“Yes. Park over there. The space that’s straight in front of us now. It was my usual place. It’ll bring us luck.”
McKenna gave me a sideways look, but he did what I asked and then turned to the agents behind us. The woman was sipping a coffee she’d produced from somewhere, and the guy was polishing a pair of mirrored Aviators.
“Everything looks quiet, so I want you two to stay here for now. Keep your eyes and ears open. Marc and I will go in. Marc? Are you ready?”
I nodded, then we got out and hurried toward the side entrance. It made sense to me to be in the open for as little time as possible, but McKenna took my arm and slowed me down.
“Do you always walk this fast, Marc? Relax. You’re just doing your job. It’s boring. You’d rather be home, in bed, but you can’t be. So you’re at least going to milk the overtime. Get the idea? We can’t control whether anyone sees us. But if they do, we want them to think, Oh, look at those IT guys. They’re here again. Not, Wow, look at those really suspicious uptight guys who are obviously pretending to be IT contractors. I better call 911.”
I listened, and I tried to do what he told me. Moving slowly was like torture, but we did reach the entrance without incident. The access card he’d given me worked fine, and it was a relief to hear the door click back into place behind me. From there it was plain sailing—across the engineers’ area, up a flight of stairs, and along a corridor all the way to an innocuous-looking, unmarked wooden door at the far end of the building.
“Is this it?” McKenna asked.
I nodded.
“OK, then.” He swiped his card. “In we go. I was expecting something a little more impressive for the money, is all.”
McKenna was already disappointed with the outside of the node room so there was little scope for his face to fall further when he saw the inside. It was really a closet rather than a room—six feet by six feet, pale green paint, scuff marks on the walls near the door frame—and there was no furniture or fittings other than a pair of standard equipment cabinets and a heavy-duty air-conditioning vent in the ceiling.
McKenna pulled the door closed and produced a black box about the size of a cigarette packet from his pocket. It had a USB plug protruding from one side, and a label with two lines of printed characters stuck to the underneath. I’d never seen anything like it before.
“I know we have to plug this in. But where? Does it even matter?”
“In there.” I pointed to the right-hand cabinet. The glass in the door was frosted, but if you looked closely you could see the space above the middle shelf was much taller than the others. A monitor and keyboard sat there, and a USB port was visible in the piece of equipment below it. “See? That’s the interface.”
“Well spotted.” McKenna pulled the handle on the cabinet door.
It didn’t move.
“What now?” He looked at me. “Can we break in?”
“Probably. But we might not have to. Give me a second.”
I reached up to the top of the cabinet, slid my fingers across to the side, and sure enough I felt them brush against something small and loose. I took it down and showed McKenna.
“A key? You’re kidding me. This place is supposed to be secure.”
“It doesn’t surprise me.” I shrugged. “You wouldn’t believe what you come across in secure buildings. I had a government contract once where I had to wait six months to get clearance for one particular site. I turned up, and walked straight in. No lock on the door at all. But when I went to the kitchen to get a coffee, the fridge was locked up tighter than Fort Knox. It’s just how people are.”
“Ridiculous.” He worked the lock and opened the cabinet.
“Go ahead.” I passed him the box.
Very gingerly he lined up the plug and socket and pushed. It slid easily into place. And nothing happened.
“What now? Is it broken? Or did I do it wrong?”
“Neither. I think I know what the problem is. With systems like this the USB ports look normal, but you often have to activate them before you can use them. It’s a security thing, to stop unauthorized people plugging stuff in. That’ll be what that writing is, on the bottom of the device. The user name and password. Let me see?”
McKenna disconnected the box and passed it to me. I switched on the monitor, keyed in the details, and within a few seconds I was logged on. The procedure was the same as with any of the dozens—hundreds?—of systems I interrogated every year. But this was no ordinary network. This was ARGUS. The electronic equivalent of the all-seeing, hundred-eyed giant. It constantly monitors every detail of every kind of communication between every citizen in this country and beyond. And it had given me administrator-level access. The IT geek in me was drooling at the possibilities, but McKenna was watching. So, reluctantly, I had to restrict myself to the couple of minutes’ searching it took me to find the option to enable the USB port.
“OK.” I handed the box back. “Try it now.”
McKenna plugged the box back in. This time, a little light on its top surface glowed red.
“Marc, you’re a genius. All we’ve got to do now is wait for the green light. Literally.”
——
IT WASN’T UNTIL MCKENNA’S words had died away that the full weirdness of the situation hit me. Locked in that small space with nothing to distract me and only the red light to stare at—on a piece of IT equipment I’d never heard of, attached to a top-secret government database I should never have had access to—I was close to walking away and telling McKenna to unplug the thing himself. Another thirty seconds, and I might have done that. But then the light changed to green. It took a few more keystrokes to close the USB port down, and we were finally free to get out of there.
McKenna tucked the box safely into his coverall pocket and gestured for me to lead the way as we reversed our path from earlier. The upper floor was still deserted, and my thoughts had run ahead of me by the time we reached the door to the engineers’ area. The prospect of seeing Carolyn was foremost in my mind so I swiped the access card and pushed the door open without thinking to peep through the observation window first. I took a step inside. And saw the security guard. He was on the other side of the room, stretching up to touch a shiny metal fob against a small circular pad on the wall. Instinctively I started to turn, but McKenna had read my mind and he took a firm hold of my arm.
“No,” he breathed into my ear. “He’ll see, and that’d be way more suspicious. If word spreads, the inside man will disappear. We’ll never catch him. You’ll have to bluff this out.”
I was about to object when the guard saw us and waddled across in our direction.
“Pete!” I tried not to make it obvious I was squinting at his name badge. “How’s it going? Weekends again? You and me—we always draw the short straw.”
“I’m good, thanks, Mr. Bowman. And I have no problem with weekends. Less work. More pay. What’s not to like? I’m pulling a double today.”
“You’ve got a point, Pete. More pay’s never a bad thing. But look, I’ve got to dash. These guys I’m with have got another job to get to.”
——
I DON’T THINK I breathed again until we reached the parking lot, and I was just turning to ask McKenna if he thought we’d pulled it off when I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. It was the other two agents, walking down the path toward us.
“I beeped them.” McKenna responded to the question on my face. “In case we had any trouble with that security guy.”
“You doubted my bluffing skills?” I was still buzzing a little from the encounter.
“Maybe. At first. But not any longer. You’re a natural.”
I watched as his guys strolled closer, wondering if that’s how McKenna and I had appeared in our matching outfits, when I noticed the others’ coveralls weren’t quite the same as ours. They looked older and scruffier, like they’d been worn before. And there was a logo on their chests, while ours were plain.