Total Control (30 page)

"I'll need to ask you some questions, Mr. Gamble. I hope it won't take all that long."

"You haven't answered my question." The chairman's voice was a notch deeper now.

"No, I haven't and I don't intend to." The two men's eyes locked, until Gamble finally broke it off and looked over at Hardy.

"Mr. Gamble, it's an ongoing bureau investigation. The bureau doesn't usually comment--"

Gamble cut Hardy off with an abrupt wave of his hand. "Then let's get this over with. I have to leave to catch a plane in one hour."

Sawyer didn't know who he wanted to belt more--Gamble, or Hardy for taking this kind of crap.

"Mr. Gamble, perhaps Quentin and Richard Lucas should be in on this discussion."

"Maybe you should have thought about that before scheduling this meeting, Hardy." Gamble punched a button on his console.

"Find Rowe and Lucas, right now."

Hardy touched Sawyer on the shoulder. "Quentin heads up the division Archer was in. Lucas is head of internal security."

"Then you're right, Frank, I'll want to speak with them."

A few minutes later the broad portal opened and two men stepped into Nathan Gamble's private domain. Sawyer ran a penetrating eye over them and quickly discerned who was who. His grim demeanor, his look of competitive reproach at Hardy, and the slight hump under his left breast labeled Richard Lucas as Triton's head of security.

Sawyer pegged Quentin Rowe as early thirties. Rowe's face held a ready smile underneath a pair of large hazel eyes that were more dreamy than intense. Sawyer concluded that Nathan Gamble could not have had a more unlikely colleague. The expanded group adjourned to the large conference table housed in one corner of Gamble's mammoth office.

Gamble stared at his watch and then looked over at Sawyer. "You have fifty minutes and counting, Sawyer. I was hoping you'd have something important for me. However, I feel disappointment looming.

Why don't you prove me wrong?"

Sawyer bit his lip and tensed his shoulders, then decided against taking the bait. He looked over at Lucas. "When did you first suspect Archer?"

Lucas shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Obviously, the security man felt particularly humbled by recent events. "The first definitive event was the videotape of Archer making the exchange in Seattle."

"The one Frank's people obtained?" Sawyer eyed Lucas for confirmation.

Lucas's sullen expression spoke volumes. "That's right. Although I had my own suspicions of Archer before the video was taken."

Gamble spoke up. "Is that so? I don't recall your ever voicing those suspicions before. I don't pay you all that money to keep your mouth shut."

Sawyer eyed Lucas closely. The guy had said too much with probably nothing to back it up. But Sawyer was duty-bound to follow through.

"What sort of suspicions?"

Lucas's face was still frozen on his boss, the fierce reprimand still resonating. Lucas looked dully at Sawyer. "Well, perhaps they were more hunches than anything else. Nothing concrete to go on. Just my gut. Sometimes that's more important, you know what I mean?"

"I do."

"He worked a lot. Irregular hours. His computer log-in times made for some interesting reading, I can tell you that."

Gamble stirred. "I only hire hard workers. Eighty percent of the people here pull seventy-five to ninety hours per week, every week of the year."

"I take it you don't believe in idle hands," Sawyer said.

"I work my people hard, but they're well compensated. Every senior-level manager on up to the executive level at my company is a millionaire. And most of them are under forty." He nodded at Quentin Rowe. "I won't tell you how much he got when I bought him out, but if he wanted to go buy an island somewhere, build himself a mansion, bring in a harem and a private jet, he could do it all without borrowing a dime and have enough left over to keep his great-grandchildren in Ivy League and limos. Of course, I wouldn't expect a federal bureaucrat to understand the nuances of free enterprise.

You now have forty-seven minutes left."

Sawyer promised himself he would never allow Gamble an opening of that size again. "Have you confirmed the facts of the bank account scam?" Sawyer eyed Hardy.

His friend nodded. "I'll hook you up with bureau agents handling it."

Gamble erupted, slamming his fist on the table and glaring at Sawyer as though he had personally ripped off the Triton chief. "Two hundred and fifty million dollars!" Gamble was shaking with fury.

