by Kirk Russell
“Do you recognize him?”
“From this? No, I really don’t, and I understand your skepticism. One thing, though. After we talked, I remembered Eric once saying—and this was years ago—that an uncle died and left him a fishing trailer.”
I stared at the image trying to imagine the AI recognizing Indonal from the little the camera had caught but couldn’t see convincing anyone it was a lead we should follow.
“Do you have any other contact numbers of friends or family of Indonal?” I asked. “What about Eckstrom’s girlfriend, Laura Trent? Would she know about a trailer?”
“I really don’t know. You’d have to ask her. Here at the base they’ll have next of kin for all of us, so that might be the way to find out about the trailer. You don’t believe Indie identified him, do you?”
“I’m not disbelieving,” I said. “I’m just trying to figure out what I can do with this information. This isn’t going to convince my supervisor. Or anyone else.”
“What about you?”
“Make me believe, convince me.”
Ralin looked down at his desk for several seconds and may have muttered something about bureaucracies, then looked up with a fatigued, defeated face. He was thirty-eight, with turned-in shoulders, probably a result of sitting long hours at a keyboard.
“Do you use Google Translate?” Ralin asked.
“When I need it, I use it. Sure. Look, I’m not challenging your AI’s capabilities and we do want to locate them, but as far as we know they haven’t committed any crimes and did leave on their own. And to be blunt, as near as we can tell, they were unhappy and quit.”
“Did you use Google Translate before the fall of 2016?” Ralin asked.
“I did and I have a reason to remember. I was in Croatia looking for a bomb maker named Frederic Dalz. I didn’t know the language. On and off I’d used Google Translate, but it didn’t work particularly well, and then all of a sudden it did. The difference was like night and day. I couldn’t understand what had happened, but I still remember the New York Times wrote that the ‘AI system had demonstrated overnight improvements roughly equal to the total gains the old one had accrued over its entire lifetime.’”
“Exactly,” Ralin said. “Picture even more rapid changes, most of them small, but many of them significant.”
I couldn’t picture it, didn’t know how to. I looked at him then back at the trailer and the pickup and partial of a man’s face. Ralin was correct in guessing that I was disbelieving. AI as I understood it needed more than what this photo showed.
“Let’s do an experiment,” he said. “Send me two photos from your phone. They can be any photos however obscure as long as you remember where they were taken. Let’s see what Indie comes up with.”
“I pick any two I want?”
“Any two.”
“Okay, you’re on, I’ll pick two.”
What followed changed my opinion of AI. It both disturbed and awed me.
6
I have an FBI phone and a personal phone. Many agents do. From my personal phone, I sent Ralin an obscure landscape photo I took on a vacation. From the FBI phone, I sent a second photo, that of fourteen-year-old Ellen Kinas.
The disappearance of Ellen Kinas dated to my third year as an FBI agent. We’d trailed a serial killer suspect named Warren Schilling and were ready to arrest him when I talked the team into waiting longer. We knew he was ramping up, and I wanted to catch him in his car with his rape and kill gear.
Maybe he spotted us trailing him. I don’t really know, but I was the one driving the morning we lost him. I missed a turn he made onto a dirt road. I’ve lived with that mistake a long time and have never stopped thinking about Ellen Kinas.
Many investigators and detectives have a similar story. I try to use mine as a touchstone to remind me to do better, but at heart it was a failure and the case has haunted me.
Ellen Kinas disappeared walking home after the school bus dropped her less than a third of a mile from her house. The bus stop was thirty-seven miles away from where we’d last seen Schilling, a significant distance, and yet the whole thing fit his MO.
I sent Ralin both photos then watched him communicate with Indie. Sure, I knew Indie would get the landscape shot. The world was mapped, almost every square mile known, but where would it go for Ellen Kinas? Probably back to childhood school photos. I expected nothing and yet my heart beat harder.
“Won’t be long,” Ralin said.
It was and it wasn’t. I heard a soft beep, and Ralin moved to a desktop. He was on it ten minutes before turning to me with a slight smile and saying, “Your photo was taken in the Atacama Desert on the side of a volcano cone at 18,052 feet. You were near the border of Chile and Bolivia.”
“Congratulate Indie for me,” I answered, but wasn’t at all surprised.
“I need a little more time with the other photo. Give me ten to fifteen minutes.” He looked over. “What you gave me was a very old photo of a child. Is she a relative? Did something happen?”
“She wasn’t a relative. She was a young girl abducted early in my career.”
“I’m sorry.”
I sat and answered text messages, but I could hear him murmuring, talking, and I wondered if it was just possible.
“Okay, we’ve got something,” Ralin said. “I’m sorry for the delay. I had to read so I understood. Quite a story. Ellen Goodwin. When she was a child, her father gave her to a church sect that believes girls entering puberty should live as if they were in convents until age twenty-one and then be married to a man the church chooses. The sect took her to Australia and into the outback where they own land. She escaped five years later, made it to Sydney and stayed. She’s married with two children now. Her story is online and she self-published a book three years ago under her married name, Ellen Carter.”
