The Minotaur by Stephen Coonts Page B

because she had different
phone numbers—at least four of them. And this guy Bob—lunch,
tennis on Saturday, reminders that he called, to call Bob. Call DE.
Call from RM. Drop car at garage. Commode broke. Smoke Judy
seemed to jot down everything out of the ordinary. He was a detail
man in a detail business.
    When he had his copies. Jake put the appointment book back on
Judy’s desk and went back to his little office. In a few moments he
heard a knock on the door, so he heaved himself up and walked
across the room to admit the visitor-
    The man in civilian clothes who came in was slighty below me-
dium height, built like a fireplug and just as bald. “Hi. Name’s
Kleinberg. From NSA. Computers.” His voice boomed. Here was
a man who could never whisper. In his left hand he carried a
leather valise.
    “I’m Grafton.”
    “Beg pardon,” the man said as he reached out and tilted the
bottom of Jake’s security tag. He stared at it a few seconds, then
glanced again at Jake’s face. “Yep, you’re Grafton, all right. Can’t
be too careful, y’know.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “Let’s look at the patient.”
    Jake led the way to his desk. “I don’t know much about com-
puters.”
    “No sweat. I know enough for both of us. When we’re through,
you’re going to be able to make this thing sing and dance.” Klein-
berg turned on the computer. “See this prompt here? That’s the
sign-on prompt and you have to type in your secret password. This
is a code that identifies you to the machine, which allows you
access to certain files and only certain files- Security, y’know.
Here’s your password.” He used a pencil on a sheet of paper and
wrote, “Reverberation.”
    “How come I can’t pick my own word?”
    “We tried that on the second go-around. Everyone wanted to
come up with something cute, except for the aviators, who all
wanted to use their nicknames. You’d have thought they were or-
dering vanity license plates. So … Now type in your password.”
    Jake did so. The computer prompt moved from left to right, but
the letters failed to appear.
    “Now hit ‘enter.’ Uh-oh, the computer won’t take it- So type it
again and spell it right.” This time the computer blinked to the
next screen. “You only get two tries,” Kleinberg advised. “If you
are wrong both times, the computer will lock you out and you’ll
have to see me about getting back in.”
    “How can it lock me out if I haven’t told it exactly who I am?”
    “It locks out everyone who has access from the bank of monitors
in this office.” Kleinberg wrote another password on the paper:
    “Fallacy.”
    ‘This is the password that allows you access to files relating to
the ATA, which is what I understand you are working on here in
this shop. Type it in and hit ‘enter.’ ” Jake obeyed. “Now, to call
up the directory of the files you have access to due to your security
clearance and job title, you have to type one more password.” He
wrote it down. “Matriarch.”
    After Jake entered this code, a long list of documents appeared
on the screen. “Of course, if you already have the document num-
ber, you can type it right in and not bother calling up the directory
with the matriarch code word. Got it?”
    ” ‘Reverberation,’ ‘fallacy’ and ‘matriarch.’ What was the first
go-around on the code words?”
    Kleinberg laughed. “Well, we used computer-generated random
series of letters. They weren’t words, just a series of letters. But
people couldn’t remember them and took to writing them down in
notebooks, checkbooks and so forth. So we tried plan two. This is
plan three.”
    Kleinberg took a lighter from his pocket and held the flame
under the piece of paper on which he had written the code words.
    It flared. Just before the fire reached his fingers, he dropped the
paper on the plastic carpet protector under the chair and watched
the remnant turn to ash, which he crushed with his shoe. Klein-
berg rubbed his hands and