Michael Connelly - The Scarecrow

“Should we head over to the farm now?” Chavez finally asked.

“Sure,” I said.

“I’m going to turn you over to our CTO, who runs the data center. I need to step out and make another quick phone call, but then I will be back to collect you. You’ll be in good hands with Mr. Carver. He’s also our CTE.”

My face must have shown I was confused and about to ask the question.

“Chief threat engineer,” Rachel answered before I could ask it.

“Yes,” Chavez said. “He’s our scarecrow.”

We went through another mantrap and then entered the data center. We stepped into a dimly lit room set up similarly to the NOC room with three workstations and multiple computer screens at each. Two young men sat at side-by-side stations, while the other was empty. To the left of this line of stations was an open door revealing a small private office that appeared empty. The workstations faced two large windows and a glass door that looked out on a large space where there were several rows of server towers under bright overhead lighting. I had seen this room on the website. The farm.

The two men swiveled in their chairs to look up at us when we came through the door but then almost immediately turned back to their work. It was just another dog and pony show to them. They wore shirts and ties but with their scruffy hair and cheeks they looked like they should be in T-shirts and blue jeans.

“Kurt, I thought Mr. Carver was in the center,” Chavez said.

One of the men turned back to us. He was a pimply-faced kid of no more than twenty-five. There was a pathetic attempt at a beard on his chin. He was about as suspicious as flowers at a wedding.

“He went into the farm to check server seventy-seven. We got a capacity light on it that doesn’t make sense.”

Chavez stepped up to the unused workstation and raised a microphone that was built into the desk. She clicked a button on the stem and spoke.

“Mr. Carver, can you break away for a few minutes to tell our guests about the data center?”

There was no reply for several seconds and then she tried again.

“Mr. Carver, are you out there?”

More time went by and then a scratchy voice finally came through an overhead speaker.

“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?”