Freedom (21 page)

The words just hung out there for a few moments—a smiling fuck-you from his new American friend.
Passive-aggressive shitheel . . .
Shen looked up to General Zhang. “The only chance I thought I’d have of turning Ross, general, was in making him feel comfortable and in reminding him of the friendship we once had in Oregon. Having policemen hanging around and cameras focused on him would not accomplish that. I take full responsibility for selecting the most shielded booth, but it was a calculated risk. I certainly did not think it would be an issue because there was no way for him to leave the bar unobserved—that is, if this system works as it must have been described in the brochure.”

General Zhang pondered Shen’s words for a moment, then nodded to Haverford.

Haverford sighed. “Well, okay then. I guess the fact that we don’t have any audio or video of you speaking with Mr. Ross—look there. . . .” Haverford pointed at a gesticulating arm being reflected in a mirror. “That’s Ross right there. We have him up until that point.”

Shen frowned. “What do you mean ‘up until that point’?”

The control board operator fast-forwarded the video, and people moved up and down the booth aisle like a
Benny Hill
closing credit chase. And then it suddenly returned to normal speed—to show Shen walking out of the bar several minutes later, a look of dread on his face.

“Wait. Wait a second.” Shen was trying to comprehend what he just saw. “Back it up.”

The video backed up at double speed. He saw himself back up to the table and sit far away from the cameras and the microphones he knew were near the restroom, the glass-and-blond-wood bar, and the entrances. Waitresses and Chinese patrons occasionally walked down the aisle—but no Jon Ross!

“That’s impossible! He was sitting right there with me.”

The video kept backing up until finally Shen saw the back of Ross, reverse-stepping toward the entrance with plainclothes policemen behind him. It was his moment of arrival seen backward.

“So he arrived, but he didn’t leave?”

“That’s what we’ve been wondering about.”

They all just sat there without talking for several moments.

That was when Shen remembered Ross’s words as he held up the ring.

This is a magic ring
.

A hot flash of fear came over him.
It couldn’t be. . . .

The control board operator was clicking from camera to camera now. Inside and outside the building. He brought up a 3-D model of the city block. It was wrapped with security camera images. “This is running backward from the moment of your departure from the table, Captain Shen.” Half a dozen video insets showed as many scenes in front of the building, the lobby, the rear exit, and the surrounding streets—people and cars were everywhere. The video played, and people moved about, but Ross was absolutely nowhere to be seen.

Haverford shook his head. “See, it certainly doesn’t seem like he left the table, now, does it, Captain?”

Then it occurred to Shen that everyone was looking at him. And then it started to dawn on him that Zhang might seriously be suspecting him of some collusion with Ross—which would be crazy considering he was the one who brought Ross to the table to begin with.

Shen cleared his throat. “There is one other explanation.”

Haverford smiled. “Well, then let’s hear it, buddy.”

Shen felt like punching him in his smiling toothy face, but instead tapped the screen. “Rewind it to the point when Ross arrives back at the table.”

Haverford nodded to the board operator, and the monitor he was focusing on obligingly reversed to the point when Ross arrived.

“Okay. Now, fast-forward it about two, two and a half minutes, then put it on slow motion.”

The screen moved forward, people jittering across the screen, then slowed. Shen held his index finger just inches away from the screen and focused intently on the occasional person moving down the aisle between booths. The rest of the assembled technicians and Chinese officers leaned in behind him.

Then he saw it. “There! Stop!”

The image stopped, and Shen pointed to a sliver of a shoe and a pant leg as reflected in a mirror.

“Uh, it’s a leg. We can’t know it’s his.”

“But there’s no one in the aisle. Look. . . .” Shen pointed. “That reflection occurs when there’s someone in the aisle.”

“Captain, if there’s no one in the aisle, he can’t be in the aisle.”

“Roll it slowly. Watch here closely.” Shen ran his hand along the empty aisle in the picture.

The image ran forward and a wave of surprise went across the assembled witnesses. An aberration, like a fleeting specter, moved across the frame.

Haverford jammed the PAUSE button, shoving the board operator out of the way. “That’s impossible. It’s an artifact. It’s a camera artifact.”

Shen was staring at a slight discoloration and diagonal line occluding the frame. “I don’t think it’s an artifact, Mr. Haverford.”

“But how could he . . . he couldn’t just walk out.”

Shen kept his eye on the screen. “Who was controlling the operation? Was it being directed by central control? Were they giving the signal to the teams to move in from here?”

The technicians looked at each other.

Haverford ignored the question, busying himself in searching other screens—the front door, the side door, the rear door. “None of these doors are popping open. Look.”

Shen pointed to the kitchen’s rear door, propped open to let cool air in. “The rear door is already open. Look—look
there
.” He pointed at video from inside the kitchen. “The staff is surprised. They are following something with their eyes—as though a very unexpected person is moving through their space. Perhaps a Caucasian businessman.”

It was undeniable. They could see a server and a chef frowning and eyeballing an unknown entity—the chef actually shouting and waving the unseen person away. As they watched, another shimmer disrupted the air of the tape. It was a ripple in the fabric of the screen’s reality. There were blurred reflections on stainless steel counters.

Shen tapped the location on-screen. “These cameras, Mr. Haverford. They are digital CCTV cameras? The very latest, I imagine.”

Haverford just stared at him. “Of course. And Chinese made, I might point out.”

Shen just laughed to himself and shook his head.
Of course they are.
He recalled Ross’s words again. . . .

He pointed at another screen—one that showed the mouth of the alley behind the restaurant. Where it met the street. There was no one in the street, but quite clearly, there in the reflection from a darkened window was Jon Ross, looking rather dapper in a Hong Kong pin-striped suit. Shen smiled to himself. “I think we’ve found the problem, Mr. Haverford.”

