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