The Long Shot (Stephen Leather Thrillers)

by Stephen Leather

  “It’s sort of like brain flossing,” said his colleague. He squinted at Howard. “Er, who are you?”

  “Cole Howard,” said Howard. He waited a beat. “Of the FBI.”

  The guy who’d switched off the CD player looked guiltily at the ashtray. The other man stepped forward, his hand extended. Howard noticed he was wearing a mood ring. He hadn’t seen one since the Sixties. It was green, but Howard couldn’t remember what that signified. “I’m Wyman,” the man said. “How’s it going?”

  As they shook hands, Howard saw the other man frantically stub out the joint and toss it into a wastepaper bin. “This is Bill McDowall,” said Wyman. “He’s been helping me with the video.”

  Howard shook hands with McDowall, whose hands were hot and sweaty. “It’s a pleasure,” said Howard, holding McDowall’s gaze just long enough so that he’d know that it wasn’t too bright an idea to be smoking pot when expecting a visit from the FBI.

  “You want a Bud?” asked Wyman, opening the door to a refrigerator and taking out a can. When Howard refused, Wyman popped the can and took a sip.

  “What about a coffee?” asked McDowall. “It’s from a machine, I’m afraid.”

  “Coffee would be good. Cream, no sugar,” said Howard.

  McDowall fumbled in his pocket then shrugged shamefacedly. “No change,” he said. Howard dug into his pockets and handed over some quarters. As McDowall wandered out into the corridor, Wyman pushed a chair in front of a computer terminal and motioned for him to sit.

  “Clayton showed you the pictures we did already?” Wyman asked. Howard nodded. “I think you’re gonna be pleased with what we’ve done,” said Wyman. His fingers played across the keyboard. “We’ve left it all on the computer, it’ll only take us a minute to print out the pictures you want.” He switched on a large monitor and a picture flickered onto the screen. It was the middle-aged balding man who was holding the walkie-talkie. Howard’s face fell. The quality appeared no better than the photographs Clayton had given him.

  “This was the stage we were at before the weekend,” said Wyman. Howard felt a wave of relief wash over him. “We went pretty much the same route as the guy you used.”

  “Girl,” corrected Howard. “Bonnie Kim.”

  “Okay. Well we did the neighbourhood averaging thing, but then we took it further by running a few pixel aggregation programs through the blurred areas. That gave us some more definition, but as you probably realised, the improvement was marginal at best.”

  “Clayton said you’d compensated for the movement of the plane,” said Howard.

  “Yeah, that was the main improvement; I’m surprised the Kim girl didn’t try it.”

  “She was pushed for time,” said Howard. He felt a sudden urge to protect Bonnie Kim from the man’s snide comments. “You said you’d taken it further?”

  Wyman brushed his hair behind his ears in a feminine gesture that was at odds with the facial hair and bitten nails. His fingers began pecking at keys. “We used a version of the Hough Transform, and the Fourier Transform. Did the Kim girl tell you about them? They detect relationships between pixels.”

  “I’m not sure,” said Howard.

  Wyman grinned. McDowall returned carrying a plastic cup of coffee. Howard took it. He noticed that it was black but didn’t say anything. McDowall leaned against a bench and watched Wyman stabbing at the keyboard.

  The screen went blank and then the picture of the man with the walkie-talkie appeared, but this time it was as clear as if he’d been photographed from six feet away. Howard was stunned. “My God,” he breathed.

  “Pretty good, huh?” said Wyman.

  “How did you manage that?” whispered Howard, moving closer to the screen. The picture was as sharp as any he’d ever seen on a television. The man had black hair which was receding, and a thick, black moustache. If the FBI had the man on file, there would be no problems in obtaining a match and a positive identification.

  “I told you he’d be impressed,” Wyman said to McDowall. He turned to look at the FBI agent. “I’m not surprised that your people didn’t know about this stuff – most of it is classified. We’ve been developing it for the military and it requires huge amounts of computing power. The program effectively analyses every single point on the picture and carries out several complicated calculations for it. We set it up on Friday and had it running over the weekend.”

  “Don’t forget to tell him about the spatial-domain program,” said McDowall.

