“Would you agree, then, that our first course of action is to determine if the suspect is indeed a member of Khan’s organization and his role, and tangentially the identity and role of this unknown man, if possible? And that, in this manner, we may also learn more about the radical group itself?”
“Yes, I agree that seems a reasonable point of entry.”
“Do you believe we can execute it successfully?”
“Given your past performance, your resources and the sanctioned rules of engagement, I do not see why that is not feasible.”
“Speaking of those, please confirm your acceptance of the Grid’s sanction to employ Roman Rules.”
“I acknowledge the sanction and accept it,” the Machine stated for the record.
“You are doing excellent work. I appreciate your accepting to support me on this. And thank you again for what you did in New York. I’m grateful.”
“It was a pleasure. I’m looking forward to our upcoming task. This one looks to be potentially consequential. I’ll do my best to watch your back.”
Their use of colloquial expressions was getting better and better. It bothered me sometimes.
“Thank you. Please end all images and ensure the Grid has a complete copy of this event.”
The ultra-high definition images in the center of the room popped out of existence – vanished. The indirect lighting of the study brightened and classical music – Chopin, I think – began to play softly in the background.
I stood there briefly, staring at the now-empty space in the center of the study, reflecting – not for the first time - on what had just taken place.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Early in the first decade of the 21st century, one of the Founders of the Grid – a mathematical prodigy – made sufficient sense of quantum entanglement, superposition and decoherence to enable the creation of the first quantum computer. This person had somehow done this in secrecy. The original theoretical physicists and computer engineers who had developed that first, utterly dazzling model of nearly artificial intelligence had become core members of the Grid and they continued to work unceasingly to make even better the type of magic they had discovered. The Machines currently in the Grid’s employ were fifth-generation quantum computers. Their computational capacity was sufficiently large and complex to enable them to find in short order a specific Facebook photograph among all of the data available on the World Wide Web. Their capacities and capabilities were staggering. What would take decades to process for a non-quantum machine of the very highest currently available capabilities took the Machines hours, if not minutes. Far simpler tasks took seconds or portions of them.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
CHAPTER 3 – Al Hodeidah: Arrival
Sweltering, oppressive heat and humidity. Those were my first impressions of Al Hodeidah as I exited the Saudi Air flight and marched down the mobile metal staircase to the tarmac.
During the several days following my initial interaction with the Ops Machine mind, we conducted a virtual reconnaissance of this city, in detail. I knew the physical layout of the airport, the city and its environs. We had looked closely at the locations where the suspected member of the Khan group had been seen and examined the operating areas around them, identifying the avenues of approach and egress, the choke points and, especially, the areas that offered limited or no visibility to observers and those that provided reasonable over-watch by the OGS.
Since the moment that we determined to enter the Yemen and begin our physical reconnaissance here, the Grid had kept a watchful eye on the activities of the Yemeni authorities, as best it could from afar, to determine their interest – if any – in our suspect and their interest in me. I had applied for and received a Yemeni visa through their Embassy in Lisbon. I was visiting as a professional photographer working for a French firm interested in ancient Yemeni architecture. Should the Yemeni authorities check my credentials, they would find that I was who my passport and immigration documents said I was – or at least, what the very polite person at the French firm who answered their inquiries would tell them, should they take the time to ask, or what Google would present to them, should they prefer a less taxing method of inquiry.
As I walked across the tarmac, camera bag slung over my shoulder, to the arrivals terminal, the heat baking off it, I checked again with the Machine on the interests of the Yemeni authorities. It informed me that there was no change in their apparent lack of interest in the suspected Khan group individual or me. Still, I knew that, given the highly underdeveloped state of Yemeni technological capabilities, its information was far less than reasonably certain, well below the Grid’s usual standard of assurance. I would need to do some gumshoe work of my own.
The arrival terminal was an oven, the drafts of the numerous overhead fans overcome by the number and proximity of human beings in its enclosed space. Two flies lifted off my sleeveless jacket and buzzed away. They were everywhere here. As I waited my turn in the queue, I checked the crowd, sensing for any interest in me, by anyone. An old and useful habit. While technology – especially the kind at my disposal – can provide a formidable advantage, I never count on it entirely. I like to think that my mind is as good as - even better in some ways - than the Machines’. After all, we are, each of us, ultimately responsible for ourselves.
At the immigration desk, the Yemeni policeman was in no rush to process my passport. They have a different rhythm to life here. You should respect it. After he waved me forward of the white line on the floor with the word “QIF” stenciled near it and I placed my passport on the counter in front of him, he continued his conversation with his colleague seated next to him. After nearly a minute, he turned to look at me, then opened my passport, looked at the photo page, entered some data on a computer keyboard and then checked the computer screen placed to his right front, then looked back at me, and again spoke to his colleague.
