First, she had to use the resources at her disposal.
Her boyfriend, by his own admission, was read into plenty of SAPs for his job at Los Angeles Space Force Base. He had to have access to at least one classified network at his office. It shouldn’t be too much effort for him to look around to see if he could find any references to a “Bronze Knot.”
Second, she had to up her game at work.
Pham had told her that the logs were moved to the NASA room. Parkowski knew where it was — just down the hall from her boss’ office.
Parkowski did not have access to that room. She had been told it was “government-only,” meaning for the USSF and NASA factory representatives, but more than once she had seen Rosen or another high-ranking employee enter it.
Parkowski had to get into that room.
But first, she was going to convince her boyfriend to do some snooping for her.
She and DePresti had planned months in advance to do some scuba diving, a recently acquired pastime, off of Catalina Island on the Saturday during the long weekend. They had gone through the extensive certification process and done some practice dives in an indoor facility, but this would be their first time with the scuba gear out in the open ocean.
Thankfully, they were going with a group, which was definitely preferable to going alone.
She sprung her request on him while they were sitting in his car as they rode the ferry to Catalina.
“I need to ask a favor from you,” she said as they ate In-N-Out burgers in the front seat.
“Sure,” DePresti said, his voice muffled as he bit into his hamburger. “What do you need?”
“I need you to go look around at work to try and figure out what Bronze Knot is.”
DePresti looked at her, half-chew, in disbelief. “What?”
She took a breath. “I’m not entirely sure how your networks are structured, but is there any way that you can do some kind of SharePoint search or shared folder search in Windows for the term ‘Bronze Knot’ or any variation of that phrase?”
Her boyfriend pursed his lips. “You just don’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because those networks — of which there are more than one — are continuously logged and monitored,” DePresti explained. “Specifically for that reason.”
“They don’t want you looking around?” Parkowski asked, finishing her burger and starting on her fries and milkshake.
“No,” DePresti said. “These systems, they’re accredited for a certain security level but sometimes data spills over, usually unintentionally. You’re supposed to only use them for official purposes at the security level you are briefed to.”
“And you’re not briefed to Bronze Knot?”
DePresti laughed. “No, Grace, I’m not. Even if it was an unacknowledged SAP that I’m authorized to lie to Congress and the media about its existence, I’d tell you, just to alleviate whatever concern you have about your mission.”
“So what are you briefed to?” Parkowski asked. This was the first time she had ever asked him a sensitive question about his work.
He took a breath. “Don’t tell any of this to anyone else.”
“I won’t.”
“I’m briefed to about fifty or sixty SAPs,” DePresti explained. “That’s in addition to all four ‘buckets’ of SCI, the big intelligence community quasi-SAP that they put a lot of their information in.”
“And you’ve never heard of Bronze Knot?”
“Nope. Grace, I have just about every space-related SAP there is and I’ve never heard it mentioned or seen those two words together anywhere.”
Parkowski paused. “What if it’s not space-related?”
“I think it has to be. Just think about it. If NASA and Aering Space Systems are involved, it has to touch the space environment.”
She thought for a moment. “Mike, what exactly do you do?”
He laughed. “Don’t worry about it.”
The motion of the ferry slowed. They were nearing their destination.
Parkowski tried one last time. “Can you
“It’s really eating you up inside, isn’t it?”
“It is,” Parkowski agreed. “Mike, imagine if you had a really big mission at work, a big event like your launch, and it went sideways for reasons beyond your control. Twice.”
“Twice,” he echoed, then paused before continuing. “I’d be pretty pissed,” he said, collecting their trash into one bag.
“And everyone tells you everything is fine, but there’s one thread that keeps showing up but you can’t get any information on it,” Parkowski continued.
“I get it, I get it.”
“So can you look for me?”
He nodded. “I’ll do some surface-level inquiries, but I can’t promise anything. I doubt there’s any harm in performing a couple of searches.”
“That’s all I’m looking for,” she said, slightly relieved. “Thank you.”
Then, it was time to go scuba diving.
The next week started with a quiet Monday.
She tried again to go through the Bronze Knot search results on the Aering internal site when she got a chance but still had no luck. The words were just too common.
