Untitled Document

07 April 2004

Hot Box

By the time I finally got to the Hot Box at the end of the day I was not at my best.

It was business and I hate doing business after dinner. Normally my day would be done. I had been up early and writing frantically, traveling to the Arctic in my mind, strapping on a dog sled and trying to imagine what it was like to conquer a part of this world.

The notion seems absurd this morning. Our troops can whip any military formation in the world, and we demonstrated the lethality of our force just a year ago. The news described this same force sinking into the sea of angry people in Falluja and Baghdad. Twelve Marines yesterday, three wounded already today.

I pounded my little story into a semblance of order, popped into the shower, and drove expeditiously by the back roads to the anonymous modern campus in Arlington. You would drive right by and not notice the place.

That is the point. The campus is a commercial enterprise with some pockets of secrecy. That is true in many places here. This one is low-density and has available parking, even if the spaces are too small, and people like me come and go without the fanfare that comes with the long walk across the vast parking lots to approach the massive heavy symbolism of the Pentagon.

They say that this location was once occupied by an adult theater flanked by two seedy bars. The little block of sin had been there since Prohibition ended. I suppose the neighbors are pleased by the change in the neighborhood, but it seems a shame that gentrification so thoroughly eradicates the history of what has gone before.

Then it was through the stainless doors and across the marble floor to the glass doors of the anonymous waiting room that services the warren of vaults in the back of the building. There is a nice lady who mans the desk and monitors the security cameras. You are never alone in the facility or at least not until you are behind your own heavy steel door. Surveillance ends at the corridor they say, but who can tell, really.

We are in the vault to work on the Contract. I can't tell you what it is, precisely, and the business being what it is, I am not sure we know what we are doing. Oh, it is clear enough on the surface, but I have not peeled all the layers off the onion to see what our work might be used for when it is complete.

Two very large Agencies seem quite upset with us, thinking we are acting with dark purpose and unpublished agenda.

We are in the clear on that. We have no direction and no hidden agenda posted on our cubical walls. At least I don't think so. I have not gone through the desks of my co-workers thus far to conduct a detailed survey of their motivations.

It is a very odd place, and our comings and goings are announced by the grinding of the lock on the bronze-fitted doors. I like them a lot. The place we work is intended for very discrete technical activities. People do things behind the vault doors that are meant to be very secure. We drink coffee and work on reports and memos under a charter from the Secretary. There is almost always something good to eat, snacks being considered salubrious for our deliberations.

The courteous emissary from one of the angry Agencies brought a delightful seafood chowder on Monday. There was plenty, since the Navy contingent was recalled from our deliberations by a phone call from their headquarters, walking out of the meeting en masse.

The woman from the Inspector General's Office brought home-made scones yesterday. I think the unofficial goal of the group is to gain ten pounds before our report is issued.

It is a cold box at the moment. The air-conditioning and electrical power are on triple back-up. They tell us it will get warmer when our computers are installed and the little fans are blowing heat off the central processing units.

But at the moment we have nothing in our cubes and sit around the large conference table and look at images projected from our single lap-top on a screen that drops down from the ceiling.

When we need more coffee, we walk past the inner vault door which is propped open, identical to the one that opens onto the corridor. At the front of the antechamber we press a button on a metal box affixed to the middle of the steel outer door. A central motor is activated and moves a cam connecting six rollers that fit tightly into brackets on the door frame. The brackets are wider on the open bottom, and the bracket is angled so that once the rollers have traveled an inch down their tracks, the door swings open. When the rollers clear the bottom you can pull the handle and the vast dead weight pivots majestically open.

The edge of the door features a knife-edge of bronze that fits precisely into a track all around the frame. When it is closed and the rollers are in the secure up position, the non-conductive blade around the door is seated firmly. There is no way for electrons or stray energy to flow around and leak out. The room is certified "secure" for the containment of the most sensitive information.

There are identical cream-colored doors that line the corridor. I sometimes see people coming and going from them, and once got a peek at some electronic equipment and blinking lights as a lean gray-haired man entered one. I do not know if I was exposed to any stray emanations before the knife-edged door swung shut.

We are not supposed to look interested in what other people might be doing, and they are expected to extend the same courtesy to us.

Sometimes I nod when I pass them in hall. That seems to be just about the right level of interaction.