BETA - Project Avatar, page 26
Abe’s face filled the entire screen, in fisheye perspective. The camera on his cell phone was compromised by the bad lighting, but even in the grainy, low-contrast image she could see that his cheeks were red. He was chuckling drunkenly.
“Oh, hey Dee,” he said merrily. The camera bounced around wildly and she realized he was lying shirtless on a big mesh hammock outdoors, looking like a walrus caught in a fishing net. He turned away from his phone to yell, “I’m going to take this call. No, I’m serious!” He began laughing breathlessly, for no apparent reason.
“Abe,” Dee said impatiently. “I hate to interrupt.”
“Sorry!” he snorted, still laughing. He turned back to the phone. “Yeah, you have my complete attention. Honest.” At that moment, an empty beer can came flying out of the darkness and bounced off his head with a tiny metallic tonk. He was immediately reduced to paroxysms of laughter and nearly capsized the hammock.
Dee was freezing. “Abe!” she insisted.
He tried to catch his breath. When he could form words, he said, “That was an amazing shot. You should have seen that! That was . . . that was a three-pointer!”
“I have a plane to catch,” she told him, trying to keep her teeth from chattering. “I’ve only got a few minutes here.”
“All right, okay.” He took a deep breath and tried to stop laughing. Abe leaned in close to inspect her image on his screen, giving her a huge, distorted vision of his bloodshot eye. “You’re okay? No one’s, you know, shooting at you or anything?”
“I’m fine. Except that I’m freezing.”
“You should fly over here and join me!” he suggested impulsively. “This would be a great place to hide out. And it’s warm!”
He swept his camera to give a panoramic view. A broad Mediterranean seascape: scrubby bluffs rolling down to a calm sea split down the middle by a brilliant avenue of moonlight. Behind him, among what might have been olive trees and asphodel, were the vague lamp-lit forms of half a dozen revelers in swimsuits. Someone was playing pipes.
“Tempting,” Dee admitted. “But you know where I’m going.”
“Oh, yeah!” Abe exclaimed, putting himself back on screen. “I’ve got that contact information for you.”
After fishing around under the hammock for something, he pulled a little notebook computer up onto his lap and began typing. “Here it comes—just give me a second.” Someone yelled his name from a distance, but he grumbled and ignored them. Then he said, “Okay, there’s a photo for you in the dead drop. Go download it.”
When the photo came through, it showed a pleasant-looking woman of early middle age with olive skin, gentle eyes, and a bit of distinguished gray above the ears. It was a posed photo, with a somewhat institutional look about it.
“Meet Lygia Magela,” he said, making an effort to control the slight slur in his voice so that she could hear the name correctly. “Definitely a core member of the Substructure. A card-carrying member, so to speak.” His eyes wandered away. “Not that we carry cards or anything. You know.” It looked as though he might have forgotten what he was talking about.
“Lygia Magela,” Dee prompted him.
“Right! Dr. Magela is an associate professor at the Federal University, in Rio. She agreed to meet you pretty much right after you land. I’m sending through a text file right now, with your rendezvous instructions. My advice is to leave the files untouched in the dead drop until after you’re clear of the airport in Brazil. That way, there’s no trace of either file on your computer while you’re in transit.”
“Point taken,” she replied.
Abe lifted an immense bottle of beer to his lips and took a long pull.
“Now, Lygia is bound to be in disguise. So I guess neither of you will really know what the other one looks like. I was going to suggest that I send her an image of you in your new getup, but that seems too dangerous.”
“No, don’t do that,” Dee said, bouncing up and down on the spot to keep warm.
Then she remembered her speculation that Beta might contain a disguise-planning application.
“Beta,” she said.
A tiny version of Beta’s animated head and shoulders appeared in the lower right corner of the screen. “Yes, Melody?”
Abe leaned in intently so that the little simulated image of Dee’s head on screen was overshadowed by a gigantic, bulging eyeball. Dee called up the photo of Lygia on her smartphone’s browser screen. “Beta, if I showed you a photograph of this person wearing a disguise, would you be able to identify the face?”
