Chapter 4: The Digital Footprint
The screen of Arthur’s laptop flickered to life, casting a cold blue light across the cluttered surface of his mahogany desk. Miller leaned over the machine, his fingers resting lightly on the edge of the wood while a technician in a gray tactical vest plugged a thumb-drive into the USB port. The room smelled faintly of old paper and peppermint tea.
"You're making a mistake," Arthur said, standing near the bookshelf with his hands clasped behind his back. "If you download those indices without authorization from the Archivist of the United States, you're violating three federal statutes before dinner."
"Let me worry about the statute book," Miller replied without looking up. The technician’s fingers flew across the keyboard in a rhythmic, muffled clatter. "My concern is the file labeled 'Agriculture 1948' that was accessed from this IP address twenty-two minutes after your shift ended yesterday."
"I was checking references for an upcoming monograph on Depression-era grain subsidies," Arthur said, his voice level and steady. "It’s public domain material."
"Then why did the query route through a proxy server in Zurich?"
The question hung in the room like cigarette smoke. Arthur didn't blink. He looked at the framed photograph of his late wife on the mantelpiece, then back at the agent whose career depended on finding a scapegoat for an audit that had gone off the rails.
Outside, the sun had dipped below the roofline of the neighboring house, casting long, bruised shadows across the pavement where the ruined basketball still lay in pieces. Marcus was leaning against the fender of a parked sedan, his arms crossed over his chest, watching the front door with an intensity that made his jaw muscles knot.
"Zurich is where the European distribution office for the Archives' microform catalog is hosted," Arthur said patiently, as if explaining a basic cataloging rule to a slow student. "Every automated query from my terminal hits that server first. You know that, Miller. You helped set up the network architecture back in ninety-four."
Miller’s thumb drummed a slow tattoo against the walnut desk. The technician tapped him on the shoulder and pointed to a green progress bar on the laptop screen. "Download complete, sir. Local cache is clean, but the master index was modified locally at 4:15 PM today."
Miller turned his head slowly to look at Arthur. "Four-fifteen. That's twenty minutes before my team crossed the county line. The house was empty except for you and the boys outside."
May you like
Arthur didn't flinch. "I was in the kitchen making tea."
"Right," Miller said. "And the kettle must have typed forty words a minute."
