Kudrow said nothing for a moment after his assistant finished speaking. Neither did any of the animals. Instead he mentally tallied just how bad the situation could be if they were not being screwed with, which he doubted anyway. He wasn’t assuaged by the result. Disaster was what he thought.
“You have the call on tape?” Kudrow asked.
“Of course,” Pedanski answered. “Sir, shouldn’t we—”
“And the trace gear was working?”
Pedanski nodded to the boss. “The call came from Chicago.”
There were two options, Kudrow quickly decided. Pull the plug on KIWI, tell its users that it was not the unbreakable monster he’d promised it to be, and flush what he’d worked so hard for down the can. Because if KIWI was no good, as Brad had said, there was nothing to switch to. Nothing feasible that could accommodate all the users who’d gone to KIWI. Ten billion dollars, Kudrow thought. Wasted. Congress would not be happy. He would be the whipping boy, of course, sitting at a table covered by a field of green in some congressional hearing room off limits to cameras. He’d be privately destroyed by the men and women whose lives he knew were tangles of deceit and dishonor. And once his butt was bared…
G. Nicholas Kudrow had not made many friends in his long government career, but he had forced many alliances. He had not always followed the book, obeyed every law, or thought much of consequences other than how they could be avoided. He had used people, gathered information on them, held it over their head, threatened, promised favors, persuaded, demanded.
But he had done all this in pursuit of getting the job done. He had made the nation’s communications secure, and in doing so had secured his place in the future. He would have a long, quietly illustrious career, and he would someday be remembered in the texts that memorialized such things as the ‘Father of KIWI’. KIWI might still be in use then. That was what he had believed. Until now.
Yes, dumping KIWI was option one, and Kudrow knew without hesitation it was unacceptable.
Option two was the better course…for the country. Yes, for everyone. “I want a copy of the tape and the trace info on my desk in ten minutes.”
Pedanski nodded, chewing his lower lip and digging fiercely at the carpet with the toes of his Reeboks. “But, Mr. Kudrow…”
“What?” Kudrow looked at each of the animals individually, and gave his assistant a glance for surety’s sake. “If someone is playing with us, gentlemen, testing us, they will not expect that we just dump the system you three designed. And if there is a weakness in your system, we have to find out what that is, and how whoever cracked it did so. In either instance the proper course is to investigate. I will see to that.” He looked over his shoulder to Folger. “Shut this room down. Assign anyone who is scheduled to work in here to other duties. Put them on the MAYFLY dissection. I don’t care. If that phone rings again I don’t want anyone other than a KIWI team member answering…just in case. Understood?”
“Yesss,” Folger replied breathily.
“You three work out a schedule to cover this place,” Kudrow instructed. He thought Patel ready to complain, but instead saw the small, dark head fall between the worn knees of his jeans. “Understood?”
After three tentative nods Kudrow turned and left. He stopped in the hall just outside the door and slid his hands into his pockets. Brad Folger followed him out and studied the government blue carpet at his feet. The boss hadn’t been able to swing a more pleasing gray sisal.
“KIWI’s all we have, Nick,” Folger said once again, as though speaking of the air they breathed.
“All the more reason not to throw it away because of one phone call.” Kudrow looked down the hallway, briefly at each door, then to the stairs that led up from the basement. It was the only way out. “We’ll fix this.”
“How?”
Kudrow began to walk toward the stairs, passing the three green doors as he did. “It won’t be a problem,” he answered with his back to his assistant, then disappeared up the staircase.
“So nothing?” Art Jefferson asked, looking up from the report.
“Preliminarily, no,” Special Agent Denise Green answered. “That’s just a quickie, remember.”
“I know,” Art acknowledged. “Bob said the CIA is anxious.”
Green nodded and took the report back from the A-SAC. She saw him close his eyes as his glasses came off. “You knew Chappell, didn’t you?”
“Briefly,” Art answered. Surely not long or well enough to know some of the things the report had just told him. To each is own, Art usually thought, but in this case it looked like Vince Chappell’s sexual tastes only made Keiko Kimura’s job easier. ‘Subject’s acquaintances report a propensity for B & D (bondage and domination) in sexual situations.’ “Very briefly.”
“Anything else?” Green asked.
Art glanced at his desk clock, and stood in a hurry. “Nope. Gotta run. Make sure I have the full report by Friday.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Please, no ‘sirs’,” Art said as be hurried by the youngish agent. “I’m old enough as it is.”
The Chicago Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation is located on the 11th, 12th, and 13th floors of the Federal Building on South Dearborn Street. Several blocks due west the Sears Tower rises toward the sky in stark black steps, and on late summer afternoons when the sun is deep in the northern hemisphere the Tower casts a shadow that leaves the west-facing Bureau offices in a cooling shade.
The office Art rushed out of as winter was melting into a chilly spring had spears of bright afternoon light filling its space, but the room he arrived at one floor down from 13 a minute later knew no such measure of the day. Tucked between a conference room and file storage, and most importantly just feet from the coffee and soda machines, Communications was a windowless cube longer than wide, and on its door was a keypad entry system. Art fumbled mentally for the right number, mistakenly tried the one L.A. used for its Com room, and knocked hard on the door after giving up. “A-SAC here.”
“Just a minute.” A shrill, rolling squeal came from behind the door before it opened. When it did, a pleasant but serious face looked up at Art through the opening. “Agent Jefferson,” Special Agent Nelson Van Horn said in greeting. He leaned forward in a non-motorized wheelchair, straight brown hair swept to the left, eyes dark but susceptible to a blue tint in the right light. “Memory trouble?”
Art saw the agent’s face light up in jest. “All right, Nels. I could say that thing needs some oil on the hubs, but I’m too po-lite to do so.”
Van Horn wheeled back and let the A-SAC in, then closed the door. It locked and alarmed itself automatically. “Here to see the new toy?”
“That I am.” Art walked deep into the Com room, past fax machines, teletypes, computers, phones, and stopped just short of a three-foot square polished metal cube that had been brought into the space through a now-patched hole in the west wall. He saw wires snaking from it, one each to the fax machines and phones, the computers, and one to a workstation that lacked a chair. Van Horn wheeled himself up to that one and reached over to pat the stainless steel cube.
“Our baby.”
“It’s a big damn thing,” Art commented. He stepped close and touched it. His fingers tingled at the coldness of its metal surface.
“That’s just the shell,” Van Horn said. He rolled one wheel back so he faced the A-SAC. “That’s so someone can’t walk in here and take it with them. The thing weighs twelve hundred pounds, but…” He leaned conspiratorially close. “…my sources say the actual works of it are no bigger than a shoe box. And don’t worry about someone cutting into it; it’s pressurized with some inert gas so that if the pressure drops some sort of thing destroys the innards. Real James Bond stuff, eh?”