An awkward moment of silence was broken by Sawyer. "I understand Archer had some additional protective measures put on his office door."

Lucas answered, his face a shade paler. "That's right, he did."

"I'll need to look over his office later. What sort of things did he have installed?"

Everyone in the room looked at Richard Lucas. Sawyer could almost see the sweat glistening on the security chief's palms.

"A few months ago he ordered a digital numeric pad and smart card entry system wired to an alarm for his office door."

"Was that unusual or necessary?" Sawyer asked. He couldn't imagine it was necessary, considering how many damn hoops one had to jump through just to get in the place.

"I didn't think it was necessary at all. We have the most secure shop in the industry." Lucas cringed when this response was met by a loud grunt from Gamble. "But I'm not sure I could say it was unusual; other people here had similar setups on their office doors."

Quentin Rowe joined in. "Not that you could have missed it, Mr. Sawyer, but everyone at Triton is terribly security conscious. It's beaten into the head of every employee here that paranoia is the proper mind-set to have when it comes to protecting proprietary technology. In fact, Frank comes in each quarter and lectures the employees on that very subject. If an employee had a problem or security concern, he or she could go either to Richard or one of his staff, or Frank. My employees all knew of Frank's illustrious career at the FBI. I feel confident that anyone with a concern about security would have had no hesitation about going to either of them. In fact, employees have done that in the past, nipping some potentially big problems in the bud."

Sawyer looked over at Hardy, who nodded in agreement. "But you had trouble getting into his office after he disappeared. You must have a system to take into account employees who get sick, die or quit."

"There is a system," Lucas proclaimed.

"Jason apparently circumvented it," Rowe said with a trace of admiration.

"How?"

Rowe looked at Lucas and then sighed. "In accordance with company policy, the code to be inputted into any individual security system placed on-site has to be delivered to the head of security," Quentin explained. "To Rich. In addition, all security personnel and key management have master key cards that can access any area of the office."

"Did Archer deliver the code?"

"He delivered the code to Rich, but then he reprogrammed the reader unit at his office door with a different code."

"And that switch wasn't caught before?" Sawyer looked incredulously over at Lucas.

"There was no reason to think he had changed the code," Rowe said. "During office hours Jason's office door was usually kept open.

No one other than Jason had any reason to be in there after normal hours."

"Okay, the information Archer allegedly delivered to RTG, how did he get his hands on it? Was he cleared for it?"

"Some of it." Quentin Rowe shifted uneasily in his seat and slid one hand down his ponytail. "Jason was part of the acquisition team for that project. However, there were certain parts, the highest levels of the negotiation, to which he was not privy at all. They were known only to Nathan, myself, and three other senior executives at the company. And outside legal counsel, of course."

"Where was this information kept? File drawer? Safe?" Sawyer asked.

Rowe and Lucas exchanged smiles.

Rowe answered. "We have, to a significant degree, a paperless of-rice.

All key documents are stored in computerized files."

"I assume there was some sort of security on these files, then? Like a password."

Lucas said condescendingly, "It was far more than a password."

"And yet Archer broke into it anyway, it seems," Sawyer jabbed back.

Lucas scrunched his mouth up like someone had just jammed a lemon inside.

Quentin Rowe wiped at his glasses. "Yes, he did. Would you like to see how?"

The group of men filled the small, cluttered storeroom. Richard Lucas pushed away the boxes from beside the wall while Rowe, Hardy and Sawyer looked on. Nathan Gamble had declined to join them. Where the boxes had rested, the cable outlet was now exposed.

Quentin Rowe moved next to the computer and held up the cables.

"Jason hardwired into our local area network through this workstation."

"Why not just use the computer in his office?"

Rowe was shaking his head before Sawyer had stopped talking.

"When he logs on to his own computer," Lucas said, "he has to go through a series of security measures. Those security measures do not merely verify the user, they confirm the user's identity. Every workstation in the place has an iris scanner, which takes an initial video image of the user's iris patterns. In addition, the scanner takes periodic sweeps of the operator to continually confirm the user's identity. If Archer had left his desk or someone had sat down in his place, then the system would have automatically shut off to that workstation."

