The Silicon Jungle

by Shumeet Baluja

  The haggard waitress returned with Sebastin’s drink to find the two men staring at each other, saying nothing—Sebastin feeling dizzy as the minute tremors of the inevitable swelled ever larger to engulf him, and Mohammad feeling the peace of being able to speak the truth.

  -FAITH-

  August 12, 2009.

  The moment Atiq was allowed to leave, he rushed back to Ubatoo. He arrived there at approximately 10:30 a.m., bleary eyed with no sleep, frazzled from his night of questioning, and more terrified than he wanted to let on. The first stop was Jaan’s office.

  When Jaan saw Atiq, he jumped up to offer him a chair and something to drink. Atiq looked ready to collapse with every shallow breath. But he did his best to remain standing, determined to attend to all the emergencies that were surely going to need his attention today.

  “Not now, Jaan. Listen to me. Do you know what’s going on?”

  Jaan had a slew of questions to ask Atiq, but he refrained. Jaan responded succinctly, “Yes. I heard about you and Stephen.”

  “Good. I need you to dig a little deeper. Something Stephen said when he was questioned bothered me. I gathered up all the commands and queries that I thought he ran on our databases. The problem is that he said that most of them looked familiar. He didn’t recognize all of them.”

  Atiq paused for a moment. He was out of breath. “I need you to double-check me. What else did he look at? I tried to find all the potentially sensitive queries that any interns may have entered, not just Stephen. But with the NCTC guys watching me, it’s possible I missed something. I want you to do that, too—look for anything in our records from the summer that I should know about. You know what to look for. I’ll convey anything we find to Alan and Rajive. I know we have to cooperate with them, but come to me first. I want to make sure we contain the damage.”

  “I’ll do it right now.”

  “Thanks, Jaan. I need to see Xiao. Come by my office when you have something.”

  As Atiq was turning to leave, Jaan called out “Atiq, are you okay?”

  “I’ll tell you about it later, Jaan. I’ll be fine. Stephen, though, I don’t know about him. We’ve got to figure out how this happened.” Hesitatingly, he asked, “Jaan, I don’t suppose you knew anything about this? I mean they didn’t tell you, did they?”

  “No, Atiq. Of course not!” Jaan answered, taken aback.

  “You never checked up on them, did you? I mean just to find out what they were working on or if they needed any guidance?”

  “I, I, I was going to . . .”

  Atiq didn’t need more of an answer. The next stop was Xiao’s office. He was there, waiting. “Xiao. I’m back,” Atiq called as he stepped through the door.

  The worry etched on Xiao’s face vanished when he saw Atiq. Xiao had been waiting in his office all night. Xiao walked straight over to him with outstretched arms to give him a long hug. Atiq hadn’t expected that from him. “I wasn’t sure when I was going to see you again, Atiq. Are you okay?”

  “Yes. I’m trying to get to the bottom of everything. I have Jaan working on it now.”

  “They let you and Stephen out?”

  “No. Stephen is still there. I don’t know what will happen to him. Things were not looking good.”

  “But you’re okay? How did you get out of this mess?”

  “One of the men there, Rajive, must have convinced Alan to let me go. I don’t really know. It must have been apparent that I had no idea what Stephen was doing. It’s not over, though. There’ll be plenty more for us to deal with, Xiao.”

  “I am happy to see you here, now,” Xiao said, pausing as if deciding whether to say aloud what was on his mind. “I was really worried about you. These accusations are not to be taken lightly, Atiq. The world is not always kind in this day. And you, well, you are a Muslim, my friend. A few years ago, it might not have been the case that I would see you so soon. Things might have turned out differently then. Though you are innocent, of course, Atiq, you are also very lucky, I think. At least we can be thankful for that.”

