After rounding a corner, Grimes entered the cavernous nerve center of the DIA. The room was a maze of cubicles, most of which were already occupied by the early arrivers. Three of the room’s walls were adorned with a special soundproof buffer. The fourth was a floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the Potomac. Grimes, a senior officer, was fortunate to occupy a cubicle that looked out over the river.
As he neared his seat, the red-haired girl in the cubicle next to his leaned back and looked at him. “Good morning, Russ!”
“Morning, Claudia,” he replied with a nod.
“Sorry I can’t talk right now,” she said in a raised voice, turning back to her computer. “Too much work.”
As usual, her voice was irritatingly loud, the product of her long-standing iPod addiction. Grimes had seriously wondered if she ever turned the thing off. He’d once joked to colleagues that she’d had the buds surgically attached to her ear canal.
Grimes looked across the river before sitting down. A Boeing 777 descended gracefully toward the tarmac at Reagan National, its wings moving gently back and forth. The big bird eventually settled on the runway, its rear wheels hitting with a jolt, followed by the front. Even from this distance, he could see the wing flaps slowing the plane as it cruised toward the terminal.
He smiled. It never got old.
Grimes finally turned, plunked down in his seat, and unlocked his screen saver. As he waited for the system to go through its protocols, he took another sip of coffee and thought about the new task he’d been assigned. It was something he’d never done before, and he was only doing it now because the two people usually responsible for it were both on vacation. He didn’t anticipate any problems though. The software would do most of the work for him.
Grimes double-clicked on the program icon. It was called Sweeper, the DIA’s newest tool in what Grimes referred to as World War III, the battle for global electronic supremacy. Sweeper was the most powerful etool of its kind, able to scan email and other communications for suspicious keywords or contacts. What separated it from similar software was its ability to find links between literally trillions of pieces of information, unwinding confusing trails that would take thousands of man-hours if attempted manually.
A login screen appeared, and Grimes entered his sixteen-digit password and answered three random security questions. His fingers moved without hesitation, snapping across the keys like a concert pianist.
His task was to search through all communications of individuals associated with hundreds of ongoing operations throughout the US intelligence community. The purpose was two-fold: make sure no one associated with those missions was working for the enemy, and make sure the enemy hadn’t somehow penetrated communications networks. The ultimate goal was to ensure the integrity of each mission.
The manual Grimes had read the night before recommended analyzing a half dozen operations at a time, so Grimes checked off the first six that came up and pressed Start. A box appeared, and inside it a series of numbers began to spin, indicating the amount of data being processed. Simultaneously, a green bar filled from left to right.
While Sweeper did its work, Grimes grabbed his Nationals cup and swiveled around in his chair. The early-morning sun reflected off of the blue waters of the Potomac. Several outboards raced by along the near shore, while a tourist cruise boat chugged in the opposite direction.
He took a long sip of coffee and allowed his mind to chew over the events from the night before. How much longer would he be single? A part of him enjoyed the dating game, the excitement of meeting new women, but the years seemed to be passing at hypersonic speed now. And the older he got, the smaller the pool of potential mates. In his midtwenties he’d laughed at his parents’ concern that he wasn’t involved in a serious relationship. But he wasn’t laughing anymore. In fact, while he was reluctant to admit it, he’d truly been hoping that Rachel would turn out to be more than a pretty face.
A loud ding caused Grimes to stiffen. It was too early for Sweeper to have finished. Based on everything he’d read, an analysis of six operations should take anywhere from fifteen to twenty minutes.
He spun his chair around and scooted closer to the monitor. A box had appeared in the center of the screen. Leaning closer, he read the information displayed.
Mission Name: Operation Green Beacon
Location: South America
Mission Objective: Classified — Access Denied
Agency: Classified — Access Denied
Contact: Director of the CIA
Comments: Issues of Concern Detected
Operation Green Beacon? He wasn’t familiar with it, but that wasn’t surprising. What was surprising was that it had denied him access to any further information. Grimes had the second-highest level of clearance in the government. Theoretically the only missions he didn’t have clearance for were ones that could only be seen by fewer than five eyes, including the President and the DNI. Those were the blackest of black ops. Soot black, he called them.
Grimes clicked on Issues of Concern Detected. His cursor transitioned to an hourglass as the software retrieved the requested information. Seconds later, an email account was referenced on the screen. He glanced at the details displayed. The account seemed innocuous enough, having been established using a major ISP right here in the US. So far nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
He leaned forward and double-clicked on the account, which he assumed was owned by someone on the Operation Green Beacon team. The name had been blacked out to protect their identity.
Strangely, there were only twenty or so emails in the Inbox. That alone was a red flag. Who kept their Inbox that clean? As he examined the subject lines, he realized that most, if not all, of the messages were spam. An advertisement for cheap sexual performance pills, another peddling a scheme to make a thousand dollars a day working out of your home.
The absence of any meaningful emails did seem a bit suspicious, but was that the only reason it had been flagged? Was there something else? And then it hit him. How could he have forgotten Sweeper’s most important feature? Grimes used his cursor to access a drop-down menu at the top of the screen. He looked at the various choices and selected Highlight Suspect Items. A flash of red appeared immediately on the left side of the screen.
The draft folder.
When he opened it up, there was one email. He double-clicked on it. Empty.
Grimes smiled. It was one of the oldest tricks in the book, and still one of the most effective. It was a way of communicating without having to send messages across the Internet, where they could be snatched up by law enforcement or the intelligence community. Instead, two or more parties would establish an email account. All parties would have the login information and could access the account from anywhere in the world. If one member of the group wanted to communicate something, he or she would login and create an email. Then, instead of sending it, they would simply save the email into the draft folder. That allowed others to sign in and read the same message at their convenience. Once the message was read by all parties, it would be deleted.
So Sweeper had found the suspicious email in the draft folder, but that didn’t necessarily mean there was malevolent intent. Every day thousands of people across the planet started emails only to be interrupted before they could actually send the message.
So how should he proceed? Grimes tapped his teeth with a pen, sifting through ideas like a data processor.
Bingo.