OPERATION: SALT THE EARTH - Log 2
Mar. 4th, 2018 08:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsEmma and MA begin sifting through the potential suspects for the most likely targets.
Emma's in-house security team took her request for 'all the information they could find' about potential suspects very seriously, and the printer went through two reams of paper printing out the results. While most of it wouldn't be useful, this kind of intelligence was the starting point of every investigation. Every operations, every mission, every investigation they'd done over the years had started at this very point; a stack of paper in which the kernels of useful information hid within a mountain of chaff.
"I promise not to cut up any paper dolls." Marie-Ange said dryly as she pulled a unorganized pile of highlighters and gel pens from her bag. "No scissors anywhere. But I do intend to write all over every single piece of paper on this table." In colours only Jubilee would really approve of. "I think they gave us a list of every single person with access." She pulled the top sheets off the pile and frowned. "And background checks on every single one, and bank records, and credit card use, and phone records..." She raised both eyebrows, clearly impressed. "Any any of your people particularly mutated, because I could make room in our budget to steal one or three."
"My security team?" asked Emma. "Not that I'm aware of. They're just very, very thorough. There are bonuses involved and I make sure that nice things are said to them about their work ethic on a fairly regular basis. It seems to work to keep them motivated." She looked at the large stack of paper in front of her and sighed slightly. "I'm very glad I tend to keep my research companies fairly small and focused. I dread to think what this would look like if it was one of the larger divisions of Frost Enterprises. We'd be looking at hundreds of times more paperwork. Thirty-two people is... manageable."
"Yes, if this was hundreds.. " Marie-Ange's eye twitched. "It would be guesswork and throwing darts and hoping precognition and pattern recognition was enough. Ick." She clicked a retractable highlighter a few times idly as she scanned the first summary sheet from the pile. "Where to start... " she said - or thought very very loudly, it was the same with Emma in the room. "Anyone with any sort of sense would hide any money they had gotten, waited to repay debts, operated in cash. But we can probably eliminate anyone with glaring debt, or put them in the unlikely pile first..."
Emma tilted her head a little as she perused another piece of paper. "Frost Enterprises - even the subsidiaries and sub-contractors and shelf companies and whatever else my creative accountants come up with - tends to be on the high end of the pay scale. Perhaps put anyone that has a very large debt into the "stupid but possible" pile? I'm going to start with the HR files. See if anyone has any kind of record of unreasonable complaints. Someone whiny." She gave a small shrug at Marie-Ange's look. "People betray their employers for all kind of reasons, but failure to recognise their inherent genius does seem to come up fairly often as a "reason". Or excuse."
"Perhaps also the recently dismissed, because again, stupid but possible." Marie-Ange pushed around some files until she came across a list of former employees. "Especially if they are in the IT department. Although I imagine the back doors in your systems are rather minimal, considering the company you keep." She could not help an amused smile. "Doug takes that sort of thing so personally after all."
“It’s very sweet, how much he cares about making sure no-one can play in my sandpit,” replied Emma. “Though fortunately he only has to do a little bit of work on top of all the other people I pay to make sure no-one plays in my sandpit. He has enough on his plate without making him my entire IT Department. I think the software updates alone would kill him. And considering how careful he is, I think it’s fairly unlikely we’re going to a find someone sending the data required to replicate the process through any kind of Frost system. That would throw up enough red flashing lights that we probably would only have had one piece of paper to look at.” She sighed as she looked at the carefully marshalled HR files in front of her. “Have I mentioned how very annoyed I am by people that betray me?”
"Perhaps this one?" Marie-Ange ticked off a name on her list and pulled one of the folders out of the stack. "Student loans, family in Chad who were in the last administration." It was as good of a place to start as any. "Let us see, has Monsiuer Launay or any of his family opened any new banking accounts off-shore or come into any interesting property at home." She frowned. "Or had family go free I suppose, ugh, there are too many avenues to stroll down for motivation."
