Tyranny of Secrets

by John Statton

  “Look, you idiots, she mapped her image on top of the janitor and threw in some misdirection,” said Mansfield. “We’ve captured a phantom to give her time to get away. Find her!”

  ***

  Around Mariana, the warm summer night had turned cold. The fog had rolled in, and it haloed the streetlights. At this hour, the streets and sidewalks were almost deserted and covered with thick fog. It enveloped her as she walked away. Her hands unconsciously reached up to her neck to double-check she had her fob. The Faraday coat was way too big for her, but slipping it on helped hide her further.

  Jesus, girl, she thought, you've got to come up with a plan. Think. How are you going to handle this? Is there a chance to resolve it with Mansfield? Not bloody likely, he is one evil scumbag, and stealing his most sensitive files has burned any bridge. I know the company will come after me with everything they have. I'm a loose cannon he will want to tie down.

  Looking around and seeing half-formed shapes moving through the fog, she got nervous and jumpy. Everything around her began to take on more sinister tones. Over the years, she anticipated she might need an insurance policy against a bad day at work. An incredibly bad day was here.

  Her RABBITRUN digital invisibility stopped when she walked out the door and onto the street. She thought, It's time to avoid facial recognition from any networked ATMs, retail store windows, and bank doors. Hell, just walking down a commercial street is dangerous.

  San Francisco, like most global cities, had homegrown digital surveillance covering most public places. Over twelve thousand cameras, both private and government-owned, provided real-time feeds into the city’s Urban Awareness System. Supplemented by hundreds of license plate readers allowing targeted vehicle pursuit, and an additional array of sensors for chemical, biological, radiation, and gunshot spotting; all of this data was used by the System to scan for potential threats. Mariana did not want to be identified and tagged for tracking, it would upset her plans.

  She knew she also needed to avoid social networking. As of now, all of her friends and family were strictly off-limits. They would only be in danger from contact, and any reach-out would register because these people were going to be under intense digital scrutiny, through GPS tracking, calls intercepted, and emails read to see if they were possibly harboring her. Even their grocery purchases would be monitored to compare to her known favorite foods.

  Already the Mariana McAllister identity was dead to her. She knew just how fast you could shut down anyone’s life by cutting off their credit cards and accounts, by denying them bank access, or flagging their passport. All of the tools we use to prove our identity and allow us to get needed goods and services. She had to walk away from it all.

  She recalled another conversation with Boris, a time when they got out on the thin ice and began to exchange ways to cultivate alternative identities, Legends, for use in times of danger. He pitched it as only being prudent, “Because one thing you could always count on in the clandestine world, trouble lay just over the horizon.” The advice she took for her rainy day. She’d labored a long time to build her Legends to support her alternative identities.

  The best Legends are those started years ago and which had been slowly accumulating the trappings of a real life. Fortunately, I’ve got those, she thought. I don’t have to rely on road creds, like a working driver’s license and credit card. She knew these were not a sound basis for long-term survival, when the government’s systems were always searching for thin identities by comparing them to all of the other usual life data an individual accumulates. I’ve just got to get to my identity stash.

  Using Lyft's app, under an account for Joan Arc, on a burner phone she kept for emergencies, she whistled up a ride. Her identity in their system came with a high rating as a strong tipper. Before her ride arrived, she used the phone to send a couple of messages, one to a service provider and one to a unique group of people. She thought she might need their help. Pulling out from her bag a headscarf and sunglasses, she ducked her head as she got in the car.

  #

  Chapter 13

  Glorious Feeling

  July 2016

  She instructed the driver to drop her at the Hyatt hotel and walked across to a BART entrance and down the stairs to the station. She carefully kept her face canted downward. All the surveillance cameras saw was her scarf-covered head. Facial recognition software enabled an efficient identification and tracking system, but if you never got an image, there was nothing to identify.

  Getting off the escalator, she kept a handkerchief against her face as if blowing her nose. She strode over to a bank of lockers. As she walked, she checked the locations and fields of view for each camera in the area. Something she’d done in rehearsals, but now was not the time to be surprised by a change. Her destination was a multi-day rental locker, the kind where you could store a small suitcase. It was in a perfect blind spot, just out of camera view.

  A city, especially the inner core, was a visual kill zone. Her mission was to get through this photographic minefield without triggering the vigilantly watching software. She opened the locker and pulled out the small rolling suitcase. Inside were changes of clothes, $50,000, a 9mm pistol with spare clips, two burner phones, and a high-powered laptop. Her new identity would be well accessorized.

  Mariana had also stored sets of identifications for Grace Hopper and Joan Arc, cards and passports which would withstand any scrutiny. After a quick clothing change, now wearing tinted glasses and hat, she exited the BART station. Rolling a suitcase like a garden-variety tourist, she ascended the station's exit escalator and was soon riding in another Lyft.

  Peering out the window as they drove, she considered her situation, Now I’ve got more resources, I’ve got more options. They know about Sander and will assign the highest probability of picking up my path by focusing on his hospital. No way I’m going in through the front door, she thought, far too likely a move. She leaned forward and asked the driver to take her to a uniform supply shop around the corner from the hospital.

