Page 26 of A More Perfect Union

She wasn’t judging.If she were forced to live a life so confined by rules and authority, sheimagined she’d eventually succumb to making decisions based on pure pleasure aswell. The students at McNair might be professional soldiers like Julia said,but they were probably still much like any other college students—academicallysmart, but stupid when it came to thinking about how one dumb decision at aparty might pop up during a job interview years down the road and derail theirwhole career. Today’s soldiers had likely been lulled into a false sense ofwell-being with troops pulling out of Iraq and both houses of Congressinsisting they didn’t want to get involved in Syria. The students likely viewedtheir time at McNair as a boondoggle complete with drinking games and expensivehookers. She, however, didn’t have that luxury, and picked up the phone tocheck in with the office.

“Rook, where have youbeen? Eric’s been looking everywhere. He’s got some news about Diamond Credit.”

“Put him through.”Rook listened carefully, stopping Eric’s report only to interject a few pointedquestions. When he finished, she gave him instructions and then directed Georgeto drive her to Diamond Credit’s headquarters. “This won’t take too long,” shetold him when he pulled up to the building. “Grab us some lunch, and I’ll textyou when I’m done.”

Rook punched thebutton for the twentieth floor of the sleek steel and glass building whereMelissa Mendoza, the CEO of Diamond Credit, and all the other C-Suite Diamondexecs had their offices. The receptionist didn’t recognize her, but whenMendoza’s assistant came out to the plush, top floor lobby to see who wastrying to get in to see her boss without an appointment, Rook was ushereddirectly back to Mendoza’s office.

Melissa looked upfrom her desk as Rook strode into her office and called out, “Tell me you’rehere because you have some good news.”

Melissa was a crisp,no-nonsense woman, which was exactly why Rook had taken her company on as aclient. She didn’t waste a lot of her time, she gave Rook a wide berth to doher job, and she paid well. Rook liked her and wished she was here to giveMelissa what she wanted. “I have news. Let’s leave it at that for now. How fastcan you get your CIO and CFO in here?” Melissa answered by pressing a button onher phone and instructing her assistant to interrupt whatever the two otherexecs were doing and get them to her office, pronto. She leaned back in herchair. “Any chance I get a preview of what you’re about to say?”

Rook shook her head,instead fishing out her phone and initiating a FaceTime call with Eric. Whenhis face appeared on her phone, she showed it to Melissa. “This is my chiefinformation officer, Eric Pryor. He’s been working to try and discover thesource of the hacking.”

“I trust our ITdepartment has been helpful,” Melissa said.

“In a manner ofspeaking,” Eric said. “I haven’t actually talked to any of them.”

Melissa shot Rook awhat the hell look, and she held up a hand. “I asked Eric to employ somespecial methods.” They both looked up at the sound of a knock on the door.“Let’s wait to let him describe it once we have the others in the room,” Rooksaid.

Two men strode in andMelissa introduced Mike Anders, chief financial officer for Diamond, and HarveyLinus, the chief information officer. After a few minutes of small talk, Rookturned the show back over to Eric. “Tell the group what I asked you to do andwhat you found.”

“You asked me tocheck for any backdoors to the system.” Eric took a moment to explain abackdoor, using the kind of layman terms that Rook preferred and then describedhow he’d conducted his search. “I found two methods a hacker could use to getinto the area of the servers that house your customers’ sensitive information.One appeared to have been written into the system on purpose to allow for dataretrieval in the event of an accidental system lockout.”

“And the other?” Rookprompted him.

“The other was abreach. The information that was released last week came from the breach.”

Melissa leaned acrossher desk. “Linus, did you know about either of these?”

The CIO shifted inhis seat. “I knew about the built-in backdoor. The other access point is newsto me.”

“Well, that’s justgreat,” Melissa sighed. “Why didn’t the hacker just go in the backdoor that wasalready set up? Seems like it would be easier to take the path of leastresistance.”

“Good point,” Rooksaid. “Eric, any theories?”

“Actually, yes. Onereason might have been to avoid leaving tracks.”

“I don’t understand.If they are accessing through a path that already exists, how would they leavetracks?”

“I guess the bestcomparison I can think of is those TV crime shows where the person who lives inthe house jimmies the window from the inside, forgetting that the burglar wouldhave jimmied it from the outside. If there was a burglar, that is.”

“You’re saying thiswas an inside job?”

“I’m saying that eventhough there are two access points to reach the data, I believe that data wasonly transferred via the breach, but that’s not enough information, on its own,for me to conclude whether the breach came from someone inside the firm or anoutside hacker.”

Rook heard the cluesloud and clear, but she waited for Melissa to home in on exactly what Eric wasimplying. It didn’t take long. “But you have reached a conclusion, haven’tyou?” Melissa asked. “You have other information, right?”

They all stared atthe screen on Rook’s phone and Eric stared back, seemingly unfazed by theinformation he was about to impart. Even Rook, who already had a heads up aboutwhat he would say, was on pins and needles waiting for Eric’s conclusion.Finally, he cleared his throat and started talking.

“Your system isvulnerable to outside hacking and there are a number of safeguards you can makethat I’d be happy to share with you. But in this particular instance, I believethis was an inside job.”

Linus slammed a handon the arm of his chair. “Dammit, Melissa. I would’ve appreciated theopportunity to be part of this investigation. If we need to, we’ll polygraphthe entire department, but next time I demand to be involved from the outset.”

Before Melissa couldrespond, Rook broke in. “Hang on a minute. I don’t think Eric was finished.Eric, you want to tell them how you arrived at your conclusion?”

“Sure, Rook. It waspretty simple, really. Once I established that someone was trying to throw meoff their tail, I figured I would look at who had the most to gain from thedata breach.”

“You mean someonefrom my department sold the information?” Linus asked.

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