by Jack Ford
Suspiciously, Rubins asked, ‘And why can’t I do that now?’
‘Because it’ll probably do more harm than it’ll do good.’
‘Harm to who?’
‘The country.’
‘Christ almighty, what is going on?’
Trying to placate the Senator, Cooper said, ‘Just give us a bit more time, that’s all we’re asking.’
‘But what I don’t understand is why I can’t just go to people I know in the FBI, or even in the CIA. Chuck, even. I’ve suddenly become part of something I don’t even understand… I’m sorry, Cooper, this isn’t the way things should be done.’
‘We’re this close to having answers.’
‘No, I’m sorry. I wasn’t comfortable before, not calling in the appropriate authorities, and even more so now.’
‘Senator, please, there’s lives at risk. The safety of the American people. We’ve already had a recent spate of terror attacks on homeland, so we need to do all we can to keep this country as safe as possible.’
Rubins wagged his large finger and said, ‘You see that’s what I’m talking about. You want me to keep quiet about compromising safety? You want me to leave the lives of US citizens in your hands… No. Sorry.’
Curbing his temper, Cooper spoke with authority. ‘You don’t know what you’re doing, Senator. We know Bin Hamad is out there somewhere, whether you believe that or not. We saw him. And whatever it is he’s doing, we know he’ll be active right now. Planning God knows what.’
Rubin’s anger was lit up. ‘This is madness. I have no idea why I agreed to any of this nonsense in the first place. If you think the imprisonment of Bin Hamad has been compromised, then we need to act fast and inform the appropriate people.’
‘Can’t you hear yourself?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘We’re trying to help you, Senator,’ Cooper said.
‘How do you work that one out?’
‘You’re talking about the appropriate people, but one or more of those appropriate people are behind this. And once they know you’re onto them, they’ll make it look like it’s you who compromised security. After all, there are only two people with the code to Bin Hamad’s jail cell.’
‘You’re not implying that Chuck Harrison has something to do with this, are you? That’s absurd.’
‘All I’m saying is they’ll make it look like you, especially as we haven’t got all the evidence we need yet to make anything stick. So I’m telling you, Senator – warning you – that if you open your mouth now it’ll be you who’s going down.’
Confused and troubled at what he was hearing, Rubins sat heavily back in his chair. ‘Y’all aren’t making sense. How could that even be?’
‘You say you’ve no recollection of going down to Florida, but that was you on the CCTV footage by the ATM. And as you say, there’s no dancing, no swaying, nothing. You look as sober as the morning sun. Yet there you are sitting in the car with an ex-CIA agent who’s now dead and shouldn’t have even been in this country in the first place.’
‘What? What do you mean he’s dead?’
Cooper walked up close to Rubins, and with his tone lowered to a quiet firmness he said, ‘Oh yes, didn’t I mention that? That guy’s dead. Been shot. A bullet straight through his head. And you, Senator, were probably the last person to see him alive.’
Nervously, Rubins retorted, ‘I don’t like your tone.’
‘You don’t have to like it. I’m just laying it out how it is. Who’s going to believe you? Think about it, Senator. You’re driving around in a car with a guy who’s supposed to be in a Saudi prison, but instead you and he are taking the scenic routes around the country. Taking money out of the ATM, having a nice jaunt to Florida…’
Rubins cut in. ‘How dare you! It wasn’t like that.’
‘Well, no it wasn’t, because I haven’t finished yet… The next thing which happens is the guy’s lying dead with a bullet in his head and Bin Hamad is winging his way to God knows where.’
Rubins slammed his hand down on his desk, inadvertently causing his palm to sting. ‘I had nothing to do with that. I didn’t even know the guy and as for…’
It was Cooper’s turn to cut in. ‘Try explaining that to the authorities. Your prints will be all over Harry Gibson’s car, you’re on the CCTV footage with him, and that’s just for starters, Senator… Doesn’t look good, does it?’
‘I trusted you to…’
Stepping away from the Senator, his voice warmer this time, Cooper said, ‘Stop, Senator. I’m not actually accusing you.’
