components. The big books are reactor and steam plant manuals.’
DeMarco remembered what Dave Whitfield had said: the reactor plant manuals told you how the ships’ reactors worked.
Emma looked at the vault, then did a slow turn to take in the rest of the training complex. To Shipley, she said, ‘You have a lot of classified information in this facility, don’t you?’
‘Well, sure,’ Shipley said. ‘Our engineers are trained primarily on three different classes of ships: Nimitz class aircraft carriers, Trident submarines, and Los Angeles class attack submarines. We can’t go running all around the shipyard every time we have to prepare a class or teach a course.’
‘I know,’ Emma said. ‘But there’s so much information here, all in one place.’ Before Shipley could respond, Emma said, ‘Are the manuals, those reactor plant manuals, are they on CDs?’
Miller hesitated. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘It’s the most efficient way to update them when they’re revised.’
‘CREM,’ Emma said.
It had sounded to DeMarco like Emma was either clearing her throat or uttering a heretofore unknown curse word.
‘What did you say?’ DeMarco said.
‘CREM. They have CREM,’ Emma said. Now the word sounded like a sexually transmitted disease. ‘Controlled removable electronic media. In other words, CDs and floppy discs that contain classified information. CDs that can be stolen and copied and e-mailed. CREM is a security officer’s nightmare, isn’t it, Mr Miller?’
Miller’s mouth took a hard set, bristling at Emma’s comment. ‘We control our classified material tighter than anybody in the business, lady,’ he said. ‘Particularly since Los Alamos.’
In July 2004, Emma explained to DeMarco later, two classified CDs were reported missing at the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Weapons Physics Directorate – a place that designs and experiments with nuclear bombs. This was the same facility that the Chinese had supposedly infiltrated in the 1990s, making off with design information related to thermonuclear warheads. The CDs lost at Los Alamos in 2004 may simply have been misplaced – stuck in the wrong file drawer or safe – or accidentally destroyed. Subsequent investigations showed that the people at the laboratory, most of them egghead scientists with skyscraper IQs, were incredibly absentminded when it came to controlling classified material. Or maybe the CDs weren’t lost or destroyed – maybe they were mailed to North Korea or Iran or some other equally unfriendly party.
Because of what had happened at Los Alamos, the shipyard was ultracareful when it came to removable media. Miller explained that when an individual checked out a classified CD from the vault, the number of the CD was recorded – just like when you checked out a book from the library – and at the end of the day, the CD had to be returned to the vault. An inventory was done every day to make sure all the CDs had been returned – and if one was found missing, Miller’s security force went to high alert. The problem was CDs could be copied and their contents e-mailed. When Emma said this, both Miller and Shipley responded immediately.
‘No way,’ they said, simultaneously. They explained that the shipyard’s computers were designed to prevent copying classified CDs and the shipyard’s firewall prevented classified material from being e-mailed out of the yard.
‘Humph,’ was Emma’s response. ‘And Mulherin and Norton, I suppose they have access to these classified CDs?’
‘Yes,’ Shipley said.
‘And do they use your computers or their own?’
‘You can’t bring personal computers into the yard,’ Shipley said. ‘So their contract specified that they be given a work space here in the training facility and computers and phones. You saw their office. They needed the computers because a lot of the training materials – class outlines, course materials, exams – are on CDs or a secure network. But like I said, you can’t burn copies of classified CDs on our computers.’
‘I see,’ Emma said.
Shipley shook her head and said, ‘Mulherin and Norton are a couple of eight balls. I wouldn’t hire them to clean my blackboards. Why anybody would pay these guys to review my training program is beyond me.’
‘You know Dave Whitfield thought there was something, ah, funny about the work Mulherin and Norton were doing,’ DeMarco said. He didn’t want to use the word ‘fraudulent.’
‘Yeah, I know,’ Shipley said. ‘He complained to me about it.’ She hesitated, then added, ‘Look, I think this review Carmody’s doing is a waste of time, and I’ve already told you what I think of Mulherin and Norton, but there isn’t anything illegal going on like Dave seemed to think. He was upset because these guys were making more money than he was, but … well, that’s just the way Dave was.’
‘What about Carmody?’ Emma asked. ‘Does he spend much time here?’
‘No,’ Shipley said. ‘He comes up here once in a while – to check on Norton and Mulherin, I guess – but he spends most of his time on the subs.’
‘Doing what?’ Emma said.
‘Part of the training is the book stuff,’ Shipley said, ‘which we do here, and part is shipboard. Carmody is supposedly watching the shipboard training, but my guys say that he seems to spend most of his time just bullshitting with the sailors.’
‘But he’s on board the submarines a lot,’ Emma said. ‘On his own.’
‘Yeah,’ Shipley said. ‘Is there a problem with that?’
Emma led DeMarco to a café on Bremerton’s waterfront. The place smelled of incense and flowers and served fifty varieties of herbal tea. The cheerful lady who ran the café sported John Lennon-style wire-rim glasses and had straight, gray hair that reached the small of her back. She wore what DeMarco thought of as a granny dress, a long shapeless thing as glamorous as a flour sack that touched the tops of her Birkenstock sandals. DeMarco had thought that hippies were extinct, but apparently not.
Emma ordered an exotic tea, something with ginseng in it. DeMarco asked for coffee, then a Coke, then a plain old Lipton’s and each time was informed by the woman – not only a hippie but a health Nazi – that she didn’t stock such beverages. He settled for a glass of water; the happy Nazi put a slice of lemon in it.
They took seats near a window where they could see the ferry terminal and watch the jumbo ferries from Seattle dock at the terminal in Bremerton.
‘I think Whitfield may have been right about Mulherin and Norton,’ Emma said.
‘That they’re committing some kind of fraud?’
‘Not fraud,’ Emma said. ‘Something else.’
‘What else? What are you talking about?’
‘Let’s look at everything Dave Whitfield said from a different perspective. He said Mulherin and Norton, two guys in debt, suddenly retire early and come into a lot of money and start buying things.
