McKean S04 The Re-Election Plot (2 page)

The phone rang and it was Peyton McKean, asking me to join him at ImCo.

* * * * *

I brought along a printed copy of my Seattle PI article to show McKean. “Medical Collaboration Cut Short By Murder,” he read the title aloud, and as he went on to silently read the text, a visitor showed up whom McKean and I had met before: Vince Nagumo, a field agent of the Seattle FBI branch. His green eyes sparkled with interest when he read the article after McKean had finished. “Sure sounds like Yamani’s the guilty party,” he asserted.

“Apparently,” McKean agreed. “And I hope for your sake, Fin Morton, that he’s not so desperate as to read your byline and come after you for knowing too much. However, I suppose his biggest concern right now is evading the police.”

He turned to his computer and clicked a file. “I overlooked this yesterday because it didn’t have Yamani in the title.”

The new file was a copy of an email Smith had saved. “Note the date,” McKean remarked. “November tenth, 2004, just a few days after the election. And note the addressee: Congressman Feebus, Smith’s U.S. Representative. Smith writes, ‘In light of the recent release of an Osama bin Laden tape, I feel I must inform you of something I discovered two years ago among the files of Ali Yamani, a computer graphics student of mine. It is a tape very similar to the bin Laden release, but I have noticed several discrepancies. First, the lips and voice are not well synchronized. Second, the image occasionally jumps, as if the creators of this file were re-using samples of film footage over and over again. This suggests my student was trying to use computer graphic techniques to synchronize bin Laden’s facial movements to a new voice recording. I had not wanted to cause trouble for my student, who has since graduated and taken a job at Microsoft. I thought this was just a college prank in extremely poor taste but now, having seen the same tape on TV during the elections, and having seen how sophisticated the final result was, I thought it best to inform you. A copy of the original crude file is attached. Please advise me what I should do next. Professor Kyle Smith.’ ‘

McKean asked Nagumo, “Have you ever seen any of this before?”

“Not in the Seattle office,” Nagumo replied. “This sort of thing would normally be handled by the D.C. office, especially if it came to us via that congressman. I’m sure the agency had its authentication people explore the question of a fake when they first got hold of the tape.”

McKean searched the web and found a copy of the finished tape. As we watched bin Laden give his pre-election discourse, his lips and goat-bearded jaw seemed to move in perfect synchrony with his words, at least as far as my Western eyes and ears could discern.

McKean clicked his mouse to pause the tape. “Now,” he said, “let’s do a comparative study.” He clicked the Yamani file and bin Laden began the same lecture, but this time the lack of sync was obvious.

“Smith had it right,” remarked McKean. “His student’s prank file doesn’t get close to matching lips with words. But on the other hand, the sound track seems to be exactly the same voice, if I’m not mistaken.”

“Sounded identical to me,” Nagumo agreed. “Tell you what, I’ll get our voiceprint lab to make a comparison. But I’m confused about one thing: how is this in any way a motive for Smith’s murder?”

“Answer: not obvious,” McKean reponded, restarting the video and watching bin Laden’s face move in herky-jerky, amateur animation. “Although the thought strikes me that more than one bin Laden video may actually have been a phony.”

“Concocted by terrorists to strike fear into us,” I concluded.

McKean shook his head. “Given that this one helped swing a close election in favor of Bush and other incumbents, your logic seems backward, Fin. If terrorists released this video at that crucial time, then they were their own worst enemies, keeping their greatest nemesis in power.”

“If terrorists didn’t release it, then who?”

“Someone who wanted to get re-elected.”

We all pondered that one for a while. Then McKean asked Nagumo, “What was the buzz at the FBI at that time, regarding the bin Laden video?”

“I once talked to a guy in authentication in D.C. There were multiple theories about the thing’s origins, but top brass ultimately told people to quit pursuing it. It doesn’t take a genius to know that if a video like this could help re-elect the president and some congressmen, there wasn’t going to be a lot of interest at the top in debunking its source.”

“More germane to Smith’s murder,” McKean observed, “is the notion that he was bringing up something considered buried and forgotten after 2004.”

“When I get back to my office,” said Nagumo, “I’d like to pass all this along to the D.C. bureau.”

