Dark Target by David DeBatto Read Free Book Online Page B

never know if what you’re doing is being duplicated and sent out for review. It’s not a secret. Everyone who works
     here knows it’s part of the deal. Cheryl Escavedo certainly knew.”
    “Reviewed where?”
    “That’s automated, too, initially, but the program is rather sophisticated. The program is designed to filter for a variety
     of keywords and triggers. If, for example, you were writing a letter to the Russian embassy, not that anyone here would be
     so stupid, but if you were, that would trigger full surveillance and oversight by the security office.”
    “E-mail goes in and out?” DeLuca asked.
    “It does, but nothing gets in or out without being fully scrutinized and analyzed first.”
    “By human beings or computers?”
    “Both,” Huston said. “The computers suggest what to look at. We have the most secure communications in the world, Mr. DeLuca.”
    “And this is all done on your computers in-house?” DeLuca asked. “No exceptions?”
    “Command heads can override it,” Huston said. “But that’s only four people.”
    “General Koenig?” Huston nodded.
    “It was General Koenig’s team that designed the system,” Huston added.
    “Does he look over your shoulder much?” DeLuca asked. “How much of his time does he spend in The Mountain and how much in
     building A?”
    Huston had to think.
    “I’d guess maybe 50 percent in each,” Huston said. “But I’m not all that familiar with the general’s schedule. And no, he
     does not look over my shoulder. The general is an excellent manager and part of that is being an able delegater. He expects
     a great deal from his people and he gets it.”
    DeLuca wondered what made Huston so protective of Koenig. Such protective loyalty wasn’t so unusual in the Army, particularly
     among ass suckers and sycophants.
    “So this system flagged Cheryl Escavedo’s keystrokes… ?”
    “Not precisely,” Huston said. “In fact, we were running a system challenge, not unlike the exercise going on right now. Operation
     Holdfast, it was called, testing for structural failure and the back-up protocols that kick in when the firewall is either
     down or breached.”
    “When was this?” DeLuca asked.
    “November 9, between 0436 and 0445 hours.”
    “Testing the night shift?”
    “There’s no such thing as a night shift in The Mountain,” Huston said. “After you’re inside for more than forty-eight hours,
     you lose track of time. We have to force people to take downtime or to sleep because the body’s sidereal mechanisms need photoperiodicity
     to operate normally. At any rate, what I was beginning to say was that for a brief period of time, between when the system
     was down and before the back-up protocols kicked in, we were vulnerable.”
    “For how long?”
    “I’d say no more than a minute,” Huston said. “And even then, we looked pretty close at everything that happened during that
     minute.”
    “This was when she copied the files?”
    “It was the most likely opportunity,” Huston said. “Maybe the only one. We didn’t catch it until months later, when analysts
     at NSA were reviewing the data from Holdfast and noticed that the clock on one of the computers had reset itself. Nobody made
     much of it until someone looking for anomalies noticed the clock had reset itself by months rather than minutes. What we think
     happened was that Sergeant Escavedo changed the clock on her computer, during that sixty-second window of opportunity, copied
     the files to either diskettes or CDs, probably CDs, but backdated that information so that the surveillance program wouldn’t
     search for it when it came back on line—why look where you think you’ve already looked?”
    “Backdated to when?”
    “To 0437 hours, May 9,” Huston said. “Six months to the day, hour, and one minute more, which is how long the system archives
     information before making the decision what to keep and what to delete, and this would have been something