by Jack Soren
By the time he caught up, they were right behind the press. Any farther and they’d need a press pass. As far as Lew was concerned, this was way too close, their position making an escape almost impossible. Lew tried to identify their best egress, but found himself staring at Emily up on the platform. He didn’t even notice when Jonathan drifted to the side of the press corps away from him.
26
Tartaruga Island
6:55 P.M. Local Time
IMAGES FILLED THE two previously dark screens flanking the center one, each individual screen showing dozens of segmented video images coming from cameras a world away—faces, thousands of faces. When a superficial comparison to the face on the center screen matched high enough on their percentage scale, a segment exploded out to fill the center of the screen and a more intense comparison algorithm ran. On completion, a match percentage displayed, indicating the likelihood that they had found someone out in the real world that matched their altered Belgian reflection. From what Nathan could see, they had yet to get above sixty percent.
The pain had passed and he was once again himself. Lara and Randy had done an excellent job of damage control, somehow getting their teams back on task despite the apparent miracle. He’d deal with Sophia later. For now, the screens above him were all that mattered.
“Status, Mr. Li,” Nathan said. He could almost feel the data surging back and forth from the server farm behind him to the control center. It was intoxicating.
“They haven’t detected us, yet. But our data models showed we’d have a solid ninety minutes before they started to shut us down. We’re not even halfway there, yet.”
“Good, good,” Nathan said, his neck crooked up as he watched the matches fail one after the other. “What about our match confidence?”
“Nothing positive. Highest match so far is sixty-three percent. But there is a problem.”
“A problem? What type of problem?”
“There’s an incredible amount of data coming across the wires.”
“That was expected.”
“It’s even higher than we expected. The servers can’t keep up. As it is,” Randy said, waving a hand toward the screens overhead, “we’re maxing the buffers out and we’re going to have to start dumping data soon.”
“English, Mr. Li,” Nathan said.
“There are too many faces. The queue is almost full of unchecked captured images. If it keeps up, we’re going to start losing images before they’ve been compared.”
“What?” Nathan couldn’t believe what he was hearing. They’d been planning this for months and this possibility had never come up. “How?”
“Cyclops must have added new sources—new camera feeds—that we’re not aware of.”
“There must be something we can do,” Lara said, moving beside her father. “What if we reduced the coverage perimeter? We’re checking all of New York City right now. Can you limit the source images to a tighter area around the press conference location?”
“Yes,” Randy said, his tone indicating he was working out the details. “How tight?”
Nathan looked at the clock and said, “Just the block around Federal Plaza and the building itself. He’ll be there by now.”
“Give me a minute,” Randy said, sitting down at a terminal.
“That’s about all you have, Mr. Li,” Nathan said, moving behind Randy’s chair. After a few minutes of pounding his keyboard, Randy spun his chair around.
“What is it?”
“We can do it. But there are two issues. The first has to do with detection.”
“You said we had ninety minutes, minimum. We’re not even close to that,” Nathan was moving beyond frustration and into anger. He fought to keep control. From past experiences, he knew that too much adrenaline pumping through his system reduced how long the serum lasted. If he wasn’t careful, he’d send himself back into the chair before they were done. But the more he thought about it, the more anxious he got.
“We did, when we had a wider footprint. By reducing our presence, if they detect us they’ll be able to shut us down faster.”
“How fast?” Lara asked.
“We’ll essentially be on a single node if we tighten up as you requested,” Randy said.
“How fast?”
“Seconds. If not faster.”
“What’s the second issue?” Nathan asked through gritted teeth. It was taking all his willpower not to explode.
“If this is going to work we have to clear out the bulk of the data. We need room for processing, temporary files, indexes—room we don’t have right now.”
“Meaning?”
Lara answered for Randy. “Meaning we have to start from scratch.”
“Essentially, yes. I’m sorry,” Randy said looking up at the main display. “But whatever we do, we have to do it now or the choice will be made for us.”
Nathan ran his hands through his hair and paced back and forth. One foot in front of the other, twisting and heading in the other direction using back, hip, and thigh muscles. A simple action that, if this failed, he would lose permanently. The cost was too high. He couldn’t decide. He stopped pacing and looked up at his daughter. He knew she’d get the message.
Help me.
She chose secret option number three.
“Dump it, Mr. Li. And activate three other nodes—”
“That won’t work. I told you—”
“Don’t buffer the other nodes. Dump the data as soon as you get it. And if it looks like time is running out, get clumsy with those other nodes. Make them noisy and obvious,” Lara said.
“A decoy. That’s brilliant!” Randy said. He spun his chair around and went to work.
“We’ll find him,” Lara said.
They looked up at the main screen, held their breath, and waited.
27
Federal Plaza
New York City
12:00 P.M. Local Time
“MY NAME IS Joseph Wagner. I’m the special agent in charge of The Monarch case. Thank you for coming, everyone,” Wagner said. The crowd quieted down and all eyes were now on him. He was getting used to the feeling.
