Paranoia (18 page)

“Thanks, brother,” I said.

He turned to look at me. “You better get that badge fixed,” he said.

And I was in.

30

Once you got past the reception area, HR looked like every other damned office at Trion, the same generic cube-farm layout. Only the emergency lights were on, not the overhead fluorescents. From what I could see walking around, all of the cubicles were empty, as were all the offices. It didn’t take long to figure out where the records were kept. In the center of the floor was a huge grid made up of long aisles of beige horizontal files.

I’d thought about trying to do my espionage totally online, but that wouldn’t work without an HR password. While I was here, though, I figured I’d leave one of those key logger devices. Later on I could come back and get it. Wyatt Telecom was paying for these little toys, not me. I found a cubicle and installed the thing.

For now, though, I had to root around through the file drawers, find the AURORA people. And I’d have to move fast—the longer I stayed here, the greater the chance I’d be caught.

The question was, how were they organized? Alphabetically, by name? In order of employee number? The more I looked over the file drawer labels, the more discouraged I got. What, did I think I was just going to waltz in and slide open a door and pluck out a few choice files? There were rows of drawers titled
BENEFITS ADMINISTRATION
and
PENSION/ANNUITY/RETIREMENT
and
SICK, ANNUAL AND OTHER LEAVE RECORDS
; drawers labeled
CLAIMS, WORKMEN’S COMPENSATION
and
CLAIMS, LITIGATED
; one area called
IMMIGRATION AND NATURALIZATION
records . . . and on and on. Mind-numbing.

For some reason some sappy golden-oldie song was playing in my head—“Band on the Run,” by Paul McCartney in his unfortunate Wings period. A song I really detest, worse even than anything by Celine Dion. The tune is annoying but catchy, like pinkeye, and the words make no sense. “A bell was ringing in the village square for the
rabbits on the run!
” Um, okay.

I tried one of the file drawers, and of course it was locked; they all were. Each file cabinet had a lock at the top, and they had to be all keyed alike. I looked for an admin’s desk, and meanwhile that damned song was circling around in my head. . . .
“The county judge . . . held a grudge”
 . . . as I looked for an admin’s desk, and sure enough, a key to the files was there, on a ring in an unlocked top center drawer. Boy, Meacham was right; the key’s always easy to find.

I went for the alphabetized employee files.

Choosing one name from the AURORA list—Yonah Oren—I looked under O. Nothing there. I looked for another name—Sanjay Kumar—and found nothing there either. I tried Peter Daut: nothing. Strange. Just to be thorough, I checked under those names in the
INSURANCE POLICIES, ACCIDENT
drawers. Nothing. Same with the pension files. In fact, nothing in any of the files, so far as I could see.

“
The jailer man and Sailor Sam
. . . .” This was like Chinese water torture—what did those insipid lyrics mean anyway? Did anyone know?

What was strange was that in the places where the records
should
have been, there sometimes seemed to be little gaps, little loose places, as if the files had been removed. Or was I just imagining this? Just when I was about to give up, I took one more circuit around the rows of file cabinets, and then I noticed an alcove—a separate, open room next to the grid of file drawers. A sign posted on the entrance to the alcove said:

CLASSIFIED PERSONNEL RECORDS—

ACCESS ONLY BY DIRECT AUTHORIZATION

OF JAMES SPERLING OR LUCY CELANO
.

I entered the alcove and was relieved to see that things were simple here: the drawers were organized by department number. James Sperling was the director of HR, and Lucy Celano, I knew, was his administrative assistant. It took me a couple of minutes to find Lucy Celano’s desk, and maybe thirty seconds to find her key ring (bottom right drawer).

Then I returned to the restricted file cabinets and found the drawer that held the department numbers, including the AURORA project. I unlocked the cabinet, and pulled it open. It made a kind of metallic
thunk
sound, as if some caster at the back of the drawer had somehow dropped. I wondered how often anyone actually went into these drawers. Did they work with online records mostly, keeping the hard copies just for legal and audit reasons?

