Shortly after the Singh interview, they met the research staff, shook hands with Carson Yampolsky. A fish out of water, Dawit thought. Then Chen used the script he’d memorized as the words were not the sort he would ever use: “I make no bones about it, ladies and gentlemen, we’re all at risk of the leak of classified information and I’m not at liberty to tell you what.” No lab data was to be taken home, nothing hand-carried ever again off the premises.
Now the fish out of water was all shook up. Carsky, baby, now you’ve got Law Enforcement Homeland Security all sticking their beaks into a place that till recently no one knew about and no one cared about. He was the Director, sure, but it’s not like he handled classified information himself. And if the foreigners did? That was Rennie’s fault. She was supposed to monitor all that. They were scientists and he wasn’t and what was he supposed to do now the FBI was sniffing around the science? I mean scientists talk to each other. They communicate. They share. International collaboration is the norm—or was, and so no surprise they took a rather expansive view of what was allowed. Petty minds devise petty restrictions so—though he’ll have to check with Rennie on that—at the Institute, he thought, we probably ignored them. But now we’ve got the New Normal.
Rennie Mulcahy turned over the list of private clients, the DIY files. Almost too cooperative, too eager to do so, Dawit thought. She’s showing off, thought Chen, bragging how it was her idea.
When they returned a second time and asked to see Emine Albaz, she was somewhere she should not have been allowed to be.