Chapter 8 - Harris Admits His Earlier Mistake
Harris asked Claire to sit with him.
Years earlier, he had worked with Peter Vale.
Vale was talented.
Fast.
And careless.
Harris had caught him falsifying an inspection after replacing a valve
with an uncertified part.
Harris reported him.
Vale lost his position.
“What I didn’t know,” Harris said, “was that he blamed me for
everything.”
Claire looked at the notebook.
“That explains you. Not the whole scheme.”
“No.”
Harris admitted another fact.
Two months earlier, Vale contacted him under a different name and asked
questions about Tank Three.
Harris recognized his voice.
He hung up.
“Did you report it?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“I thought he was trying to scare me.”
Claire was frustrated.
“So you kept it to yourself.”
“Yes.”
Another secret.
Another person deciding a concern was too small to escalate.
Harris did not excuse it.
“I should have reported the contact.”
Captain Ellis later agreed.
Harris received administrative scrutiny for failing to report the
suspicious approach.
But investigators found no evidence he participated in sabotage.
The forged signature was formally attributed to stolen credentials.
Meanwhile, Vale was arrested at a bus terminal two states away.
He requested counsel.
Search warrants recovered encrypted files from his laptop.
They showed he had designed the data-manipulation strategy.
Reed supplied access to trainees and drills.
Cole supplied procurement information.
Vale coordinated financial beneficiaries.
But the files also contained something unexpected.
Reed had tried to withdraw from the scheme.
Three days before Claire’s drill, he emailed Vale:
NO MORE LIVE SUBJECTS. USE EXISTING DATA.
Vale responded:
YOU DON’T GET TO DEVELOP A CONSCIENCE AFTER TAKING THE MONEY.
Reed had still run Claire’s drill.
Still removed the safety tag.
Still endangered her.
His late hesitation did not erase that.
But it explained his fear.
He was no longer controlling the operation.
He was trapped inside it.
Claire felt no sympathy.
May you like
Only clarity.
People could be both compromised and responsible.
