‘You need to play catch up here on what’s happened and what the NSA’s involvement is,’ Jarvis said as they descended in the elevator. ‘Echelon, a clandestine global surveillance and intelligence gathering initiative between many countries allied to the United States, was replaced with PRISM in 2007. The NSA uses PRISM to collect Internet communications from major US Internet companies and is operated under the supervision of the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.’
‘Is this the program that was leaked a few years back?’
‘By Edward Snowden,’ Jarvis confirmed, ‘who is, depending on your outlook, a courageous patriot or an insane traitor. Either way, PRISM’s existence went public and revealed not just the extent of the surveillance gathering but also a financial arrangement between the NSA’s Special Source Operations and PRISM partners worth millions of dollars.’
‘So what’s the connection between this PRISM and our search for Abrahem?’ Ethan asked.
‘It’s not Abrahem that’s the link,’ Jarvis replied. ‘It’s China. PRISM is responsible for more than ninety percent of all the NSA’s Internet traffic acquired using FISA section 702 authority. The Edward Snowden leaks also exposed the existence of MYSTIC, a voice interception program used here at the NSA to record every single phone call made in a targeted country for thirty days, and that intelligence analyzed for potential targets of interest that may threaten US security. With the spotlight on these programs and the media focusing on them, the real conspiracy has been missed entirely.’
‘What conspiracy?’ Lopez asked. ‘Do you mean Majestic Twelve?’
‘For once,’ Jarvis replied, ‘MJ–12 are as behind the curve as we are. It’s this way.’
Jarvis led them down a corridor of pristine white panels illuminated from behind and in deep contrast to the impenetrable blackness of the building’s exterior.
‘We’re being scanned for recording devices,’ Jarvis said as they walked. ‘The scanners are implanted behind the walls.’
As they reached the end of the corridor a door opened and two armed soldiers stood to attention before checking their security passes against a log and then waving them through.
Jarvis led them through a doorway and into a large Watch Room that looked not dissimilar to the ones Ethan had seen at the Defense Intelligence Agency. Large screens ringed the walls at the front of the Watch Room in the manner of a space agency’s control room, and rows of desks with operatives seated behind them monitored events across the world.
But this time, there was something odd about the images on the screens, the pictures indistinct, slightly blurred.
‘The news feeds are out of focus,’ Lopez said.
Jarvis shook his head. ‘Those are not news feeds.’
Jarvis walked to one corner of the room and then turned to face them, speaking softly so as not to disturb the thirty or so operatives at work behind their desks.
‘Welcome to The Identity Mine,’ he said simply.
‘The what?’
Jarvis gestured to the Watch Room around them. ‘This room is used specifically to monitor the activities of thirty or so of the most wanted people on the planet,’ he explained. ‘Their activities are observed in a way that no other country on Earth has ever been able to do before so that the NSA is able to predict when and where they’re going to strike next. This program is in its infancy, just a couple of years old and so clandestine that even Edward Snowden wouldn’t have been able to get near it.’
Ethan frowned and looked at the screens. Several of them showed slightly blurred images of people talking to the camera and responses coming back from somebody out of sight. Others showed the view through a car windscreen as it drove along a highway, yet another the interior of a busy shopping mall. Several of the screens were almost black but filled with bizarre little points of light swimming and zipping about on them.
‘I don’t get it,’ he admitted finally. ‘What are they actually watching here?’
Jarvis smiled, clearly enjoying himself once again, standing in the center of something so secret that barely a handful of people in the world knew about it.
‘They’re not watching the criminals,’ Jarvis said. ‘They’re watching what the criminals are seeing.’
Lopez stared at the screens for a moment longer and then her jaw dropped. ‘This is what the criminals are doing, right now?’
‘Right this very instant,’ Jarvis confirmed, gesturing once more to the screen. ‘Welcome to the future of intelligence gathering, where the criminal leads law enforcement directly to the scene of their next crime. You’re not seeing through the eyes of a camera, and not even precisely through the eyes of the person in question. You’re seeing what their brains are seeing, literally as it happens.’
