She embedded code in the Emirates Airline’s server to alert her to any outside IP addresses searching the manifest for flight numbers 975 and 123. She built a trap to catch others like herself as a security measure, something Emirates should have done in the first place. Having received no such alerts, she has every reason to believe she’s alone in having identified the Melemet alias and flight schedule. But her mind won’t let it be.
Ten minutes.
Immigration desks are the fly strips of terrorism pest control. Face recognition software has improved exponentially in the past five years, to the point at which X-ray imaging in an airport’s full-body scanner can utilize an individual’s skull features to overcome attempts at disguise like glasses and wigs. If the man Grace is set to follow has tripped a list in Tehran or the UAE or is identified passing through Immigration here in Turkey, airport security will follow him. Turkish agents might arrest him. Where does that leave Dulwich’s plan? Why weren’t contingencies made?
A Knox rule she’s absorbed: you can’t win the game if you don’t know all the players.
Dulwich has either been told Okle is not in the international database of persons of interest, or Dulwich’s mystery client is none other than the Turkish government or one of its agencies — meaning the man can enter the country without being stopped. Atatürk Airport offers Grace an opportunity to identify such players if they exist. She notices a series of mirrored windows angled down toward the busy concourse from the mezzanine level. Despite her fatigue, she smiles at the advantage she has just discovered.
She assumes Dulwich will follow Okle once he’s out of the terminal, but it’s nothing but an educated guess. She begins plotting.
An agent or investigator wanting to follow Okle/Melemet out of the terminal would be far wiser to do so from a chair in a security office than with boots on the floor. Every square inch of the airport is monitored. Once the mark reaches Immigration Control and leaves, through a succession of cameras one would be able to follow him to a taxi, bus, passenger vehicle, rental or parked car.
One agent in the security room, another in a car parked somewhere along the airport exit route. The mark has no way of identifying his surveillance team.
But she does.
She’s filled with a sudden burst of energy, defying her fatigue. Her mathematical mind is well suited to strategic planning; she’s capable of linear thinking, of laying down stepping-stones on the fly, rarely having to backtrack and correct a step.
Abandoning the salad, she pulls her roll-aboard into the concourse and rides an escalator to the mezzanine and its pair of higher-end restaurants, administration offices and the secured entrance leading into the mirrored window area. She phones her car service, is patched through and informs the dispatcher she will be at the curb in twenty minutes — ten for the plane to land; ten, or more, for Okle to get through Customs and Immigration.
She kneels by a trash can and makes a point of unzipping her bag and rearranging some clothing. She needs the cover.
In the process, she places her iPhone slightly behind the trash can, lens pointing out, difficult if not impossible to see. The beauty of the device is that it allows still or video photography to be shot without having to unlock the phone. Its contents are Cloud-based; if the phone is confiscated, she will be able to access those via another identical phone in a matter of hours. Apple sells well in both Dubai and Istanbul. For now, it’s recording live video. She repacks, zips up the bag and leaves, returning to the concourse via the escalator.
Six minutes.
She repositions herself with a view of International Arrivals. A crowd of weary drivers and enthusiastic relatives has formed on her side of a restraining tape, a gauntlet past which she can’t see. Despite the heels, she’s forced to a stretch as she tries to balance against a spinning rack of tourist pamphlets. As arrivals reach the open end of the roped-off gauntlet, people rush to meet them, further obscuring her view.
She overhears a woman ask an arriving passenger in English the flight’s origin. Delhi.
One minute.
The crowd ebbs and flows, sorting itself out. There’s a lull. She has a chance to secure a place at the tape, but decides against it. Mashe Okle must not see her; she is supporting Knox and may meet the man face-to-face. Her interest is less in Okle than in who’s watching him. That, along with his entourage, if any.
She’s also monitoring the elevators and escalators for people like her — those who keep their distance and yet imply an interest in new arrivals.
She sends Dulwich a secure text:
mark on point
He made it clear she won’t hear from him over the course of the op, but that only serves to excite her: he’s trusting her, solo. Until she and Knox confab, she’s independent.
He expects her to fail at following Okle single-handed. Told her she can pick him up again at the hospital. But she has other ideas.
Dulwich’s penchant for secretiveness has a chilling effect on Grace. His methods, his need-to-know exclusivity, protects the chain of knowledge, secures the intelligence. Her first field op for Dulwich, in Shanghai, she felt expendable. Recently, she’s been led to believe she’s not simply secure with her outsource work for Rutherford Risk, but is a highly valued asset/provider. Brian Primer has invested in her cyber intelligence training. He must see big things ahead for her.
Knox knows Dulwich better than she, rarely believes everything Dulwich tells him. She often finds herself defending Dulwich only to wonder why later. She blames her ingrained sense of loyalty to her employer, her Chinese-ness, an inescapable connection to her heritage that she often wears like an albatross.
Time is suddenly impossible to measure. The minute hand of her watch won’t advance. It isn’t the adrenaline-induced special effect of time slowing, a phenomenon that can be mesmerizing and addicting. Instead it’s her anticipation and expectation, which feed her impatience. She wants the curtain to rise.
As so often happens in surveillance, when the logjam finally breaks with the arrival of Mashe past security and into the terminal, Grace finds herself in a perfect storm. She counts two other men traveling with him, possibly bodyguards; they aren’t making it obvious, but they aren’t hiding, either. They follow a step behind, emotionless and alert.
She sees a Middle Eastern male, wearing blue jeans and a leather jacket, walking down the moving escalator. The rubber rail guides his hand, his eyes on the arriving passengers. It’s his practiced scan of his surroundings that cues her: in a second or two he’s taken in the surroundings, including egress. He’s spotted a uniformed airport security team with a K9, as well as an undercover woman that Grace had missed.
He’s wearing iPhone earbuds, the undercover equivalent of the flesh-colored curly “pigtails” bodyguards wear emerging from their shirt collars. His lips move. Could be a phone call, but Grace knows better — he’s with a team. Private security? Police? Domestic intelligence? Foreign? Friendlies?
She calls Dulwich to pass along the intel of the extra set of eyes. He doesn’t answer the call, pissing her off. She assumes he must be nearby. Providing information like this should help solidify her stature as an effective field operative. There are a limited number of such opportunities on any op. The cream rises to the top because it separates; she must separate herself from the nose-to-the-ground types who can’t think for themselves.
For now, she sends Dulwich a text, “company,” and leaves it at that. She avoids the man from the escalator. She’ll determine his role later. As he reaches the bottom floor, she locates and rides an elevator up one flight. She retrieves her phone, grateful it’s still there, and enters two passwords in order to unlock it and view the video. Back on the lower concourse, she replays the video a total of three times: she watches a man emerge from the secure area of the mirrored windows. He comes straight for the camera. Videoed from floor level, the perspective lends drama to his approach. When he’s three meters away, she pauses on a clean image of his face. It’s the same Middle Eastern man — the agent, the cop — who came down the escalator. A man who has been monitoring Melemet from inside airport security. Such access suggests Turkish law enforcement or an agent.