The Merchant of Secrets (9 page)

Cyber-attacks in 2010 grew at the shocking rate of about
50% over the prior year, and were projected to be the greatest threat was to
our national defense with China being the primary source of the attacks.
Beijing brushed aside any suggestion that they were attacking American targets
and any U.S. attempts to hold Beijing accountable were met with Beijing’s
attempt to  redirect  the blame  onto rogue groups within China
or groups they claimed were “pretending” to be Chinese. This was ludicrous of
course. Our analysts regard Beijing’s gaming of the issue as nonsense from a
government that sponsors cyber espionage against the
U.S..
and
builds spy schools to train more cyber attackers
for the future.  Whereas rogue groups of hackers typically break into
banks or other easy targets for monetary incentive, the billions of attacks we
receive each month were too numerous, too sophisticated and required too much
equipment to have been launched without the backing of an entire government.

 As traditional intelligence gathering techniques
were gradually superseded by high tech alternatives our enemy’s inducements to
hack our Top Secret networks multiplied dramatically. Foreign intelligence
agencies have changed the way they attack US military information systems;
instead of going after government networks as they did just a few years ago
they refocused their efforts to the companies that supply material and services
to the government, believing that the major defense contractors don’t safeguard
their networks as carefully as the government agencies like the CIA, the FBI
and the DIA. They believe that the private sector is more lax about security
than the government and is therefore an easier target.

The increasing use of drones controlled remotely by
pilots in the U.S. invited even more risk.  American drones could be
reprogrammed to attack friendly targets even within our own country unless the
pilots on the ground catch them in time and destroy the unmanned vehicles
before they caused harm.  Incidents of illegal access to the networks were
increasing at an alarming rate.  Although  defense contractors
 and government agencies  stand  guardian over these networks
 while the oblivious  American public sleeps, the live streaming
video from the  drones in flight  back down to the operational
facilities  in the U.S. are sometimes accessed by groups  hostile to
Americans.

Congress and The Senate had been too slow to recognize the
reality of 21
^st
century warfare, and now General X was trying to
package that reality in non-technical, layman’s terms, and deliver it to the
President. 

CHAPTER 13

When I arrived back at the office Todd again immediately summoned
me to the security department and led me to a conference room where six men
were sitting around a table. He told me to have a seat but I declined and chose
to remain standing with my back against the wall scanning the six faces, when
suddenly I recognized the face of Dave Jones who was sitting next to
Todd.  At first he seemed oddly amiable like someone you might trust to
marry your sister without any hint of the cold, calculating monster he had
proven himself to be.  I knew right away I was in big trouble.
Perspiration began to gather on my forehead as the blood started to drain from
my face. Of the six men at the table four of them were peering at me
simultaneously  like
 onlookers to a show or
 a crowd gathered for an execution or something.  I knew the amiable
face of the murderous Jones concealed beneath its surface a demonic disposition
and an appetite for violence which his victims in Afghanistan knew all too
well.  Looking at him became  something akin to being forced to
witness a violent crime; I couldn’t  separate  the face in front of
me from the mental image of the torture of children I had read about in the
reports, despite all my efforts to the contrary. I looked away, recognizing
this as a pivotal moment in my life
,  a
moment of
awakening when  my opinion on torture, waterboarding or any other type,
had changed at least for this one case, at least for this one person.  For
David Jones any type of torture would have been okay. And if there’s one case,
surely there’d be another? Within seconds of first coming into the room and
into the presence of this monster, he had already altered me.
Mullaly
was curiously absent.
Flumm
was absent too. So was Colin. I wondered if they knew about this, but
Flumm
, Colin and
Mullaly
had
chosen not to attend for reasons I would discover later. Jones was relaxed in
his chair, smiling with his left arm slung comfortably over the back of the
chair while Todd was wearing reflective glasses that obscured his eyes. The
others, the onlookers, appeared as though they hadn’t bathed in a week.

 “I invited your boss to this meeting today but he
elected not to come,” Todd said, smiling at his perceived advantage to finally
get his victim alone and unguarded.

“Caroline,” he continued, “I’d like you to meet Dave
Jones.” Todd bent his neck slightly to the right to acknowledge the person
sitting next to him. I was at first overwhelmed by fear and anxiety and then a
series of
  unfamiliar
emotions welled up within
me; I wanted to lunge at Jones and to strangle him as he brought out a dark
side that I didn’t know existed within me. The monster I had been reading a
bout
whom until the very moment existed only in newspaper print and in our files was
now before me in this small room. The child rapist, drug dealer, pimp, extortionist
and I were sharin
g breathing space. It more than horrified me and
it was more than I could bear. I couldn’t understand any of this; why Todd was
pretending that Jones was one of the good guys. The world had turned upside
down and nothing made sense anymore.

“Todd, why are you bringing Jones into our office, don’t
you know what he did to women and children in Afghanistan”? I asked, trying to
elicit from him some acknowledgement of Jones’ horrific deeds and the
mortification I felt at being in Jones’ presence.

“I’ll tell you why, Caroline. What happened between him
and a few women a long time ago is none of your business. Mr. Jones here is the
President of PFG Corporation and prior to that he was one of our best field
operatives, with 20 years of experience, including 10 years in Afghanistan.”

Todd was heaping exultant praise upon the Devil? I
thought I must be in Hell. There are certain breeds of human being that
shouldn’t be free to walk the streets and Jones was one of them. Jones had
defiled the reputation of every American soldier stationed in Afghanistan. In a
country  where one American soldier commits an act of murder other 
U.S. soldiers are captured and killed in retaliation, there’s no telling which
innocent American soldiers might have paid  with their lives for the
crimes committed by Jones. How many American throats were slit in bloody
revenge for
Jone’s
villainous rampages?  And yet
all of his horrors were whitewashed as if they had never happened and his
record had been cleansed so that Jones would never pay for what he had done.