Ethan blinked and almost missed a breath as he tried to digest what Jarvis was saying.
‘Their brains? How is that even possible?’
Jarvis smiled, clearly as amazed as Ethan at the technology before them.
‘You’re watching the brain waves created by what they’re seeing converted into moving images here in the Watch Room. Effectively, you’re seeing their thoughts.’
***
XXVIII
‘We’re seeing their thoughts?’ Lopez gasped as she surveyed the Watch Room’s myriad screens. ‘That’s insane.’
Ethan shook his head in disbelief, his arms folded as he realized that the blurry images of talking people and the responses from off–screen were in fact ordinary conversations being conducted between two people.
‘I myself wouldn’t have believed it possible until I was given the clearance necessary to get full disclosure about this program,’ Jarvis said, ‘but this technology is in use today and has far–reaching consequences for law enforcement and personal privacy. If it was to become public knowledge, it would make Snowden’s PRISM leaks look like a joke in comparison.’
‘How does it work?’ Ethan asked.
Jarvis leaned against the wall as he spoke.
‘Almost a decade ago, researchers at the ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Japan figured out a way to sample electrical signals moving from the retina to the brain’s visual cortex. They realized that for any given image witnessed by an observer a unique signal was relayed to the brain, and thus those individual signals could be recorded, analyzed and stored. They wired volunteers up to a series of simple electrodes and showed them around four hundred images, recording each signal into a database. When they were done, they then reversed the process and placed random images in front of the subjects. A computer in a room nearby recognized the relevant visual signal and produced an image of what the subject was seeing.’
Lopez frowned. ‘That’s not quite what we’re seeing here,’ she said.
‘The technology was considered by the scientists involved to be useful in developing a better understanding of cognitive thought, dream analysis, psychology and so on,’ Jarvis replied. ‘But the NSA was way ahead and had recognized the tech’ as being tremendously promising in the field of intelligence gathering, and they had made copies of earlier data during a discreet hacking operation from an NSA listening station in Hawaii.’
‘And then they militarized it,’ Ethan guessed.
Jarvis shrugged in agreement.
‘Of course they did,’ he said. ‘I can’t think of a technology that hasn’t been militarized or emerged as a result of military research. The NSA realized that the technological leap to go from seeing thoughts on a screen to seeing real–time imagery was not particularly great, requiring only a larger database of source imagery, better and smaller hardware and a way of installing that hardware into an unsuspecting host.’
‘That sounds like a virus or something,’ Lopez said with an expression of disgust.
‘In a sense that’s exactly what it is,’ Jarvis agreed. ‘Effectively, the NSA was developing a program to hack the human mind; to intercept signals on their way to the brain, code them into data and send them back here.’
Ethan shook his head in wonder.
‘And they did it,’ he murmured to himself. ‘How many federal and international laws does this Identity Mine of theirs break?’
‘It would probably be quicker to ask how many of them it doesn’t break,’ Jarvis admitted, ‘and the evidence obtained here could never be used in a court of law, much like that gathered by Operation Watchman. But it can lead law enforcement to catch criminals of all kinds in the actual process of committing their crimes. It’s the next best thing to predicting the future – watching the present play out in the perpetrator’s mind.’
Lopez shook her head. ‘How did they go from a handful of recorded images to this?’
‘The NSA picked up the technology but it was already moving quickly in the civilian field. The same Japanese firm that developed the initial technology then started looking into whether they could see dreams instead of thoughts. They started monitoring again, this time as the subjects were falling asleep and witnessing something known as hipnagogic imagery, the half–dreams we experience when falling asleep. They recorded the signals in the same way as before into a database and then let the subjects sleep while watching the monitors. Sure enough when the subjects entered REM, or Rapid–Eye–Movement sleep, which is normally associated with dreams, they could see the dreams in motion.’
