Cutting Edge

51

DeBolt sipped a large caffè Americano as he fine-tuned yet another newfound skill. On the screen in his right eye was the face of a college-aged girl who seemed to stare right through him. He watched in amazement as she bit her lower lip in concentration. Completely innocent, completely unaware.

It was nearly ten o’clock, the conference at the Hofburg Vienna having ended over an hour ago. DeBolt had seen nothing of Dr. Patel at the conference, and had drawn a blank among his peers — no one knew where the professor from Cal was staying. He kept trying up to the last possible moment, until he was finally ushered outside by conference staff amid a group of IBM researchers, a well-lubricated bunch who were heading out on the town. They’d invited DeBolt to join them, but he had politely declined.

Disappointed and frustrated by what seemed a wasted evening, he’d crossed the cobblestone square, and on the far side DeBolt had taken up the inviting paths of the Volksgarten where the night tried unsuccessfully to conceal rows of finely sculpted hedges and a disparate array of fountains. Within ten minutes he’d come across Café Wien, a classic Viennese coffeehouse, and taken a seat outside at a shadowed corner table, feeling somehow safer in the open.

He’d been waiting for his coffee when the idea came to him, and now, twenty minutes on, yet another new world had been unlocked. The concept was born from a selfie stick — an Asian couple taking a self-portrait at a nearby table. Realizing he might be captured in the background, DeBolt was able to identity the man, and subsequently capture his phone number. He tried to search the phone for the picture they’d just taken, and to his surprise was soon flicking through images as easily as if his finger was on the device’s screen. It was, after all, only data, the merest of hurdles being where it was stored and who had access. To his surprise, he found he could also activate the phone’s camera — actually either one, front or back — and if he were so inclined, turn the device into a remote surveillance tool.

Applications for this newfound utility had rushed through his head. He’d watched the Asian couple smile through four more snapshots. At that point, DeBolt was subjected to a stagnant view of the awning overhead after the man set his phone on the table and the two began talking. Bored with that, he ran with the concept, and inside ten minutes had pirated an IP address for a nearby laptop computer. The young girl behind it was taking advantage of the café’s Wi-Fi network. DeBolt could easily have looked over his shoulder to discover that she was working on a document of some kind. A school project perhaps, or a letter — he hardly cared. DeBolt was more intrigued by the laptop’s camera.

This took longer, but the end product was essentially the same. In a near real-time stream, he watched a shamelessly voyeuristic video of the girl’s face as she typed, her brow furrowed in concentration no more than two feet from the lens. He considered going further, exploring the files on the machine to see what was available to him, but decency intervened.

A week ago he would have been astounded, but curiously DeBolt felt only numbness at the prospect of being able to hijack the camera on virtually anyone’s phone or computer. He knew there would be more, other electronic muggings he’d not even dreamt of. It’s only data after all.

He considered what else was on the horizon, and hoped that many of his questions might be answered tomorrow. He was eager to meet Patel. The man had to show up for his presentation, and when he did, DeBolt would be in the front row. Was he aware that the META Project had imploded? Did he realize he was the lone survivor among those who’d built it? DeBolt wondered what the scientist knew about him. Had he been informed that Bravo was a success? If so, did he also know about Delta?

DeBolt’s musings were suddenly sideswiped by a more unsettling question: Why was Delta pursuing him?

He knew Colonel Freeman and his team had been acting through a chain of command, executing a kill order against what they’d been told was a terrorist cell. Then Delta had arrived on the scene. DeBolt remembered the message he’d received through some private channel they shared: I am Delta. The very concept of such communication was profound — a kind of web-enabled telepathy.

He had heard nothing from Delta since Boston, yet assumed the killer was still pursuing him. But to what end? Then a new worry intervened. Besides Bravo and Delta, there appeared to be but one remaining survivor of the META Project — Dr. Atif Patel. Might Delta try to hunt him down as well? If so, Delta was probably hitting the same information roadblocks DeBolt had — the only thing available on Patel was that he would present at tomorrow’s conference.

Taken together: DeBolt realized he might not be the only one in the front row.

Feeling a sudden urge to start moving again, he left five euros on the table and was soon on the sidewalk outside Café Wien. There he paused and, after a mental coin flip, turned right. He began to study the streets around him. If he were a spy he would look for surveillance teams or unmarked vans or whatever spies looked for. As it was, DeBolt scanned for his only known threat — the distinctively large frame of Delta.

He typically liked being outdoors — hiking mountain passes, swimming in the ocean, bicycling through canyons. Here, however, swathed in the crisp autumn air of Vienna, he was suddenly uncomfortable. He felt exposed and vulnerable, like a deer that had ventured too far from the forest. It wasn’t just a matter of being seen — given what he’d learned in recent days, the idea of being identified by line of sight seemed utterly nostalgic. Might META broadcast his position? Could Delta intercept his communications, then use them to acquire his location? If so, then I can theoretically do the same in return. Unfortunately, DeBolt knew the two of them were not on level ground: Delta understood how the system operated.