  Atiq stopped pacing, stopped fidgeting, and stopped thinking. He let himself collapse into a chair. Nothing he had endured that night pained him as much as Xiao’s last words. He wanted desperately to fall to his knees and prostrate himself in prayer. He had not once considered his religion through the entire night, not even once. Not once did he think about who he was. It had never crossed his mind to ask for strength, to accept his fate, to turn to his faith. He knew now, though, that his faith surely must have crossed everyone else’s minds.

  He felt ashamed—ashamed he had not prayed for months, nor even once during his ordeal today. He was distraught that he could have gotten so far away from his faith that even an event like this had not called him back. There would be many such moments of discovery through the months of introspection to come.

  “How much of our information was leaked, Atiq?” Xiao asked for the third time.

  Atiq snapped out of his thoughts. “I don’t know yet. We’re trying to figure it out now. I hope that Jaan will be able to tell us soon. I should go.” And without waiting for a response, he headed out the door, and rushed back toward his office. He needed to call his family and tell them where he’d been all night.

  Though he had left Jaan less than fifteen minutes ago, Jaan was waiting, laptop in hand, in his office. Atiq was about to ask Jaan to give him a second while he called his family, but Jaan started talking before Atiq had the chance. “I’ve found some disturbing news, Atiq.”

  -COUNTING BY TWO-

  August 12, 2009.

  At 1:30 p.m., Rajive received a call from Atiq urgently asking him and Alan to come back to Ubatoo. Atiq had more information to share—important information. It had been a long night for everyone—Stephen, Atiq, and Molly, as well as Rajive and Alan. Since the time Atiq had left, Rajive and Alan had spent hours reviewing notes, debriefing the agents who had scoured ACCL and interviewed its personnel, and fending off reporters that had already whiffed the scent of a blood orgy in the making.

  Earlier this morning, after learning about Molly’s encounters from the agents at ACCL, Rajive had gone through the expected panic-stricken moments in front of Alan—blaming himself mercilessly for not understanding what could be done with a list of books. Alan had waited patiently through the hysterics, and then succinctly informed him that, as of now, Rajive’s management of the CL lists was to continue, unstopped. The CLs kept coming in, fleshing out the profiles of the men and women “of interest.” Until they heard differently, and Alan would try to ensure that they never did, no aspect of Rajive’s program was to be changed. That was all that was said on the matter. Then they returned to the task of conveying all their information to those back at NCTC—to set much bigger wheels in motion.

  Their calls to their home office had done the necessary job; an unseen tempest was arising around them. While they made their way back to Ubatoo to find out what new surprise Atiq had in store for them, in the mayhem of their home offices in DC, hurried phone calls, frantic e-mails, and urgent meetings were taking place. In less than an hour, a full-scale search for Sebastin would be initiated, 5,000 people from Stephen’s lists would have every aspect of their life scrutinized and recorded, this time by the NCTC, NSA, and FBI, and if all went well, the buyers of the list might be found, too.

  “The way I see it, Rajive, whoever has that list is either going to try to sell it or is going to reach out to every single person on it. Once they start reaching out, it’ll be too tempting not to call everyone, and we’ll find them when they do.”

  “That’s not what will happen. They’ll do it over weeks, months, Alan. Maybe over years. They’ll contact them through e-mails, phones, in letters, in person; we’re not going to find them. You tell me how we’re going to watch 5,000 people day and night for so long.”

  “Rajive, stop worrying. It’s not doing us any good.”

  Rajive appreciated the attempt at consolatory words, if that’s what they were, b
ut they weren’t working. “We just did their job for them. Before I came along, who knows how many people they had to contact just to get a single recruit? How many contacts they had to cull through, how many people they found who just weren’t the right fit? How much time did they have to waste trying to find just a single one? That’s what we had going for us. We had time. We had time to find out who they were recruiting and watch the handful of people they were about to convert. They made so many mistakes finding even one, we had a chance. Now, we gave them a list, Alan. We gave them 5,000 people in a single shot. They just have to pick up a phone, and there’s an army waiting for them. We gave them a list on a silver platter. You tell me how we’re going to catch them, Alan. You think we can watch all of them until they’re contacted, until someone actually does something wrong? We just can’t do it. We’ll never be able to do it. Unless I built the damn bomb myself and strapped it to my chest, you tell me what else I could have done for them.”