‘Jesus,’ Lopez uttered. ‘That’s creepy.’
Ethan looked at the screens that were black, the ones with the strange lights leaping about across them.
‘They’re sleeping,’ he realized.
‘The observers see their dreams here too sometimes,’ Jarvis confirmed. ‘The lens of the human eyeball sees the world inverted, so it requires the brain to flip the image into something we can understand. When the subjects are dreaming, their brain automatically presents the images to them right–side up – so we then have to flip the dream images manually here on the screens to override the programming and make sense of what we’re seeing.’
Ethan moved closer to a railing and leaned against it as he overlooked the operatives and the big screens before him. He could see the people talking on the screens but there was little sound.
‘So they can see but not hear?’ he asked Jarvis.
‘The information from the subjects is visual only,’ Jarvis confirmed. ‘The lip reading skills of operatives assigned to this program and a small sonic implant ensure that some audio makes it through, enough to get a reasonable picture of what’s being discussed. Phone records from PRISM often complete the picture.’
‘How do they know the difference between what the subject’s thinking or dreaming and what they’re actually seeing?’ Lopez asked.
‘Different brainwaves,’ Jarvis explained, ‘the signals travel to different parts of the brain depending on if they’re purely visual or the product of our imagination. Experiments at the University of California, Berkeley, were able to produce images of scenes and events when the subjects were asked to recall those scenes and events, without ever having had a picture presented to them. So they’d be asked to think of something obvious, like the Eiffel Tower or the Golden Gate Bridge. Observers monitoring the subject’s brain waves in another room were easily able to distinguish the images and identify them. The feeds here in The Identity Mine are filtered to remove any thought signals, but they could also be altered to produce only images of the subject’s thoughts.’
Ethan stared at Jarvis. ‘Thought crimes?’
‘Wouldn’t be admissible as evidence,’ Jarvis reminded him. ‘We’re not in Minority Report territory yet.’
‘You’re not damned far from it,’ Lopez retorted. ‘How the hell did these subjects of yours end up being able to be watched like this? And what’s the link with China?’
‘The four NSA operatives who went missing from Kowloon, on route to a symposium on neurotechnology,’ Jarvis replied. ‘They were carrying copies of that early data taken from the Japanese labs who developed this technology, ten years before the first images of thoughts were successfully screened, which included their own detailed analysis and projected ideas for radically improving the technology. It’s now believed that the Chinese grabbed them, obtained the technology and then used the abducted computer scientists to make their own improvements.’
Ethan thought for a moment.
‘So you think that the implant we found inside Major General Thompson’s brain was fitted with this kind of technology?’
‘Pretty much,’ Jarvis replied. ‘That’s why the people who had control of Thompson didn’t have to be right on the scene when they initiated their attack. They could see what he could see, in real–time.’
‘Wouldn’t that have taken a lot of processing power?’ Lopez asked.
‘Yes,’ Jarvis agreed, ‘that’s why they needed a vehicle like their van, to contain a computer to decode the data and a monitor to watch the scene unfolding. But the implanted device need only be small and requires only enough power to transmit the data to the processing point.’
‘So the Chinese got hold of this technology,’ Ethan surmised, ‘and then they went one step further and added the ability to control the subject as well.’
‘That’s what we think happened,’ Jarvis agreed. ‘One of the NSA operatives’ remains washed up outside of Hong Kong a day ago. These guys were elite hackers, real computer geniuses. China would not have wanted to kill them without first extracting every last ounce of use from them. Who knows what they could have achieved in the last decade?’
‘Hacking human brains,’ Lopez murmured. ‘And these guys you’re watching here, they have implants too?’
‘Very small ones,’ Jarvis replied. ‘NSA agents maintained a permanent watch and when the subjects went for normal procedures at dentists or hospitals that required sedation at any time, they were able to use that time to insert small implants that wired into the frontal lobes to intercept and transmit data as it passed through the optical nerves and on to the visual cortex, building a complete visual picture of the subject’s field of view.’
