Most definitely not Tower personnel.
Thief
Possible. Though Anselm was having a hard time imagining what might be worth stealing in the entirety of the Tower Project. There were no valuable materials being produced or mined here. It was an agricultural and energy producing plant, neither of which really fit into a satchel to be flung over one’s shoulder for a quick getaway.
A Disgruntled associate was a distinct possibility, Jacob had never been known as a forgiving man, which was why his association with many of his fringe friends was known to be short and abrupt.
Another possibility was that another Agency was now involved, though Anselm judged that to be an unlikely chance. The CIA wouldn’t have sent an overweight and obviously near retirement agent for this sort of wetwork, and most other agencies with an interest in this matter would probably coordinate with Interpol.
In any case, he had good equipment, Anselm noted when the lock to the door gave way in less than a minute and the man let himself into the inner office.
Anselm frowned, pulling out his Portable for a quick glance at the Project schematics.
The Office was a dead end.
Great.
That meant that he’d have to find a place to wait for the man to come out, somewhere to observe without being seen.
Anselm slipped into the receptionists office, and made his way silently over to the unobtrusive door in the side wall, letting himself into what appeared to be a combination coat room and secretarial bathroom.
Perfect.
Now he just had to wait.
Chapter 6
Bingo.
Joshua Corvine smiled to himself as the lock gave way on the door at the back of the office and it opened up on a curving stairwell that sank down into the earth below. He let himself in, and then closed it behind him before beginning down the long run of stairs, moving quietly as he listened for any action below.
The lights in the stairwell were well above the power saving emergency lighting that currently lit the `official’ part of the facility, and Corvine smiled slightly when he came to the bottom and saw that it was much the same there as well.
Apparently they weren’t concerned with saving power so much as saving face, he supposed.
The halls below the director’s office were empty, though, and he couldn’t find any cameras, either visually or through a WAN search with his portable, so the CIA Agent took his chances and quickly moved out into the corridors, looking for.something.
Anything, if the truth were known. Curiosity had always been one of Joshua’s overriding sins, and one that had gotten him into a great deal of trouble in his youth. It had also gotten him commendations and a nice `cushy’ posting to Sydney to run out his last years of service.
He’d take the good with the bad.
The first thing he noticed about the corridors was that they were rough, unfinished, unlike the glassy smooth surfaces above. In fact he was almost certain that he was looking at the raw stone, with no finishing done at all, and probably not a particularly professional job of it either.
Which, thinking about it, suddenly concerned Joshua a great deal more than he’d have thought.
Somewhere above him there was a one kilometer high tower of concrete and twenty-five thousand acres of greenhouse, and the idea that some crazy lunatic had been tunneling under all of that on their own was a damned frightening thought.
Especially since he was currently under all of it.
He shuddered, but pushed the thought aside. The tower hadn’t collapsed yet, so either the morons who came up with this plan were at least mildly competent or, perhaps more likely, were simply lucky.
Whichever it was, he doubted it would give out on them just because one Joshua Corvine had paid a visit. Even as a CIA agent, he wasn’t quite so self-obsessed that he thought the place had been waiting just to collapse around his ears.
The rough cut of the stone ended about twenty meters along, smoothing out at a section where it was obvious that someone had laid concrete and taken some care, leading him to a pair of sealed security doors that stood alone in the glaringly lit corridor.
He looked up in the corners, trying to convince himself that the evidence was right and the cameras he thought should be there really weren’t, but in the end it didn’t matter. He fished his Portable out again, and scanned for any RIF tags within range.
The `Contactless Chips’ that were put into widespread use over the last fifteen years were small, unpowered, radio transmitters with tiny EEPROM chips embedded in the circuits. When the radio signal from his Portable flashed out, somewhat more powerful than a standard RIF Scanner, the tiny transmitters used that broadcast power to send a brief message pulse with the contents of the EEPROM.
In a few seconds, Joshua had a list of every RIF tagged item within thirty feet and was carefully reviewing the data.
Lab supplies, computers, two industrial freezers, a microwave oven, a fridge, and various other items, but no security equipment aside from the electronic lock on the doors themselves. Joshua shrugged, shaking his head slightly, and ran the odds through his mind.
Lots of companies sold RIF `burners’, devices that sent an overpowered surge through the RIF tags and burned them out so that they couldn’t be used in precisely the way the CIA agent was doing just then, but if a burner had been used in the room it would have nailed all the tags.
On the other hand, if those tags had been brought in after, then there could be some items in the room that weren’t responding to his Portable’s query.
Only one way to find out, Joshua decided.
He brought up the Electronic lock picking program and quickly ran through the sequence to key open the big security doors.
Damn it, where was that guy
Anselm Gunnar grimaced, looking out over the secretary’s office, and then checked his timepiece.
Twenty minutes.
Twenty minutes with no sound. Twenty minutes with no sign, in fact.
He was certain that the man had gone into the Director’s office, he’d seen him let himself in. So where was he
A thief would have found what he was after by now, Anselm decided. Anyone who could penetrate this deeply would have a target in mind, and would know how to get it. Getting in and out quickly and quietly was the only way to make a `living’ as a thief.
So the man was something else.
Perhaps he was doing much the same as Anselm himself had done earlier Checking the Director’s records, maybe looking for something on the Director’s own computer
Unlikely.
Few people kept any data on a local computer now, the security of a networked drive was better for almost everything one might need to save.
Almost every legitimate thing, Anselm corrected himself.
For the truly secret or the truly incriminating, which basically amounted to the same thing, having a secure hard disk without network access was still the best one could hope for in electronic security.
Director Jacob wouldn’t be stupid enough to leave anything incriminating on his office computer though, would he
Anselm slipped out of the bathroom, creeping over to the big office doors.
He had to know.
It was a lab, alright.
Joshua frowned, moving through the two long stainless steel tables, and took a seat by the computer at the far side of the room.
Now he had to find out just what kind of lab.
He set his portable down on the desk, propping it up on the little flip out stand that was embedded in the back of the device, and had it access the net and send an inventory of the Lab’s RIF Chips to the computers at Langley. They’d process the results and send him back a list of probable uses for the entire list within a couple minutes.