An American Girl

Got a picture of her mama in heels and pearls
She's tryin to make it in her daddy's world
She's An American girl
An American Girl

 

 

“Okay, Belden.  You’ve spent a week getting this operation set up.  Everything’s in place from our end to support the move to New York.  From your perspective, is the mission a go or do you have reservations?”  Deputy Chief Ben Walker was all business when Trixie returned to her job in Chicago.

“Sir, I’m not confidant that everyone will buy this cover story… or keep buying it.” Trixie was uncharacteristically cautious.  “There wasn’t enough time to talk to everyone in my family, but the risk is minimal, and I think we can pull this off.”

“You’ll wrap everything up by the end of the week?”

“Yes, no problem.” Her words of assurance were accompanied by a confident nod, and she leaned forward in anticipation.  “Does this mean you’re going to give me the details of my assignment now?”

Ben pushed the paperwork across the desk.  Everything in the package made it appear she had given her notice.  Only the two of them knew differently.  All she had to do was sign the letter of resignation he had included.   It was a simple matter to readily complete the paperwork in her official folder.  Once that minor housekeeping task was completed, the top secret folder came out. 

Ben leaned back in his chair to study her before he began his explanation of the assignment.  Trixie was startled, however, with his next question. “Belden, what’s the biggest problem facing private business today?”  Ben leaned back in his chair to study her as she answered.

Trixie frowned. “You’re not talking about the sky-rocketing cost of health insurance or the unstable energy market, are you?”

He shook his head.  “Not even close.”

“Employee theft and crime?” she guessed, biting her lip as her mind processed issues associated with corporations in the private sector.

“You’re getting there,” he encouraged her.

“Managing change or security?”  She shook her head, ruefully.  “Really, Ben, there could be a dozen different problems depending on the business.”

He nodded. “Big businesses have a real problem managing change.  Technological advances keep them constantly reacting to the latest threat.  They set up an infrastructure to protect their business data, and within six months or less, it’s vulnerable again.”

Trixie was shaking her head as Ben spoke.  “Sir, that’s not much different for the government.  That’s why we have whole departments and teams that focus on security-related issues for cyberspace protection.  The money we’ve spent on security is a huge line item in our budget.”  She eyed her boss critically across the desk.  “But you know all this, so what are you getting at?”  Trixie’s mind was running ninety miles an hour, wondering why security for private business would be a concern for the CIB.

“Imagine you’re running your own business,” he began, “and you need cyberspace to talk to other offices around the world.  You want to send electronic files back and forth, exchange some data between your offices, conduct normal business transactions, and make business plans for the next ten years.  You’ll need to protect your business and your data.  How would you do it?”

“Sir, the standard things we have at the government would apply to a private business as well – firewalls, backup protection, encryption, and of course physical security.  Is this a test?  Do you want me to do all this for my business?”

“Bear with me a moment, Belden.  How often would you review such protection?”

“Continuously, sir.  I’d probably request some type of formal audit or review at least quarterly.”  Trixie’s face told she was puzzled by the direction of her boss’s questions.

“If you wanted to bring down a website -- say a competitor’s site – how would you do it?”

“Assuming that we’re ignoring the ethics of the situation…” Trixie raised one sandy brow in question.  Surely he’s not going to ask me to hack into a private business’s website!

“Correct.” Ben gave a small smile, nodding for her to continue.

“The easiest way, for a company who was lax about security, would be to simply hire a hacker.  It wouldn’t be difficult to bombard a competitor’s web site to the point where legitimate business could no longer be transacted.  If you’re trying to buy something online and you keep getting denial of service messages, you go to the next company that offers it.”  She paused, noticed his brief nod, and then continued.  “Then we could ghost the site with a dummy site that looked real.  That would let me easily capture all customer information without being detected – I guess it depends on what I want out of it.  Eventually I’d find a way to intercept email or ghost it, find their trade secrets, intellectual property, just about anything.”  Trixie nodded as she began to get the big picture on where this was going.