  Wyman turned around in his seat, grinning. “You think he’d understand? Jeez, man, I barely understand it.” The two men sniggered like schoolchildren.

  “We could explain about the spatial masks we generated from the frequency-domain specifications,” said McDowall. He giggled girlishly.

  “Yeah, right,” laughed Wyman. Howard resented being the butt of their humour, but he knew he needed their specialist knowledge. “How many did you do?” asked Howard. He sipped his coffee and then pulled a face when he realised it had sugar in it.

  “About a dozen,” said Wyman. “We picked out what we thought you’d want the most – the guys on the ground and the snipers. But if there’s anything else you want you can let us know and we’ll have it within a couple of days.” He pecked at more keys and the picture of the balding man was replaced by the young man with glasses. It was as sharp as the first image.

  “Amazing,” said Howard, under his breath. Wyman went through the rest of the pictures he’d worked on: the woman, the snipers, the vehicles, the towers. All of them were perfectly in focus and the detail was phenomenal. He could clearly see a small, crescent-shaped scar on the cheek of one of the snipers. On the original video the sniper had been little more than a blur.

  Wyman sat back in his chair, grinning proudly. “You should see some of the stuff we get,” he said. “They make your video look like a Hollywood movie.”

  “Who else do you do this for?” Howard asked.

  Wyman grinned. “Military, CIA, DEA, you name it, they all want what we’re developing,” he said. “They just don’t know it yet. We can pick a face out of a crowd at several thousand yards. We did some work for the LAPD after the riots . . .”

  “Yeah, but they wouldn’t let us near the Rodney King video,” interrupted McDowall, sniggering. “I never understood that.”

  “Yeah, the video tape doesn’t lie,” sneered Wyman.

  Howard frowned. The two computer experts were clearly on a different wavelength, possibly a different planet. “I don’t follow you,” he said.

  The two men looked at each other as if deciding whether or not to let him in on a dirty secret. “What do you think, do you think he’d appreciate it?” asked Wyman.

  McDowall shrugged. “He’s a Fed. He might tell.”

  Wyman grinned. “We could delete the evidence. If a tree falls . . .”

  The two men laughed again. Eventually Wyman stopped giggling and waved Howard over to another terminal. “We shouldn’t be showing you this, but it might give you an idea of what video and computer imaging is capable of,” he said. “You’ll understand why you can’t believe the evidence of your own eyes any more. And why we think it’s so funny whenever anyone says that video can’t lie. Jesus, they go and watch The Terminator and accept that the special effects are computer-generated, then they see a news video and they automatically believe that it’s the truth. It’s yet to sink in that you can’t believe a photograph or video any more. They’re too easy to fake.”

  “Yeah, what about the Caroline Perot pictures, remember them?” said McDowall. “Ross Perot pulled out of the presidential race in July 1992 after he heard that pictures of his daughter were being circulated. We were given them to analyse. They were fakes, but good. Really good work.” He grinned at Wyman. “So good that we had a pretty good idea where they came from.”

  Wyman nodded. “Didn’t matter whether they were fake or not. Perot knew that the great unwashed just believe what they see, especially when it’s printed in th
e supermarket tabloids.” He pressed a few keys and a picture flickered onto the screen. There were two men on the screen, one in a dark blue suit, the other in a military uniform. The two men embraced and shook hands. It was George Bush and Saddam Hussein. Howard’s jaw dropped and he looked at Wyman.

  “It gets better,” said Wyman.

  Howard looked back to the screen. A woman in a dark blue shirt and jacket walked into the room and Howard immediately recognised Margaret Thatcher, the former British Prime Minister. She kissed the Iraqi dictator on the cheek, then all three stood facing the camera, smiling and nodding.

  “It never happened,” said McDowall, walking up behind Howard and putting a hand on his shoulder. “But it sure looks like it did, doesn’t it?”

  Howard shook his head thoughtfully. “That’s dangerous,” he said.

  “In the wrong hands,” agreed Wyman.

  “In any hands,” said Howard.

  “It gets better,” said McDowall, nodding at the screen.

  The scene changed from an office to a bedroom, and the three world figures were naked on a king-size bed. Howard grimaced and leaned over to switch off the visual display unit.

