Douglas Preston - The Obsidian Chamber

“Ms. Metcalf,” said Pendergast, “we never forget who our friends are. And we have long memories.”

This was exactly what she wanted to hear, but she was surprised to hear it put so clearly. This was a man who valued directness. No weaselly beating around the bush. “When do you wish access?”

“Right now, if you please.”

For a third time she let the silence build. And then she said, “Gentlemen, if you could have a seat, it’ll take me about five minutes to clear the PRISM unit of extraneous personnel. I assume you’ll need a technical support person?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll leave the best one in there, then.”

When the room was ready, and as they were all leaving, Pendergast turned and offered her a hand as cool and clean as a fresh cotton sheet. “I’m so very glad we’re friends.”

Howard Longstreet followed SAC Metcalf down a series of hallways and elevators, until they reached the door to the windowless basement room, warm with the smell of electronics. It was small and awash in a bluish light from myriad computer screens. In this room, agents with special clearance could access certain of the NSA’s relevant databases. He had been in PRISM rooms before, of course, and this one was no different. Except that it was now empty, save a single technician, lanky and nervous, with an unruly cowlick.

“Mr. Hernandez,” said Metcalf, “this is SA Pendergast and Executive Assistant Director Longstreet.”

“Um, hi,” said Hernandez.

“They’ll require your unfettered help for one hour,” Metcalf said to the technician. “And of course what happens here is to remain confidential, even from me.”

“Yes, Ms. Metcalf.”

She retreated and closed the door. Longstreet glanced at Pendergast; there was a rare light of anticipation shining in those eyes. He wished he felt the same. This seemed like such a wild goose chase, a complete waste of time when they had so little time left. If it were any other agent he would have put an end to this detour right at the beginning. But he had known Pendergast far too long to dismiss one of his hunches out of hand. And the discovery of the missing caudae equinae, while extremely outré, was nevertheless telling. He just wished Pendergast was a little more forthcoming with his theories.

“Aloysius,” said Longstreet, “would you like to explain to Mr. Hernandez what you want him to do?”

“Certainly.” Pendergast brought out a large hard drive from somewhere in his suit and placed it on the table in front of Hernandez. “On this drive are twenty-four hours of video feeds from all the security cameras in the Miami Baptist Hospital. These cams capture every person who visits the hospital — without exception. They are comprehensive. It isn’t possible to enter or leave the hospital without having your visage recorded multiple times.”

Hernandez gave a nod of understanding.

“The hospital has about nine thousand visitors a day. There are approximately two hundred such cams.”

“That’s a lot of video. Is this about that slasher killing?”

Pendergast fell silent and a sense of disapproval filled the room.

“Sorry,” said the technician.

“We believe an individual entered the hospital wearing one disguise and left it wearing a different one. He could have changed facial features, hair color, and perhaps other physical details as part of the switch.”

“I see.”

“So, Mr. Hernandez: how can we use your computing power and the NSA’s databases to identify a person who left the hospital without ever entering it?”

“Why,” said Hernandez, relieved, “that’s a piece of cake. I thought you were going to give me something hard. The NSA has the best facial-recognition software in the world — better than Google’s. I’ll just ask it to match all the ingresses with the egresses and spit out the unique face that left but didn’t enter.”

At this, Pendergast broke into a rare smile. “And how long might this take?”

“How many gigs you got in that drive?”

“Three terabytes.”

“Twenty minutes. Care to wait?”

Longstreet watched Pendergast slide himself into a chair, and he did likewise. Hernandez remained standing at the computer, typing on a keyboard.

As if timed by the clock, twenty minutes later the technician straightened up from his computer monitor. “Bingo! Got your man. At several angles.”

Longstreet rose and followed Pendergast, who had leapt up like a cat and was scrutinizing a series of faces on a computer monitor.

“Let me put them up on the big screen,” said Hernandez.

The faces popped up on a sixty-inch screen. They showed a tall man, dressed in an elegant brown suit, with brown eyes and brown hair, skin somewhat olive in tone, wearing fashionable titanium glasses. Longstreet stared with surprise and disappointment. It wasn’t Diogenes — was it? The man looked so different.

Pendergast said, “Play some video, please.”

Hernandez obliged, showing the man walking down a hallway; another image of him crossing the lobby; and a final image of him exiting. He was the right height and build, that was true, but a lot of people were slender and six foot two. Watching the videos, Longstreet felt disappointed. The man not only didn’t look like the old FBI surveillance tapes he’d seen of Diogenes — he didn’t move like him. In Longstreet’s experience, the way a person walked was almost as identifiable as the way he looked. Everyone had a different way of walking, something that couldn’t be disguised.

He glanced at Pendergast, only to see the man’s face distorted by triumph mingled with anger.

“Surely that isn’t Diogenes?” he asked.

“Most surely it is,” came the answer. “I know my brother. That’s him there, on the screen — I know it.”

“But the way he moves?”

“My dear H! Naturally that would be the first thing he’d alter. The man doesn’t walk like my brother, true — but doesn’t the walk look the slightest bit artificial to you? He’s playing up the difference — for the camera.”

Longstreet turned to Hernandez. “Run that video again, please.”

He scrutinized the feed once again. Damned if Pendergast wasn’t onto something. “Aloysius,” he said, turning away from the screen, “I’ve known you long enough to trust your hunches.”

“This is no mere hunch,” Pendergast replied. He turned back to Hernandez. “I now have a second assignment for you: who is this man? Officially, I mean.”

With a smile, Hernandez rapped on the keyboard. Within seconds, NSA facial-recognition software had come up with an identity and numerous details:

Name: Petru Balan

SS# 956-44-6574

Place of birth: Râșnov, Romania

Date of naturalization: 6/15/99

Race: Caucasian

Height: 6'2"

Eyes: Brown

Hair: Brown

Identifying tattoos or marks: None

A lot more information scrolled past, but Pendergast ignored it. “Excellent,” he said. “Now, Mr. Hernandez: I want you to look up this man’s real estate holdings. And not just his personal holdings, but any real estate held by shell companies he owns, offshore companies, alleged relatives — in short, I want to know about any square inch of ground even remotely connected to him. With a focus on Florida.”

“Of course.” Another few clicks on the keyboard and a list appeared. Even with his vast experience, it still amazed Longstreet at how quickly the computer could connect a maze of carefully disguised shell companies. And then it occurred to him that the NSA had probably already done the work — for every registered company in the world. That would be like them.