The first time he used it was when Bai appeared in the office with the encrypted USB drive Yong had promised and handed it to Paul. He took it as nonchalantly as if Bai had handed him a glass of tepid tap water. Inwardly, Paul was dancing for joy. He was now decidedly one step closer to fulfilling his mission for the CIA.

Coolly and calmly, Paul began downloading data from the Dalfan computer to the Dalfan USB, then loading that data onto his laptop. His own machine didn’t require the encrypted passcodes on the Dalfan drive, so it ignored them.

Bai tried stealing glances over Paul’s shoulder every now and then, on the pretense of stretching or fetching hot tea or office supplies. Bai’s job obviously was to get a sense of the kinds of files Paul was pulling down, but Paul shifted around in his chair and adjusted his posture to keep Bai at bay, and when that failed, he simply turned to the young accountant and said, “I’m sorry, but I need my privacy.”

That was enough to get Bai to back off, but Paul knew that Bai wasn’t his only problem. Someone in the Dalfan accounting department was likely monitoring his work. If it were him, he would’ve set up some kind of remote mirroring program—the same kind that allows a technical-support person in Bangalore to conduct remote repairs on a client’s computer in Baltimore. Every file he opened, and every data set he pulled down from the Dalfan desktop, would’ve been seen and probably recorded by the remote observer.

That was fine by Paul, because the important work he needed to do he accomplished on his private machine. Unfortunately for Dalfan, the security protocols that prevented Paul from logging on to their machines prevented Dalfan from logging on to his machine. Air-gapping worked in both directions. Acquiring the encrypted Dalfan USB drive allowed him to download their data onto his secure laptop.

But the real reason why he wanted the drive was the drive itself. As soon as Bai left the room for his first bathroom break, Paul plugged the Dalfan drive into one of his laptop USB ports and screen-grabbed the make and model and stored it in a file. He needed that information if he wanted to go out and buy a duplicate one. He wasn’t sure that he even could; at this point, he was still improvising. Unfortunately, he still didn’t have any idea how to defeat the Dalfan drive’s encryption.

In the meantime, he needed to keep his hand to the plow and try and find any fraud in the Dalfan books. He got back to his auditing work.

—