True, before his time several blunders had been made during overzealous investigations against supposed computer crimes. Most infamous was the Secret Service raid on a gaming company in Texas, that had been botched every way imaginable, from bogus charges to incorrectly filed paperwork, which had generated a lot of bad press. That sort of thing happened when technologically illiterate agents tried to investigate a high-tech case.
Craig specialized in that kind of work, though. It took a smart agent to catch a smart bad guy. Like in this case. And NanoWare was no innocent bystander.
Operatives in Malaysia and Singapore had traced bootleg microprocessor chips that had been flooding the market. The path led through several sham corporations, directly back to the Silicon Valley company NanoWare.
“Here, sir,” Jackson, ahead, pointed to a double airlock door with a flashing light mounted outside. Through large, thick observation windows in the hall Craig could watch people in white garments, masks, and hair nets moving around cabinets of glittering microchip fabrication apparatus.
“Okay, let’s go inside,” Craig said, stepping up to the airlock door that led into the changing room. “I want you to suit up for the clean room. Everything by the book. Do minimal damage. Our primary objective is to secure this facility, not to damage it.”
They stepped to the door to the outer clean room, walking across a gray mat of stickum to pull away all the loose dust from the soles of their shoes. They passed into the changing area and rummaged in the cubicles for spare outfits. A bin of dirty uniforms sat beside a sink. Wooden benches lined the walls near blue metal lockers. Racks of folded white jumpsuits stood next to a box full of nylon hair nets and bins of thin plastic booties marked small, medium, and large.
“Let’s make it quick. They may have seen us.”
Craig put on facemask, adjusting the elastic at the back of his head and snugged on a hairnet. He stepped into a white Tyvek jumpsuit and grabbed flimsy booties that billowed around his black street shoes. He smelled clean, new fabric and flat filtered air, cold from the increased air conditioning.
Before sealing the velcro straps on the jumpsuit, Craig took out his badge wallet and small camera and stuck them into one of the deep external pockets. He pulled on rubber surgical gloves from an open box, snapping the thin membrane against his wrist. Finished, the four FBI agents gave each other a cursory checkover. “Good enough,” Craig said. “Let’s move.”
They passed through the second airlock door together. Craig took the point; Goldfarb and Jackson fanned out. Holding his badge high, Craig raised his voice — firm, businesslike, no-nonsense.
“May I have your attention please? We’re with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. All operations must cease immediately. Do not touch anything. Do not shut down any processes or equipment. We want everything nice and clean, just the way it is.”
A storm of voices swirled around him in several different languages. He noticed for the first time the dark almond eyes behind many of the face masks, saw Korean and Vietnamese workers, probably at minimum wage, doing sophisticated high-tech labor.
“Goldfarb and DeLong, secure the lab. Jackson, round all those people up by the desk. I’m going to start taking pictures, get an inventory.”
As confusion bubble around him, Craig snapped a series of quick shots with the small camera, fumbling with the button through the rubber gloves. Then he set to work on the part that most interested him, the large x-ray lithographic chip-imprinting apparatus. The three-foot by three-foot negatives were used to burn patterns upon the coated sapphire wafers, thin circular disks that looked like CDs. The process exposed incredibly reduced and intricate electronic circuits that would then be etched. Once imprinted, the thin wafers were chopped into small rectangles, individual chips.
Craig spread out the set of four overlarge negatives on a light table rigged next to a high-resolution x-ray camera. He flicked on the table and picked up a loop the size of a postage stamp. As the white fluorescent light flooded beneath the negative, he squinted and scanned down the complex labyrinth of millions of circuit paths.
He ran his pen along one edge, counting grid lines over, searching for the spot the original PanTech designer had told him to look for, the small signature of his own design — a tiny circuit loop connecting nothing, difficult to find and impossible to deny. Like the tiny intentional mistakes on copyrighted maps, this signature proved the identity of the original designer.
Craig found it without much difficulty, proving that this set of masks had been stolen from NanoWare’s primary competitor. Then the negatives had been altered — sabotaged — to make the bootleg chips malfunction frequently.
“Dead to rights,” Craig said, snapped off the light table, and rolled up the negatives. He raised his voice, calling attention to himself.
“Goldfarb, Jackson, DeLong, you all saw me take this set of negatives out of their apparatus.” Craig rolled up the large dark sheets, placing an IMPOUNDED sticker on the side.
The inner door of the clean room burst open. A dark powerhouse of a woman barged in without bothering to put on the entire clean-room outfit. Craig paused only a moment, noting to himself that with all of NanoWare’s difficulties, a contaminated clean-room environment was one of the most minor things the company had to worry about right now.
The woman was short, stocky, and filled with an energy born from contained fury. She had dark Indian skin and bright flashing eyes under glossy black hair cut short like a man’s. “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Craig refused to be intimidated, though, standing up and meeting the brunt of her anger. “Are you Ms. Ompadhe?” Craig said and removed all the appropriate documentation one piece at a time. “I’m Craig Kreident from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. These are my agents. This is my search warrant. I think you’ll find everything is in order.” He narrowed his gray eyes and tapped his finger against the rolled up lithographic negatives.
“What—” she started to say, but Craig decided he didn’t want to let her finish a sentence.
“Alleged bootlegged chips, stolen circuit design, industrial sabotage, market fixing. I could probably go on.” He held up his hand again before she could say anything. “I know you’re probably going to say you don’t know anything about this, Ms. Ompadhe. For your sake, I hope that’s true. But for the moment I would advise you not to say anything at all. Unless you’d care for us to read you your Miranda rights here and now?” He stared her down. Finally Ompadhe flinched and followed his advice, saying nothing.
“When is Mr. Skraling supposed to be back?” Craig asked. “We have a subpoena for him.”
Ompadhe flinched, stared at the floor, then looked up to meet the eyes of all of the non-English-speaking line workers herded into an open area beside one of the workstations.
She looked squarely at Craig. “He should be on a plane right now, flying back from Bermuda. We expect him to come in to San Francisco International late tonight, and he plans to be back at work tomorrow. When I see him, I’ll tell him you’re expecting him.”
“Thank you,” Craig said with false levity, “but I think I’d rather you gave me his flight number. We’d prefer to meet him at the airport directly. Saves time.”