Ever skeptical, but with a flood of emotions moving in me, I studied the face. I found the scar on her left cheek, faint but still there, and another on her neck, both from a fall off an ATV that happened when she was five.
“What’s wrong?” Ralin asked.
“It is her and it matters,” I said, and for a moment my voice may have faltered.
I sat still, unaware of time, as I tried to accept the idea that Ellen Kinas hadn’t been another of Schilling’s victims. I studied the woman in the photo and finally said, “I’ll call her, or we’ll call her.”
I thanked him as a rush of emotion flowed through me. Then we talked some more about Indonal and Eckstrom before I left.
“If the AI is accurate, then Indonal is fine,” I said. “He looks like he’s headed out on a vacation, but by now or very soon, he’ll know there’s an APB out for both him and Eckstrom. What will he do when he learns about it? Will he contact us or other law enforcement?”
“I don’t know.”
“When was your last contact with him?”
“Yesterday, early evening.”
When he said that there was a slight hesitation that might or might not mean something. Hard to say, but I noted it.
“If they’ve quit, where will they go next?” I asked.
“There’s a demand bubble in AI,” Ralin answered. “Worldwide there aren’t enough people with the right mix of math, intuition, coding, and computer science. They’ll be offered salaries of over a million a year. Eric is very gifted. He’ll get offers right away. He could get a high-salary offer that’s made by a foundation but funded by an enemy government. We’ve worked in such an isolated way, they’ll have to reach back to earlier connections and they’ll be vulnerable to new ones.”
“Vulnerable?”
“Both are naïve, Eric less so.”
“Will they pick the project or go with the highest bidder?”
“The project, and it won’t be for a totalitarian government.”
Ralin had dark thoughts
he expressed about totalitarian governments wanting AI to monitor and control the lives of their citizens, and about others in freer societies who were eager to dominate a business and drive rivals out.
I called Mara at dusk as I left the Indie building. In my rearview the building looked small and lorded over by a spine of dry mountains.
“Ralin asked for two random photos from me to prove Indie’s image-recognition capabilities. I gave him a vacation pic and the photo of a girl who disappeared early in my career. A girl I’ve assumed all these years was murdered by a serial killer after I missed a turn on a road. She’s alive in Australia.”
“How do we verify?”
“He showed me photos and I recognized her. I think we accept it.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“I think it is. The DoD has invested billions in Indie and I recognized Ellen Kinas. I’ll find a way for us to contact her.”
“Do that, and where are you headed next? Are you on your way back to the office?”
“Yes, but before you hang up—”
“Come find me when you get in.”
7
Jace
Jace wanted to check in with Grale after getting her new apartment key from the building manager in the late afternoon. She was hungry but upbeat, and happy to be in Las Vegas. She called Grale.
“I’m here,” she said, “and I’ve got the key to my new apartment. Can you recommend somewhere for dinner? Someplace uncomplicated, but anywhere you think is good.”
“Where’s the new apartment?”
“Less than a mile from the FBI office, so somewhere around here.”
He gave her a couple of places to eat and said, “I just met with Dr. Ralin, who heads the artificial intelligence project at Independence Base. Two coders disappeared last night after drinking in a lounge bar. Indie, the AI, ID’ed one of them from a traffic cam photo taken late in the night. The guys are critical to the project and a security worry. We need to find them. We know they haven’t used their passports and they staged a disappearance at night after leaving the bar.”
“Staged a disappearance, so definitely weren’t abducted?”
“It’s looking like they left on their own. If Indie, as they call it, the AI, is correct about the traffic cam photo, then they’ve staged a disappearance.”
“Why would they?”
“That’s the big question. They know a lot, they could sell computer code or other information, or meet up with a foreign spy, whatever. That one of them, Eric Indonal, is driving a pickup dragging an old trailer in the traffic cam photo fits with video I saw from a department store security camera that was taken last night. A woman met them with a van and hugged Eckstrom.”
“What do you think, Grale?”
“They went out of their way to disappear, and we need to find them to determine why. I’m gathering they were critical to the project and will be difficult to replace. So, there’s the two coder computer scientists missing and there’s a bomb maker I’ve hunted for two decades who crossed the Washington border three days ago. Why the bomb maker matters is that there’s a heightened threat level surrounding the new AI, Indie. That includes phone chatter about attacking Independence Base, Indie Base. The AI is in a building on the base. It’s all Indie and AI right now, Jace.”
“I don’t know anything about AI.”
“No one here does either, but we’ve got a consultant we’re leaning on. Hey, I’ve got a call coming in I’ve been waiting on. I’ll call you back later.”
Afternoon heat and the unmistakable smell of urine hit Jace when she opened the apartment door. She wanted a shower and a beer. She jumped as a door opened and all of a sudden there was a guy standing behind her.
