The Scarecrow (33 page)

“Yes, on my way.”

Chavez turned to Rachel and me and then looked at her watch.

“Okay, then. He will handle this part of your journey and I will collect you in about twenty minutes. After that, the tour
will be completed unless you have specific questions about the facility or operation.”

She turned to leave and I saw her eyes hold for a moment on a cardboard box sitting on the chair in front of the empty desk.

“Are these Fred’s things?” she asked without looking at the two techs.

“Yup,” Kurt said. “He didn’t get a chance to get it all. We boxed it up and were thinking about taking it to him. We forgot
yesterday.”

Chavez frowned for only a moment, then turned toward the door without responding. Rachel and I were left standing and waiting.
Eventually through the glass I saw a man in a white lab coat walking down one of the aisles created by the rows of server
towers. He was tall and thin and at least fifteen years older than Sideburns. I knew you could make yourself older with a
disguise. But making yourself shorter was tough. Rachel turned and subtly gave me a questioning look anyway. I surreptitiously
shook my head. Not him.

“Here comes our scarecrow,” Kurt said.

I looked at the kid.

“Why do you call him that? Because he’s skinny?”

“ ’Cause he’s in charge of keepin’ all the dirty, nasty birds off the crops.”

I was about to ask what he meant by that, when Rachel once again filled in the blanks.

“Hackers, trolls, virus carriers,” she said. “He’s in charge of security on the data farm.”

I nodded. The man in the lab coat made his way to the glass door and reached for an unseen locking mechanism to his right.
I heard a metallic click and then he slid the door open. He entered and pulled the door closed behind him, testing to make
sure it had properly locked. I felt cool air from the server room wash over me. I noticed that right next to the door was
an electronic hand reader—it took more than a simple key card to access the actual farm. Mounted above the reader was a case
with a glass door that contained what looked like a pair of gas masks.

“Hello, I’m Wesley Carver, chief technology officer here at Western Data. How do you do?”

He extended his hand first to Rachel, who shook it and told him her name. He then turned to me and I did the same.

“Yolanda left you with me, then?” he asked.

“She said she’d come back for us in twenty minutes,” I said.

“Well, I’ll do my best to keep you entertained. Have you met the crew? This is Kurt and Mizzou, our server support engineers
on shift today. They keep things running while I get to putter around on the farm and chase down the people who think they
can have a go at the palace walls.”

“The hackers?” Rachel asked.

“Yes, well, you see, places like this are a bit of a challenge to the people out there with nothing better to do. We have
to constantly be aware and alert. So far, so good, you know? As long as we’re better than they are we’ll do fine.”

“That’s good to hear,” I said.

“But not really what you came to hear. Since Yolanda handed the baton to me, let me tell you a little bit about what we’ve
got in here, yeah?”

Rachel nodded and signaled with her hand for him to proceed.

“Please.”

Carver turned so he was facing the windows and looking into the server room.

“Well, this is really the heart and brains of the beast down here,” he said. “As I’m sure Yolanda has told you, data storage,
colocation, drydocking, whatever you want to call it, is the main service we provide here at Western Data. O’Connor and his
boys up on the design and hosting floor might talk a good game, but this down here is what we have that nobody else has.”

I noticed Kurt and Mizzou nod to each other and give each other a fist bump.

“No other aspect of the digital business world has grown so exponentially fast as this segment,” Carver said. “Safe, clean
storage and access to vital company records and archives. Advanced and dependable connectivity. This is what we offer. We
eliminate the need to build this network infrastructure privately. We offer the advantage of our own direct, high-speed, redundant
Internet backbone. Why build it in the back room of your law firm when you can have it here and have the same sort of access
without the overhead costs or the stress of managing and maintaining it?”

“We’re already sold on that, Mr. Carver,” Rachel said. “That’s why we’re here and why we’ve been looking at other facilities
as well. So can you tell us a little bit about your plant and your personnel? Because this is where we’ll make our choice.
We don’t need to be convinced of the product. We need to be convinced of the people we are entrusting our data to.”

I liked how she was moving it away from technology and in the direction of people. Carver held up a finger as if to make a
point.

“Exactly,” he said. “It always comes down to people, doesn’t it?”

“Usually,” Rachel said.

“Then let me give you a quick overview of what we have here and then perhaps we could retire to my office and discuss personnel
issues.”

He walked around the line of workstations so that he was standing directly in front of the big windows that looked into the
server room. We followed him around and he continued the tour.

“Okay, then. I designed the data center to be state of the art in terms of technology and security. What you see before you
here is our server room. The farm. These big, long towers hold approximately one thousand managed, dedicated servers on direct
line with our clients. What that means is that if you sign on with Western Data, your firm will have its own server or servers
in this room. Your data is not commingled on a server with any other firm’s data. You get your own managed server with one-hundred-megabit
service. That gives you instant access from wherever you are located to the information you store here. It allows you interval
backup or immediate backup. If needed, every keystroke made on your computers in—Where are you located?”

“Las Vegas,” I said.

“Las Vegas, then. And what is the business?”

“A law firm.”

“Ah, another law firm. So then, if needed, every keystroke made on a computer in your law firm could be instantaneously backed
up and stored here. In other words, you would never lose anything. Not a digit. That computer in Las Vegas could be struck
by lightning and the last word typed on it would be safe and sound right here.”

“Well, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” Rachel said, smiling.

“Of course not,” Carver said quickly and humorlessly. “But I am just telling you the parameters of the service we provide
here. Now, security. What good is it to back everything up here if it is not safe?”

“Exactly,” Rachel said.

She took a step closer to the window and in doing so moved in front of me. I could clearly see that she wanted to make the
lead connection to Carver, and that was fine with me. I stepped back and left them standing side by side at the window.

