Chapter 11: New Friends and Old Enemies
Chuck was nervous, there wasn't any point in denying it. This was the most nervous he'd ever been on a first day at a new job. Of course his first day at the Buy More, he'd been cashier. It wasn't exactly like he hoped to keep that job for ten years and it wasn't difficult. Chuck wasn't even sure if he could do this job.
The fact that Sarah was several chairs away from him wasn't helping either. She was facing him, while he was facing away from her. She was pretending to read a book, or at least Chuck thought she was pretending. She was dressed in a very fashionable business suit, but had her hair pulled back into a bun and was wearing glasses. It wasn't Sarah. At least it wasn't as disturbing as the time she was pretending to be Ellie.
Her instructions had been very detailed. It was okay for him to glance at her occasionally, but they should avoid eye contact. He was supposed to stay in front of her as much as possible. They were taking the bus to work so that they could go together without having to carpool, which would look suspicious since they weren't supposed to know each other at the office yet. She spent most of the previous afternoon moaning about the fact that they'd have to buy a more reasonable car, nobody would believe a low grade NSA analyst and a newly minted cryptographer could afford a Porsche. Chuck had pointed out that nobody who witnessed their last cover believed a yogurt girl could afford a Porsche either, but that had only earned him a very nasty glare for more than a minute.
When their alarm had gone off this morning it had been impossibly early. Six AM was only an hour earlier that he was used to, but it seemed like so much more. Chuck moaned and whimpered when Sarah shoved him out of bed.
Now he was sitting on a bus riding to work in much the same attire he'd worn for the last several years. The only difference being his tie was silk not polyester and his shirt had long sleeves not short, Sarah had insisted. He was supposed to walk from the bus stop to the visitors entrance of the NSA building and report to the security desk. Sarah was following him as closely as she could, but despite her efforts she was going to be out of contact for quite some time. Her nervousness had been given away by the tightness in her smile when she adjusted his tie and collar before they left the house in the morning.
"Hi, I'm Charles Carmichael, reporting for my first day of work," Chuck said cheerily to the security guard at the desk. The guard look unimpressed. "What department?" he asked.
"Cryptography."
"Who are your reporting to?"
"Tom Hopkirk."
"Fill this out," said the guard handing Chuck a clip board. "Then sit over there until you're called."
Chuck started filling out the form until he got to the part where it asked for a social security number. Did Carmichael have the same social security number? What should he do? Chuck pulled out his cell phone and called Sarah.
"You miss me already?" Sarah answered. Chuck could actually hear the grin on her face.
"Hi, mom!" Chuck said a little too loudly. "What's my social security number?"
"Uh, you really know how to get a girl out of the mood."
"Yeah, I can't believe I forgot to bring it either, can you look it up for me?"
Sarah laughed. "There are two copies of your social security card in your wallet. I put them in there this morning. There is one for you, one for HR, when you talk to them later this morning."
"Okay, thanks, Mom. I'll talk to you later."
"Seriously, you have to stop calling me that."
"I have to go, bye."
"You wouldn't just hang up on me. I'm going to make you pay for calling me your mother."
"Mom, seriously, I have to go, first day on the job and all."
"GRRRRR" Sarah growled. "The hole is getting deeper!"
"I'll tell you all about it when I get home, bye!"
Chuck hung up his phone and took out his wallet. He fished around for a minute until he found what Sarah had told him was there and he also found a picture of Sarah. He recognized it immediately it had been taken at Ellie's wedding and was Sarah in her bridesmaid gown. Chuck stared down it, struck slightly dumb by the fact that Sarah wanted a picture of herself in Chuck's wallet. He kept staring at it until a man walked over and cleared his throat. "Mr. Carmichael?"
"Yes?" Chuck answered quickly stuffing the photo back in his wallet.
"Hi, there, it's nice to meet you. I'm Tom Hopkirk your new boss. It's good to finally meet you. They didn't tell me when exactly you were starting." Chuck shook Tom's hand. "I have to say it's a bit of an unusual situation. I've never had an employee I didn't meet before they were hired. Your test scores looked good, your math was just a little weak, but tell me did you really sleep overnight in the exam room during the Crypto exam?"
Chuck smiled sheepishly. "Yeah."
Tom slapped him on the back. "Well I'll hope you'll show that kind of dedication while you're working for me."
"Are you all done with the security form?"
"I just have a few more questions."
"All right, good, finish filling that out and we'll take you upstairs so you can get processed by HR."
***
"You understand Mr. Carmichael that you'll need to read all of these policy manuals and then return this form with your signature stating that you read and are familiar with them all?"
Chuck gulped. The stack of manuals was at least half a foot high. "I understand."
"Okay, I'll need that by the end of the week. You understand your benefits package?"
"When do I get stock options?" Chuck asked.
"Mr. Carmichael, this is a government agency, not a publicly traded company, we have no stock options."
"Yeah, I know, it was just a little joke," Chuck explained.
