The two men casually glanced about the chamber and at us, a couple seemingly engrossed in private conversation in a dimly lit room. Perhaps sensing our intimacy, they withdrew, disappearing around the entranceway, the sound of their footsteps on the ancient stone floor receding, as they moved away to rejoin their group. I let go of her shoulders as she turned to face me. “You are quick,” she pressed on. “Thank you.”
“Where are you going with this?” I asked.
“You mean Khan and his group?”
“Yes.”
“Five days ago, the Chinese observed an individual they believe might be a member of Khan’s group meeting an individual unknown to them. There was no audio take. Photographs, however, were taken. From those, we have been able to potentially identify the unknown individual.”
We stopped our pacing. She still held my hand, maintaining our image. Turning to watch my face, she went on, “We believe he may be a senior ISI officer, a Colonel, who is never allowed to meet with foreign intelligence service representatives. He is a member of the section of the ISI responsible for the security of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program. We believe his name is Amir Trak. I say potentially due only to the less than excellent quality of the Chinese agent’s photographs.”
I thought I could see where she was going with this and why she was having this meeting with me. “And you suspect …” I began.
“Yes,” she interjected softly, wanting to keep the initiative, still watching my reaction to this information, certainly noting my more alert posture and focused attention. “We suspect the worst, naturally. But we need to be certain, absolutely certain. Is the individual the Chinese were watching a member of this radical group? If he is, what is his function in that organization? Is the unknown man in the photograph the ISI officer we suspect and is he acting essentially alone or as part of a rogue group within the ISI? In the worst case, we must of course stop Khan from obtaining a nuclear weapon or fissile material from which to construct one. In all cases, we would like you to determine if this new radical terrorist group can be destroyed. If you determine it can, we would ask that you be prepared to do so.” Eggshells – many of them - underfoot.
An Operator is always given the opportunity to decline a mission. The Grid understands that it is folly for an Operator to undertake its type of work if the Operator feels, for whatever practical reason, that he or she is not capable of succeeding. Such declinations must be formal and in writing. In this way, the Grid keeps score.
She looked intently at me and pressed on, “Of course, we could only ask someone fully capable of success to undertake this operation. It is far too important and dangerous.”
Red warning flares arched over the scoreboard in my mind. I stared at her, assessing.
Addiction, curiosity, ego, and heavy doses to feed them all - they wanted this done, badly. Still, I waited to see just what they believed was at stake.
The fly approached us and settled on my shoulder.
She kept her gaze intent on me but let go of my hand as she delivered the coup de grace. She wanted no personal distraction at this precise moment. She said, “It is of sufficient importance to us to authorize Roman Rules throughout.”
It was for the third reason they had wanted me to meet with her – for her to say those words to me, personally.
Roman Rules. Khan’s group frightened them.
She noted my left eyebrow rise. Understanding its meaning, she smiled at me, I thought somewhat sadly, and said, “Do not undertake this one lightly, my friend. There may be demons here.”
She must have noticed the gleam in my eyes at those words. Ever since my youth, I have been fearful of demons – though their nature changed over the years - and my defensive reaction has been to try to slay them. She knew this, of course, and was perhaps regretful to use that against me as she asked, “You’re certain?”
How could they present me with demons to slay in some misty, dark place somewhere and expect me to refuse? They didn’t. They knew me after these many years. I nodded.
She briefly took my hand again. “Then you know the formality.”
I looked at her sadly smiling and very beautiful face and said only what I could say. “I accept.”
She looked at me with her sad eyes, warmly squeezed my hand and finished our meeting. “Thank you, and you will be careful out in the world, won’t you?”
She took a step toward me, leaned upward, softly kissed my left cheek, and then turned and left this magnificent shrine to curiosity and daring. I watched her go. Her perfume lingered. As I said, they can get you killed.
The chamber was darker when I departed shortly later. The fly followed me.
CHAPTER 2 – The Douro
The villa was situated on the banks of the Douro River, thirty or so kilometers from Porto. The city had once been named Portucale – the origin of the name of the territory that would become Portugal – a name derived from Roman times. The river passed lazily in front of me as it meandered toward the west, to the sea. The setting sun created deep contrasts in the visible light among the rocky crags of the steep hillside on the far bank and on the distant vineyard-covered hills beyond. The summer breeze rustled through the trees. It all created a feeling of harmony and tranquility. This feeling resonated well with me here and now. After all, my present task was aimed broadly at maintaining an environment where such human feelings could be experienced, an environment that was largely anathema to the ultra-extreme exclusionary vision of Khan and his group. He represented a potential, virulent threat to what the Grid perceived as its core values. This frightened it - much as Hannibal’s Carthage had frightened the Imperium of Italy. Therefore - Roman Rules. Roughly translated – do unto them before they do unto you, by – nearly - any means necessary and – nearly - without regard to immediate consequences. I say nearly because we are not allowed to act as beasts when let off the leash.
