The Identity and Passport Service data chip, Jason recalled, was a smart card for biometric access systems - encrypted files containing a user’s retinal scan, fingerprints and other unique identifiers.
‘No worries, though,’ Meat said. ‘I’m sure we can crack it.’
Jason watched as Meat hooked a rectangular USB device, no bigger than a deck of playing cards, into his laptop - a hi-tech data reader developed by the NSA, which Meat commonly used to skim embedded information off passports.
Meat placed the chip on the reader’s flat surface.
The software interface launched on the laptop screen. It took only seconds before the chip reader identified the protocol, matched its key, and brought up the data.
‘That was fast,’ Jason said.
‘There’s good reason to be worried about cyber terrorism.’ Scrolling through the biometric data, what looked like a passport photo came up on the screen - the face of an attractive, thirty-something female. Meat whistled. ‘Yummy.’
Leaning in, Jason’s brow rumpled with confusion. ‘How can that be right?’ he said. The green-eyed brunette with a flawless complexion looked like a spokesmodel for Revlon. ‘That’s no Iraqi.’
‘Nope.’ Meat scrolled the data. ‘That’s Ms Brooke Thompson. Sorry, make that
Professor
Brooke Thompson. Female, as you can see … US citizen … Born April 19, 1975 … last clocked-in 15.02, May 2, 2003. No social security number, but her passport number’s here.’
‘What would
she
have been doing here?’ Jason aired his thoughts aloud.
‘And right after the Battle of Baghdad, in fact. This place was a battle zone back then.’
‘Transmit that data to the home office and ask them to send an agent immediately to find her and vet her.’
‘Got it.’
Jason waited for him to wrap up the call on his sat-com, then encrypt the data file and bounce it off a satellite to Global Security Corporation’s Washington DC headquarters.
‘Anything else?’ Meat asked.
Jason unclipped the binoculars from his neck strap, handed them to Meat. ‘Let’s have a closer look at some of the video I took earlier.’
Meat patched the binoculars’ hard drive into the laptop with a fire wire. A new program launched onscreen. ‘Tell me what you’re looking for and I’ll freeze the image,’ Meat said.
Jason leaned in close to review the playback. The high-resolution images were crystal clear. The frames skipped backwards until Jason spotted what he wanted. ‘There.’
Meat hit a key to pause the image.
‘Zoom in on the tall guy in the middle.’
‘That Al-Zahrani?’
‘You tell me.’
For a good minute, Meat replayed and advanced the footage. Satisfied that he’d found the best full frontal view of the guy’s face, he froze the image, dragged a frame over the head, and zoomed in. The enlargement pixellated before sharpening on the screen.
Meat slumped back in his chair and gave his beard a long, hard stroke. ‘Fuck me, Google. You’re right. That’s definitely him.’
‘We need to be 100 per cent on this.’
Meat held his hand out at the laptop. ‘That’s not a face to forget.’
‘Humour me and run facial recognition on it.’
Huffing, Meat leaned forward again to work the keyboard. He opened the biometric software in a new window, imported the picture file, and initiated the analysis. The program deconstructed the photo using virtual lines that measured eighty nodal points between the irises, the ears, the chin and nose, and various other facial landmarks. Ten seconds later, the ‘face print’ was complete. Using an encrypted signal, he linked to the military’s satellite network and routed an inquiry to the FBI. Meat’s limited clearance enabled him to pull Al-Zahrani’s biometric stats from the agency’s database. Then he instructed the program to compare the biometric statistics.
‘As close as I’ve ever seen to a precise match,’ Meat reported. ‘See for yourself.’
As Jason verified the results, excitement and concern came in equal measure.
‘Imagine if we catch this fucker alive,’ Meat said. ‘We’d be goddamn heroes. Not to mention the bounty. Shit. Ten mil? Forget this soldier-for-hire gig. We could all retire.’ He flitted his eyebrows.