“I’ll email you everything,” McKean promised.

When Nagumo had gone, McKean clicked off bin Laden’s rant and restarted the molecular model animation. “Notice the intricacy of the details,” he mused, running his thumb and fingers along his angular jaw. “Thousands of component parts, all animated independently, but the whole scene moves in an organized and believable way; a computer graphics problem of a hundred thousand variables, all of which conspire to make you feel you are there, witnessing the real thing.”

Momentarily confused, I asked, “Which, the molecule or the bin Laden recording?”

“My point, precisely,” McKean replied, intellectual light glowing in his eyes. “Both films may have been made the same way: tens of thousands of spots of light orchestrated by computer programs. To a computer, there is no difference between a molecule and a terrorist’s face. But Kyle Smith had the most practiced of eyes for spotting traces of computer fakery. No wonder he couldn’t let the matter drop.”

The phone intercom buzzed and he punched a button. “McKean here.”

The receptionist said, “You’ve got a visitor. She says her name is Fatima Yamani.”

We exchanged surprised glances and then McKean said, “Send her up.”

Minutes later, Fatima Yamani sat in one of McKean’s guest chairs while I sat in the other, which left little spare room in McKean’s small, cluttered office. With McKean seated at his manuscript-strewn desk, we were all knee-to-knee. Mrs. Yamani had arrived dressed in a black robe with a brown scarf wrapped around her head and drawn across her face below her eyes. Now, she removed the scarf to reveal a pretty Arabian face.

“I don’t wear veil, normally,” she said in labored, heavily accented English. “I am Americanized woman. I have no love for extremist or terrorist. But I think I might be watched, so I wore veil to hide my face.”

Looking at McKean imploringly she pleaded, “You are a great helper of people who are in trouble, is that not true?”

“I try to do what I can,” McKean replied with uncharacteristic modesty.

She continued in a rush. “Are you not the scientist who cured the Jihad Virus?”

“Well, yes.”

“And solved the mystery of the Tide of Blood?”

“That, too.”

“So I come to you, Dr. McKean. Not to police. I feel I can trust you, because you work with my husband’s teacher, Smith.” She drew a deep breath and then said, apologetically, “It is true my husband made certain recordings. But he did not kill Smith.”

“I had already come to that conclusion,” McKean reassured her. “His part in this is that of the student prankster.”

“This is true,” she replied. “That is why I want you to talk with him but don’t involve police. My husband trusts nobody now but I convince him he must tell you what he knows. His life is in danger. Please help him, Dr. McKean.”

“I’ll do everything I can,” McKean assured her. “Just tell us where he is.”

“Meet us tonight at Ivar’s Restaurant on Pier Fifty-six, just before closing time, when not too many people are there.”

“I have more questions,” McKean began, but she shook her head.

“No more for now. Come tonight. Now, I must go.” She wrapped her scarf around her head and got up to leave.

When she had gone I asked McKean, “You don’t suspect a trick or a trap? Maybe Yamani wants to eliminate us, too.”

“I doubt she’d set us up,” McKean replied. “Her concern for her husband seems too genuine.”

* * * * *

We showed up at Ivar’s about fifteen minutes before closing and joined Fatima Yamani at a table in the back of the nearly empty restaurant. A man in a gray business suit was with her. He stood and introduced himself quickly and quietly as Ali Yamani. We sat and ordered coffees and then turned to the business at hand. Yamani, a small, mustachioed man with a British tinged Arabian accent, explained in urgent tones, “In 2002, I took a computer graphics course from Professor Smith. In class, I met a fellow named Omar Azziz, who said he trained with bin Laden in Afghanistan. In those days I was younger, angrier. I had some sympathies for bin Laden’s cause then, but no more. Omar said he had heard from a cousin in Afghanistan that Osama was dead, killed by an airstrike on his tent when he was fleeing the U.S. invasion and buried in a shallow grave in the desert. Omar also said he did not want the teachings of Osama to die with him and so we should make a false bin Laden video to keep his words alive. He had some old footage of bin Laden. Late at night in the UW’s computer labs, we would play the footage silently and say our own words over it, declaring holy war on U.S. imperialists and other things like that. Both of us agreed I did the best Osama bin Laden impression, like a comedian mimicking someone, only scary. So I was the one who made the voice recording.”

