Hard Road

by J. B. Turner

  Freddie smiled, panda shadows around his eyes and stubble around his chin. He pressed a button and a profile of what looked like a youthful middle aged man with longish hair appeared on one of the big screens.

  Meyerstein took a long, hard look. “Don’t tell me you think that’s him, as it sure as hell isn’t.”

  He tapped another button and it zoomed into the bridge of the nose. “We created a new program. The program allows for changes to the face within one point five per cent or less.” He grinned. “Check out the bridge of this guy’s nose.”

  Meyerstein stared at the image. She thought the nose was broken, like a boxer’s. “What’s your point?”

  “Check out the left eyebrow and compare it to the right. Notice how arched they are.” Then he clicked another couple of buttons which showed a picture of Scott Caan on the right and the long-haired man on the left. The long haired man looked more youthful, fresher even, and his nose was more crooked.

  Meyerstein stared at the two images on the big screen, as Limonton leaned back in his seat on a third screen. “The guy with the long hair doesn’t look anything like Caan. His face looks different. Puffier.”

  “Precisely.”

  Slowly it dawned on Meyerstein what Freddie Limonton was going on about. “Goddamn son-of-a-bitch.” She stared long and hard at the image. “What are we talking about? Some form of facial surgery, is that it?”

  “Dead on. Within the last forty-eight hours. But of the non-invasive variety.”

  “I’m not an expert in that area, although I could probably do with the same sort of work.” Her self-deprecating humor made Freddie smile.

  “We’ve talked to two Beverley Hills plastic surgeons and sent them the photos, before and after. They both came back with the same analysis. Caan has had three bits of work done. Firstly, a nose job, non-surgical rhinoplasty, which only takes about an hour. A soft-tissue filler is injected in small amounts under the nasal skin, to change the shape and contour of the nose. Typically it is used to straighten a crooked nose, but the opposite has happened here, and that would throw off the readings in the central region of the face. Secondly, there was a browlift and eyelift, created by Botox. It has, as its name suggests, the effect of raising the brows and lifting the eyelids, favored by middle aged Hollywood stars, especially women.”

  Meyerstein nodded, seeing how the changes had affected the contours and profile.

  “I’m told it can also remedy a fleshy brow or one that is naturally lined. Compare and contrast.” He clicked another button. “It showed noticeable differences between the forehead area before and after. The third thing is the cheekbones. Collagen filler. Changes the shape of the face, don’t you think?”

  Meyerstein walked up to the plasma screens and took a closer look. “Son of a bitch.”

  “The cumulative effects of all these small changes on Caan’s face have, in effect, fooled our best face recognition systems. I’m telling you, this guy is good.”

  The conference room door behind her opened and Special Agent Tom Jackson shouted across, “Director’s on the feed in the briefing room across the corridor, and wants you now, Martha.”

  “Tell him I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”

  “I can’t say that, Martha.”

  “I will speak to him in two minutes.” Her tone was cold.

  Jackson blushed and nodded, before he disappeared again into the briefing room.

  “Now listen to me, Freddie, is this a true match? I can’t afford any errors at all. I need to be certain that this is Caan.”

  “It’s him. We checked out the changes, and realised immediately why the face recognition was not finding him. Then we ran this face.” He clicked another button. A long-haired man wearing glasses descends the stairs of Penn Station in downtown Manhattan, caught on camera. He freeze-framed the image. “This is our guy. One hundred per cent match.”

  Meyerstein’s heart was beating harder as she stared at the image. “Train station. You must have his destination.”

  He clicked another button which showed the back of the long-haired man boarding an Acela Express to Washington DC. He clicked another button and the long-haired man emerged from the train onto the concourse of Grand Station, Washington DC.

  A few moments later, Meyerstein was in the briefing room across the corridor and flicked a switch to commence an emergency video teleconference, which included the Directors of the FBI, SIOC, NCTC, The White House Situation Room, and Langley. “OK, Assistant Director Martha Meyerstein here, I’ll lead, if that’s OK.”