"Ha ha, very amusing," the HR lady said sourly. "If you have no more serious questions, Mr. Carmichael, welcome to the NSA."
Tom took Chuck up to the eighth floor where their department was located. Chuck was impressed with the view. Maryland was apparently flat because he could see forever.
"I'll show you to your cube and get you logged into Spymail. Then I'll let you get settled for a moment and then I'll take you around and introduce you to the team," Tom explained.
"Spymail?" Chuck asked.
"It's just a little joke. Don't put anything in any email here that you don't want analyzed by thirty NSA analysts. Data security is as tight here as it is anywhere in the world."
"Oh," Chuck shrugged. "No problem."
"This is where you'll be sitting."
"Okay, thanks." Chuck's cube was that last one on the end of the row. It was rather plain with high walls of taupe and two rather impressive DynoSystems X5200's sitting on a desk connected to four monitors. Chuck whistled. "Nice hardware."
Tom smiled. "We are the one government agency that doesn't seem to have too much trouble keeping up with technology. Just remember, no personal thumb drives or memory cards of any kind. If you insist on using a phone with data storage capability, the IT department will insist on installing a program that will let them know exactly what's on it all the time. Data should never be removed from the company network. We'll give you remote access to the system so that you can connect from home, but you can't download anything from there either. If you try, it will notify the IT department and you'll be reprimanded. There's only one warning for trying to remove data from the NSA network. After that you'll either be fired or arrested, depending on what you tried to download. Do you understand?"
Chuck nodded and Tom continued. "It's all laid out in the Agency data policy. It's in one of those books you have there. Now, you'll need to read all of those by Friday. They are in hardcopy so you can take them home. You can't get access to much, until you've signed off on them. You'll be shadowing Michael this week, I'll introduce you in a few minutes after you get settled."
Tom showed him how to log onto the network and then left him alone for a few minutes. He wasn't quite sure what he was supposed to do, since he didn't even know what his job was yet. His phone started vibrating in his pocket and Chuck pulled it out quickly. He'd just received a text message.
You have a really cute butt. I'm going to enjoy this assignment.
Chuck whipped around, but there was nobody behind him. He kept looking and down in the office at the end of the hallway was a familiar blonde head. Sarah gave him a small little wave and then her eyes dropped back down to whatever she was reading.
Chuck watched her for a moment then texted her back.
Hi
Chuck was confused by what he got back.
Heads up
Chuck contemplated what that meant when a voice from above him said. "You must be the new guy. I'm Steve." Chuck's head whipped up and there was a head above the wall of his cubical.
"Hi," Chuck replied obviously startled. "I'm Chuck."
"Chuck, huh, I didn't know anybody still named their kids Chuck."
Chuck turned and found the head of a pretty girl above the cubical wall right in front of him. "Uh, my parents…are…are sadists…" Chuck finished lamely.
"Really?" the girl asked. "That must have made growing up very interesting."
"No…" Chuck shook his head. "It was a joke."
"Oh," the girl frowned and looked to Steve. "Did you get it?" Steve just shrugged. "Oh, well. So what's your story Chuck?"
"My story?" Chuck asked.
"Yeah, we're in the middle of the biggest Agency hiring freeze in years. We haven't had a new guy come on board since Tyler did seventeen months ago and he's already left. Then suddenly you show up, you must be pretty impressive. So what's impressive about you other than your pretty eyes?"
Chuck blinked. That was flirting. Chuck was no expert, but he was reasonably certain that was flirting. "Uh…" Chuck replied. "There's nothing impressive about me."
The girl smiled. "Well that's just not true. I already told you, you had impressively pretty eyes."
Steve rolled his eyes. "Seriously, what did they bring you in for? You must have something they really need."
"I don't know," Chuck replied. "Someone asked me to come to Washington to take some tests and a week later I'm sitting here."
The girl frowned at this explanation. "We've been trying to get additional staff for a year, you'd think they'd tell us if they're going to start hiring newbies again. I wonder if this means I can finally get my raise." Chuck shrugged helplessly. "Ooh, you're a number two!"
The girl turned away. "Richard, the new guy already has a higher security clearance than you do!" she called.
"No frick'n way!" Came an angry reply from a couple of cubicles away. A moment later another face appeared beside the girl. "What the heck? They're just giving new guys level two now? What's his story?"
"He claims he doesn't have one," the girl replied.
"Oh, one of those," Richard shook his head.
"One of what?" Chuck asked defensively.
The girl smiled. "One of those people who find themselves unremarkable. You wouldn't have gotten hired in this department if you were unremarkable. Everybody in this department is a genius. The CIA won't even think about putting you in here unless you are. So you're obviously intelligent and you've got some sort of story that makes you special. Steve there graduated from MIT at fourteen. Richard here wrote a program to optimize communications traffic on the internet when he was seventeen. It's still in use today. So you see, nobody who comes here, comes without a story."
