Total Control

by David Baldacci

  proper mind-set to have when it comes to protecting proprietary technology. In fact, Frank comes in each quarter and lectures the employees on that very subject. If an employee had a problem or security concern, he or she could go either to Richard or one of his staff, or Frank. My employees all knew of Frank's illustrious career at the FBI. I feel confident that anyone with a concern about security would have had no hesitation about going to either of them. In fact, employees have done that in the past, nipping some potentially big problems in the bud."

  Sawyer looked over at Hardy, who nodded in agreement. "But you had trouble getting into his office after he disappeared. You must have a system to take into account employees who get sick, die or quit."

  "There is a system," Lucas proclaimed.

  "Jason apparently circumvented it," Rowe said with a trace of admiration.

  "How?"

  Rowe looked at Lucas and then sighed. "In accordance with company policy, the code to be inputted into any individual security system placed on-site has to be delivered to the head of security," Quentin explained. "To Rich. In addition, all security personnel and key management have master key cards that can access any area of the office."

  "Did Archer deliver the code?"

  "He delivered the code to Rich, but then he reprogrammed the reader unit at his office door with a different code."

  "And that switch wasn't caught before?" Sawyer looked incredulously over at Lucas.

  "There was no reason to think he had changed the code," Rowe said. "During office hours Jason's office door was usually kept open.

  No one other than Jason had any reason to be in there after normal hours."

  "Okay, the information Archer allegedly delivered to RTG, how did he get his hands on it? Was he cleared for it?"

  "Some of it." Quentin Rowe shifted uneasily in his seat and slid one hand down his ponytail. "Jason was part of the acquisition team for that project. However, there were certain parts, the highest levels of the negotiation, to which he was not privy at all. They were known only to Nathan, myself, and three other senior executives at the company. And outside legal counsel, of course."

  "Where was this information kept? File drawer? Safe?" Sawyer asked.

  Rowe and Lucas exchanged smiles.

  Rowe answered. "We have, to a significant degree, a paperless of-rice.

  All key documents are stored in computerized files."

  "I assume there was some sort of security on these files, then? Like a password."

  Lucas said condescendingly, "It was far more than a password."

  "And yet Archer broke into it anyway, it seems," Sawyer jabbed back.

  Lucas scrunched his mouth up like someone had just jammed a lemon inside.

  Quentin Rowe wiped at his glasses. "Yes, he did. Would you like to see how?"

  The group of men filled the small, cluttered storeroom. Richard Lucas pushed away the boxes from beside the wall while Rowe, Hardy and Sawyer looked on. Nathan Gamble had declined to join them. Where the boxes had rested, the cable outlet was now exposed.

  Quentin Rowe moved next to the computer and held up the cables.

  "Jason hardwired into our local area network through this workstation."

  "Why not just use the computer in his office?"

  Rowe was shaking his head before Sawyer had stopped talking.

  "When he logs on to his own computer," Lucas said, "he has to go through a series of security measures. Those security measures do not merely verify the user, they confirm the user's identity. Every workstation in the place has an iris scanner, which takes an initial video image of the user's iris patterns. In addition, the scanner takes periodic sweeps of the operator to continually confirm the user's identity. If Archer had left his desk or someone had sat down in his place, then the system would have automatically shut off to that workstation."

  Rowe looked steadily at Sawyer. "The important point in all that is if Archer had accessed any file from his own workstation, we would have known he had done it."

  "How's that?" Sawyer asked.

  "Our network has a tag feature. Most systems have some attribute of that kind. If a user accesses a file, that access is recorded by the system. By using this workstation"--Quentin pointed at the old computer--"which is not supposed to be on the network and is assigned no number through the network administrator, he bypassed that risk. For all intents and purposes, this was a phantom computer on our network. He may have used the computer in his office to find the location of certain files without accessing them. He could do that at his leisure. That would cut down on the time he needed to spend here, where he could be caught."

  Sawyer shook his head. "Wait a minute. If Archer didn't use his own workstation to access the files because it could positively identify him and used this one instead because it couldn't, how do you know it was Archer who accessed the files in the first place?"

  Hardy pointed at the keyboard. "An old reliable. We lifted numerous fingerprints from here. They all matched Archer's."

  Sawyer finally asked the most obvious question. "Okay, but how do you know this workstation was used to access any files?"

  Lucas sat down on one of the boxes. "For a period of time we were getting unauthorized entries onto the system. Although Archer didn't need to go through the identification process to log on through this unit, he would still leave a trail if he accessed files using it unless he electronically erased his trail as he exited. That's possible to do, although tricky. In fact, I think that's what he did.

