For Money or Mayhem

{9} Changing Tactics

The phone vibrating on my desk eventually woke me up. I snatched it up and answered before I looked to see who was calling.

“Hamar.”

“Where the hell are you? Your team meeting started ten minutes ago,” Darlene snapped at me.

“Damn!” The clock on my computer screen read 9:42. I’d only slept a couple of hours, but I’d forgotten entirely about the team meeting this morning. “Tell them I got caught in traffic. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

“Wait! Shower, shave, and dress right. It’s business casual on Fridays. Slacks, no ties. You can tell them I sent you home to change.”

“That’s better than traffic?”

“Trust me. Oh. And thanks for the flowers.”

“Okay. Half an hour. I’m moving.” The line went dead. I stripped and headed for the shower. I took just enough time to shave carefully. I was beginning to get the hang of it, but one bad move and I’d have no facial hair at all. I chose black slacks, a white Oxford shirt, and my gray sweater.

I skipped coffee and was at the office ready to enter the conference room in twenty-eight minutes. I was lucky with the bus. Before I was visible from the conference room windows, Arnie caught up with me and called me to a stop.

“I almost missed you,” he said as he pulled me to a stop.

“Sorry, I was rushing to the team meeting. I’m late.”

“I know. That’s why I’m here. Please don’t make a habit of this. You and I have been talking for the past hour. I’ll apologize for keeping you away from the meeting.”

“Darlene said she’d tell them she sent me home to change clothes.”

“That would have worked, but this is more plausible. I didn’t come into the office until after the meeting started, so none of them know we weren’t together off-site. Just listen closely and follow along.” I nodded and Arnie pulled the door open and pushed me through.

“You’re late,” Jen barked. She halted suddenly as Arnie pushed through behind me.

“My fault,” he said. “I intercepted Dag on the way in this morning and asked to go over his report with him. We got into a discussion about the viability of IPv6 as a security mechanism and lost track of time. If Darlene hadn’t buzzed us, we’d still be down at the Daybreak.” Now why had he suggested that scenario for our discussion? Was he the one who suggested the IP address as ‘IGotUrBak’ on all those forums? He either had my back this morning or he was changing the game and throwing me to the wolves. It made sense that he might have been the one sending me the message since he hadn’t shown up for the beer bash last night. I knew everyone else in the room was with me up until I headed home. I was reluctant to have Arnie as an ally.

“What’s IPv6 got to do with IPSec?” Ford asked.

“Ford, you know the answer to that question better than I do. I know you’ve read the spec. Is this another interview question?” I asked.

Ford grinned at me.

“For the benefit of the Neanderthals,” he said.

“Well, technically, the spec only provides for a few gazillion unique web addresses,” I said. “Part of the network discovery protocol spec emphasizes the use of IPSec to protect NDP messages, but there’s no instruction manual for using it. That means we could be vulnerable to a massive security hole if we don’t do some R&D in the next year to eighteen months. It’s part of a proposal I’m putting together to attend the IPSec Working Committee Conference coming up in July. Actually Ford, you suggested that in the first place if you recall.”

“I’ll leave you folks to it, since I’ve heard all this before. Sorry to have made Dag late for your team meeting.”

When Arnie walked out the door, all eyes turned back to me and they started bombarding me with questions. I professed that I’d just come across this information and that I’d been up a good bit of the night exploring an IPv6 site. I watched for reactions to that comment, but no one showed a sign of being complicit. I commented about how orderly everything seemed, but how difficult it was to protect with so many IPv4 portals connecting into it. When we broke up the meeting, it was noon and I’d talked myself hoarse. It was a good thing I’d spent so much time exploring that site last night or I wouldn’t have known a thing about what I was talking about. Of course, if I hadn’t been up all night trying to break into the site in the first place, I wouldn’t have slept late and been late for the meeting.

I went to the cafeteria for lunch and when I sat to eat, Jen pulled up a chair and sat across from me.

“Do you mind?” she asked pleasantly.

“No. Please, have a seat.”

“That was a nice bit of work this morning. I fail to see how it’s going to be relevant, though,” she started in on me. What’s her problem? “We aren’t going to do that R&D here. They’ll get around to doing it in Redmond or Silicon Valley and we’ll buy a package off the shelf. But, it was still a great way to distract everyone from what you’re really doing.”

“Why does everyone assume I’m not here to do the job I was hired for?”

“Part of this team’s charter is subterfuge. We have projects we work on and show results to each other, but no one on the team is focused on our team. Everyone’s up to something.”

“Is that official or your personal observation?” I asked. “As the team lead isn’t guiding the team your responsibility?”

“My responsibility is to give the team a reason to exist. I have no idea what any of them are really doing.”

“Isn’t that a little counter-productive?” I looked at her curiously. We hadn’t had much one-on-one time since I got here. Last night she’d been affable, but just part of a group. Today she wore her version of business casual, which was a simple skirt that fell just below her knees and a silk blouse with a black camisole keeping her from exposing more than a business-acceptable amount of cleavage. It was quite an appealing look.

“It could be, but I’m inclined to trust my boss on this one. We really do have security problems and pitting our best and brightest minds against each other is one way of pushing them to the limits.” She seemed to be assessing me in much the same way. “You know, by the way, that the size tag is still running down your left pants leg?”

