Chapter 2 - After the Room
The checkpoint emptied four minutes later.
Keene did not answer her question. He did not answer it because, Priya thought, he did not have an answer that would survive the room. He said the word "dismissed" and he turned and he walked out through the door behind the console, and the door closed behind him, and the sound of it clicking shut was the loudest sound Priya had ever heard.
The crowd did not move for a moment. Then it did — slowly, awkwardly, in ones and twos, officers and NCOs and civilians moving toward the turnstiles and the exit and the parking lot. Priya heard someone say her name. She heard someone else say "did you see his hands." She heard someone else say "shut up, not here."
Lauren Price was standing beside the console with her hands at her sides.
"Airman Price," Priya said.
"Specialist."
"Are you in trouble?"
"I expect so." Lauren's voice was flat. "I just told a colonel that I sent a report to OSI and the IG and my own private email. That is not the kind of thing a colonel forgets."
"It is also not the kind of thing an auditor does unless she has already decided that the truth is more important than her career."
Lauren looked at her. She was twenty-seven years old. She had been a checkpoint technician for three years. She had, in the course of those three years, run the Tuesday morning audit one hundred and fifty-six times. This was the first time she had ever found anything in it.
"I did not decide anything," she said. "I just ran the audit. The audit decided for me."
"What does the audit say?"
"It says that the credential used to open Vault 4 was not your credential. It was a copy. It had the same name, the same rank, the same barcode. But the issuer code on the chip was not the one from the badge office. It was from a programmer that belongs to the security director's office."
Priya's stomach turned over.
"Keene's office."
"Keene's office." Lauren met her eyes. "There are four programmers in the security director's office. They are used to create temporary credentials for visitors, contractors, and inspection teams. They are supposed to be signed out on a log. They are supposed to be locked in the security director's safe when not in use. They are not supposed to be used to create permanent credentials, and they are not supposed to be used to copy existing credentials, and they are absolutely not supposed to be used to clone a badge for a restricted facility."
"And one of them was used on Monday?"
"One of them was used at 15:31 on Monday — sixteen minutes before the cloned badge opened Vault 4."
"Which programmer?"
Lauren looked at her.
"Programmer three," she said.
Priya closed her eyes.
"Programmer three is the one in the security director's personal office," she said. "It is the one that is kept in his desk drawer, not in the safe. It is signed out to him permanently, because he uses it to make his own visitor badges when he has VIPs and does not want to walk down the hall."
"Correct."
"And you are telling me that at 15:31 on Monday, someone used the security director's personal programmer to create a cloned credential with my name on it."
"I am telling you that the audit says that. I am not telling you who did it." Lauren paused. "But I am telling you that the programmer is kept in his desk drawer. And that the drawer is in his office. And that the office is locked. And that the only people who have the key to that office are the security director, his executive assistant, and the two duty officers on his staff."
Priya took a breath.
"Airman Price," she said, "I need to ask you something, and I need you to tell me the truth, and I need you to not be afraid."
"Okay."
"Did you send that report where you said you sent it?"
"I sent it to OSI. I sent it to the inspector general. I sent it to my own private email. And I sent it to a fourth place."
"What fourth place?"
"My father's email." Lauren paused. "My father is a retired chief master sergeant. He spent thirty-two years in the Air Force, most of them in security forces. He is not a powerful man. But he knows people. And he has been telling me since I was twelve years old that if I ever saw something that looked wrong, I should make sure it existed in more than one place before I said anything about it."
Priya looked at her.
"Airman Price," she said, "I want to shake your hand."
Lauren shook her hand.
"So what do we do now?" Lauren asked.
"We do exactly what you did. We make sure it exists in more than one place. We make sure it exists in the OSI. We make sure it exists in the IG. We make sure it exists in the Senate Armed Services Committee. We make sure it exists in the newspaper. We make sure it exists in enough places that a colonel cannot fold it in half and put it in his pocket."
Lauren nodded.
May you like
"I can do that," she said.
"Good," Priya said. "Because I think we are going to need to."