  “Rajive,” Alan snapped. “No more. I’m only going to say this once, and I promise you I will never say this again. It’s not your fault. Nobody, and I mean nobody, could have seen this coming. Now calm down, we still have more work to do.”

  What Atiq had asked Jaan to do was find other suspicious uses of the Touchpoints data-mining system over the past few months. Atiq wanted to know the extent of Stephen’s violations and why it was that Stephen didn’t acknowledge everything when they questioned him in Atiq’s office. There was some material that he claimed not to recognize. What more was he hiding? Jaan was waiting with Atiq in his office when, at 2:41, Alan and Rajive walked in.

  Becky was already on her way to get coffee for everyone. Atiq immediately rose to greet them, and introduced Jaan Ramamurthi, the architect and mastermind behind the data-mining system that allowed these analyses to be done so effectively.

  Atiq started simply, “Jaan, this is your finding. Please tell them what you discovered this morning, and don’t hold anything back.”

  Jaan stood up, turned his laptop around so everyone could see the screen, and presented his findings without emotion, just the facts. The laptop displayed lines of computer code that nobody there was paying attention to, but that held quite a bit of significance to Jaan.

  “Atiq asked me to look into Stephen’s work and database accesses over the past several months. I looked at the type of data he asked for, matched it with the projects he had been officially assigned, and verified the existence of the disparities you already know about.”

  Jaan clicked his mouse and the laptop went to the next screen. Judging from the line endings and whitespace, they were pretty certain it was a different page of computer code, but again, no one was paying attention to it. He continued, “I went ahead and expanded Atiq’s request to see if we were missing anything in our review. I looked at all of the interns and newer full-time employee requests for information as well. What we found was that someone else also had requests for personal information not associated with any project she was tasked to do or was officially working on, and also seemed to be narrowly focused on many of the same people that Stephen found.”

  Rajive was fidgeting in his chair anxiously. Not another one. This can’t be. Rajive interrupted, and blurted out his question, “This other person started with the list of books, too?”

  “No. Aarti wasn’t looking for books, but she was performing a very similar analysis for web site visits and searches that people had conducted, which led her to finding an extensive network of similarly profiled people. She pruned this down a bit by looking for similarities in their e-mails and friends. Though her list wasn’t exactly the same as Stephen’s—it was actually quite a bit longer than his. We noticed that Stephen used many of the same people’s profiles and e-mails for his data analysis that Aarti used in hers. That’s how we connected the two.”

  Alan spoke for the first time in the meeting—his words calm, even. “Was her information leaked out as well?”

  “Yes. We’re looking into that now.”

  “Jaan, was there anyone else who used your system to find information like this?” Alan asked, seemingly unperturbed.

  “This is all we’ve found so far,” Jaan answered, relieved.

  Alan had his chin resting in his hand. He looked resigned. “Tell me, you two, how is it that everyone here has access to all of this information? Aren’t there any rules here? Do any of you know what your employees are doing?”

  Jaan started to answer, but Atiq raised his voice louder and immediately took charge, “There are very few people who have access to all this information. Many have access to small bits of it, but only a few have complete access. The two, Aarti and Stephen, are members of my group. We work to integrate the data, so yes, they had access to all of it.”

  “Hmmmm,” Alan murmured. No words were necessary, his expression and tone conveyed everything there was to say.

  “Clearly, our procedures need to be refined,” Atiq conceded.

  “Clearly,” Alan mimicked. “Another clear fact that I don’t understand, Dr. Asad, is how you, or one of your managers, or stars, or architects, or whatever you call yourselves, don’t know what your subordinates are doing? Do you have any idea how much trouble they might be getting into right now? Who knows what someone in your group will do next?”

