Cutting Edge

by Ward Larsen

  “Can you tell me what time it is?”

  A fifty-something cross between George Clooney and a train hobo looked at her blankly.

  She pointed to his watch, and his face brightened. He cocked his wrist toward her. It was 11:03.

  “Dammit!”

  Patel had been due to speak at ten. Lund had no idea she’d slept so long. She rushed for the exit, and burst outside into a cold wind and a blinding sun. After taking a moment to get her bearings, she hurried off in the direction of the Hofburg Vienna.

  Back in the shelter, the man with the watch wondered what all the fuss was about. He was Armenian, a taxi driver before his car had been confiscated by Turkish soldiers when his Chinese-made GPS receiver had led him astray near a disputed border area—another incidental casualty of globalization. He looked away from the door, checked his watch, and perhaps saw the problem. His watch was still set to Armenian time—the thing had five buttons, and he really didn’t know how to work them.

  He shrugged it off.

  Technology, he thought. It will be the death of us all.

  * * *

  With the specter of Delta lurking at every corner, DeBolt kept his movements to a minimum. After catching a few hours of sleep in the mail alcove of an apartment building, he had risen shortly after first light and worked his way cautiously toward the Hofburg Vienna. He’d skirted major roads, keeping to alleys wherever possible. In the gloom of dawn he’d regarded the backsides of buildings that appeared rough-hewn and weathered, the stains of centuries like scars on a battle-weary soldier.

  He used the map in his head to avoid areas where green—readily available—CCTV coverage existed. He walked under a raised section of highway for a time, and where that ended he followed a polluted ditch overgrown with vegetation. Next came a dirt path that edged the backyards of a row of brownstone homes. At one he saw a clothesline near the back fence, a pair of pants and a shirt, roughly his size, fluttering in the early breeze. The clothes he was wearing were hopelessly soiled, doomed by last night’s rain-sodden getaway and a night spent on a concrete floor. DeBolt made the switch. The pants were a marginal fit, but his belt made them work, and the shirt was two sizes too large. He left a hundred-dollar bill on a clothespin.

  His approach became more cautious when the Imperial Palace came into view. He moved from alley to alcove, and imagined Delta doing the same. At the very least, he found comfort on that one point—when it came to CCTV monitoring, he and the assassin had found level ground. But what am I missing? DeBolt wondered. What tricks does Delta know that I don’t?

  Steps away from the palace commons, he paused to study the grounds. Between him and the conference entrance were a busy road, walking paths, and rows of overmanaged topiary clinging to the green of summer. Beyond that he faced a fifty-yard expanse of stone terrace. It was all open and vulnerable, and from a security standpoint probably the most heavily monitored acre in all of Austria. If Delta was surveilling any single place, this would be it.

  DeBolt wondered if there was some way he could remain outside and intercept Patel, catch him on his way in. As far as he knew, there was only one entrance. Appealing as it was, the idea had one critical flaw—he had no idea what the man looked like.

  But might there be a way?

  He considered his new skill set, desperate for a fresh approach. The answer came out of nowhere on the sidewalk in front of him. It was wearing a lanyard.

  * * *

  “Excuse me!”

  Matthias Schulze turned around and saw a young man with a bad haircut approaching him on a jog. His hand was raised in the air like a cop holding up traffic.

  “Yes?” Schulze said.

  The man pulled to a stop a few steps away. “Are you attending the cyber security conference?”

  Schulze’s conference badge was hanging from his neck on a lanyard. He smiled, and said, “I think there is no denying it.” He was proud of his English, even if the occasional word got crushed under his Hamburg accent.

  “I was wondering … do you have a conference brochure? The one that lists the schedule?”

  Schulze was carrying his leather organizer—he was German, after all. “Yes, I think I have it here.”

  “I’m sorry to bother you, but I left mine in my hotel room, and I’m not sure about the schedule today. I traveled here all the way from the University of Alaska, in Anchorage. There are some interesting topics I don’t want to miss.”