‘Right. You wouldn’t know what to do with yourself,’ Jason scoffed. ‘The hunt’ gave them all purpose, and allowed them to exorcize their demons. Back home, a small fortune would do little to dispel the haunting memories that drove them here to begin with.
Meat considered the dream, then dickered it down in his mind to settle for something more realistic. ‘I’d at least take some R&R … eat some cheese steaks instead of MREs and vermin roast. Maybe even shit in a toilet instead of a trench with sand flies nipping my ass. You know, take a dump with dignity.’
‘I’d settle for a proper shower,’ Jason said, scratching at his beard. Getting back to business, he asked, ‘Hey, where’s the Snake?’
‘Over there,’ Meat said, pointing to a bulky case loosely covered by a goatskin.
Jason went to retrieve it. ‘Give me hand with this. I want to get up that hill … see if we can’t peek inside the cave.’
It took a lot to fluster Randall Stokes. Plenty of years spent skulking behind enemy lines to stare down the Devil made most of life’s stressors seem mundane. However, when the caller had conveyed what had transpired in Iraq, a sour taste came to the back of the preacher’s throat.
There’d always been the possibility that someone might accidentally stumble upon the cave installation. Precisely the reason so many security protocols had been built around the programme, including tripwires for unauthorized persons attempting to breach the main hatchway.
But what had happened just an hour ago was something even Randall Stokes could not dream up. Such an incursion fell far outside the limits of possibility - the outlier of outliers. The caller had indicated that a US helicopter gunship had misfired a missile - a freak accident. But Arab militants storming into the tunnels? Stokes thought. Certainly this was God’s plan. It was the only plausible explanation. Has the time already come?
Seated at his desk and directed towards his oversized LCD computer monitor, Stokes drafted a secure e-mail. The brief message stated in cryptic terms that countermeasures were to commence immediately. Step one: a comprehensive clean-up.
There was an outside chance that some random clue left behind might trigger an investigation. Regrettably that meant that outside contractors who’d worked on the project - the most vulnerable links - would need to be eliminated, quickly and cleanly. Because if the media were to somehow get wind of what was happening at the site, one of the scientists might get cold feet and ignore the restrictive confidentiality agreement he’d signed.
Stored on his computer’s encrypted hard drive were the vital statistics for each scientist - everything from birth certificates, passport information, credit history and social security numbers, to work history, credentials, family contacts and last known addresses. There were passport photos and biometric data too. Stokes attached all eight ‘A-list’ profiles to the e-mail.
Just as he was about to click the SEND button, the phone’s intercom came to life with a small chime.
‘So sorry to disturb you, Randy.’
‘I’m busy. What is it, Vanessa?’ he replied agitatedly.
‘Mr Roselli is here,’ she reported in a subdued tone. ‘He’s insisting on seeing you. He doesn’t look so good … acting strange too. Should I call security?’
‘No. It’s fine.’ Perfect, actually. ‘Give me a minute, then send him in.’
‘As you wish.’
Stokes focused again on the draft, removed profile number ‘4’ labelled ‘ROSELLI-FRANK’. Verifying the content one last time, he clicked a command that encrypted the message and pushed it out into the ether. He leaned back and stretched, considered how exactly to handle the surprise visitor. When he peered at the open door centred in the rear wall of the office, an idea came to him. A brilliant idea.
Fifteen seconds later, the double door opened and Vanessa held it as Roselli lumbered into the room, hands stuffed in the pockets of his rumpled seersucker slacks.
‘I was going to run to the Post Office,’ Vanessa said. ‘Need me to stay?’
‘No, no. You go ahead,’ Stokes said. He stood and rounded the desk. She was right: the five-foot-eight portly project manager looked even more ruddy than usual. ‘Frank,’ he greeted him with presidential style. ‘What a surprise.’
‘What’s the emergency?’ Stokes asked, calmly reclining in his office chair.
Roselli was huddled on the edge of the leather visitor’s seat, elbows propped on knees. Sweat peppered his brow below an island of sun-bleached dirty blond hair that looked like a badly replaced divot. His round cheeks and bulbous nose were pink with sunburn, three deep worry lines cut parallel tracks across his forehead, and his dull hazel eyes, set too close together, were too small for his head.
