Chapter 5
The institutional smell of steamed vegetables and floor wax always settled in the basement cafeteria of the cyber intelligence headquarters by noon.
Marcus sat at our usual corner table, a plastic tray holding a half-eaten sandwich and a stack of printed system logs. He was my technical assistant, twenty-six and brilliant, though he lacked the patience for the bureaucratic games that defined the upper floors.
He didn’t wait for me to sit down before sliding a single printed sheet across the laminate surface, his thumb covering the classification stamp.
“This cleared the Berlin gateway at fourteen hundred hours yesterday,” Marcus said, keeping his voice below the noise of the nearby ice machine.
I picked up the paper, my eyes scanning the cryptographic header that detailed the secure transfer.
At the bottom of the routing authorization sat a string of sixty-four alphanumeric characters, ending in my personal administrative key.
“This signature was generated by a system I built, but I never signed it,” I said, my finger resting on the printed ink.
Marcus looked at his hands, then back at the log.
“The verification protocol says otherwise, Claire. The token came from your secure terminal while you were out of the building.”
“My level eight access card was in my wallet the entire day,” I said. “I was at the federal courthouse with Rachel until the recess.”
“Then someone duplicated the token while the network was still linked to the Vance home office,” Marcus said. “That link was supposed to be severed when the preliminary divorce decree was signed last month.”
“The software routing shows the duplicate program was initiated from inside our own server room,” Marcus said.
“Then we have a shadow mirror running on the secure side,” I said. “If Harrison has that access, he can read every report we send to the Senate committee before it ever reaches the hill.”
“He was copying my work before we even bought the penthouse,” I said.
I slipped the printed log into my jacket pocket and stood up, leaving my untouched tea on the table.
May you like
The quiet of my penthouse was broken only by the rhythmic swish of Maria’s broom against the kitchen tile. The afternoon sun cast long, thin shadows across the oak floor, catching the dust motes that floated in the warm air.
I knelt in the hallway utility closet, pulling a heavy cedar chest out from under a stack of seasonal wool blankets.
