Search: A Novel of Forbidden History by Judith Reeves-Stevens, Garfield Reeves-Stevens Page B

actually twenty-nine, sat back in Weir’s chair and cracked her knuckles. “I’ve extracted the core roots from the protected files and set it to write to disk.” She turned her head to look innocently at her boss. “Want that in English?”
    Lyle shook his head. Two months earlier, when this investigation had led him to Weir, Roz had slipped a program into the lab’s network thatrecorded every keystroke Weir made, and whenever he deleted a file, it made a copy where he couldn’t find it. Lyle was content not knowing more than that. In his life, machines that required anything beyond an ON and OFF switch rarely stuck around long enough to become good friends.
    “How about an ETA?” he asked.
    Roz checked Weir’s computer screen. Lyle couldn’t tell what she saw there that could give her a time estimate. “Five minutes.”
    He turned to Kowinski. “Then the computer’s all yours.”
    “It’s always been mine.”
    “Colonel, I don’t like getting my toes stepped on, either, but sometimes we have to let the little fish go so we can get the big ones.”
    “Mr. Lyle,” Kowinski said, emphasizing his civilian title, “I get that Weir is selling the data he’s stealing to someone you think is more important than his sorry ass. But the only reason this lab accomplishes its mission is the trust the men and women in uniform have for it. Maybe stealing someone’s genetic profile isn’t as big a crime as whatever you’re gunning for—but multiply that small crime by three million people feeling they’ve had their privacy rights trampled. Then add all the people who, because of that betrayal, decide not to cooperate with us in the future. To this lab, and to me, that’s irreparable harm.”
    Lyle thought that over, though he knew he didn’t have to. Three million service members having their feelings hurt and future recruits being hesitant to add their DNA to the armed forces registry was an easier challenge to deal with than America’s enemies being able to pinpoint every secret underground command post and continuity-of-government facility in the country, and every hidden U.S. sub pen around the world. How Weir was linked to the person responsible for that very real threat, Lyle didn’t know, but he was determined to follow any lead that would result in achieving his mission to bring Holden Ironwood to justice.
    Of course, he could say none of that to the colonel. “I understand your concern.”
    Kowinski folded her arms, apparently realizing that if he couldn’t give her even the slightest indication of the stakes he was playing for, then those stakes must be huge. Lyle felt bad for her, but relieved.
    While the two women watched whatever there was to watch on the computer, Lyle ran his eyes over the featureless office cubicle, noting how little had changed in Weir’s absence. When the suspect had resigned this morning, a security guard had watched as the kid boxed up his personal items, not that there had been many to begin with. Two months earlier, the first time Lyle had searched the office, he’d been struck by the impersonal feel of it.
    Almost everyone else in this section of the lab had a personal coffee mug with slogans or pictures. Almost everyone had photos of family and friends on the bulletin boards and on the walls boxing in their desks. At least a third of the cubicles had artwork by children. David Weir’s was different.
    On his cubicle’s bulletin board, he had lab schedules and memos, all current and neatly arranged. The only other item on the board had been one personal photo: a three-by-five color print of a forested landscape, completely nondescript.
    Roz had copied the photo with one of her handheld gadgets and sent the file to OSI forensics for analysis. She’d also noted that it was an actual photograph, not something produced on a home printer. The code on the back of the print revealed it had been made twenty-one years ago at a large film-processing lab that, in the