“Well, we’re talking about two different things here,” Carver said. “Plant security and data security. Let’s talk about the
facility first.”

Carver covered a lot of the ground Chavez had already covered but Rachel didn’t interrupt him. Eventually, he homed in on
the data center and offered some new information.

“This room is completely impregnable. First off, all the walls, floor and ceiling are two-foot-thick cast concrete with double
rebar and rubber membrane to protect it from water sources. These windows are level-eight glass laminates that are impact
resistant and ballistic proof. You could hit it with both barrels of a shotgun and you’d probably only hurt yourself with
the ricochet. And this door is the only means of entry and exit and is controlled by biometric hand scan.”

He pointed to the device next to the glass door.

“Access to the server room is limited to server engineers and key personnel only. The biometric scanner unlocks the door after
reading and confirming three distinct hand groups: palm print, vein pattern and hand geometry. It also checks for a pulse.
So nobody can get away with chopping my hand off and using it to get into the server farm.”

Carver smiled but Rachel and I didn’t join in.

“What about if there’s an emergency?” I asked. “Could people be stuck in there?”

“No, of course not. From the inside you simply push a release button that opens the lock and then slide open the door. The
system is designed to keep intruders out, not keep people in.”

He looked at me to see if I understood. I nodded.

Carver leaned back and pointed to the three digital temperature gauges located above the main window on the server room.

“We keep the farm cooled to sixty-two degrees and have plenty of redundant power as well as a backup cooling system. As far
as fire protection goes, we employ a three-stage protection scheme. We have a standard VESDA system with a—”

“Vesda?” I asked.

“Very Early Smoke Detection Alarm, which relies on laser-based smoke detectors. In the event of a fire the VESDA will activate
a series of alarms followed by the waterless fire-suppression system.”

Carver pointed to a row of red pressure tanks lined on the back wall.

“There you see our CO
₂
tanks, which are part of this system. If there is a fire, carbon dioxide floods the room, extinguishing fire without harming
any of the electronics or the client data.”

“What about people?” I asked.

Carver leaned back again so he could see around Rachel to look at me.

“Very good question, Mr. McEvoy. The three-stage alarm allows sixty seconds for any personnel in the server room to escape.
Additionally, our server room protocol requires anyone entering the server room to carry a respirator on their person as a
WCS redundancy.”

From the pocket of his lab coat he withdrew a breathing mask similar to the two hanging in the case by the door.

“WCS?” I asked.

“Worst-Case Scenario,” Rachel said.

Carver put the mask back in his pocket.

“Let’s see, what else can I tell you? We custom-build our own server racks in a shop attached to the equipment room down here
in the bunker. We have multiple servers and attendant electronics in stock and we can hit the ground running to provide for
all our clients’ needs. We can replace any piece of equipment on the farm within an hour of malfunction. What you are looking
at here is a reliable and secure national network infrastructure. Does either of you have any questions about this aspect
of our facility?”

I had nothing because I was pretty much at sea on the technology. But Rachel nodded like she understood everything that had
been said.

“So again, it’s about people,” she said. “No matter how well you build the mousetrap, it always comes down to the people who
operate it.”

Carver brought his hand to his chin and nodded. He was looking out into the server room but I could see his face reflected
in the thick glass.

“Why don’t we step into my office so we can discuss that aspect of our operation.”

We followed him around the workstations to his office. Along the way I looked down into the cardboard box that was on the
chair of the empty station. It looked like it was mostly full of personal belongings. Magazines, a William Gibson novel, a
box of American Spirit cigarettes, a
Star Trek
coffee mug full of pens, pencils and disposable lighters. I also saw a variety of flash drives, a set of keys and an iPod.

Carver held the door to his office and then closed it after we entered. We took the two seats in front of the glass table
he used as a desk. He had a twenty-inch computer screen on a pivoting arm, which he pushed out of the way so he could see
us. There was a second, smaller screen beneath the glass of his desk. On it was a video image of the server room. I noticed
that Mizzou had just entered the farm and was walking down one of the aisles created by the rows of server towers.

“Where are you staying?” Carver asked as he moved behind his worktable.

“The Mesa Verde,” I said.

“Nice place. They have a great brunch on Sundays.”

Carver sat down.

“Now, then, you want to talk about people,” he said, looking directly at Rachel.

“Yes, we do. We appreciate the tour of the facility but, frankly, that’s not why we are here. Everything that you and Ms.
Chavez have shown us is on your website. We really came to get a feel for the people we would work with and entrust our data
to. We’re disappointed we were unable to meet Declan McGinnis and, frankly, a little put off by it. We haven’t received a
credible explanation for why he stood us up.”

Carver raised his hands in a gesture of surrender.

“Yolanda is not at liberty to discuss personnel matters.”

“Well, I hope you can understand our position,” Rachel said. “We came to establish a relationship and the man who was supposed
to be here is not here.”

“Completely understandable,” Carver said. “But as a director of the company I can assure you that Declan’s situation in no
way affects our operation here. He simply took a few days off.”

“Well, that is troubling, because that’s the third different explanation we’ve gotten. It doesn’t leave us with a good impression.”

Carver nodded and exhaled heavily.

“If I could tell you more I would,” he said. “But you have to realize that what we sell here is confidentiality and security.
And that starts with our own personnel. If that explanation is not acceptable, then we might not be the firm you are looking
for.”

He had drawn a line. Rachel capitulated.

“Very well, Mr. Carver. Then tell us about the people who work for you. The information we would store in this facility is
of a highly sensitive nature. How do you ensure the integrity of the facility? I look at your two—what are they called, server
engineers? I look at them and I have to say they look to me like the type of people you are protecting this facility from.”

Carver smiled broadly and nodded.