A plasma screen showed a feed from the FBI's New York field office showing WMD agents in Hazmat suits scouring the air ducts for other lethal weapons. It never ceased to amaze her how brave and selfless her colleagues could be. The public didn't know the half of it. Another screen had a Fox News anchorman speculating that the building may have been leaking dangerous asbestos. But she knew that line or any line could not stand up indefinitely.
Hundreds of special agents across America were trawling numerous encrypted calls and emails and security video footage culled from the NSA. A specialist team worked on Thomas Wesley's recordings. Meyerstein was focussed on two objectives: tracking down Scott Caan and identifying the two people talking on the tape.
An image showing Freddie Limonton, the bureau's top computer expert in Washington, came up on one of the huge screens. He looked bug-eyed as he tried to hook up to the teleconference facility.
Meyerstein had known him since she'd joined the bureau in the early 1980s. At the time, the atmosphere of sexism and racism were still ingrained from the Hoover generation of special agents. A world where the white Anglo-Saxon man was king. Limonton was always a loner, didn't enjoy the locker room atmosphere, and just got on with his job. He was Jewish, like her, and was often the butt of anti-Semitic jokes from a hard-core few from the old school. When cartoons of hook-nosed money lenders were taped to his desk or computer screen, he just shrugged his shoulders and smiled. Meyerstein fumed, but as the years went by, the culture began to disappear, as a new generation of smarter special agents emerged, changing the FBI for good.
Limonton cleared his throat on the screen.
“Freddie, can you hear and see me?”
“Loud and clear.”
“OK, you guys have been working on this a helluva long time, Freddie. This better be good.”
Freddie remained stony-faced. “I've had my best guys working on this flat out, Martha, gimme a break.”
“What have you got?”
He let out a long sigh. “We've been trying to figure out why we can't get a location trace with our face recognition software. It's the best there is. But we've had nothing. A few close things, but nothing concrete.”
Meyerstein looked at her watch, which showed it was 7.09am. “You wanna get to the point. I'm due to hook up with the Director in six minutes precisely.”
“You need to know how cute this guy is. Martha, we ran numerous programs and variations of the program, checking for faces, but nothing. That hasn't happened to us since we got this new package. But then we started working the problem. What we needed was to pull a face out of the crowd, and compare it to all the stored images we have, alright?”
Meyerstein wanted him to hurry up, but she knew Limonton didn't know how to cut to the chase.
“Every face has numerous landmarks, as they're called.”
“Unique to that person.”
“Absolutely,” he said, nodding slowly. “Now, there are peaks and troughs that make up everyone's facial features. These landmarks are known as nodal points. And each human face has around eighty nodal points. You with me?”
Meyerstein felt her foot tapping against the desk.
“Distance between the eyes, width of the nose and depth of the eye sockets. The length of the jaw line. These nodal points are measured.”
“And this produces a numerical code, right?” she said, trying to hurry him along.
“You got it. Known as a face print. But we've been using biometrics, to check skin texture, and still we haven't come up with any trace of this guy, Scott Caan.”
Meyerstein looked again at her watch. “Tell me there's a point to all this, Freddie.”
Freddie smiled, panda shadows around his eyes and stubble around his chin. He pressed a button and a profile of what looked like a youthful middle aged man with longish hair appeared on one of the big screens.
Meyerstein took a long, hard look. “Don't tell me you think that's him, as it sure as hell isn't.”
He tapped another button and it zoomed into the bridge of the nose. “We created a new program. The program allows for changes to the face within one point five per cent or less.” He grinned. “Check out the bridge of this guy's nose.”
Meyerstein stared at the image. She thought the nose was broken, like a boxer's. “What's your point?”
“Check out the left eyebrow and compare it to the right. Notice how arched they are.” Then he clicked another couple of buttons which showed a picture of Scott Caan on the right and the long-haired man on the left. The long haired man looked more youthful, fresher even, and his nose was more crooked.
Meyerstein stared at the two images on the big screen, as Limonton leaned back in his seat on a third screen. “The guy with the long hair doesn't look anything like Caan. His face looks different. Puffier.”
“Precisely.”
Slowly it dawned on Meyerstein what Freddie Limonton was going on about. “Goddamn son-of-a-bitch.” She stared long and hard at the image. “What are we talking about? Some form of facial surgery, is that it?”
“Dead on. Within the last forty-eight hours. But of the non-invasive variety.”
“I'm not an expert in that area, although I could probably do with the same sort of work.” Her self-deprecating humor made Freddie smile.
“We've talked to two Beverley Hills plastic surgeons and sent them the photos, before and after. They both came back with the same analysis. Caan has had three bits of work done. Firstly, a nose job, non-surgical rhinoplasty, which only takes about an hour. A soft-tissue filler is injected in small amounts under the nasal skin, to change the shape and contour of the nose. Typically it is used to straighten a crooked nose, but the opposite has happened here, and that would throw off the readings in the central region of the face. Secondly, there was a browlift and eyelift, created by Botox. It has, as its name suggests, the effect of raising the brows and lifting the eyelids, favored by middle aged Hollywood stars, especially women.”
Meyerstein nodded, seeing how the changes had affected the contours and profile.
“I'm told it can also remedy a fleshy brow or one that is naturally lined. Compare and contrast.” He clicked another button. “It showed noticeable differences between the forehead area before and after. The third thing is the cheekbones. Collagen filler. Changes the shape of the face, don't you think?”
Meyerstein walked up to the plasma screens and took a closer look. “Son of a bitch.”
“The cumulative effects of all these small changes on Caan's face have, in effect, fooled our best face recognition systems. I'm telling you, this guy is good.”
