His physical closeness and her subordinate manner. Very much a male world here. Her gratefulness for the interruption more clearly understood. Good fortune that the policeman was a family friend – someone to perhaps look after her - I thought.
I found that I was tapping the tips of my forefingers and thumbs together, unconsciously. Such things had become a matter of habit after the first year or so working operationally for the Grid.
The Machine said, “Thank you. From where you are standing, proceed to your right front and along the main street for 695 meters.” I took a tourist map out of my jacket pocket and began to look at it, as if relying on its information to find my way.
I heard the door of the hotel open and close and the approach of someone walking in my direction over the graveled drive of the hotel. A moment later, the man who had been speaking with the young woman at Reception walked by me and headed off on foot away from the hotel. He did not look at me.
The Machine continued, “The OGS has visual line-of-sight in all spectrums and full electromagnetic interaction. I have now calibrated and registered all of your physical, mental and vocal signatures, the signatures of your Physical Interfaces, and all Devices, to include your PDs, in this environment.” Devices – I had always thought that word incomplete to describe the nano-bots to which it referred. It sounded so benign. I found it somewhat surreal to know that the OGS was – at this very moment – looking directly at me from its geo-synchronous perch 500 kilometers above the surface of the ground on which I stood.
In the early afternoon, when most people were at home or in a café escaping the mid-day light and heat, there would be few people about. This would present a clearer picture to the OGS, the Machine and me of whether anyone was interested in me. If they were, they would surely follow me, beginning now. I turned to my right front and strode off.
Al Hodeida is not one of your top tourist stops. Still, tourists and other Westerners – marine merchantmen, sailors, businessmen, historians, and photographers (like me) – do pass through this city on the Red Sea. It is an old place and many foreigners have passed through it over the centuries. I drew only modest attention, mostly from children and young men, the former wanting candy or money and the latter, being more entrepreneurial, seeking to be my personal guide for my entire stay in their city and at local – not tourist – prices.
Twenty minutes or so after I departed the hotel, the Machine advised me to turn right. I referred to my map, looked briefly about me and walked up the side street to my right. I had noted nothing unusual in my immediate environment during my walk from the hotel to this street corner. I had stopped several times to take photographs in different directions, sometimes of the children, allowing me a reasonably comprehensive perspective. The Machine would immediately inform me if the OGS witnessed anything suspect – anything at all. It had said nothing of such things.
The building that was my destination was located about 100 meters up the side street on the opposite side from where I walked. As I approached it, I crossed the street, looking to my left for traffic. As I did so, I checked again with the Machine. I reached the other side of the street and entered the Al Hodeidah Police Headquarters. I unzipped my camera jacket. Three flies immediately lifted from it.
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The climate in the interior of the Al Hodeidah Police Headquarters was modestly cooler than that outside. A number of ceiling fans were turning and swaying slightly in their housings hung from the ceiling of the large room that I was entering, displacing the air at their level, allowing the warm air below to rise. Given the time of day, there were not many policemen or women present and even fewer civilians. An older woman dressed in black from head to foot was talking expressively with a uniformed policewoman and, at the same time, shaking a much younger man at her side by the shoulder. He had a swollen left eye. An errant son, I thought.
As I approached the large counter, a uniformed, middle-aged and balding policeman sitting behind it looked up at me, then turned immediately to a much younger colleague behind him, looking at some papers on a desk, and called out his name. “Sa’id!” Sa’id looked up from his papers and toward his middle-aged colleague, who first pointed at me, then waved him forward to attend to me, saying, “Anglish.” Sa’id looked up at me and then moved slowly toward the counter.
“You need help?” he asked in heavily accented English when I presented myself at the counter.
Two flies flew near us. One landed on the counter. The policeman ignored it – there were many in the room. I followed his example.
“Yes, shukran. I am a photographer visiting Yemen and your city for a few days.” I patted my camera slung over my shoulder. He nodded his head. “While I am in Al Hodeidah, I would like to take some pictures of the old part of the city.” He nodded again. “Are there any problems with me doing that?”
“Please, your passport.” I gave it to him. He looked at my passport photograph, then back at me. “You stay in what hotel?”
“The Embassy Hotel,” I answered. He nodded again. He turned and went to look in a large notebook lying on the countertop and then punched at a keyboard and regarded the results of those actions on a computer screen. He examined entries in both and looked again inside my passport. He then turned to his older colleague and spoke to him in Arabic.
“He is explaining your statements to his colleague, stating that it matches the immigration record and what was written by our hotel policeman friend in the foreign visitors’ file, and asking if there are any unusual limitations on photography in the old part of the city.”
The older policeman thought for a moment and then responded. Sa’id turned back to me. “You should not take pictures of mosques or of people without asking them. You can ask hotel for guide who speaks Anglish.”
“That is what the older gentleman said.”
