empty-handed. I looked through some of the stuff on her desk. Not much here. I found a draft of an e-mail to the Maestro team, which she hadn’t yet sent. “My most recent market research,” she wrote, “indicates that, though GoldDust is undoubtedly superior, Microsoft Office will instead be supporting BlackHawk wireless technology. Though this may be a disruption to our fine engineers, I’m sure we all agree it’s best not to swim against the Microsoft tide. . . .”

Fast work, Nora, I thought. I hoped to hell Wyatt was right.

There were also the file cabinets to go through. Even in a high-tech place like Trion, important files almost always exist on paper, whether originals or hard-copy backups. This is the great truth of the so-called paperless office: the more we all use computers, the more reams of copy paper we seem to go through. I opened the first cabinet I came to, which turned out to be not a file cabinet at all but an enclosed bookcase. Why were some books kept in here, out of sight, I wondered? Then I looked closely at the titles and I whooped out loud.

She had rows and rows of books with titles like
Women Who Run with the Wolves
and
Hardball for Women
and
Play Like a Man, Win Like a Woman
. Titles like
Why Good Girls Don’t Get Ahead . . . but Gutsy Girls Do
and
Seven Secrets of Successful Women
and
The Eleven Commandments of Wildly Successful Women
.

Nora, Nora, I found myself thinking. You
go
, girl.

Four of her file cabinets were unlocked, and I went for those first, thumbed through the stultifyingly dull contents: ops reviews, product specs, product development files, financial. . . . She documented seemingly everything, probably printed out a copy of every e-mail she sent or received. The good stuff, I knew, had to be in the locked cabinets. Why else would they be locked?

Pretty quickly I located the small file-cabinet key on Lisa’s key ring. In the locked drawers I found a lot of HR files on her subordinates, which might have made for interesting reading if I had the time. Her personal financial records indicated that she’d been at Trion a long time, a lot of her options had vested, and she traded actively, so her net worth was in seven figures. I found my file, which was thin and contained nothing scary. Nothing of interest.

Then I looked closer and came across a few pieces of paper, printouts of e-mails Nora had received from someone high up at Trion. From what I could tell, the woman named Alana Jennings, who’d had my job before me, had abruptly been transferred somewhere else inside the company. And Nora was pissed—so pissed, in fact, that she escalated her complaint all the way up the food chain to the senior vice president level, a pretty bold move:

SUBJ:
Re: Reassignment of Alana Jennings

DATE:
Tuesday, April 8, 8:42:19 AM

FROM:
GAllred

TO:
NSommers

Nora,

I am in receipt of your several e-mails protesting the transfer of ALANA JENNINGS to another division of the company. I understand your upset, since Alana is your highest-ranked employee as well as a valued player on your team.

Regretfully, however, your objections have been overruled on the highest authority. Alana’s skill set is urgently needed in Project AURORA.

Let me assure you that you will not lose your head count. You have been granted a backfill requisition, so that you may fill Alana’s position with any interested and qualified employee within the company.

Please let me know if I can do anything further to help.

Best,

Greg Allred

Senior VP, Advanced Research Business Unit

Trion Systems

Helping You Change the Future

And then, two days later, another e-mail:

SUBJ:
Re: Re: Reassignment of Alana Jennings

DATE:
Thursday, April 10, 2:13:07 PM

FROM:
GAllred

TO:
NSommers

Nora,

Regarding AURORA, my deepest apologies, but I am not at liberty to disclose the exact nature of this project except to say that it is mission-critical to the future of Trion. Since AURORA is a classified R&D project of the utmost sensitivity, I would respectfully ask you not to pursue the matter further.

That said, I appreciate your difficulty in filling Alana’s position internally with someone appropriately qualified. Therefore I am happy to tell you that you are, in this instance, permitted to disregard the general companywide ban on hiring from outside. This slot may be designated a “silver bullet” position, enabling you to hire from outside Trion. I trust and hope this will allay your concerns.

Don’t hesitate to call or write with any questions.

Best,

Greg Allred

Senior VP, Advanced Research Business Unit

Trion Systems

Helping You Change the Future

Whoa. Suddenly things were starting to make a little sense. I’d been hired to replace this Alana woman, who’d been moved into something called Project AURORA.

Project AURORA was clearly a top-secret undertaking—a skunkworks. I’d found it.

