Infinite Exposure

by Roland Hughes

  “I'm looking for that now. Here it is.”

  “Good. Send it to her,” Kathryn said looking at the skirt. “Once you get it, forward it to both of the others out there with a message to print it out and get in here now!”

  Five minutes later both of the other skirts cautiously crept into the room.

  “Pete,” said Kathryn, “I have two girls here who will be coming over to answer the door, phone, and help you any way they can. Do you want them to pick up lunch on the way there?”

  “No, they could pick up a plain bagel with regular cream cheese and a bottle of iced tea though. Too early for lunch. Do they know how to get here?”

  “They have the directions from the Intranet in their hot little hands. Is there an extension where you are sitting that they can call when they get there? I'm assuming they can't walk right in.”

  “Yes, x5491. If they can't get through, have them call one of you there in the conference room on your cell. I don't know if the PBX is working here.”

  Margret scratched her cell phone number down on the paper for the girls as did Kathryn, then they sent them on their way. “Save the receipts if you want to be reimbursed,” Kathryn told the girls.

  There was the sound of a modem dialing in the distance. A few minutes later there was a some muttering on the end of the phone. Finally Pete spoke. “The email is on its way to India. They should have it in another minute or two. You know, I'm looking at the system startup files an the application startup files. It looks like about six of them were changed last week. Did we have something that went into production then?”

  “Yes,” responded Margret. “A bunch of changes for the board of directors with respect to how things were reported. Those changes should have propagated out to the Indian site, too, since it was running in unison with this site.”

  “In theory they should be there. Tell you what, I'm going to do some cutting and pasting between windows on this thing and send another email to that same address with instructions for them to verify the dates on these files on their end. These files are on a local drive here. That is why I'm concerned.”

  “Sounds like a plan, Pete,” responded Margret. “Can't hurt to be certain before we pull the trigger on application startup.”

  Kent returned to the room. “Carol says she won't join us in the war room, but would like to see the three of us in my office if we have a moment.”

  “Pete,” Margret called out. “I'm going to leave the room with Kathryn for a quick meeting in Kent's office. If I'm not back and you need me you have my cell phone.”

  “That's fine. It will be about half an hour before they can get things verified and send back an email.”

  With that, the three walked out to Kent's office where Carol was waiting.

  “I don't want details, but how bad is it,” Carol asked.

  “They needed to get an updated security file over to the new system in India and didn't do it. Once it is there we will probably have to run the program to update the system ID in it. There might be a couple of startup scripts which need to be copied over as well,” responded Margret.

  “Thanks for not giving me any details,” remarked Carol.

  Margret gave a faint smile. “It is not a train wreck, I just don't know if we can sort it out within the time frame we have left.”

  “That's why I want to talk with you. We have some severe legal exposure here. I need to find out exactly what happened this weekend. If this goes on much longer someone is going to have to answer to a board of inquiry.”

  Kathryn didn't really believe this “end of the world” stuff she was hearing until she heard it from a lawyer. This was just a system outage to her. Embarrassing yes, but with legal implications? She hadn't thought it possible until now.

  Margret started, “When I came in this morning I had email from everyone working at the data center tendering their resignations effective immediately. It appears when the migration team showed up Saturday morning it honked off the data center workers. They sent me their resignations, logged out, and went home. The data center was completely unstaffed from around 9:30 AM Saturday until now.”

  Kent actually paled when Margret issued the last statement.

  Kathryn continued, “I have not gotten a full report from my people. The two I need to speak with are in the room working through this. They were supposed to notify me if there was any problem. I never got a call.”

  “I would think all of the staff from the data center walking out would qualify as a problem,” said Carol.

  “So would I,” continued Kathryn. “They don't know it, but once they have filed what happens in writing they no longer have jobs.”

  “Now for the ugly question Kent,” Carol continued. “Why didn't we have any staff overseeing the migration?”

  “I had the data center manager and the entire staff of the data center. I had no idea they were all going to quit at the same time as some form of protest.”

  “Do we know what they were protesting.”

  Kathryn interjected, “From what I have heard, they were under the impression the data center was going to be expanded, not migrated.”

  “Where the hell did they get such an idea!” Kent exclaimed.

  “Probably from doing the leg work for a report the board requested. They wanted to know the currently available floor space, cost per kilowatt hour of electricity, and additional floorspace available in the building should a center need to be expanded. They also asked for a list of all employees working there who have undergone security clearance in accordance with FDIC regulations,” said Carol.

  “Why was the board asking for that?” Kent piped up, confused.

  “It is part of an annual audit for insurance purposes. It is more important now that we aren't far from having a regulation that all data centers be staffed by personnel having a government security clearance of SECRET. It is the lowest level you can get from the DOD, but everyone with significant access to the banking systems must have it if the regulation goes through,” continued Carol. “Right now it is something that dramatically reduces our insurance rates. If everyone with privileged access to the system has this security clearance our insurance rate is one-twentieth what it would be with personnel who don't have such a clearance background check.”

