Trojan Horse Read Online Free

once again. It summarized the facts leading to the conclusion. He’d asked Walthrop, confidentially, to run through it and let him know if he’d overlooked any aspect his final report ought to address. He’d been intending to curry favor with the man by giving him an advance peek but his effort had the opposite effect.
    His first reaction to the e-mail had been to ask himself how the man could have misread his report so badly. Still, cautious as ever, Herlicher had gone to his “Sent” folder and clicked on the attachment to confirm what he’d sent. Perhaps he’d linked to some early draft or even a different report altogether. Something.
    And then he’d seen it. In utter and total disbelief he’d stared at the report he’d sent. In shock, he’d printed the thing out and was now holding it in his hand. It wasn’t the report he’d written. It wasn’t the report he’d attached and sent!
    A wave of paranoia swept over him. His immediate thought wasn’t “How could this happen,” but rather “Who was doing this to me?” And why? What possible purpose could this serve?
    He’d immediately sent Walthrop an explanation but realized how futile it sounded. Someone had entered his computer, bypassing all security, and cleverly altered his words so that the report said the exact opposite of what he’d written. It was incredible. Herlicher struggled to gather his wits as he reconsidered the situation. Who would believe such a story? It was his report, sent from his office, from his computer. How could anyone tamper with it? And if it had been altered, why had he sent it in the first place? That would be the question.
    Still, what else could he say? It was the truth. Someone had found a way to change his report. He didn’t know how, or when, but
someone
had done it. He followed up by calling Walthrop repeatedly, but either the man was not in his office or he was refusing to pick up his telephone.
    Herlicher sat in despair. He wondered if in a moment of insanity he’d really written it that way and now had no memory of the act. Perhaps in some kind of psychotic, self-destructive trance he’d made the changes. He struggled with the thought, earnestly trying to conjure a memory, anything that would suggest such an explanation. There was none.
    Iran was poised to detonate a nuclear bomb in less than three weeks. That was the point of the report. That was what he’d written. There’d been no reason, no possible motivation, for him to have written anything else. He had no opinion on the subject, no reason at all for the report to say one thing rather than another. But the report now said there was no evidence to suggest Iran was about to do any such thing.
    Herlicher went carefully through the printed report, making a point to highlight every change. When he finished he was surprised there were so few, no more than a dozen words spread throughout, two short sentences rewritten, then the new concluding paragraph. How long would something like that take? Given their totality it didn’t seem possible anyone could have done it quickly.
    He rose, instinctively straightening his tie as he did, and paced as he thought this through. Could he be actually suffering some kind of breakdown and not realize it? He’d read once that the deeply mentally ill had no idea they were deranged.
    Was
he crazy?
Ausgeflippt.
That was the German word for it. His mother had once mentioned one of her uncles in that way but he’d been under the impression the man’s aberrations were a consequence of the war and his years in a Russian POW camp. Now Herlicher considered that perhaps that was what she’d wanted him to think. He could recall no other instance of mental illness in his family. Of course, his mother could have been lying.
    Herlicher glanced at his door quickly. No one was there. Maybe someone had come into his office and made the change. He locked the door at night as instructed but he wasn’t the only one with a key, and to be