‘Haven’t you heard?’ he said. ‘The alarm in the cave? For God’s sake. They’ll find -‘
Stokes raised a hand to stop him. ‘I’ve heard,’ he replied levelly.
‘And you’re still
here
?’ He spread his hands. ‘Have you gone mad? What if they -‘
‘Calm down. Don’t you see? This is better than we could ever have hoped for.’
‘What? Are you insane?’
‘Now, now, Frank …’ he warned. But Roselli was inconsolable.
‘I told you this might happen!’ he overrode indignantly. Pointing a pudgy index finger at Stokes, he said, ‘We should’ve permanently sealed the opening.’ He shook his head with dismay. ‘Christ, we
knew
that hatch might draw attention.’
‘And how do you suppose what’s in the cave could be released without a doorway?’
Rolling his eyes, Roselli didn’t have an answer.
‘Let me remind you that it was a
missile
, Frank. A missile that accidentally veered off course. Sorry, but we didn’t plan for that.’ Stokes got up again. ‘Let’s not have someone overhearing this conversation,’ he said conspiratorially. He waved for Roselli to follow, led the way to the open door in the rear of the office.
Huffing, Roselli got up and went over to him, hesitated at the entry threshold to assess the keypad on the doorframe. His head tilted to calibrate the thickness of the door - five, maybe six, inches. Then he peeked inside. ‘What is this place?’
‘My private gallery. We can talk more freely in here.’ Stokes offered a composed smile, placed a gentle hand on the man’s shoulder and urged him inside.
The spacious, windowless gallery housed an impressive collection of ancient artifacts in sturdy display cases - mostly Middle Eastern, as far as Roselli could tell. No surprise since Stokes was obsessed with anything remotely linked to Mesopotamia or Persia, both past and present. Floor-to-ceiling shelves lined the walls; dozens of compact clay tablets were neatly laid out behind thick glass doors. He could also make out jewellery, pottery and Bronze Age tools and weapons stored there too.
But the room’s centre featured the relics Roselli knew intimately.
Mounted atop a wide granite plinth was an enormous limestone slab; maybe six feet high, four feet wide, he guessed. On the monolith’s face were intricate relief etchings of two winged beasts, spirits facing one another in profile, as if courting for a dance - each half human, half lion. The stone seal they’d removed from the cave entrance and replaced with a heavy-duty metal door.
In the display cases beside the seal, Roselli spotted some of the cursed artifacts they’d recovered from deep within the labyrinth: an assortment of clay tablets stamped with ancient wedge-shaped symbols and pictograms; a beautiful necklace of glossy shells; a clay jar painted in symbols and whose bizarre contents remained locked within rock-hard resin. But the most prominent display case was covered with a veil. The thought of what might be inside it made him shudder. ‘You must be insane … keeping all these things here.’
‘Do you really think anyone would know where these treasures came from? I’m a mere collector, Frank. Stop being paranoid,’ Stokes suggested delicately.
‘
Paranoid?
Do you know what will happen if anyone finds what we left behind in that cave?’ Then he turned pale when he thought of the most serious consequences. ‘My God … what if those American contractors go inside … what if they all die?’
With hands behind his back, Stokes paced over to the stone slab and admired it for a long moment. ‘When God expelled Adam and Eve from Eden, the cherubim were posted outside the entrance so that the humans could never return to paradise. The sacred guardians …’
‘Now is not the time for Bible-thumping,’ Roselli fumed. ‘We need to focus on the cave. What are we going to
do
?’
Stokes shrugged and contemplated the situation for five seconds before responding. ‘The cave being discovered like this … well, it can only be considered divinely inspired, wouldn’t you agree?’
‘Bullshit.’
‘I understand you’re upset,’ Stokes said.
‘Damn right I’m upset.’
‘Let me get us drinks. Then we’ll talk about this, figure things out. Scotch?’ Another of Roselli’s Achilles heels.