Rowe looked steadily at Sawyer. "The important point in all that is if Archer had accessed any file from his own workstation, we would have known he had done it."

"How's that?" Sawyer asked.

"Our network has a tag feature. Most systems have some attribute of that kind. If a user accesses a file, that access is recorded by the system. By using this workstation"--Quentin pointed at the old computer--"which is not supposed to be on the network and is assigned no number through the network administrator, he bypassed that risk. For all intents and purposes, this was a phantom computer on our network. He may have used the computer in his office to find the location of certain files without accessing them. He could do that at his leisure. That would cut down on the time he needed to spend here, where he could be caught."

Sawyer shook his head. "Wait a minute. If Archer didn't use his own workstation to access the files because it could positively identify him and used this one instead because it couldn't, how do you know it was Archer who accessed the files in the first place?"

Hardy pointed at the keyboard. "An old reliable. We lifted numerous fingerprints from here. They all matched Archer's."

Sawyer finally asked the most obvious question. "Okay, but how do you know this workstation was used to access any files?"

Lucas sat down on one of the boxes. "For a period of time we were getting unauthorized entries onto the system. Although Archer didn't need to go through the identification process to log on through this unit, he would still leave a trail if he accessed files using it unless he electronically erased his trail as he exited. That's possible to do, although tricky. In fact, I think that's what he did.

Initially, at least. Then he got sloppy. We finally picked up the trail and, while it took time, we narrowed down the breach until it led us right here."

Hardy folded his arms across his chest. "You know, it's ironic. You put all this time and effort and money into securing your networks against any breaches. You have steel doors, security guards, electronic monitoring devices, smart cards--you name it, Triton has it.

And yet ..." He looked up at the ceiling. "And yet you also have drop-down ceiling panels with exposed cables connecting your entire network together, ripe for penetration." He shook his head in dismay and looked at Lucas. "I've warned you about this risk before."

"He was an insider," Lucas said heatedly. "He knew the system and he used that knowledge to hack it." Lucas brooded for a moment.

"And then he took down a planeload of people in the process.

Let's not forget that little fact."

Ten minutes later the men were once again in Gamble's office. He did not look up when they reappeared.

Sawyer sat down. "Okay, any further developments on the RTG end?" he asked.

Gamble's face flamed red at the mention of his competitor. "Nobody rips me off and gets away with it."

"Jason Archer's involvement with RTG hasn't been proven. It's all speculation at this point," Sawyer said evenly.

Gamble dramatically rolled his eyes. "Right! Well, you just go and jump through your little hoops so you can keep your little job and I'll take care of the tough stuff."

Sawyer closed his notebook and stood up to his full height. Hardy stood up too, and reached out to grab Sawyer's coat, until his former partner froze him with a stare that Hardy had seen him use on many an occasion at the bureau. Sawyer turned back to Gamble.

"Ten minutes, Sawyer. Since you don't appear to have anything of note to report, I'm going to catch my plane a little early." When Gamble walked past the burly FBI agent, Sawyer tightly gripped his arm and led the Triton chairman outside into the private reception area. Sawyer looked over at Gamble's executive assistant. "Excuse us for a minute, ma'am." The woman hesitated, looking at Gamble.

"I said excuse us!" Sawyer's drill-sergeant tone catapulted the woman out of her chair and she fled the room.

Sawyer turned to the chairman. "Let's get a couple of things straight, Gamble. First, I don't report to you or anyone else at this place. Second, since it looks like one of your people conspired to blow up a plane, I'll ask you as many questions as I want to and I don't give a shit about your travel schedule. And if you tell me one more time how many minutes I've got left, I'll rip that goddamned watch off your wrist and stuff it in your mouth. I'm not one of your lackey boys and don't you ever, ever talk to me that way again. I'm an FBI agent and a damn good one. I've been shot, knifed, kicked and bitten by some seriously demented assholes who would make you look like the biggest pussy in the world on your best day. So if you think your bullshit tough-guy act is gonna make me pee in my pants, then you're wasting everybody's time, including your own.