I took my passport back, thanked him, turned, walked back to the main doors, and exited the building.
I would have preferred not to have gone into the police building, but I needed to ensure that we could adequately surveill the activities in it, to ensure I knew if they became interested in me. Of course, the Machine and I had already discussed this in the house on the Douro River and had calculated that the risk was acceptable. My brief interaction with the Machine as I had crossed the street, just before entering the police building, had confirmed that assessment. Two minds are always better than one. As I exited the Police Headquarters building, I turned left to return to the hotel by a more circuitous route.
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My walk back to the hotel, guided intermittently by a few words from the Machine, took me to the edge of and briefly into the old part of the city. I took numerous photographs of various structures, working my way along the periphery of the old part of the city. Given the heat and humidity of the day, I drew little attention from the few inhabitants who were out and about.
When I thought I was about five minutes from the hotel, I sub-vocally hailed the Machine. “Tell me about the Devices in the Police Headquarters building.”
“Your three Devices are functioning within parameters. They have performed a reconnaissance of the interior of the building. The top floor is dedicated to storage space for office equipment and supplies. The one subterranean level contains detention cells and weapons and ammunition lockers. There are no persons presently occupying the detention cells. The ground and first floors of the building contain the office spaces of the police headquarters. There are twelve offices on the ground floor, plus the large, open working area that you saw earlier today. On the first floor, there are twenty offices. Eighteen of the individual offices appear occupied. Presently, there are twenty-six police officials in the building: six in the open work area on the ground floor and twenty in various offices on the ground and first floors. The office of the Al Hodeid
ah Police Chief is on the first floor. He is not presently in the building. Additionally, we know via the OGS that the Police Headquarters is connected only by telephone, both landline and mobile, with the Ministry of the Interior in Sana’a and other police headquarters in Yemen, such as Sana’a and Aden. It maintains communication with its local police personnel by landline and mobile telephone and also radio communication to police vehicles and selected fixed police stations. I have access to the entirety of their technical communications network. The Police Headquarters does possess an independent internal intranet that includes the immigration terminals at the airport, but it is not shielded. Therefore, we will not have the challenges that we faced in New York last year.”
“Too bad,” I commented. “We learned a lot in New York about how to do that. I’m sure you would have liked to try your hand at that again with what we now know.”
“Most certainly,” the Machine responded.
I smiled at this last alpha-personality remark. I liked that about the Machine. I had needed those exceptionally aggressive attributes before and would need them, I was certain, in the future. “Please continue,” I said.
“There has been no disturbing activity concerning you within the Al Hodeidah police force or between it and other relevant Yemeni police or government offices. This is based on all information available from the Devices and from my monitoring of all Yemeni telephonic and radio police communications. After you left the building, I focused two of the Devices on the ground floor to over-watch for any personal communication concerning you. After your departure, one of the Devices monitored a discussion between the younger uniformed policemen you spoke with at the police headquarters and the policeman who had checked on your arrival at the hotel. The younger policeman mentioned to the other your visit to the headquarters and your conversation. The other man had only responded, ‘More foreigners with cameras; they are addicted to taking photographs,’ and shrugged his shoulders. The younger policeman also asked the older man if he had seen Laila and spoken with her. The other man appeared briefly embarrassed, frowned and turned away.”
So her name was Laila and it appeared she might have a potential suitor, a policeman no less. I hoped so. I wondered if he knew of the attentions of his competitor.
I was nearing the hotel. “And the Devices at the hotel?”
“The Devices have provided continuous surveillance of the lobby, the corridor outside your room, and in your room. The hotel staff, a young woman, made up the room and a young man has checked the lighting in the bathroom of your room. There have been no other visits today by the police. There have been no persons loitering in the corridor near your room. There have been no persons present in the lobby that have looked suspect to me. When you arrive back in the room, you should conduct another electronic sweep – just to be certain.”
I rounded a corner and walked up the graveled drive to the Embassy Hotel. The Machine concluded its report. “You have not been surveilled during today’s bit of gumshoeing.”
There it is again, I thought. “Thank you.”
There was an older man at Reception who gave me the key to Room 110. I had hoped to see and speak with the attractive young woman - Laila.
After I entered my room, I saw one of the Devices resting on the ceiling above the door – very much as when I had departed hours earlier. The Device dropped away from the ceiling and began its tour of the room. I followed suit with my smartphone in hand, looking at it as if checking, perhaps, for missed calls. After completing my rounds, I again plugged it in to its charging unit and set it down. Again, I waited for the tone. It came and the Machine told me that all appeared to be well.
When the Grid is putting a person it desires to be one of its Operators through its lengthy, grueling and bewildering training regime, one of the first things they tell him or her is that - truth be told - much of an Operator’s work is simply tedious. I am a witness: they were telling the truth.
