Maxwell was the last. As he clasped the woman’s hand, she held the handshake a few seconds longer than necessary.
“I enjoyed hearing about Rensselaer,” he said.
“I liked it there,” she said. “Maybe I’ll go back someday.” Still holding his hand, she said, “Zaijian, Commander Maxwell.”
He looked at her quizzically. “Which means…”
“Good bye,” she said. “Until we meet again.”
He smiled. “Zaijian, Miss Chen.”
Chiu gave them both a scowl of disapproval. “Let’s go,” he said. “Our business here is finished.”
“Was I imagining or what?” Boyce was tilted back in his desk chair, looking at Maxwell. “Did I observe some kind of basic hormonal chemistry bubbling between you and that Chinese girl?”
Maxwell shrugged. “We both went to RPI.”
“Right. When old classmates get together, they always ogle each other like minks in heat.”
“She’s just glad to have someone to talk to. She has to deal with that hardass, Colonel Chiu.”
“He seems to have a low opinion of defectors, even a foxy one like your classmate, Miss Chen.” Boyce jammed his cigar back in his mouth and rose from the chair. “You heard her story. Never mind that you think she’s got a cute butt. Is she telling the truth?”
“The part about Rensselaer was on the mark. It would be stupid of her to fake something like that because she knows we’ll check it out. The stuff about the Black Star — the thing she calls Dong-jin—was spooky. Like she just came from Dreamland after working on the Calypso Blue project. She had too many details right. She couldn’t know about that stuff unless she’d seen it.”
Boyce seemed not to hear. He was on his feet, gnawing the cigar, staring at some object in infinite space.
Maxwell was getting a bad feeling. He’d seen that look before. Boyce was on to something, and it meant trouble.
The questions were stupid. And terrifying.
Lutz reclined in his desk chair and did his best to appear bored. He doodled on a notepad while the agents asked their questions. His heart was pumping like a steam engine.
“Who did you spend last weekend with?”
“Myself.”
“Doing what, Doctor Lutz?”
“Gambling. Watching a show.”
“Do you have a girlfriend?”
“That’s my business. Am I accused of something?”
“We’re just trying to establish your routine, how you spend your off time.´
“My off time is my own affair.”
“Do you ever hire a prostitute, Doctor Lutz?”
Lutz took a moment before he answered. They probably knew about his habits in the casino. If so, they would know about the hooker in the leather skirt. They wanted him to lie about it.
“I regard women as I do boats and airplanes,” he said, trying to keep the tone light, “I prefer to rent.”
The FBI agent’s name was Swinford. He didn’t smile. “Do you always rent the same one?”
“That’s my business, not yours.”
“Correct,” said the agent. “You’re not required to tell us anything. However, you should understand that it is our prerogative, if we feel you’re concealing sensitive information, to place you under custody and continue this interrogation at our regional office in Las Vegas.”
Lutz nodded. This jerk was used to getting his way, scaring the shit out of people with that stuff about placing them under custody and continuing the interrogation. Typical bullying tactics.
But it was working. Lutz was scared.
He forced himself to appear impassive. Don’t let them see that you’re nervous. Don’t talk too much. “It might be helpful if you gentlemen would tell me the purpose of this interrogation.”
Swinford said, “We’re investigating possible… hypothetical breaches of security at the facility. This happens to be a high priority project, you know. We just like to run routine checks.”
“What you mean is, there’s been a leak.”
The agents exchanged glances. “Why would you think that?”
“I’ve been here long enough. This isn’t a routine check. You people are digging for something, these asinine questions about my sex life.”
“What we want is for you to tell us about your routine. Talk us through your work day, how you secure the data you work with, what you do when you leave for the day or the weekend.”
Lutz hesitated. “What I do here is classified top secret.”
“We have top secret clearances.”
“It doesn’t matter what your clearance is. I’m not at liberty to talk about it.”
Swinford produced a letter and laid it on Lutz’s desk. “Notice the signature. That’s the director of the research facility. The letter says that you will tell us everything we want to know about your job. If you have a problem with that, Doctor, pick up the phone and ask him yourself.”
Lutz didn’t bother reading the letter. He didn’t need to call. The bastards had the keys to the kingdom.
He told them about his routine. He kept it loosely detailed, explaining how at the end of the day he deleted sensitive data from his hard disk, how the codes for access to the data base were stored, how the software scrubbing program worked. In theory, nothing classified ever left his lab on paper or in digital form. Every byte of data was encrypted and maintained and stored in the facility’s optical storage network.
As he explained the process, he watched Swinford’s expression, trying to determine how much the man understood about the arcane technologies of data encryption and transmission. Not much, he judged. Swinford had that furrowed-brow look, like a man faking something he hadn’t a clue about. Cops. They were like characters from comic books.
He finished the explanation. Swinford scribbled some notes, then said, “Okay, that’s your routine. How about your colleagues? Have you ever noticed anything — you know, peculiar behavior, a habit pattern, a comment — that would suggest someone might be violating the security restrictions on the Calypso Blue project?”
Lutz nodded. There it was. They were telling him what they were looking for. Even the name of the stealth jet development project — Calypso Blue — was so secret no one knew it except those with the very highest clearance.
So they knew about the Black Star.
“You mean, have I ever suspected someone of leaking data?”
“Not suspected, necessarily. Just something that didn’t quite fit. You know, someone whose behavior was a… little bit odd.”
Lutz almost laughed. A little bit odd. That described half the research and development community. Research scientists were, by definition, a little bit odd. Some more than a little.
But this was good. At least, they were getting away from questions about him and the hooker in the leather skirt. He was beginning to relax now. And as he relaxed, he had the glimmering of an idea.
“Well, there was something…” He caught himself, shook his head, then said, “No, never mind. It wouldn’t mean anything to you.”
Swinford perked up, like a dog seeing a bone. “What wouldn’t mean anything?”
“Oh, it was just… no, it doesn’t have any significance.”
“Let us be the judge of that, Doctor. Tell us everything you’ve observed, and we’ll sort out what’s significant and what isn’t.”
Lutz put on a pained expression. “Well, I really don’t think it means anything. But one of my colleagues, a fellow named Feingold—”
“Herbert Feingold?” Swinford was leafing through his notebook. “Works in the RAM lab of Calypso Blue?” The furrowed-brow look again. “What does RAM mean?”