  “I know. I know it must seem strange. My group’s success is based on the fact that we hire only the best. If we had to dictate everything they did, they wouldn’t be the best. Our breakthroughs come from what they invent when they’re not doing what has been assigned to them.”

  “I think we can see where that leads, can’t we?” His calm voice became a growl. “You two have no idea what you’ve done. Your whole company is broken, and you, you two . . .” He pointed at both Atiq and Jaan, who were looking back at him speechless. “. . . just sit here in your office and watch it happen. This is your fault. Nobody else’s. Yours.”

  Next, Alan spoke directly to Rajive. “Take Jaan and find out all you can about Aarti. Find out where her information went and exactly what information she managed to hand out, and what this brilliant team has done this time.” He turned to Atiq. “As for you, you need to immediately start checking everyone who has access to this data. We’re going to get some of our guys in here. We’re going to look at this data, too, and your records and anything else you might have. And we’re going to find out just how much you screwed all of us over.”

  Atiq knew better than to fight this battle now. There would be time later for the drawn-out acrimonious conflict that would inevitably ensue if Alan moved forward with his notion of seeing Ubatoo’s data and records. Nobody was going to see that data. But that confrontation was for another day.

  A little over two hours later, Alan and Rajive met in Ubatoo’s parking lot.

  The question of who Aarti was working for was already resolved. Earlier, Jaan had shown Rajive the data she had examined for her investigations. On a hunch, when he was alone, Rajive phoned his office, and gave them the list of web sites she had tracked and the list of individuals she had sent out in her final analysis. In fact, the exact same web site list comprised CL-91B. Further, the resulting people she had found corresponded exactly to the list that was returned from a contractor commissioned by NCTC. This was precisely how the plan was supposed to work. NCTC funds people who have connections inside massive data collection companies—they get the data, give it to NCTC, NCTC maintains deniability, and everyone is happy. The contractor, or middleman, isn’t supposed to sell the information to another buyer, like Sebastin had. The list that Aarti had obtained was what was anticipated, just like all the other CLs they had successfully received—a large number of random people on the list, and a few people of interest. Only by looking at other CLs and finding the overlaps would the people of interest really be uncovered. Nobody, including any buyers who might intercept the list, would find much use in it—almost all of it was garbage; almost all of it was the names of innocent people.

  Rajive w
as in a bind with Aarti. Obviously, he couldn’t tell Jaan or Atiq that the information Aarti had gathered had already been funneled back to the NCTC, and that they would rather Ubatoo not press charges. If anyone at Ubatoo could show it was NCTC’s money creating these leaks inside Ubatoo, any troubles encountered so far would pale in comparison to the problems they would face then. Instead, Rajive needed Jaan and Atiq to believe Aarti’s information flow from Ubatoo was going into the terrorist world, like Stephen’s had. Thanks to Stephen, there was no way to leave Aarti in place. She was, after all, as guilty as Stephen.

  “What do you suggest we do with Stephen and Aarti?” Rajive asked Alan as they walked to the car.

  “If Sebastin sold this data to the wrong people, it’ll fall on Stephen. Ubatoo will hang him out to dry. I think it’s already beyond our control. Rajive, forget about Stephen, your main concern should be that none of this gets connected to NCTC. I don’t think that Sebastin will be talking much when we find him. He’s the only one who can put this together, at least as far as CL-72B, right? Nobody else has any ties to the buyer, correct?”

  “As far as I know.”

  “We have to keep NCTC out of this mess for as long as possible. You know that. Right, Rajive?”

  “Yes. Yes, of course,” Rajive replied irritably. “Sebastin got greedy. Let’s give him what he deserves. But, about Stephen, he’s not a terrorist, not even close. Did you hear him talking to us? He had no idea.”

  “At least we agree that we should go ahead and ruin Sebastin’s life?” Alan said, the first smile on his face all day.