My disgust with our government at that moment cut deep
into my gut. I began to contemplate quitting my job and moving to Canada, away
from this government which seemed to have lost all moral focus.  I had spent
the better part of 8 years of my life on the technological forefront of three
wars; Iraq, Afghanistan, and defense of the home turf. I had altered my whole
life to adhere to the security demands of my country and my job, and now I was
faced with this
hypocracy
. I wanted to turn around,
swing the door open and run as far away as possible, but the door was closed
and there were just too many security guards outside for any expectation of
successful escape. I was weighing my options when Todd opened fire.

“Caroline, you were caught red-handed at Ft. M accessing
not one, but two Top Secret databases although your security clearance is only
at the “Secret” level. You violated federal law.”  I thought at that
moment that Todd would have thrown his mother under a bus if it meant enhancing
his career.

 I thought to myself
silently, “raping children is fine, human rights abuses on a massive scale,
and  running a heroin racket while on the payroll of the US government is
fine, but an innocent mistake with no harm to national security  is
suddenly a criminal act worthy of this?”  He was standing by the goalposts
of righteousness and moving them to fit angle of whatever ball was in the air.
I could barely maintain my composure as he continued.

“I let you slide on that one…,” he said.

“You didn’t let me slide, Todd. I out-maneuvered you by
taking it out of your jurisdiction and under the IRS’s authority.”

Todd rolled on “but this clearly is a significant issue
and we can no longer ignore your transgressions. I don’t know what you have
against Mr. Jones here, or his friend Mr. Valdez for that matter, but it’s got
to stop. Mr. Jones has kindly agreed to waive legal action provided that
you  obey
his right to privacy and that means that you
are prohibited from accessing his files, you are not to  try to
 contact him, and you are required  seek help for whatever issues
you’re dealing with. It will probably come as no surprise to you that your
security clearance is suspended,” he proclaimed.

I fought hard to suppress the impulse to strangle him; it
was just like Todd to delight in causing people misery. That’s what he had in
common with Jones; he liked to inflict pain. He rambled on about giving me a
break and a second chance and a lot of other garbage.

“But if you don’t do as I tell you, I can assure you Mr.
Jones will precede with legal action against you.” It was no use; I was already
numb, stricken with disbelief that something like this could happen to a devout
American like me. I wanted out, out of it all. I wanted to unload my burden,
break out of this cage and go out and have fun like normal people do. I wanted
to wander through a mall and not think about the explosives that might be
hidden in trash containers, or to a movie theatre without thinking about
Abraham Lincoln’s last moments and wondering if my colleagues and I would end
up like that.  I wanted to go on a vacation wherever I wanted, without
first submitting my travel plans detailing  every restaurant where I might
eat, every person I would meet, every museum I would visit so that security
could review it and give it their approval. I wanted to go home at night and
know that I wouldn’t be awakened at one o’clock in the morning with a crisis on
my hands because some idiot clicked on a link to a phony website and invited a
group of hackers from the Ukraine to take a virtual tour through an electronic
file room of our top secret government files. I wanted basic freedoms that the
other American had.

 Then he gave me the name of the shrink I was
ordered to see to get my job back and I went.

 Sometime between the mob scene in the conference
room and my first appointment with the shrink, I realized that even with the
gates flung wide open I still couldn’t leave. I was branded at birth with the
idealisms of God and Country and no matter what happened at the office I
couldn’t walk away from who I was bred to be. Like most the people in the
intelligence community I was raised to believe that there’s something more
important than self-interest and I couldn’t define myself without it. There was
a stubbornness inside of me that wouldn’t accept defeat and so like a good
soldier I marched on.

CHAPTER 14

I found Dr. Sickle in a brown brick building, dating from
the 1970’s and clearly nobody had spent the money to upgrade it in the last 30
years. Located in an office park, it was a depressing   environment.
In the waiting room there were few magazines or anything else to look at while
waiting
;  just
a panel of buttons attached to the
wall, one with the name of Dr. Sickle on it, so I pushed it.

After about 20 minutes he came to retrieve me from the
waiting room;
a short man nearing the half- century mark
with a potbelly, wearing a bright red tie, and resembling a penguin. With a
soft, pleasant smile he directed me to his office. “You can sit there,” he
said, pointing to a chair on the opposite side of his desk. There was a reading
light with a high wattage light bulb shining in the direction of the seat of
the person who was being questioned, which in this case was me.  It was
unnerving but I just thought it was part of the testing. That light bulb
provided the only light in the room thus intensifying the focus on the visitor
in the chair. The walls were decorated with his own self- made works of art, so
he boasted.  Curiously all were painted in the same palette of medium
brown and dark green. Seeing that, I wanted to turn the light back on him.

I took my seat and waited for him to begin the
interrogation. He began asking about my childhood and about my grandparents
then settled on my sex life and clung to that topic for most of the remaining
sessions, apparently looking to be entertained.
I  was
unnerved by his  voyeurism and  denied him the opportunity. He seemed
to be personally deprived of physical affection from another human being, or
maybe he was just obsessed with sex because he was dysfunctional in the
bedroom. Either way, he struck me as the type of person who shouldn’t be
allowed near children. Then he held up pictures of ink blobs on cardboard and
asked me to tell him what I saw and I invented some ridiculous answers to fit
the ridiculous questions.