August 12, 2009.
At 1:30 p.m., Rajive received a call from Atiq urgently asking him and Alan to come back to Ubatoo. Atiq had more information to share—important information. It had been a long night for every-one—Stephen, Atiq, and Molly, as well as Rajive and Alan. Since the time Atiq had left, Rajive and Alan had spent hours reviewing notes, debriefing the agents who had scoured ACCL and interviewed its personnel, and fending off reporters that had already whiffed the scent of a blood orgy in the making.
Earlier this morning, after learning about Molly’s encounters from the agents at ACCL, Rajive had gone through the expected panic-stricken moments in front of Alan—blaming himself mercilessly for not understanding what could be done with a list of books. Alan had waited patiently through the hysterics, and then succinctly informed him that, as of now, Rajive’s management of the CL lists was to continue, unstopped. The CLs kept coming in, fleshing out the profiles of the men and women “of interest.” Until they heard differently, and Alan would try to ensure that they never did, no aspect of Rajive’s program was to be changed. That was all that was said on the matter. Then they returned to the task of conveying all their information to those back at NCTC—to set much bigger wheels in motion.
Their calls to their home office had done the necessary job; an unseen tempest was arising around them. While they made their way back to Ubatoo to find out what new surprise Atiq had in store for them, in the mayhem of their home offices in DC, hurried phone calls, frantic e-mails, and urgent meetings were taking place. In less than an hour, a full-scale search for Sebastin would be initiated, 5,000 people from Stephen’s lists would have every aspect of their life scrutinized and recorded, this time by the NCTC, NSA, and FBI, and if all went well, the buyers of the list might be found, too.
“The way I see it, Rajive, whoever has that list is either going to try to sell it or is going to reach out to every single person on it. Once they start reaching out, it’ll be too tempting not to call everyone, and we’ll find them when they do.”
“That’s not what will happen. They’ll do it over weeks, months, Alan. Maybe over years. They’ll contact them through e-mails, phones, in letters, in person; we’re not going to find them. You tell me how we’re going to watch 5,000 people day and night for so long.”
“Rajive, stop worrying. It’s not doing us any good.”
Rajive appreciated the attempt at consolatory words, if that’s what they were, but they weren’t working. “We just did their job for them. Before I came along, who knows how many people they had to contact just to get a single recruit? How many contacts they had to cull through, how many people they found who just weren’t the right fit? How much time did they have to waste trying to find just a single one? That’s what we had going for us. We had time. We had time to find out who they were recruiting and watch the handful of people they were about to convert. They made so many mistakes finding even one, we had a chance. Now, we gave them a list, Alan. We gave them 5,000 people in a single shot. They just have to pick up a phone, and there’s an army waiting for them. We gave them a list on a silver platter. You tell me how we’re going to catch them, Alan. You think we can watch all of them until they’re contacted, until someone actually does something wrong? We just can’t do it. We’ll never be able to do it. Unless I built the damn bomb myself and strapped it to my chest, you tell me what else I could have done for them.”
“Rajive,” Alan snapped. “No more. I’m only going to say this once, and I promise you I will never say this again. It’s not your fault. Nobody, and I mean nobody, could have seen this coming. Now calm down, we still have more work to do.”
What Atiq had asked Jaan to do was find other suspicious uses of the Touchpoints data-mining system over the past few months. Atiq wanted to know the extent of Stephen’s violations and why it was that Stephen didn’t acknowledge everything when they questioned him in Atiq’s office. There was some material that he claimed not to recognize. What more was he hiding? Jaan was waiting with Atiq in his office when, at 2:41, Alan and Rajive walked in.
Becky was already on her way to get coffee for everyone. Atiq immediately rose to greet them, and introduced Jaan Ramamurthi, the architect and mastermind behind the data-mining system that allowed these analyses to be done so effectively.
Atiq started simply, “Jaan, this is your finding. Please tell them what you discovered this morning, and don’t hold anything back.”
