The Days to Come by Tom Rosenstiel

Author:Tom Rosenstiel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ecco
Published: 2021-10-06T00:00:00+00:00

27

RANDI BROOKS

Tomorrow they would begin looking at the battery companies with Matsuda. This afternoon they had another briefing. They were scheduled for a crash course in spying in Silicon Valley. Gil Sedaka had set it up for them.

The man to see apparently was the head of the FBI field office in Palo Alto. “Jasdeep Bhalla,” Randi read aloud from the file, trying out the pronunciation different ways. Bhalla had run the FBI’s Silicon Valley office for ten years. “No one in the country,” Sedaka promised, “knows more about security and spying in high technology.”

Peter had nosed around a bit more. An FBI friend had explained that technically, Palo Alto was a satellite office to the bigger FBI operation in San Francisco, but this was the only FBI unit in the Valley itself. The Palo Alto and S.F. offices were also united by a common grudge, according to Rena’s friend: a mutual frustration that Washington’s policy on economic espionage in Silicon Valley was naive and inept. “Bhalla is a straight-up guy, but he’s pretty cynical,” Peter’s friend had advised. “For twenty years, Washington has been focused on fighting the last war—against Islamic radicalism—not the new one that Bhalla thinks is hurting the U.S. now.”

And what war was most hurting the U.S. now? Rena had asked.

“Technology theft and cyber war from Asia and the former Soviet Republics.”

So we weren’t just still fighting the last war. We were ignoring the new one, Randi thought. Why was she even a Democrat? she wondered. The entire government just sucked.

Her spirits weren’t exactly lifted when she saw the FBI’s lone office in Silicon Valley for the first time. If this was ground zero in the fight against foreign infiltration of America’s high technology, the good guys were losing.

The Bureau was located on the second floor of a run-down two-story rented building next to the freeway. It looked like a nuclear bunker built above ground by mistake. It was the kind of place a start-up would move to when it left the founder’s parents’ basement.

Special Agent in Charge Bhalla met them in the lobby.

“Call me Jazz,” he said in a travel-worn East Asian British accent.

“You guys trying to keep a low profile?” Randi asked with a glance around the lobby.

“We don’t want to scare people,” Bhalla said.

He was a jowly, elegant man in his late forties with a weary but friendly look. His thick black hair had distinguished strokes of gray at the temples.

He led them upstairs to a small conference room and introduced them to his deputy, Dave Polansky, a frowning, heavy-boned man with a blond crew cut. The two men leaned against metal desks and stared at their visitors.

“The president’s deputy chief of staff says you want a briefing on national security matters in the Valley,” Bhalla said. “So . . .”

Another set of VIPs from Washington to get the spy tour, Bhalla’s body language suggested. Randi was already worried a little about Peter. She was in no mood to be dissed by a grumpy cop who felt he was wasting his time with them.

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