  The Director spoke up, his voice gravelly and strained. “You gotta development, Martha?”

  “We most certainly have, sir. Caan has changed his physical appearance. The still images from Penn Station are being sent to you now.”

  The Director cleared his throat. He stared at the image that had just appeared on his monitor. “Good God.”

  “This man, ladies and gentlemen, is Lt Col Scott Caan. We have reason to believe he smuggled out three vials of a hybrid virus from the bio facility in Maryland. We believe he is an integral part of a highly sophisticated operation to attack America and we believe he is in Washington DC, intent on recreating what has happened in Manhattan.”

  A silence opened up between them for a few moments as if everyone was letting the information sink in.

  O’Donoghue spoke first. “So where do we go from here? The National Counterterrorism Center didn’t see this coming. They’ve been blindsided.”

  “We’ve all been blindsided, sir.”

  “Tell me about Thomas Wesley? What the hell was going on there?”

  “What, indeed? It’s a mess. The NSA claim they know nothing about any decrypted intercept. We have people working on the recording given to Congressman Drake. We hope to identify the two people by the end of the day.”

  “You hope? Is that what we’re relying on?”

  “We have our best people on it, sir.”

  “What about Wesley?”

  “DCIS deny taking him out. He’s disappeared off the radar.”

  “What about Luntz?”

  “The latest I have from Dr Horowtiz, is that Luntz is working on anti-virals with every available scientist at our disposal. But this is gonna take time, something we don’t have.”

  O’Donoghue shook his head. “So where does the investigation go from here? I assume there’s full inter-agency cooperation?”

  “Across the board, sir. The investigation’s focus is now on Washington. It makes sense from a terrorist’s point of view. The seat of government. The advice I’m getting is that Caan didn’t use all the virus in New York, and we’re assuming Washington is his next target.”

  O’Donoghue scribbled on a pad, nodding quickly.

  “But we need to keep this very, very tight. Circulate the photo we have. Working his new image into Washington transports hubs and shopping malls, to try and get a position on this guy. He must be staying somewhere. So we have all the hotels, hostels, guest houses, you name it, having their surveillance footage scanned.”

  O’Donoghue looked up. “We’ve got to be cautious that we don’t alert Caan or cause any panic amongst the public.”

  “Absolutely, sir. We’re just informing each hotel’s head of security, usually someone who is former military, Fed, or police, and there is no problem.”

  The Director leaned back in his seat. “You got the scientist for us, Martha. That was terrific work. And now we’ve got a city for Scott Caan. But we’re still missing the end game location, Martha. We’re playing catch-up.”

  “I’m well aware of that, sir. Our best analysts are going through everything we have. Email traffic, hidden files, but it’s tightly encrypted. We’re also scouring all the electronic devices and computers owned by Norton & Weiss in Miami. We’re leaving no stone unturned, I can assure you, sir. It’s just a matter of time.”

  “Something we don’t have, Martha.”

  A knock at the door and Roy Stamper walked in.<
br />
  Martha turned round and glared at him. “Middle of a video teleconference, Roy.”

  “They’ve just dragged a body out of the Potomac. A man in his late thirties. Near the Chain Bridge on the Virginia side. He had a suicide note wrapped in cellophane in one of his pockets.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Not one hundred per cent, but it looks like Thomas Wesley, the missing former NSA analyst.”

  The mood amongst Meyerstein and her team as they were driven to the 34th Street Heliport was of quiet determination. She wanted to exude a quiet authority. No one was getting unduly rattled. It was important to remain focussed.

  She checked via a secure iPad to monitor real-time events in downtown Manhattan and a feed to SIOC on the 5th floor at FBI HQ.

  The cold realisation that a bio-terror attack might be in the offing in the nation’s capital made her think again of her children. Their school was in Bethesda. Her gut instincts were telling her to call the head and get her children back to the sanctity of their house. But she knew that would be against all protocols and would also jeopardise the news blackout, especially if the head teacher suspected something was amiss.