  ***

  Dressed to avoid notice, in nursing scrubs, hat to conceal her hair, and a mask tied across the bottom of her face, Mariana slipped in the hospital’s emergency entrance by grabbing the railing of a stretcher being wheeled into the doors and helping push. This effort got her past the cursory door security. Once inside, she slipped into the buzzing chaos that marked any big city emergency ward.

  She picked up a clipboard and with a purposeful stride walked across the ward and located an elevator. She’d repacked the computer, money, gun, and other accessories in a medical bag hung over her shoulder. Inside the packed elevator car, she swiped a nurse's ID badge dangling on a clip. She rode down to the basement cafe where she used the laptop to connect to the hospital's system.

  Sander's telemetry read all green, and he slept. Mariana dismissed the guard, who received a text sending him to his next needed location. She played a few other tricks with hospital security, shut down the laptop, and headed upstairs.

  So far, so good, she thought as she approached Sander’s room. No guard, and the nurses did not seem interested as she pushed the wheelchair down the hallway and past their station. Opening Sander’s door, she rolled the chair inside and next to his bed. She flipped on the overhead lights and reached out to shake him awake. His eyes opened and recognized her.

  “Hey there, you want to come with me? I think it’s going to be a little dangerous here.”

  Sander nodded and looked at the wheelchair. “I’m feeling a lot better.”

  “Come on and enjoy the ride. I've bought maybe six unobserved minutes,” she said. “I borrowed a little trick from an old movie. I've got the hospital’s security camera system looping the prior ten minutes of recording. It's not going to fool them for long.” With that, she got Sander up and into the wheelchair.

  Endless hallways made it seem to take forever to get out of the building. At every moment, Mariana waited to be challenged and asked what she was
doing with that patient. Nine long minutes later, the nurse pushed her patient towards the front door; a surgical mask obscured her face, the patient swaddled in blankets. The guard at the front door nodded to her as she rolled past his station.

  The doors slid back as they approached. The outside security cameras above the doors focused on the entry way and the passenger pickup area. A short line of cabs was available and Mariana stopped near the back door of the lead one. The driver stepped out and helped her get the apparently weak man into the back seat. He seemed surprised when the nurse also got in. But he left the wheelchair on the curbside and returned to his driving duty.

  Mariana asked, “Can you take us to the TransBay Terminal, and hurry because we have to make a connection in fifteen minutes?” She slipped him a fifty-dollar bill, and he vowed to get them there in time.

  ***

  It wasn't long before the observers in NetSecure's Command Center tumbled to her deception. One of the men monitoring the hospital's front door registered the same car had pulled up and discharged its passenger, again. He shouted out to the others, “Hey, what's happening here?” Then, with fuller realization, “The cameras are replaying prior footage!”

  They had been pirating the visuals from the hospital's security system, so he accessed the hospital's computer and rebooted the entire camera system causing all screens to go dark. It took several minutes before the system came back online, purged of the loop Mariana had installed, and showing current feeds from each camera.

  It reappeared just in time for him to see the nurse push a patient into a cab and disappear behind him into the car. The wheelchair on the curb served as an indictment. “Got them,” he exclaimed as the cab pulled out into traffic. He quickly identified it as a Yellow Cab and within minutes accessed the company's database, which provided GPS tracking for each of its vehicles.

  “Here they are,” he called out as one of the wall screens displayed a God's-eye view city map with the target highlighted and moving along Third Street. “They’re moving towards the financial district; I'm vectoring in the two security teams we had heading to the hospital along alternate routes, one on either side. If they make a break, we can adjust.”

  Blair had arrived and reported, “Getting no camera in the target cab. Last footage had Sander being inserted then it all goes dark. Likely she ripped it out or covered it; she knows how to spot them.”

  “Stay with them people.” Mansfield stood at the center of the activity and said, “They won't be moving on foot too well, I don't think Bonham is ready for a lot of movement, there had to be a reason she took him out of there in a wheelchair.”

  Blair contributed, “Our best guess is she has a car stashed somewhere downtown, or they’re going to try and take public transit.”

  “Doubtful on the car, but we can't be sure what she did after she exited our offices tonight. But we’ve got her now.” Mansfield debated, “The biggest transit hub is the TransBay Terminal. If that's going to be the O.K. Corral then we can get both teams in there, should be able to take them.” Mansfield entered a few commands into the system, and the locations of each of the company's teams were displayed, roughly paralleling the cab's icon.

  He continued, “I'd prefer this be kept within the family if possible. But if it draws attention, instruct our team to use the routine NSA training operation cover story. Our boys have the credentials if needed and know the drill. I'll take care of the mayor and police chief if it comes to it.”

  Blair said, “We’re monitoring for any related social media report or news story, and we’ll immediately censor it. First though, we will embargo all mention, effectively giving us time to rewrite the narrative. We’ve done this before to throw a blanket over events.”

  Observing the map for a minute, Mansfield said, “Looks like they’re on a direct route to the terminal. Let's get our teams moving there, we need to lock them down, it's worth the gamble they’re not heading somewhere else.”

