'I'm sooo glad you said that. It's like that every lunchtime, you know. I don't know why I bother going there.'
To my surprise, he didn't make as if to cross the street, starting instead to walk toward N. I fell into step beside him and shot him a quizzical look.
Mickey put his arm around my shoulder and said, 'We'll go to Sarah's, it's a bit more private.' He patted his computer bag.
'I've even brought some milk to go with the Earl Gray. Do you know, there's a little shop in Georgetown that gets it straight from Sir Thomas Lipton himself!' He was very pleased with himself; maybe he was hoping I'd take special note of his initiative when I filed my report. Fuck the milk; I wanted to see what was next to it.
As we walked along 23rd, I carried on playing the part of best mate in nice-to-see-you mode. I couldn't decide whether he was really good, or away with the fairies. Either way, I was glad I could run faster than him and had a weapon.
'I'll leave the clearing to you now,' he said.
'You're probably much better at it than I am.'
I laughed and nodded in response, so that anyone watching would assume he'd just made a joke.
'By the way,' he grinned, 'the man sitting on the corner? He's always around here; he works in the apartments. I know you'll be keeping an eye on him.'
I looked around and saw Green Shirt, sitting on the wall to the right of Sarah's apartment, smoking.
'Just in case you started to worry. You may have seen him on your area clearing
I certainly did on my drive-past; in fact I always look out for him. It makes me feel better to know he's there.' He gave me a cherubic smile.
We reached the entrance and the water system was still drowning the flowers. Wayne was behind the desk, leaning back in his chair and reading a newspaper. It was like watching an action replay; they both had the same clothes on and even the dialogue was the same: 'Hello, Wayne, how are you today?'
Wayne put down his paper and grinned like an idiot. He was obviously having a really good day again.
'I'm very good. And how are you today?'
'I'm just Jim Dandy.' The corners of Mickey's mouth were almost touching his ears. As we walked toward him, Wayne turned his fall attention to me. I really felt as if I was being welcomed to the asylum.
'How are you today? Do you still need that car space? If you want it, you got it!'
I said, 'I'll certainly bear it in mind. Thanks.'
He put his hand up.
'Hey, no problem.'
We reached the desk and Metal Mickey switched his camp game-show host's voice into overdrive: 'Wayne, I bet if you looked in the delivery drawer you'd find a large UPS envelope addressed to Sarah.'
Wayne had a look, rummaged around for a moment and handed it over.
'Why, thank you, Wayne, I hope you continue to have a very nice day!'
We said our good-byes and walked to the elevator. He saw me looking at the envelope; as the elevator doors closed he raised an eyebrow.
'Why, Mr. Snell, you didn't expect me to carry the material around with me, did you?'
Sarah's apartment was just as I'd left it. There was even the faint aroma of burned food hanging in the air. Metal Mickey wrinkled his nose.
'Cooking--the other night,' I explained, closing the door behind us.
'Ooh, that's what it is.' He walked toward the kitchen.
'I'd ask for the recipe, but...' He twitched his nose again.
'Can I get you some tea?' He threw the envelope onto the settee and unzipped his bag.
I walked over and sat down beside it, checking my watch. The envelope looked quite thick, but I had plenty of time before my RV with Sarah.
I heard the kettle being filled as I ripped open the UPS plastic outer. Inside was a brown envelope, sealed with Sellotape.
Metal Mickey came back into the room.
'They're printouts, and they are now your responsibility.' He couldn't help looking rather pleased with himself.
'How did you get all this?' I asked.
He gave an impish smile and his eyes twinkled.
'Ask no questions, you'll be told no lies; that's what my dear mother always used to say.' He came over and sat down next to me.
'However, I have a friend,' his fingers mimed quote marks 'who has access to Intelink.' He clasped his hands together between his legs and did a pretty good impression of a Cheshire cat. It was the most pleased I'd seen him, and he had every reason to be.
Intelink was switched on in 1994. The need for real-time intelligence had never been so acute, as the Gulf War demonstrated when General Schwarzkopf very loudly complained that the spooks had failed to produce satellite imagery fast enough. The network was soon being used as a central pool by all thirty-seven members of the United States Intelligence Community, from the CIA to FINCEN (Financial Crimes Enforcement Network), plus other groups connected with national security and the military. I knew that at least 50,000 people had passwords, with varying levels of access.
We both heard the kettle boil and click off. Mickey jumped up.
'Tea!
Milk, sugar?'
'Strong. Shaken, not stirred.'
I heard him giggle as I pulled out the wad of paper, filed in three clear-plastic sleeves. It was definitely stuff off Intelink. On the top file I could see the META tagging: <'IL. CIA Executive Order 12958: Classified National Security Information^ META (Megadata) is a system for pulling down the documents needed from hundreds of thousands on call.
The information available is nearly half a million electronic pages; just over 80 percent of all the National Security Agency's output can be accessed in two hours.
The rest of the title went on to give its level of security. This document was tagged Intelink-P--in other words, managed purely by the CIA and top secret, available only to policymakers.
Mickey came back with the tea. I had just finished skimming through the rest of the tags. This was looking good. There was another IntelinkP and an Intelink-TS--classified secret, about a third of the intelligence community have access at this level. I was quite looking forward to having a read. I looked at Mickey as he held a sugar lump on a spoon for me.
I shook my head.
'How on earth did your friend get this stuff?'
He sat down and proceeded to put four lumps in his cup.
'Well, the objective is the eventual flow down, or up, of information as various security classifications impose themselves. Right now, standard COTS tools are used, but they're not specially augmented with multilevel security.
These tools don't provide the right hooks, so for now different levels of security are provided by different physical levels of security, so there's an issue regarding upgrading and downgrading information between security levels.'
I gave up listening to him halfway though his waffle.
'What the fuck are you on about?'
His spoon fought a battle with the amount of sugar in his cup.
'If they say something is an 'issue,' it means they haven't got that sorted out yet.
Now and again you can confuse the system. Especially when it's new and is taking a while to sort itself out.'
He went back into Cheshire-cat mode and took a sip of what must have been very sweet tea. I was waiting for his teeth to drop out as he spoke.
'The only one that can't be got into at the moment is a new, fourth level. It hasn't even got a name that I
