by James Ponti
Sydney gave him a curious look. “How can you tell?”
“The metadata,” he answered. “A digital photograph carries a wide range of technical information about the picture—everything from the type of camera and lens that were used to the date and time it was taken. This picture was taken last October on the fifteenth.”
“Although we can’t trust that completely,” said Brooklyn. “It also said that the picture was taken thirteen minutes past midnight. Considering it’s broad daylight, that’s obviously wrong.”
“Is there anything useful in the metadata?” Monty asked.
“A lot,” said Brooklyn. “It lists the serial number of the camera, and we were able to track that to Clarendon Photo, a store in Oxford, where it was purchased by someone named R.F. Stroud.”
“Or at least that’s who they claimed to be,” added Mother. “We’ve not found an R.F. Stroud living within fifty miles of Oxford.”
“Do you think it’s an alias that Clementine uses?” asked Paris.
“I would, except I can’t imagine she’d go anywhere near there,” Mother answered. “Do you know how many people from the Intelligence Service live and work nearby? Retired agents? Current ones? Not to mention the fact that Oxford University has long been one of MI6’s main recruitment centers.”
“That’s where they recruited me,” Monty interjected.
“Exactly,” said Mother. “Clementine had to know that the chance of being spotted was significant. I don’t know why she’d risk it for something as mundane as a camera she could purchase in any of a thousand locations.”
“So she used someone else’s camera?” Paris replied. “Either someone who gave it to her or was traveling with her.”
“And if Oxford is full of spies,” Rio reasoned, “that means the camera could’ve belonged to another spy.”
Mother nodded as he weighed this idea. “That makes a lot of sense.”
“I’ll tell you what doesn’t make sense,” Sydney said. “At least not to me.” She turned to Brooklyn and asked, “What did she say again? When she gave you the thumb drive.”
“She told me that Annie and Robert were happy and healthy and that Mother needed to stop looking for them,” Brooklyn answered.
“That,” Sydney said, trying to work it out in her brain, “that doesn’t make sense at all.”
“I may not have it word for word,” Brooklyn replied somewhat defensively. “It was a crazy situation, and she just appeared out of nowhere.”
“No, not that,” said Sydney. “What you said makes sense. It’s what she said that seems wrong.”
“How do you mean?” asked Rio.
“You know Mother,” Sydney said to him. “Is he ever going to stop looking for Annie and Robert?”
Rio shook his head. “Not until he finds them.”
“Of course not,” she said. “We all know that, and Clementine does too. Now add the fact that she gives him a massive clue. A photograph with both kids in it, knowing it will have the exact opposite effect. That it will make him look even harder.” She turned to Mother. “She’s super smart. So why would she give you the picture?”
“Because she feels guilty about everything?” Paris suggested.
“Maybe it’s just what she told Brooklyn,” Monty offered. “That she wants Mother to know that the kids are happy and healthy.”
“No. That’s not it.”
The voice was forceful, and it took everyone a moment to realize that it belonged to Kat. She was away from the others, examining the photo on a monitor across the room.
“Why do you say that?” Paris asked.
“She may feel guilty, and she may want Mother to know that Annie and Robert are okay,” Kat said. “But that’s irrelevant to why she gave Brooklyn this picture. This particular picture was chosen for a specific reason.” She stopped for a moment and analyzed it one more time before turning to them. “She picked it because she wants Mother to find them. Or at least to find where this picture was taken.”
“And you think that because?” Mother asked.
Kat shrugged as if the answer were obvious. “Why else would she make it so easy to figure out?”
The others all shared an incredulous look.
“You think this is easy?” Paris asked. “Because it doesn’t seem easy to any of us.”
“That’s because you’re only seeing caterpillars,” she said.
Paris tilted his head to the side and thought about that for a second. Then he smiled at Kat and said, “I love how when you explain things it actually makes them more confusing.”
