She made her way slowly toward the back, bumping discarded junk on the floor, catching her shoe on loose cords. She felt like a blundering drunk in an obstacle course.
She passed a table with three modern workstations, each more powerful than the Cray supercomputers that only a few years ago had been the flagship of the weapons design program. A glint of stray white light reflected off a framed photo on the table: Gary Lesserec and his bimbo girlfriend.
Diana’s face clouded over. It wasn’t right that this squeaky little man would still be alive when Hal, with all he had to offer, was gone. Lesserec should have been the one laying face-down on the carpet in the VR chamber.
She hurried to Hal Michaelson’s office door. Yellow construction tape blocked the entrance, but at least she had a key to his office door. She didn’t hesitate to peel away the strips, allowing her access — carefully, though, so she could replace them when she was finished.
Diana squeezed through a gap in the tape and flicked on one half bank of lights in Hal’s office. She went to the window and fiddled with the miniblinds to block the light from alerting any outside observer wandering by.
Hal’s office was a disaster area — as usual. Volumes marked with yellow Post-It notes were shoved at all possible angles into the bookcases; stacks of journal articles, preprints, and unmarked floppy disks covered the desk and credenza. His bulky classified document repository stood behind the door, five feet tall and three deep, like a thick-walled black file cabinet.
Diana spun the dial and tried the first combination she could think of: her birthday. Seconds later she satisfied herself that no permutation of the numbers would work.
Bastard, she thought. Diana tried his birthday — it was more like Hal to think of himself instead of her anyway — but still without any luck. A few more dates also refused to work: the date they met, the date the nonproliferation treaty he negotiated was signed, even the date they had first made love. Still nothing.
She thought of yet another place she could look for the combination. Hal was always preoccupied, often forgetful — he would have jotted the combination down somewhere. She felt sure of it.
Diana pulled back Hal’s desk chair and powered up his workstation. The dim room filled with the glow from the screen. When the request for a password came up, she hesitated. Same problem. No telling what he might have put in, but she didn’t kid herself into thinking Hal would have used something from their relationship.
She racked her brain, trying to think what he found whimsical. He had taken pride in claiming that he had all the physical constants memorized, and she might be able to find them in the scores of books lying around the office. But she didn’t have time to go scrounging around the room, looking up arcane numbers. Or maybe it was something serious, a mnemonic that he might base on an elegant formula, or event in history.
But Hal would have been wary about what he kept on his computer anyway, especially surrounded by a bunch of hackers who, once they knew the boss was away, might use roughly ten percent of the world’s supercomputing power to dig out their boss’s password. That would be just like Gary Lesserec. No password would be safe working in a place like this.
Diana sighed and slumped back in her chair. The words on the screen still waited for her: PLEASE ENTER PASSWORD.
It was a ridiculous request in a place where no password was safe. And then it hit her, just what Hal would have thought.
She reached out and tapped the ENTER key.
The word WORKING appeared in the center of the screen, and within seconds, she had access to his entire file base. So he didn't use a password. And it would have driven the hackers nuts trying to find it.
She rummaged through Hal’s files and found a document titled IMPORTANT DATES. She found the repository combination at the bottom and recognized the numbers immediately, feeling a warm, bittersweet thrill. Hal had chosen their room numbers from the hotel in Moscow where they had started their affair. So gruff and arrogant Hal Michaelson had been sentimental after all! She felt tears stinging the corners of her eyes.
Diana opened the repository on the second try and started pawing through his files. Most of the folders were stamped SECRET/RD, NOFORN, or NO CONTRACTOR. Scarlet lines encircled the pages; dates, document numbers, and classifying authorities were rubber-stamped on the front.
She skipped past the technical reports. Lab overviews, stockpile numbers, and design criteria were all grouped together, but nowhere did she find any of the memos they had exchanged, the love letters from early in their relationship, sealed away in tighter security than any safe deposit box. Except for now.
By the time Diana reached the bottom drawer, she was sweating — a deep, oily perspiration that seeped from her armpits, born from fear of not finding the dozens of documents that would incriminate her. Her knees and feet ached from the awkward position bending over the packed files, sifting through page after page.
She considered going through the pile of classified documents again, but she knew she had not missed anything. Hal’s repository was not so extensive, and it only dealt with his latest interests.
Which obviously didn’t include her.
She looked up, startled at a sudden noise. Had she really heard anything, or was it just nerves?
The FBI had already been called in to do a preliminary investigation on Hal’s death. What if somebody had already been through this place, taken away the folders that didn’t belong? What if, even now, the phone was ringing at her home in Arlington. Fred would roll over, answer it, and innocently tell them that she had gone to Livermore several days ago, before Hal Michaelson’s death?
She struggled to her feet and nudged the heavy drawer shut with her leg. Her breath came in quick, laborious gasps. She ran a hand through her gray-flecked blond hair. What did he do with those damned memos? He could have shredded them, of course, but that wasn’t like him.
At the time it had been a cute game Hal and Diana had played — passing classified love letters through the system, absolutely sure that no one else in the world would be able to intercept them.
She’d kept her own copies of the letters in her personal repository back in the DOE Headquarters building — but now she knew that was a huge mistake. She had to get back home and destroy them. Now. Right away.
She tried going through the files in his desk drawer, but still she found nothing. She turned off Hal’s workstation, pushed the chair back to where she had found it, and flicked off the lights.
She felt sick to her stomach as she fought through the yellow construction tape back out of his office. Her fingers shook as she clumsily pushed the construction tape back against the door frame in a reasonable semblance of what it had looked like.
If the FBI had found the letters already, how long would it be before she was subpoenaed?
She stumbled through the obstacle course back toward the CAIN booth. Her elbow hit a stack of papers that hissed to the floor. Diana held a hand to her face and fought back a panicked outcry. She knelt and gathered up the papers, stacking them roughly on the table. Nobody could tell the difference with all this mess. Patting the top to ensure it was stable, she used her outstretched hands as a guide in the dimness until she reached the exit.
She didn’t look behind her as she trotted to her car. No one would remember that she had come here — with 8,000 people working on the Livermore site, the night guard couldn’t possibly know she wasn’t a regular employee, so long as she had the right badge….