  A few minutes later, two choppers whisked them out to Newark, New Jersey, in seven minutes. Then they transferred to the Gulfstream, which was already waiting for them. Within moments of the plane taking off into the bright winter sunshine, climbing steeply as they headed south to Washington DC, Meyerstein’s phone on her armrest rang.

  It was from one of the SIOC team in Washington, Reed Steel.

  “Martha,” he said, nearly out of breath, “do you want the good news or the bad news?”

  She sighed. “With the day I’ve had so far, gimme the good news first.”

  “The good news is that we’ve just had an update from the hospital in Pensacola. Reznick’s daughter has opened her eyes. She’s emerging from the coma. And she’s fine.”

  Meyerstein smiled as she felt her throat tighten. “Well, thank God.”

  “Now, for the bad news. You’re not gonna like it.”

  Meyerstein cleared her throat. “Try me.”

  “It’s Reznick.”

  “What about him?”

  “He’s gone missing.”

  “What are you talking about? He’s in a goddamn naval hospital. Two of our guys are babysitting him for chrissakes.”

  “Calm down, Martha.”

  “No, I won’t calm down. Tell me what the hell happened.”

  He sighed. “After Reznick spoke to you earlier, he complained of being unwell. Dizzy. Nauseous. The doctors examined him. They said he was mentally and physically exhausted. Traumatised by what he’d been through. They prescribed a couple of sleeping tablets so he could sleep the rest of the day.”

  Meyerstein closed her eyes for a moment and groaned.

  “It appears Reznick went for a lie down in a quiet room. But when someone went to check on him a short while ago, they found out he was gone.”

  “Well, that’s just great. You wanna explain how he’s gone?”

  “I mean he pushed back some ceiling tiles, and escaped out of the main part of the hospital. A soldier’s civilian clothes are missing from a locker along with his car. We think Reznick just drove out the front gate.”

  “You better be kidding me, Reed.”

  “Afraid not. It’s a fuck up, I know.”

  “I’ll deal with this later. Alert the team about Reznick.”

  “What do you think he’s gonna do?”

  “I just hope he stays in Florida. I’ve got enough on my plate to last a lifetime.”

  She ended the call. Almost immediately the phone rang again.

  “Martha, we got something else.” It was Freddie Limonton. “We’ve cracked it!”

  “Give me what you’ve got.”

  “We’ve analysed the conversation decrypted by Wesley. We’ve gone over every word, every phrase. Then gone over it again and again. We missed it at first.”

  Meyerstein groaned as Limonton talked around the subject as usual, instead of getting to the point. “Go on.”

  “It’s an embedded message within the audio signal.”

  Meyerstein felt her stomach tighten. She knew how good Freddie Limonton and his team were. “What does it contain?”

  “The conversation is banal. The sort of conversation which no one would give a second thought to, right?”

  Meyerstein ground her teeth in frustration as she waited for Limonton to get to the point. “Could this have been intended for Caan?”

  “You got it. Caan is super bright. If he had a decoder and the cell phone number of the guy who made the call, with his knowledge, this is a serious possibility.”

  “OK, explain.”

  “This is classic stuff. When we were running the tests for the voices and the conversation, we found that there was a short data message hidden within the conversation Wesley had decrypted. Data hiding in audio signals is incredibly challenging as it covers such a wide range.”

  “I need to know what it contained, Freddie.”

  “I’m getting to that. Martha, I’ve just been told you’re on your way to Washington, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “The embedded message was hiding a target address in Washington.”

  “Where?”

  Limonton let out a long sigh. “Two South Rotary Road.”

  “Where the hell is that?”

  “It’s the postal address for the Pentagon Metro station.”

  A short while later, as the Gulfstream headed south en route to Washington DC, the most senior officials from each government agency were on the secure video conferencing facility. The bank of TV screens in the plane came on, showing the dark-panelled White House secure videoconference center, which was located on the ground floor of the West Wing. It showed the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA Director and the National Security Adviser among others. Separate screens showed her team within the SIOC command center on the fifth floor at the FBI HQ in Washington.

