Daniel Suarez - Influx

“I don’t want you annihilating city blocks to get at him. Nonlethal weapons only. And no publicity. I’ll allow tech level four.”

“Four? They’ll barely be able to overpower the authorities.”

“Then they’ll need to be smarter this time. I can’t have any more advanced technology going missing. Tech level four will be sufficient. Is that clear?”

Morrison sighed in irritation but nodded. He turned to leave.

“One more thing…”

Morrison halted.

“Once you’ve got Grady, I want you to pay a surprise visit to Hibernity—in force.”

“Do we clean house?”

Hedrick picked up a small model that he kept on his desk. It was supposedly of his first fusion reactor design. “Yes. And I want a manual prisoner count.”

“That’s a big job. Opening up every cell will take—”

“I want you to lay eyes on him —personally.”

Morrison studied Hedrick. “Archibald Chattopadhyay is dead. His cell has been dormant for a decade. No food. No water. He’s entombed in nine hundred feet of solid rock.”

“I want you to lay eyes on him.”

“There’s no way he could have—”

“Just do it.”

Morrison stared for a moment, then nodded.

At that moment the office doors opened to admit Alexa. Both men looked up; Hedrick brightened at the sight of her.

“What is it, my dear?”

“The deep packet AIs have a lead on our Mr. Grady.”

Hedrick felt the relief wash over him. “Well done. Where?”

“Last night an FBI agent in Chicago ran fingerprints on a suspect and got a match for Jon Grady.”

Hedrick slammed his hand on his desk. “Then they have him.”

“No. And an FBI agent started doing Internet searches for the ‘Federal Bureau of Technology Control.’”

Hedrick scowled.

“It was the arresting agent in the Richard Louis Cotton case: one Denise Davis.”

Hedrick looked shocked. “You don’t think Cotton has—?”

“No. Cotton’s a lot of things, but he’s not an idiot. His sense of self-preservation is legendary.”

Morrison nodded to himself. “Chicago’s just a few hours by car from here.”

She turned toward Hedrick. “This Davis woman has been all over the media lately for the Cotton trial. Perhaps Grady saw her and thought he could trust her.”

Hedrick motioned impatiently. “Do we know where Grady is?”

“We know where he was.” Alexa brought up a holographic video window that showed thousands of video thumbnails all running simultaneously. “I had the AIs go back through the last twenty-four hours of street-level surveillance on all systems they could access within five miles of Agent Davis’s location in downtown Chicago, looking for Jon Grady’s likeness in the streets. A lot of federal and city cameras in the area, so we had good coverage.”

“And?”

“No hits on Jon Grady.”

Hedrick threw up his hands.

“I decided to do a search for Agent Davis’s movements, figuring he must have followed her for a while, waiting for the right moment to make contact. And that’s when I found this…” She selected and then expanded a single video image and froze it.

The surveillance camera image wasn’t anywhere near as detailed as what the BTC’s cameras could produce, but it was clear enough. It showed a woman with short hair walking with several men in suits on a crowded Chicago sidewalk. The woman was highlighted by the system in a red rectangular box.

But Alexa pointed to a man walking several yards behind her, wearing jeans and a hoodie. The man’s face was notable in the crowd because it was obscured by pinpoints of blinding light.

Hedrick frowned in confusion. “What am I looking at? And how could a person be walking in a crowd with such bright lights without drawing attention?”

Alexa looked up. “Varuna, can you explain what the subject in this image is wearing?”

The disembodied voice of the AI said, “Yes, Alexa. It is an exploit first seen in Hibernity prison, used by prisoners to defeat early facial recognition systems.”

Hedrick narrowed his eyes. “Used by prisoners?”

“Correct. The device consists of goggles punctuated by near-infrared LEDs emitting at roughly eight hundred fifty nanometers, which can be found in common motion sensors. This light is invisible to the human eye but matches the spectral sensitivity of CMOS or CCD cameras or other silicon-based photo detectors. When placed around the face, these make it impossible to obtain accurate measurements on the spacing and shape of a subject’s facial features.”

Hedrick turned back to Morrison meaningfully. “Grady’s obviously received assistance. There is something going on at Hibernity.”

Alexa looked between the two of them. “What makes you think that?”

“Mr. Morrison will handle it, Alexa. You just concentrate on locating Mr. Grady.”

“Without facial recognition, it’ll be difficult.”

“What about this Agent Davis?”

“From the moment of her fingerprint match on Grady, she’s been under surveillance by AIs—microphones in her laptop and cell phone, the works. Apparently Mr. Grady requested that she meet him in the Columbia University Mathematics Library a week from today. I took the liberty of using AIs to instruct her through official channels to meet with Grady in New York. She’s to report to a special task force.” Alexa swept her hand through the air and dropped a virtual document onto Hedrick’s desktop.

He examined the document—an email from the deputy director of the FBI ordering Denise Davis to report to a task force safe house. “If we know where Grady is going to be, why involve her?”

“Grady might not show if he doesn’t see her.”

Hedrick looked up from the document. “But why New York?”

Alexa closed all the holographic windows. “Back when Bertrand Alcot was a physics professor at Columbia, he took Mr. Grady under his wing—mentored him. Grady never attended, but he spent time there. I’m guessing he still has friends in the area—or he knows of someplace there where he can go to ground.”

“Set AIs loose on any communities of interest his past activity might generate. See what they turn up. Past addresses, run geolocation on his phones for the past ten years. I want anyone he’s ever been with under surveillance.”

Hedrick then turned to Morrison. “Prep your people to become this FBI unit. Grab him when he shows.”

Morrison nodded. “You still need him alive?”

“Yes, damnit!” Hedrick looked back to Alexa. “Excellent job.”

“I’d like to go on that operation, Graham.”

He looked surprised. “That’s not up to me, Alexa.” Hedrick turned to Morrison.

“No.”

“I feel I’ve earned the right to go on this operation. Mr. Grady represents a grave risk to the BTC and society at large. I think he’ll listen to me.”

“Ah, you’re going to charm him, like you did to so many in the old days?”

Hedrick shook his head vigorously. “You’re too valuable, Alexa. It can’t be risked.”

Morrison added, “And we don’t need your help.”

Hedrick took her by the elbow. “I need your people monitoring Agent Davis’s every move. Look how well you’ve done so far on the intelligence side.”

Morrison gave Alexa a sly smirk.

Alexa focused on Hedrick. “I was a top field operative. It’s what I’m good at. Why won’t you let me do what I’m good at?”

“You’re much too valuable.”

She studied him and then turned to exit.

His words followed her. “You’re dismissed.”

The Raven Rock Mountain Complexwas intended to deal with end-of-the-world scenarios. For that reason it always put Bill McAllen on edge. Known officially as Site R, it was a continuity of government (or COG) bunker complex in the hills of eastern Pennsylvania, not far from the Maryland border. One of many such bunkers built during the Cold War, it had been augmented and expanded over the decades. It was now sometimes called the Underground Pentagon because it served as an emergency command center for various U.S. defense agencies, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in the event of a major national crisis.