Jaan stood up, turned his laptop around so everyone could see the screen, and presented his findings without emotion, just the facts. The laptop displayed lines of computer code that nobody there was paying attention to, but that held quite a bit of significance to Jaan.
“Atiq asked me to look into Stephen’s work and database accesses over the past several months. I looked at the type of data he asked for, matched it with the projects he had been officially assigned, and verified the existence of the disparities you already know about.”
Jaan clicked his mouse and the laptop went to the next screen. Judging from the line endings and whitespace, they were pretty certain it was a different page of computer code, but again, no one was paying attention to it. He continued, “I went ahead and expanded Atiq’s request to see if we were missing anything in our review. I looked at all of the interns and newer full-time employee requests for information as well. What we found was that someone else also had requests for personal information not associated with any project she was tasked to do or was officially working on, and also seemed to be narrowly focused on many of the same people that Stephen found.”
Rajive was fidgeting in his chair anxiously. Not another one. This can’t be. Rajive interrupted, and blurted out his question, “This other person started with the list of books, too?”
“No. Aarti wasn’t looking for books, but she was performing a very similar analysis for web site visits and searches that people had conducted, which led her to finding an extensive network of similarly profiled people. She pruned this down a bit by looking for similarities in their e-mails and friends. Though her list wasn’t exactly the same as Stephen’s—it was actually quite a bit longer than his. We noticed that Stephen used many of the same people’s profiles and e-mails for his data analysis that Aarti used in hers. That’s how we connected the two.”
Alan spoke for the first time in the meeting—his words calm, even. “Was her information leaked out as well?”
“Yes. We’re looking into that now.”
“Jaan, was there anyone else who used your system to find information like this?” Alan asked, seemingly unperturbed.
“This is all we’ve found so far,” Jaan answered, relieved.
Alan had his chin resting in his hand. He looked resigned. “Tell me, you two, how is it that everyone here has access to all of this information? Aren’t there any rules here? Do any of you know what your employees are doing?”
Jaan started to answer, but Atiq raised his voice louder and immediately took charge, “There are very few people who have access to all this information. Many have access to small bits of it, but only a few have complete access. The two, Aarti and Stephen, are members of my group. We work to integrate the data, so yes, they had access to all of it.”
“Hmmmm,” Alan murmured. No words were necessary, his expression and tone conveyed everything there was to say.
“Clearly, our procedures need to be refined,” Atiq conceded.
“Clearly,” Alan mimicked. “Another clear fact that I don’t understand, Dr. Asad, is how you, or one of your managers, or stars, or architects, or whatever you call yourselves, don’t know what your subordinates are doing? Do you have any idea how much trouble they might be getting into right now? Who knows what someone in your group will do next?”
“I know. I know it must seem strange. My group’s success is based on the fact that we hire only the best. If we had to dictate everything they did, they wouldn’t be the best. Our breakthroughs come from what they invent when they’re not doing what has been assigned to them.”
“I think we can see where that leads, can’t we?” His calm voice became a growl. “You two have no idea what you’ve done. Your whole company is broken, and you, you two . . .” He pointed at both Atiq and Jaan, who were looking back at him speechless. “. . . just sit here in your office and watch it happen. This is your fault. Nobody else’s. Yours.”
Next, Alan spoke directly to Rajive. “Take Jaan and find out all you can about Aarti. Find out where her information went and exactly what information she managed to hand out, and what this brilliant team has done this time.” He turned to Atiq. “As for you, you need to immediately start checking everyone who has access to this data. We’re going to get some of our guys in here. We’re going to look at this data, too, and your records and anything else you might have. And we’re going to find out just how much you screwed all of us over.”
Atiq knew better than to fight this battle now. There would be time later for the drawn-out acrimonious conflict that would inevitably ensue if Alan moved forward with his notion of seeing Ubatoo’s data and records. Nobody was going to see that data. But that confrontation was for another day.
A little over two hours later, Alan and Rajive met in Ubatoo’s parking lot.
