Stephen Leather - The Long shot

As they shook hands, Howard saw the other man frantically stub out the joint and toss it into a wastepaper bin. “This is Bill McDowall,” said Wyman. “He’s been helping me with the video.”

Howard shook hands with McDowall, whose hands were hot and sweaty. “It’s a pleasure,” said Howard, holding McDowall’s gaze just long enough so that he’d know that it wasn’t too bright an idea to be smoking pot when expecting a visit from the FBI.

“You want a Bud?” asked Wyman, opening the door to a refrigerator and taking out a can. When Howard refused, Wyman popped the can and took a sip.

“What about a coffee?” asked McDowall. “It’s from a machine, I’m afraid.”

“Coffee would be good. Cream, no sugar,” said Howard.

McDowall fumbled in his pocket then shrugged shamefacedly. “No change,” he said. Howard dug into his pockets and handed over some quarters. As McDowall wandered out into the corridor, Wyman pushed a chair in front of a computer terminal and motioned for him to sit.

“Clayton showed you the pictures we did already?” Wyman asked. Howard nodded. “I think you’re gonna be pleased with what we’ve done,” said Wyman. His fingers played across the keyboard. “We’ve left it all on the computer, it’ll only take us a minute to print out the pictures you want.” He switched on a large monitor and a picture flickered onto the screen. It was the middle-aged balding man who was holding the walkie-talkie. Howard’s face fell. The quality appeared no better than the photographs Clayton had given him.

“This was the stage we were at before the weekend,” said Wyman. Howard felt a wave of relief wash over him. “We went pretty much the same route as the guy you used.”

“Girl,” corrected Howard. “Bonnie Kim.”

“Okay. Well we did the neighbourhood averaging thing, but then we took it further by running a few pixel aggregation programs through the blurred areas. That gave us some more definition, but as you probably realised, the improvement was marginal at best.”

“Clayton said you’d compensated for the movement of the plane,” said Howard.

“Yeah, that was the main improvement; I’m surprised the Kim girl didn’t try it.”

“She was pushed for time,” said Howard. He felt a sudden urge to protect Bonnie Kim from the man’s snide comments. “You said you’d taken it further?”

Wyman brushed his hair behind his ears in a feminine gesture that was at odds with the facial hair and bitten nails. His fingers began pecking at keys. “We used a version of the Hough Transform, and the Fourier Transform. Did the Kim girl tell you about them? They detect relationships between pixels.”

“I’m not sure,” said Howard.

Wyman grinned. McDowall returned carrying a plastic cup of coffee. Howard took it. He noticed that it was black but didn’t say anything. McDowall leaned against a bench and watched Wyman stabbing at the keyboard.

The screen went blank and then the picture of the man with the walkie-talkie appeared, but this time it was as clear as if he’d been photographed from six feet away. Howard was stunned. “My God,” he breathed.

“Pretty good, huh?” said Wyman.

“How did you manage that?” whispered Howard, moving closer to the screen. The picture was as sharp as any he’d ever seen on a television. The man had black hair which was receding, and a thick, black moustache. If the FBI had the man on file, there would be no problems in obtaining a match and a positive identification.

“I told you he’d be impressed,” Wyman said to McDowall. He turned to look at the FBI agent. “I’m not surprised that your people didn’t know about this stuff — most of it is classified. We’ve been developing it for the military and it requires huge amounts of computing power. The program effectively analyses every single point on the picture and carries out several complicated calculations for it. We set it up on Friday and had it running over the weekend.”

“Don’t forget to tell him about the spatial-domain program,” said McDowall.

Wyman turned around in his seat, grinning. “You think he’d understand? Jeez, man, I barely understand it.” The two men sniggered like schoolchildren.

“We could explain about the spatial masks we generated from the frequency-domain specifications,” said McDowall. He giggled girlishly.

“Yeah, right,” laughed Wyman. Howard resented being the butt of their humour, but he knew he needed their specialist knowledge. “How many did you do?” asked Howard. He sipped his coffee and then pulled a face when he realised it had sugar in it.

“About a dozen,” said Wyman. “We picked out what we thought you’d want the most — the guys on the ground and the snipers. But if there’s anything else you want you can let us know and we’ll have it within a couple of days.” He pecked at more keys and the picture of the balding man was replaced by the young man with glasses. It was as sharp as the first image.

“Amazing,” said Howard, under his breath. Wyman went through the rest of the pictures he’d worked on: the woman, the snipers, the vehicles, the towers. All of them were perfectly in focus and the detail was phenomenal. He could clearly see a small, crescent-shaped scar on the cheek of one of the snipers. On the original video the sniper had been little more than a blur.

Wyman sat back in his chair, grinning proudly. “You should see some of the stuff we get,” he said. “They make your video look like a Hollywood movie.”

“Who else do you do this for?” Howard asked.

Wyman grinned. “Military, CIA, DEA, you name it, they all want what we’re developing,” he said. “They just don’t know it yet. We can pick a face out of a crowd at several thousand yards. We did some work for the LAPD after the riots. .”

“Yeah, but they wouldn’t let us near the Rodney King video,” interrupted McDowall, sniggering. “I never understood that.”

“Yeah, the video tape doesn’t lie,” sneered Wyman.

Howard frowned. The two computer experts were clearly on a different wavelength, possibly a different planet. “I don’t follow you,” he said.

The two men looked at each other as if deciding whether or not to let him in on a dirty secret. “What do you think, do you think he’d appreciate it?” asked Wyman.

McDowall shrugged. “He’s a Fed. He might tell.”

Wyman grinned. “We could delete the evidence. If a tree falls. .”

The two men laughed again. Eventually Wyman stopped giggling and waved Howard over to another terminal. “We shouldn’t be showing you this, but it might give you an idea of what video and computer imaging is capable of,” he said. “You’ll understand why you can’t believe the evidence of your own eyes any more. And why we think it’s so funny whenever anyone says that video can’t lie. Jesus, they go and watch The Terminator and accept that the special effects are computer-generated, then they see a news video and they automatically believe that it’s the truth. It’s yet to sink in that you can’t believe a photograph or video any more. They’re too easy to fake.”

“Yeah, what about the Caroline Perot pictures, remember them?” said McDowall. “Ross Perot pulled out of the presidential race in July 1992 after he heard that pictures of his daughter were being circulated. We were given them to analyse. They were fakes, but good. Really good work.” He grinned at Wyman. “So good that we had a pretty good idea where they came from.”

Wyman nodded. “Didn’t matter whether they were fake or not. Perot knew that the great unwashed just believe what they see, especially when it’s printed in the supermarket tabloids.” He pressed a few keys and a picture flickered onto the screen. There were two men on the screen, one in a dark blue suit, the other in a military uniform. The two men embraced and shook hands. It was George Bush and Saddam Hussein. Howard’s jaw dropped and he looked at Wyman.