At the end of it, he was forced to leave all electronics behind, especially his smartphone. He signed paperwork linking his name to the serial number and a barcode, and the phone was taken away and placed in storage. At least they let him keep the cross around his neck! Finally, he met up with Houston, and they returned to her car. She limped with her fake cast the entire way.
“So, I don’t even get a fancy Visitor ID badge?” Lopez asked ironically.
“No need here,” she answered, unlocking the car.
Lopez opened the door and ducked his head in. “So how will they know I’m a visitor, or who I am? This is your fourth-generation security?”
“They’ll know,” she said. The car rocked slightly as they closed their doors, and Houston started the engine and shifted into reverse. “And not just because you’re wearing a collar. It’s a smart building, Francisco. A very smart one, actually. All that silly stuff they had you do that you were complaining about — they were taking your biometric ID.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Lopez’s smile faded as she evened the car with the road to the gate, shaking her head. “Biometric ID?”
“Short version: your height, weight, temperature distribution, face, and voice all are highly specific to your person, like a fingerprint. They took scans of your face for facial recognition, weighed you, measured you in three dimensions, recorded your voice and breathing patterns. They had you walk up and down a pressure-sensitive carpet that recorded information about your gait, the way you walk.”
“Seriously?”
“It gets better.” Houston idled in front of the thick steel gate as it slowly opened to let them through. “The individual measurements are nice, but the power comes in the integration of them all. It’s like when you surf the web — any individual website or search term, online purchase or download, they tell you something. But the privacy advocates are worried about the so-called “aggregators,” the sites that have access to multiple aspects of your behavior online. When they can create multidimensional databases of your behavior, they develop a highly precise portrait of your virtual self. And they sell it to advertisers, of course.”
The gate had opened, and Houston shifted and accelerated through it. “Of course,” said Lopez, fascinated.
“It’s similar with biometrics identification. Combine your body measurements, face recognition, temperature patterns, and patterns of motion, and, really, they can ID you better than your mother could. The entire main building is carpeted in this pressure-sensitive material — one big sensor, essentially, measuring every step taken. Motion sensors, cameras, and direction mics crisscross every cubic inch of the place. All of them feed into highly optimized pattern-recognition software. Now that your biometric ID is uploaded, once inside, they know everything about you.”
“Scary.”
“Well, Francisco, this is the CIA. We deal routinely in classified material, often of a significant national-security concern. You can’t be too careful.”
“How’d they let me in, then?”
“Walk-ins. Despite all the high-tech magic, some of our biggest hooks come from people who literally just walk into CIA offices and tell us something they couldn’t bring themselves to tell anyone else. You’ve got to keep that channel open. Always.”
And suddenly, he saw it.
As they pulled through the gate and out from under the shadow of the wall, a pyramid rose out of the ground. As inaccessible and hostile as the outer razor-studded concrete wall had been, the main offices were inviting. Combining the old and very new, the building was shaped like a pyramid yet constructed of steel and glass. Perhaps three-fourths of the outer walls were glass, supported by steel grids. The tip of the structure reached about five stories high; reflecting the morning sunlight, it looked like something out of Star Trek. A parking lot surrounded the square base.
“Wow,” was all he could think to say.
“Yeah, I tried to warn you about this. All that contractor money seeded by 9/11 has done a lot for the intelligence services over the last decade. But don’t be wide-eyed too long. We’ve got to see my boss, Jesse Darst. I’m going to tell him what I’ve found, and what I’ve concluded. He’s not going to like it.”
Lopez sighed as Houston pulled to a stop in a free parking spot. “And then you’ll ask him for the complete mission records?”
She nodded. “And believe me, he’s really not going to like that. We’ll give it a try, before we do anything else.” She undid her seat belt and looked over at Lopez seriously. “Just so you know Francisco, everything we say is picked up by mics in that building. Likely, everything we say in this car. No privacy debates here.”
Lopez raised his brows unconsciously.
“I just thought you should keep that in mind.”
25
The new CIA building was everything she said it would be and more. Lopez felt like he had stepped into a scene from a science-fiction film depicting the American future. The funds from the War on Terror may have been wasted in many instances — the giant razor wall outside came to mind. But whoever ran this show — the design, building, implementation of security, modern office spaces, communications — had been gifted.
Because she had prepped him, he was able to notice the unusual spring in the carpets that revealed the presence of pressure sensors, devices also integrated into a mechanical system that converted the force of impact into electrical energy, charging batteries. Many of the “windows” he had seen coming in were actually large solar panels, the entire building functioning as an extended photovoltaic array. It was a spy building that was also a cutting-edge green building.
He looked carefully around and was able to pick up clues about the placement of cameras and motion detectors, but the mental rethink in the design was startling. Instead of the usual small collection of cameras, or line of sensors at various heights, the walls and ceiling were like the compound eyes of an insect. An array of very small embedded cameras and sensors, likely thousands, covered the surfaces. Whether they were hardline or wireless, how they were powered, and what software ran and integrated it all, he didn’t dare guess. It seemed like overkill, until he remembered what Houston said they could do: track and identify every person in every location in the building in an automated fashion. In this structure devoted to preserving the secrets of America and uncovering those of hostile nations, there would be no secrets. After a second round of milder security checks, including one to recalibrate the system for Houston and her limp, they were off to the third floor of the pyramid and the office of her supervisor.
Associate Director Jesse Darst was a thin and angled man, suit immaculately pressed, thinning hair shorn close to the scalp, the large bald spot gleaming under the bright lights overhead. He fidgeted constantly, appearing to Lopez like some stretched rubber band ready to snap. It was obvious immediately that things were not going to be friendly. After very brief introductions, they took a seat, and Darst launched into an interrogation.
“No disrespect to you, Mr. Lopez,” he began with a nod in the direction of the priest, his eyes focused on Houston, “but Sara, where the hell do you get off bringing in a civilian without prior authorization or contact?”
“Jesse, there are damn good reasons.”
Darst waved her away dismissively. “There had better be. Unless the civilian has mission-critical information, value to bring to our operations, they bring only a security risk. Basic agent training 101, Sara. You should know better than this.”