The villa was hidden by a large stand of trees from the country road that passed to the south. Like the Grid – which owned it – the villa was there, but difficult to see. It was from this calm and docile place on the banks of the slowly meandering Douro that we would begin to formulate a series of actions aimed very deliberately at dissuading Khan and his group of any perception that they could deeply influence the course of human events.
I turned away from the last of the day’s sunlight warmly reflecting off the river and made my way back up the path through the shade of the trees to the house and entered it.
“Lights,” I said.
The lower floor of the villa was immediately filled with soft light, off-white in color. Soothing to the eye and mind. The indoor temperature was twenty-one degrees Centigrade with no perceptible humidity. Essentially, perfect.
“Dim the windows, please,” I said next.
“Done,” the house responded in a pleasant female voice. I knew from experience that, from outside, the windows had darkened, no longer visually revealing the interior of the villa, while from the inside, I was able to continue to witness the finishing touches of nature’s artistry on the landscape.
“Security report, please,” I said.
The house responded, “The Grid has dedicated one Operations-Grade Satellite and an Ops Machine mind to support you, exclusively.”
“Who is the Machine, please?”
“The Machine responds to that word. You have worked with it before. This Machine supported you in New York.”
The Machine’s work in New York had been uncanny, even magical, ready to act mercilessly, certainly saving me - as is said in those adventure novels - from almost certain death in utterly dire circumstances, in spite of my best efforts. It had been a very close thing and I was grateful to it and its angel of death attitude – if that could be said of an Ops Machine mind. I have worked with others, and this particular mind represented first-class support. Its exclusive assignment to me, as well as that of the OGS, provided another indication of the depth of the Grid’s concern and the seriousness of its
intentions.
“Please continue.”
“On my grounds are deployed a multitude of acoustic, visual, thermal and seismic Devices. The satellite is providing surveillance in all spectrums out to fifty kilometers in all lateral directions from me and monitoring the activities of all other orbiting devices capable - singly or in tandem - of surveilling me. The Ops Machine mind reports no apparent unusual activity that could suggest knowledge of our presence here or interest in it. My Personal Devices are providing surveillance throughout my property and out beyond it to a distance of three kilometers. The collation of the information provided by them reports nothing alerting or curious. The Grid is up and fully operational. You have full access and connectivity. Communication channels with the Grid for the duration are redundant to the fifth order. My in-extremis retrograde plan for you remains the same. Would you like me to review it?”
I had been here before. “No, thank you. That will not be necessary. Please complete the security report.”
“You are safe,” the house stated.
“Thank you.”
You will come to understand that the Grid’s overarching strategy and tactics rely on bringing to bear overwhelming capability to whatever task is at hand.
I interacted with my own Personal Devices, all deployed in the house and on its surrounding property. Although not providing as extensive coverage as those belonging to the house, they were independent of them and therefore of great value to me. Nothing is ever guaranteed. The Grid recognized this and provided Operators with such independent, personal means to verify its information – just in case of that one in a billion chance. They corroborated the house’s information.
I walked into the spacious study. The room’s windows were shrouded in heavy, light-colored drapery. On the broad desk to one side of the room lay what appeared to be a large, very thin computer screen. I stood in front of it, admiring its elegant simplicity – no keyboard or mouse or separate central processor. It fit well with the house. I sat down in the upholstered and comfortable desk chair that rested in front of the screen. I swiveled the chair away from it, looked toward the center of the room and said, “Machine, please show me the location of the meeting of the ISI official and the suspected member of Khan’s group.”
The lights dimmed and a hologram of the planet Earth was projected in the center of the room, as real as any image I had ever seen of it viewed from space. A mostly blue orb of magnificent beauty suspended in mostly darkness, the hologram turned on its axis until it showed an image of the planet with the Arabian Peninsula at its center, facing me.
The image slowly exploded, enlarging, telescoping inward, burrowing down closer toward the planet, down through the cloud cover, land masses and seas, expanding, taking on ever-increasing detail, finally centering on and coming to rest one kilometer above the city of Al Hodeidah in the Yemen – suspended in front of me in this room in ultra-high definition clarity. I was always amazed at what a Grid Operations-Grade Satellite could do. I was looking at a real-time image. In its upper right quadrant appeared the local date, time, temperature, geographical coordinates of the area being viewed, and the altitude of the view. A red dot appeared on the image, marking the meeting location, as I had requested. It was in the north-northwest portion of the city, near its limits.
“Please refine the top-down image of the meeting location to 200 meters.”
The image zoomed farther inward toward the planet’s surface and stopped when the altitude indicator in the upper-right quadrant of the image read 200. A small red-bordered box replaced the dot to mark the meeting location. People, motorbikes, a few small automobiles, and some animals were moving through the scene. I examined the meeting site and the immediate surrounding area – a warren of small streets leading in all directions among the three and four story buildings of an extensive residential area.
