Decency

by Rex Fuller

  Kathy struggled with her arms extended to steady the descent of the first box.

  “Here let me help.”

  The second box joined the first on the floor of the bedroom.

  “If it’s not in one of these, then we may have to look through everything. I’ll be back with the coffee.”

  Kelly carefully removed each item from each box and laid them in order next to the corresponding box to permit returning them in the same order. It proved disappointing. There was no “diary” as such. There were, however, a couple of dozen computer diskettes, any of which could house diary entries.

  As Kathy returned with the coffee, she guessed the result.

  “Not there, huh?”

  “Looks like not. Maybe the computer diskettes. Did she keep a diary as a child?”

  “Yes, at times. I’m not sure I know whether she kept one all along. And I don’t know if we still have any of them. We have a lot of searching through boxes to do.”

  “Let me take the disks back with me and let’s plow on ahead.”

  Box by box the search continued.

  In the next to last one a small leatherette bound volume labeled in faded faux gold lettering, “My Journal,” appeared.

  With bated breath, Kelly thumbed quickly to page ten, only to be disappointed again. There was only a page of neat penmanship describing Samantha’s reaction to a new teacher in high school. Nothing that resembled a “CODE KEY.”

  Kathy took the volume and read it to herself.

  “This might mean something.”

  She pointed to the last two lines on the page.

  “I know her handwriting. These last lines were not written when she was in high school. See, they are just not as precise as the rest of the page.”

  They read,

  “He’s so difficult to follow. “A equals b and b equals c and so on. That’s it: he’s one off.”

  “Kathy, it’s got to be it. Only you would have noticed the difference in the handwriting. Probably, on one of her visits home, she just picked a page where there was space left at the bottom of her entry, and made up a line that fit the context. She’s saying the key to decoding her material is to change each letter to the next one in the alphabet.”

  “What material?”

  “I don’t know, yet. But I will bet much of it is in her letters to you.”

  Kathy Pierce, proud, sturdy woman of the soil, turned her gaze eye to eye. Her lip started to quiver and burning words rushed through her stiffened jaw.

  “You get those bastards, Kelly. You get them. They took my baby…”

  Sorrow buckled her. Kneeling, slump-shouldered, she took no comfort from the arm placed across her back, or the forehead gently pressed to her head, and gasped in heavy, hurting sobs.

  Kelly’s car hurtled down the two-lane splitting farms passed just hours ago in the opposite direction.

  Tom, each one of these homes probably shelters a family as good and solid as the Pierces…the country’s fiber comes from here. Just as much as the fields grow the grain, these houses nurtured solid sons and daughters. What will happen if these disappear? Corporations can’t do what these people do…

  Kelly dialed the number.

  “Hello.”

  “Bonnie, it’s Kelly. Sorry to catch you at home.”

  “It’s fine. How’d it go?”

  “Pretty well. I think I saw the book. Can we meet first thing in the morning?”

  “At your service. I can be in by about 8:00 if traffic cooperates.”

  “That will be great. See you then.” Kelly needed some time with Tom and riffled through her carrying case of CD’s. Aaron Neville’s Orchid in the Storm caught her eye. She slid the disk into the player and jumped to the second track. The smooth, trilling voice filled the car with Pledging My Love, “…always and forever, I’ll love only you.”

  She hit the repeat button to cycle it again.

  …one of our favorites. I miss you so much, Tom.

  At 7:45, Bonnie was waiting outside the office. Jannie had apparently just arrived and was still putting things in order to start the day while chatting with Bonnie. Kelly caught the last words.

  “…it nearly killed her too. She was devastated.”

  “Thanks, Jannie. I didn’t know at all.”

  They both turned with Kelly’s approach.

  “Good morning. Bonnie, thanks for coming in early.”

  “Sure thing. I could hardly sleep wondering what you found.”

  “Let’s get some coffee and settle in. We’ll be here a while.”

  “Ms. Hawkins, you unpack and I’ll get the coffee. Jannie just told me about your husband, Tom. I’m so very sorry.”

  “Thanks, Bonnie. It was pretty rough…maybe still is.”

  While Bonnie was in the firm’s kitchen, Kelly sorted out the materials from the trip and notes on things to do, then made two photocopies of page ten from the diary.

  When Bonnie came in with the coffee, Kelly handed her one of the photocopies.

  “Look at the last lines. Notice the slight difference of hand writing. Now read them. She’s saying the key is to change each letter of the alphabet to the next ensuing one.”

  “I see that. But we don’t know what text has the characters to be changed do we?”

  “Not yet. I’d be surprised though if at least a good part of it isn’t in the letters she wrote to her parents. They come from the right time frame and they would be something she could control, something she could use to update information as necessary.”

  “Have you looked?”

  “No, I left them here. Going through them is the first thing we’ll be doing today.”