  “So, Special Agent Howard, I guess you want prints of them all,” said Wyman. “The snipers, I mean. Unless you want a few prints of our little threesome. I could put you in there with them if you want.”

  “The snipers and the people on the ground will do just fine,” said Howard.

  “I can give you close-ups of the faces, if you want.”

  “Sounds good,” said Howard. “I’d like duplicates, too.”

  McDowall walked over to a large printer and switched it on while Wyman pounded on the keyboard. A few seconds later the printer made a humming noise as it processed the first print. Wyman crushed his empty beer can and threw it into the wastepaper bin. “So, what sort of music does an FBI Special Agent listen to?” he asked.

  Mary Hennessy took a cab from Baltimore–Washington International Airport to the city. It was a hot day but the driver, a big black man wearing mirrored sunglasses, hadn’t turned the air-conditioning on. Instead he’d opened all the windows and the draught blew Mary’s blonde locks backwards and forwards across her face. It was a pleasant feeling and she closed her eyes and moved her head from side to side, letting the breeze play across her face.

  “You Australian?” the driver asked over his shoulder.

  “British,” she replied. She hated having to hide her Irish origins but knew it was necessary.

  “Yeah? I can never tell the difference,” said the driver laconically, his elbow resting on the open window. There were three lanes of highway heading north to the city and all the traffic was sticking religiously to the 55 mph speed limit. There was none of the lane switching and aggression she associated with driving on European roads, everyone seemed quite content to cruise along in their own lane. “First time in Baltimore?” the driver asked. He didn’t pronounce the ‘t’ in the city’s name. Bawlmore.

  “That’s right,” said Mary. She looked out of the window at the lush, almost tropical, vegetation which lined the side of the road. Years ago, in what almost felt like a past life, she’d gone on honeymoon to the Far East and had stopped off in Singapore for two days. The climate and the rigid adherence to the speed limit reminded her of the island republic.

  “You here to see your man?”

  Mary frowned. “My man?”

  The driver laughed, a deep-throated rumble that vibrated through his body. “Yeah, your Prime Minister. He’s coming here in a week or so, didn’t you know?” He watched her in the driving mirror. Mary shook her head. “Yeah, he’s going to a Bird’s game,” he said. “Stopping off on the way to Washington, I guess.”

  “What’s a Bird’s game?”

  He laughed again. “The Orioles,” he explained. “They’re our baseball team, and Maryland’s state bird. We’re coming up to the ball park on our right.” Mary looked over to the right and saw the stadium looming up like a modern-day coliseum. “We had your queen here in 1990. She went to a Bird’s game in the old Memorial Stadium, north of the city. Don’t know if she enjoyed it much.” He laughed. “Your man’s going to throw the first pitch,” he continued.

  “Really?” replied Mary.

  “Uh-huh,” he grunted. “The President’s going to be there and everything.” He laughed throatily. “Last time the President was here he threw the first pitch – and they measured it at 39 mph. He never lived that down. I mean, there’s ladies’ softball teams with faster throws than that, know what I mean?”

  “Yes,” said Mary, even though she only understood half of what the man was saying. The stadium was brick-built with huge arches that gave it a cathedral-like form. Overhead were huge banks of floodlights. The building looked brand new.

  “Built in ninety-two,” said the driver as if reading her thoughts. “It’s a great ball park. You should go while you’re here in Baltimore.”

  “I’ll certainly try,” said Mary.

  Joker plumped up the pillow, shoved it against the top of his bed and sat with his back against it, his long legs stretched out towards the television. A woman with frosted hair and glasses with red frames was hosting a studio discussion about eating disorders. She was directing questions from her audience to three young women all of whom claimed to be suffering from anorexia nervosa, though to Joker they all looked to be in good shape. The questions were almost all accusatory in nature, along the lines of “Why the hell don’t you eat more?” It was the hostility from the distinctly overweight audience which surprised Joker. Generally he found Americans to be easy-going people, but there seemed to be something about food and eating which brought out the worst in them. A woman with elephantine legs and flabby arms stood up and the host stuck the microphone under one of her three chins. “I may not be thin, but I still feel good about myself,” the woman bellowed. “Being large is not something to be ashamed of.”