I ate in the hotel restaurant in the mid-evening, mentally reviewing the day’s events. True to its nature, after this initial day of reconnaissance, the Grid was in play in Al Hodeidah and no one knew it was here.
I thought briefly of the young woman at Reception.
I retired shortly afterward and slipped comfortably into sleep. Friendly things watched over me, both near and far.
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The Grid is certain that no other individual or group has developed quantum-computing machines. Such an event is the Grid’s second-most important information requirement. If the Grid believes such an event has taken place or is about to take place, it will intervene to control, obliterate or prevent it. The Grid needs dominance, above all, in this domain, to continue to maintain its technological hegemony. The Grid has this certainty of unilateral possession of quantum computing because once it had such staggering computational power at its disposal, it took the next logical step to both further develop its capacities and capabilities and to protect itself. It broke all cryptography then in use by all organizations and individuals on the planet and developed and employed for itself alone quantum cryptography. This meant that the Grid had access to the communications between anyone or anything, anywhere on the planet or orbiting it that employed technology linked to computers that interface with the World Wide Web and satellites. This also meant that no other organization of any type could decipher the Grid’s electronic communications or databases. They were totally secure.
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CHAPTER 5 – Tag
I was – somewhere. I didn’t recognize where I was, but I felt I had been here in the past, at some time. It was familiar. Wherever I was, I knew that I could not – must not – fail at what it was I was doing, at all costs. Must not fail.
I also knew that I should pay attention to the whistling sound in the background – like a train whistle. Something to pay attention to – train whistles – especially if you’re approaching a blind crossing.
I came wide awake with a start, fully alert, without moving a muscle, as they had trained us. I didn’t yet know why the Machine had awakened me from a deep sleep so suddenly – up through the many levels from where I had been comfortably resting. My heart rate at first spiked, then slowed again. My eyelids fluttered briefly without opening. All of this in seconds.
The whistling sound had been engineered for me personally, for my psyche. The sound signaled to my mind - in whatever level of activity - a matter that required my immediate attention. I had very nearly been killed in my youth by a train. The sound of its whistle vibrating my bones as it flashed by me, whipping my clothes and skin, less than an arm’s length away. It had been something to do with a dare – what they call a significant emotional event. Motionless, I paid attention.
“No danger. You are physically alone,” were the Machine’s first words to me. I relaxed, somewhat. Monitoring my physical and mental biometrics via the OGS, the Machine knew that I was fully awake. I opened my eyes. The Machine continued, “The time is 0504. At 0405, the OGS and Devices at the Al Hodeidah Police Headquarters monitored a communication between a police patrol in the old part of the city and the Al Hodeidah Police Headquarters. The patrol reported finding the body of a man lying in a small alleyway. The man had been stabbed in the lower right side of his back and his throat had been slit. The man was Asian in appearance and carried a Chinese passport.”
I sat up.
“The police headquarters notified the Chief of Police, who, in turn, telephoned the Yemeni Minister of the Interior at his residence and informed him of the events as he knew them. The Minister telephoned the Chinese Embassy in Sana’a and spoke with the Chinese Ambassador, telling him that an individual carrying a Chinese passport in the name of Huang Li had been found dead, apparently murdered, in Al Hodeidah. The Ambassador expressed surprise and grief. He told the Minister that the Embassy would immediately send its security officer to Al Hodeidah to interac
t with local police authorities to address these events. He asked the Minister to facilitate that interaction. The Minister stated that he would do all he could to assist and determine what had transpired. He expressed his condolences and those of the Yemini government. At 0440, the Chinese Embassy sent an urgent, encrypted communication to Beijing, to the Ministry of State Security, reporting the apparent death of Huang Li, one of its field operatives.”
I stood up from the bed and began to dress. Sub-vocalizing, I asked, “Is Huang Li the same Chinese intelligence officer who submitted the original report that drew our attention here?”
“His was the name over which the original report was submitted to the Chinese Ministry of State Security. We have compared his passport photograph to the very brief satellite images that we believe we have of him earlier. Although not unequivocal, they are not dissimilar.”
“What of the OGS?”
“The OGS localized the communication of the police patrol. The site from which it was made is approximately 25 meters from the building into which we saw our suspect enter. The alleyway where the body was found connects with another that passes on the north side of this building.”
“So the Chinese intelligence operative was getting too close for their comfort?”
“That would appear a reasonable assessment.”
“What more from the OGS? Any visuals?”
“I’ve transferred what I have to your Physical Interfaces should you wish to view them as I report this information.”
I went over to my camera bag and took out my smartphone, gave it a few seconds to read my biometrics, and then felt a momentary vibration communicating its acknowledgement of me. The PI’s screen lit up and I asked it to show me the images to which the Machine was referring. Immediately, I was looking at the relevant high definition video. The video followed the Machine’s narrative, displaying red-bordered squares or rectangles to highlight areas on the ground or persons to which the Machine referred.
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