  Schulze smiled. “Then let me help—you have come a very long way.”

  He dug into a pocket of his portfolio and quickly found it. He handed the guide over, saying, “I am a professor at the University of Hamburg. I recommend Albrecht’s talk this afternoon on parallel processing.”

  The American took the conference guide and began flipping through it. “Yes, parallel processing.”

  An encouraged Schulze said, “I have recently authored a paper myself, ‘Idle Time Processing Across Networks.’ You have heard of it maybe?”

  “Maybe…” The blue eyes seemed to pause on one page in the guide and concentrate keenly.

  “Did you find what you were looking for?”

  “Yes, this is exactly what I needed.” The man from Anchorage handed back the guide. “I know how to schedule my day now. Thank you so much.”

  “Perhaps I will see you later. Remember,” he called out as the American walked away, “Albrecht at two o’clock!”

  “I’ll come if I can, Matthias!”

  Schulze smiled, slightly surprised that the man knew his name. He looked down at his lanyard only to realize that his nametag wasn’t showing. He’d taken it out earlier to find a breakfast coupon, and must have reinserted it the wrong way—only the blank backside of the card was now displayed. So how had he…?

  56

  The sun rose higher, cutting the chill morning air. DeBolt had taken up a bench in the Burggarten, half a mile from the Hofburg Palace. He’d selected the seat carefully, concealed between a pair of mature willow trees. In front of him an algae-laden pond stretched across the garden, a physical barrier to the busy avenues beyond. Reluctantly, he was learning.

  DeBolt had reached one conclusion: simply showing up at Patel’s presentation was a last-ditch option. Delta would be there. Aside from presenting himself as a target, it might also endanger Patel, who, as far as DeBolt knew, was the only person alive who could explain what had been done to him. His goal, therefore, became clear: he had to find Patel before he arrived at the conference.

  His original idea had been to hack into hotel registries. Unfortunately, there were a vast number to cover, and a comprehensive search might take hours. It also occurred to him that Patel could be staying in a group of rooms blocked off for convention participants, meaning his name might not be clearly listed. Then DeBolt had struck on a new plan. If he could locate Patel by CCTV, he might be able to intercept him before he reached the Hofburg.

  To make it work, he combined two previous-used processes. He had uncovered a few basic facts on Patel, but still had no idea what the man looked like. To carry through on his scheme, he needed to find out. To that end, he’d flipped through the pages of the borrowed conference agenda to find the list of presenters. There, as hoped, he found a biography, and more importantly a photograph, of Dr. Atif Patel. While Matthias Schulze looked on curiously, DeBolt had concentrated intently on the photo in the brochure.

  Once he’d captured the image, and sent the helpful German on his way, DeBolt was ready for the real work. He looked out across the placid garden, and phrased his request carefully, making every effort to avoid extraneous words—something he increasingly viewed as necessary to achieve timely and accurate results. The sparse prose of one computer talking to another: Recall image, Dr. Atif Patel.

  The picture he’d seen in the brochure was reproduced on the screen embedded in his vision. It was a head shot, with reasonably good resolution. With some effort, DeBolt found he could manipulate the image, enlarging and cropping. Patel was clearly of In
dian heritage, which was in line with his name.

  Finally: Upload for facial-recognition analysis.

  Less than ten seconds later, a minor victory.

  UPLOAD SUCCESFUL.

  STANDBY ANALYSIS.

  The wait seemed interminable. DeBolt sat watching a pair of swans cruise the far side of the pond. Their white bodies were almost still, balanced and effortless, yet beneath the surface their webbed feet had to be motoring furiously. The unseen means of propulsion. He wondered where his request was being dissembled at that moment. Washington? Langley? The Pentagon? Some giant, anonymous data center in Utah? Were humans involved at all or was it a strictly automated process? He had so many questions. Today, perhaps, he would finally get answers.

