Disclosure_ A Novel - Michael Crichton [15]
“You look pale,” Bosak said. “But everybody in the building is pale today. It’s tense as hell around here, you know that?”
“I’ve noticed.”
“Yeah, I bet. Okay to start?”
“Sure.”
“Cindy? Mr. Sanders is going to be unavailable for a few minutes.”
Bosak closed the office door and locked it. Whistling cheerfully, he unplugged Sanders’s desk phone, and the phone beside the couch in the corner. From there, he went to the window and closed the blinds. There was a small television in the corner; he turned it on. He snapped the latches on his briefcase, took out a small plastic box, and flipped the switch on the side. The box began to blink, and emitted a low white noise hiss. Bosak set it in the middle of Sanders’s desk. Bosak never gave information until the white noise scrambler was in place, since most of what he had to say implied illegal behavior.
“I have good news for you,” Bosak said. “Your boy is clean.” He pulled out a manila file, opened it up, and started handing over pages. “Peter John Nealy, twenty-three, DigiCom employee for sixteen months. Now working as a programmer in APG. Okay, here we go. His high school and college transcripts . . . Employment file from Data General, his last employer. All in order. Now, the recent stuff . . . Credit rating from TRW . . . Phone bills from his apartment . . . Phone bills for his cellular line . . . Bank statement . . . Savings account . . . Last two 1040s . . . Twelve months of credit charges, VISA and Master . . . Travel records . . . E-mail messages inside the company, and off the Internet . . . Parking tickets . . . And this is the clincher . . . Ramada Inn in Sunnyvale, last three visits, his phone charges there, the numbers he called . . . Last three car rentals with mileage . . . Rental car cellular phone, the numbers called . . . That’s everything.”
“And?”
“I ran down the numbers he called. Here’s the breakdown. A lot of calls to Seattle Silicon, but Nealy’s seeing a girl there. She’s a secretary, works in sales, no conflict. He also calls his brother, a programmer at Boeing, does parallel processing stuff for wing design, no conflict. His other calls are to suppliers and code vendors, and they’re all appropriate. No calls after hours. No calls to pay phones. No overseas calls. No suspicious pattern in the calls. No unexplained bank transfers, no sudden new purchases. No reason to think he’s looking for a move. I’d say he’s not talking to anybody you care about.”
“Good,” Sanders said. He glanced down at the sheets of paper, and paused. “Gary . . . Some of this stuff is from our company. Some of these reports.”
“Yeah. So?”
“How’d you get them?”
Bosak grinned. “Hey. You don’t ask and I don’t tell you.”
“How’d you get the Data General file?”
Bosak shook his head. “Isn’t this why you pay me?”
“Yes it is, but—”
“Hey. You wanted a check on an employee, you got it. Your kid’s clean. He’s working only for you. Anything else you want to know about him?”
“No.” Sanders shook his head.
“Great. I got to get some sleep.” Bosak collected all the files and placed them back in his folder. “By the way, you’re going to get a call from my parole officer.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Can I count on you?”
“Sure, Gary.”
“I told him I was doing consulting for you. On telecommunications security.”
“And so you are.”
Bosak switched off the blinking box, put it in his briefcase, and reconnected the telephones. “Always a pleasure. Do I leave the bill with you, or Cindy?”
“I’ll take it. See you, Gary.”
“Hey. Anytime. You need more, you know where I am.”
Sanders glanced at the bill, from NE Professional Services, Inc., of Bellevue, Washington. The name was Bosak’s private joke: the letters NE stood for “Necessary Evil.” Ordinarily, high-tech companies employed retired police officers and private investigators to do background checks, but occasionally they used hackers like Gary Bosak, who could gain access to electronic data