Daniel Suarez - Freedom (TM)

General Zhang pondered Shen’s words for a moment, then nodded to Haverford.

Haverford sighed. “Well, okay then. I guess the fact that we don’t have any audio or video of you speaking with Mr. Ross—look there. . . .” Haverford pointed at a gesticulating arm being reflected in a mirror. “That’s Ross right there. We have him up until that point.”

Shen frowned. “What do you mean ‘up until that point’?”

The control board operator fast-forwarded the video, and people moved up and down the booth aisle like a Benny Hill closing credit chase. And then it suddenly returned to normal speed—to show Shen walking out of the bar several minutes later, a look of dread on his face.

“Wait. Wait a second.” Shen was trying to comprehend what he just saw. “Back it up.”

The video backed up at double speed. He saw himself back up to the table and sit far away from the cameras and the microphones he knew were near the restroom, the glass-and-blond-wood bar, and the entrances. Waitresses and Chinese patrons occasionally walked down the aisle—but no Jon Ross!

“That’s impossible! He was sitting right there with me.”

The video kept backing up until finally Shen saw the back of Ross, reverse-stepping toward the entrance with plainclothes policemen behind him. It was his moment of arrival seen backward.

“So he arrived, but he didn’t leave?”

“That’s what we’ve been wondering about.”

They all just sat there without talking for several moments.

That was when Shen remembered Ross’s words as he held up the ring.

This is a magic ring .

A hot flash of fear came over him. It couldn’t be. . . .

The control board operator was clicking from camera to camera now. Inside and outside the building. He brought up a 3-D model of the city block. It was wrapped with security camera images. “This is running backward from the moment of your departure from the table, Captain Shen.” Half a dozen video insets showed as many scenes in front of the building, the lobby, the rear exit, and the surrounding streets—people and cars were everywhere. The video played, and people moved about, but Ross was absolutely nowhere to be seen.

Haverford shook his head. “See, it certainly doesn’t seem like he left the table, now, does it, Captain?”

Then it occurred to Shen that everyone was looking at him. And then it started to dawn on him that Zhang might seriously be suspecting him of some collusion with Ross—which would be crazy considering he was the one who brought Ross to the table to begin with.

Shen cleared his throat. “There is one other explanation.”

Haverford smiled. “Well, then let’s hear it, buddy.”

Shen felt like punching him in his smiling toothy face, but instead tapped the screen. “Rewind it to the point when Ross arrives back at the table.”

Haverford nodded to the board operator, and the monitor he was focusing on obligingly reversed to the point when Ross arrived.

“Okay. Now, fast-forward it about two, two and a half minutes, then put it on slow motion.”

The screen moved forward, people jittering across the screen, then slowed. Shen held his index finger just inches away from the screen and focused intently on the occasional person moving down the aisle between booths. The rest of the assembled technicians and Chinese officers leaned in behind him.

Then he saw it. “There! Stop!”

The image stopped, and Shen pointed to a sliver of a shoe and a pant leg as reflected in a mirror.

“Uh, it’s a leg. We can’t know it’s his.”

“But there’s no one in the aisle. Look. . . .” Shen pointed. “That reflection occurs when there’s someone in the aisle.”

“Captain, if there’s no one in the aisle, he can’t be in the aisle.”

“Roll it slowly. Watch here closely.” Shen ran his hand along the empty aisle in the picture.

The image ran forward and a wave of surprise went across the assembled witnesses. An aberration, like a fleeting specter, moved across the frame.

Haverford jammed the PAUSE button, shoving the board operator out of the way. “That’s impossible. It’s an artifact. It’s a camera artifact.”

Shen was staring at a slight discoloration and diagonal line occluding the frame. “I don’t think it’s an artifact, Mr. Haverford.”

“But how could he . . . he couldn’t just walk out.”

Shen kept his eye on the screen. “Who was controlling the operation? Was it being directed by central control? Were they giving the signal to the teams to move in from here?”

The technicians looked at each other.

Haverford ignored the question, busying himself in searching other screens—the front door, the side door, the rear door. “None of these doors are popping open. Look.”

Shen pointed to the kitchen’s rear door, propped open to let cool air in. “The rear door is already open. Look—look there .” He pointed at video from inside the kitchen. “The staff is surprised. They are following something with their eyes—as though a very unexpected person is moving through their space. Perhaps a Caucasian businessman.”

It was undeniable. They could see a server and a chef frowning and eyeballing an unknown entity—the chef actually shouting and waving the unseen person away. As they watched, another shimmer disrupted the air of the tape. It was a ripple in the fabric of the screen’s reality. There were blurred reflections on stainless steel counters.

Shen tapped the location on-screen. “These cameras, Mr. Haverford. They are digital CCTV cameras? The very latest, I imagine.”

Haverford just stared at him. “Of course. And Chinese made, I might point out.”

Shen just laughed to himself and shook his head. Of course they are. He recalled Ross’s words again. . . .

The Chinese people want to be free, Liang.

He pointed at another screen—one that showed the mouth of the alley behind the restaurant. Where it met the street. There was no one in the street, but quite clearly, there in the reflection from a darkened window was Jon Ross, looking rather dapper in a Hong Kong pin-striped suit. Shen smiled to himself. “I think we’ve found the problem, Mr. Haverford.”

Now a gasp went over the assembled engineers. More leaned in to see what appeared to all present an absolute impossibility.

Haverford just kept shaking his head. “But . . .”

On-screen, a block away, plainclothes policemen were gathered in a group on a corner, smoking—awaiting a signal that came too late.

Shen turned to General Zhang, but spoke to everyone. “Let me tell you what your system is, Mr. Haverford. It’s a six-billion-dollar . . . how do you Americans say it? Oh yes: clusterfuck.”

Haverford stood up and turned to General Zhang. “This is ridiculous. This is a glitch. That’s all.”

Shen pointed to the cameras. “Mr. Ross is invisible here to a dozen cameras. Show me a camera where he reappears. Blocks away? Hours later? I’ll bet you cannot find him. Because your system has been defeated.”

General Zhang studied the screen. “How, Shen? How did he do it?”

“There are two million digital cameras. They are all unified with layers of digital image-processing software. With camera firmware. Someone has created a system where points on the screen are replaced with the background image.”

“The background?”

“Yes. Somewhere along the chain of custody between where the image is recorded and where it’s seen on our monitors, the empty background imagery of each camera’s sweep is substituted for the image of a person who is wearing some sort of electronic tag—to identify their movements through space.”

“But how could the camera know the location of that person in three-dimensional space relative to the camera?”