‘I thought…’
‘I know you’re innocent, but what I am doing is showing you how it’ll look without our help. You’re a man of influence and a man who holds a huge deal of responsibility. You are just the sort of person who’d be able to get Harry Gibson out of prison. And you hold the code for Bin Hamad.’
‘But I didn’t and I certainly didn’t have anything to do with Bin Hamad.’
‘I know. But someone did, and this someone doesn’t know you know anything. But you know. It’s all about the known unknowns… So let’s keep it between ourselves as long as we can, because the person behind this has got a huge amount of influence. Much more than either of us. We don’t want them to be able to go and hide, and cover what tracks it is they’re making. This goes beyond just you and me… I promise we’ll have all the answers soon.’
With the tension slightly easing from his face, Rubins stayed quiet for a moment, then he stared at Cooper. ‘Forty-eight hours. And that’s it. After that, Cooper, I call in who needs to be called. You understand me? I’ll give you forty-eight hours.’
SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA
USA
84
Ke5 Ra1
‘Forty-eight hours? You’re kidding, Thomas! There’s no way.’
‘It’s fine, trust me.’
Rosedale raised his eyebrows and finished off the bottle of water he was hungrily consuming. Threw the bottle in the bin in a perfect overhead shot. ‘Thomas, trusting you is like taking your chances in a pool of piranhas.’
‘Look, Rosedale, Eddie is going to get me the results through and then we’ll know for certain what’s happening on that front.’
Rosedale’s laugh felt like a swarm of ants crawling under Cooper’s skin. ‘No, what we’ll know is just what we now suspect. The Senator was given scopolamine, probably or undoubtedly by Harry Gibson, who now happens to be dead. Anything else is just supposition and bits of ideas. There’s no way we’re going to give anything concrete to Rubins in that short space of time. I don’t know why you even agreed to it.’
Irritated, yet relaxed in the knowledge that Granger was away for a few day and wouldn’t suddenly appear in the doorway, Cooper sat down in the Onyx kitchen. Dusted off the piece of broken biscuit left on the table, probably by Levi. ‘I agreed to it, Rosedale, because that’s the only thing I could do. He gave me no other choice.’
Maddie said, ‘It’s not ideal but at least we’ve got forty-eight hours. Rosedale, what’s happening with your cartography guy? It feels like he’s had that USB key for ages. Do you think it’s not going to come to anything? Because we really need to find somebody to tell us if it is the basis for a map, like you thought it was, and if so, where is it?’
Pulling off his brown suede cowboy boots to massage his feet, Rosedale pulled an apologetic face. ‘Greg has always liked to work on Greg time, and now he’s retired seems like Greg time’s got even slower. But if anybody can work it out, he can. He was the number one location and navigation person at the CIA. When I was in the clandestine unit, at certain times something would come into your possession, you know like some small imaging or a drawing or even a sketch that you might’ve found at a suspect’s house, which didn’t look like anything at all. But then we’d take it to Greg and he’d would work out exactly what and where it was. It was like a jigsaw puzzle to him. And I mean you give him one piece of the jigsaw and he’ll work out what
the whole picture for you. He was a legend. Still is. And even though he’s retired now he does the odd bit of stuff for the CIA when they’re desperate. There’s nobody better. I was thinking of taking a trip over there, he doesn’t really do phones.’
To which Maddie said, ‘Well, there’s no time like the present.’
WYOMING, USA
85
Ng5 Kg6
By the time Rosedale and Cooper had travelled from Scottsdale to Wapiti, Wyoming – a state defined by its canyons and mountains and vast plains where the buffalo had once roamed freely – apart from the occasional cuss word neither man was speaking, and each had come a hair’s breadth from a fight.
Standing on the doorstep of the ranch, which sat on the river front of the north fork of the Shoshone River, set in 25 acres of horse pasture and mountain springs, Rosedale knocked hard. Couldn’t deny he was imagining it was Cooper’s head.
