Internal Threat (13 page)

“Welcome,” said the trim man in a gray suit, his smile sparking in the sunlight. “Glad to see you made it our way.” He gestured at a banner behind him which read, “US Government:
You
Are The Future!”

“Hello,” Emma replied, extending her hand for a shake.

“I’m Agent Mike Saunders.” He grasped her hand in a firm shake. “To be honest, I’m glad you came over. I was going to approach you soon anyway.”

“You were?” she answered, more flustered than she would have liked.

“You are Emma Hosobuchi, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” she answered, now becoming unnerved and pulling her hand back. “How did you know?”

The man chuckled softly. “I suppose it wouldn’t freak you out any less if I said we’ve been keeping tabs on you.”

Emma felt her stomach drop to her feet. Dizzy, she turned on her heels, mumbling ‘excuse me.’ She walked swiftly across the quad, ignoring Mike calling her name as she did so. An hour later, she was finally calming down from the weird encounter and taking refuge in the library to study. Feet scuffed nearby and she looked up to find Mike Saunders standing across the table from her.

“Emma, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you,” he said in a hushed voice while taking the seat opposite her.

Emma glanced around, noting the stares of the students at the neighboring tables. She was not sure if it was because of Mike’s suit or because a girl like Emma seldom had a guy that looked like him talk to her. In any case, it made her feel a bit safer to be around people; safe enough to answer him. “You didn’t offend me, but you did give me the creeps,” she said.

“Well then, I apologize for being creepy,” he replied good-naturedly.

“So what do you want?”
“Your brain, quite frankly.” His eyes scanned the room, then nodded towards the front door. “Mind if we take a quick walk?”

“As long as we stay in a public place.”

“See? That’s the brain I’m talking about.”

A few minutes later, Mike and Emma were pacing down the length of a sun-dappled sidewalk still populated with students from the career fair.

“You’re very talented at computers, I hear,” Mike began.

Emma shrugged, “Good enough.”

“You’re being modest. Your professors said you were the brightest person they’ve seen in years.”

“They did?” she said with some surprise. She had always thought to herself that might be the case, but had never dared to voice the opinion out loud.

“Look, Emma, I’ll be honest with you. You can go off and join one of those investment banks or technology firms and make a great living. Nice car, nice house, as many fancy vacations as you want. Maybe you’ll get married, invest safely in a 401K and pre-pay for your funeral in fifty years.” He stopped, turning to her. “But I don’t think that’s what you really want, is it?”
She felt his eyes studying her, watching her face for its reaction. “No,” she finally answered.

“And what
do
you want?”
It took a moment for her to find the words but when she did, they felt right. “To be a part of something that’s bigger than me. To make a difference, not just make money. And, I suppose if I’m making a wish list, it would be to always make sure the people I care about are safe.” It was an answer she thought her grandmother would be proud of.

Mike grinned, reaching into his breast pocket. “Then I think I have the perfect job for you.” A business card appeared in his hand. She took it, glancing down at the black letters etched into the white paper.

“National Intelligence Agency? I’ve never heard of it.”

“Good, we like to keep it that way.”

“What is it?”

“The future.” He gave her another small smile before turning and walking away.

“Wait,” Emma said, looking the card over again and finding it blank besides the letters. “How do I contact you? There’s nothing else on here.” All she received in return from Mike was another wave over his shoulder.

She shook her head, pocketing the business card. That weekend, she headed home for a much-needed visit. She found the house more comforting than usual, especially when she discovered her grandmother in the kitchen hovering over a batch of noodles.

“Grandma, can I ask you something?” she said, sliding into a nearby kitchen chair.

“Of course.”

“Do you ever think about your time at Manzanar?”

Her grandmother paused in her stirring for a moment before answering, “Every day.”

Emma nodded. “Do you still hate the government?”

“I never said I hated the government. I said I hated what they did. There is a difference.”

“Is there?” Emma wondered.

Her grandmother put down her wooden spoon and focused her attention on Emma. “Why all the questions?”

