The director started pacing again. Remar could sense the mental gears turning. But it was taking a long time for them to spit something out.
Finally, the director stopped. He looked at Remar and said, “What’s the status of God’s Ear?”
Remar shook his head, realizing just how desperate the director had become. “Ted, you can’t be serious.”
“What’s the status?”
“It’s not even close to being ready for—”
The director slammed a hand down on his desk and shouted, “Well, make it ready!”
Remar had about had enough. “How, Ted? You want me to suspend the laws of physics? It’s too much data, too many false positives, requiring too much processing power to sift through. Maybe in a year, maybe six months, if we’re lucky. But not now.”
“Why? The data’s there, Mike. Every cell phone has a microphone. If we’re not going to listen in, why the hell did we develop WARRIOR PRIDE and NOSEY SMURF? We can even use the phone’s gyroscopes like microphones — what was the point of that program if we’re not going to use it? Every new car has Bluetooth, and voice recognition, and a microphone that gets activated when an airbag deploys, or when the driver wants to access some concierge service. Home entertainment systems are getting equipped with voice recognition. People are installing personal electronic assistants like that Amazon Echo in their homes. All voice-activated. And how many baby monitors are there? The whole world is being wired for sound, every vehicle, every room, every person. We need to access that. We need to use it.”
“But we can’t make sense of it yet. God’s brain hasn’t caught up to God’s Ear.”
“Damn it, you’re not thinking. The parameters here are small. Only a certain radius from Gallagher’s apartment. We can redeploy the sensors in the JLENS blimps — we were going to do that anyway. That is a huge multiplier on what we can perceive in the DC area.”
The Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System was a pair of surveillance blimps the army had managed to launch over Maryland, ostensibly to defend against cruise missiles. In Remar’s view, the near-three-billion-dollar program was a giant white elephant. On the other hand, as the director said, it could be redeployed. But still.
“And the dirtboxes,” the director went on. “That joint CIA/US Marshals cell phone tracking program. We’ll repurpose that, too.”
Remar thought that one might make a little more sense. The program involved the use of planes that mimicked cell phone towers, tricking phones into reporting unique registration information. CIA and the Marshals had most of the US population covered, but for Gallagher and Manus they would need coverage only of the DC area.
“Okay, fine,” Remar said. “You’re saying the data set is manageable because we’d only be listening for two voices.”
“That’s right. Gallagher’s. And Manus’s.”
“Manus barely talks. He signs.”
For a moment, the director looked crestfallen. Then he shook it off.
“It doesn’t matter. We only need a snippet. We know that. It’s been prototyped. And his voice is unusual, too, because of his deafness. When he does talk, we can pick it out from the background noise more easily than the norm. Anyway, they’re together — we don’t need both of them, just one or the other.”
“Look, even within the parameters you’re describing, the processing power we’d need would be massive. What do you want to do, shut down everything else?”
“Yes! Yes, if that’s what it takes. Why not?”
Remar couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You’re saying you want us to go dark on all the terrorist chatter, on the Kremlin’s plans for Ukraine, on the launch of new Chinese spy satellites, on the cartels in Mexico, on the disposition of nukes in India and Pakistan… so we can try to listen in on Manus and Gallagher?”
“If we don’t find Manus and Gallagher, if someone puts out God’s Eye, we will be shut down. Game over. We’ll be deaf and blind anyway. All I’m proposing is a short… hiatus. Probably no more than twenty-four hours, possibly a good deal less than that. Divert all the processing power we need to locate Manus and Gallagher, roll them up, and we’re done. We save God’s Eye. And who knows, maybe we learn from field-testing God’s Ear how to bring it on line faster.”
“How the hell are we even going to explain this? We can’t divert that much processing power discreetly. Half the technical side of the organization is going to know.”
“Intel on a second bomb threat. All need-to-know.”
“A bomb threat? For something like what you’re describing, they’ll think we’re under nuclear attack. There will be leaks. You’ll cause a panic.”
“Not if we clarify that the parameters are extremely tight and the time frame extremely limited. By the time anyone even has a chance to think too much about it, it’ll already be over.”
Remar didn’t answer. He was no longer asking himself whether the director had lost it. That question had been answered, and there was no time to be emotional about it. He just needed to figure out what to do.
But the director seemed to take his silence as assent. “Don’t you see? We need this. It’s like I said, every time some civil liberties extremist leaks another one of our capabilities, we have to develop new ones. Well, God’s Eye is at risk now. At a minimum, we have to have God’s Ear to replace it. And Manus and Gallagher will have no idea it’s out there. They’ll walk right into it.”
CHAPTER
46
Hello, miss, hello, son, where may I take you this morning?”
The man had a sunny Maharashtra accent. For some reason, Evie found it reassuring.
“Is there a Walmart around here?”
“There is indeed, a twenty-four-hour facility on Route 30. Will that be your destination today?”
“I just need to stop there to pick up a few things. My destination is in Columbia. Is that all right?”
“Of course, as long as you don’t mind the meter running.”
“I don’t mind at all. Thank you.”
She and Dash were in and out of the Walmart in less than ten minutes — Evie with a new prepaid cell phone, Dash with some new comic books — and a little over an hour later, they were standing in front of the senior center, watching the cab drive off. Evie pulled on the door but it didn’t open. Of course. They’d keep it locked at night.
She knocked on the glass. She didn’t recognize the person behind the desk — a big man in scrubs, unlike the attractive women in business suits they seemed to favor during the day. An orderly, she supposed, more than a receptionist.
The man looked up, then stood and came to the door. “Can I help you?” he asked.
“Yes, thank you, my father lives here, and… well, would it be all right if I see him?”
“Ma’am, visiting hours don’t start until seven.”
“Yes, I know. And I know it’s odd, but… look, could you at least open the door? It feels strange to have to talk to you through the glass.”
The man looked dubious, but it was a retirement home, for God’s sake, not a bank. He unlocked the door and opened it, but didn’t step out of the way or invite her in.
“Thank you,” she said. “The thing is, my son and I are going on a trip. On our way to the airport, in fact. And… I had this terrible dream, just before I woke up, that my father would be gone when we got back. I know it’s silly, but it felt so much like a premonition. I just wanted to make sure we saw him before we left. In case. Would that be all right?”