“Omar and I tried to make the film of bin Laden move its lips with my voice, but we could not get it right. We also made his finger-waving hand move to make each point but that looked fake too, like a cut-out animation on YouTube. Then Professor Smith called me to his office one day and confronted me with the video. He had come across it while looking for one of my class homework files. He threatened to have me expelled unless I stopped working on it.”

“This confirms what we have already heard,” McKean responded. “The infamous bin Laden election video originated as a college prank.”

“True,” Yamani admitted. “But I quit working on it before it was finished. So, when it surfaced two years later just before the election, I was horrified. Here is a fake bin Laden lecture about holy war against America, and it’s my voice making the threats. But now, bin Laden’s lips matched everything I said exactly, and his finger wagged like he was really moving it.”

“It was foolish of me to make the original video, not so much motivated by ideology as by the sheer fun of creating something outrageous. I didn’t believe what I said. It was just for shock value, and it made Omar and me laugh to think we could do it. But I now regret my part in this.”

McKean asked, “Why didn’t you come forward at the time and explain the whole thing?”

“I would not let him,” Fatima interjected. “I knew there would be trouble for us. Arrest, deportation, or worse.”

“I was surprised the experts believed the video,” said Yamani. “I kept expecting them to declare it a fake.”

“Can you elaborate on Smith’s part in this?” McKean asked.

“As I said, Professor Smith found my file, but did nothing about it at that time. However, when it appeared in the 2004 election, he called me at Microsoft and told me he had passed the video along to Congressman Feebus and I should expect a call from him. I was frightened but the congressman never contacted me or sent anyone after me.”

“That’s surprising,” I said. “Given an election in the balance.”

“Not necessarily surprising,” McKean asserted. “We can’t know Congressman Feebus’s agenda. He might have been more interested in finding out who finished the video or who gave it to the media, rather than who started it.”

Ali went on. “Now we are afraid for our lives because the police, and you, Phineus Morton, have exposed me with your news articles and TV interviews about Professor Smith’s death. So we come to seek the help of Dr. McKean who, being a fair and just man, will perhaps find a way to save us.”

“I have a trustworthy connection at the FBI who might be helpful,” McKean replied. “But, what makes you fear for your safety?”

The Yamanis carried on a brief conversation in Arabic and then he confided, “Omar Azziz has been killed. He dropped out of the UW and was living in the big Muslim community in New Jersey, where there are many radicals. Two weeks ago, I learned through friends that Omar was shot dead in the street in Jersey City.”

“By whom?” McKean asked.

“No suspect was identified. It’s still an unsolved murder. Then last week a man, someone I never met before, came around the Microsoft offices asking to see me. He questioned me about the video. I was scared and I tried to deny any knowledge but he knew too much, so I admitted it. He asked quite a few questions about Professor Smith’s part in stopping me. And he wanted to know if anyone else at the university knew of this, other than the professor. I told him no, I did not think so. Professor Smith told me he would take it no further if I never worked on it again.”

“I see,” said McKean. “So this stranger now knew that only you and Professor Smith were aware of the fake.”

“This is true. After he left I realized if he meant to harm me, he would harm Smith too, so I wrote the email to Smith. But it was too late.” His voice broke and he closed his eyes and wiped away tears. “Smith was killed later that day.”

“What does this stranger look like?” I asked.

Yamani was about to answer when he looked up - and froze. His face went pale and he began to tremble. “L-Like him,” he quavered, pointing over my shoulder. We all turned to find that a short, heavyset man in a navy blue pea coat and stocking cap had approached while we were talking. He sat down at the empty table next to ours.

“Good evening gentlemen, and lady,” he said in a Jersey inflected accent, opening the lapel of his coat to let us see the butt of a pistol hung in a shoulder strap. He closed the lapel and put a hand on the butt of the gun, unseen.

“I want yuz all to keep calm and quiet. All I got is a few questions to ask. Now, we’re gonna get up and go out the back door.”

Fatima entreated, “If you don’t leave us, I’ll scream!”