  “We can tell pretty quickly if there is anything that’s obvious on the face of her letters.”

  The answer sprang at them.

  “Look, she jotted in the underlining in nearly all of them the same way she did on the last letter. I’ll bet anything that’s the text.”

  They started with the earliest and made a translation page of each letter, writing down in order the next ensuing character of the alphabet after each one that was underlined. They would not try to read the resulting messages as they went. They waited for the context that appeared from the whole.

  The work was slow. For over four hours they transcribed the next ensuing character of those underlined before they finished.

  “Okay, Bonnie, now for the interesting part. Want a break before we go back and turn the character strings into messages?”

  “Are you kidding? I can’t possibly wait.”

  “Then have at yours and I’ll do mine. Leave out capitalization and punctuation at least for now.”

  The earliest letter quickly became achingly clear.

  mom dad if youre reading im gone i love you thank you bringing me up and all your sacrifice if other reads first please give to parents don’t know how much will get to you working strange case agency cant crack letters not real time show past events in chron order

  “Bonnie, look at this. If there was ever any doubt we’re on the side of the angels, there isn’t now.”

  Although this step was quicker, it still took nearly an hour to complete them all. Bonnie read them aloud.

  noticed feedback loop echelon computers no record of it in design

  removed feedback loop informed security and ig no report back from security or ig

  new unplanned selfcopying function found in echelon computers informed security and ig

  security questioned me as if responsible for feedback loop and selfcopy not true of course they may believe I am possible mole and disclosed to cover tracks

  security watching don’t know why

  carl foley dead helped spot feedback and selfcopy verdict suicide doubt it

  clearance suspended referred to psych eval

  psych james cochran evaled me same as foley

  letters now real time wrote code for

  ident unplanned software change no access need buddy to insert

>   have buddy christian mason he inserted ident code picked up change feeds to security may or may not be legit

  cochran found me depressed and paranoid bullshit don’t know if hes mule for management or just wrong or why want rid of me unless they think im mole

  will meet termination hearing board in two months

  mason reports getting close to ident who in security accesses unplanned feed

  Both were quiet a long, long moment.

  “Bonnie, would you take some notes while I think out loud. Chime in any time with your thoughts.”

  “Okay.”

  “These are my thoughts on what we have here and what we don’t have and questions these messages raise.

  “Obviously, Samantha Pierce found repeated efforts to get access to NSA information in an unauthorized, or what she perceived to be, unauthorized way.

  “She did what she felt she could and should do about it.

  “She worked in two tracks, one official and one unofficial.

  “She did not think anything sinister was necessarily involved until later in the process and then she started sending coded letters describing her efforts to her parents.

  “She gave us three names of people connected to her efforts or her case that we did not already know were involved in them, co-worker Carl Foley, who Richardson mentioned to us, psychologist James Cochran, and coworker Christian Mason.

  “The letters stop, presumably because she died, when Christian Mason told her he was close to identifying who made the unauthorized access to the NSA information.

  “Among the things the letters do not tell us is whether the efforts she was making, possibly through Christian Mason, in fact triggered the effort to terminate her employment.

  “We do not know what information was involved in the unauthorized access to the Echelon computers.

  “We do not know why she felt it necessary to track the unauthorized access except that nothing came of her official reports.

  “We do not know why she thought a mole was possibly involved, except to the extent that the access to the Echelon computers was probably so limited even within NSA that a mole was perhaps necessarily involved.

  “And, this information from the letters is obviously of interest to law enforcement and national security authorities which may create obligations on our part to divulge it to them.

  “Finally, in the litigation we initiate, we will eventually have to disclose the letters in discovery.

  “Your turn.”

  “Just one other one for now, which I’ve thought since we started this morning. It’s this. The code system she used in the letters to her parents is simple, probably crude from the point of view of an NSA computer scientist. Wouldn’t she use a sophisticated code to keep details such as classified things somewhere?”

  “That would still be outside classified channels…but I get what you mean.”

  They fell silent.

  “While we’re on the subject, let’s just see what is on the diskettes from the farm.”

  Kelly took the first and slid it into the drive on a computer she asked Jannie to bring in. None of the firm’s machines had drives that would accept floppy disks.

  In Microsoft Word, she clicked on “Open” then on “(A:).”

  No files showed up in the files list window.

  She tried each one separately. All of them show the same result, no files.

  “I guess that’s that.”

  “Kelly, let’s check for archived or deleted files.”

  “I don’t know how to do that.”

  “Here, let me.”

  Kelly offered her desk chair and Bonnie sat down.

  She exited “Word” and pulled up “Programs.”

  She clicked on “Norton Utilities” then on “Recover Deleted Files.”

  Norton Utilities ground away for several seconds.

  “I think it’s finding something.”

  A list of a dozen files showed up. Bonnie flashed a smile.

