Terminal Compromise, Winn Schwartau [sight word books txt] 📗

> * Tuesday, December 15 New York

It was before 8:00 A.M. and Scott cursed himself for arriving at

his office at this ungodly hour. He had found the last piece of

the puzzle, didn’t sleep very much, and was in high gear before

6:00. Scott couldn’t remember the last time he had been awake

this early, unless it was coming round the long way. He scurried

past security, shaking his ID card as he flew through the closing

doors on the express elevator. The office hadn’t yet come to life

so Doug McGuire was available without a wait or interruption.

“I need some expense money,” Scott blurted out at Doug.

“Yeah, so?” Doug sounded exasperated with Scott’s constant

requests for money. He didn’t even look up from his impossibly

disorganized desk.

“I’m serious . . .,” Scott came back.

“So am I.” Doug firmly laid down his pen on his desk and looked

at Scott. “What the hell kind of expenses do you need now?”

Scott spent more money than several reporters combined, and he

never felt bad about it. While a great deal of his work was

performed at the office or at home, his phone bills were extraor-

dinary as were his expenses.

Scott had developed a reputation as willing to go to almost any

lengths to get a story. Like the time he hired and the paper paid

for a call girl to entertain Congressman Daley from Wisconsin.

She was supposed to confirm, in any way necessary, that LeMal

Chemical was buying votes to help bypass certain approval cycles

for their new line of drugs. She accidentally confirmed that he

was a homosexual, but not before he slipped and the lady of the

evening became the much needed confirmation.

As Scott put it, Daley’s embarrassed resignation was unavoidable

collateral damage in stopping the approval of a drug as poten-

tially dangerous as thalidomide.

Or then there was the time that Scott received an anonymous tip

that the Oil Companies had suppressed critical temperature-emis-

sion ratio calculations, and therefore the extent of the green-

house effect was being sorely underestimated. As a result of his

research and detective work, and the ability to verify and under-

stand the physics involved, Scott’s articles forced a re-examina-

tion of the dangers. He received a New York Writer’s Award for

that series.

When Doug had hired Scott, as a thirty-something cub reporter,

they both thought that Scott would fit in, nice and neat, and

write cute, introspective technical pieces. Neither expected

Scott to quickly evolve into a innovative journalist on the

offensive who had the embryo of a cult following.

But Scott Mason also performed a lot of the more mundane work

that most writer’s suffer with until the better stories can

justify their full time efforts. New products, whiz bang elec-

tronic toys for the kitchen, whiz bangs for the bathroom. New

computer this, new software that.

Now, though, he was on the track, due in part he admitted, to

Doug coercing him into writing the computer virus bits. Yes, he

was wrong and Doug was right. The pieces were falling in place.

So, no matter what happened, it was Doug’s fault.

“I’m going to Europe.”

“No you’re not!” thundered Doug.

“Yes I am. I gotta go . . .” Scott tried to plead his case.

“You aren’t going anywhere, and that’s final.” Doug retorted

without a pause. He stared challengingly through Scott.

“Doug,” Scott visibly calmed himself, “will you at least hear me

out, before telling me no? At least listen to me, and if I’m

wrong, tell me why. O.K.?” Same routine, different day, thought

Scott. The calmer, sincere request elicited empathy from Doug.

Maybe he’d been too harsh.

“Sorry, it’s automatic to say ‘no’. You know that they,” he

pointed down with his thumb, “have us counting paper clips.

Sure, explain to me why I’m going to say ‘no’,” he joked. Doug’s

overtly stern yet fatherlike geniality returned.

“O.K.” Scott mentally organized his thoughts. He touched his

fingers to his forehead and turned to sit on the edge of Doug’s

desk. A traditional no-no. “Without my notes . . .”

“Screw the notes, what have you got? If you don’t know the mate-

rial, the notes won’t help. They’re the details, not the story.”

Scott had heard this before.

