The Devil's Banker

Chapter 50

“Clearer, baby. Just a little bit clearer. Come to Daddy. That’s right, sharpen up. Looking good. Looking very, very good!”

Perched over an ocular lens, Sam Spencer fiddled with the focus of his Leica magnified videoscope. The face grew clearer. The chin firmed, the lips solidified, full and firm. He had no problem with the hair. A dark mane parted in the middle and cut to the shoulders. No, the hair was not the problem. It was the eyes and nose that eluded him. The center of the face was still a blur.

“Darn it!” Spencer muttered, raising his head from the eyepiece and pushing himself back from the desk. Until he could define these all-important pixels, he would not be able to submit the picture to the Identix software for a match. He wouldn’t go to Owen Glendenning with anything less. A picture without a name was no good to anyone.

Sam Spencer, age thirty-seven and one day, director of the FBI’s forensic audio, video, and image analysis unit, had been enhancing the final seconds of the digital tape rescued from Mohammed al-Taleel’s apartment for thirty-six hours’ running. What had begun as a top-secret rush job had continued into the night and plowed right through his birthday. He didn’t mind missing the celebration dinner with his wife and parents. He did mind the yellow packages piling up outside his door. Spencer was conscientious about his responsibilities to a fault. At this rate, he’d have to motor through the weekend to clear the backlog.

Working out of an air-conditioned bungalow on the grounds of the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, Spencer assisted not only the FBI, but also state, local, and international law enforcement agencies with the examination of recorded audio, video, and photographic media. Jobs varied from converting a tape from NTSC to PAL to repairing shot-up video cameras. Most of his enhancement work came from ATM security cameras and involved getting a clear shot of the robber’s, and sometimes, the eventual murderer’s, face. It was critical work and he loved it.

Never, though, had he been tasked with such an important project. Top Secret. Eyes Only. Utmost National Priority. The urgency of the mission had been drummed into him ad infinitum. And the calls. Every hour on the hour the deputy director for operations of the CIA called for an update on his progress, always ending their conversations with the same terse warning not to share the information with anyone.

A box of See’s candies was in easy reach. Snapping up the birthday sampler, Spencer hunted for his favorite-a dark chocolate ganache. He was pretty sure he’d eaten the last one, but it paid to look twice. A finger poked under the gold crenellated paper and blindly surveyed the bottom tray. His conscience stopped him cold. It was cheating to start on the bottom tray until you’d finished the top. Spotting a pecan carmel, he popped it into his mouth. The chocolates weren’t a luxury. They were a necessity. Fuel.

Chewing the delicious confection, Spencer crossed the room to a humming white machine the size of a refrigerator. Slipping on a pair of surgeon’s gloves, he ran the original tape through the Canon X3 Digital Enhancer one more time. The X3 broke down the picture into individual pixels, then using an artificial intelligence program, compared each to the pixels surrounding it, and either sharpened, or flattened, the image. It was the same process the human eye performed in concert with the brain when it looked at Monet’s cathedrals. Each step you took away from the painting rendered the cathedral in clearer focus.

So far, Spencer had run the image through the enhancer five times. What had started as a speck on the mirrored sunglasses had evolved into a slender brunette wearing ivory pants and a matching sleeveless T. Model material all the way. But that fact and ten cents still wouldn’t buy him a cup of coffee. He needed a face. The problem was that the machine was at the end of its tether. There was only so much the A.I. could manipulate the pixels without the result boomeranging. This was the last go-round.

Wiping a lock of hair out of his eyes, Spencer retook his place on his red stool and rolled up to the X3.

“Clearer, baby. Just a little bit clearer.”