“And not enough,” responded Emma. “I try and ensure that Frost employees don’t have any particular reason to betray company secrets, but I also try and make sure that I’ve made at least a cursory scan of all employees, no matter how distant. I don’t want them joining the company with an immediate intention of running away with secrets and making money. I assume it may arise suddenly in light of a sudden, unexpected opportunity.” She tilted her head, looking down at the files she held, without seeing them. “And my scans, let us say, may also provide a suggestion that betraying the company isn’t a good idea. Not so strong a suggestion that it would alter behaviour, but enough that it would take at least some time to wear down enough to overcome. I think I can eliminate some names fairly easily – if the employee joined in the last, I would say, year, we can put them to the bottom of the pile. I would generally have noticed someone with a strong enough psychic drive to overcome my suggestion within that time and none of these people,” she waved her hand over the bland manila folders, “were in the slightest bit memorable in that way.”
"What if they left your influential sphere for some time?" Marie-Ange asked. She thumbed through the stack and then picked up a pair of highlighters. "If we assume that the suggestion is reinforced by surroundings, but can be worn away with time." She paused to start reading over the employment records in some of the file folders. "If that is the case, and I recognize that it is a guess, then someone who left and returned, or took a sabbatical, some time ago might be our culprit."
Emma tilted her head in thought. "That could definitely be an option," she said. "The kind of people I employ for these particular offshoots tend to be very academic. Having a break from employment to pursue further studies is not discouraged - why wouldn't I want them to know more? Mmm - their HR records should provide that information. Somewhere." She sighed, only slightly exaggeratedly.
Marie-Ange rubbed at her face and picked up a handful of the folders. ""Are we regretting your people's thoroughness and enthusiasm yet? Yes, I think I am." She reached into bag again and produced a container of sticky tabs. "So first, everyone who has worked for you for more than a year, but went on sabbatical or otherwise left your employ for some time." She opened the first folder in her pile and flipped through the unbelievably organized sections. "Ah, green sheets are employment records, with a timeline summary, so this will not take nearly as long as I expected." She scanned the sheet, stuck a green tab on the folder and set it aside. "And our Monsiuer Launay has worked for you for only nine months. Quite new, and quite diligently paying off those college loans via paycheck deduction."
Emma put her head down and began sorting through the files she had gathered in front of her. She had picked them out at random, but with a plan (no matter how slight) for possible identification, she was able to whittle them down quickly and gather another pile. When she had finished, she only had three files left in front of her. She looked up at Marie-Ange, her eyebrow raised in the obvious query – how many files did they have left between them?
"Two for me, and a perhaps." Marie-Ange answered. "Are we counting a leave of absence for heart surgery as leaving and returning, or no? On one hand, Ms. Badawi's medical expenses were covered entirely, and on the other, she extended her leave twice, and I do not have the medical expertise to know if her reasons were valid." She'd had to google the terms from the medical reports already, and it was very clear that Marie-Ange's medical knowledge was lacking in the "saving lives" department.
Emma closed her eyes for a second, accessing her formidable memory. The situation Marie-Ange had described rang a faint bell – following that sequence back through her memory, Emma finally nodded. “I remember her,” she said. “I signed a card, gave Sandrine money for flowers and signed off on the invoices for her medical care. There were complications and she had to have follow-up surgery. It is always a possibility that she could be the mole, but I know she’s still on a return to work program and can only work limited hours due to fatigue. If she is our mole, all I can do is congratulate her on finding the energy to do it.”
"The genuinely the dullest name I've heard so far today," responded Emma. "He doesn't ring any particular bells. Which tends to makes me more suspicious than not. Let me..." Emma held up a finger and pulled her laptop to her. She accessed the subsidiary's records - her log-in to the HR records gave her access to everything and now she had a specific record to look for, she was quickly able to pull up everything on Neil. His work record appears exemplary. Digging further, Emma went back and found his academic transcript, which didn't include anything particularly unusual. She was about to suggest putting him down the list, but saw that beneath the transcript was a listing of his postgraduate studies. She clicked on the link and found the list was quite long. Neil had bounced around a few shorter postgraduate postings, but then Emma saw the thing that made her breath hiss through her teeth. "Well," she said, turning the laptop around to show Marie-Ange what she'd found, "I think Mr Neil's three years working on a Russian project, with a Russian team, with Russian funding, may just have taken him to the top of our suspect list. Shall you call in the troops, or shall I?"
"I think I can, if you would prefer to begin the vicious and unrelenting process of blacklisting this man and destroying any hope of him having a career?" Marie-Ange said, hand already on her phone to make the necessary phone calls. "Oh goodness, he has a wife." She said, scrolling down the page. "I hope she is innocent of all this, and has a good divorce lawyer." She tilted her head, pondering. "Or he has good life insurance. It would be too easy to solve the divorce problem for her after all this."