“Facial recognition is still possible when subjects are disguised,” Beta told her, “as long as all key facial bone structures are exposed.”
“So, if I just point the camera on my smartphone at her face, could you recognize her?”
“I am assessing hardware parameters,” Beta said. After a brief pause, it said, “No. Your configuration includes a three-megabyte camera. Real-time facial structure analysis requires at least a six-megabyte camera.”
“I have a ten-megabyte webcam in my bag,” she said. “So, if I hook up that camera, you can recognize this woman in real time, even through disguise?”
“Yes,” Beta said confidently. “Given a frontal view of the subject at a range of three meters or less, the probability of correct recognition is ninety-two percent or better.”
“Thanks, Beta,” she said. Beta recognized its exit cue, nodded, and faded away.
Abe looked a little stunned by what he had just seen. He asked, “Do you believe that it can actually do that? I mean, is it reliable?”
She nodded. “It’s reliable.”
“Man. No wonder those guys want this thing back. Do you have the only copy?”
Dee was impatient to go inside and pick up her ticket and visa. “No,” she said. “It’s an Endyne product, remember? Endyne has all the original code. Outside of the company, I don’t know. This might be the only released copy so far.”
His puffed eyelids lowered a little, in an absurd parody of slyness. “Don’t you think you ought to store a copy of the program somewhere?”
She gave him an irritated look, which seemed to roll right off him. “No, I don’t,” she said. “Why?”
He shrugged in a manner that was clearly intended to look innocent but, to Dee, looked anything but. “Just so that, you know, you have a backup. I’ve got safe data lines that you could upload through, and perfectly secure hard drives where you could store the code.”
She forced a laugh and scolded him. “Abe!”
“What?” he said, looking alarmed and somewhat wounded. “You don’t think I . . . hey, I’m just trying to help.”
“Why does everyone want a copy of this thing when all I want to do is get rid of it?”
He tried not to look guilty and did a lousy job of it. “Honestly,” he protested, “I didn’t mean . . . I just . . .”
“You’re a darling. I forgive you. Got to run.”
She hung up on him and hustled into the terminal. As the big doors slid open, she was immediately wrapped in a sweet cocoon of warm air.
Chapter 26
A young waiter in dark livery attempted to hand a breakfast menu to Brigadier General Tyrone Grimmer as he passed out of the dressing room area and onto the lavishly furnished concrete skirt that surrounded the hotel pool. The old general swept the menu out of his way with a fair amount of violence, making no effort to pretend a false civility, even in deference to the posh surroundings. His disgruntled attitude seemed somehow appropriate, considering how extremely out of place he looked. From the neck up, his old hide was a cracked and sun-dried mass of red leather, but from the shoulders down his whole body was a wrinkly expanse of baby-pink skin, and every bit of it was exposed to view except the region concealed by a pair of designer swim shorts. It took no more than a glance at him to discern that this was skin that hadn't seen the sun in years, and that the trunks had been purchased a few minutes earlier at the store in the hotel lobby, which unfortunately just didn't carry any swimwear in modest cuts. This is Brazil, and physical modesty is not one of the predominating social conventions, especially not this close to the beach.
“Get me a Rob Roy, kid,” the general growled at the waiter. “With a twist of lime. You got that? Lime, not lemon.”
“Sim, senhor. Rob Roy, a twist of lime.”
“And no goddamn paper umbrella, either. I’m serious.”
The general stepped boldly out onto the concrete in the golden, slanting rays of the morning sun, and stood there glowering threateningly in all directions as if daring the few others at poolside to laugh at him. There were no takers. In fact, no one seemed to pay any attention to him all.
His eyes fell upon a middle-aged man who was lounging on the opposite side of the pool, stretched out full length on a chaise longue under a spacious umbrella and nibbling idly at a breakfast tray. The general frowned at the man with a poignant mixture of personal satisfaction and vague belligerence, and headed around the pool in that direction.