“Sure, sorry.” He gained confidence and went straight from the

hip. “Fact one. The FBI is investigating a massive blackmail

campaign that nobody wants us to talk about, and probably for

good reason from what I can see. As of now, there is no clue at

all to whom is behind the operation.

“Fact two. My story got pulled by CIA, NSA or someone that pushed

the AG’s buttons. And this Tempest thing gets heads turning too

fast for my taste.” Doug nodded briefly. Scott made sense so

far, both things were true.

“Three,” Scott continued, “First State has been the target of

hackers, plus, we have Sidneys . . .”

“Sort of. McMillan hasn’t caved in on that yet.”

“Agreed, but it’s still good. You and I both know it.” Doug

grudgingly nodded in agreement.

“Then we have all those papers that came from a van, or more than

one van I would guess, and not a damned thing we can do with them

according to Higgins.” Again, Doug nodded, but he wondered where

all of this was going. “Then the EMP-T bombs, NASA, the Phone

Company, and all of these viruses. What we have is a number of

apparently dissimilar events that have one common denominator:

computers.”

Scott waited for a reaction from Doug that didn’t come so he

continued. “Don’t you see, the van with the computer data, the

endless files, the Sidneys problems, pulling my stories, the

hackers? Even the viruses. They’re starting to get a little out

of hand. It’s all the same thing!”

Doug rolled his head from side to side on his shoulder. Rather

than boredom, Scott knew that Doug was carefully thinking through

the logic of it. “Aren’t you acting the engineer instead of the

reporter here? Miss the old line of work ‘eh?”

“Give me a break! You and your viruses are the ones who got me

into this mess in the first place.” Scott knew it would come up,

so he had been ready and grabbed the opportunity Doug had just

given him. “That’s exactly the point!” Scott leaped off the

desk to his feet. “All we have are technical threads, pieces of

a puzzle. It’s a classic engineering problem.” Although Scott

had never been a brilliant engineer, he could argue the issues

fluently.

“Let me give you an example. When I was in defense electronics,

whenever someone built something we had to document, without

failure, it didn’t work. Radar, navigation, communications, it

didn’t matter. The engineers forever were releasing products that

failed on the first pass.” Doug stopped rolling his head and

looked at Scott with a blank stare.

“We had these terrifically advanced products meant to defend our

country and they didn’t work. So, we had to tell the engineers

what was wrong so they could figure it out. Our own engineers

and I got involved more times than we liked because the response

time from the contractors was for shit. They didn’t care any

more. Since we hadn’t designed it, we only saw the pieces that

were on the fritz, we had symptoms and had to figure out what

they meant in order to diagnose the failure so we could get the

designers to come up with a fix. The point is, we only had

shreds of evidence, little bits of technical information from

which to try to understand the complete system. That’s exactly

what’s going on here.”

“So?” Doug said dead panned.

“So,” Scott avoided getting incensed. “You’re damn lucky you have

me around. I see a pattern, a trail, that leads I don’t know

where, but I have to follow the trail. That’s my job.”

“What has Europe got to do with it?” Doug was softening.

“Oops, thanks! I almost forgot.” Scott felt stupid for a second,

but he was without notes, he rationalized. “Kirk is my hacker

contact who I’ve been talking to over my computer. Gives me real

good stuff. He says there’s a conference of hackers in Amsterdam

next week. It’s a real private affair, and he got me an invite.

I think, no I know, there’s something bigger going down; somehow

all of these pieces tie together and I need to find out how.”

“That’s it?” Scott looked disappointed at Doug’s reaction.

“No, that’s not it! You know that the Expos has been publishing

bits and pieces of the same stuff we haven’t been publishing?”

Scott didn’t know which of his arguments made the case, but Doug

certainly reacted to the competitive threat. “How much?”

“How much what?” Scott wasn’t ready for the question.

“For Europe? How much play money will you need. You know I have

to sell this upstairs and they . . .”

“Airfare and a couple of nights plus food. That’s it. If you

want,” Scott readied the trump card he