Chapter 9: Changing Tactics

The phone vibrating on my desk eventually woke me up. I snatched it up and answered before I looked to see who was calling.

“Hamar.”

“Where the hell are you? Your team meeting started ten minutes ago,” Darlene snapped at me.

“Damn!” The clock on my computer screen read 9:42. I’d only slept a couple of hours, but I’d forgotten entirely about the team meeting this morning. “Tell them I got caught in traffic. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

“Wait! Shower, shave, and dress right. It’s business casual on Fridays. Slacks, no ties. You can tell them I sent you home to change.”

“That’s better than traffic?”

“Trust me. Oh. And thanks for the flowers.”

“Okay. Half an hour. I’m moving.” The line went dead. I stripped and headed for the shower. I took just enough time to shave carefully. I was beginning to get the hang of it, but one bad move and I’d have no facial hair at all. I chose black slacks, a white Oxford shirt, and my gray sweater.

I skipped coffee and was at the office ready to enter the conference room in twenty-eight minutes. I was lucky with the bus. Before I was visible from the conference room windows, Arnie caught up with me and called me to a stop.

“I almost missed you,” he said as he pulled me to a stop.

“Sorry, I was rushing to the team meeting. I’m late.”

“I know. That’s why I’m here. Please don’t make a habit of this. You and I have been talking for the past hour. I’ll apologize for keeping you away from the meeting.”

“Darlene said she’d tell them she sent me home to change clothes.”

“That would have worked, but this is more plausible. I didn’t come into the office until after the meeting started, so none of them know we weren’t together off-site. Just listen closely and follow along.” I nodded and Arnie pulled the door open and pushed me through.

“You’re late,” Jen barked. She halted suddenly as Arnie pushed through behind me.

“My fault,” he said. “I intercepted Dag on the way in this morning and asked to go over his report with him. We got into a discussion about the viability of IPv6 as a security mechanism and lost track of time. If Darlene hadn’t buzzed us, we’d still be down at the Daybreak.” Now why had he suggested that scenario for our discussion? Was he the one who suggested the IP address as ‘IGotUrBak’ on all those forums? He either had my back this morning or he was changing the game and throwing me to the wolves. It made sense that he might have been the one sending me the message since he hadn’t shown up for the beer bash last night. I knew everyone else in the room was with me up until I headed home. I was reluctant to have Arnie as an ally.

“What’s IPv6 got to do with IPSec?” Ford asked.

“Ford, you know the answer to that question better than I do. I know you’ve read the spec. Is this another interview question?” I asked.

Ford grinned at me.

“For the benefit of the Neanderthals,” he said.

“Well, technically, the spec only provides for a few gazillion unique web addresses,” I said. “Part of the network discovery protocol spec emphasizes the use of IPSec to protect NDP messages, but there’s no instruction manual for using it. That means we could be vulnerable to a massive security hole if we don’t do some R&D in the next year to eighteen months. It’s part of a proposal I’m putting together to attend the IPSec Working Committee Conference coming up in July. Actually Ford, you suggested that in the first place if you recall.”

“I’ll leave you folks to it, since I’ve heard all this before. Sorry to have made Dag late for your team meeting.”

When Arnie walked out the door, all eyes turned back to me and they started bombarding me with questions. I professed that I’d just come across this information and that I’d been up a good bit of the night exploring an IPv6 site. I watched for reactions to that comment, but no one showed a sign of being complicit. I commented about how orderly everything seemed, but how difficult it was to protect with so many IPv4 portals connecting into it. When we broke up the meeting, it was noon and I’d talked myself hoarse. It was a good thing I’d spent so much time exploring that site last night or I wouldn’t have known a thing about what I was talking about. Of course, if I hadn’t been up all night trying to break into the site in the first place, I wouldn’t have slept late and been late for the meeting.

I went to the cafeteria for lunch and when I sat to eat, Jen pulled up a chair and sat across from me.

“Do you mind?” she asked pleasantly.

“No. Please, have a seat.”

“That was a nice bit of work this morning. I fail to see how it’s going to be relevant, though,” she started in on me. What’s her problem? “We aren’t going to do that R&D here. They’ll get around to doing it in Redmond or Silicon Valley and we’ll buy a package off the shelf. But, it was still a great way to distract everyone from what you’re really doing.”

“Why does everyone assume I’m not here to do the job I was hired for?”

“Part of this team’s charter is subterfuge. We have projects we work on and show results to each other, but no one on the team is focused on our team. Everyone’s up to something.”

“Is that official or your personal observation?” I asked. “As the team lead isn’t guiding the team your responsibility?”

“My responsibility is to give the team a reason to exist. I have no idea what any of them are really doing.”

“Isn’t that a little counter-productive?” I looked at her curiously. We hadn’t had much one-on-one time since I got here. Last night she’d been affable, but just part of a group. Today she wore her version of business casual, which was a simple skirt that fell just below her knees and a silk blouse with a black camisole keeping her from exposing more than a business-acceptable amount of cleavage. It was quite an appealing look.

“It could be, but I’m inclined to trust my boss on this one. We really do have security problems and pitting our best and brightest minds against each other is one way of pushing them to the limits.” She seemed to be assessing me in much the same way. “You know, by the way, that the size tag is still running down your left pants leg?”