  Meyerstein took a deep breath to calm her nerves.

  Richard Blake, the chair at the White House secure video conferencing center, spoke first. “Let’s begin. We’ll do this in crisis mode. So, keep your microphones off unless you’re speaking. If you want to speak, simply raise your hand. Let’s not talk over each other. OK, Assistant Director Meyerstein has a critical update for us. Martha, we’re all yours.”

  “Thank you, Richard. OK, let’s start with the facts. There has been one partially successful bio-attack in the evacuated building in lower Manhattan, which housed the New York field office. If we hadn’t got there, if there had been no evacuation, if the ventilation system had been on, we would have been looking at thousands of casualties, spreading this virus like no one’s business. As it stands, one guy in a bio-suit got it straight in the face. But we shouldn’t be complacent. Now, we are looking for a Scott Caan. If you check your monitors, you can see the before and after pictures we have of him. He has undergone non-invasive cosmetic surgery.”

  Blake put up his hand as others scribbled notes.

  “Yeah, Richard, go right ahead.”

  “Why are we so off the pace, Martha? It’s like we’re chasing shadows.”

  “I’m well aware of that,” she said, brushing aside the thinly veiled criticism. “But we are where we are. We found our scientist who may be only a matter of hours from recreating the formula for the anti-viral drugs and a vaccine. We have Caan’s new identity and we have his destination. Thanks to some brilliant decryption and computer specialists and an ex-NSA guy – Thomas Wesley – who gave his life trying to alert the authorities, we have made a major breakthrough. Ladies and gentlemen, we believe that there is going to be a biological attack on the Pentagon Metro station in Washington DC.”

  An audible gasp could be heard from the video conferencing facility at the White House followed by a show of hands.

  “I’ll deal with queries in a moment. Now, as you’ll know, this metro sta
tion is adjacent to the Pentagon, underground. But whilst there used to be a direct and secure entrance from the Metro to the Pentagon, that obviously changed after 9/11. Access to the Pentagon is from a new secured entrance above ground near the bus depot. We believe Scott Caan is planning to release this virus in the Metro. She saw Dr Horowitz’s hand was up and she pointed at him. “Adam, go right ahead.”

  Horowitz sighed heavily. “My team has talked through the scenarios until we’re blue in the face. Bottom line? We believe Caan may change tack. Whilst he used aerosol devices in the air ducts, I believe that if the Pentagon Metro station is the target, and he’s mobile, he’ll be carrying the virus in small lightweight containers. I think he’ll release the virus on the train tracks or on to an escalator leading to the Pentagon concourse, perhaps a crowded carriage. He’ll either discreetly smash the containers or simply open them to release the bio-material.”

  A ripple of turbulence shook the plane as Meyerstein nodded. “The rushing trains would help keep the virus aloft and efficiently spread the bacteria around the platform and it would take the virus right into the heart of the Pentagon unseen by its thousands of employees, right?”

  Horowitz nodded. “That is the scenario my analysts and I envisage.”

  Meyerstein had read about the scenario. She cleared her throat before she spoke. “As some of you may know, this scenario mirrors a secret military experiment in 1966 – which no doubt Caan would have been aware of – when a seemingly benign virus…”

  Horotwitz interjected. “Bacillus subtilis var niger 3. This was meant to simulate Anthrax spores which were dispensed throughout the New York City subway system. This was done ironically by army scientists – just like Caan – who dropped light bulbs filled with a harmless bacteria through ventilation grates onto the tracks to see how easy it would be to expose large number of strangers to a lethal germ.”

  Meyerstein put up her hand and Horowitz went quiet. “If this virus was allowed to escape in the carriages and tunnels of the Metro, and infect the Pentagon workers riding the Metro, then, unbeknown to them, they are potentially infecting each and every person who works at the Pentagon. Within a matter of days, the Department of Defense HQ may be wiped out. Nearly twenty-three thousand staff.”