John Weisman - Direct Action

MJ had met him exactly once in the twelve months she’d worked at the C-PIG. He’d come to meet the staff at Coppermine. His first words to her were, “Call me Percy, gorgeous.” He was just over five feet tall. He wore a shiny polyester blazer, sported a Ronald Coleman mustache, parted his slicked-down hair in the middle, and he stank of aftershave. When he’d called the next morning on the secure phone and asked her out, she’d had to stifle a huge guffaw.

MJ was bothered by the current level of creative tension at the C-PIG. She found the sin-gin lady’s professional views stiflingly inflexible. With the unhappy result that Portia M. ST. JOHN and Hester P. SUTCLIFFE had constantly differing opinions about what the term significant meant. To Marilyn Jean O’Connor, significant was whenever a face in a crowd caused the recognition software to hiccup. To Mrs. ST. JOHN, significance only occurred when the recognition software had a 100 percent positive ID-which meant all 127 points that formed the recognition criteria were matched perfectly.

The problem, as MJ had tried to explain, was that setting such an unyieldingly high bar precluded the possibilities of factoring in old-fashioned facial disguises, not to mention the sorts of appearance-changing prosthetic devices that CIA case officers commonly used, as well as more radical transformations, like plastic surgery. But whenever MJ brought the subject up, Mrs. ST. JOHN would remove her wire-frame half-glasses and finger her brooch, a sign that the individual standing before her was dismissed.

Despite the consequences this interpretational schism might have on her career, MJ continually pushed the edge of the analytical envelope. Indeed, if the software as much as twitched, MJ would immediately start the sophisticated IdentaBase program. If IdentaBase hit anything over eighty points, she’d forward the material to Mrs. ST. JOHN. MJ’s attitude was better safe than sorry, and if Mrs. SJ didn’t like it, to hell with her.

C-PIG’s source material was delivered by armed messenger from Langley twice a day. Why the hell Mrs. ST. JOHN insisted on a guy with a gun on the bike was another unfathomable. The photos, after all, were open source. They’d been published in newspapers, magazines, and on the Internet, for chrissakes. In any case, the jpg files were downloaded onto C-PIG’s secure computer network, then scanned on ultra-high-resolution twenty-inch flat screens and run through the interpretation group’s databases, by region. MJ was responsible for the Middle East and North Africa.

8:22A.M. This particular morning, MJ began by examining a series of Agence France Press pictures chronicling the aftermath of yesterday’s nasty attack on a U.S. diplomatic convoy in the Gaza Strip. There were eight photos in the sequence.

MJ shifted the Starbuck’s Grande out of the way, clicked on the first thumbnail, and brought it up onto her screen. The photo showed the rear end of a blown-up Suburban SUV. The big vehicle had been completely flipped onto its back by the explosion. MJ could read the license plate clearly. It was a standard Israeli diplomatic plate: black lettering on a white background. CD for Corps Diplomatique. The numbers began with 15, which was the Israeli Foreign Ministry designator for the United States, then 833, then 26. The heavy armor plating that covered the gas tank was twisted. One of the clamshell doors hung loose.

In the foreground, a curly-haired Palestinian security man with a bushy gray mustache in an olive-drab uniform glared at the lens. She right-clicked on him and got a hit: he was a major in the Palestinian security forces named Hamid el-Mahmoud. War name: Abu Yunis. Born: Amman, Jordan, 6/16/1960. Admitted to the United States in June 1997 for six months of advanced counterterrorism training. He was wearing a heavy gold watch. MJ zoomed his wrist. It was a Rolex President-a fifteen-thousand-dollar watch on the wrist of a PSS major who made six hundred a month max. MJ shook her head. And the U.S. was paying the PA how much? Forty mil a year. And what did generous Uncle Sam get for its money? It got to put gold Rolexes on Palestinian security officers’ wrists.

Behind the wrecked vehicle, a crowd of uniformed Palestinians held back a tide of gawking onlookers, news photographers, and passersby. MJ started the face-recognition software and scanned left to right, clicking on every one of the onlookers, security personnel, and photographers. But there were no more hits, so she double-clicked on the picture and it disappeared.

MJ clicked on the second thumbnail. This was a reverse angle of the first picture. You could see that the entire front axle had been blown off the Suburban. In fact, there was nothing left of the entire front end of the vehicle except charred pieces of twisted metal. MJ got a sudden chill. My God, she thought, there were people riding in that car. Americans. And they’re dead.

MJ tried to imagine what terror they’d felt and what pain they’d suffered during the last seconds of their lives, and she found herself tearing up. Funny, she hadn’t been affected that way when she’d seen the video on the morning news. But now, staring up close and personal at the skeleton of the Suburban, she was hugely affected.

She wiped her eyes, blew her nose, and got back to work. As in the first photograph, there was a young Palestinian security officer in the foreground. She clicked on his face. Six-tenths of a second later, she learned that his name was Samir Ali, born 4/26/1976 in Jenin, Occupied West Bank; that he was a member of the Preventive Security Services, he had no known aliases, and he had been admitted to the United States on November 14, 1997, for security training. He wasn’t wearing a watch.

She moved on, stopping at every one of the other twenty-two full and partial faces in the photograph. There were no more hits. Still, there was something about the picture that bothered her. Something about it was awry. Just…not…right.

But she couldn’t put her finger on whatever it was, so she reduced the photo, brought up the third one, and scanned it. Results were negligible: three of the PSS personnel IDs came up, but there were no hits or anomalies. She went through the rest of the series. Nada.

Next folder on the pen drive was an antiwar demonstration in Cairo. Twenty-five photographs. MJ sighed, craned her neck, and stared at the ceiling. God, she thought, if the public only knew the insanity we go through to protect them.

She was about to open the Cairo thumbnails folder when she remembered the Gaza picture she’d wanted to take a second look at. MJ double-clicked the photo and brought it up onto her screen. She forced her eyes away from the wreckage, isolated the upper right-hand corner of the picture, cropped the area, then enlarged it.

Now she realized what had bothered her subconsciously. What wasn’t right. What the anomaly was. Everyone in the photograph-everyone with the exception of Samir Ali, the security man in the foreground who was scowling into the camera-was staring at or reacting to the carnage. There were forty-seven people in the photo. All of them were looking at the Suburban.

Except for the six men in the upper right-hand corner of the photo.

Each of those six was facing in a different direction, and yet, now that she’d blown the photo up and cropped it, she could see they were relationally connected to one another. They were, she understood instinctively, a group. First of all, they dressed similarly. Most of the other onlookers were wearing T-shirts or open-necked short-sleeved sport shirts. These six wore long-sleeved shirts, which hung over their dark trousers. One of the figure’s shirts was open, and MJ could make out something dark underneath. She keyed on the area, blew it up, and saw the top edge of what appeared to be either a low-necked T-shirt or the top of a bulletproof vest.