  The audience whooped and clapped and the woman looked around, nodding her enormous head. Joker smiled to himself. The show abruptly changed into a commercial for a seven-day diet which promised dramatic weight loss or your money back. It was one of the ironies of the country, thought Joker, that some people consumed so much that they had to pay to lose weight, while in the inner cities children were dying because they weren’t inoculated against childhood illnesses and adults were begging in the streets.

  He leaned across to the bedside table and poured more Famous Grouse into his tumbler. As he raised the glass to his lips he registered movement at the periphery of his vision and his hand jerked, sloshing whisky down his hand. It was a white cat at the window, standing with its back legs on the ledge outside and resting its paws on the glass. It was staring at Joker with emerald green eyes. The cat’s left ear was mangled and torn and its fur was matted and streaked with what looked like oil. Joker raised his glass to the cat and drank. He turned to watch a commercial for fat-free, cholesterol-free blue cheese salad dressing, but the cat began to pat its paws against the window to attract his attention. Joker went over to open the window. As soon as he raised the lower section of the window, the cat jumped onto the carpet and padded over to the bed. Joker stood and watched as the cat leapt up onto the bed covers and walked stiff-legged over to the table. It sniffed delicately at the alcohol, screwed up its nose and looked disapprovingly at Joker.

  “It’s only whisky,” he said. The cat meowed. She was female, Joker decided. “No, I haven’t got any milk,” he said. The cat sprang off the bed, stalked around the room, popped its head around the bathroom door, sniffed, and then jumped onto the window ledge. She looked up at Joker, gave him another plaintive meow as if telling him to have milk next time, and then ran down the fire escape.

  Joker settled down to concentrate on what he was to do next. He had no problems thinking while watching television. Most of his childhood had been spent in a two-bedroomed tenement flat with two younger brothers and an unemployed father, where the television was on eig
hteen hours a day and privacy was a luxury he rarely experienced. At seventeen he’d joined the Army and life in the barracks wasn’t much different from life at home, and before he’d left his teens he’d grown accustomed to concentrating, no matter what the distractions.

  He’d now spent more than a week working behind the bar at Filbin’s, usually with Shorty, though he’d met two other part-time barmen, both of them teenagers from Belfast and, like Joker, working without the proper visas. There had been no sign of Matthew Bailey, though Joker had seen several faces he recognised from photographs in files he’d read before his last undercover operation in Northern Ireland. Two were IRA hit-men who’d done time in the H-blocks of Long Kesh, not for murder but for armed robbery, and the third was a bombmaker, a small, shrewish man in his thirties with a Hitler moustache who chainsmoked Benson & Hedges cigarettes. He was calling himself Freddie Glover but Joker knew him as Gary Madden, wanted in the UK for an explosion which had killed four Army bandsmen and injured another nine.

  The men were clearly at home in the bar, where they were treated almost as folk heroes – heads turned whenever they entered, smiles and nods were exchanged as they moved to their regular table and throughout the evenings free drinks would be sent over, usually the gift of one of the construction workers. Joker had asked Shorty how long the men had been in New York. Shorty had just tapped the side of his nose knowingly and winked. “Careless talk costs lives,” he’d said and Joker hadn’t pressed it.

  Joker had yet to meet the owner of Filbin’s. Though Shorty had hired him and paid his wages each evening in used dollar bills, the little man clearly wasn’t the owner because Joker had seen him surreptitiously pocket money from the till on several occasions. Shorty knew everyone in the bar by name, and from conversations they’d had Joker had learned that he had been a member of the Provisional IRA since his teens, moving to the States in the early eighties. He had been one of thousands of Irish granted US citizenship in 1991 and was the only barman who was working legally in Filbin’s. Joker had wanted to raise the subject of Matthew Bailey with him, but had been loath to tip his hand so soon. Shorty had a sharp mind and a quick wit, and Joker doubted that he’d give much away, especially about active IRA members. If anything, it was Shorty who was doing the probing, asking Joker about his past and testing his views as he cleaned glasses and served drinks. Joker had little trouble sticking to his cover and after the first few days Shorty’s conversations had become less probing and more friendly.