“I was doing a paper at school,” Emma lied. “I just thought I would ask.”

Her grandmother crossed to the table, sitting heavily into the seat next to Emma. “When I was younger, I was very angry,” she said. “Then, as I got older and I had a family, I gained some perspective. I began to see things in a different way.”

“How so?”

“People were scared,” she said softly. “And when they are frightened, people cannot think rationally. They will do anything to protect those they love. At that time, no matter how wrong it was, the government thought they were doing the right thing to protect their people.”

“That doesn’t excuse it,” Emma countered.

“No, it doesn’t,” her grandmother agreed. “But it explains it.” She stood up, heading back to her boiling pot. “In life, you will find far more explanations than excuses.”

Emma stood up and wrapped the woman in a hug. “I love you,” she whispered.

“I love you, too,” her grandmother said, patting her. “Now get out of the kitchen and do what you have to do.”

Emma squeezed her affectionately, then headed to her room upstairs. From her pocket, she withdrew the card that Saunders had given her. She flipped it over for what must have been the twentieth time, finding nothing but the blank white again. Falling back on to her bed, she grunted with annoyance as she tossed the card on to the floor.

“The future,” she scoffed. “Not much of a future if I can’t even call you-” She stopped, noticing something. From this angle, the edge of one of the letters in “National Intelligence Agency” looked as if it bulged out more than it should. She picked it back up, bringing the card closely in front of her eyes. Though blurry, she thought she could see something on the curve of the letter ‘g’. Hurrying to a nearby desk drawer, she pulled out a magnifying glass. As she held it over the letter, she expelled a small breath. The letter was revealed to be a mass of 1’s and 0’s crammed together.

“Computer code,” she whispered in awe.

She ran to her bookbag, yanking out her laptop and powering it on. Her hands flew across the keys, mind churning as she worked out the algorithms. An hour later, she was finished. A black square suddenly appeared in the center of her screen as her webcam popped to life. Green letters reading ‘Securing Connection’ flashed for a few seconds before the face of Agent Mike Saunders filled the square.

“Ms. Hosobuchi, I didn’t expect you so soon.”

“I guess my professors were right,” she could not hold back her grin. “So, about that job…”

“Consider this your interview. You just passed it.”

The weighing in was Emma’s least favorite part; a fitting finale to the rigors of entry into the NIA headquarters. She stepped on to the small metal square just inside the thick steel door. Working as another verification process, the electronic scale calculated any fluctuation in her weight. Of course, small increases or decreases were in the acceptable range. However, any great change over the last twenty-four hours would be a signal that the person on the scale may not be who they claimed they were.

“Thank you, Ms. Hosobuchi,” came the disembodied voice again from a side speaker. The two frosted glass doors in front of her whooshed open and she stepped through. Here, in the nest of ergonomic cubicles, the NIA looked like any other office that might be home to a venture capital firm or new social media company. The men and women in military uniforms were the only thing that stood out among the plain-clothes workers hovering over flat-screen monitors and chatting on Bluetooth-enabled desk phones. Glass-walled conference rooms lined the entire right side of the space, half of them occupied.

As Emma passed, people nodded in deference and offered polite ‘good evenings’. Although her features and size may have been pixie-like, Emma cut an imposing figure within these halls.

Nearly everything that went on in the organization had been her brainchild. All of the achievements were impressive, but it was her creation of FALCON that was, by far, the most dazzling.

A memory flash came: Mike calling her into his office, a year after she had finished reorganizing the division’s computer system to increase its efficiency tenfold.

“I’ve got a new project for you,” he said.

“Great,” she replied. She had found the last year rewarding but somewhat tedious. Her instinct told her that it had been more of a test for her abilities than anything else. “What is it?”

Mike tossed a blue folder in front of her stamped “Top Secret.” Emma flipped it open to peruse the pages inside. A short gasp of surprise escaped her lips.

“This is our missile defense system,” she said, still examining the information.