‘They attached something to the optical nerve?’ Lopez mumbled in horror.
‘Apparently it’s quite easy,’ Jarvis replied. ‘Surgeons can pop the eyeball out of its socket and insert a small transmitter, then reposition the eyeball with the subject being completely unaffected. As long as they’re sedated, of course.’
‘And this occurs without their knowledge,’ Ethan figured.
‘What they don’t know will hurt them,’ Jarvis smiled in response. ‘Obviously we can’t risk apprehending these individuals directly, but using this technology means that we never have to get too close to them and they never actually realize they’re under surveillance.’
Lopez peered at one of the screens, which appeared to show a man brushing his teeth in front of a mirror. To her amazement, the man’s fuzzy visage on the screen closely matched his image in a photograph beneath the same screen.
‘So, how does this connect with Abrahem?’ she asked.
Ethan figured he had the answer.
‘Abrahem must have done some kind of deal with the Chinese,’ he surmised. ‘The Chinese would not have wanted to dirty their hands in Iraq for fear of causing an international incident, so they would have instead hired Iraqis or suitably corrupt Americans to implant devices into senior American personnel for the purpose of spying.’
‘First the surgeon, Muller,’ Jarvis confirmed. ‘He’s already confessed to being paid tremendous sums of money by the Chinese to insert mind–hacking devices into soldiers like General Thompson and others, although he swears he had no idea that this would be the outcome. He believed that the devices were some kind of high–tech trackers or bugs.’
‘So, China would have needed somebody to carry these devices into Iraq for them,’ Lopez realized. ‘That way, they could gain field access to senior military figures working in the country.’
‘They used the hospitals,’ Jarvis replied, ‘and targeted injured soldiers or personnel being treated fo
r minor ailments and such like. As far as Muller can recall, he hid the insertion of the devices while performing sinus drains under local anesthetic. The small size and design of the devices caused minimal discomfort for the wearer, but he has told us that they also caused nosebleeds from time to time.’
‘The list of possible carriers could run into the hundreds,’ Ethan said, ‘and many of them may be civilians now, scattered across the globe.’
‘We can’t focus on that many people,’ Lopez agreed. ‘If we can’t find Abrahem we’re not going to be able to stop him.’
‘If he’s targeting the Trans Pacific ceremony purposefully,’ Ethan said, ‘that means he must have planned this attack for some months. He would have had to be sure that the Presidents of both the United States and China were going to be in the same place at the same time. That narrows our list of potential targets down.’
‘To a couple of thousand,’ Jarvis replied. ‘The President has been informed of the threat but is showing no signs of backing out of the ceremony, so you’ll have to brief the administration yourselves.’
‘What?’ Lopez uttered.
‘You’ll be taken directly to Pennsylvania Avenue to deliver your own briefing to POTUS.’
Ethan blinked in surprise as Lopez frowned.
‘What’s POTUS?’ she asked.
Jarvis glanced at her, somewhat bemused. ‘President Of The United States, genius. You’d best do your hair.’
***
XXIX
‘Will the Chiefs of Staff be present?’ Ethan asked as he climbed back into the limousine.
‘I doubt it.’
‘And the directors of the intelligence and security services?’
‘I certainly hope not.’
Ethan glanced at Lopez as the limousine climbed out of the underground lot and into the late afternoon sunshine. ‘That means LeMay won’t be there.’
Jarvis leaned in conspiratorially as he replied.
‘The President wants to be updated personally on our progress. He knows that what’s happened at Fort Benning will break out globally through the media within days, and he wants every last piece of information at his disposal when the storm hits. That means us debriefing him now before we do anything else. Believe it or not he asked for the both of you personally.’
The Identity Mine (Warner & Lopez Book 3) Page 18