  He wasn’t even sure if this part of his plan was viable. Could he create, from a photograph in a conference brochure, a facial-recognition signature for Atif Patel, a man he’d never seen in person? Even if it worked, the second part of his scheme seemed an even greater reach. DeBolt was no expert on urban surveillance or metadata analysis … all the same, he knew what he had managed last night.

  The cameras.

  The genesis of his idea had been cued from a vague memory. Something he’d once read—although he couldn’t say where—describing how law enforcement agencies used software to match facial profiles to CCTV footage. It was a way of leveraging computers to crunch massive amounts of data, plucking a specific terrorist’s face from throngs of travelers in an airport or a train terminal. It seemed like a useful application, the kind of thing that would be developed because there was a practical need.

  A message arrived.

  FACIAL PROFILE COMPLETE

  NO IDENTITY MATCH

  LOGGED AS UNKNOWN #1

  DeBolt was not surprised by the lack of a match. Like everything else about Patel, his official record was a blank. But that wasn’t what he was after. He input: CCTV within one-mile radius of present position. Search facial profiles for unknown #1.

  STANDBY

  DeBolt did exactly that.

  57

  Through the waking of a dull and lusterless morning, DeBolt waited and watched a pond whose water was like glass. He felt a distinct urge to move to a new location—having just sent his position into cyberspace, he couldn’t discount the chance that it might be digitally hijacked by Delta. He forced himself to stay on the bench, refusing to succumb to paranoia.

  He realized his plan had weaknesses. To begin, it made a number of assumptions. Would Patel even walk to the conference? What if he took a taxi or a bus? Would the server to which DeBolt was connected have enough capacity, enough raw processing power to scour thousands of faces in near real time? Once again, he imagined mainframes in some distant, dark room churning through terabytes of information.

  He remained still on the bench.

  After ten minutes there was no response.

  After fifteen doubts began to weigh in. With each passing second it seemed more of a long shot. Time was not on his side. If no reply came soon, he would have to find a way to approach Patel inside the well-monitored confines of the Hofburg. All while keeping a wary eye out for Delta.

  DeBolt decided to give it five more minutes. When that passed, he decided to wait five more.

  * * *

  Three hundred yards from where DeBolt sat on a bench, an out-of-breath Lund rushed toward the main entrance of the Hofburg Vienna. Once she was inside, her first reaction was one of surprise. She was taken aback that a gathering of cyber specialists and software vendors would be held against the backdrop of a gilded European palace. Lund found her attention diverted by ornate columns, copper domes gone green, and the vast field of statues dressing the cornices and anterooms.

  She saw a series of signs directing attendees of the World Conference on Cyber Security to the official access point. Hoping she wasn’t too late, she followed the signs past a series of columns, and then up a staircase sided by a statue depicting Hercules or Neptune, or perhaps some Germanic mythological figure—art had never been her strong suit. Classical music drifted from unseen speakers, soft and soothing.

  She arrived at a bustling reception area and found a pedestal where a schedule of the day’s events was posted: Dr. Patel’s ten o’clock presentation was set in a room called Festsaal. There was also a map to guide her to the right corridor. Lund had been to her share of conferences, and while hers had related to law enforcement, she supposed they were all similar in one respect—oversight would be lax. She took the direct route, falling into a role. She gave the occasional nod to strangers, glanced at a few merchant poster boards, but kept moving in one direction. Her confidence was rewarded when she drifted past the sign-in table without a glance from the two busy women behind it.

  She found the Festsaal room quickly, and on turning inside was immediately struck by two things. First was the overt grandeur of the hall. With mural-covered ceilings, carved stone, and chandeliers the size of cars, it had to be as beautifully appointed as any room in Vienna. The second impression was far more worrying—the place was nearly empty.

  Had she missed the presentation?

  “Dammit!” she muttered under her breath.

  At the back of the room Lund saw two men engaged in casual conversation, and she caught a few words of English. She hurried over.

  “Excuse me—”

  The man she’d interrupted broke off, and both looked at her.

  “I missed Dr. Patel’s talk. Did either of you see him leave?”