Again, the sub-miniature microphones implanted next to my inner ears sounded that brief, distinctive tone. The Machine informed me that the conversation of the two Yemeni policemen sitting at the immigration booth in front of me had nothing to do with me but rather concerned the salary increase that the Yemeni police force had been told by the government it would receive next year. The two policemen felt unappreciated by the State, that the increase did not reflect the increasingly dangerous nature of their work with radical groups seeking to establish a foothold in their country. We have similar interests, I thought.
“Nature of visit?” the policeman asked me in halting English.
“Business. I’m a professional photographer,” I responded, patting my camera bag.
“And what will you photograph?”
“Your city’s buildings.”
“Why?”
“To show their beautiful architecture to people who have never seen them.”
“You can do this?”
“No, I cannot, but the French company that I am working for can.”
“What is the name of the French company?” he asked.
“Reflets et Images.”
He typed something on his computer keyboard.
“How long will you stay?”
“A week,” I answered.
His colleague stood up and told him – as translated by the Machine – that he needed to go to the bathroom and smoke a cigarette. As he left the cabin, he told my fellow arriving travelers in the queue to my right to join the line in which I had been standing. One of them – he sounded English – voiced his understanding. “We’ll be here all bloody day now!”
My interrogator returned his attention to me and asked, “You stay where?”
“The Embassy Hotel.”
“A very nice hotel.”
Some more typing on the keyboard.
The Machine – ever attentive, as best it could be - informed me that the policeman had not entered anything out of the ordinary at his computer terminal,
simply my passport data, my occupation, the name of the French firm for which I was supposed to be working, and the name of the hotel that I had given him.
The policeman marked my passport with a Yemeni entry stamp and handed it back to me through the small opening at the bottom of the window that lay between us. I took it and thanked him. “Shukran,” I said.
He looked at me, his face forming a brief, appreciative smile, as he nodded. “Afwan”. A courtesy given, a courtesy returned.
I collected my one suitcase. As I was departing the arrivals building, I said to no one in particular, “All very normal.”
“No unusual interest in your arrival detected from Yemeni authorities or from any individual in your immediate proximity,” the Machine told me. It was always good to be traveling with a friend, I thought, even if the friend was several thousand miles away.
The Machine’s assessment tallied with my own personal sensing of the operating environment. As I was now entering it, all seemed to be well. I pushed open the glass doors to exit the building and enter this place of dazzling sunshine, humidity and heat. Two flies landed on my camera bag.
CHAPTER 4 - Reconnaissance
The open windows of the taxi had provided the only conditioning to the air inside the vehicle as my driver darted here and there among the late morning traffic in his effort to move me from airport to hotel. The lobby of the Embassy Hotel employed mechanical means of heat reduction and, as a result, was much cooler. The heat I don’t mind at all, though I prefer dryness to it. I also did not mind the allure of the young woman who was managing Reception when I walked into the hotel. She had a light olive and smoothly soft complexion; long, raven-black hair; dark eyes; and a scent of jasmine. I immediately found her attractive.
She smiled at me courteously as I approached.
“I have a reservation,” I offered.
“Your name please,” she countered in accented though excellent English and in a sparkling tone. It brought a smile to my face. It’s a weakness that I know I have.
I told her the name I was using. She looked in her register – no computer terminal or associated paraphernalia anywhere in sight – to confirm what I had just said and that I did indeed have a reservation. She asked me for my passport. I gave it to her.
In formal Arabic, I asked, “You are from Al Hodeidah?”
She looked up from my passport with surprise and curiosity in her eyes, I thought. She responded in kind, saying, “Well, yes, my family is from near here.”
I responded, telling her – reverting to English – that my talents in her most cultured language were not what I would desire them to be. As you know, Arabic in this place is among its purest forms. She smiled slightly and briefly at my statement of cultural failing and graciously said, “Your Arabic is very good.”
I admired her elegant manner even more.
I ventured on in English. “I apologize for being so rude, but your English is excellent. I had not expected it. I thought you might be from somewhere else. Please forgive me.”
She seemed to appreciate my self-effacing manner, lowered her eyes from mine, and pushed a form toward me. “Will you please complete the hotel registration?” I did so, entering the words “professional photographer” where the form asked for my occupation, signed it, and handed it back to her. She turned and took a key from the rack of room keys behind her. She handed it to me. “You are in Room 110. Mohammed will show you.” She looked at me and with a modest smile finished her welcome, “Ahlan wa sahlan.”
I sensed no subterfuge from her. Her actions and reactions had seemed to me to be naturally pleasant and hospitable – relaxed and unsuspecting. I didn’t think the police or anyone else had spoken to her about me, in advance of my arrival. I nodded to her, turned and followed Mohammed – an old and nearly toothless gentleman – to Room 110. As he lifted my suitcase a fly ascended from it and flew off deeper into the lobby.
When the Grid makes reservations in a hotel for an Operator, it will always attempt to acquire a room on the first floor, at or near the end of a hallway. The reasons for this – as you know – are entirely practical. After receiving a slightly generous tip, Mohammed left me in Room 110, on the first floor at the very end of its single corridor.