“First, I wanted to comment on the package the press received a few days ago. This package, while from all indications contains valid materials, is at this time still from an unknown source. In an attempt to provide the public with as much information as possible, without impeding our investigation, I’ve instructed the FBI legal department to allow all contents to be published and made accessible by the public. However, this does not indicate FBI endorsement of the contents. In our view, the contents are suspect, at best.
“Second, one of the items included in the previously mentioned package was a book called The Monarch’s Reign. The author of this work, Miss Emily Burrows, is seated behind me,” Wagner said, indicating Miss Burrows for the crowd, though by now it was really a formality. Even so, the sound of camera shutters snapping open and closed rose and then fell. Miss Burrows squinted from the sudden onslaught of flashes.
“I would like to confirm that our investigation has shown that Miss Burrows, aside from being the author of this work, had nothing to do with the package’s assembly or distribution. She is as much a victim as anyone in this case.
“That being said, she does have a unique perspective on the individual known as The Monarch. While she has no special access to this case and is not privy to anything the general public isn’t aware of, we have brought her on as a consultant. Now, let me be perfectly clear about this,” Wagner said, leaning forward. “She is a consultant on The Monarch, not on the murders.
“In a moment, she would like to make a statement and then we’ll take some questions. The final point I want to make is that there have been some rumors that a conflict between the FBI and the NYPD has been impeding this case. This couldn’t be further from
the truth, as represented by the presence of NYPD Chief of Police Marvin Powers,” Wagner said, indicating Powers sitting beside Miss Burrows. Powers gave a half smile and a slight nod.
“And now Miss Burrows’s statement,” Wagner said, stepping away from the microphone and extending a hand toward Miss Burrows. She smiled nervously, stepped to the podium, unfolded a piece of paper, and laid it down, smoothing out the folds with a repeated petting motion. She eyed the crowd.
“Hello,” she said, a slight quaver in her voice.
28
Tartaruga Island
7:05 P.M. Local Time
“I THINK WE’VE got something,” Randy Li said. It was the third time he’d said the exact same words; each time further processing had dismissed the candidate. They had upped their threshold to almost seventy-two percent, but it wasn’t enough.
“The source?” Lara asked.
“Inside the building. Right next to the podium.”
“It’s not him,” Nathan said.
“But Father—”
“He would never be in such a vulnerable position,” Nathan barked. He took a second to steady himself. Lara tried to take him by the arm, but he pushed her away.
“Is it wearing off already?” she asked him. It had actually started to wear off a few minutes ago, but he was fighting it. The pain was back and it was getting harder and harder to maintain his balance. It must be the stress. The treatment had never worn off so quickly. Then again, he’d never taken so many treatments so close together before.
“I’m . . . I’m fine.”
“The hell you are,” Lara said. “Sit in the chair.” He knew she meant the wheelchair. He’d never get into that thing willingly.
“I said I’m—”
“Detection!” one of the techs called from behind them, an alarm sounding as the warning passed through the system.
“Which node?” Randy asked, jumping out of his chair and trotting over to the technician’s console. “It’s one of the decoys,” he said before the technician could answer him, the result shown plainly on his display. “But if they’re on to us, it won’t be long, now.”
“Sir!” another tech called out. Nathan turned but saw that the tech was talking to Randy.
“Mein Gott!”
“What . . . what is it?” Nathan managed, the pain in his head making it hard to talk. This was more than the serum wearing off. He had to repeatedly blink to clear his vision and his left hand was tingling. Something was wrong.
“We’ve got him!” Randy shouted, pointing to the overhead display. Lara and Nathan looked up. The screen showed the image that Randy had suspected was a good candidate. Beneath the face the comparison confidence display blinked in green: 98%.
“STAGE TWO! NOW!” Lara ordered, seeing her father too disoriented to react.
They dropped the connection to the Cyclops nodes, leaving some engineers thousands of miles away frustrated. Randy sent the image on the screen through to zombie processors lying dormant in American databases, planted by Randy. They compared the face to databases of official identification documents—drivers’ licenses, passports, criminal records.
“We’ve got a hit,” Randy said after a few minutes. “Wait. This can’t be.”
“What is it?” Lara asked.
“Shut it down! Shut it all down! Hurry!” Randy attacked his workstation, pounding commands out on his keyboard faster than Lara could read them.
She looked up at the screens flanking the identified face and realized why Randy was so agitated. Their system was warning that an intruder was trying to hack in. Randy managed to shut everything down before the intruder broke through their firewalls.
“What the hell was that?” Lara demanded. Randy collapsed in his chair, panting like he’d run a marathon.
“The face triggered a black response.”
“A what?”
“A search and destroy using sophisticated algorithms. Very sophisticated. They were tracing our signal back to its source.”
