Serious Risks

“Not just now, thanks. Maybe later.”

Jessica settled onto the couch, facing the armchair where she’d seated Arlen, and watched as he pulled a pad and pen out of his breast pocket. He had blunt-fingered, large hands, competent, capable-looking hands. Their movements were calm, controlled. As was he, she realized. Everything about him was controlled, even his smile.

“I’ll probably need to get an official statement from you later, but for the moment, why don’t we just go over what happened?” He offered what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “The questions may get a little repetitious, but I need to be sure you aren’t inadvertently overlooking something. All right?”

Jessica nodded and clasped her hands tightly, wondering why the living room suddenly seemed small. She’d considered it a pleasantly large room until Arlen Coulter entered it, but he seemed to fill it completely.

And there was a wedding ring on his left hand. She noticed the gold band with an unexpected stab of disappointment and wondered why it should matter.

Arlen spoke. “Jessica, why don’t you tell me a little bit about your job and the kind of classified information you work with.”

“I’m a programmer,” she explained. “I work on software for Department of Defense applications. Right now I’m designing a package that’s intended to be able to pick out planes and incoming missiles from all the electronic countermeasures that are available to confuse radar.”

Arlen was impressed. “Can it?”

“It’s too soon to tell yet, but in theory it should work.”

“How long have you been working on defense applications?”

“Six years.”

In answer to his prompting, she described some of the other programs she’d worked on over the years. Listening to her, watching her, Arlen realized a couple of things. This lady was very bright, and she loved her work. As she spoke, she grew animated, using her hands and smiling, and her eyes sparkled with enthusiasm. At this new glimpse of the woman behind the uptight, severe facade, Arlen wondered what had happened to her to make her want to hide her vitality. Not that it mattered, he reminded himself. He was here as an agent to do a job, not to wonder about a woman who was young enough to be his daughter.

Eventually he brought her back to the events of the past day. Her animation faded, to be replaced by the nervous worry he’d seen when he first arrived.

“At the end of the day,” Jessica explained, “I lock up everything I work with—my files, my hard drive from the computer, any paper I’ve scribbled on or written on. I don’t bother sorting at night, because I’m tired and might make a mistake. In the morning I’ll decide which stuff needs to be burned, but in the evening I just lump it all into an envelope and file it in my safe.”

“What kind of safe do you have?”

“It’s a GSA-approved four-drawer cabinet.” All safes used for the storage of classified information had to be approved by the General Services Administration, or GSA, an indication that the safe met certain standards.

Arlen nodded. “What level material do you keep in it?”

“Just Secret and Confidential. If I need to use Top Secret or special-access information, like Secret Compartmented Information, I check them out of the vault downstairs and return them at the end of the day.”

“And last night you followed your usual procedure.”

Jessica nodded, clasping her hands together so tightly that Arlen saw her knuckles turn white.

“Why don’t you run through it again for me? Just so I can be sure I have it right.”

Jessica nodded again. “I take my hard disk out—”

“Just a second,” Arlen interrupted. “You take your computer apart every night?”

Jessica shook her head. “I have an external, removable hard disk. It’s designed for this kind of thing. I can take it off my system in just a minute, and I always store it in the top drawer of my safe, unless for some reason there’s material of a higher classification on it. Then I take it to the vault.”

“Okay. You put your hard disk in the top drawer. Then what?”

“Then I pick up any documents I’ve pulled, and I file them in their proper folders in the other drawers. When that’s done, I pick up whatever scraps of paper there are that I’ve scribbled on, doodled on or whatever, put them in a manila envelope and file them in the suspense folder I keep at the front of the second drawer.” Seeing the question form on his lips, she hastened to explain. “The suspense file just means the stuff in it is suspended, set aside to deal with later.”

He nodded. “And that’s how you know the missing document was there last night?”

“That’s right.” Realizing suddenly that her fingers were aching from the tight way she had folded her hands, Jessica unlaced them and wiggled them to relax them. “I always put the suspense file right in front of it.”

Arlen watched her wiggle her fingers, pursing his lips thoughtfully. “And you’re sure it was there?”

Jessica’s eyes snapped to his face. “Yes.” She said it with conviction.

Arlen’s gray eyes lifted from her hands to her eyes, and they no longer held any of the warmth and friendliness she’d seen in them earlier. “I have to ask these questions, Jessica. They’re not intended to be offensive. How is it you’re sure the document was there? Usually when we do things in certain ways they become so habitual that we don’t really notice. Did you really see that document last night, or do you just think you saw it?”

Her hands knotted into fists on her lap. “I saw it,” she said flatly. “The folder it was in is red, and the three folders behind it are blue. If that folder was gone, I’d have noticed it instantly, the way I noticed it was missing this morning.”

Arlen nodded and wrote in his notebook. “Okay,” he said pleasantly. “I believe you. The folder was there last night. You filed the suspense file in front of it?”

“Yes.”

“And then?”

“I closed the drawer and locked the safe.”

“How did you lock the safe?”

Jessica sighed. “I turned the dial four full rotations and tested the lever. It was locked.”

“And it was still locked when you came to work this morning?”

Jessica opened her mouth to respond, and then hesitated, her brown eyes widening. “I don’t know,” she said after a moment. “I always turn the dial four times before I start to work the combination. And I never try the lever before I enter the combination.”

“So it could have been closed but unlocked this morning.”

She nodded. “But I don’t see—”

“Don’t you find it odd that the entire folder was missing?” Arlen asked her.

Jessica’s reply was tart. “To tell you the truth, I haven’t been allowed any time today to think about anything, least of all whether what happened was odd. Of course it was odd. It was odd that anything disappeared overnight. I still don’t see.”

“Well, if you were going to steal classified information, would you leave such an obvious footprint? Wouldn’t it make more sense to photograph the document and put it back? Or photocopy it and replace it?”

“Well, yes, of course,” Jessica agreed. “But if you didn’t have time—” Her eyes widened. “Oh!” she said on a breath. “Oh!”

“Exactly.” Arlen smiled faintly. “Did you come to work early this morning, by any chance?”

The expression on her face answered the question even before she spoke. “I was a half hour early because I wanted to check out something I thought of last night.”

Arlen spread his hands, as if to say, “See?” “Could I take you up on that coffee now, Jessica?”

“Yes, of course.” She went to the kitchen to get it, impressed with how quickly Arlen Coulter had picked up on something she’d entirely missed, something even the security officer, Dave Barron, had entirely missed, in spite of all the questioning she’d endured today.