The sound of shuffling came first, and a barking of dogs, and then the door was opened wide by a man with wild white wiry hair, a large moustache and a face which looked like it’d lived several lives over. A pipe hooked and crooked in the corner of his mouth and the baggy, creased shirt and shorts shadowed over the socks with sandals.
With an awkward gait, he shuffled towards Rosedale, his smile beaming. ‘It’s so good to see you. But you didn’t have to come all this way, you could’ve called.’
Rosedale grinned. ‘I did. Several times.’
‘Did you? Damn answering machine, always forget I got it. Though don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to have an old face come by especially out here. There are days when I don’t see anybody.’
‘Sounds ideal,’ Cooper said.
‘It is actually. Suits me just fine, and I got the dogs to keep me company… Here, boys, come on! Come and see who’s here.’
From seemingly out of nowhere, six dogs sped and scampered and barked and yapped and jumped and licked and nipped the visitors with excitement.
‘Get down, Boo, get down! Bailey, Buddy, Charlie, down! Sorry, they’re a bit excitable… I said, get down! Obama, down! Biden, down!’
Rosedale chuckled. ‘Obama? Biden? You’re a Republican though.’
Greg said, ‘Yeah, just my little joke. I can tell them to sit, roll over, get down, get out, and on occasion, when they’re being a pain, I can smack their ass – something I would’ve liked to have done when I worked under them, believe me. But now I get to do all that. It’s me who’s calling the shots and they have to listen… Don’t you, Biden? You have to listen to what I say… Hold on a minute, guys, you’ll like this… Woods…! Woods! Come here, boy. Come here! There’s a good boy.’
Round the corner of the small ranch a three legged mongrel dog appeared, wagging its tail and looking slightly boss-eyed.
Greg, patted Woods. ‘I found him up by Yellowstone. Didn’t think he’d make it through the night. But he came through and I nursed him back to health. He’s simple as sin though, can only grasp the fewest of commands and hardly ever listens to anything you tell him. Likes to do his own thing… Thought the name was perfect. What do you think?’
Rosedale laughed loud and hard. ‘I think you should ask Thomas here that.’
‘Why, are you a Republican, Thomas?’ Greg said.
Cooper gave a half smile. ‘To tell you the truth, I don’t know what I am, but I think you’ve got Woods down to a T there.’
With a rush of energy and a big wide grin, Greg suddenly became very animated. ‘What am I thinking, making you stand on the doorstep? Come in, guys, my office is through here.’
Throwing Biden, Obama and Woods a dried pig’s ear from his pocket, Greg led the men through the wooden living room and up a flight of stairs to his large but sparsely furnished office.
In the middle, two computers, along with several messy piles of papers, sat on a desk which faced a worn, brown leather sofa. ‘Have a seat, gentlemen.’
Rosedale and Cooper both sat down on the two-seater sofa, and both felt themselves sink a little too more deeply than expected. They both masked their surprise as they sat awkwardly low, tilted in, shoulder to shoulder.
Managing to reach forward enough to place his cowboy hat on the floor, Rosedale adjusted his position, aiming for comfort. Failed. Caused Cooper to slide and slope further in, their bodies looked conjoined.
Ignoring his own discomfort, Rosedale asked, ‘So how did you get on with the data from the USB? Like I say all we saw were crazy shapes, senseless patterns layered on top of one another. It was like some modern day hieroglyphics. It wasn’t until I saw a drawing on the wall down in Turkey that I realized it was a map.’
Greg smiled sympathetically. ‘I know what you mean, it does look meaningless if you don’t know what you’re looking at.’
Rosedale winked. ‘But you know what you’re looking at, right?’
‘Of course. That’s why you always used to come to me, back in the day. He used to call me up in the middle of the night sometimes, didn’t you?’
‘It was only the middle of the night, Greg, because usually I was on the other side of the world. That, and it was often the safest time to call. You were never in bed anyway. You sleep like a cat.’
Greg, about to answer, saw Cooper looking at his watch. ‘Sorry, am I keeping you? That’s what happens when you have no human company – when guests come, you talk enough for ten men.’
