Yet DeBolt did have one concern. His advantage to this point, indeed the only reason he was alive, was his new capacity to acquire information. Would that connection work in Europe? In Austria? On his lone visit to Europe, a late-teen summer pilgrimage nine years ago with two friends from high school, he remembered that his mobile phone had been useless. Would his new connection be any better? Would he still be able to access limitless, sensitive information from whatever servers he was leveraging?
With hours remaining to refine his plan, DeBolt settled into a café in the departures lobby, and set up watch at a table overlooking the check-in lines. His central idea was a simple one — he would identify someone who bore a reasonable resemblance to him, steal his passport and travel documents, then create a reason for his victim to ignore his travel plans. The scheme would require considerable patience, no small demand given his situation. Necessarily, he needed a mark who would either not recognize the deception, or if he did, not be willing to report it. It would be counterproductive for DeBolt to reach Europe only to have the authorities there waiting for him. He allowed that it might take more than one day to find a viable situation, which was acceptable since Patel was not due to appear at the conference until the day after tomorrow.
To make it all work, he began with the server in in his head.
For thirty minutes he researched passport security measures, and got his best information from a classified FBI report — how META gained access to that he had no idea — which convinced him that he should concentrate on citizens of the United States. The gold standard for passports involved chip technology that recorded biometric data on the holder — digitized facial photos and fingerprints were the most common. European Union countries used varied criteria, but on balance their designs were considerably more stringent than those of the U.S. In particular, the United States did not yet encode fingerprint information within passports — something DeBolt certainly could not defeat — and while a computerized system of facial recognition was on the drawing board, it had so far not been fielded. His overall take — while the groundwork for greater security was being laid in the United States, the reality was much as it had been before 9/11: one photograph against the discerning eye of an immigration official.
The biggest hurdle in his plan was obvious — he had to find someone whose appearance very closely matched his own. Facial similarity aside, the age had to be close, plus or minus five years he decided. Height and weight, while listed on applications, were not included on the actual passport, nor was hair or eye color — a benefit to DeBolt, whose eyes were a sharp blue.
By two o’clock he’d made trial runs on three individuals, all of whom, given the time of day, were predictably bound for domestic destinations. He had particular trouble identifying one young man, and realized that META’s facial-recognition technology was not infallible — the man was wearing eyeglasses, had a week’s growth of beard, and was wearing a Yankees baseball cap. It took six uploaded images for DeBolt to get a result. But once he did, information began to flow, and he soon had a better profile on the man than did any customs official in the building.
At that point, batting practice was over. With two hours remaining before the first bank of transatlantic flights was to depart, DeBolt began his search in earnest.
The first serious candidate appeared fifteen minutes later. On first glance DeBolt thought the man might be younger, and when he stopped and waited for something or someone near a plastic plant, DeBolt got a good look at his face. Within five minutes he knew all he needed to know: Gregory White was a grad student at Columbia working on a master’s in theology, and originally from Allentown, Pennsylvania. He bore a decent resemblance to DeBolt, and at six foot two — this from his Pennsylvania driver’s license — was an inch taller and visibly thinner. His hair was similar in color and length, albeit a more stylish cut than DeBolt’s postoperative chop. Altogether, a strong candidate save for one problem — he was ticketed on the El Al nonstop to Tel Aviv. Probably on his way to do research in the Holy Land.
DeBolt kept looking, and it was an hour before he made a second inquiry. Edward Jernigan, a fastener salesman from Dubuque, was close on height and build, his hair a bit darker. The problem was the face — the one characteristic that could not be overcome. It was close, but try as he might, DeBolt wasn’t comfortable with the match.
Another hour passed without a contestant in his cyber lineup, and doubts about his scheme were beginning to creep in when a third option appeared. The facial features were encouraging, reasonably close to his own, but before even trying to capture an image for a profile, DeBolt waited to assess an obvious complication — the man was not alone.
She stood at his side, big blond hair and puffy lips. Her impossible curves seemed painted in white cotton. Both were smiling, all touches and laughs, like kids at the junior prom. She in Jimmy Choos, he in L.L.Bean. From fifty feet away DeBolt saw no wedding band on his left hand as it brushed across the woman’s bottom. Nor did she wear one. He imagined a host of possibilities, and decided to narrow things down by starting with the woman. He got a good look at her, sent a request, and was rewarded thirty seconds later with her name. Not long after, he got her NYPD mug shot. For sixty rapid-fire seconds DeBolt sent one request after another and had no trouble getting results. He narrowed them to the most pertinent:
MARTA NATALYA KAMINSKI
ALIAS SUMMER DEAN
BORN 5-25-89
THREE ARRESTS PROSTITUTION/CLASS B MISDEMEANOR
CURRENT EMPLOYER: ELEGANT ESCORTS, NEW YORK, NY
Having settled that half of the equation, DeBolt moved on. The pair were nuzzling now, and intermittently looking at photographs on her mobile phone. He elected not to peep into that slideshow, thinking for the first time in days, Too much information.
DeBolt concentrated on the man, and assembled the deepest profile of anyone he had so far investigated. Ronald Anderson was thirty years old, a partner in a small Chicago investment house. He’d been married for five years, and had two young children at home, suggesting a busy and certainly fatigued wife. He was on his way to Amsterdam for a business meeting, the day after tomorrow, to facilitate the buyout of a small software company — information DeBolt acquired by viewing email on Anderson’s phone. He was booked home on a return flight two days after the meeting. Based on what he’d seen so far, DeBolt could only imagine how Ronald Anderson might amuse himself for the balance of four days in certain districts of Amsterdam. The situation was a virtual cliché, the kind of minor drama that played out every day in every city. For DeBolt, however, one detail was most compelling: Anderson was booked on today’s 5:45 P.M. KLM flight to Amsterdam.
He watched the man jab a thumb over his shoulder, in the direction of the TSA security area. His flight was scheduled to depart in fifty minutes. DeBolt’s interest peaked when the man pulled a passport and what looked like an airline boarding pass from a pocket of the roller bag he’d been dragging. He slid one inside the other, and tucked them into the breast pocket of his casual jacket — dark in color, but otherwise similar to the one DeBolt was wearing.