An encouraged Schulze said, “I have recently authored a paper myself, ‘Idle Time Processing Across Networks.’ You have heard of it maybe?”
“Maybe…” The blue eyes seemed to pause on one page in the guide and concentrate keenly.
“Did you find what you were looking for?”
“Yes, this is exactly what I needed.” The man from Anchorage handed back the guide. “I know how to schedule my day now. Thank you so much.”
“Perhaps I will see you later. Remember,” he called out as the American walked away, “Albrecht at two o’clock!”
“I’ll come if I can, Matthias!”
Schulze smiled, slightly surprised that the man knew his name. He looked down at his lanyard only to realize that his nametag wasn’t showing. He’d taken it out earlier to find a breakfast coupon, and must have reinserted it the wrong way — only the blank backside of the card was now displayed. So how had he…?
56
The sun rose higher, cutting the chill morning air. DeBolt had taken up a bench in the Burggarten, half a mile from the Hofburg Palace. He’d selected the seat carefully, concealed between a pair of mature willow trees. In front of him an algae-laden pond stretched across the garden, a physical barrier to the busy avenues beyond. Reluctantly, he was learning.
DeBolt had reached one conclusion: simply showing up at Patel’s presentation was a last-ditch option. Delta would be there. Aside from presenting himself as a target, it might also endanger Patel, who, as far as DeBolt knew, was the only person alive who could explain what had been done to him. His goal, therefore, became clear: he had to find Patel before he arrived at the conference.
His original idea had been to hack into hotel registries. Unfortunately, there were a vast number to cover, and a comprehensive search might take hours. It also occurred to him that Patel could be staying in a group of rooms blocked off for convention participants, meaning his name might not be clearly listed. Then DeBolt had struck on a new plan. If he could locate Patel by CCTV, he might be able to intercept him before he reached the Hofburg.
To make it work, he combined two previous-used processes. He had uncovered a few basic facts on Patel, but still had no idea what the man looked like. To carry through on his scheme, he needed to find out. To that end, he’d flipped through the pages of the borrowed conference agenda to find the list of presenters. There, as hoped, he found a biography, and more importantly a photograph, of Dr. Atif Patel. While Matthias Schulze looked on curiously, DeBolt had concentrated intently on the photo in the brochure.
Once he’d captured the image, and sent the helpful German on his way, DeBolt was ready for the real work. He looked out across the placid garden, and phrased his request carefully, making every effort to avoid extraneous words — something he increasingly viewed as necessary to achieve timely and accurate results. The sparse prose of one computer talking to another: Recall image, Dr. Atif Patel.
The picture he’d seen in the brochure was reproduced on the screen embedded in his vision. It was a head shot, with reasonably good resolution. With some effort, DeBolt found he could manipulate the image, enlarging and cropping. Patel was clearly of Indian heritage, which was in line with his name.
Finally: Upload for facial-recognition analysis.
Less than ten seconds later, a minor victory.
UPLOAD SUCCESFUL.
STANDBY ANALYSIS.
The wait seemed interminable. DeBolt sat watching a pair of swans cruise the far side of the pond. Their white bodies were almost still, balanced and effortless, yet beneath the surface their webbed feet had to be motoring furiously. The unseen means of propulsion. He wondered where his request was being dissembled at that moment. Washington? Langley? The Pentagon? Some giant, anonymous data center in Utah? Were humans involved at all or was it a strictly automated process? He had so many questions. Today, perhaps, he would finally get answers.
He wasn’t even sure if this part of his plan was viable. Could he create, from a photograph in a conference brochure, a facial-recognition signature for Atif Patel, a man he’d never seen in person? Even if it worked, the second part of his scheme seemed an even greater reach. DeBolt was no expert on urban surveillance or metadata analysis … all the same, he knew what he had managed last night.
The cameras.
The genesis of his idea had been cued from a vague memory. Something he’d once read — although he couldn’t say where — describing how law enforcement agencies used software to match facial profiles to CCTV footage. It was a way of leveraging computers to crunch massive amounts of data, plucking a specific terrorist’s face from throngs of travelers in an airport or a train terminal. It seemed like a useful application, the kind of thing that would be developed because there was a practical need.
A message arrived.
FACIAL PROFILE COMPLETE
NO IDENTITY MATCH
LOGGED AS UNKNOWN #1
DeBolt was not surprised by the lack of a match. Like everything else about Patel, his official record was a blank. But that wasn’t what he was after. He input: CCTV within one-mile radius of present position. Search facial profiles for unknown #1.
STANDBY
DeBolt did exactly that.
57
Through the waking of a dull and lusterless morning, DeBolt waited and watched a pond whose water was like glass. He felt a distinct urge to move to a new location — having just sent his position into cyberspace, he couldn’t discount the chance that it might be digitally hijacked by Delta. He forced himself to stay on the bench, refusing to succumb to paranoia.
He realized his plan had weaknesses. To begin, it made a number of assumptions. Would Patel even walk to the conference? What if he took a taxi or a bus? Would the server to which DeBolt was connected have enough capacity, enough raw processing power to scour thousands of faces in near real time? Once again, he imagined mainframes in some distant, dark room churning through terabytes of information.
He remained still on the bench.
After ten minutes there was no response.
After fifteen doubts began to weigh in. With each passing second it seemed more of a long shot. Time was not on his side. If no reply came soon, he would have to find a way to approach Patel inside the well-monitored confines of the Hofburg. All while keeping a wary eye out for Delta.
DeBolt decided to give it five more minutes. When that passed, he decided to wait five more.
Three hundred yards from where DeBolt sat on a bench, an out-of-breath Lund rushed toward the main entrance of the Hofburg Vienna. Once she was inside, her first reaction was one of surprise. She was taken aback that a gathering of cyber specialists and software vendors would be held against the backdrop of a gilded European palace. Lund found her attention diverted by ornate columns, copper domes gone green, and the vast field of statues dressing the cornices and anterooms.
She saw a series of signs directing attendees of the World Conference on Cyber Security to the official access point. Hoping she wasn’t too late, she followed the signs past a series of columns, and then up a staircase sided by a statue depicting Hercules or Neptune, or perhaps some Germanic mythological figure — art had never been her strong suit. Classical music drifted from unseen speakers, soft and soothing.
She arrived at a bustling reception area and found a pedestal where a schedule of the day’s events was posted: Dr. Patel’s ten o’clock presentation was set in a room called Festsaal. There was also a map to guide her to the right corridor. Lund had been to her share of conferences, and while hers had related to law enforcement, she supposed they were all similar in one respect — oversight would be lax. She took the direct route, falling into a role. She gave the occasional nod to strangers, glanced at a few merchant poster boards, but kept moving in one direction. Her confidence was rewarded when she drifted past the sign-in table without a glance from the two busy women behind it.