Point of Contact

25

The next morning, Jack did two of his three S’s in quick succession and brushed his teeth. He pulled on a pair of chinos and a blue oxford shirt with a pair of his favorite urban hiking boots — super-comfortable and just dressy enough for the business-casual atmosphere at Dalfan. They were also waterproof. There was the strong possibility of thundershowers again today.

He’d promised Paul he’d be down in twenty minutes, and his watch told him it had already been twenty-two. But Jack needed to do one more thing before heading out the door.

He pulled out his iPhone and tapped on his Photo Trap app — the best ninety-nine cents he had ever spent, as far as he was concerned — and then went around to his closet, his clothes drawers, and his bathroom sink. At each stop, he pressed the + button to record the date and time of an initial photo. Later this evening he would come back and stand in the same position and take secondary photos and then compare them on the app by hitting the manual flip function, which switched back and forth between the comparison photos to see if anything had been moved.

It was standard operating procedure at The Campus to establish personal security checks when on assignment — foreign hotel rooms were notorious surveillance traps for any visitor, especially Westerners. But beyond electronic devices, it wasn’t uncommon for hotel security — or, worse, national security personnel — to enter one’s private hotel room and search around in person for contraband.

Of course, this wasn’t a Campus assignment, but the habits drilled into him by Ding and the others were hard to break, including this one. For an extra thirty seconds of effort, the Photo Trap icon would scratch an itch that would otherwise drive Jack crazy, and would keep Ding’s nagging voice silent. Besides, Clark told him to always trust his gut, and Jack’s gut was telling him to stay vigilant.

Until recently, the way to find out if someone had broken in and searched around was to place a single piece of lint on a drawer lip or leave a zipper slider at an exact location on a piece of luggage, but most skilled surveillance people knew these kinds of tricks because they employed them themselves, and that meant they knew how to spot and defeat them. The great thing about the Photo Trap application was that it took a picture of everything, so that if anything was even slightly out of place, Jack would know someone had been in his room and what they had touched.

Not that he had anything to hide. But he hated the idea that someone would have been snooping around and he wouldn’t know about it.

He thought about telling Paul to do the same thing, but he didn’t want to give Paul any reason whatsoever for him to suspect that Jack was anything but a financial analyst for Hendley Associates. Finance guys on business trips didn’t do OPSEC. The less Paul knew about him, the better.

Paul and Jack arrived at the Dalfan building and split up. Paul was met by Bai, and the two of them headed for his office.

Jack waited for Lian, who arrived a few moments later, clearly off her game. She greeted him formally, then escorted him to the third floor for his appointment with Dr. Singh. She didn’t say a word on the elevator ride up. Neither did Jack.

Dr. Singh greeted Jack and Lian at the security desk and directed them toward the floor. He was taller than Jack but thinner, with a lean, handsome face that was heavily bearded. His turban was brilliantly white and perfectly wrapped. Dark, smiling eyes were framed by square glasses with stylish clear acetate frames.

“Are you familiar with our Steady Stare program, Mr. Ryan?”

“Only what I read from your materials. It’s a twenty-four-hour-a-day drone-based surveillance program for civilian applications.”

“That’s correct. But when you put it that way, it sounds rather boring, doesn’t it? What I want to show you today is how we put it all together, and what it really means for the bottom line for our customers and for Dalfan.”

“Can’t wait.”

“Good. Please, follow me.”

The Steady Stare floor was organized into two main divisions, much like the one downstairs. The first division was composed of offices and computer workstations.

“This is where we write our own proprietary software for GPS navigation, autopiloting, image correlation, and so forth,” Singh explained.

“What’s proprietary about any of it?” Jack asked. “Lots of people are writing software like that.”

Singh’s eyes shifted to Lian. She nodded.

“It’s the artificial-intelligence software we’ve written, and the means by which we’re applying it to each phase of the other software and hardware components that make Steady Stare a unique product,” Singh said.

“AI? That’s what Google and the other big boys in Silicon Valley are trying to figure out. You’re facing some stiff competition.”

“We believe we’re holding our own.”

He led Jack and Lian over to a computer-aided design station. “And here is one of our hardware design platforms. We use CAD to create and build our own devices — optics, sensors, communications, and the Steady Stare unmanned aerial vehicle itself.”

“And you manufacture all of these components here in Singapore?” Jack said.

“The proprietary ones,” Singh said. “We utilize a lot of off-the-shelf technology, too. Some of that we import from trusted sources.”

“Trust is hard to come by these days.”

“Rarer than the rarest earth element,” Lian said. “But we have our sources.”

Singh then introduced Jack to several of his top programmers and designers, all young. Like everyone else in Singapore, they were all fluent in English, no matter their ethnicity or mother tongue.

Jack quizzed them on the particulars of the projects they were working on, but they answered in technical jargon, pointing at the CAD diagrams or lines of code on their screens. He could follow their trains of thought, but he didn’t have the engineering or programming expertise to drill down further. It was clear they all knew their stuff, though. He thanked them and pushed on.

Dr. Singh then led Jack to the second part of the floor that was separated by a glass security wall — again, just like downstairs, but a blackout curtain was on the other side of it. Singh explained that his designers and programmers didn’t need access to the operations room, and that some of what was going on in there was strictly off-limits. “Privacy concerns,” he explained, as they passed through the curtain.

The operations suite was dark and laid out like a mini mission control room with workstations and video monitors all manned by technicians watching their screens and speaking into headsets.

At the far end of the room was a nearly wall-to-wall video screen displaying what appeared to be a live overhead shot of Singapore. It looked like a satellite video. There was a lone control station facing the screen, unmanned. Singh led them to it.

“This room is the heart of the Steady Stare operation,” Singh said. “Our Steady Stare UAVs remain on station for twelve hours at a time, and we put two in service every day, providing twenty-four-hour coverage.”

“What powers your drones?”

“Solar.”

“You’re able to fly for twelve hours on solar power?” Jack was incredulous.

“In theory, Google’s unmanned solar-power plane can fly continuously for five years without landing. Of course, theirs is a much larger platform. Our small airplane relies on our own solar cell and lithium battery storage designs — another example of the value we bring to the project. There is also a backup battery on board, and a small petrol engine for emergency use.”

“So the idea is that these drones fly over the city for twenty-four hours a day and provide video monitoring.”

“Exactly.”

“How do you manage that during monsoon season?”

“It’s a challenge for sure. We launch the planes with their batteries precharged, but even on cloudy days there can be a good deal of radiation.”

Jack frowned. “Why is your system of aerial observation particularly useful or unique, especially in civilian applications?”

Singh cleared his throat and shifted his attention to Lian.

“Aerial observation has many advantages,” Lian said. “But we provide a highly efficient, low-cost aircraft to perform it.”

“Do you have any idea how many hundreds of low-cost, high-capacity drones have been or are being developed?”

“We’re aware,” Lian said.

“Then you know you can’t make money in that business.”

“We’re not idiots.” Lian smiled.

Jack pointed at the video monitor. “Then what is it that your system does that would make me believe this is a revenue generator?”

Lian crossed her arms, thinking and clearly conflicted. Finally, she nodded toward Singh. “Go ahead.”

Relieved, Singh smiled. “Do you believe in time travel, Mr. Ryan?”