"Positive, yes. That's him."
"Let's have a quick look at the others before we do a full re- trieve," said the computer operator. Tyrone agreed and fourteen other pictures of men with similar facial characteristics to the Spook appeared on the screen, all receiving a quick 'no' from Scott. Spook's picture as brought up again and again Scott said, "that's him."
"All right, Mike," Tyrone said to the man running the computer, "do a retrieve on OBR-III." Mike nodded and stretched over to a large printer on the side of the console. He pushed a key and in a few seconds, the printer spewed out page after page of informa- tion. OBR-III is a super-secret computer system designed to fight terrorism in the United States. OBR-III and Big Floyd regularly spoke to similar, but smaller, systems in England, France and Germany. With only small bits of data it can extrapo- late potential terrorist targets, and who is the likely person behind the attacks. OBR-III is an expert system that learns continuously, as the human mind does. Within seconds it can provide information on anyone within its memory.
Tyrone pulled the first page from the printer before it was finished and read to himself. He scanned it quickly until one item grabbed his attention. His eyes widened. "Boy, when you pick 'em, you pick 'em." Tyrone whistled.
"What, what?" Scott strained to see the printout, but Tyrone held it away.
"It's no wonder he calls himself Spook," Tyrone said to no one in particular. "He's ex-NSA." He ripped off the final page of the printout and called Scott to follow him, cursorily thanking the computer operators for their assistance.
Scott followed Tyrone to an elevator and they descended to the fifth and bottom level, where Tyrone headed straight to his office with Scott in tow. He shut the door behind him and showed Scott a chair.
"There's no way I should be telling you this, but I owe you, I guess, and, anyway, maybe you can help." Tyrone rationalized showing the information to Scott - both a civilian and a report- er. He may have questioned the wisdom, but not the intent. Besides, as had been true for several weeks, everything Scott learned from Tyrone Duncan was off the record. Way off. For now.
The Spook's real name was Miles Foster. Scott scanned the file. A lot of it was government speak and security clearance inter- views for his job at NSA. An entire life was condensed into a a few files, covering the time from when he was born to the time he resigned from the NSA. Scott found much of his life boring and he really didn't care that Miles' third grade teacher remembered him as being a "good boy". Or that his high school counselor though he could go a long way.
"This doesn't sound like the Spook I know," Scott said after glancing at the clean regimented life and times of Miles Foster.