Guard Shredded a Black CEO's Badge — Then the Secretary of Defense Walked Through the Door
Chapter 6
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Raymond turned. The relief on his face was visible only for a second before professionalism closed back over it. "Patricia."Secretary Wren crossed the lobby in twelve strides. Her security detail fanned out automatically. She stopped next to Raymond and looked at the security desk, then at Dailey, then at the shredded credential on the counter."Would someone like to explain to me," she said, her voice unhurried and glacially calm, "why the man I am here to sign a 2.3 billion-dollar defense contract with is standing in the lobby of his own building without a security clearance?"Sergeant Norris had gone the color of old concrete. Dailey was frozen behind his partition, his mouth slightly open."Madam Secretary." Norris stepped forward and managed a stiff nod—not quite a bow, not quite composed enough to be a salute. "There was a credential dispute at the desk. Officer Dailey determined that Mr... that this individual's facility access card appeared to be a counterfeit document, and—""—and destroyed it," Secretary Wren finished the sentence, looking at the shredded pile on the counter."Madam, I was following fraudulent access—" Dailey started."Officer." Secretary Wren turned to look at him directly. She said nothing else for a moment. The silence she left in the wake of that single word had more mass than anything Dailey could have said into it.Raymond spoke first. "Patricia, I need to flag something before we go upstairs."She turned to him."The biometric sign-on for the contract documents is tied to my facility credential chip. The Federal Acquisition System requires principal party biometric authentication for contracts above 500 million. My chip is in that shredder."The lobby went quiet in a different way now. Secretary Wren looked at Raymond. Raymond looked back at her with the steady expression of a man who had already calculated the problem and was waiting to see if she saw the same solution he did."How long till the window closes?" she asked."The Federal Acquisition Portal locks the signing session at 9:45. That's fifty-one minutes."Secretary Wren turned to the woman at her left, her chief of staff, a compact, fiercely efficient woman named Dr. Renata Cross. "Get the FAR office on 14 on the phone now, and get me the facility director." Then she turned back to Dailey. "You," she said. It was not a large word, but it pinned him in place. "Do not go anywhere."