The Teeth of the Tiger - Tom Clancy [42]
"How the hell did you manage this?" Jack asked.
"Ever hear of a company called INFOSEC?" Rick Bell asked in return.
"Encryption stuff, right?"
"Correct. Information Systems Security Company. The company's domiciled outside of Seattle. They have the best information-security program there is. Headed by a former deputy head of the Z-Division over at Fort Meade. He and three colleagues set the company up about nine years ago. I'm not sure NSA can crack it, short of brute-forcing it with their new Sun Workstations. Just about every bank in the world uses it, especially the ones in Liechtenstein and the rest of Europe. But there's a trapdoor in the program."
"And nobody's found it?" Buyers of computer programs had learned over the years to have outside experts go over such programs line by line, as a defense against playful software engineers, of which there were far too many.
"Those NSA guys do good code," Bell responded. "I have no idea what's in there, but these guys still have their old NSA school ties hanging in the closet, y'know?"
"And Fort Meade listens in, and we get what they dig up when they fax it to Langley," Jack said. "Anybody at CIA good at tracking money?"
"Not as good as our people."
"Takes a thief to catch a thief, eh?"
"Helps to know the mind-set of the adversary," Bell confirmed. "It's not a large community we're dealing with here. Hell, we know most of them-we're in the same business, right?"
"And that makes me an additional asset?" Jack asked. He was not a prince under American law, but Europeans still thought in such terms. They'd bow and scrape just to shake his hand, regard him as a promising young man however thick his head might turn out to be, and seek his favor, first because of the possibility he might speak a kind word into the right ear. It was called corruption, of course, or at least the atmosphere for it.
"What did you learn in the White House?" Bell asked.
"A little, I suppose," Jack responded. Mostly, he'd learned things from Mike Brennan, who'd cordially detested all the diplomatic folderol, to say nothing of the political stuff that happened there every day. Brennan had talked it over with his foreign colleagues often enough, who saw the same things in their own capitals, and who thought much the same of it, from behind the same blank faces when they stood post. It was probably a better way to learn all this stuff than his father had, Jack thought. He hadn't been forced to learn to swim while struggling not to drown. It was something his father had never spoken about, except when angry at the whole corrupting process.
"Be careful talking to Gerry about it," said Bell. "He likes to say how clean and upright the trading business is by comparison."
"Dad really likes the guy. I guess maybe they're a little alike."
"No," Bell corrected,"they're a lot alike."
"Hendley got out of politics because of the accident, right?"
Bell nodded. "That's it. Wait until you have a wife and kids. It's about the biggest hit a man can take. Even worse than you might think. He had to go and identify the bodies. It wasn't pretty. Some people would eat a gun after that. But he didn't. He'd been thinking about a run for the White House himself, thought maybe Wendy would make a good First Lady. Maybe so, but his lust for that job died along with his wife and kids." He didn't go further. The senior people at The Campus protected the boss, in reputation at least. They thought him a man who deserved loyalty. There was no considered line of succession at The Campus. Nobody had thought that far forward, and the subject never came up in board meetings. Those were mainly concerned with non-business matters anyway. He wondered if John Patrick Ryan, Jr., would take note of that one blank spot in the makeup of The Campus. "So," Bell went on, "what do you think so far?"
"I read the transcripts they gave me of what