And then I saw something truly bizarre:
all
of the files for the AURORA department were gone. I mean, there was a gap of a foot and a half, maybe two feet, between the number before and the number after. The drawer was half empty.

The AURORA files had been removed
.

For a second it felt as if my heart had stopped. I felt light-headed.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a bright light start to flash. It was one of those xenon emergency strobe lights mounted high on the wall, near the ceiling, just outside the file alcove. What the hell was that for? And a few seconds later there came the unbelievably loud, throaty
hoo-ah, hoo-ah
of a siren.

Somehow I’d triggered an intrusion-detection system, no doubt protecting the classified files.

The siren was so loud you could probably hear it throughout the whole wing.

31

Any second Security would be here. Maybe the only reason they hadn’t shown up yet was that it was a weekend and there were fewer of them around.

I raced to the door, slammed my side against the crash bar, and the door didn’t move. The impact hurt like hell.

I tried again; the door was bolted shut. Oh, Jesus. I tried another door, and that too was locked from inside.

Now I realized what that funny metallic thunking sound had been a minute or two earlier—by opening the file drawer I must have set off some kind of mechanism that auto-locked all the exit doors in the area. I ran to the other side of the floor, where there was another set of exit doors, but they wouldn’t open either. Even the emergency fire-escape door to a small back stairwell was locked, and that
had
to be against code.

I was trapped like a rat in a maze. Security would be here any second now, and they’d search the place.

My mind raced. Could I try to pull something over on them? Stan, the security guard, had let me in—maybe I could convince him I’d just accidentally stepped into the wrong area, pulled open the wrong drawer. He seemed to like me, that might work. But then, what if he actually did his job right, asked to look at my badge, saw that I didn’t belong anywhere remotely near here?

No, I couldn’t chance it. I had no choice, I had to hide.

I was stuck inside here.

“Stuck inside these four walls,” Wings wailed sickeningly at me.
Christ!

The xenon strobe was pulsing, blindingly bright, and the alarm was going
hoo-ah, hoo-ah,
as if this were a nuclear reactor during a core melt.

But
where
could I hide? I figured the first thing I should do was create some sort of a diversion, some plausible, innocent explanation for why the alarm had gone off. Shit, there was no time!

If I was caught here, it was over. Everything. I wouldn’t just lose my job at Trion. Far worse. It was a disaster, a total nightmare.

I grabbed the nearest metal trash can. It was empty, so I grabbed a piece of paper off a nearby desk, crumpled it up, took my lighter and lit it. Running back toward the classified-records alcove, I set it against the wall. Then I took out a cigarette from my pack and tossed it into the can too. The paper burned, flamed out, sending up a big cloud of smoke. Maybe, if part of the cigarette were found, they’d blame the old smoldering butt. Maybe.

I heard loud footsteps, voices that seemed to be coming from the back stairwell.

No, please, God. It’s all over. It’s all over.

I saw what looked like a closet door. It was unlocked. Behind was a supply closet, not very wide, but maybe twelve feet deep, crowded with tall rows of shelves stacked with reams of paper and the like.

I didn’t dare put the light on, so it was hard to see, but I could make out a space between two shelves in the rear where I might be able to squeeze myself in.

Just as I pulled the door shut behind me I heard another door open, and then muffled shouts.

I froze. The alarm kept whooping. People were running back and forth, shouting louder, closer.

“Over here!” someone bellowed.

My heart was thundering. I held my breath. When I moved even slightly, the shelf in back of me squeaked. I shifted, and my shoulder brushed against a box, making a rustling sound. I doubted anyone passing by could hear the small noises I was making, not with all that racket out there, the shouting and the sirens and all. But I forced myself to remain totally still.

“—fucking
cigarette!
” I heard, to my relief.

“—extinguisher!—” someone replied.

For a long, long time—it could have been ten minutes, it could have been half an hour, I had no idea, I couldn’t move my arm to check my wristwatch—I stood there squirming uncomfortably, hot and sweaty, in a state of suspended animation, my feet going numb because of the funny position I was in.