“Whylom.”
The middle-aged man slid his sunglasses an inch down his nose, as if only now noticing the fat, pink general standing at his feet with arms akimbo. Whylom himself was fit-bodied, trim for his age, sporting a military-style brush-cut of prematurely white hair. He had bad skin and shadowy, sunken eyes that suggested chronic insomnia.
“Grimmer. Always a pleasure.” Despite the roughness of his appearance, Whylom’s voice flowed out as mellifluously as that of a late-night disk jockey. “Have you ordered? I strongly recommend the eggs Benedict.”
The general dropped onto a chair under the sun umbrella, coming down hard and letting out a grunt of air. “I was in Europe a few hours ago. I didn't fly all the way to South America for the eggs Benedict.”
“A shame! But if you feel that way about it, try the pão de queijo.”
“Come off it. What are we doing here?”
Whylom popped a grape into his mouth and let his eyes flicker briefly in the general’s direction, a parody of innocence. “Come again?”
“This is a swimming pool. Why didn't we meet at the CIA facility? Or if not that, why not at least rent yourself a room?”
“Ah. Well, I don't think I really need to answer your first question. We’re kind of meeting off the clock, aren't we? As for renting a room, I’m sure you already know that I’m a registered guest here. In fact, for your information, I'm actually staying in my room—it’s not just a front. Second floor, two fourteen. I always stay here at the Copacabana Palace when I come to Rio. My personal opinion is that this is one of the grandest old five-star hotels south of Miami. I like the service. And the eggs Benedict.”
A waiter approached the table with exactly the right amount of prompt deference, and delivered a perfect Rob Roy with a lime twist onto the cast-iron tabletop in front of the general. Then he bowed himself away and faded from view like a Cheshire cat.
“As for the pool,” Whylom resumed, “I always prefer to have my important meetings poolside, weather permitting. Just a little piece of tradecraft.” He turned briefly to face the general directly, sliding his dark glasses down to reveal his level and steady stare. “This way, each of us can see that the other is unarmed. And unwired.”
The general drank off half of the morning's first cocktail and grimaced with satisfaction as he swallowed it down. “It's good to know you trust me, Whylom.”
“Indeed I do.” Whylom lay back again on the chaise longue and closed his eyes. “If you weren't someone I trusted, I would have insisted we jump in for a swim while we talk. Just in case you have microelectronics in those swim trunks.”
An awkward delay ensued. Although it was unlikely that either of the two men could afford to waste much time, a good five minutes passed in which neither said anything at all. Eventually, Whylom pivoted his head without leaning up from where he was lying, and gazed insouciantly across the table at the general. He seemed to be waiting to see if the irascible old man was willing to break the ice, and to dare to ask all the obvious questions. Such as: what was Whylom doing in South America? It was obvious enough that he had flown all the way to Rio de Janeiro on a moment's notice, arriving here from Virginia almost as quickly as the general had flown in from Geneva. But why? And why demand this strange meeting? What could possibly be so important as to justify pulling the general away from an ongoing operation for a poolside chat?
These tacit questions hung in the air as the minutes dragged on, but the general didn't say a word. He scowled into his drink, finished it, rattled the ice cubes at a waiter across the pool, and brooded silently in his chair until his refill arrived.
Whylom, observing him, smiled a very hard smile. Apparently, the general’s silence—his unwillingness to broach these topics—told him plenty. The smile faded after a few moments, but the hardness remained. “I've been trying to get through to you for days. As I'm sure you know.”
The general shrugged, sending a ripple down the flesh of his torso. “I've been busy.”
“I want answers. What happened back there?”
“Back in . . . ?”
“Don't fuck with me. Back at Hotel Uncle Sam. The word is that the whole meeting collapsed into some sort of fiasco. Officially, the conference was canceled at the last minute, but you and I both know that's bullshit.”
“We hit a snag,” the general acknowledged, holding his drink to his lips and avoiding Whylom's face.