  “Okay, now let’s read them.”

  Bonnie clicked on the command.

  Norton ground repeatedly then reported, “Error - Unknown File Format,” then the screen changed to lines of computer code.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Just that Norton doesn’t recognize the file format but can recognize the programming code.”

  “And?”

  “Well, we’re at the end of my expertise. I suggest you let me take the diskettes to some programmers and see what they can come up with.”

  “Sounds good to me. One thing though, get copies of them made and leave the originals here.”

  “Sure.”

  “Okay, Bonnie. Let’s game plan what we do next. We’re down to nine days.”

  Kelly divided the tasks, taking responsibility for Richardson and getting any other NSA employees as witnesses, except Mason. She gave contacting Mason, requesting all existing documents from NSA and contacting expert psychologists and psychiatrists, to Bonnie.

  “By the way, what did you find at the police?”

  “It’s pretty strange. For all practical purposes there is no remaining evidence. The investigation report is not there. They could not even tell me whether there was an investigation report.”

  “I suspected that might be the case.”

  “That it?”

  “No. Before you do anything else, finalize the complaint and the other papers to be served with it. We now know Cochran was the key psychologist doing the evaluations. We’ll go with him and the government as defendants. We’ll file as soon as it’s in final form.”

  The partners meeting was always unpredictable. Not in the sense of irregularity. It was uniformly held every Tuesday at 8:00 a.m. Or in the sense of the general flow. It began with a financial report, went on to discussion of collecting from slow paying clients, then transitioned to new clients, then orbited around problems until everyone had their say on whatever they wanted to bother everyone else about. What was unpredictable was what would dominate the discussion. It could come from anywhere and in rarest of all events, made the gathering interesting.

  Today’s meeting was bound to pivot on the issue of how much it would cost to make the telephone and computer systems secure.

  The assembled principals of the firm blistered through the agenda, presumably with everyone holding their tongues to shorten the whole process and get them back to making money as quickly as possible.

  Toward the end Abe Kramer intoned, “Kelly, I would be grateful if you would explain the possible security requirement that you and I have discussed.”

  “Sure. As everyone knows, we do not have special security features on our telephone lines. We have normal software firewalls but we don’t have the highest grade encryption or even anything on some of the phone lines and connections, like the faxes and printers. This means anyone with the necessary equipment, skill, and intentions can listen to our phone conversations and hack into our computers.

  “As we have discussed before, the need for upgrading security on our systems has not been apparent or at least has not been significant enough to warrant the expense of doing so.

  “I believe that has changed. The new case, the Pierce case that I have briefed you about, is a matter involving the NSA. That agency can listen in on any telecommunication anywhere, including phones, faxes, computers, etc. While I don’t anticipate the agency itself will target our systems - which as you know it cannot legally do here in the U.S. without a court order - I believe that individuals at the agency may very well use its capabilities to listen in on us to protect themselves. That means listen in on any of us or anyone at the firm, not just me.

  “Now, I think we’re faced with a requirement to protect our clients’ confidentiality to the extent that we reasonably can. Remember, in these times it does not take much in the way of equipment and fairly low grade skill to eavesdrop or hack into computers. It may be that we are at the point where, for the sake of all of our clients, and not just beca
use of this Pierce case, that we need to spend the money to make our systems secure.

  “I’m sure you are interested in what the costs of this are. Because we have fiber optic connections to the computers and the phone exchange I think we are talking about mainly software, such as highest grade firewalls and encryption and certain monitoring gear. The number I’ve come up with in talking to a couple of suppliers is down slightly from when we last discussed this. I think we can do the job for about eighty to ninety thousand. Questions?”

  Don MacIntyre, a notorious penny pincher, spoke first as could be expected.

  “Kelly, can you assure us this new case will pay for this?”

  “No. But as I said we probably need it anyway.”

  “As long as nothing has changed except having this new case, I don’t see why we should do it, given our previous position on the matter. Lawyers lose more money picking up crumbs in front of the statute of limitations expiration than any other way. It seems to me it’s your problem, Kelly. You could solve it by spending what you need from your allocation.”

  MacIntyre was not being actually unfair. He would not spend a dime of his own money to keep himself in food if he could help it.

  “Mac, God knows you have saved us a lot of money over the years. It’s my opinion, however, the time has come for us to move from outdated technology to today’s.”

  “I just don’t need to for my practice. I propose anyone who wants the features Kelly is talking about to spend their own money for them. The firm as a whole is doing fine without them.”

  Michael Campanelli spoke next.

  “I don’t give a damn about the costs. But your case, Pierce. There’s just no way you can sue an intelligence agency or its employee when the issue is likely to revolve around security clearances. We’ll end up looking like jackasses! I don’t want the firm to look like that and neither do you. You’re spinning your wheels, at best.”

  Abe stepped in.