True Faith and Allegiance

When the presentation was finished, Cojocaru offered to take the men on a tour of the location, but the head of the Chinese delegation, Mr. Peng, waved a hand in the air like he couldn’t possibly care less about ARTD’s workspaces and computer server stacks.

Peng said, “We have come a very long way to speak with you, for this reason. We want to be assured that the data we have requested, the data we have paid well for you to keep absolutely secure, is being maintained with the strictest integrity.”

Dalca could see that Drago hadn’t the faintest idea what the Chinese man was getting at. No realization that the recent attacks against America could possibly be coming out of the very material ARTD took from the OPM files on behalf of the MSS.

Dalca adopted a similar look of confusion at the man’s insinuation, but in his mind dark clouds formed. Shit, he thought. He was right.

They were here because they suspected.

Dragomir, on the other hand, ignorant of what was going on, had no worries in the world. He said, “Certainly it is. Our sensitive information is kept on special machines that have no connection whatsoever to the outside world. The material we acquired on your behalf resides here in the building and nowhere else.” He held up a hand. “Other than in its original location in the United States, I mean.”

Albert Cojocaru added, “And the initial acquisition took place leaving no ability for the Americans to ever discover anything was amiss.”

Albert beamed with pride. Dalca tried not to roll his eyes. Albert was the chief hacker, a tech who lived in cyberspace, and he had no clue of the shit storm that these thugs would rain down on this building if Dalca himself didn’t convince them their concerns were unfounded.

Peng conferred with his men in Mandarin for a moment. The Romanians just sat there.

Peng next looked at Vasilescu. “The person in charge of obtaining the files?”

Dragomir slapped Albert on the back. “The best in the business, I can tell you that. Albert Cojocaru here. He and his team created the intrusion system that was used to pull the data off the server in Bangalore, India, where it had been residing untouched for the past four years. He did a great job.”

Albert chimed in. “If you would like a layman’s explanation of the process, just in case you had other needs in the future you might want us to handle, I would be happy to—”

Albert shut up when Peng raised his hand.

The Chinese man said, “As far as the person here in your office in charge of linking the raw data to the committers of illegal espionage activities in the People’s Republic of China. Who is that?”

Dragomir Vasilescu pointed down to the end of the table with a proud nod. “My other best man. Alexandru Dalca here. The top of the industry, and my number-one secret weapon here at ARTD. I personally placed him as the lead researcher on your project. He took all the raw files, millions and millions, as you know, and used his own handmade software to identify those files that met your criteria. He looked for men and women who had studied Asian languages, focused on particular course work in school, had relevant military or civilian experience in their past, or already had associations with men and women in China. From there he still had thousands to go through by hand before he personally—”

Dalca knew he had to short-circuit Dragomir before he made it look like Dalca was the only guy in the building with the skills to turn the American files into targeting data.

He quickly interrupted his boss. “Thank you, Mr. Vasilescu, for making it look like I alone could possibly do all this.” He smiled sincerely at the four dour men facing him. “The truth is, gentlemen, I am very fortunate to be in charge of a large team of men and women who work exclusively on your project, and have done so from the start. While I originally created and optimized the software that is used to manage all this data efficiently, I do not personally extract the raw data and convert it to the actionable product distributed to you. Instead, I oversee a team of eager young men and women who do. They work so hard, and are so adept at what they do. I honestly couldn’t be more proud of all the work they put into this project.”

The Asians nodded a little.

Good, Dalca thought. He made the right assurances to the Chinese that their data wasn’t being exploited for the gain of others, while simultaneously hinting that others were involved in the work on the data, distancing himself from the material they clearly feared might have been compromised.

Through his peripheral vision, Dalca could see Albert and Dragomir looking his way now. Dalca was usually the first to take credit for something, to leverage a success for his own benefit. Of course these two would be confused that he was deferring praise onto his underlings. Both men knew how many hours Dalca worked on the Seychelles Group project, and both men would find it strange that he was minimizing his role.