Now a gasp went over the assembled engineers. More leaned in to see what appeared to all present an absolute impossibility.

Haverford just kept shaking his head. “But . . .”

On-screen, a block away, plainclothes policemen were gathered in a group on a corner, smoking—awaiting a signal that came too late.

Shen turned to General Zhang, but spoke to everyone. “Let me tell you what your system is, Mr. Haverford. It’s a six-billion-dollar . . . how do you Americans say it? Oh yes: clusterfuck.”

Haverford stood up and turned to General Zhang. “This is ridiculous. This is a glitch. That’s all.”

Shen pointed to the cameras. “Mr. Ross is invisible here to a dozen cameras. Show me a camera where he reappears. Blocks away? Hours later? I’ll bet you cannot find him. Because your system has been defeated.”

General Zhang studied the screen. “How, Shen? How did he do it?” “There are two million digital cameras. They are all unified with layers of digital image-processing software. With camera firmware. Someone has created a system where points on the screen are replaced with the background image.”

“The background?”

“Yes. Somewhere along the chain of custody between where the image is recorded and where it’s seen on our monitors, the empty background imagery of each camera’s sweep is substituted for the image of a person who is wearing some sort of electronic tag—to identify their movements through space.”

“But how could the camera know the location of that person in three-dimensional space relative to the camera?”

Shen was nodding as he said it. “The camera’s position is probably already known, but it could also be derived from a geometric analysis of surrounding landmarks. Software, General. It could all be done with software.”

Haverford was still shaking his head. “But that would . . . it’s just not possible.”

“Why not, Mr. Haverford? Do you think Americans are the only ones who can think ‘outside the box’?”

Zhang was unreadable. “How do we fix it?”

“The first rule of computer security, General, is don’t leave your equipment where people can mess with it.” He gestured to the screen. “What do we have here? Two million cameras sitting around in public? How many fiber-optic lines connecting them to publicly reachable network cables? Literally anyone anywhere in that complex chain could have done this.”

“Then we need to have the cameras fixed. Replaced.”

“And how do you know that you can trust the people who do the replacing?” Shen stood up and turned to the general. “I hope I have not spoken out of turn, sir.”

General Zhang stared with great intensity at the image of Ross still on the screen. “You are dismissed, Captain Shen. I will be in touch with you soon.”

Shen saluted grandly once more, casting Haverford a slight grin. Shen moved to depart.

“Oh, and Captain.”

Shen turned.

“Excellent work.”

He replied in Mandarin. “It was my pleasure, General.”

Shen continued toward the buttonless elevator, and all he could think of was the great game that was now under way out there in the world. A game an old friend told him about. One that he had just now resolved to join.

L
oki’s traveling rig was a tribute to American automotive excess. He drove a customized Ford F-650 4x4 with a Caterpillar diesel engine. It had nine hundred foot-pounds of torque and could pull twenty-six thousand pounds up an unpaved 7 percent grade. With a series of three chromed fuel tanks tucked beneath each running board, that incline didn’t need to be anywhere near a gas station either. Composite-laminate windows and ceramic composite plating meant the driver and three passengers could recline in comfort while enduring a barrage of small arms fire. It was, in short, the ultimate vehicle for commuting through the Apocalypse.

It could have accommodated five passengers if Loki hadn’t extended the storage area to provide room for various pieces of high-tech wireless communications equipment and supplies. This was, after all, his mobile base of operations for running the one-man Stormbringer faction.

Toward that end, Loki towed an enclosed forty-four-foot Gooseneck racing trailer, whose exterior surface was emblazoned with the image of a black-helmeted motorcycle racer viewed from the shoulders up and done in the style of a Japanese anime character. The entire branding effort was completed with the logo for Stormbringer Motorcycle Racing, jagged with lightning bolts.

To all outward appearances, Loki was a professional motorcycle racer following his circuit through the Midwest. The fact that his real business was hunting down and destroying at any cost a shadowy mercenary army hired to kill Daemon operatives was well concealed behind the patina of professional racing. With his big corporate sponsors (unwilling though they might be) listed on the trailer’s wall, he looked more than legit. He looked downright establishment.

However, in this fight, as in all things, Loki remained a loner. He had no crew of mechanics. He preferred instead to communicate his needs through the darknet—pressing into service local maintenance factions to repair his fleet of razorbacks and microjets. That was, after all, what the trailer was for—a storage facility for a score of Type 2-E razorback interceptors and half a dozen microjet aircraft—as well as his personal black Ducati S-version Streetfighter motorcycle, which he rode into battle against The Major’s people. So far he’d slain or captured at least a hundred of the bastards, and he was on his way to tracking down more—dragging them screaming from their motel rooms or safe houses like pigs to slaughter. Their blind trust in the anonymity of their communications would be their undoing.

But each battle brought damage, and for this Loki had to seek out darknet communities where he could get replacement bikes and turn in his damaged units. This had brought him here to Garnia, Missouri—a small, economically depressed town out in the plains that was transforming itself into a bustling new darknet community. Founded by a logistics faction—an Order of Merritt signatory, no less—they’d be able to service his razorbacks, provide fuel cell batteries, replace wireless receivers, and so on. Loki would also be secure in the knowledge that he wouldn’t be hassled by the police—because, as in all darknet communities, the police here would be fellow darknet members.

Regardless of Loki’s half-star reputation score, he knew that no one would question him. He was the leader of an infrastructure defense faction—an unpleasant job that frequently caused him to commandeer local darknet resources in defense of the network as a whole. Everyone knew he had to pass frequent fMRI scans to prove to the Daemon his actions were legitimate—aimed at defense of the Daemon’s constituent parts. So the opinions of fellow darknet operatives mattered little to Loki. The Daemon was all that mattered.