‘Espionage? Is that what you’re saying, Emma?’
Emma nodded her head slowly.
DeMarco had never been near a spy in his life, at least not that he knew of. His normal assignments involved wayward politicians and greedy bureaucrats and being the middleman for deals that Mahoney didn’t want his fingerprints on. ‘You might be right,’ he said to Emma, ‘but you saw the security in that place.’
The shipyard’s perimeter was protected by tall fences topped with barbed wire; boats armed with machine guns patrolled the waterfront to keep watercraft – watercraft potentially filled with explosives – from approaching the drydocks or ships that were moored at the piers; armed guards manned entry gates and patrolled the grounds, and cameras were located in strategic spots. And these were just the security measures that were visible.
People entering the shipyard were carefully controlled. The employees, the ones who worked on the nuclear ships, had to have a security clearance and they wore badges that had their pictures on the front and a magnetic strip on the back, like the strip on the back of a credit card. To enter the shipyard, workers had to show their badges to guards stationed at the gates and swipe the badges through bar-code readers to further confirm they were allowed to enter. Miller, the shipyard security chief, had said that random searches of backpacks and lunch boxes and vehicles were performed at all times, and if the national or regional threat level increased, everybody was searched, from the shipyard commander’s wife on down to the guy who mopped the cafeteria floor.
‘Let me tell you something about security systems,’ Emma said to DeMarco. ‘Most systems – including the one at this shipyard – are primarily designed to keep the bad guys out. But once a worker has been vetted for a security clearance and given a badge, he’s in. And once he’s in, he’s trusted, and he has access to classified information, and most important, he knows how such information is protected.’ Emma paused to sip her tea, then added, ‘And espionage isn’t the only possibility.’
‘What else is there?’
‘Sabotage. There are currently four nuclear-powered submarines being overhauled at the shipyard. Sabotaging one of these ships would have significant repercussions. Not only the cost to repair whatever was damaged, but fleet operations would be disrupted if a vessel had to be taken out of service for a significant amount of time, and work on all the other ships being overhauled would be delayed.’
‘It’s kinda hard to picture Mulherin and Norton as spies. I mean these guys, they’re just—’
‘Remember Aldrich Ames?’ Emma asked.
‘The CIA guy?’ DeMarco said.
‘Right,’ Emma said. ‘Ames was probably the most damaging mole ever to penetrate a U.S. intelligence service. He was an alcoholic and poorly thought of by his coworkers. He was turned down for promotions, not all that bright, and openly flaunted the money he received from the Russians. In spite of all that, he fed CIA information to the KGB for almost ten years, and ten native Russians providing intelligence to the CIA died because of him. When you think about it, Mulherin and Norton bear a rather large resemblance to Aldrich Ames.’
‘What about Carmody?’
‘We don’t know anything about Phil Carmody,’ Emma said and her lips compressed into a stubborn line that said they soon would.
‘Hell, even if they are spies, according to that tall gal up in the training area, what’s-her-name, Shipley, it’d be pretty hard to sneak anything classified out of that place. You sure as hell can’t sneak one of those big damn books out of that vault.’
‘I know,’ Emma said.
They sat in silence a moment until DeMarco said, ‘If all those security systems don’t keep the spies out, how do they get ’em?’
‘The first opportunity,’ Emma said, ‘is the background checks performed when they issue a man or a woman a security clearance. That’s the time to see if they’re in financial trouble or susceptible to blackmail. But that’s not how spies are usually caught.’ Emma gestured toward the shipyard, the eastern end of which was visible from the teahouse. ‘All that security – the fences, the cameras, the safes, the cyber locks – that’s the physical perimeter that protects the facility and its secrets. But there’s a second perimeter that’s just as visible but not as apparent – a human perimeter. The employees. Employees like Dave Whitfield watching their coworkers, looking for odd behavior, looking for something that stinks, as poor Dave put it. It’s the second perimeter that catches the spies.’
Emma tipped her cup back and swallowed the remainder of her horrible, healthy tea. ‘There’s somebody I need to talk to,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you later.’
‘I need some help here, Bill,’ Emma said.
Bill Smith – his real name – worked for Emma’s old outfit. He was five foot nine, slim, had curly dark hair, and wore glasses with heavy black frames. He didn’t look like an international spy; he looked, to his great dismay, very much like the older brother of a guy who did a national TV commercial, one that had been running for more than three years. He and Emma were sitting in a Denny’s restaurant and Emma winced as Smith poured half a pint of raspberry syrup over his waffles.
‘I can’t do it, Emma,’ Smith said. ‘We’re more shorthanded right now than we were during the cold war.’ Before Emma could object, he held out a forkful of waffle, red syrup running down the handle of the fork. ‘Wanna bite?’ he said.
‘God, no,’ Emma said. ‘I’m telling you, Bill, these guys are up to something. I can feel it.’
‘Have you talked to the Feebies about this feeling of yours?’
‘Yes. The Bureau assigned two young agents to Whitfield’s murder. The one in charge is not only greener than grass, he’s handling a caseload that would break a donkey’s back. He thinks the likelihood of espionage is pretty far-fetched …’
‘Which you have to agree it is,’ Smith said.
‘… and he says he doesn’t have sufficient probable cause to get warrants to look into these guys’ finances or search their homes.’
‘Probable cause,’ Smith said and made a sound that was half snort, half laugh. In Bill Smith’s normal line of work, probable cause was rarely, if ever, an impediment.
‘And as for Whitfield’s murder, he says they’re starting to think that poor schizophrenic really did it.’
‘Well maybe he did do it.’
‘He didn’t,’ Emma said. Emma, as the old saying went, was sometimes wrong but never uncertain.
‘So what do you want?’ Smith said.
‘I want someone from research to check these people out, particularly Carmody. And I want to borrow a computer guy to tell me how they could trick the shipyard’s IT security. And I need a team, just a small one. I want these guys followed for a while and their houses searched. I particularly want Carmody’s place sniffed for explosives