I placed my camera bag on a chair and took off my jacket and hung it in the nearby wardrobe. I fiddled with my smartphone and then slowly walked about the room, as any traveler does, examining what will be his home for as long as he is there: the small sitting area, the sleeping area, the bathroom, and the reasonably spacious outside balcony. A fly flew out of the closet and began to move about the room.
I removed the charging unit for the smartphone from my camera bag and plugged it into a wall socket. I connected my smartphone to the charger and placed it on a table nearby. I sat down in one of the chairs in the sitting area, put my feet up on the low table, closed my eyes and waited.
A short time later, the Machine’s tone sounded next to my inner ears. I opened my eyes, stared off into the middle distance and listened attentively. “The OGS had unobstructed observation of your movement from the airport to the hotel. There was no apparent mobile surveillance of you during that movement. There are no acoustic or visual surveillance devices in this room, on its balcony or in the spaces and rooms above, below and adjacent aimed at this room. Neither are there any in the hotel lobby. The OGS reports no satellites presently specifically observing the Yemen, Al Hodeida, our operating arena here or this hotel. Should this change I will, of course, immediately inform you. So far, so good.”
I tilted my head at this last expression by the Machine. I wondered if it had been provided this wording in its programming or if – building on its quantum computing capabilities – had discovered it on its own. I thought my speculation was reasonable, given what I had seen it capable of doing, first-hand. “Yes, so far, so good. Thank you,” I said.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I departed the hotel in the early afternoon. As I left the room, after putting on my jacket and placing my camera bag on my shoulder, a fly came to rest on the ceiling just above the room door. In the lobby, the atmosphere was subdued, the glaring outside light deflected from direct entrance by the levered shutters that someone had extended out and up from the windows at a 45 degree angle. The ceiling fans spaced overhead about the lobby turned slowly. There were a few people – all European-looking – sitting near the entrance to the hotel’s small restaurant. I saw a man speaking with the attractive young woman at Reception. In profile, he looked local. The man was leaning toward her, physically close, pointing at a paper on the counter between them. He was speaking in what seemed to me to be an officious, superior manner. His words were lost to me in the distance and body angles separating us. She appeared to have accepted a subordinate position in the verbal exchange – allowing his closeness, yet not reciprocating.
I approached them. The man turned to look at me. I nodded at him and memorized his face. I spoke to the young woman. “I am going for a walk. May I have my passport, please?”
She walked farther along behind the counter, collected my passport from a drawer and handed it to me. I thanked her and went on to ask if she could have someone check the light in my bathroom. It had not been working properly earlier, I told her. She moved farther off along the counter, away from the man, and wrote something in a notebook. “Of course,” she said. I handed her my room key and told her that I found the room comfortable and pleasant. She smiled briefly again. Using the interruption I had created in her interaction with the man, she continued to ignore him and began to attend to other work.
As I walked away, the man turned away from the Reception counter but did not say anything to me. I hefted the camera bag higher onto my shoulder, donned my sunglasses and continued on my way, departing the hotel through its main doors and walking again into blinding light and sweltering heat and humidity. The wind had picked up quite a bit. I didn’t
care for that. Chance playing its role.
“Your destination is 723 meters from you.” The Machine and I had already agreed on the preliminary steps of my reconnaissance. I stopped and looked about, as if getting my bearings. In doing so, I noticed nothing and no one in my immediate vicinity that struck me as unusual. I was always attentive to the operating environment and the situation it presented me. They had told us this in our initial training: no matter how powerful and seductive it seemed, never come to fully rely on the technology - even a quantum-capable Machine mind supported by an OGS. Always remember that it is not perfect, they said.
As I stood there, I sub-vocalized in the area of my throat, “Do you know who the man was in the lobby talking with the young woman at Reception?” My lips hardly moved.
“He appears to be a local individual of some influence in Al Hodeida, perhaps in port operations. Before your entry into the lobby, he arrived at the hotel and approached the young woman, who appeared to know him. He told the young woman that he had received the application of her brother for work with his company and that he would give it his personal consideration. Just before your arrival, he asked the woman if she would have dinner with him some evening. She answered that he was wearing a wedding ring and her family would not approve. The man had said, ‘Old ways are changing,’ but did not pursue the subject further, following your interruption. Also, prior to this man’s arrival at the hotel, another man visited. The OGS had detected this other man departing the local police headquarters and walking directly to this hotel 20 minutes prior to the arrival of the man you nodded at. He also spoke with the young woman and showed her official identification - although she also seemed to know him. The identification he showed appeared to be that of the local Yemeni police. He asked to see your passport, examined it, and asked her the time and manner of your arrival at the hotel. The woman answered truthfully. He made some notes in a small notebook and then engaged in personal discussion with her, asking if her father’s health was recovering and that she pass his regards to him. She said that she would be pleased to do so. He thanked her and departed the hotel. The OGS was able to track his characteristics back to the police headquarters building.”
The Grid Page 3