It gave harsh new meaning to the phrase, “Getting in your head.”

He walked cautiously up Burggasse, not sure whether to steer toward shadows or light. He was confident he would get his answers tomorrow morning — assuming he could survive that long.

Twelve hours.

It was a long time to be alone with such despondent thoughts.

Lund’s heart leapt.

It was after ten o’clock, and even thought most shops were closed, the crowds were thick on the wide boulevard of Graben, a well-heeled shopping area in Vienna’s first district. What had Lund’s attention, however, was not Chanel or Hermès, but something far more useful. On the far sidewalk, a hundred yards ahead — a familiar profile. Tall and athletic, moving confidently under faux gaslights on the busy sidewalk. Walking away with an easy long stride.

“Trey!” she said under her breath. Lund began to trot.

He disappeared around a corner, moving quickly, and she ran as fast as she could. Closing ground, she rounded the corner and spotted him again, light jacket and dark pants. “Trey!” she shouted.

He didn’t respond. She was twenty steps behind him, and about to shout again, when he turned ninety degrees and drew to a stop. Under a wash of light from a busy gelato shop Lund saw his face for the first time as he bent down to kiss a pretty woman on both cheeks. Her spirits foundered.

She ground to a halt, her feet suddenly leaden. Lund sank a shoulder against a stone wall and tried to catch her breath, watching as the couple sat together at a table and began an animated discussion. They might have been deciding which nightclub to visit later, or reminiscing about the rain shower they’d been caught in the last time they were here. Subjects of amusement, of no consequence whatsoever. The kinds of things most people talked about. And if it had been Trey, what would the two of them be discussing? Why is this man trying to kill us? How can we stay out of jail? What’s Austria’s policy on extraditing Americans?

She looked all around and saw happy people in a tidy city. “Foreign” was not a strong enough word. She didn’t speak the language here. Didn’t have identity documents or money. Had Trey even reached Vienna? If so, was he still alive, or had the assassin finished that half of his job?

She saw but one hope. Lund had earlier found a public library and accessed a computer. Having arrived minutes before closing time, she’d typed as fast as she could. With great restraint, she avoided the online version of the Kodiak Daily Mirror. Whatever was happening in the murder cases there — William Simmons and Jim Kalata — it was a distraction she couldn’t permit. Vienna was the here and now, and she flew from web page to web page searching of direction. It was the name Trey had sent — Dr. Atif Patel, whom he’d somehow linked to the META Project — that hit sevens. Patel would present a lecture at ten o’clock tomorrow morning at the World Conference on Cyber Security, which was taking place at the Hofburg Vienna. The same article explained that Patel was an expert on computer systems and software, which she took as further proof of his ties to META.

By the time she was ushered out of the library, three minutes after closing, Lund had settled on two possible scenarios. First, Trey might already have made contact with Patel, in which case the scientist would know where he was. If not? Then Trey would also be at the auditorium tomorrow. Either way, it gave her a destination — a time and a place from which to start reclaiming her life.

She began walking again, mixing into the crowds amid Graben’s charmless palette of designer neon. The sky above was a milky white, low clouds absorbing the lights like a great blanket. As if insulating and protecting the city. Lund remembered having the same impression when she had first arrived in Kodiak. She’d seen a small town holding fast against the sea and the winter, a safe harbor where the rest of the world was kept at a distance. She began to feel more confident, thinking perhaps there was a future after all.

Then she saw a picture behind a broad window that froze her to the sidewalk.

It was on the wall of a bar, on the middle of three televisions. Framed by mirrors with scripted writing and liquor bottles in neat formation. Left and right were a pair of soccer games, but the central screen was tuned to a news channel, presumably Austrian because the captions on the footer were in German. She saw her passport photo in full-bloom color, her name right below. Shannon Ruth Lund. She knew why it was there, of course, confirmed by the follow-on shots: blue lights rolling in front of the decimated Bundespolizei station, a body beneath a blanket rolling past on a gurney. Being a cop herself, she recognized the entire production. Her picture front and center, widest possible dissemination. The backdrop of a tragedy.

The police wanted very much to talk to her.

Lund watched for any other pictures, any headlines she could decipher. She saw nothing to further her understanding of things, and more disappointingly, nothing to suggest that the brute who’d launched the attack was either deceased or in custody.

Lund realized she was gawking at the screen from the sidewalk. Was the barman staring at her? Possibly. But maybe only as an invitation. Maybe he needed another female to help balance his cast of regulars. She set out quickly, like any woman would who was underdressed for a chilly night in Vienna. She took a turn at the first side street.

Two blocks farther on, she took another.

Lund knew what she had to do — stay out of sight until morning. Either that, or think of a way to find Trey before Patel’s presentation. Of course that would be the better option.

But how?