  “Dr. Patel?” said the taller of the two, in what sounded like a Scandinavian accent. “He is not here until ten o’clock.”

  “Ten?” Lund repeated. “But … what time is it?”

  The other man checked his watch. “Nine twenty.”

  Lund stared at him stupidly, recalling the man with the watch in the homeless shelter. She sighed heavily. “I’m sorry, I forgot my phone … I’m lost without it.”

  The distress on her face must have been pronounced, because the taller man said, “Don’t worry. We too have been waiting a long time to hear Patel.” He winked conspiratorially. “We will have the best seats, no?”

  With forty minutes to spare, Lund thanked the men.

  They watched her curiously as she took a seat in the back row, deep in a corner and partially hidden behind a column. Without a doubt, the worst seat in the house.

  A simple misunderstanding, she thought, sinking back into a padded metal chair. It occurred to her that this had been the sequence of her life in recent days. Meandering through a grocery store one moment, flying off to Maine the next. Waiting in a police holding room, then dashing away from a killer. It was a distressing pattern—hours of boredom interspersed by moments of sheer terror. Once more, she found herself in the waiting cycle.

  Which didn’t bode well for what was to come.

  * * *

  “Only two bags?” asked the bellman.

  “Yes,” Patel replied, watching the young man carry his suitcases toward the door of his room. “They will be taken straight to the airport?”

  “Of course, sir. Our concierge has made arrangements with the delivery service.”

  Patel slipped the man five dollars, and watched him disappear. He checked his watch: thirty minutes remained until his scheduled presentation. He collected his speaking notes from the writing desk, an undeniably thin stack for a one-hour presentation. In truth, he’d not put much thought into the effort, deciding to stick with one of his stock lectures: “The Art of Systems Architecture.” Patel cared little if he engaged the crowd—today would be his final performance behind a lectern, his life in academia having reached its predestined end. He had not yet purchased his outbound airline ticket, but Patel’s preliminary feelers had identified three interested parties, all predictably to the east: Russia, China, and India.

  All that would have to wait just a few hours longer.

  Patel opened his leather portfolio and stuffed his notes inside carelessly. They hung up momentarily on the onl
y other item in the attaché, a loaded 9mm Beretta Nano. Delta had provided it, Patel having no idea how to procure such a thing in a foreign country. He could use it in the most basic sense, but doubted it would come to that. Not if Delta did his job.

  Either way, he was prepared.

  Patel left the room, and when he shut the door it was perhaps with a flash of reflection. He thought he might return to Vienna someday under more casual circumstances. Stay for a time and relax in the very room where the marriage of META to its host had been consummated.

  Having already settled his account, Patel bypassed the front desk and headed outside into a bland morning. He took his usual route to the Hofburg—through the Stadtpark, past the pigeon-laden statue of Schubert, and then the vacant Kursalon. He navigated Walfischgasse as if he were a local, and had just rounded the Albertina art museum, with its sculpture of what looked like a giant diving board, when someone called, “Excuse me, Dr. Patel?”

  He stopped and turned, and encountered a man he’d never seen before. He was slightly younger than Patel himself, keen and athletic. Of course he knew who it was. Patel’s grip on his attaché tightened ever so slightly as he said, “Do I know you?”

  “I very much hope so.”

  With the benefit of forewarning, Patel managed things well—his face remained a blank. “I don’t understand.”

  “The META Project, Dr. Patel. I’m what came from it.”

  “You mean—”

  “Yes,” the man interrupted. “I’m Option Bravo.”

  58

  DeBolt watched the man closely as he said it. I’m Option Bravo.

  Patel appeared stunned, and looked him up and down. “You’re saying…,” he hesitated mightily, “they actually went forward with the surgeries?”

  “I think there may be a lot you don’t know. I need some questions answered. We should talk.” He looked across the crowded sidewalk, then at the busy Albertina Museum entrance. “Somewhere more private, I think.”

  “Yes,” Patel agreed, “I know just the place.”