every confidence in Harmon. He was a good man. Grove Industries liked to use patriots. They were better than the people you had to buy. You could always trust them to do their jobs.
• • •
Inspector Harmon made copies of the pictures of the smiling well-dressed black man and circulated them throughout the intelligence agencies. He sent them to key FBI offices. He did not know he was also sending them to a computer room in a bank, where only one man ever seemed to go to the twentieth floor during working hours, a New Englander who took his hat off in the elevator and was never known to start a conversation. Everyone in the building thought of Mr. Smith, who brought his lunch every day in a brown paper bag, as an actuarial analyst with a very large private practice.
This day, the computer itself interrupted Smith’s work with a flag. A flag was a form of alarm. It flashed a small red light to indicate there was something Smith should look into. If it were important enough, it would break into anything Smith was working on. First came the small red light in the upper corner of his screen, and then, everything else disappeared. Thrown onto the screen was an alarm that something might compromise the secrecy of the organization. It was a confirmed image of McCleary and his fingerprinting confirmation on the right hand.
The FBI was looking for him and the prints. Smith watched the electronic memos route themselves throughout the government. The prints even went into the CIA files because the FBI suspected this man might be a former government agent. Good guess, thought Smith. But there, where they had once been, they no longer were. Smith had had them removed years before when he had chosen this man despite obvious personal flaws concerning drink and women. The thing about Con McCleary that made him so worthwhile was that he got things done. And he was loyal to his country.
What McCleary had done most recently was to raid the AR-60 files and verify what Smith had suspected: they had used the secrecy of the HARP system, namely its multitudes of electronic defenses, to shield all their operations at Grove.
McCleary had found the parameters of the blocks by trying to get into HARP, and then all Smith had to do was send them back into the Grove system, and let the Grove teckies (technologists) think they were repairing an access problem. They would simply show Smith how to get in without ever knowing they were doing it. Then Smith would make access to the AR-60 available to the proper Army sections or the General Accounting Office that made sure Americans got what they paid for.
Smith waited as the warning filled the screen with information as to who was looking for what and how much they knew. Looking in on this world, safe from detection but able to influence events, was almost like playing God, he thought. And as soon as the thought became conscious, he pushed it from his mind.
The good Lord was always sure of what he was doing. Smith only hoped he knew. He didn’t try to stop the search for McCleary. That would only create an information block and as soon as someone discovered the wall was there, they would figure out how to scale it, break it, or get around it some other way.
So one did not block, one redirected. Smith sent in a security clearance for McCleary with McCleary’s face and prints, under the name Mel Bergman, computer engineer, Grove Industries, Grove, Idaho, on special assignment Taiwan.
Then he created a payroll record for Mr. Bergman, including complaints about withholding. He created a system for Mr. Bergman that would enable Grove and the FBI to chase him for months, and then declare him missing.
This job finished, Smith phoned McCleary.
“I’d like to see you in the shop,” he said. He had reached McCleary’s apartment.
“Does it have to be now?” asked McCleary.
“Yes,” said Smith.
Smith heard a woman’s groan through the receiver.
“Does it have to be now? I have met the one
• • •
Inspector Harmon made copies of the pictures of the smiling well-dressed black man and circulated them throughout the intelligence agencies. He sent them to key FBI offices. He did not know he was also sending them to a computer room in a bank, where only one man ever seemed to go to the twentieth floor during working hours, a New Englander who took his hat off in the elevator and was never known to start a conversation. Everyone in the building thought of Mr. Smith, who brought his lunch every day in a brown paper bag, as an actuarial analyst with a very large private practice.
This day, the computer itself interrupted Smith’s work with a flag. A flag was a form of alarm. It flashed a small red light to indicate there was something Smith should look into. If it were important enough, it would break into anything Smith was working on. First came the small red light in the upper corner of his screen, and then, everything else disappeared. Thrown onto the screen was an alarm that something might compromise the secrecy of the organization. It was a confirmed image of McCleary and his fingerprinting confirmation on the right hand.
The FBI was looking for him and the prints. Smith watched the electronic memos route themselves throughout the government. The prints even went into the CIA files because the FBI suspected this man might be a former government agent. Good guess, thought Smith. But there, where they had once been, they no longer were. Smith had had them removed years before when he had chosen this man despite obvious personal flaws concerning drink and women. The thing about Con McCleary that made him so worthwhile was that he got things done. And he was loyal to his country.
What McCleary had done most recently was to raid the AR-60 files and verify what Smith had suspected: they had used the secrecy of the HARP system, namely its multitudes of electronic defenses, to shield all their operations at Grove.
McCleary had found the parameters of the blocks by trying to get into HARP, and then all Smith had to do was send them back into the Grove system, and let the Grove teckies (technologists) think they were repairing an access problem. They would simply show Smith how to get in without ever knowing they were doing it. Then Smith would make access to the AR-60 available to the proper Army sections or the General Accounting Office that made sure Americans got what they paid for.
Smith waited as the warning filled the screen with information as to who was looking for what and how much they knew. Looking in on this world, safe from detection but able to influence events, was almost like playing God, he thought. And as soon as the thought became conscious, he pushed it from his mind.
The good Lord was always sure of what he was doing. Smith only hoped he knew. He didn’t try to stop the search for McCleary. That would only create an information block and as soon as someone discovered the wall was there, they would figure out how to scale it, break it, or get around it some other way.
So one did not block, one redirected. Smith sent in a security clearance for McCleary with McCleary’s face and prints, under the name Mel Bergman, computer engineer, Grove Industries, Grove, Idaho, on special assignment Taiwan.
Then he created a payroll record for Mr. Bergman, including complaints about withholding. He created a system for Mr. Bergman that would enable Grove and the FBI to chase him for months, and then declare him missing.
This job finished, Smith phoned McCleary.
“I’d like to see you in the shop,” he said. He had reached McCleary’s apartment.
“Does it have to be now?” asked McCleary.
“Yes,” said Smith.
Smith heard a woman’s groan through the receiver.
“Does it have to be now? I have met the one
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