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Jarvis waves a sheaf of papers. “Hold on, Max. Let me lay it all out for you.” If we were in the same room, he would have thrown it across the table at me. Then he taps his pen against his teeth and stares out of the screen. We watch his chest inflate, collapse, inflate, collapse. “Okay, short and dirty. Troy Diamond found spaghetti code in the upgrade and reported it to Erik, who came to me.”
Troy came to us from Cal Tech via the Navy a little over a year ago and looks to be a new star on the horizon. “Spaghetti code? That’s not possible,” I yelp in disbelief. “We checked for that at the beginning of the project.”
“Tell me about it.” I blink at Jarvis’ flat tone. The confidence he had when I left on this trip has evaporated like raindrops on hot pavement. “It’s there now.”
I drum my fingers against the brown, wood-grained tabletop. My face, pale with red spots on my cheeks, reflects from the glass of the screen. Erik fidgets.
“How long have you known?” My voice catches as Clay glares around accusingly.
“I found out this morning.” Jarvis sounds evasive. “But…” He glowers at Erik, who seems even more unhappy as he twists his glasses between his fingers. The thin wire frames snap. He drops them on the table, twisted metal glinting in the artificial light.
With an overgrown goatee and his scruffy band T-shirt decorated with smears of egg, Erik resembles the caricature of the bloke who lives in his mother’s basement. He studies his clenched hands. Finally, he peers at the screen.
“Troy told me two weeks ago,” he mumbles into his beard, his thick Russian accent difficult to understand.
“What did you say?” Clay’s deep voice reverberates, echoing from the transmission.
A rush of adrenaline overwhelms me, and I push to my feet.
Clay glares at me through the screen and slams his hand on the table. “Sit the fuck down, Max.”
I compose my face and glare at Erik on the monitor. “Why didn’t you say something to me or Jarvis?”
Erik squirms and turns his eyes toward the floor. “Group has had issues for couple of weeks, but team thought they could figure out glitching, so seemed pointless to say. But keeps getting worse, not better. Now, delays are massive, so had to tell Jarvis.”
Clay’s eyes are icebergs. “You should have told Max or Jarvis when this started. The delay could cost us contracts and good will besides damaging our reputation. I’ll discuss your decision-making with Max and Jarvis later.” He pauses. “We need to figure out a fix.”
“Was only this morning we knew things were out of control.” Lips moving frantically, Eric’s panic makes his words almost indecipherable. “Troy and I came early to run test.” He shakes his head and his shaggy red hair flies around. “No improvement.” His voice wobbles, harsh with fear.
“Pull it together,” Jarvis snarls at Eric. “Can you tell how much spaghetti code is in there? Are there other issues as well?”
Playing with his ruined frames, Erik squeezes his eyes shut, then pops them open and frowns. “Glitches started two weeks ago. Found few problems and fixed them. That was good for couple days. Then glitches start again and keep getting worse. Now we recheck all code. We think it is spaghetti code in there, gumming things up. Hard for us to figure out where problem is. Can’t tell if is one person or several programmers at fault.”
“Now that you’ve found it, can you remove it and write new code quickly?” I ask.
Erik shrugs. “Not sure. Depends on how widespread. We’re not sure we’ve found all.”
Clay examines his fingernails. When he responds, his voice chills like frost forming on a windowpane. “Thank you, Erik. You can go back to your office. I’m sure Jarvis will speak to you later.”
With a shaky wave of assent, Erik sweeps up his broken glasses and wobbles off our screen.
Clay runs his fingers through his crew-cut. “Where do we go from here? And the more important question—is this incompetence, or sabotage?”
Around both tables, we cast uneasy glances. Hack attacks are an occupational hazard. But no one wants to think that someone in the company is intentionally trying to destroy the system. Still, now that it’s out there, we have to take it seriously.
Metin chimes in. “There’s been an escalation of Russian activity on banks.”
“Anything from the services?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “Not so far, but if word gets out about our problems, they’ll come sniffing around.” Bank security software is always subject to governmental interest.
“Should we contact them before they barge in?”
“No.” Clay’s bark is decisive. “For now, we will treat this as an internal matter.”
“I think we need to explore all the possibilities. We may uncover sloppy coding.” Jarvis tries to sound optimistic.
I jot down notes. “Who can start looking through the personnel files and the coding logs?”