“The Chinese report stated that its intelligence officer had followed the suspected member of the Khan group to the meeting location from somewhere else in the city. Please show me that trace.”
The image zoomed out to an altitude of 332 meters. A yellow line appeared on the image showing the requested trace. “Please zoom in on the starting point, down to 52.3 meters.”
The image zoomed back in and stopped precisely at 52.3 meters. I do that from time to time – just to check.
The starting point was a café.
“Machine, did the Grid have any resources operating near the viewed area or surveilling it around the time of the meeting?”
A male voice responded, “No.”
“To the Grid’s knowledge, were any persons or groups of persons representing any organization – governmental or otherwise – operating near the viewed area or surveilling it around the time of the meeting?”
There was a nearly imperceptible delay. “A high-grade commercial satellite belonging to a European consortium was conducting an urban development scan of the viewed city for the World Health Organization around that time.”
“Did the commercial satellite visually capture any images related to our interest here?”
“Yes.”
“Please describe them.”
“According to the Chinese intelligence report, the meeting in which we are interested took place between 1234-1240 hours, local time. At that time precisely – according to the internal clock of the commercial satellite – two individuals were captured in the images taken by the satellite at the specific location of the meeting, as reported by the Chinese. The satellite images of the two individuals – though not clear enough to provide positive identification – appear to match the descriptions provided by the Chinese. Of course, if the Chinese report is reliable and accurate, it is reasonable to believe that the images of the two individuals meeting at that specific location at that precise time could only be the two individuals of interest to us.”
Immediately below and separated from the hologram appeared an image of two persons at a location that appeared similar to that of the red-bordered box shown in the hologram. The Machine superimposed the two locations. Identical, to all appearances.
“Concur. Please continue.”
“Using the stored images in the commercial satellite, I was able to follow the image characteristics of the suspected Khan group individual from the meeting site to a subsequent location. Regrettably, those stored satellite images did not contain sufficient post-meeting traces of the ISI officer. Images that may have corresponded to the Chinese intelligence officer were only sporadically available and provided few useful data points.”
“Please show me the location of the destination of the suspect following the meeting.”
The hologram zoomed out to 300 meters and its focus moved southeast, farther into the heart of the city, to a lateral distance of about half a kilometer. A red dot appeared over what appeared to be one of a plethora of multi-story buildings.
“Please zoom in to an altitude of 100 meters.”
The Machine complied, providing me an image slightly off-center from the top of the building. What I was looking at appeared to be a three story structure with a sign affixed near the top of the third floor.
“Do the commercial satellite images provide any visuals of the suspect leaving that building?”
“No. The focus of the satellite moved beyond this area of interest 20 minutes after the suspect entered the marked building.”
“Would the angular coverage of the commercial satellite have provided evidence of the subject exiting the building from any of the apparent four sides of the structure?”
“Yes,” said the Machine.
I was thinking that even twenty minutes is a relatively long time.
“Were there any other images of interest?” I asked.
“One other,” the Machine said.
“Please describe.”
“A Japanese tourist group was in the immediate vicinity of the meeting location when it took place. They were on a guided, walking tour of the city as part of a world tou
r holiday. One of the Japanese stepped away from the group to take a photo of it. She later published this photograph, among others, on her Facebook webpage.”
An image of the photograph appeared, again below the hologram.
The Machine continued its description. “The meeting location is to the right of the tourist group, out of view in this image. I draw your attention to the individual here.” A red-bordered circle appeared around the photographed image of a large, though not tall, man standing in a doorway. “At the time the meeting ended and both participants moved off in different directions, this man moved away from this doorway and appears to have followed the suspect. I draw this tentative conclusion based on images from the commercial satellite that show glimpses of him following the same trace as the suspect. Additionally, those images show this same person moving into another building or simply its doorway 32 meters before the building that the suspect entered. This person did not reappear for the approximate 20-minute period that the commercial satellite remained focused on our area of interest.”
“Who is he?”
“We do not know. The photograph was taken with a device of sufficient quality for useful magnification.” The image below the hologram enlarged to focus on the man’s face. The quality was quite good. I memorized it. “Still, our resources cannot identify him.”
Although highly unusual in the developed countries, where everyone and everything is tagged and labeled somewhere in some electronic database, this is not uncommon in the under-developed countries, where local, regional or national governments to varying degrees do not have the capacity or capability to do so, let alone know who all of their citizens are.
“Speculate, please.”
“The suspect is of interest to someone or some group, perhaps a non-technically-capable intelligence organization, perhaps Yemeni or Pakistani. Also, the other unknown man could have been providing security for the suspect or the ISI officer or could represent some other variant possibility. In all cases, you will need to be cautious of him and any group he may represent, as well as the secret intelligence services that have already demonstrated interest in this affair.”
The Grid Page 2