"So what's your story?" Chuck asked.
"Oh no." the girl smirked. "If you want to know that, you have to take me to dinner first and you have to tell me yours."
"I can't believe you're level two, how'd you manage that?" Richard asked.
"Don't mind him, he's just sore because he's been here two years and is still at security clearance level one. He's the only one in the department that hasn't made at least level two. The girl lifted up her badge to show Chuck. Her name was Vanessa Thompson, security clearance level three.
"Putting the new guy through the ringer already?" Chuck whipped around to find Tom standing behind him. "I see you've met Steve, Richard and Vanessa," Tom nodded. "Did they tell you what they do?"
"No," Chuck replied. "They were mostly pumping me for information."
Tom smiled. "Well they're curious people by nature, that's why they work here. Richard and Vanessa work in the communications encryption. Steve here works in decryption programming which will be where you're starting out as well. You'll be working on Michael's project to start with. Let's go meet the rest of the crew."
Robert was in the cube next to Steve and then a man who had to have been in his sixties named Doug. Doug was apparently an expert in weapon systems encryption. Chuck wasn't even sure what that meant, but apparently had something to do with nuclear missiles.
Chuck was led around and met the other members of the department. He'd lost count, there had been at least seventeen of them so far. Some of them with offices, most of them had cubicles. The names were starting to run together when Tom introduced him to Derrick Martin.
Chuck held out his hand, but then his eyes rolled into the back of his head and a series of flashes appeared in front of him, IRS records, bank statements, code fragments and the Fulcrum alias, Gideon. Chuck staggered backwards. "Are you okay?" Derrick asked, clearly concerned.
"Oh, uh yeah, I think it's just first day jitters, you know." Chuck attempted to shrug it off.
"I was really nervous my first day too," Derrick sympathized, "but you come to figure out it's just like working for any other company."
"Yeah, thanks."
"So what's your specialty?" Derrick asked.
"Chuck's going to be working on optimizing decryption algorithms," Tom answered for him. "He has an incredible ability to recognize patterns and has shown an incredible tenacity for decryption."
"Is this the guy that slept on the table?" Derrick asked.
"The very one," Tom nodded.
Derrick shouted across the hall. "Hey, Simon, this is the guy that slept on the table during the decryption exam."
Simon popped out of his cube. "No way, that was you?"
Tom laughed and smacked Chuck on the shoulder. "You earned yourself quite a reputation around here with that little stunt. The exams are of course confidential, but I think that rumor broke loose about a day after it happened."
"I was just trying to find a way to clear my head," Chuck said dismissively. "It was no big deal."
"It was a big deal, I heard the staff went home during the test." Derrick laughed. "You have to let me buy you a beer sometime."
"Oh…all right."
Tom finished introducing him to the rest of the of the staff, there were twenty eight people in Chuck's department as well as two more departments that worked with data protection. Chuck's group mainly dealt with how to break encryption. Although a few people like Doug, Vanessa, Richard and Keith worked on protecting different critical systems. According to Tom the world of Cryptography was a constant game of can you top this between the encrypters and the decrypters. It sounded like a pretty lousy game to Chuck.
By the time Tom introduced him to Michael and sat him down in the other man's cube, Chuck was practically frantic.
"What's wrong?" Michael asked.
Chuck attempted to calm down. "Nothing, it's nothing."
"Okay, well, I'll go over the program overview and then how about some of the guys and I take you out to lunch?"
"Sounds terrific," Chuck replied flatly.
***
As it turned out Derrick was one of the people that decided to take Chuck out to lunch. Chuck sat shotgun and Derrick sat directly behind him, which made him very nervous. Simon was also in the car. Richard, Vanessa and Steve were taking a second car.
"What kind of car do you have, Chuck?" Derrick asked.
"Oh, I don't have a car."
"You take public transportation?"
"Yeah."
"Well that sucks, where do you live?"
"Severna Park," Chuck shrugged.
Michael whistled. "That's got to suck."
"Maybe I could stop by and pick you up," Derrick offered. "It'd only be like fifteen minutes out of my way and it would save you like an hour."
"No!" Chuck said a little too excitedly. "I, uh, I don't mind the commute."
"That's seriously crazy." Simon shook his head.
"Come on," Derrick offered again. "It's no big deal. It will save you a ton of time."
"It's okay, really. I don't want to be any trouble and the commute isn't a big deal."
Michael looked over at him from the driver's seat. "You are a seriously weird, dude, Chuck. Who are you texting?"
Chuck looked up from his phone. "Oh, uh, my sister, she worries."
"Wow, overbearing family, long commute, classified job you can't talk to anyone about. You live quite the life Chuckster," Derrick teased.
"Yeah I guess," Chuck mumbled. He completed his text to Sarah. At lunch with Fulcum, help!
He got a response a few minutes later. Are you in danger?
Chuck thought about it for a moment. I don't think so
Stay calm I'll be there.