might be able to avenge Fielding's death.
On a good traffic day, the Trinity complex was a twenty-minute drive from my house in suburban Chapel Hill. Research Triangle Park, the manicured haven of corporate research known locally as the RTP, lay between Raleigh and Durham and was named for the triangle formed by Duke University, UNC at Chapel Hill, and North Carolina State. Its quiet lanes led through expansive lawns that suggested an exclusive country club, but instead of golf links, the seven-thousand-acre RTP boasted labs owned by DuPont, 3M, Merck, Biogen, Lockheed, and dozens of other blue-chip names. Forty-five thousand people reported to work within its borders every day, but less than three hundred knew what lay behind the walls of the Trinity building. I drove slowly, hoping in some juvenile way that I would never arrive at my destination.
The Trinity lab stood two hundred yards back from an understated sign that read ARGUS OPTICAL. A forbidding five-story block of steel and black glass, it sat on sixty wooded acres with extensive sub-basements and a heliport. The steel and glass was just a shell constructed for show. Behind it, high-tech copper cladding code-named Tempest encased the inner building, preventing electromagnetic radiation from passing in or out of Trinity. The same stuff protected the NSA operations buildings at Fort Meade.
Because the building had been sited in a sort of bowl, its first two floors lay out of sight. The main entrance was on the third floor. To reach it, staff had to cross a roofed catwalk forty yards long. Inside a fortified archway at the far end, they confronted a narrow passage guarded by a security officer and lined with sensitive metal detectors, electronic bomb-sniffers, and fluoroscope machines. Authorized entry required photo ID, a fingerprint scan, and a mandatory search of all bags.
A sentry buzzed open the archway door, and I walked up to the security desk, my face revealing none of the anxiety I felt.
"Morning, Doc," said a middle-aged guard named Henry.
I sometimes thought Henry had been hired through central casting. The other security personnel were all in their late twenties, lean young men and women with smooth faces, avian eyes, and zero body fat. Only Henry, the gate man, ever said a word of greeting.
"Good morning, Henry," I said.
"There's a meeting in the conference room at nine."
"Thanks."
"You got four minutes."
I looked at my watch and nodded.
"Still can't get over Professor Fielding," Henry said. "They say he was dead before the ambulance got here."
I took a careful breath. This exchange was being recorded by hidden cameras.
"That's the way it goes sometimes with strokes."
"Not a bad way to go out. Quick, I mean."
I forced a smile, then laid the pad of my right forefinger on a small scanner.
After the unit beeped for a match, I passed through the gauntlet of threat-detection equipment and took the stairs to the fifth floor, which housed the administrative offices and conference room.
Yellow police tape stretched across the closed door to Fielding's office. Who had put it there? Surely the NSA hadn't allowed local or state police to enter this facility. Glancing up and down the empty corridor, I quickly tried the knob. Locked. And not with some lightweight mechanism from a hardware store.
If Fielding's pocket watch was inside his office, I couldn't get it.
I walked a few doors down to my own office, closed the door, and sat down at my primary computer. Part of a closed network that served only the Trinity scientists, it had no connection to the outside world. To access the Internet, I had to use a second computer that had no ports or drives through which files could be exported from the building.
My primary screen showed one interoffice e-mail: a reminder of the meeting scheduled to begin in the conference room in two minutes. With a macabre chill I realized that I'd half-expected a humorous e-mail from Fielding. He often sent me little
On a good traffic day, the Trinity complex was a twenty-minute drive from my house in suburban Chapel Hill. Research Triangle Park, the manicured haven of corporate research known locally as the RTP, lay between Raleigh and Durham and was named for the triangle formed by Duke University, UNC at Chapel Hill, and North Carolina State. Its quiet lanes led through expansive lawns that suggested an exclusive country club, but instead of golf links, the seven-thousand-acre RTP boasted labs owned by DuPont, 3M, Merck, Biogen, Lockheed, and dozens of other blue-chip names. Forty-five thousand people reported to work within its borders every day, but less than three hundred knew what lay behind the walls of the Trinity building. I drove slowly, hoping in some juvenile way that I would never arrive at my destination.
The Trinity lab stood two hundred yards back from an understated sign that read ARGUS OPTICAL. A forbidding five-story block of steel and black glass, it sat on sixty wooded acres with extensive sub-basements and a heliport. The steel and glass was just a shell constructed for show. Behind it, high-tech copper cladding code-named Tempest encased the inner building, preventing electromagnetic radiation from passing in or out of Trinity. The same stuff protected the NSA operations buildings at Fort Meade.
Because the building had been sited in a sort of bowl, its first two floors lay out of sight. The main entrance was on the third floor. To reach it, staff had to cross a roofed catwalk forty yards long. Inside a fortified archway at the far end, they confronted a narrow passage guarded by a security officer and lined with sensitive metal detectors, electronic bomb-sniffers, and fluoroscope machines. Authorized entry required photo ID, a fingerprint scan, and a mandatory search of all bags.
A sentry buzzed open the archway door, and I walked up to the security desk, my face revealing none of the anxiety I felt.
"Morning, Doc," said a middle-aged guard named Henry.
I sometimes thought Henry had been hired through central casting. The other security personnel were all in their late twenties, lean young men and women with smooth faces, avian eyes, and zero body fat. Only Henry, the gate man, ever said a word of greeting.
"Good morning, Henry," I said.
"There's a meeting in the conference room at nine."
"Thanks."
"You got four minutes."
I looked at my watch and nodded.
"Still can't get over Professor Fielding," Henry said. "They say he was dead before the ambulance got here."
I took a careful breath. This exchange was being recorded by hidden cameras.
"That's the way it goes sometimes with strokes."
"Not a bad way to go out. Quick, I mean."
I forced a smile, then laid the pad of my right forefinger on a small scanner.
After the unit beeped for a match, I passed through the gauntlet of threat-detection equipment and took the stairs to the fifth floor, which housed the administrative offices and conference room.
Yellow police tape stretched across the closed door to Fielding's office. Who had put it there? Surely the NSA hadn't allowed local or state police to enter this facility. Glancing up and down the empty corridor, I quickly tried the knob. Locked. And not with some lightweight mechanism from a hardware store.
If Fielding's pocket watch was inside his office, I couldn't get it.
I walked a few doors down to my own office, closed the door, and sat down at my primary computer. Part of a closed network that served only the Trinity scientists, it had no connection to the outside world. To access the Internet, I had to use a second computer that had no ports or drives through which files could be exported from the building.
My primary screen showed one interoffice e-mail: a reminder of the meeting scheduled to begin in the conference room in two minutes. With a macabre chill I realized that I'd half-expected a humorous e-mail from Fielding. He often sent me little
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