  Initially, at least. Then he got sloppy. We finally picked up the trail and, while it took time, we narrowed down the breach until it led us right here."

  Hardy folded his arms across his chest. "You know, it's ironic. You put all this time and effort and money into securing your networks against any breaches. You have steel doors, security guards, electronic monitoring devices, smart cards--you name it, Triton has it.

  And yet ..." He looked up at the ceiling. "And yet you also have drop-down ceiling panels with exposed cables connecting your entire network together, ripe for penetration." He shook his head in dismay and looked at Lucas. "I've warned you about this risk before."

  "He was an insider," Lucas said heatedly. "He knew the system and he used that knowledge to hack it." Lucas brooded for a moment.

  "And then he took down a planeload of people in the process.

  Let's not forget that little fact."

  Ten minutes later the men were once again in Gamble's office. He did not look up when they reappeared.

  Sawyer sat down. "Okay, any further developments on the RTG end?" he asked.

  Gamble's face flamed red at the mention of his competitor. "Nobody rips me off and gets away with it."

  "Jason Archer's involvement with RTG hasn't been proven. It's all speculation at this point," Sawyer said evenly.

  Gamble dramatically rolled his eyes. "Right! Well, you just go and jump through your little hoops so you can keep your little job and I'll take care of the tough stuff."

  Sawyer closed his notebook and stood up to his full height. Hardy stood up too, and reached out to grab Sawyer's coat, until his former partner froze him with a stare that Hardy had seen him use on many an occasion at the bureau. Sawyer turned back to Gamble.

  "Ten minutes, Sawyer. Since you don't appear to have anything of note to report, I'm going to catch my plane a little early." When Gamble walked past the burly FBI agent, Sawyer tightly gripped his arm and led the Triton chairman outside into the private reception area. Sawyer looked over at Gamble's executive assistant. "Excuse us for a minute, ma'am." The woman hesitated, looking at Gamble.

  "I said excuse us!" Sawyer's drill-sergeant tone catapulted the woman out of her chair and she fled the room.

  Sawyer turned to the chairman. "Let's get a couple of things straight, Gamble. First, I don't report to you or anyone else at this place. Second, since it looks like one of your people conspired to blow up a plane, I'll ask you as many questions as I want to and
I don't give a shit about your travel schedule. And if you tell me one more time how many minutes I've got left, I'll rip that goddamned watch off your wrist and stuff it in your mouth. I'm not one of your lackey boys and don't you ever, ever talk to me that way again. I'm an FBI agent and a damn good one. I've been shot, knifed, kicked and bitten by some seriously demented assholes who would make you look like the biggest pussy in the world on your best day. So if you think your bullshit tough-guy act is gonna make me pee in my pants, then you're wasting everybody's time, including your own.

  Now get back in there and sit the fuck down."

  Two hours later Sawyer had finished interviewing Gamble and company and spent thirty minutes looking through Jason Archer's office, ordering it off limits and calling for a investigative team to methodically analyze every molecule of the place. Sawyer checked out Jason's computer system, but he had no way of knowing that something was missing. The only remnant of the microphone was a small, silver-plated plug.

  Sawyer walked to the elevator bank with Hardy.

  "See, Frank, I told you there was nothing to worry about. Gamble and I got along just fine."

  Hardy laughed out loud. "I don't think I've ever seen his face quite that shade of white before. What the hell did you say to the man?"

  "Just told him what a great guy I thought he was. He was probably just embarrassed by my frank admiration."

  At the elevators, Sawyer said, "You know, I didn't get much usable info in there. Sure, Archer pulling off the crime of the century might make for fascinating reading, but I'd prefer to have him in a jail cell."

  "Well, these guys just got taken to the cleaners and they're certainly not used to that experience. They know what happened and pretty much how it happened, but all after the fact."

  Sawyer leaned up against the wall and rubbed his forehead. "You realize there's no evidence tying Archer to the plane bombing."

  Hardy nodded in agreement. "I said before that Archer could've used Lieberman to cover his tracks, but there's no proof of that either.

  If there is no connection, Archer's one helluva lucky guy for not getting on that plane."

  "Well, if that's the case, then somebody else out there took down that airliner."

  Sawyer was about to hit the elevator button when Hardy touched his sleeve. "Hey, Lee, if you want my humble opinion, I don't think your biggest problem will be proving Archer was involved in the plane sabotage."

  "So what's my biggest problem, Frank?"

  "Finding him."

  Hardy walked off. As Sawyer waited for the elevator, a voice called to him.

  "Mr. Sawyer? Do you have a minute?"

  Sawyer turned to find Quentin Rowe walking toward him.