“Did you really think we could keep that from the Kuwaitis?” Whylom sat up at last, and reached behind to raise the back of his seat. He twisted the chair twenty degrees to the left, the better to stare at the general. “They were skittish enough the way things were before. The whole purpose of this conference was supposedly putting their fears at rest. Remember? We promised we could keep their secrets safe.”
“Their secrets are safe anyway,” the general growled. “The whole conference idea was stupid to begin with. You guys in the CIA have been keeping all the biggest secrets in the Middle East under your hats for decades. Who the hell do they think is going to go leaking their state information, anyway?”
“Right, right. You and I can sit here by the pool all day, convincing each other of that. But they wanted the power to keep secrets all their own, and that was part of the deal, remember? We told them we could arrange cryptosystems that were so good that no one could break the code in a hundred years. Or, sorry, let me correct myself . . . you told them that.”
“I was making good on the promise. I had the best brains in the field all together under one roof. Then something came up, and we got sidetracked by a field operation.”
“Uh huh. I'd like to know what kind of fieldwork could possibly be worth sidetracking Operation Hydra at a time like this. We're on a countdown of days now! The timing is absolutely critical.”
“You don't have to tell me that! My neck is out a mile on this one, just like yours is. A complication arose that threatened our basic security, and I had to mount a defensive maneuver.”
Whylom was staring directly at the general's profile by this point, leaning forward with his elbows propped on his knees. He removed his dark glasses, the better to stab the general with the unblinking gaze of his sunken, black-rimmed eyes. “Threatened . . . the security of Operation Hydra? So, you're talking about a leak?”
The general glanced at Whylom briefly, then looked away across the pool again and shook his head vigorously. “No leak. Just a monkey wrench that was accidentally tossed into the works. I thought we could take care of the whole thing in a matter of hours, but a couple of my men fumbled the ball. We'll have it all cleaned up today. You can rest assured.”
“Now, when you say a ‘monkey wrench’, you're telling me it's something extraneous to our operation?” Whylom's voice had lowered and slowed, as if he were probing this question with extreme delicacy. “You know how I hate complications, Grimmer.”
“You and me both.”
“But if I'm involved in this thing directly, whatever it is, I suppose you'd better let me in.”
Grimmer frowned pensively, then let his eyes cut slowly over in Whylom's direction. He said, with immense reluctance, “I doubt that there's any connection with you. Though I have to admit that the idea has crossed my mind. All right, here goes. Have you ever heard of Operation Avatar?”
The name hung in the air, pregnant with menace. Whylom closed his eyes with concentration and was perfectly still for ten seconds. Then, at last, he slowly shook his head, tentatively at first, then again, more firmly. “No. Never heard of it.”
Grimmer released an audible breath, then lifted his Rob Roy and drained it. “Right. Well, like I say, it's nothing directly involved with Hydra. Or it shouldn't have been. We just kind of got blindsided by it, and we've had to do a little running around to get things back under control.”
“Don't tell me any more about it,” Whylom said firmly. He turned away from the general and put his feet up on his chaise longue again, then slid his sunglasses back in place over his disconcerting eyes. “The last thing that I need is to be made privy to the sordid details of someone else's fucked-up operation.”
“Believe me, you're better off not knowing,” the general assured him with obvious relief.
“In my profession, it's not good to be the guy who knows where all the bodies are buried. Frankly, I prefer to be the guy who gets assigned to kill the guy who knows where the bodies are buried.”
“Very prudent.”
“Okay, it sounds like we're still go, as long as you can get this thing taken care of today, and get back to your post. You know and I know that the Kuwaitis never needed the damn crypto to begin with. I'll fly out to the Middle East tomorrow, and pat their hands until they calm down. I'll tell them it was an act of Allah, and there was nothing we could do about it. I'll promise them five state-of-the-art cryptosystems, next week.”
The general glanced at Whylom briefly, as if assessing the spirit in which this glib remark was made. “Fine. By then, it'll be a done deal. Right?”