Kat tried to figure a way to put into words what was going on in her head. “If you look at a caterpillar, you’re only going to see a caterpillar,” she said. “And if you look at a cocoon, you’ll only see a cocoon.”
“And your point is?” Paris asked, totally baffled.
“You have to look at both of them,” she tried to explain. “You have to look at the caterpillar and the cocoon. And then you have to figure out how they fit together….”
“If you ever want to find a butterfly,” said Sydney, finishing the thought.
“Exactly right,” Kat said.
“That’s brilliant,” Brooklyn said. “I’m not sure what it means, but I’m certain it’s brilliant.”
“You think if we stop looking for caterpillars, we can figure this out?” asked Sydney.
Kat nodded and tried to conceal her smile.
“Wait a second,” said Sydney, suddenly excited. “You already figured it out. You already found the butterfly.”
Kat could contain her smile no longer. She beamed as she said, “Yes.”
Mother looked at Kat with total amazement. “How?”
“Start with the time,” said Kat. “What time is it in the picture?”
“That depends,” said Brooklyn. “It’s 12:13 if you believe the metadata. But we know that’s wrong.”
“No it isn’t,” said Kat.
“You do see all the sunlight, don’t you?” Rio asked skeptically. “You think it’s midnight in that picture?”
“No,” said Kat. “I think it’s midnight in Oxford, where the camera was purchased and the time and date were originally programmed.” She pointed at the picture. “So how do we figure out what time it is in the picture?”
“Her watch!” Monty said, getting it. She used her fingers to zoom in on Annie’s watch, which was visible where she had her arm around her brother. “Her watch says it’s 4:13.”
“Right,” said Kat. “And if it’s 12:13 a.m. in Oxford, where is it 4:13 p.m.?”
Mother started getting excited. “That’s eight hours earlier,” he said, doing the time zone math out loud. “It’s five hours to New York and another three hours puts us in… California!”
Kat smiled. “Actually, it puts us on the West Coast of North America. It could be California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, or the northwest corner of Mexico.”
“She’s amazing,” Sydney whispered to Monty.
Monty nodded. “Breathtakingly so.”
“You said there were more than fifty Chinatowns in America,” Kat said to Brooklyn. “How many are on the West Coast?”
“A bunch. Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Portland, Seattle, a few others,” Brooklyn answered. “And Vancouver in Canada.”
“Which narrows it down,” said Paris. “But it’s still a lot of geography to cover. How do we figure out which of those it is?”
Kat smiled. “That’s the best part.”
She stepped up to the monitor and used her fingers to zoom in to a reflection in the store’s window. In it the street was visible.
“What do you see?” Kat asked.
“The road,” answered Sydney.
“And…,” replied Kat.
Sydney shrugged. “Nothing. Just the road. No cars even, just… asphalt.”
“And train tracks,” Rio said excitedly.
“Right,” said Kat. “We’ve seen them in cities around t
he world. We’ve seen them so much we don’t even notice them. Tracks for trolleys, trams, subways, trains. Except those tracks have two rails, and if you look closely, you’ll see that this one has three.”
They all looked closer and saw that a third rail ran down the middle of the tracks.
“What’s that for?” asked Paris. “A third wheel?”
Mother gasped and covered his mouth with his hand. He couldn’t believe it. “It’s a slot for a cable,” he said. “Those are tracks for a cable car.” He shook his head in disbelief. “How did I miss that?”
“And there’s only one city in the world that still uses cable cars,” Kat said triumphantly. “And it’s in that time zone and it has a Chinatown.”
“San Francisco,” Mother said as tears welled up in his eyes. “They’re in San Francisco.”
There was stunned silence in the room until Paris exclaimed, “Well, I’ll be a fuzzy caterpillar.”
The others laughed, and Mother walked over to Kat and wrapped her in a hug.
“Thank you, sweetheart,” he said. “Thank you so much.”
