Free The Magdalene Cipher by Jim Hougan

afternoon. Three days later, it arrived on his own desk, routed there by his new roommate, the accommodating R. White in the Office of Privacy and Information .
    Having managed in this way to assign himself to an investigation of what amounted to his own downward mobility, Dunphy was elated for the first time in months. With E. Piper’s letter in hand, he took the elevator down to Central Registry. Though he neither whistled nor skipped, there was a smart-ass smile on his face that wouldn’t go away .
    Arriving at the registry, he signed the visitors log with a flourish and sat down at a computer terminal to obtain the necessary file-reference numbers. Though much of the Agency’s day-to-day business relied upon data-processing equipment, most of the operational files continued to be stored on paper, as they had always been. While powerful arguments had been made to computerize all of the data in the Agency’s system, the Office of Security vetoed the idea. The difficulty was that, while the Agency’s computers could not be hacked from the outside , it simply wasn’t possible to ensure their inviolability from internal attacks. And since the need-to-know doctrine was considered paramount, the operational files remained as and where they were: locked away in filing cabinets in kraft-colored folders of greater or lesser thickness, accordion style or not, in better or worse condition. Retrieving a file required that he obtain the relevant reference number from the computer, which he would then give to a data retrieval officer, or Drone, whose job was to locate files for IROs such as Dunphy. Though both positions were well removed from the fast track, IROs and Drones were virtually the only employees in the CIA with direct access to Central Registry computers and operational files in the Agency’s underground vault .
    As an information review officer, Dunphy’s need to know was potentially boundless, with the result that his clearances were among the highest in the national security establishment. It was an irony of his situation that even as his career was crashing, his access to information was soaring. With the clearances he had, he could virtually browse through the Agency’s files (once he’d obtained them from a Drone) .
    Seated in front of the terminal, Dunphy pressed his right thumb to the monitor’s screen, initializing the program while, at the same time, the computer searched for his thumbprint in the Office of Security’s data banks. A few seconds passed, and then the words:
    WELCOME, JOHN DUNPHY, TO AEGIS. PRESS SEND TO CONTINUE .
    Dunphy hit the send key, and a menu shimmered onto the screen .
    SUBJECT?
    He thought about it. Whatever other mysteries might be involved, one thing was certain: his own world had begun to fall apart when Leo Schidlof had been murdered. That this was no coincidence was clear. Curry had screamed at him and sent him packing. So the solution to his problems, or at least an explanation for them, was somehow a function of a single question: Who killed Schidlof, and why a?
    Next to Subject , Dunphy typed:
    /SCHIDLOF, LEO/+ALL X-REFS/
    And the cursor began to blink .

Chapter 11
    To Dunphy’s surprise, the file was a thin one, consisting almost entirely of documents in the public domain. There was an obituary from The Observer , a handful of clippings about the murder, and a worn copy of the first issue of an old magazine: Archaeus: A Review of European Viticulture .
    Disappointed, Dunphy paged through the magazine. Though it was dedicated to the cultivation of grapes for wine, the magazine was filled with essays and articles on a variety of odd and disparate topics. Religious iconography (“John Paul II and the Black Madonna of Cze¸stochowa”), public housing (“Redevelopment Options on Jerusalem’s West Bank”), and chemistry (“A Form and Method of Perfecting Base Metals”) were equal grist for Archaeus a’s