Alastair's jaw shut with a click and his nostrils flared. "Sorry," he said, in a clipped tone. "He's not in." He folded his hands, tension showing in his knuckles.
"Oh, well--" The man didn't seem to notice. "I guess I can talk to someone else about it. We need to defer your bills. I can't afford to pay when I'm not getting paid myself. Someone filling in for him?"
Alastair let out a careful breath. "Not yet."
"Well, he should at least put an out of office message on." The man went on, "if that's not too much to ask I--" His voice finally trailed off as he caught Dar's glare. "What?"
"Our sales team was in the towers during the attack." Dar reached over and put a hand on Alastair's shoulder. "Bob was there. He didn't make it."
The spokesman stared at them in shocked silence.
"I'm sorry," the woman next to him said. "We didn't know that."
"We're also missing some people." Dar responded quietly. "So if you're wondering, that's why we're here. We don't really give a rat's ass about the governor."
Alastair lifted his clasped hands and rested his head against them.
"Well hell," the spokesman muttered, after a pause. "Why didn't you say something? For Pete's sake people. Now I feel like a prize jackass."
Dar half shrugged. "You have a right to be here, asking us what you are asking us. You're our customers."
"Yeah, but..." The man exhaled. "Sorry. We're just so frustrated."
"So are we." Dar picked up the desk phone and dialed a number.
"This is Dar. Is Nan out there? Send her to the small conference room, please."
Now everyone looked uncomfortable, trying not to stare at Alastair's silent figure.
The door opened and Nan stuck her head in. "Ms. Roberts? You asked for --" She stopped, her eyes flicking from the customers to their CEO. "Is something wrong?"
"Could you please take these people to one of the reception areas? They need to discuss space requirements, maybe relocating to this area. See if Kerry can talk to them, get some details."
"Yes, ma'am." Nan responded instantly, opening the door the entire way. "Could you come with me please?"
The customers scrambled to their feet and headed quickly to the door."Thanks. We'll work it out," the spokesman muttered. They followed Nan out the door and she closed it behind them, leaving Dar and Alastair alone.
It was quiet for a few minutes. The air conditioning cycled on and off, and very far away, a siren was heard. Finally Alastair dropped his hands to the table and looked sideways at Dar, appearing as tired and as human as she'd ever seen him. "Sorry about that. "
"Don't be." Dar studied his face. "Kerry and I both lost it last night." She glanced away. "It's too damn much to keep dealing with."
Alastair sighed. "I want to do the right thing by everyone, but damned if I know what the right thing is right now." He tapped his thumbs on the desk. "That was a good idea, telling them to find other space by the way."
"They haven't been down there." Dar leaned back in her chair. "Or they'd have thought of it themselves."
A knock came at the door. Alastair sat back and hitched one knee up. "C'mon in."
The door opened, and the secretary poked her head in. "Sir, there's someone here to see you." She looked apologetic. "He's very insistent."
"Jesus." Alastair looked plaintively at the ceiling. "Sure. Bring him in. Dar, stick around, will ya?"
Dar merely kept her place, letting that be her answer as the door opened again and a tall man in dark khakis and a leather jacket entered. He crossed to the table and set down a briefcase leaning on the surface and looking right at Alastair.
Dar herself could have been a coffee machine in the corner for all the attention he gave her.
"McLean? My name is Jason Green. I work for the Department of Defense. I'm going to cut to the chase. Your people have been stonewalling me, and it's going to stop, right now. I want a list of your people in our facilities and I want it now."
"Why?" Alastair asked.
"What?"
"Why?" He repeated. "I know Hamilton's talked to you. You all have the information you need in your own systems. Why do you want mine?"
"You don't really need to know that," Green said.
'Sure I do." Alastair remained calm. "They're my employees, and I have a responsibility under the law to protect their information and their privacy."
"You don't get it do you?" Green sat down. "McLean, I'm not your enemy. I don't honestly want to be here jerking you around. You don't have a choice. You have no recourse. You can't ask me what I want this for because I've been given the authority to do whatever I need to do in order to get what I think is important."
"Regardless of the law?" Alastair asked.
"Law doesn't mean anything. You ever heard of martial law? We're in it. They just haven't announced it to the press." Green told him. "I could throw you in jail as a suspected terrorist and you'd spend years in some hole without contact with your family or anyone else. So do you and me a favor and just give me the damn list."
Alastair steepled his fingers and tapped the edges of his thumbs against his lips as he studied the man. Then he turned and glanced at Dar. "What do you think?"
Green turned, as though noticing Dar for the first time. His eyebrows rose.
Dar rested her hands on her knee. "I think if my father was here,he'd kill this guy." She remarked. "That's what I think."
"Who in the hell are you?" Green asked.
Dar ignored him pulling her laptop over. "But I'm not going to sit here and watch you get dragged off to some gulag on account of a database, Alastair." She opened the laptop. "I'll parse a file for them. They won't know what the hell to do with it. They won't be able to read the format, their program will spit out a pile of crap when it tries to ingest it and there's no information in there they don't already have, but what the hell." She rapidly logged in to the machine. "I'll give it to him and he can go weenie waggle somewhere else."
"Hmph." Alastair grunted. "Well, if you think that's a good idea--"
"Do you have something to put the file on?" Dar looked up at the man."Or do you want me to pour raw packets down your goddamned underwear?"
Green stared at her. "What?"
"Did you bring a portable hard drive?" Dar asked. "Or did you bring a truck to haul off the five hundred pounds of paper it'll take me to print out eighty thousand records?"
"W--"
"You came here and asked for something." Dar enunciated the words. "Do you have any idea in hell what it is you're even asking for?"
Green turned to Alastair. "I don't appreciate being spoken to in that way, McLean."
Alastair regarded him for a moment. "Too damned bad," he said."Answer the woman if you want your list. If not, hit the road. We're busy people."
The man sat back in his seat bracing his hands on the table. "Did you not listen to a word I said?"
"We did. We just don't care," Dar said bluntly. "All we've heard from you people since this whole damn thing happened is pointless demands and threats. You have no idea on the planet what to do with what you're asking for, and your people can't use the data I give you.
But what the hell. To get you out of here I'll go ahead and produce it,but you've got to cough up something to put it on or carry it away with, and do it fast."
"I'm sure you have something--" Green blurted, half standing."You can't expect me to--"
"No, I don't," Dar said. "We don't allow portable storage devices in our facilities. It's a security issue." She rattled some keys. "And these databases are protected by encryption, so I hope what you've got can handle it, not to mention interpret the structure. "