The security process had been efficiently streamlined, Dean saw. A line of civilians, most of them in appropriately garish vacation clothing, stood in line waiting to go through the backscatter scanner. Each person in turn would stop beside a conveyor belt and deposit wallets, handbags, cameras, cell phones, and other devices and carry-on items into baskets for conventional X-ray scans, then walk first through an old-fashioned metal detector and then through the smoothly sculpted white tunnel of the backscatter X-ray machine. Security guards stood at strategic points to control the traffic or to administer, as with Erbakan, more detailed and personal attention. Under the guards' watchful eyes, they retrieved their personal items at the end of the conveyor, on the far side of the backscatter device. Once they were cleared through the checkpoint, they filed through glass doors leading to the dock outside and the immense white cliff of the newest addition to the Royal Sky Line's fleet of luxury cruise ships, the Atlantis Queen.
Another young woman, looking harried and a bit impatient, stepped out of the tunnel below Dean's window, holding an infant on one arm. She turned, and held out her free hand, fingers impatiently waggling. A moment later a dark-haired girl walked out and took her hand. The girl couldn't have been more than ten.
Disgusted, Dean turned away and watched Lockwood, Llewellyn, and Mitchell at the console but did not walk back to where he could see the screen.
"Just how long have you been using this device?" he asked. He was trying not to think about the ten-year-old.. or about a world gone so sick and paranoid that this kind of thing was thought necessary.
"Do you mean here in England?" Mitchell asked. "Or Royal Sky Line? We've had them operating at Heathrow International for a couple of years now."
"That's where I got my training," Llewellyn told him. "We started using this unit here just yesterday. The upgrades are amazing."
"We've already screened over a thousand of the Queen's passengers," Lockwood added.
"Really? How many opted for a hand frisk?"
As he spoke, his right hand peeled a three-inch strip of black, sticky plastic from the back of his tie, the movement blocked from the others by the screen itself.
"A couple of hundred," Lockwood told him. She shrugged. "Like Tom said, most people prefer this. It's less obtrusive. Less… personal."
"So what is the CIA's interest in our little peep show?" Llewellyn wanted to know.
Dean had introduced himself that morning as a security analyst with the CIA, though he'd used his real name. The National Security Agency remained not only the largest and best-funded intelligence agency in the United States but also the most secretive. Its operatives rarely admitted who they really worked for. NSA employees jokingly referred to the acronym as "No Such Agency" or "Never Say Anything," and, even yet, few people in the general public had ever heard of the organization, or knew anything about it.
But everyone had heard of the CIA.
"We're interested," Dean said carefully, reciting from a memorized script, "in how new transportation security technologies might be interfaced with various international databases, passport records, and police files, so that we can track known criminals and terrorists before they can even enter the United States or Great Britain."
Unobtrusively he pressed the tape, sticky side down, against the back of the freestanding console. The tape had a meaningless ten-digit number printed on it in white letters; if a security sweep found it later, it would look like just another serial number.
"Royal Sky Line," Dean added as he finished, "is introducing some.. novel concepts along those lines."
"Ah. You mean the passenger tracking chips," Llewellyn said, nodding.
"Among other things."
"Makes sense, actually. As you saw, Ship's Security personnel can pull everything necessary in a person's jacket into a database when they check in, or even when they first buy their ticket. When they check on board, they receive a key card with a magnetized strip and an embedded microchip. It serves as the key to their stateroom, but it also holds all pertinent data about that person, and lets them be tracked wherever they go on board the ship. At any given moment, Ship's Security can determine the exact location of everyone aboard. If someone goes ashore at a port of call but doesn't come back aboard for some reason, Security knows about it."
"Scanners in the passageways and public areas ping the cards' strips every few seconds," Lockwood added. "A computer in Security tallies up where every card is at any given moment, and which cards are missing. Or it can isolate, identify, and pinpoint the location of any one particular card, anywhere on board."
"Very convenient," Dean said. "What if someone forgets and leaves his card in his stateroom?"
"Then a steward very politely informs him of the fact," Llewellyn replied, "as soon as he tries to go ashore or to enter a monitored public area. If he loses his card, he is escorted down to Security, where his identity can be verified, and he is issued another card."
"And how do you safeguard the data?"
"I beg your pardon?"
Dean gestured at the back of the big screen. "You've got a lot of sensitive, personal information there. I'm not saying you, necessarily… but what's to stop one of your security people from misusing it?"
"I'm sure I don't know what you mean," Llewellyn said.
"You liked the looks of that one woman v/ho just went through… what was her name? Miss Johnson? And here, right at your fingertips, you have her age, her marital status, her address, her phone number, her Social Security number, what she does for a living, where she works, health conditions. For all I know, it tells you whether she prefers Harvey Wallbangers to scotch on the rocks! Are you telling me you don't see how that much personal information could be misused?"
"All data here are destroyed, Mr. Dean," Mitchell insisted.
"No, they're not! Those X-ray images are erased — or so you tell me — but the personal data are still there. And why should the public accept your word that even the naked pictures get shit-canned?"
"Mr. Dean," Lockwood said. "There are professional and legal standards here. We are professionals, no less than doctors or therapists! And our clients, the companies using X-Star's equipment, I assure you are self-policing. A scandal — "
"In other words, Mr. Dean, we're not going to do anything that would generate lawsuits or right-to-privacy injunctions," Llewellyn said, interrupting.
"Maybe not," Dean said, shrugging. "But what about outside access? Hackers?"
Lockwood patted the keyboard in front of her. "This network is completely isolated from the Internet. Hackers can't get in."
"Oh? What kind of protection software do you use?"
Lockwood hesitated, and Mitchell answered, "They're not supposed to tell you, but you've been cleared. It's a software package called Netguardz."
"Ah, right. I've heard of it."
"Since when is the American CIA so interested in protecting the privacy of individual citizens?" Mitchell asked.
"There's a difference between what I do for a living," Dean replied slowly, "and what I feel and believe on a personal level."
"Really?" Lockwood said. "Maybe you're in the wrong line of work."
"I've often thought so."
The door to the security room opened and a young man in the blue uniform of the Royal Sky Line walked in.
He was young, in his mid-twenties, perhaps. "Hey there," he said. "Shift change!"
"About time," Llewellyn said, standing. He turned to Lockwood. "Can I get you anything, Ellen? Tea? Coffee?"
"I'm fine, thanks," the woman said. "I'll be breaking for lunch in a little bit."