  "What can I do for you, Mr. Rowe?"

  "Please call me Quentin." Rowe paused and looked around the hallways. "Would you like to take a short tour of one of our production facilities?"

  Sawyer quickly caught his meaning. "Okay. Sure."

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  The fifteen-story Triton office building was hooked to a sprawling three-story structure that covered about five acres of ground. Sawyer pinned on a visitor's badge at the main entrance to the facility and followed Rowe through a number of security checkpoints. Rowe was obviously well-known and well-liked here, as he received a number of cordial greetings from Triton personnel. At one point, through a wall of glass, Sawyer and Rowe watched lab technicians in white coats, gloves and surgical masks working away in a large space.

  Sawyer looked at Rowe. "Geez, looks more like an operating room than a factory."

  Rowe smiled. "Actually, that room is far cleaner than any hospital operating room."

  He watched Sawyer's surprised reaction with amusement. "Those technicians are testing a new generation of computer chips. The environment has to be completely sterile, absolutely dust-free. Once they're fully functional, these prototypes will be able to carry out two TIPS."

  "Damn," Sawyer said absently, having no earthly idea what the acronym stood for.

  "That means two trillion instructions per second."

  Sawyer gaped at the small man. "What in the hell needs to move that fast?"

  "You'd be surprised. A litany of engineering applications.

  Computer-aided designs of cars, aircraft, ships, space shuttles, buildings, manufacturing processes of all types. Financial markets, corporate operations. Take a company like General Motors: millions of pieces of inventory, hundreds of thousands of employees, thousands of locations. It all adds up. We help all of them do their jobs more efficiently." He pointed to another production area. "A new line of hard drives is being tested in there. They'll be by far the most powerful and efficient in the industry when they hit the market next year. Yet a year after that they'll be obsolete." He looked at Sawyer.

  "What sort of system do you use at work?"

  Sawyer put his hands in his pocket. "You might not have heard of it: Smith Corona?"

  Rowe gaped at him. "You're kidding."

  "Just got a new ribbon in it, baby runs sweet as mother's milk."

  Sawyer sounded very defensive.

  Rowe shook his head. "A friendly warning. Anyone who doesn't know how to operate a computer in the coming years will not be able to function in society. Don't be intimidated. The systems today are not only user friendly, they are idiot friendly, no offense intended."

  Sawyer sighed. "Computers getting faster all the time, this Inter-net thing, whatever it really is, growing like crazy, networks, paging, cellular phones, faxes. Jesus, where's it going to end?"

  "Since it's the business I'm in, I hope it never does."

  "Sometimes change can happen too fast."

  Rowe smiled benignly. "The change we see going on today will pale in comparison to what will take place in the next five years.

  We're on the cusp of technological breakthroughs that would have seemed unthinkable barely ten years ago." Rowe's eyes appeared to shine ahead into the next century. "What we know as the Internet today will seem boring and quaint very soon. Triton Global will be a huge part of that happening. In fact, if things work out correctly, we will be leading the way. Education, medicine, the workplace, travel, entertainment, how we eat, socialize, consume, produce--everything human beings do or benefit from will be transformed.

  Poverty, prejudice, crime, injustice, disease will crumple under the sheer weight of information, of discovery. Ignorance will simply disappear.

  The knowledge of thousands of libraries, the sum of the world's greatest minds, all will be readily accessible by anyone. In the end, the world of computers as we know it today will metamorphose into one enormous interactive global link of limitless potential."

  He peered at Sawyer through his glasses. "All the world's knowledge, the solutions to every problem, will be one keystroke away. It's the natural next step."

  "One person will be able to get all that from a computer."

  Sawyer's tone was skeptical.

  "Isn't that a thrilling vision?"

  "Scares the shit out of me."

  Rowe's mouth dropped open. "How could that possibly be frightening to you?"

  "Maybe I'm a little cynical after twenty-five years of doing what I do for a living. But you tell me one guy can get all that information and you know the first thought pops into my head?"

  "No, what?"

  "What if he's a bad guy?" Rowe didn't react. "What if with one keystroke he wipes out all the world's knowledge?" Sawyer snapped his fingers. "He destroys everything? Or just screws it all up. Then what the hell do we do?"

  Rowe smiled. "The benefits of technology far surpass any potential dangers. You may not agree with me, but the coming years will prove me right."

  Sawyer scratched the back of his head. "You're probably too young to know this, but back in the fifties, nobody thought illegal drugs would ever be a big problem either. Go figure."

  The two men continued their tour. "We have five of these facilities situated across the country," Rowe said.
>
  "Must get pretty expensive."