The question of who Aarti was working for was already resolved. Earlier, Jaan had shown Rajive the data she had examined for her investigations. On a hunch, when he was alone, Rajive phoned his office, and gave them the list of web sites she had tracked and the list of individuals she had sent out in her final analysis. In fact, the exact same web site list comprised CL-91B. Further, the resulting people she had found corresponded exactly to the list that was returned from a contractor commissioned by NCTC. This was precisely how the plan was supposed to work. NCTC funds people who have connections inside massive data collection companies—they get the data, give it to NCTC, NCTC maintains deniability, and everyone is happy. The contractor, or middleman, isn’t supposed to sell the information to another buyer, like Sebastin had. The list that Aarti had obtained was what was anticipated, just like all the other CLs they had successfully received—a large number of random people on the list, and a few people of interest. Only by looking at other CLs and finding the overlaps would the people of interest really be uncovered. Nobody, including any buyers who might intercept the list, would find much use in it—almost all of it was garbage; almost all of it was the names of innocent people.
Rajive was in a bind with Aarti. Obviously, he couldn’t tell Jaan or Atiq that the information Aarti had gathered had already been funneled back to the NCTC, and that they would rather Ubatoo not press charges. If anyone at Ubatoo could show it was NCTC’s money creating these leaks inside Ubatoo, any troubles encountered so far would pale in comparison to the problems they would face then. Instead, Rajive needed Jaan and Atiq to believe Aarti’s information flow from Ubatoo was going into the terrorist world, like Stephen’s had. Thanks to Stephen, there was no way to leave Aarti in place. She was, after all, as guilty as Stephen.
“What do you suggest we do with Stephen and Aarti?” Rajive asked Alan as they walked to the car.
“If Sebastin sold this data to the wrong people, it’ll fall on Stephen. Ubatoo will hang him out to dry. I think it’s already beyond our control. Rajive, forget about Stephen, your main concern should be that none of this gets connected to NCTC. I don’t think that Sebastin will be talking much when we find him. He’s the only one who can put this together, at least as far as CL-72B, right? Nobody else has any ties to the buyer, correct?”
“As far as I know.”
“We have to keep NCTC out of this mess for as long as possible. You know that. Right, Rajive?”
“Yes. Yes, of course,” Rajive replied irritably. “Sebastin got greedy. Let’s give him what he deserves. But, about Stephen, he’s not a terrorist, not even close. Did you hear him talking to us? He had no idea.”
“At least we agree that we should go ahead and ruin Sebastin’s life?” Alan said, the first smile on his face all day.
“What about Stephen? What about Aarti?”
“What do you want me to say? We should have done all this work in-house, Rajive. You know that.” It was good that he wasn’t facing Rajive to witness his resentment. “We ought to find someone like Atiq or Jaan—someone like those two to figure out how to make our people like Aarti and Stephen. No more mandated ‘creativity time,’ no more huge projects that are doomed to fail under their own weight. Next time, we can’t afford to do this work outside our walls, Rajive. Look at Ubatoo, all that data, all that security and all the other crap they have in place, none of it matters. It just matters what one little intern decides to do. We can’t take that risk again.”
Rajive was furious. He stopped Alan before he walked any further. “I know all that. I’m the one who fed you these warnings for years. But now, Alan, what about Aarti and Stephen?”
“Stop the whining, Rajive. You’ve got more important things to worry about. What do you think? They did it to themselves, nobody forced them, and that’s that.”
“That’s that,” Rajive sniped back.
They didn’t speak on the ride back to the local FBI office. It wasn’t until they were pulling into the local FBI’s parking lot that Alan threw Rajive a bone. “Look, you want to try to come up with something for Stephen and Aarti, be my guest. It’s probably past the point that you or I could do anything for him, but maybe you can do something for Aarti. I’m not going to waste my time on this, but if you think you can save these kids, fine. Make sure NCTC comes out of this clean.”
“Will do,” Rajive replied quietly. Doors were opening—doors that had previously been locked. He was sure of it. But which ones? He needed to devote his full attention to swiftly reconfiguring his plans to find a place for Aarti and Stephen. But like Alan said, there were so many more important things to worry about.