Ben Walker’s eyes gleamed as he saw her putting it together.  “Get me all the company’s customer data – names, addresses, credit card numbers – anything that would allow me to produce fake identities.  That would be one of your goals.  Then I want you to obtain any formulas they own, electronic designs, anything that would give me a competitive advantage in the industry, and I mean anything and everything.  From the recipe for a Hershey bar to the latest design for Intel’s next microprocessor.” 

Trixie paused a moment to ponder his words more carefully.  “For some companies, sir, I could probably hack into their systems and find the information myself.  I know it’s something we don’t like to dwell on, but there is that pesky human element.  People tend to use simple passwords that they can remember easily -- like the propensity to use the word ‘password’ as their password.  But you know the Bureau has yet to be stumped in hacking into a system.  The government has employed hackers that are almost genius in their abilities to break into systems.”   Trixie wondered if she were going to be asked to break a company’s encryption.

“Could you get into some systems and find out if they’re vulnerable, without hacking?”

“Sure,” Trixie answered.  “Any security consultant could do it.  They’d just need to be brought in …” She stopped as realization dawned.  “You want me to get companies to hire me as a security consultant so I can find out where their systems are weak?”

“That would probably be a good start.”  Ben paused and thought for a moment on how to make her understand what was at stake.  “Do you remember the event that spawned the creation of the IC3 division?” 

“Of course.  All agents had to study that event and do case analysis on it during our training.  Hackers managed to break into NSA’s computer system as well as several commercial business sites.  For a period of two days, they almost brought Internet commerce to its knees.”  Trixie looked at Ben sharply.  “Do we suspect something similar is happening or is going to happen?”

“Not exactly.  You’ll remember the instigators behind that event were primarily graduate students with too much time on their hands.  There weren’t any terrorists behind the hacking.  But now, we suspect the International Revolutionary Movement for Arms is backing a similar episode.  We suspect IRMA has approached one or more legitimate businesses, requesting assistance in their activities.”

Trixie frowned as she followed her boss’s story.  “IRMA is scary enough to think about,” she commented.  “They make Al-Qaeda look like pussycats.  But wouldn’t the businesses report the contact to us, sir?  I mean, after all, it would be the end for them if they were discovered cooperating with a known terrorist faction like IRMA.”

“Our intelligence sources have given us solid information,” Ben stated firmly.  “A large, multinational private company on the east coast is working with IRMA.  The assistance is coming from the top level of the company.” 

“But sir,” Trixie protested.  “That’s absolutely crazy!  What could possibly make it worthwhile for an American-based company to agree to do something like that?” Trixie’s loyalty to country made it almost impossible for her to comprehend the treasonous aspect of such an arrangement.

 “Greed, Belden!” Ben shook his head at her naïveté to corruption.  “The most common reason in the world for malfeasance is pure and simple greed.  But we won’t know the real reason until we identify the culprit.  The deal is simple.  The company involved gets an improved bottom line as they sabotage the competition.  IRMA gets two things -- first, they can obtain a tremendous amount of personal identification data.  They’ll wreak havoc with citizens across the country by exploiting personal identities to create fake IDs, passports, driver’s licenses, etc.  Second—and we suspect this is their real goal—is the acquisition of the intellectual property the company has stored.  We believe they’re looking for the latest in encryption code technology.”

 Trixie sat back in disbelief.  “The penalties for exporting encryption code are harsh.  But still – there  isn’t a code that can’t eventually be broken, sir.  It won’t matter what IRMA hacks into or steals.  We’ll break the encryption coding.”

“That remains to be seen,” Ben answered. “There are rumors that several businesses are on the edge of developing multiple-use random encryption key verification.”  Ben paused to see her reaction.

“But, sir…random encryption can’t be broken!” She was dumfounded at the concept.  She knew that the US Government had spent millions of taxpayer dollars over the past five years just trying to develop such technology, but to no avail.

“Exactly. If they have it, and we don’t …” he didn’t need to finish.  He knew she understood that putting a tool like that in the hands of terrorists would be the technological equivalent of nuclear weapons -- or worse.

“We can’t let that happen.” Trixie spoke quietly. 