Emma's in-house security team took her request for 'all the information they could find' about potential suspects very seriously, and the printer went through two reams of paper printing out the results. While most of it wouldn't be useful, this kind of intelligence was the starting point of every investigation. Every operations, every mission, every investigation they'd done over the years had started at this very point; a stack of paper in which the kernels of useful information hid within a mountain of chaff.
"I promise not to cut up any paper dolls." Marie-Ange said dryly as she pulled a unorganized pile of highlighters and gel pens from her bag. "No scissors anywhere. But I do intend to write all over every single piece of paper on this table." In colours only Jubilee would really approve of. "I think they gave us a list of every single person with access." She pulled the top sheets off the pile and frowned. "And background checks on every single one, and bank records, and credit card use, and phone records..." She raised both eyebrows, clearly impressed. "Any any of your people particularly mutated, because I could make room in our budget to steal one or three."
"My security team?" asked Emma. "Not that I'm aware of. They're just very, very thorough. There are bonuses involved and I make sure that nice things are said to them about their work ethic on a fairly regular basis. It seems to work to keep them motivated." She looked at the large stack of paper in front of her and sighed slightly. "I'm very glad I tend to keep my research companies fairly small and focused. I dread to think what this would look like if it was one of the larger divisions of Frost Enterprises. We'd be looking at hundreds of times more paperwork. Thirty-two people is... manageable."
"Yes, if this was hundreds.. " Marie-Ange's eye twitched. "It would be guesswork and throwing darts and hoping precognition and pattern recognition was enough. Ick." She clicked a retractable highlighter a few times idly as she scanned the first summary sheet from the pile. "Where to start... " she said - or thought very very loudly, it was the same with Emma in the room. "Anyone with any sort of sense would hide any money they had gotten, waited to repay debts, operated in cash. But we can probably eliminate anyone with glaring debt, or put them in the unlikely pile first..."
Emma tilted her head a little as she perused another piece of paper. "Frost Enterprises - even the subsidiaries and sub-contractors and shelf companies and whatever else my creative accountants come up with - tends to be on the high end of the pay scale. Perhaps put anyone that has a very large debt into the "stupid but possible" pile? I'm going to start with the HR files. See if anyone has any kind of record of unreasonable complaints. Someone whiny." She gave a small shrug at Marie-Ange's look. "People betray their employers for all kind of reasons, but failure to recognise their inherent genius does seem to come up fairly often as a "reason". Or excuse."
"Perhaps also the recently dismissed, because again, stupid but possible." Marie-Ange pushed around some files until she came across a list of former employees. "Especially if they are in the IT department. Although I imagine the back doors in your systems are rather minimal, considering the company you keep." She could not help an amused smile. "Doug takes that sort of thing so personally after all."
“It’s very sweet, how much he cares about making sure no-one can play in my sandpit,” replied Emma. “Though fortunately he only has to do a little bit of work on top of all the other people I pay to make sure no-one plays in my sandpit. He has enough on his plate without making him my entire IT Department. I think the software updates alone would kill him. And considering how careful he is, I think it’s fairly unlikely we’re going to a find someone sending the data required to replicate the process through any kind of Frost system. That would throw up enough red flashing lights that we probably would only have had one piece of paper to look at.” She sighed as she looked at the carefully marshalled HR files in front of her. “Have I mentioned how very annoyed I am by people that betray me?”
"Perhaps this one?" Marie-Ange ticked off a name on her list and pulled one of the folders out of the stack. "Student loans, family in Chad who were in the last administration." It was as good of a place to start as any. "Let us see, has Monsiuer Launay or any of his family opened any new banking accounts off-shore or come into any interesting property at home." She frowned. "Or had family go free I suppose, ugh, there are too many avenues to stroll down for motivation."
“And not enough,” responded Emma. “I try and ensure that Frost employees don’t have any particular reason to betray company secrets, but I also try and make sure that I’ve made at least a cursory scan of all employees, no matter how distant. I don’t want them joining the company with an immediate intention of running away with secrets and making money. I assume it may arise suddenly in light of a sudden, unexpected opportunity.” She tilted her head, looking down at the files she held, without seeing them. “And my scans, let us say, may also provide a suggestion that betraying the company isn’t a good idea. Not so strong a suggestion that it would alter behaviour, but enough that it would take at least some time to wear down enough to overcome. I think I can eliminate some names fairly easily – if the employee joined in the last, I would say, year, we can put them to the bottom of the pile. I would generally have noticed someone with a strong enough psychic drive to overcome my suggestion within that time and none of these people,” she waved her hand over the bland manila folders, “were in the slightest bit memorable in that way.”