“Hey, neighbor,” he said. “I’m Darren from next door. You probably want to know about that smell.”
“I do. Talk to me.”
He started talking about the weird guy who’d just moved out of this apartment, but he danced around any details and Jace excused herself. After he’d gone, she walked the whole apartment, from bedroom to the living area, where she found rodent droppings that didn’t look like rat. She knew rat. Could be some desert mouse or whatever they had out here. She called the manager to complain.
***
“The rugs were cleaned,” the manager said after he arrived.
“Don’t you smell that?”
“I don’t. I don’t see anything either.”
Jace leaned over then straightened and said, “Put out your hand.”
“Why?” he asked but put out his hand anyway. She dropped black-brown pellets into his palm. He stared in disgust, then flipped them onto the rug.
“Call your carpet guy,” Jace said.
“There’s no reason to. That rug has been cleaned. It’s standard procedure before a new tenant.”
He repeated that as he stood at the kitchen sink and washed and rewashed his hands. He was still muttering to himself as he let himself out, just as Grale called back.
“You in?” he asked.
“Yeah, in my new apartment but looks like the last tenants were rodents, so I’m not sure whether I’m staying.”
“You can stay with Jo and me as you get sorted out. We have an empty bedroom. You can be there as long as you want.”
“Isn’t your niece living with you?”
“Julia moved to Utah a while ago.”
“Thanks, but I’ll get this sorted out. Talk to me more about what I’m walking into on the DT squad.”
“Like I said earlier, the focus is Indie and the threat level. I’ll take you out there for a look around. Indie is penetrating defenses faster than anyone thought possible. Or that’s what we’re hearing from sources that are pretty reliable. The CIA has passed on information that suggests an espionage team is either en route or already here.”
“What’s the name of the bomb maker you mentioned earlier?”
“Frederic Dalz. I’ll tell you what I know about him when I see you, and don’t worry about what you don’t know about AI. We’re looking for two missing guys and trying to stop attacks on the base or base personnel. That’s not AI work.”
She laughed and Grale said, “It’s really great to hear your voice, Jace. Welcome to Vegas. See you tomorrow.”
8
My girlfriend, Jo Segovia, is a doctor and answers medical questions nonstop at work, so I try to avoid them at home. We live together and were lucky to find each other. I get asked why we’re not married and I don’t have an answer that satisfies anyone, but we’ve both been married before and for now we’re happy this way.
I was still at the office when Jo texted; she’d just gotten home. I wanted her advice about my back without waiting until later or tomorrow. I called her, and Jo being Jo, she was ahead of me.
“I’ve been waiting for you to say something. You haven’t wanted to hear this, but it may be more than the flare-up you’ve been thinking it is. What’s it like down your left leg?”
“Sharp pain that makes it hard to walk normally, but the worst is my back near that lump of scar tissue. I thought it would get better by this week. It’s usually been that way.”
“This feels different?”
“It hurts more than anything in recent years.”
“Show me when you get home.”
“I may not get home until late.”
“Wake me when you do, then show me.”
***
But I didn’t wake her. I got in late and let the hot shower run a long time on my lower back, then lay down alongside her. Jo slid closer, and I fell into a quasi-sleep, half dream, half memory, where I returned to a bar in Paris and my last meeting with a friend, a French intelligence officer named Pierre Desault who’d worked in the 20th arrondissement in the DGSE, the French external intelligence service.
That night Des
ault had proposed something so contradictory to his investigative career that I’ve thought about it ever since.
“Consider how many years Frederic Dalz eluded capture,” Desault said. “Who else has remained active this long without arrest or death? He’s killed your soldiers. He’s killed CIA agents that no one should have known were there. How did he know their whereabouts? Can you answer that?”
The answer was our enemies provided him directions, money, and information, but animated and drinking as we were, Desault couldn’t hear that. He was a month from retirement. We wouldn’t see each other again for a very long time, if ever.
Tonight, he wanted me to accept something that I couldn’t. In French foreign intelligence circles, no one knew more than he did about Frederic Dalz, but I’d been in law enforcement long enough to recognize the frustration investigators can carry out the back door over cases they didn’t solve. It was also alcohol talking.
“I accept that it is too late for me to find him,” Desault said. “Someone protects him, though we haven’t been able to figure out who. That’s a danger for you as well. He knows your name by now.”
“You can’t know that.”
“I am sure of it.”
There was no way to answer that, so I moved on and said, “Your General Board of External Security came close to catching him in Lebanon. Others have come close.”
“No, we did not come close. We said that, but the truth is he ran back into the burning hotel. He could not have escaped death, yet he did. We had no explanation for that, so we made one. Very experienced people reviewed the reports and the film. He went in but did not come out, and yet, he’s alive.”
Concrete spalled, steel melted, the ashes of the bones of the dead blew away in the wind that followed.
