Changing of the Guard

23

Still in his office, Thorn read the FBI report again. He had heard that Jay was out of his coma, and had, in fact, been on the way out the door to go and see him, when his computer priority-one notice had chimed. He went back to check it.

It seemed that a man the Bureau strongly suspected was a Russian spy — a control — had been found dead in his home in Bridgeport, Connecticut, only a few minutes before. The locals were working the incident, but the Russian connection had the Bureau involved. It looked like an accident, according to the very sketchy on-line preliminary report by the Special Agent in Charge of the case, but he was suspicious. There was nothing specific, but the AIC was not convinced that the man, a doctor, had slipped in the bathtub and cracked his skull.

Even if the Agent in Charge was correct and this was more than a simple accident, there was nothing to connect it to the attack on Jay. Still, considering Thorn’s theories about Jay’s shooter, the report bothered him.

Jay had been working on a coded file that exposed hidden Russian spies around the world, and would likely have revealed more, right here in the U.S.

A man known to the FBI as a Russian agent, and more, one suspected of being a control — one who ran other spies — had died in a freak accident? Or maybe been killed in such a way as to make it look like an accident? That was… odd, to say the least. Enough to stick in Thorn’s mind.

The common term was “Russian spies,” which is what Thorn had set his tripbot to note when new law enforcement reports came in.

This was Thorn’s gift — that he could sometimes take two things that did not seem directly related and he could see a correlation. It had helped him come up with new ideas about software, it had even helped in his fencing bouts, and he had learned to trust it over the years.

These two events were connected. He knew it — in his gut, if not his mind.

But how?

The obvious thing was, somebody had killed one man, made it look like an accident, and tried to kill the other. How many assassins or would-be assassins could there be in this area?

Who could say for sure? Maybe there were dozens of them running around looking for victims. But he didn’t believe that, and—

What if there was just the one?

Forget for a minute the why of it. Just run with the idea that the guy who shot Jay also killed the Russian. What would that mean?

Thorn shook his head. What would it mean?

Well, it would mean that if you found one, you found the other.

And if you got him, you could maybe find out why he had done it, and maybe who had put him up to it…

A hint of something touched him, as might his opal ring catching a ray of sunlight at just the right angle to gleam with a sudden bright flash of color:

Maybe there was a way to figure out who the assassin was — by the process of deduction.

Thorn knew he had to think large, to encompass all the possibilities. First, assume it was just one guy. He was obviously dealing with a professional who wouldn’t leave anything obvious with which to track him. The bug on Jay’s car had been a mistake, maybe, and they had done what they could with that — the records from every traffic cam, bank ATM machine, and Homeland Security invisible in the area of the spy electronic store had been accessed for the day the transmitter had been sold, but all that had given them were thousands of faces. They had run those against the ones in the law-enforcement archives, and the FFR — the Facial Feature Recognition software — had come up with a few bad guys who happened to be passing by, but none they could tie to the assassination attempt on Jay.

Of course, it could be that the shooter didn’t have a criminal record, any kind of security clearance, a passport, or even a driver’s license, so maybe his picture wasn’t accessible.

Can’t match what isn’t there.

What they needed was a cross-reference. If a camera anywhere near the dead Russian agent held an image of somebody who matched one of the faces in the electronics store? Then they’d have something. Neither set of images alone would do it, but together, the chances of a coincidence, of matching faces? That would be unlikely.

Gridley was awake and Thorn really needed to get by there to see him, but he could get this rolling before he headed for the hospital.

Thorn put in a call to the Intel Section of Homeland Security and got the woman in charge of the surveillance cams to provide Net Force with the Connecticut records on the day the Russian was killed.

Then he called the State Police, the Department of Transportation, and the local Sheriff’s office. Finally, he got a street directory of businesses around the location, and sent a blanket e-mail, asking them for their visual records on that date. He didn’t have a court order, but in these days, people felt that helping the government find somebody who was a killer and who might be a terrorist or a spy was worth doing.

The records would start to come in pretty quick, and the Super-Cray would run the matching software, looking for two identical peas in a very large pod.

There were a lot of things that could mess it up. Maybe it wasn’t the same guy. Or his image hadn’t been captured on one or both cameras. Or maybe it had been, but the shot was the back of his head or too fuzzy to make a match.

Those images that did look similar enough would kick out and ask for a human interpretation. All Thorn could do until then was wait. It could take weeks, or even months, and it could always come up empty.

But at least it was a place to start.

Now, to go pay a hospital visit. Maybe Jay himself had something to add to this.

Thorn had only known Jay for a short time before the shooting, but the man sitting in the bed in front of him didn’t seem like the man he remembered.

He looked the same physically, but the Jay Gridley he’d first met had a brash cockiness that had grated, particularly before he’d walked Jay’s VR stuff and realized Jay really was that good.

This man seemed a lot less sure of himself.

“Jay. How are you doing?”

“Commander. Other than being shot in the head and in a coma? I’m fine.”

He didn’t sound fine at all.

Thorn had arranged to have an FBI expert with identikit software come to the hospital — having Jay go into VR this early wasn’t, his doctor said, a good idea.

Thorn was trying not to be too hopeful, but if he could match the face he’d yanked from the traffic cam in New York with any kind of ID that Gridley could provide, that would be good.

“Thanks for agreeing to do this so soon — I’m hoping we can get a handle on this guy.”

“Me, too.”

The door behind him opened. A thin man with a slightly dreamy expression entered and smiled.

“Commander. Mr. Gridley. I’m Adrian Heuser, the ID artist.”

The artist sat down in one of the visitor’s chairs and pulled a rolling tray over so that Gridley could see it. “I understand you had a little trauma after you saw your, ah, shooter?”

Jay indicated his bandage. “Yeah. You could say that.”

I guess the lab rats don’t get out much, Thorn thought.

“Normally we do this in VR, but we’ve got a flatscreen for you.” He put a small flat panel on a stand in front of Jay on the tray, “and one for me.” The second panel must have had a digitizer, because Heuser pulled out a stylus and tapped it several times.

“As much as you can, I want you to relax, and focus. I want you to go back to just before you were hurt, back to when you were watching. What are you doing?”

“Sitting in the car wondering why this jerk had cut me off.”

Heuser took Jay through it, asking questions, getting Jay’s input. The man’s stylus danced over his tablet, tapping out menus and putting down textures and color. He asked what Jay’s attacker was doing, what he was holding, how he stood, how he walked.

Jay was vague. Understandable, if frustrating.

A picture began to take shape on the flatscreen, a face with a gun alongside it. But it wasn’t all that clear. It could have been any generic white man, wearing a Band-Aid on his chin and thick glasses.

Not much help.

Heuser came at it from different directions; he was very smooth, but it was obvious that Jay had given him all he had. He saved the file and said he’d pipe it over to Thorn.

“Sorry I didn’t do better,” Jay said.

“You did fine, Jay. Don’t worry about it.”

Gridley smiled and nodded. “No problem there,” he said. “I’m awake. Not much to worry about after that.”