Rosedale was now sitting too close to Cooper to even turn his head towards him and glare. ‘Oh no, it’s not that, Greg, Thomas here has to keep an eye on the time because of his medication. He can’t afford to miss it. Hey, Thomas.’
Cooper said nothing but gave a tight, polite smile to Greg.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realize. I hope I wasn’t being insensitive. Another consequence of being on your own. Good manners go out of the window. Let me just get on with this for you. And if you need a drink of water, Thomas, please ask… Okay, what you have on your USB key are a whole series of digital elevation models and geospatial scans processed from satellite images. In other words, you’ve got the framework, the basics of a map, but all the labels and key information are missing. Your USB stick, as you know, had encrypted data on it, some of which I couldn’t access. It’s high-grade, military-style coding.’
‘Yeah, Maddie was only able to get into certain files as well,’ Cooper said.
‘Right. It was obvious to me what the images were, but of course in such a basic format they were no use to anybody. There could of course be other maps on the key in different files, perhaps more detailed, but at the moment they’re inaccessible so if we concentrate on what we have got, that’s probably the best way to go.’
Greg logged into the computer. Stood up and hobbled across to the window and rolled down the blinds, which plunged the room into semi-darkness. He pressed a remote control button and projected images lit up the white wall next to the door.
‘These images here I’m showing you aren’t yours, but it’s just to give you an idea. They’re made up by analyzing satellite data. The software program uses pixel pattern, as well as lines and shape recognition, to differentiate various surfaces such as land, water, vegetation, people, etc. That’s why if you know what you’re doing you can program in something like your images, something which looks to most people like strange, multi-sided shapes and squiggles; I basically input the set of existing geometric data, such as the shape of your map, with all its unlabeled subdivisions and contours, and the computer scans existing data for a match. It’ll bring up all the areas in the world which have that geographical or border area and formation. And then it’s a question of filtering in or out the details required. Building up the area. It is complicated, but essentially it’s an interactive mapping system which saves on thousands of man hours at the click of a mouse.’
‘So nobody uses an old school map or satellite navigation system anymore?’
‘Amateurs and hobbyists do of course, but not if you’re serious in my field. You’d be left behind. This technolog
y, Thomas, is so different to what we used to have. So much more advanced. It creates very high resolution images and lots of detail from the most basic of frameworks, like what you guys brought me. The software these days can even work out what type of rocks form the landscape in an area, or if you want it to it can calculate the size and material of objects, such as buildings and cars. It can instantly map, not just the road network, but fine detail like what kinds of houses, and what shape trees are in the back yard. It can show how many people are driving down those roads, and can calculate the size of a crowd of people during a humanitarian crisis, for example. These data breakdowns are being used corporately and politically, to help with disaster response, risk management in environment, and in military defense and intelligence, as well as monitoring changes in land cover and usage. And the image can be refreshed constantly, and tracked every time a satellite passes overhead. These are maps that can constantly update themselves and track changes. It really is brilliant.’
Rosedale nodded. ‘So what about our images on the USB?’
‘Well, I’ve built them up because, as you said, they were just hieroglyphics. Just a lot of shapes and lines. But I managed to layer in the details, and now you can see clearly for yourselves it’s a map.’
Greg clicked the remote button again.
Cooper stared at the image projected on the wall. ‘That’s amazing. I can’t believe it’s the same thing.’
‘It is amazing, isn’t it? From the size of the trees I can tell that we’re looking at an area of about five square miles. You can make out a river on the top right, but mostly it’s dry ground, and you can also see rocky hills to the north if you look at the craggy representation there.’
‘And that’s a road, presumably? Though it looks more like a dirt track.’
‘Yes, and if you see the next image…’ Greg paused to press the remote again and then continued. ‘You can see it’s the only road in that particular area. It’s basically a pretty dry, rural place. But you can see several villages; simple, hut-like structures. An area of people and life. Though here’s the thing, gentlemen. This map was created by the images from the USB key, but once I’d created it, I then uploaded it into another software program and the metadata showed me something else.’