Sixty days and counting - Kim Stanley Robinson [53]
“Jesus. There are government programs with that kind of funding?”
Charlie shrugged. “Maybe.”
Frank was staring at him, startled, even perhaps frightened. “In that case, we could all be in big trouble.”
Anna was shaking her head. “A complete audit would find even that. It would include all accounts of every federal employee or unit, and also what they’re doing with every hour of their work time. It’s a fairly simple spreadsheet, for God’s sake.”
“But it could be faked so easily,” Charlie objected.
“Well, you have to have some way to check the data.”
“But there are hundreds of thousands of employees.”
“I guess you’d have to use a statistically valid sampling method.”
“But that’s just the kind of method you can hide your black programs out of the reach of!”
“Hmm.” Now Anna was frowning too. She was also sending curious glances Frank’s way. This was a pretty un-Frank-like inquiry, in both content and style. “Well, maybe you’d have to be comprehensive with the intelligence and security agencies in particular. Account for everything in those.”
Charlie said, “So, that being the case, they probably aren’t tucked there. They’re probably in Commerce or the Coast Guard or the Treasury. Which by itself is huge. Like, you know, the bank.”
Frank said, “So maybe it isn’t possible.”
Charlie and Anna did not reply; each was thinking it over.
Frank sighed. “Maybe if we found a specific problem, and then told the president about it? Or, whoever could best put a stop to it? Wouldn’t that be the president?”
Charlie said, “I should think the president would always be best at that kind of thing. But there are a lot of demands on his time.”
“Everyone keeps saying that. But this could be important. Even, you know…crucial.”
“Then I would hope it would get attended to. Maybe there’s a unit designed to do it. In the Secret Service or something.”
Frank nodded. “Maybe you could talk to him, then. When you think it’s a good time. Because I know where to start the hunt.”
Charlie and Anna glanced at each other, saw that neither knew what he was talking about.
“What do you mean?” Charlie said.
“I’ve run across some stuff,” Frank said, adjusting a log in the fire.
Then the power flickered and hummed back on, and after a while Frank made his excuses and took off, still looking distant and thoughtful.
“What was that all about?” Charlie said.
“I don’t know,” Anna replied. “But I’m wondering if he found that woman in the elevator.”
Anna had been pleased when Diane asked her to join the Presidential Science Advisor’s staff, but it only took her a short period of reflection to decide against accepting the offer.
She knew she was right to do so, but explaining why to Diane and Frank had been a little tricky. She couldn’t just come out and say “I prefer doing things to advising people to do things,” or “I like science more than politics.” It wouldn’t have been polite, and besides, she wasn’t sure that was the real reason anyway. So all she could do was claim an abiding interest in her work at NSF, which was true. It was always best when your lies were true.
“But you’re the one who has been finding all these programs that knit together the federal agencies,” Frank said. “You’d be perfect to help in a project like this. You could maybe come over on loan for a year or so.”
This confirmed Anna’s suspicion that it was Frank’s idea to invite her over to the White House. Very nice of him, she liked that very much—but she said, “I can keep doing that from here, and still run my division too.”
“Maybe.”
Frank frowned, almost said something, stopped. Anna could not guess what it might have been. Some personal appeal? He looked a bit flushed. But maybe he was abashed at the thought of how little time he now had to give to his work on biological algorithms, his actual field. With this move he had shifted almost entirely to policy—to administration. To politics,