“Why would they do that?” Lara asked. She knew a little about the field after grilling Randy for the past few weeks. Typically system administrators just wanted to keep intruders out or cut them off as fast as possible if they managed to get in. It was only later that other personnel would worry about where the attack had come from.
“The face wasn’t found in an American national identity database or in a credit card company’s files. It was found in a data center in Langley, Virginia.”
“Langley? You mean—”
“That face is a government operative. A spy.”
29
Federal Plaza
New York City
12:15 P.M. Local Time
“TARGET IDENTIFIED,” THOMAS said from the front seat of the limo. The screen in the limo’s dashboard, previously displaying GPS route map information, now displayed a man’s photograph, as did the three LCD screens in the back of the limo. The communication from Tartaruga Island to the limo was on a discreet system, protected from the hack happening so far away. “Let me know when you find him.”
“Roger,” Bill said. Thomas scanned the crowd with his naked eye, but it was impossible to tell anything from this distance. “Got him. Standing to the right of the podium beside a big guy in a duster. Tall and slender. Black windbreaker and jeans.”
Thomas looked and saw the man Bill was describing. He was close to Miss Burrows, but in the wrong position to use the decoy. The exploded glass would fire shards like shrapnel, slicing through everything in its radius. At the moment, that would include the target.
“Tell your men to get on him and be ready to separate him from the crowd. There’s some sort of partition to their right.”
“Got it. It’s a company directory,” Bill said.
“Tell your men to be ready to swing the target behind there. It should provide enough cover.”
“Roger.”
Thomas watched as several men separated from the crowd inside the concourse and made their way across the room.
“They have to get him across the plaza to the curb,” Thomas said. Like most official buildings in New York, thick barricade poles protected the entrance, making it impossible to get up close to the building with anything bigger than a dirt bike.
“Them,” Bill said.
“What?”
“Get them across the plaza. You said him,” Bill said. “No biggie.” But Thomas knew it was a biggie and then some.
Thomas’s cell phone rang and he answered it. It was the B team located nearby in the back of an electronics-filled van with a broadcast dish on top.
“We’re ready. Image has been superimposed. Just let us know when you want to do the cut-in.”
“Stand by,” Thomas said, then to Bill he said, “Let me know the second your guys are ready.”
“Just one . . . more . . . good to go,” Bill said. Thomas put the cell phone back to his ear.
“Play it.”
12:20 p.m.
JONATHAN WATCHED EMILY Burrows clumsily answer questions from the reporters about The Monarch—a situation he found more than a little surreal—when he heard his name. He saw Lew ignoring Miss Burrows and looking up at one of the huge displays overhead. When Jonathan saw what Lew was looking at the hairs on the back of his neck prickled.
“ . . . a photographer from Tallahassee, Florida. It’s not yet known what motivated this mild-mannered family man to take up a ritualistic killing spree. Again, for those just tuning in, the killer known as The Monarch has been identified by the FBI as Jonathan Hall . . .”
A fist slammed into Jonathan’s face just below his right eye. The world swam, and Jonathan was only peripherally aware that someone grabbed him and dragged him away. Even in his delirious state all he could think about was Natalie. If that broadcast wasn’t nationwide now, it would be
in minutes. Soon, everyone in Tallahassee would see it. He’d lose her for sure.
As more and more of his senses returned, Jonathan knew he had only one chance. Get to Natalie as soon as he could. If he could just explain things, maybe she’d understand. Either way, they could run. Whether that was any kind of life for an eleven-year-old would be something he’d anguish over later. Right now he needed to stay out of a prison cell.
“Get your shit together, Jonny,” Lew said. “We’ve got to get you out of here.”
Jonathan’s vision returned as Lew led him toward the door. He looked down at Lew’s hands gripping his arm and noticed they were bloody and bruised. He looked back and saw two men with earpieces lying on the ground, bloody and broken. Past them, he saw that four armed men had jumped out of the crowd and up onto the raised platform by the podium. The FBI agent called Wagner and the NYPD chief of police were on the ground, not moving. Two of the men had their guns pointed over the crowd, and were intermittently shouting and firing into the air.
Two other men had Emily Burrows and were dragging her out like they’d tried to drag him. If not for Natalie, he might try to help her, then a thought occurred to him. He got his feet under him, shook off the remaining bells in his ears, and pushed Lew off him. A few more bullets thunked into the ceiling and pieces of cement crashed around them. They raised their arms over their heads to deflect the debris, the crowd screaming and running every which way. Jonathan’s was the only face up on that screen right now. They—thugs and cops alike—would only be after him right now. He had to keep it that way.
“What the hell are you doing?” Lew asked.
“Get Burrows. She’s in danger.”
“Who the fuck isn’t? Come on,” Lew said, trying to grab Jonathan’s arm. Jonathan’s wits and reflexes were back and he slipped out of the grab easily.
“I’m serious, Lew. Go help her. Something’s fucked up here and I’ll be damned if I’ll let one more person get hurt in our name,” he lied.