“A big chunk of it, yes,” Mike agreed. “We’re entering a new age, Emma. One where it’s not just about the size of the shield we carry but who can sneak behind it.”

“Hackers,” Emma surmised.

“Exactly. We get hundreds of thousands of attempts each
day
to access that network. And some of them have gotten too close for comfort.” He leveled his gaze at her. “I want you to redesign it.”

“Okay,” she answered simply, eliciting a laugh from him.

“Never afraid of a challenge. That’s what I love about you, Emma.” The words made her blush but Mike did not seem to notice. “Think outside the box on this one. Way outside the box. If you just come in and talk about throwing up some more firewalls, they’ll kick you right out.”

“I won’t disappoint you, Mike.”

He smiled. “I know you won’t.”

The task had been more difficult than she anticipated. Although she found several vulnerabilities in her examination of the system, it was Mike’s order to ‘think outside the box’ that plagued her. She had to come up with something wholly new, something that no one, especially the country’s enemies, would ever think of.

At last, it was Mike’s business card that again provided the answer. When she told him the broad strokes of her idea, he was thrilled.

“Flesh it out and put together a presentation,” he said. “I’m going to call a meeting ASAP.”

A few days later, she found herself presenting a PowerPoint slideshow to a group comprised of top Pentagon officials and military commanders. Mike sat in the back of the room, offering silent encouragement. After spending the first twenty minutes detailing weak spots in the current defense, she reached her moment of truth.

“Gentlemen, I can strengthen the current system but I would like to present you with another option. Something ‘outside the box’, if you will.” Mike smiled at her from his chair.

“Get on with it,” grumbled a gray-haired general in the middle of the table.

“Our enemies know where our systems live, in the secure government sector. I propose moving them.” The table murmured in confusion. “To the private sector.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” said one of the Pentagon higher-ups.

“Hiding the system in plain sight.” She flipped to the next slide, which gave visual representations of her speech. “Through a series of shell corporations, we take over seven secure servers. In those, we compartmentalize one component of our missile defense system.”

“This isn’t some goddamned video game we’re talking about,” the same general barked. “It’s the United States of America’s protection. You can’t just outsource that or send it out via the Facebook or Tweet or whatever the hell it is this week.”

“Calm down, Griggs,” one of the Defense Department officials ordered. “Go on,” he said to Emma.

“With all due respect, General Griggs,” she looked to the man glaring at her, “over ninety percent of government communication, much of it top secret, is already sent out over private sector systems.”

“It’s true,” Mike backed her up.

Emma flipped through more slides to illustrate her point. “We’ll use only servers that are protected by the most state-of-the-art security, which is usually ahead of whatever we in government possess. While our enemies are busy looking in one place, we will be hiding in another.”

“And what if the servers all go down?” Griggs quizzed her further.

“The odds of that happening are statistically impossible. All of these servers are backed up by redundant systems, generators…it can’t happen.” She reached for a pile of bound documents at the edge of the table. “I’ve prepared a detailed report showing how this will work.” As the documents were passed around and studied, a hush fell over the conference table. One by one, the men turned to the head of the table, where a slight man in a tailored navy blue suit sat, still studying the screen.

Emma knew that he was the current Secretary of Defense.

“I like it,” the Secretary said at last. “I think she’s right. It’s something they won’t be suspecting.”

“Puts money into the private sector, too,” another official agreed.

“Let’s move forward,” the Secretary continued. “Start with the Western region to test it before we go national.”

“Thank you, sir,” Emma beamed.

“One condition, though, Ms. Hosobuchi.” The Secretary pointed at the grey-haired objector. “You’ll be working together with General Griggs who will be reassigned to the NIA next month. I don’t want you getting too cocky.”

Emma flushed red but kept her mouth shut. If she objected, it could end everything right then and there. Besides, she thought, Mike would still be around to help her.

The Secretary stood to indicate that the meeting was over. As he headed for the door, he suddenly turned. “What do you call it?” he asked Emma.