"What if they left your influential sphere for some time?" Marie-Ange asked. She thumbed through the stack and then picked up a pair of highlighters. "If we assume that the suggestion is reinforced by surroundings, but can be worn away with time." She paused to start reading over the employment records in some of the file folders. "If that is the case, and I recognize that it is a guess, then someone who left and returned, or took a sabbatical, some time ago might be our culprit."
Emma tilted her head in thought. "That could definitely be an option," she said. "The kind of people I employ for these particular offshoots tend to be very academic. Having a break from employment to pursue further studies is not discouraged - why wouldn't I want them to know more? Mmm - their HR records should provide that information. Somewhere." She sighed, only slightly exaggeratedly.
Marie-Ange rubbed at her face and picked up a handful of the folders. ""Are we regretting your people's thoroughness and enthusiasm yet? Yes, I think I am." She reached into bag again and produced a container of sticky tabs. "So first, everyone who has worked for you for more than a year, but went on sabbatical or otherwise left your employ for some time." She opened the first folder in her pile and flipped through the unbelievably organized sections. "Ah, green sheets are employment records, with a timeline summary, so this will not take nearly as long as I expected." She scanned the sheet, stuck a green tab on the folder and set it aside. "And our Monsiuer Launay has worked for you for only nine months. Quite new, and quite diligently paying off those college loans via paycheck deduction."
Emma put her head down and began sorting through the files she had gathered in front of her. She had picked them out at random, but with a plan (no matter how slight) for possible identification, she was able to whittle them down quickly and gather another pile. When she had finished, she only had three files left in front of her. She looked up at Marie-Ange, her eyebrow raised in the obvious query – how many files did they have left between them?
"Two for me, and a perhaps." Marie-Ange answered. "Are we counting a leave of absence for heart surgery as leaving and returning, or no? On one hand, Ms. Badawi's medical expenses were covered entirely, and on the other, she extended her leave twice, and I do not have the medical expertise to know if her reasons were valid." She'd had to google the terms from the medical reports already, and it was very clear that Marie-Ange's medical knowledge was lacking in the "saving lives" department.
Emma closed her eyes for a second, accessing her formidable memory. The situation Marie-Ange had described rang a faint bell – following that sequence back through her memory, Emma finally nodded. “I remember her,” she said. “I signed a card, gave Sandrine money for flowers and signed off on the invoices for her medical care. There were complications and she had to have follow-up surgery. It is always a possibility that she could be the mole, but I know she’s still on a return to work program and can only work limited hours due to fatigue. If she is our mole, all I can do is congratulate her on finding the energy to do it.”
"The genuinely the dullest name I've heard so far today," responded Emma. "He doesn't ring any particular bells. Which tends to makes me more suspicious than not. Let me..." Emma held up a finger and pulled her laptop to her. She accessed the subsidiary's records - her log-in to the HR records gave her access to everything and now she had a specific record to look for, she was quickly able to pull up everything on Neil. His work record appears exemplary. Digging further, Emma went back and found his academic transcript, which didn't include anything particularly unusual. She was about to suggest putting him down the list, but saw that beneath the transcript was a listing of his postgraduate studies. She clicked on the link and found the list was quite long. Neil had bounced around a few shorter postgraduate postings, but then Emma saw the thing that made her breath hiss through her teeth. "Well," she said, turning the laptop around to show Marie-Ange what she'd found, "I think Mr Neil's three years working on a Russian project, with a Russian team, with Russian funding, may just have taken him to the top of our suspect list. Shall you call in the troops, or shall I?"
"I think I can, if you would prefer to begin the vicious and unrelenting process of blacklisting this man and destroying any hope of him having a career?" Marie-Ange said, hand already on her phone to make the necessary phone calls. "Oh goodness, he has a wife." She said, scrolling down the page. "I hope she is innocent of all this, and has a good divorce lawyer." She tilted her head, pondering. "Or he has good life insurance. It would be too easy to solve the divorce problem for her after all this."
