Point of Contact

“You’re not serious.”

“How else can I get the data into my laptop?”

“Let me speak with Mr. Fairchild.” Bai exited the office and headed across the suite to Yong’s office. Through the glass partition, Paul watched the two of them speak. A few moments passed and Yong glanced up, glowering at Paul. Paul waved meekly. Yong rose and crossed the suite, entering Paul’s office with Bai in tow.

Paul remained seated.

“Please explain your problem again, Mr. Brown?”

“Please, call me Paul.”

“The problem?”

“I can’t do my forensic audit without my software. Bai has explained to me that I can’t download the encrypted security passcode onto my machine or have any other direct interface.”

“Why can’t you use our analytical software?”

“It isn’t as good as mine.”

Bai whispered something in Mandarin. Yong nodded. “Would it be possible to upload your software onto our machine?”

Paul shrugged. “Are you sure you want to do that? The whole point of not allowing alien machines to connect to your mainframe is to prevent malware from infecting your system. Call your IT person, but I bet they’d have a real problem with that.”

Yong nodded at Bai, who grabbed a desk phone and speed-dialed a number. Paul guessed it was the IT department. Bai and the party on the other end of the line chatted in Chinese for a bit. Bai hung up. “Mr. Brown is right. They don’t want to upload his software.”

“Even if they check it?” Yong asked.

“No, sir.”

“There is one other possibility,” Paul suggested. “If you can loan me one of your encrypted USB drives, I can download the data I need and transfer it to my machine. That way my machine is never in direct contact with your computer.”

“Why can’t you just use Bai’s?”

“I prefer one of my own.”

“Why?”

“It would be a violation of the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board auditing protocols to allow a Dalfan employee — or a Marin Aerospace employee, for that matter — to have access to the data and records I’m examining. Surely you see how that would be an ethical violation?”

Yong rubbed his face, thinking. “Yes, I suppose it would be.” He turned to Bai. “Get him one of our drives — and wipe it clean. Then make sure he’s registered with it and the serial number is recorded.”

“Yes, sir. Will he have to turn it in each day before he leaves?”

“Yes, of course.” He turned to Paul. “Is that a problem?”

“No. I’ll BleachBit the drive clean each day, just to keep things… ethical.”

“You must also return the drive to us when you’re finally through with it. It’s proprietary, and we keep a strict accounting of each device.”

“No problem. I’m sorry for the inconvenience. It’s just that I have a job to do.”

“I understand. Hopefully this will be the last hurdle for you to jump in order for you to complete your assignment.”

Paul smiled. “That’s the plan.”

* * *

It was mostly bullcrap, of course.

Paul had to lie. It was his only choice. But he wasn’t happy about it.

Bai was right. IDEA was a great piece of analytical auditing software, and just about anything Paul needed to do on this “due diligence” audit could’ve been done with it. Paul’s software was even better because he’d written the macros and templates himself, based on his years of experience in fraud analysis. But to do a proper fraud investigation would take several weeks for a company this size. What Paul really needed was the Dalfan encrypted USB flash drive. That didn’t solve his problem, but it got him one step closer to completing his mission.

Or so he hoped.

In the meantime, he had work to do. Rhodes had told him that the audit was legit, but that it was in addition to his more important task. Paul couldn’t shake the feeling that the auditing assignment was just a cover for the software upload. A giant waste of time. That didn’t make sense, either, though. Rhodes was paying a lot of money to send him and Jack out here. But then again, it wasn’t his money, was it?

Paul pushed that idea aside and opened up his program. Time to eat the elephant.

Even if he had all the time in the world, on a project this size the trick was to cut it up into bite-sized pieces rather than try to swallow it whole. If there was some kind of fraud or illegal activity taking place, and if whoever was behind it was careless enough to record the transactions somewhere in the general ledger, his auditing software might be able to sniff it out. It would take a great deal of luck to find anything, since all he could do with so little time available was perform random checks of selected data sets. But Fortune was a lady, and she favored the bold, statistically.