“Hot dog!” Pashley breathed, visions of reinstatement dancing before him, “I told you we’d get this hacker.” He stopped. “But wouldn’t it be simpler just to ask the people at that site to track where the other side mailbox leads to?”
“I tried that,” Whipple told him. “But I didn’t get anywhere. I think there’s something funny about that site.”
Twelve: Bureau-cratic Complications
If you can delay solving a problem long enough, one of three things will happen: The problem will become so large that it destroys the organization, everyone gets so used to living with the problem that it ceases to be a problem, or the problem solves itself. In cases two and three you win. Meanwhile you don’t make enemies by rocking the boat.
The Consultants’ Handbook
It was a bright muggy morning in Washington, D.C. The kind of morning that finds legions of bureaucrats hard at work in their air-conditioned offices and trying not to think about what the drive home will be like.
The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation was hard at work in her air-conditioned office, but she wasn’t worried about the drive home. For one thing she probably wouldn’t go home until well after sundown. For another she was deep in a review of industrial espionage activities in the United States, trying to decide how much of the report represented a legitimate danger and how much was eager beavers pumping for a bigger share of the department budget.
The Phone rang.
Not just any phone, The Phone. Popular legend to the contrary it was not red. It was a very ordinary looking tan telephone with a funny mouthpiece and an unusually thick cord connecting the handset to the base. It was the director’s main link to the White House and the higher echelons of the Justice Department and the national security apparatus.
The director eyed The Phone. Not even the President normally used that telephone to contact her. It rang again and she picked it up.
“Director, do you recognize my voice?”
The director pulled what looked like a cheap pocket calculator out of the top drawer of her desk, checked the date and time and punched in a highly improbable mathematical calculation. “Give me confirmation.”
“Alpha,” The Voice said, “gamma rho woodchuck three-four.”
“Confirmed. I recognize you.”
Actually the director had no idea who the person on the other end of the phone was. She only knew he represented No Such Agency, the officially non-existent organization charged with communications and cipher security. The outfit was a couple of rungs up the intelligence food chain from the FBI.
“We have a domestic security problem,” The Voice said. “Someone has been using one of our accounts on the computer network. A rather sensitive account. I am afraid we need your cooperation on this one.” There was real regret in The Voice.
“We’ll be happy to assist you,” the director said, trying to keep the excitement out of her own voice. A favor like this to No Such Agency could be worth a lot in the barter market that made official Washington tick. “We can have a team ready to meet with you inside of an hour.”
“I understand one of your people is already working on this from the other end, Special Agent Pashley.”
“Pashley?” she asked in a voice that didn’t betray anything.
The director was trying to quit smoking, but she groped in her desk for the crumpled remnants of her last pack and lit a slightly bent Camel.
“Yes. He apparently found evidence of the penetration at another site and has been tracing it back.”
“I’m sure he doesn’t realize the significance. I’ll put a team of specialists on it instead.”
“We think that would be inadvisable just now,” The Voice said. “Perhaps it would be better if we worked with this Agent Pashley alone.”
“Of course we’ll need a small group to liase,” the director said hastily.
“Of course,” The Voice agreed. “Have your people contact ours at a suitable level and keep us informed of anything Pashley turns up.”
After The Voice hung up the director ground out her cigarette and glared at the phone. Damn that man. And damn Pashley! Somehow that moron had stumbled into something.