“Now you understand why this so critical.” Ben’s face was grim.  “We can’t afford to ignore the possibility that the rumors could be true.  If we don’t act and identify the business that’s working with IRMA, we’re looking at another economic collapse, one that will make Black Monday look insignificant.”

“What’s my assignment, then?” Trixie asked dubiously, still unsure as to whether he was asking her to court businesses to hire her to do security evaluations.

“Find the company, find the hackers, find bullet-proof evidence, and halt any intellectual property technology transfers and stop the theft of personal identity records.”   Ben Walker pushed the list across the desk, watching her reaction as she picked it up and began to read. “You’re lucky,” he added while he waited for her to finish reading.  “We’ve managed to work the list down to one of these ten companies.” 

She started through the list, and her reaction was just what her boss expected.  “You’re out of your mind!” she exclaimed. “There is no way that Matthew Wheeler is doing anything illegal.” Trixie jumped up, enraged, and glared down at Walker.  “You tricked me!”

“No, I didn’t.  I asked you about your friendship with the Wheelers from the start.  You did a poor job of asking why that was important.  You were too concerned about convincing your friends and family.  I was more than a little disappointed in you.”  Walker narrowed his eyes at her across the desk.  “Not to mention you’re already letting your emotions get in the way of thinking objectively.  There’s only a ten percent chance it’s his company, and less that it’s actually him.”

Trixie’s jaw dropped.  It had been a long time since she had been rebuked about her job performance.  But her boss was right.  She had willingly accepted his ready answer without asking any questions.  “Do you honestly believe I can accomplish something like this through society connections?”  She tossed her head, causing her curls to jump as if they were alive before they settled down into the expensive cut.

“Yes,” he replied simply.  “If anyone can do it, you can.  You get them to hire you to placate their wives and daughters, the society matrons and divas.  They won’t take you too seriously about meeting their security needs when you go calling on them as a socialite.  You can use Matthew Wheeler’s name to get your foot in the door, but refrain from playing up how much you really know.  That’ll make it easy for you to uncover things without them suspecting anything.”

“Why would anyone doing something illegal allow me into their company to look at their systems?” Trixie protested.  “That would be suicide!”

“Not if they don’t think you’re very smart.” He grinned. 

“You mean you want them to think I’m a blonde ditz?”  Trixie said slowly as she sat back down.

Deputy Chief Walker grinned.  “Exactly!  We want them to placate you, not take you seriously, so they’re not scared off.”

“But that’s not going to help my business,” she reasoned aloud.  “If anything it’ll hurt it!” She moaned at the thought of people thinking her a brainless blonde.

“Which is another reason we justified paying you the bonus.”  Ben Walker couldn’t quite stop a partial grin at her expression of dismay.  “Admittedly, you don’t have to play it that way, Belden.  But it fits our cover story.  Why we’re letting you leave a few months early, transferring you to an ordinary field office in Kansas.  Everything was set up to make it appear that you’re not very good at your job.  In the end, we’ll leave the actual method of approach up to you.  But I mention it because I think many men, especially those of the age of some of these business owners are, won’t take a beautiful young woman seriously.”  He watched her, wondering if she would take his suggested plan or develop one of her own.

Trixie was quiet, knowing she would need to think this through before making a final decision.  My cover is to be a newly rich, society girl attempting to run her own security business.  I guess it’s plausible, but it sure is weak!  It might work for one or two of the companies, but not all of them.  But … Trixie’s thoughts churned as ideas began forming in her head.  If I play my cards right and use my head, there might be a way to pull this off.   Trixie leaned back in her chair, more determined than ever to show the agency she could handle this assignment and prove Matthew Wheeler innocent in the process.  She took a deep breath before asking her question.  “Why these ten companies?”

 Ben nodded approvingly.  This was the agent he had watched and mentored.  “It simply has to be a large, privately held company.  We’ve ruled out all that are based on the West Coast from our intelligence reports.  Another agent has checked out the two in the Southeast and another in Boston and Pennsylvania.  These are the only ones with New York headquarters.”  He continued to brief her and answer questions for another hour.  They would have continued, but they were interrupted by the deputy chief’s administrative assistant, reminding him he had a meeting to attend. 