  Kent was really paling now. Nobody had told him the insurance rates would go up 20 fold. Kent didn't have the common sense God gave little green apples, which means he didn't have sense enough to ask when the project plan was being put together. He was quietly hoping this wouldn't happen until after his promotion so his replacement could take the fall. He also made a note to start looking for a new job once he got his new title, assuming he wasn't on the board.

  Kathryn, sensing the fickle finger of fate heading her way, asked, “What is the process for getting this clearance?”

  “It's a standard DOD clearance check. Fingerprinting, criminal background check of yourself and family, credit check, in some cases a polygraph is required. All applicants must be sponsored by a company either doing business with the DOD or in an industry having this regulation. All applicants must be U.S. citizens, either natural or naturalized.”

  “Right now that is not our concern,” Carol continued. “The regulation may not become mandatory, and the insurance rates will be what they will be. Our concern right now is piecing together a timeline of what transpired so we have it all documented for the federal regulators when they arrive. Yes, I'm assuming a worst-case scenario of us not getting the system operational in time.”

  Carol looked at Margret and said, “When you have your next lull in there, I need to come in and get statements from those two guys. We can mute the phone so Pete doesn't have to hear.”

  “Statements?” stammered Kathryn.

  “If for any reason our systems aren't running at the start of business, we have to run a mid-day audit to ensure all funds are accounted for. Not fixing this on Sunday caused a shit load of work for a lot of people. On Sunday, nobody
would have known and nothing would have to happen,” Carol told Kathryn. “Now we have to comply with the letter of our insurance agreement or nothing will be covered.”

  “Fine. Do you mind if I have some counsel from Big Four in the room as well?”

  “Not at all. Just be sure they are skilled with depositions.”

  And I thought my cramps were bad this morning, thought Kathryn.

  ***

  Hans strolled into the room they were using as the meeting room and general room for those not stationed here to work from time to time. He was shocked to see the Brit in the room, but not surprised the man in the suit hadn't made it yet. For a man who did international operations, he was picky about what countries he set foot in.

  There wasn't much to this meeting. It was a “Hello and thanks for coming” meeting. Really just to ensure everyone knew where the new temporary headquarters was, the satellite phone numbers it was using, and who else was on this team.

  Hans looked at the Brit and said, “The man in the suit not coming?” He knew he was punching a button, but best to punch it in front of the others so they would all be aware of this guy's temper. It took a lot to set him off, but when you finally did, he went off like a fuel-air bomb, burning long and hot.

  “No,” responded the Brit. “The little bugger is not coming! He is still in Pakistan waiting for Pakistani intelligence to get done picking up all of the body parts they can find at the other communications hub. They are never going to find anything. Satellite photos show a crater roughly 15 feet wide. Anything inside was scattered half a mile down the hillside if it wasn't incinerated at time of detonation. He just doesn't want to bloody come here.”

  Some of the other team members had never met the Brit. The ones who had sat there with smirks on their face. They knew what he said was true and they knew he was just getting started. This kind of anger would brew in him all day. If you didn't suddenly become a focal point for it, the spectacle could be entertaining.

  Hans interrupted, “For those of you who don't know him, we call this man 'the Brit.' He will be assisting you in processing the email communications. Those who know him know he was instrumental in our previous email hub operation.”

  The Brit gave a distracted wave to the room.

  Hans began passing out slips of paper to everyone. “These are the sat phone numbers to this place. We only have two. I don't expect we will be here that long.”

  The Brit piped up, “Inside of three weeks we will know if this is a long haul or a short grab.” Everyone looked at him, so he continued. “If they send someone new to the trainer, then the thinking is that this is really all they have left for whatever reason. We will take it out and blind them for a while. We won't have enough on the new hub operator to try and turn them as we did before. We couldn't get lucky enough for al-Qaeda to choose someone that spineless again.”

  “What if they do send someone?” asked one of the team members.

  “Then we have to grind this one out, taking down every cell they lead us to and searching for some link across communications networks. Other than the first hub we worked in Pakistan, we haven't found another hub handling cells in America. The cells these two are handling seem to have all come from that first hub in the mad dash to restore communications lines.”

  “So, they either have very few operatives in America, another hub, or home-grown cells that don't communicate with the leaders here,” Hans continued. “Within three weeks we should at least have an answer for these two hubs. We may not be able to help the Americans further.”

  The Brit started speaking and Hans just stepped out of the way. “Yes, I will be helping you decipher emails and track them back to point of origin, I will be one of several doing that. Our real focus needs to be on the trainer though. Forget watching where the new hub operator goes and what he does. He is working too close to the trainer and handling far too big of a load to still be under his wing.”

