“That’s really bizarre,” Maggie said, her eyes bulging. “A penny? How did whoever did this get the budgets to come out so precisely?” Maggie pawed through the rest of the papers, swiftly going down the rows of purchases. “The individual charges are generally tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars each,” she mused out loud. “Spending precisely the right amount of money to bring the totals in to exactly that amount… Well, it seems impossible.”
“What is even more unusual,” Gene said, “is why they would do that. Whoever did this was smart enough to stay under the one million dollar limit in a single budget line item, knowing that would trigger the alert I mentioned. And in addition, they were smart enough to keep each account under budget, knowing that even hitting the budget would trigger another alert.”
Maggie laughed. “That’s true. There are emails from Finance every fiscal quarter about the repercussions of exceeding budgets or going over a million dollars. Anyone in the company who reads their email would know not to exceed their budget, or they would get chewed out by their Finance representative.”
“Then why would they try to spend every last penny but one?” Gene sat back. Gene liked hard data, but his gut was telling him that Maggie wasn’t in on whatever the deception was.
“It is contradictory,” Maggie said. “Smart enough to avoid any of the standard alerts, and yet foolish enough to create a suspicious pattern.”
They both paused for a moment and looked at each other.
“Gene, I don’t know what to tell you,” Maggie continued on, after a minute spent in reflection. “I agree, the picture you are painting looks suspicious, but I never saw anything unusual in the course of processing these requests. They were mostly for servers, additional hard drives and computer memory, contractors to service them, stuff like that. Nothing out of the ordinary for Gary’s department. Granted, they seemed so innocuous that after the first few, I just rubber stamped them.”
Gene watched Maggie sit back, her face apologetic, but her body posture relaxed and confident. It wasn’t Maggie, he thought to himself. “Is it typical for Gary Mitchell to approve all the purchases himself?” Gene asked out loud. “I see very few cases where he delegates purchasing authority.”
“Yes, that’s normal for Gary. Are you thinking that Gary is responsible?”
“The fact that Gary personally authorized all these orders makes him the first person I’d look at. But…” Gene trailed off.
“But?”
Gene pulled a fourth set of papers from his accordion folder. “It turns out that the same behavior is happening in another department. The Offshore Data Center project. Their expenditures exhibit some of the same characteristics. Multiple line items just under one million dollars, budgets coming in at just under one penny less than their limit.”
“But that’s not under Gary?”
“No, it’s not. Which makes it more likely that someone has hacked Avogadro’s procurement system.”
“But to what purpose?” Maggie asked. She scanned the papers again. “Why would someone risk their job and even jail to order servers, satellite communication systems, and hire contractors? It makes no sense.”
“I agree,” Gene said. “I was hoping that you would be able to shed some light on this, and that maybe there would be an easy answer.” He began to pick up his papers and put them back into the accordion folder. “I’m going to keep investigating this. Please don’t discuss it with anyone.”
Maggie nodded.
Gene stood up. “Thanks for your time, Maggie.” He let himself out, leaving Maggie full of questions.
From the time Mike arrived at the airport in Madison for the flight home, and periodically since he arrived back in Portland, he had tried to reach David by phone. Frustratingly, David had been off the grid in New Mexico. Mike knew that David always went to Christine’s family ranch for the holidays, and he knew that the ranch was off the grid, so he couldn’t claim any legitimate reason for feeling even more suspicious. Yet here he was, feeling manipulated by a software algorithm.
David had sent Mike a copy of his itinerary by email weeks earlier, so he had David’s flight information. Without even realizing what he was doing, he found himself standing in his living room, holding a printed copy of the itinerary, watching the clock. He had his jacket on, alternating between sitting on the couch tapping his toe and getting up to pace the living room. Finally, with more than an hour left before the flight would arrive, he drove to the airport.
Mike drove with furrowed brows through a light drizzle, with the streets threatening to ice over. His thoughts were bordering on obsessive. What had David done to ELOPe? What was ELOPe doing? Why was he locked out of the servers? He swore as his front tires spun crossing the light rail tracks, and the car fishtailed. He fought the wheel and recovered halfway through the turn onto Airport Way.
He sped into the parking garage, circling up the ramp, and parked near the skybridge. He walked across the covered bridge at a high speed, and stalked through the airport. He got to the security gate, and looked at his phone. Still nearly an hour until David’s flight would arrive.
He checked the flight monitors once, then forced himself to sit down and stay there, trying to squelch his nervous energy. He watched whole families disgorge through the security exit; suitcases, car-seats, and exhausted children in tow. He smiled as he watched a young woman welcome a man home with a single flower and a long embrace. He missed the bittersweet tang of young love.
Then he saw David and Christine coming through the gate. He walked over and waved. David and Christine were delighted to see him. Christine gave him a big hug, and a bigger smile. Standing in the middle of the stream of exiting passengers, Mike launched into an immediate explanation in a hushed voice. David and Christine leaned closer to listen, and their smiles vanished.
“My dad was absolutely fine. My mother never sent any emails at all. I’m telling you, I’m convinced that ELOPe originated those emails. What I don’t understand is why.”
“Did you get my email before you left?” David asked. “The one about the override I put in?”
Mike gave him a blank look. “No, but it sounds like you should start explaining.”
Before David could say anything, a TSA agent asked them to move out of the way of people.
“Let’s get to your car,” David said. “Then I’ll tell you.”
They rushed to the parking garage, made their way to Mike’s Jetta, and threw the bags in the trunk. Mike gripped the wheel tightly, while David sat next to him, and Christine sat in the middle of the rear seat, leaning forward.
“I put in an override,” David said once they got out of the garage. “I didn’t just use ELOPe to send an email to Gary. I have ELOPe filtering every company email.” David slammed the dashboard with his fist, startling Mike, who swerved sideways, skidding on the icy street, before regaining his lane.
“I sent you an email, the night you came over for dinner. I told you all this, and that I needed your help to do a live-patch on the server.”
“I never got it,” Mike said. ”I’ve been through all my emails from you.” He sighed. “This explains so much. Didn’t it occur to you that ELOPe would fabricate that email to get rid of me?”
“No, it didn’t.” David shook his head. He raised his voice defensively. “Look, I didn’t think that you would fly off to Wisconsin based only on an email.”
“Hey, I had just heard that my father had a heart attack. I was freaking out. And it’s your damn fault I had to go through that.” Mike was yelling now, and David leaned away in his seat.