Meet At Joe's

19 Interviews Part 2 Cheryl

I chose Cheryl for my next interview figuring if she was motivated enough to recruit Mike, she might be a real fanatic. Perhaps the type of fanatic who would betray her friends and country for a cause?

She definitely seemed more nervous as I escorted her back to the booth, but that was probably just in her nature. I would describe her as the sweet mousy type. She was small and soft spoken. Not your typical fanatic.

"Cheryl, how does a nice girl like you end up in a group like this?" I grinned hoping she'd see the humor in my question.

She smiled back and responded, "I have often asked myself that very question. I ran into John at a technical conference a while back. We had met before when our two companies worked on a joint project together. When we worked together before, we had both expressed concern at the cavalier attitude toward security in our industry. At the conference, John approached me with a plan for doing something about it. Have you ever heard his analogy to the wild west? He makes a very convincing argument."

"I have heard his argument. I think there are a few problems with it."

"I know. But his intentions are good, and I was hoping that getting a group together to work on the problem, we might be able to come up with something better. We aren't making as much progress as I'd like. The others are impatient to do something and so they are hell-bent on deploying this malware to try and detect and track all the other malware out there. Also, I think many of them are more motivated by the challenge than by what we are trying to accomplish."

"It sounds like you are against deploying this malware?" I asked.

"I am, but I am definitely alone in that."

"Do you have any idea who in the group might have told the FBI what you all were up to?" I was still looking for a clue to who gave the original tip to the FBI that started their interest in John.

"You mean besides me?"

I honestly did a double take.

"I thought you knew." Cheryl realized she needed to explain. "I was nervous about what we were doing. So, I contacted the FBI. I gave a preliminary copy of our software to Agent Fink. I've been visiting the bar outside of our Tuesday meetings. When I saw Agent Fink at the bar talking to you all, I assumed you all knew about it. Did he not say anything to you all about it?

The look on my face answered Cheryl's question. Then she asked, "So John doesn't know either? I was afraid the reason he was avoiding the group meetings was because he no longer trusted me.

I felt like I had to explain John's situation to her. She had acted with the best of intentions and didn't deserve to think John had any ill feelings toward her. I didn't see any reason to keep the group in the dark any longer. I now had a pretty good idea who had leaked the malware to the Russians.

I told her that John had gone into hiding with Lupin one of our bar regulars. I told her he was hiding from the FBI and not the group. I did not tell her about John going in search of Julie. The current situation was complicated enough.

So, Fink was the agent who had told Lee there was nothing to the anonymous tip. He'd kept the preliminary software Cheryl had given him and sold it to the Russians. I wonder if Agent Lee has suspected him all along and that is why he called us in?