  Blair responded, “I'm on it. I'm into the city's Traffic Management Center and I can keep them running into red lights for the next couple of blocks.”

  Another staffer reached for his workstation's keyboard and sent the appropriate commands to the two teams. On the map, each team's marker sped up as they got green-light assists and raced to arrive before their quarry. The cab found itself stopped about a block back when NetSecure's Suburbans pulled up to a different terminal entrance; each discharged four rough-looking characters.

  These were experienced guys whose sense of humor had been replaced by a sense of menace. Through their phones, NetSecure Command vectored them into the target's most likely arrival place. They abandoned their SUVs at each unloading point and started towards the doors of the huge transit area.

  Opened just a few years before, the Terminal was the focal point for the city's transit system serving local, regional and national rail, bus, and subway users. The Terminal stretched for almost a half city block, with a grand open plaza, roofed with glass several stories above.

  Trains arrived and departed through an elaborate series of tunnels drilled into an underground switching yard. From here Caltrain handled commuters down the Peninsula to Silicon Valley, BART’s sleek electric cars were dispatched to bring far-flung regional commuters, California's high-speed rail whisked passengers to Los Angeles, and Amtrak had its terminus for lines across the country and the West Coast. Stairs down to the passenger loading levels were off the center of the plaza.

  Eight guys were not enough to cover the busy Terminal; there were hundreds arriving and departing via busses, taxis, commuter and commercial trains. But they had to try. Splitting up, they started to fan out. They were in communication with NetSecure Command who had commandeered the Terminal’s security cameras to monitor and direct the team's hunt.

  ***

  Walking home from work earlier, Judy Corker was a bit bored. It had been a shitty day at work and her new relationship was not going well either. In fact, the jerk had not called or texted for a week, time to put him out to pasture. Who was she kidding, he probably had been gaming all night and was just too wiped out to pay her any real attention. Then she got the text that made her smile: SITR9PTBT.

  Bike messenger, Scott Calloway, was pulled up to a stoplight when he got the same text on his smart watch. He knew he would have to jam to make his delivery, get home, and pick up an umbrella.

  People across the city got the silent summons. It reached over a thousand members of this unique troupe. One by one, they made their availability decision and soon, hundreds were on the move. All converging. All focused on arriving at the TransBay Terminal by 9:00 p.m.

  ***

  When they got in the cab, Mariana did a quick pat down of Sander to make sure he wasn’t carrying anything that could prove a fix on their location. With his scant hospital gown, it was clear there was nothing visible. Pulling a small but nasty-looking knife from her medical bag, she slit off his hospital identification wrist bracelet, and it went out the window.

  But she knew the Agency's next-generation bugs and trackers were more likely to take the form of a device embedded subcutaneously, or swallowed. They would be able to sense and transmit vitals and the GPS coordinates of the carrier. Sander looked banged up enough; they could have hidden it in any of a half dozen scrapes and cuts.

  Mariana leaned forward and asked the startled driver what size shoe he wore. She bought his well-worn Nikes for $500 and immediate possession at the next stop light. She handed them to Sander along with the trench-coat.

  “Quick, pull these on. I don't care if it makes you look like Secret Squirrel or Inspector Gadget, or some other lame comic character, just put it on, all right?”

  “OK, you don't have to be so sweet about it; at least you got my shoe size right. Why the trench coat, don't you like my gown?”

  “It’s a Faraday coat.”

  “Come again?”

  “Faraday’s just a nickname, the coat provides almost one hundred percent radio frequency
and heat sensor blocking, isolating anything underneath from the rest of the electromagnetic spectrum. Until we can get you examined for trackers, it's best you keep it on. Without it, the best case scenario is you get arrested for indecent exposure, the worst is you’re found and killed.”

  Sander moved fast to take the coat and slip it on over his hospital gown. Mariana finished her thought, “They would have wanted to keep you on a short electronic leash. I did not see any NetSecure guards. You probably swallowed a sensor, or had one stuck up your ass. No matter how inserted, it's likely they can track your every move, and know a lot more about you as well. Did you know they can use it to tell when you are nervous? It's a handy little lie detector.”

  They were behind another red light. Sometimes it seems like everything conspires against you, Mariana thought, and sometimes paranoias are correct.

  She kept impatiently checking her watch.

  They were sitting in traffic, a block away from the Terminal, and it was four minutes to nine. Suddenly Mariana was out the door after throwing another fifty at the startled driver. Shouting, “Keep the change,” she reached in and helped Sander out and onto the sidewalk.

  He stood and stretched, the color had returned to his cheeks, and he was moving more smoothly. He looked at Mariana as she sized up the distance to the Terminal. She grabbed his hand and pulled him along behind her. “Run!” was the only word she wasted.

  They burst into the Terminal doors just as the giant clock, suspended above the floor, struck nine. Sander was panting heavily at the exertion and bent over, hands on knees, to catch his breath. Mariana scanned the crowd, registering two of the company's security operatives who were starting to move towards them. She then spotted her goal, the stairs down to the train passenger levels in the center of the plaza.