I waited for the closet door to swing open, the light to cascade in, the jig to be up.

I didn’t know what the hell I could say then. Nothing, really. I would be caught, and I had no idea how I could possibly explain my way out of it. I’d be
lucky
just to be fired. I’d likely face legal action at Trion—there was simply no good explanation for my being here. I didn’t want to
think
about what Wyatt would do to me.

And for all my trouble, what had I turned up here? Nothing. All the AURORA records were gone anyway.

I could hear some kind of hosing, squirting sound, obviously a fire extinguisher going off, and by now the shouts had diminished. I wondered whether Security had called in-house firefighters, or the local fire department. And whether the wastebasket fire had explained away the alarm. Or would they keep searching the place?

So I stood there, my feet turning into tingling blocks of ice while sweat ran down my face, and my shoulders and back seized up with cramps.

And I waited.

Once in a while I heard voices, but they seemed calmer, more matter-of-fact. Footsteps, but no longer frantic.

After an endless stretch of time, everything went quiet. I tried to raise my left arm to check the time, but my arm had fallen asleep. I wriggled it, moved my right arm around to pinch at the dead left one until I was able to move it up toward my face and check the illuminated dial. It was a few minutes after ten, though I’d been in there so long I was sure it was after midnight.

Slowly I extricated myself from my contortionist’s position, moved noiselessly toward the door of the closet. There I stood for a few moments, listening intently. I couldn’t hear a sound. It seemed a safe bet that they’d gone—they’d put out the fire, satisfied themselves that there hadn’t been a break-in after all. Human beings, especially security guards who must on some level resent all those computers that have all but put them out of a job, don’t trust machines anyway. They’d be quick to blame it on some alarm-system glitch. Maybe, if I were really lucky, no one would wonder why the
intrusion
-detection alarm had gone off before the
smoke
alarm had.

Then I took a breath and slowly opened the door.

I looked to either side and straight ahead, and the area seemed to be empty. No one there. I took a few steps, paused, looked around again.

No one.

The place smelled pretty strongly of smoke, and also some kind of chemical, probably from the fire extinguisher stuff.

Quietly, I made my way along the wall, away from any outside windows or glass-paneled doors, until I reached one of the sets of exit doors. Not the main reception doors, and not the rear stairwell doors through which the security guys had entered.

And they were locked.

Still locked.

Christ, no.

They hadn’t deactivated the auto-lock. Moving a little more quickly now, the adrenaline surging again, I went to the reception-area doors and pushed against the crash bars, and those too were locked.

I was still locked inside
.

Now what?

I had no choice. There was no way to unlock the doors from inside, at least no way that I’d been taught. And I couldn’t exactly call Security for help, especially not after what had just happened.

No. I’d just have to stay inside here until someone let me out. Which might not be until the morning, when the cleaning crew came in. Or worse, when the first HR staff arrived. And then I’d have some serious explaining to do.

I was also exhausted. I found a cubicle far from any door or window, and sat down. I was totally fried. I needed sleep badly. So I folded my arms and, like a frazzled student at the college library, passed right out.

32

Around five in the morning I was awakened by a clattering noise. I bolted upright. The cleaning crew had arrived, wheeling big yellow plastic buckets and mops and the kind of vacuum cleaners you strap to your shoulder. There were two men and a woman, speaking rapidly to each other in Portuguese. I knew a little: a lot of our neighbors growing up were Brazilians.

I’d drooled a little puddle of saliva onto whoever’s desk this was. I mopped it up with my sleeve, then got up and sauntered over to the exit doors, which they’d propped open with a rubber doorstop.

“
Bom dia, como vai?
” I said. I shook my head, looking embarrassed, glanced ostentatiously at my watch.

“
Bem, obrigado e o senhor?
” the woman replied. She grinned, exposing a couple of gold teeth. She seemed to get it—poor office guy, working all night, or maybe in here ridiculously early, she didn’t know or care.