“I’ve already started reassigning all your open case files.  Your vacation counted as the first week of your notice.  If possible, I’d like this wrapped up by the end of the week. Get me a list of everything you’re going to need.”  He stood and pulled on his jacket.  He handed her a card imprinted with a single word.  “This is the name of the operation.  Memorize it and destroy this card before you leave my office.  We’ll meet again tomorrow.  In the meantime, as far as the rest of the department is concerned, you’re working out your notice and I’ve spent the last hour berating your lack of loyalty to the Central Investigative Bureau.  Are we clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

He left the office and Trixie stared at the card for a few more seconds before crossing the office.  She stared a few more seconds before dropping the card into the cross-cut, mulching shredder standing in the corner of Ben’s office.  She pushed the button and watched as the tiny card was instantly mulched.  The contents of the shredder were fed into a Government incinerator each night.  She shook her head as she walked out of his office, wondering if anyone besides her could appreciate the irony of being assigned to work on a project code named ORCHID.

 

 

Trixie spent every spare moment in Chicago either packing of visiting her favorite places.  She spent an evening with her office colleagues before packing her office belongings.  She had help packing the remainder of the personal belongings in her condo from a moving company.  She had shaken her head in disbelief when a designer garment bag and trunk were delivered with additional clothes early in the week.  I can’t believe they still don’t trust me to pick out the right clothes!

 Thanks to some assistance from her father and Mr. Wheeler, she was able to handle the closing of her new apartment in New York via fax, email and telephone calls.  This enabled her to ship boxes directly to her new address in downtown Manhattan.

Every spare moment she could manage was spent peppering her boss with questions about Project ORCHID.  She had received the electronic pass codes and encryption key to read everything stored in bureau files.  The final meeting between her and her boss was tense.

“Everything in order from your side, Belden?” He was all business.

“Yes, sir.  I’m going to need some tools.”

“Such as?”

She passed him a list, in a manner similar to the way he had handed her the list of names that included Matthew Wheeler’s.  It was no coincidence that she also had ten items listed.

“Why do you need a regulation pistol and a derringer?” he demanded immediately.

“Because I have no intention of waiting to get a pistol permit approved.  I’m going to have to go through the process of registering as a private investigator in New York.  That will slow the process down, not speed it up.  You can fix that easily, some sort of retired, reserve agent designation or something at the federal level.  I’ll need a derringer because a regulation firearm won’t fit in my designer evening bags.”

Ben grunted and continued to review the list.  He couldn’t find much to argue with on it.  Besides the two weapons, she had included fairly high-tech cameras, a secure fax machine and phone line, an encrypted cell phone with satellite link-ups and one of the bureau’s new hybrid laptops that looked perfectly ordinary but was equipped with more extras that most computer geeks ever dreamed of having.  He protested again at the last item.  “Belden, do you know how much one of the BLISS PDA’s you’re requesting will cost this department?”

The Personal Digital Assistant, being developed under the code name BLISS for Broadband Long-range Internet Secure System, was as powerful as any laptop, but included features found on cell phones and spy gadgets alike as well as several that people believed only existed in spy movies. 

“Yes, of course I know.  I wouldn’t have included it if I hadn’t felt it would be needed for this case. When I get in meetings, no one will look twice if I’m taking notes on a PDA.  Only you and I know I can also be recording conversations and taking pictures.”

“Are you sure this is everything?  You don’t need anything else?”

“This is everything, sir.  Will I be informed who the agent in place is?”

“No, not now.  Maybe at some point.  Our agent has been briefed of your involvement on the project.  It will be his or her call to reveal who they are to you.”  Ben paused and looked at the young woman sternly.  She had done an outstanding job working outside her element.  “Belden, I was hard on you the other day.”

“No, sir.  You were right.  No matter what, I have to look at this case objectively.  I’ll deliver for you, sir, and for the bureau.  When you see that I was right all along about Matthew Wheeler, I’ll have the pleasure of being able to say I told you so.”