  One of the team piped up. “I have just been hired at his company and he will be my boss there.”

  “Good,” said the Brit and Hans in unison.

  The Brit continued “Without being obvious, we need to find out if he has any health issues like a bum ticker, etc. We need to rule out a biological reason for him passing the reins.”

  The other team members hadn't really thought about the big picture. They weren't normally included in such discussions. The Brit was gaining credibility in their eyes.

  “And if he plays soccer with us during lunch?”

  “Then we really have to look at him. He is either moving out or moving up,” said the Brit.

  “Up?”

  “We have been using wet erase boards with little hierarchy trees on them to try and map this organization. That doesn't work. Once you get beyond bin Laden and his inner circle there is no tree. All of the cells are autonomous. If the inner circle of al-Qaeda chooses not to bless and fund an operation they will simply get the blessing and funding from some cleric,” continued the Brit.

  “Perhaps you guys haven't been watching the news lately, but coalition forces have blown up a few people who used to be in the inner circle. There is no clear line of succession. Basically someone already in the inner circle must select you to become a part of the inner circle and the others or bin Laden must agree. The replacement members could come from anywhere in the bloody world.”

  This realization floored most of the room. Hans had to admit he hadn't entertained that idea and he hadn't heard such an idea from Vladimir. The Brit was on a roll though, and he kept going. Since the roll was informative, Hans didn't try to choke it off.

  “We know that some time ago bin Laden lost his head geek. The man was arrested and interrogated. He's not a lot of use to anyone now. This method of using email operators was probably a pilot or fledgling idea when he was nabbed. That trainer may have been tapped as a replacement simply because al-Qaeda needs this method of communications and he is the only one left who knows how it worked. If they pull him back and move him up, it will most likely be because they know they need to redevelop this idea and deploy it on a larger scale. Satellite communications tends to attract a lot of missiles, which shortens their life span.”

  The room got a good chuckle out of that one.

  “OK,” started Hans. “This was a meet and greet today. Just needed you all to know where the place was and how to reach it. If anything goes wrong here, we don't have friends in government. There are a couple of choppers not far from here, but they won't be able to stick around for long. Is there anything not in your written status reports that needs to be on the table now?”

  Everyone looked around.

  “Good. Get back to work. Fill in your teammate who is still at work with the new hub operator. Those of you handling email circle around the Brit.”

  Hans then sat down and dashed an email off to Vladimir with this new possibility. He copied the suit on it out of politeness.

  ***

  John was having an impossible day. The final data center migration did not work. His site was handling the full bank volume on a machine that was partitioned to handle slightly over half the banking volume easily. Adding insult to injury his boss' boss was calling trying to find out why the other data center had not come up this morning.

  “I don't know,” John answered for the 15th time. “Mine has been running for over a week just fine. Right now it is gasping for air trying to handle the complete banking transactional volume for a Monday morning in the U.S. Do you have any idea just how many cash station transactions there are to post right now?”

  “Well find out and get back to me,” said the voice on the other end of the phone line.

  “I don't even know where that data center is, let alone have its phone number,” responded John. “I don't even have enough people at work today to handle the things we normally handle without getting tied up in this matter. I've been told Big Four Consulting is working with the bank to solve the problem. That is all I know now and all I kn
ew two hours ago when you called the first time. I have to go fill in for one of my employees who didn't make it in today. You were supposed to get me more workers here, how is that coming?”

  John knew exactly how it was coming. The employees had voted to bring in a union and the company was refusing to pay union wage. Unions currently had a lot of clout with the government. There were soon to be some government officials dragging the company heads into a room with the union officials. If the union slapped down the same contract they had signed at several other places with government negotiators helping, it would be a kangaroo court. The government officials would simply tell the corporation this was the same contract approved at four other companies within a reasonable distance of here and that they must agree to it.

  Everybody here knew the place needed more workers. The consulting company had brought in two more data center off-shoring projects. John needed at least three more people to handle the network communications configurations, let alone regular computer operators.

  Judging from the number of developers requesting print outs, they must be selling a lot of software development work with these contracts. John was rather shocked when several high-speed continuous-form printers were installed. He had read about green bar paper, but never actually seen tractor-fed paper like that until the printers were installed. They were all manner of noisy and generated a lot of paper dust. It turns out some things still needed to be printed that way and some programmers preferred getting their listings on continuous form rather than off a laser printer. The laser printer could do far more formating, but the line printer was faster and continuous form kept all of the pages in order. Laser-printed listings were impossible to keep in order they had told John.

  The really bad part about today wasn't that John's data center was understaffed. It wasn't even the fact John's data center wasn't in the least way involved with the problem. The bad part was John's boss had pulled a duck and cover move. He offered up John's name and pointed his boss in John's direction. Now, they knew his name and his voice. John made a mental note to send an email tonight requesting a new identity kit.