The conference room door behind her opened and Special Agent Tom Jackson shouted across, “Director's on the feed in the briefing room across the corridor, and wants you now, Martha.”
“Tell him I'll be there in a couple of minutes.”
“I can't say that, Martha.”
“I will speak to him in two minutes.” Her tone was cold.
Jackson blushed and nodded, before he disappeared again into the briefing room.
“Now listen to me, Freddie, is this a true match? I can't afford any errors at all. I need to be certain that this is Caan.”
“It's him. We checked out the changes, and realised immediately why the face recognition was not finding him. Then we ran this face.” He clicked another button. A long-haired man wearing glasses descends the stairs of Penn Station in downtown Manhattan, caught on camera. He freeze-framed the image. “This is our guy. One hundred per cent match.”
Meyerstein's heart was beating harder as she stared at the image. “Train station. You must have his destination.”
He clicked another button which showed the back of the long-haired man boarding an Acela Express to Washington DC. He clicked another button and the long-haired man emerged from the train onto the concourse of Grand Station, Washington DC.
A few moments later, Meyerstein was in the briefing room across the corridor and flicked a switch to commence an emergency video teleconference, which included the Directors of the FBI, SIOC, NCTC, The White House Situation Room, and Langley. “OK, Assistant Director Martha Meyerstein here, I'll lead, if that's OK.”
The Director spoke up, his voice gravelly and strained. “You gotta development, Martha?”
“We most certainly have, sir. Caan has changed his physical appearance. The still images from Penn Station are being sent to you now.”
The Director cleared his throat. He stared at the image that had just appeared on his monitor. “Good God.”
“This man, ladies and gentlemen, is Lt Col Scott Caan. We have reason to believe he smuggled out three vials of a hybrid virus from the bio facility in Maryland. We believe he is an integral part of a highly sophisticated operation to attack America and we believe he is in Washington DC, intent on recreating what has happened in Manhattan.”
A silence opened up between them for a few moments as if everyone was letting the information sink in.
O'Donoghue spoke first. “So where do we go from here? The National Counterterrorism Center didn't see this coming. They've been blindsided.”
“We've all been blindsided, sir.”
“Tell me about Thomas Wesley? What the hell was going on there?”
“What, indeed? It's a mess. The NSA claim they know nothing about any decrypted intercept. We have people working on the recording given to Congressman Drake. We hope to identify the two people by the end of the day.”
“You hope? Is that what we're relying on?”
“We have our best people on it, sir.”
“What about Wesley?”
“DCIS deny taking him out. He's disappeared off the radar.”
“What about Luntz?”
“The latest I have from Dr Horowtiz, is that Luntz is working on anti-virals with every available scientist at our disposal. But this is gonna take time, something we don't have.”
O'Donoghue shook his head. “So where does the investigation go from here? I assume there's full inter-agency cooperation?”
“Across the board, sir. The investigation's focus is now on Washington. It makes sense from a terrorist's point of view. The seat of government. The advice I'm getting is that Caan didn't use all the virus in New York, and we're assuming Washington is his next target.”
O'Donoghue scribbled on a pad, nodding quickly.
“But we need to keep this very, very tight. Circulate the photo we have. Working his new image into Washington transports hubs and shopping malls, to try and get a position on this guy. He must be staying somewhere. So we have all the hotels, hostels, guest houses, you name it, having their surveillance footage scanned.”
O'Donoghue looked up. “We've got to be cautious that we don't alert Caan or cause any panic amongst the public.”
“Absolutely, sir. We're just informing each hotel's head of security, usually someone who is former military, Fed, or police, and there is no problem.”
The Director leaned back in his seat. “You got the scientist for us, Martha. That was terrific work. And now we've got a city for Scott Caan. But we're still missing the end game location, Martha. We're playing catch-up.”
“I'm well aware of that, sir. Our best analysts are going through everything we have. Email traffic, hidden files, but it's tightly encrypted. We're also scouring all the electronic devices and computers owned by Norton & Weiss in Miami. We're leaving no stone unturned, I can assure you, sir. It's just a matter of time.”
“Something we don't have, Martha.”
A knock at the door and Roy Stamper walked in.
Martha turned round and glared at him. “Middle of a video teleconference, Roy.”
“They've just dragged a body out of the Potomac. A man in his late thirties. Near the Chain Bridge on the Virginia side. He had a suicide note wrapped in cellophane in one of his pockets.”
“Who is it?”
“Not one hundred per cent, but it looks like Thomas Wesley, the missing former NSA analyst.”
The mood amongst Meyerstein and her team as they were driven to the 34
th
Street Heliport was of quiet determination. She wanted to exude a quiet authority. No one was getting unduly rattled. It was important to remain focussed.
She checked via a secure iPad to monitor real-time events in downtown Manhattan and a feed to SIOC on the 5
th
floor at FBI HQ.
The cold realisation that a bio-terror attack might be in the offing in the nation's capital made her think again of her children. Their school was in Bethesda. Her gut instincts were telling her to call the head and get her children back to the sanctity of their house. But she knew that would be against all protocols and would also jeopardise the news blackout, especially if the head teacher suspected something was amiss.
A few minutes later, two choppers whisked them out to Newark, New Jersey, in seven minutes. Then they transferred to the
Gulfstream
, which was already waiting for them. Within moments of the plane taking off into the bright winter sunshine, climbing steeply as they headed south to Washington DC, Meyerstein's phone on her armrest rang.
It was from one of the SIOC team in Washington, Reed Steel.
“Martha,” he said, nearly out of breath, “do you want the good news or the bad news?”
She sighed. “With the day I've had so far, gimme the good news first.”
“The good news is that we've just had an update from the hospital in Pensacola. Reznick's daughter has opened her eyes. She's emerging from the coma. And she's fine.”