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He waited patiently.
“Here we are,” Kris whispered excitedly as he opened the access panel in the ceiling of the Foundation’s main computer room. It was quiet, dim, with only the hum of electronics breaking the silence.
It had taken them an hour to work their way into place. Nothing was ever as easy as it looked on paper. First they had had to dodge the real maintenance crew, finally climbing seventeen flights of stairs instead of using the service elevator. After locating the access panel to the overhead heating ducts, they climbed onto a high stool and managed to hoist themselves inside, putting the panel back in place so no one would know they were there. Then, using a flashlight taken from her glove box, they navigated the miles of ductwork only to find they had to go into the Foundation’s offices after all. They located the computer room and listened for a while, but the room seemed empty. Carefully they removed the ceiling access panel.
Kris leaned his head and shoulders out of the opening and looked around. “There aren’t any cameras,” he whispered. “But there’s a window in the door, so we’ll need to sit where anyone passing by can’t see us.”
“If we happen to be climbing in or out when someone walks by, we’re s
unk,” Grace said. It couldn’t be helped, though; they had no access through any of the doors, so it had to be the ceiling.
Kris braced his arms on each side of the opening and slowly lowered himself through it until he was hanging by his fingers. The ceilings were standard eight feet, for easy heating; with his arms outstretched, he had little more than a foot to drop. He landed quietly on the tile floor, then turned for Grace to hand down the laptop. With that safely stored, he held up his arms for her as she swung down from the ceiling, catching her around the waist and carefully setting her on the floor.
He looked swiftly around, sizing up the setup. This was his milieu, and his thin face glowed with eagerness. “Sit over there, behind that desk,” he said, pointing. “Let me get this hooked up and I’ll join you.” As he spoke he was busy removing cords and wires from a terminal, and rehooking them to his laptop. That done, he repositioned some operating manuals to block any view of their heads, which would be sticking up above the edge of the desk.
He flopped down beside her and drew his long legs up, cradling the laptop between them. He fingered a switch and the powerful little machine began to hum and make discreet little chirps as it booted up. They had been crossing their fingers on this, because Kris used the Windows 95 operating system; if the Foundation used DOS, he wouldn’t be able to use his laptop. Instead he would have to sit at a monitor, and given the window in the door that would be risky. But the Foundation used the same operating system, and the menu flashed on the screen.
“Okay, let’s see the files,” he murmured, rubbing his fingertip across the little mouse tucked in the middle of the keyboard and directing the cursor to the correct icon. He clicked once, and the screen filled with file names.
He scrolled down while they looked for something interesting. “Let’s look at the financial statement and tax returns,” she said, and he pulled up those files. They were incredibly complicated; they didn’t have time to decipher everything, so he copied the files onto a floppy and returned to the list.
“Donor list,” Grace directed, and he copied that file too.
There was little else that looked interesting; they looked into the payroll file, and Grace gasped at what Parrish was paid. Millions. The Foundation paid him millions every year. Just for directing the Foundation? She was certain the Foundation could find an able overseer for much less money, if that was all that was needed.
“Nothing much here,” Kris said after an hour of pulling up individual files and checking their contents. “What were those ideas you had on passwords? Let’s try a few of them and see what happens.”
“Treasure,” she directed, and he gave her a sharp glance as he obediently typed in the word and clicked on “Retrieve.”
File Not Found.
“Temple.”
File Not Found.
“Knight.”
File Not Found.
“Templar.”
“You mean those bad-ass monks you were reading about at my house that night?” Kris asked, typing the word.
“The very same.”
File Not Found.
“Damn,” she breathed. She was running out of likely passwords. “Guardian.”
File Not Found.
“Niall… Pope… Temple Treasure. Whose bright idea was it to allow unlimited space in naming files? Let’s see… he’s egotistical enough to name a file after himself. Try Parrish and Sawyer.”
File Not Found popped up on the screen after every entry. Kris had been silent except for asking her how to spell Niall.
“Power,” she suggested.
He typed. “Nope.”