“I know this is an emotional moment, and I hate to be critical at a time like this,” she said. “But you really should’ve shown me the picture sooner.”
“Lesson learned,” he said, half laughing, half crying. “Lesson learned.”
9. Operation Golden Gate
EVEN IN THE WORLD OF secrets, there were rules and records.
Officially, any MI6 spy mission had to be sanctioned by headquarters at Vauxhall Cross in London. Once approved, it was given a name, and a file was created to hold all the relevant information and documents. Eventually, that file was stored in a secure vault located just outside of Cheltenham in a building nicknamed the Doughnut. But there was nothing official about what Monty proposed. In the lingo of the spy trade, she was suggesting a “rogue op” that would be run “off the books.”
“We’re going to have to follow this lead wherever it goes,” she said. “We’ll call it Operation Golden Gate, but no one can know about it except for the seven of us.”
She looked around at the others, and each nodded their agreement, with the exception of Mother, who was hesitant. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for any of you to—”
“We’re doing it,” Paris said, cutting him off. “And Monty’s right. No one else can know. It’s too risky.”
The risk came from the fact that if Clementine was a double agent, there was no telling who at the Secret Intelligence Service might be threatened by that piece of information. More worrisome, if an Umbra mole secretly working inside the Service came across the file, Clementine’s cover would be blown, and the consequences would be devastating.
“Let’s begin with what we know,” Monty suggested.
“All we can be certain of is that Annie and Robert were in San Francisco at 4:13 p.m. on October fourteenth,” said Kat.
“I thought it was the fifteenth,” said Sydney.
“It was back in Oxford,” Kat explained. “But it was still the fourteenth in California.”
Sydney sagged, embarrassed that she hadn’t realized that on her own. “Of course. Eight hours earlier.”
“What’s our first step?” Rio asked. “Do we fly straight to San Francisco?”
“No,” Monty answered as she studied the photo. “Not until we figure this out.”
“I thought Kat already did that,” Brooklyn replied.
“She figured out the when and the where,” Monty said. “But we can’t do anything until we know the why.” She turned to Mother, who was silent as he tried to process everything that was going on. “Don’t you agree?”
He stood there for a moment, still conflicted about all of it. “I don’t know that I agree with any of this,” he said. “If there’s a mission, it should be mine alone. Running a rogue op can go pear-shaped in so many ways.”
“No offense, Mother,” she replied, “but you had the picture for two months and didn’t figure out that it was in San Francisco.”
He shook his head. “I know,” he said. “I can’t believe I missed that.”
“I can,” she replied. “This is too close to you. The fact that it’s so personal makes it even more challenging. That’s why we’re going to help.”
“Do you know what the fallout would be if MI6 finds out?” he asked. “They’d quite likely disband this program. Break up the team.”
“Except we’re not a team,” said Kat. “We’re a family.” She pointed at the picture of Annie and Robert and added, “And this is about family.”
For this, Mother had no counterargument. For the second time in less than fifteen minutes, Kat’s words had silenced the room.
Monty laughed and said, “For someone who never talks, you sure know what to say.”
Kat smiled wryly and answered, “I pick my moments.”
“Besides,” Brooklyn added, “Clementine didn’t give the picture to you. She gave it to me. She involved me, and when she did that, she involved all of us. So what’s it going to be? Are you going to keep fighting us about this, or are you going to take charge and be the alpha?”
Mother took a few deep breaths as he scanned their faces and saw their determination. He was in. “Monty’s right—we don’t go anywhere until we figure out why Clemmie picked this picture. I guarantee that it wasn’t to help me find the kids. The three of them were probably only in San Francisco for a few days. We have to find that reason, which means we have to find exactly where they’re standing.”
“How do we do that?” asked Sydney. “San Francisco’s a large city.”
“I’ve got an idea,” Brooklyn said eagerly as she sat down at a computer keyboard and did a quick search. Within seconds, she found what she was looking for and put it up on the main wall monitor. “This map shows the different cable car routes in San Francisco. We know that they have to be alongside one of them.”