It didn’t seem like a good idea to pull out the e-mails and take them out to the copy machine, so I took a yellow legal pad from a tall stack in Nora’s supply closet and began taking notes.

I don’t know how long I’d been sitting there on the carpeted floor of her office, writing, but it must have been a good four or five minutes. And suddenly I became aware of something in my peripheral vision. I glanced up, saw a security guard standing in the open doorway watching me.

Trion didn’t do rent-a-cops; they had their own security personnel, who wore navy blazers and white shirts and looked sort of like policemen, or church ushers. This guy was a tall, beefy black man with gray hair and a lot of moles, like freckles, on his cheeks. He had large, heavy-lidded, basset-hound eyes and wore wire-rimmed glasses. He was standing there, watching me.

For all the time I’d spent mentally rehearsing what I’d say if I was caught, I went blank.

“I see what you got there,” the guard said. He wasn’t looking at me; he was staring right toward Nora’s desk. At the computer—the Keyghost? No, God, please,
no
.

“Excuse me?” I said.

“I see what you got there. Hell, yeah. I
know
it.”

I freaked, heart racing. Jesus Christ almighty, I thought: I’m hosed.

22

He blinked, kept staring. Had he seen me install the device? And then I was suddenly seized by another, equally sickening thought: had he noticed Nora’s name on the door? Wouldn’t he wonder why a man was in a woman’s office, thumbing through her files?

I glanced over at the name plaque on the open door, right behind the guard. It said
N. SOMMERS. N. SOMMERS
could be anyone, male
or
female. Then again, for all I knew he’d been patrolling the halls forever, and he and Nora went way back.

The guard was still standing in the doorway, blocking the exit. What the hell was I supposed to do now? I could try to bolt, but I’d first have to get by the man, which meant I’d have to take a dive at him, tackle him to the ground, get him out of the way. He was big, but old, probably not fast; it might work. So what were we talking about here, assault and battery? On an old guy?
Christ
.

I thought quickly. Should I say I was new? I ran though a series of explanations in my head: I was Nora Sommers’s new assistant. I was her direct report—well, I
was
—working late at her behest. What the hell did this guy know? He was a goddamned
security guy
.

He took a few steps into the office, shook his head. “Man, I thought I’d seen everything.”

“Look, we’ve got a huge project due tomorrow morning—” I started to say, indignantly.

“You got a Bullitt there. That’s a genuine Bullitt.”

Then I saw what he was staring at, moving toward. It was a large color photograph in a silver frame hanging on the wall. A picture of a beautifully restored, vintage muscle car. He was moving toward it in a daze, as if he were approaching the Ark of the Covenant. “Shit, man, that’s a genuine 1968 Mustang GT three-ninety,” he breathed like he’d just seen the face of God.

The adrenaline kicked in and the relief seeped out of my pores. Jesus.

“Yep,” I said proudly. “Very good.”

“Man, look at that ’Stang. That pony a factory GT?”

What the hell did I know? I couldn’t tell a Mustang from a Dodge Dart. For all I knew that could have been a picture of an AMC Gremlin. “Sure,” I said.

“Lotta fakes out there, you know. You ever check under the rear seat, see if it got those extra metal plates, those reinforcements for the dual exhaust?”

“Oh yeah,” I said airily. I stood up, extended my hand. “Nick Sommers.”

His handshake was dry, his hand large, engulfing mine. “Luther Stafford,” he said. “I haven’t seen you ’round here before.”

“Yeah, I’m never here at night. This damned project—it’s always, ‘We need it at nine
A.M
., big rush,’ hurry up and wait.” I tried to sound casual. “Glad to see I’m not the only one working late.”

But he wouldn’t drop the car. “Man, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a fastback pony in Highland Green. Outside the movies, I mean. That looks like the exact same one Steve McQueen used to chase the evil black Dodge Charger off the road and into the gas station. Hubcaps flying all over the place.” He gave a low, mellow, cigarette-and-whiskey chuckle. “
Bullitt
. My favorite movie. I must’ve seen it a thousand times.”

“Yep,” I said. “Same one.”

He moved in closer. Suddenly I realized that there was a huge gold statuette on the shelf right next to the silver-framed photo. Engraved on the statuette’s base, in huge black letters, was
WOMAN OF THE YEAR
, 1999.
PRESENTED TO NORA SOMMERS
. Quickly I walked over behind the desk, blocking the security guard’s view of the award with my body, as if I too were inspecting the photograph closely.