I looked down. I hadn’t even seen the tag. I wondered if there was one on the other pair I’d bought as well. I stripped the transparent, sticky strip off the leg and folded it up on my tray.

“So now I at least know you wear a 34x36 pair of slacks. Am I going to have to figure out everything else about you the hard way?”

“Why don’t you start with what you know and then ask what you want to know?” I asked. “If I can help you, I will.”

“Okay. Why did Arnie hire a private investigator?”

Whoa! That was too off the wall to be a random guess.

“What makes you think I’m a P.I.?”

“I’m pretty good at searching for information. I searched state records for your name and discovered your P.I. license.”

“You’re a pretty good hacker then, too,” I said. “Those records aren’t open to the public.”

“I have my ways.”

“Then suffice it to say that anything I’m hired to do as a private investigator is covered under client privilege and I can’t say anything about it to anyone, including you.”

“Okay. So maybe you could tell me what kind of work you do in your private investigation business so that I will know if I ever need someone,” she asked coyly. I’d almost say she was flirting, but perhaps she was just trying to lighten up the mood a little.

“Mostly, I fix computers,” I said, trying to make it sound as boring as possible. “I’m also an expert, I suppose, on data recovery. That could either be erased files or damaged media.”

“Sounds like a waste of your skills. Who is Lars Anderson?”

“You can’t hold an agency license until you have three years of experience in this state. Lars owns the investigative agency that holds my license. He’s an old friend from my Navy days.” I felt confident in mentioning the Navy since that was on my resume and I was sure she’d read it.

“Why do you need a P.I. license to recover hard drives?”

“I don’t, technically. But it gives me latitude to handle investigative cases. Let’s say you suspect your husband…”

“I’m not married.” That came out rather quickly. She was looking at me intently. I wasn’t going to bite.

“Let’s say a married woman suspects her husband of hiding assets. In divorce court, she might demand the record of his private email. When the court issues a civil warrant, she discovers the email has all been erased. Her attorney might bring me the computer and ask me to recover the deleted email.” I saw her nodding. “It’s part of digital forensic science and has very specific practices that have to be adhered to. Since I would be handling legal evidence, I need to be licensed and bonded.”

“Fascinating,” she smiled. “I could just listen to you talk about digital forensics all day.” I could hear the sarcasm in her voice. I knew my description didn’t impress her, but I wasn’t prepared for what came next. “Why don’t we continue the discussion over dinner tonight?”

Damn!

“Um…” I couldn’t believe I was almost tongue-tied, but this was definitely going no further. “Do you suppose any of the guys on the team want to ask me out, too? I mean, both women have. It would only be fair for the men to have a chance, too.” She went scarlet.

“It was just a friendly invitation,” she said coldly. “I think we’ve covered everything we need to for our one-on-one today, so there’s no need to come by my office this afternoon. It’s such a nice day, I think I’ll knock off and start my weekend early. See you Monday.”

She was gone. I was relieved. I didn’t even have to tell her I had a date tonight.

With my lack of sleep for the past two days, the idea of knocking off early was appealing. I headed back to my office and stopped to thank Darlene for covering for me this morning. Her office had enough flowers in it to be a funeral parlor.

“Darlene? Are you in there?”

“Hi Dag. Thank you for the flowers.”

“You’re welcome, but I didn’t send all these.”

“I know. Yours got here first thing this morning. I picked them up at reception on my way in,” she said. “Just about noon, all the others arrived. One from Allen, one from Don, one from Ford, one from Phil, and even one from Jen. Wasn’t that nice of her? Of course, the fact that I paraded your flowers around the office before your meeting this morning, telling everyone how nice you were to have remembered Administrative Professionals Day, might have had something to do with inspiring everyone else. I don’t think anyone else had a clue.”

“What about Arnie? Didn’t he send you flowers?”

“Oh no. I just had a card from him… a little cash card kind of thing to use at Nordstrom.” She smiled and I could see exactly how devious a person she was. “This day almost makes putting up with their crap the rest of the year worthwhile.” She was definitely being sarcastic. She even rolled her eyes in a way that reminded me of Cali and Mel.

“I’ll try to make sure you are shown proper appreciation for all the crap I throw at you. I really do appreciate you running interference. Say, did Arnie tell you the new direction my research is going? I’m afraid it might mean some extra work for you,” I said, thinking of all the new security stuff we came up with on the fly.

“Yes. Fortunately, I just make the reports look good. He has to do the research.”

“You mean I just caused more work for him?”

“Don’t worry, he loves it. It gives him something to look forward to when he’s in executive staff meetings and poring over spreadsheets,” she paused and looked up at me. “Nice sweater, by the way. Don’t you need to go get ready for your big date tonight?” It was only two in the afternoon, but if I could get a nap before faculty lounge, the whole evening would be better.

“I was just stopping to tell you I was taking off for the rest of the day. Frankly, I do some of my best work at night, which was why I overslept this morning.”

“Well, if you go home and nap, set an alarm so you’ll wake up in time for your date.” She waved at me. “Go on!”

I had used the excuse of having a date tonight to such good effect, that I was even beginning to think of the outing with Andi, Mel, and Cali as a date.

I needed to get a handle on that. It was just a thank you for picking up the girls.

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