“That’s great,” said Monty. “That focuses the search.”
The map showed three separate lines. They were named after the streets they traveled along: California, Powell/Mason, and Powell/Hyde. Each was about a mile and a half to two miles long.
“We get on street view and take a virtual walk along each of these routes, building by building, until we find the storefront in the picture,” Mother said. “We split up into three teams of two with each team taking one line, and each person taking one side of the street. That way we shouldn’t overlook anything.”
“Three teams of two is six,” Brooklyn pointed out. “But there are seven of us.”
“Right,” said Mother with a grin. “That’s because while we’re going on street view, I want you and Beny to revisit all of those search profiles you’ve been using the last few months. Only now limit them to a fifty-mile radius around San Francisco.”
Beny was the name they used for the massive supercomputer that was kept in a climate-controlled portion of the priest hole. For the past few months, Brooklyn had been using its power to search for Annie and Robert. She’d written a variety of algorithms, facial recognition programs, and search codes trying to locate them. But she had to use those to search the entire planet, which produced results that were unwieldy and hard to muddle through. Now she could concentrate that power to search every flight manifest, hotel registry, and database in San Francisco.
There was a buzz of excitement in the room, but also a hint of uncertainty. Sensing this, Kat turned to Mother to remind him of a good luck tradition they had at the start of every operation. “You know it’s not really a mission until you say it.”
This was as close to official as it would get, but it was an important step, a way for Mother to signal to the others that he was fully on board.
“This operation is hot,” he said with a sly smile. “We are a go.”
10. Fortune Cookies
SYDNEY LOVED HER TEAM, HER “family” as Kat put it, and that only made her feel worse about how things had been going lately. Before, she’d always felt essential. S
ometimes, she even thought of herself as a star. After all, everyone said she was a natural, and she was chosen to be the alpha more often than anyone else. But she didn’t feel like a star now.
In Paris, on the biggest mission they’d ever undertaken, Brooklyn had been the hero, even though she’d had virtually no training. That continued on the Sylvia Earle. Yes, Sydney defused the bomb and used the explosives to cause a distraction, but she’d also mishandled her role as alpha. Brooklyn was the reliable one who’d gotten Alice and Judy to safety. She was the resourceful one who twice defeated a hulking thug. She was the clever one who worked her way onto the bridge so that she could signal for help. Brooklyn proved time and again that she was the natural spy. And how did Sydney respond? She threw a hissy fit and hurt Brooklyn’s feelings.
So far, Operation Golden Gate wasn’t going any better. Kat solved a puzzle that Sydney knew she never could’ve cracked. And when it came time to convince Mother that they should take on the mission, it was the others who did the convincing. All Sydney did was make unhelpful suggestions and confuse time zones and dates. She felt useless. That’s why she was determined to be the one to find the storefront as she took a virtual walk through San Francisco along Mason and Powell Streets. It was the kind of small but important contribution that could put her back on track. A way for her to help and maybe win back some of her confidence.
The work was tedious, made more difficult by the fact that the images weren’t a picture of the streets now, but rather a collection of photographs taken over the course of the last few years. Businesses had changed hands, buildings had been repainted, facades remodeled, and there was little in the photograph to go on: just part of a window, half of a Chinese character, and the reflection of the street. Sydney clicked on the little arrow so she traveled down the sidewalk a few feet at a time until…
“Found it!”
A surge of excitement went through the room, just as Sydney had hoped. Only it wasn’t directed at her. It was focused on Rio, who had made the discovery. He was across the room, tracing the cable car route down California Street along the edge of Chinatown. On his computer screen, he positioned the photo of Annie and Robert next to a storefront for a side-by-side comparison. “They’ve changed the paint,” he said, “but you can tell that the window’s the same, and there’s a discoloration on the sidewalk in both.”
