“Does your threat potential show his connections to white nationalists?” asks Ella, who stands in the doorway to my office, and I am ripped from my mind. I didn’t even hear her walk away.
“What?” I ask, and look from her to Doug and back.
“Here," says Ella as she walks over and hands me a picture frame with a photo of the employee, showing him with a couple of friends in a group of people, probably at a festival. I don’t see anything particularly notable about it.
“Their hands,” she says when I glance at her questioningly. “It’s the sign for white power. Sometimes labeled as a hoax, but if you look closely enough at the people in the back, one of them has a shirt with the ‘Viking Compass’ on it. It’s misused by nationalist extremist groups worldwide.”
I stare at her, at the photo in my hand, then back. Everything is so subtle that even I, who sees patterns everywhere, didn’t notice it. I've walked past this picture for months, and yet, it takes her just one look?
My eyes narrow as my gut warns me something's off. But is it her? Or because I didn’t catch it? Or because I uncovered an extremist within the company?
I look at Doug to see what’s going on in his mind. He stares at her, too.
“My brother was part of such a group in Denmark,” Ella says silently. “One of the reasons I had to get as far away as possible.”
“Could it be a possibility that it’s them coming after you here?” I ask, genuinely concerned, remembering I am not the only one with issues right now.
“I don’t know,” she says. I see her get smaller. “I hope not.”
“I don’t rely on hope,” I say and turn to Doug. I hesitate. “If we call it in with the officials, we’ll be out of control, and those groups have excellent lawyers. If we don’t, we’ll be vulnerable.”
I also don’t feel comfortable with Ella being so close in a matter like this, but I cannot tell him that out loud.
“Your choice,” he says.
“Can I see his profile?” Ella asks, and Doug and I both narrow our eyes at her.
“Studied psych, remember?” she asks and laughs. “It’s my special interest to analyze people.”
I hesitate a moment, but then say, “Sure.” An extra set of eyes doesn’t hurt.
She pulls the laptop towards her.
“You can put in prompts for certain requests,” I say, and show her where.
“I’m more interested in what Zeus didn’t catch,” she says. “Like the photo.”
I watch her scroll and click through the profile.
“Can I see the phone?” she asks, and I hand it to her.
She swipes through the used apps.
Mail. Messages. Photos. Socials. I see nothing out of the ordinary. She types in search words like ‘proton’, ‘vault’, and ‘privacy’. She checks the names of contacts; her finger lingers on one name a little longer than the others.
Wes Peter,I read in my mind. A name that says nothing to me.
“So,” she says after a while. “First thing, he uses Tor. Second, does Zeus go beyond hidden folders and file vaults? And third, can Zeus look for a contact in other known extremist group members by the name of Wes Peter? Not the number, but the name?”
“It does, both,” I say, and put in the prompt for the cross-referencing request.
It takes Zeus a moment to assemble the data, and I can feel my heart pounding against my chest.
The output returns over ten thousand matching datasets, all have a contact named Wes Peter, and my jaw drops. Something that rarely happens.
“Have Zeus look for anything connected to the number eighteen or eighty-eight, Social handles, messages, numbers, photos, everything,” she says, and I set Zeus onto it.
I get eight names; one of them stands out for a connection to something called H88. A nationalist movement originated in Germany, now active in Texas, and the man I am looking at is on the radar for pushing anti-immigration and anti-LGBTQ+ agendas, rape, violations against gun laws, and the use of nationalist signs.
