Killer Instinct (Instinct #2)(25)

“It’s called animatronic echo mapping. The next step in biometrics. It can predict muscle movement based on fixed intervals.”

Facial recognition software generally relies on measurements between key features: the eyes, ears, mouth, and nose. Its limitations derive from the inability to account for different facial expressions. But what four-star general smiles when he gets his face scanned before entering the launch room at NORAD? In other words, the limitations haven’t been too limiting. Until now, apparently.

“The times, they are a-changing, Dylan,” said Julian. “It used to be I could hack into any facial recognition system by simulating a single expression. A freeze-frame. Now it’s all about movement. Instead of passwords, most Swiss banks have recently switched to using sentences, and not just for a voice match. Every move of the mouth for each vowel sound has to match as well.”

“So this echo mapping is your way around that?”

“An eleven-foot ladder for a ten-foot wall,” said Julian. “From a series of still photos I can essentially animate you. If I can do that, I can be you.”

“And empty my Swiss bank account?”

He grinned. “If need be.”

“Good to know if I actually had one,” I said. “Even better would be knowing how this is going to help me identify the five women.”

Julian looked down at my phone. “These are still frames from surveillance footage, right? So, what I need is the footage.”

I felt like a Boy Scout handing him the flash drive I’d made with all the recordings. I’d come prepared.

Julian began downloading the files, and I was starting to get the picture, so to speak. Julian was a hacker, not a programmer. This wasn’t his program, but he was well equipped to reverse engineer it and tinker with its application. In doing so, the possibilities were literally endless. Forget about only being able to search mug shots and driver’s license photos. Now you could identify almost anyone using the internet, and not only by their photos. That was the true innovation. All videos were now in play. Snapchat. YouTube. You name it.

The times, they were indeed a-changing.

As fast as I’d appeared, I was now gone from Julian’s walls. In my place were the five women, one shot after another, amid the barrage of red bursts. It felt like the room was exploding.

Then, it all suddenly stopped.

“Winner, winner, chicken dinner!” said Julian with a clap of his hands.

I spun around on my heel, my head craning to look at every wall. “Which one?”

“Right shoulder, three o’clock,” he said.

I turned. Fittingly, I was staring at a still frame taken from a video. She was standing at a podium. It was as if she were staring right back at me. “How do you know it’s her?” I asked. “How do you know she’s the one?”

He made a few taps on his keyboard. “Because of this,” he said.





CHAPTER 33


SHE DIDN’T have a mug shot, and according to the motor vehicle departments in all fifty states, she didn’t have a driver’s license either. But she did have a job.

Julian enlarged the description underneath the video he’d found. It was from the website of New York University. Professor of Philosophy Sadira Yavari speaking at the Great Thinkers Summit, it read.

Before I could even ask for it, Julian pulled up her bio from another page on the website that listed all the NYU faculty.

Sadira Yavari was an Iranian-born professor who had taught philosophy at the university for seven years. Her focus was epistemology, the study of knowledge and justified belief.

“It can’t be a coincidence,” said Julian.

“Which part?” I asked. “That she and Darvish are both Iranian or both professors?”

“Both,” he said.

On the one hand, he was right. The fact she was Iranian was proof enough for me that she had been the one with Darvish at the hotel. That she could also claim to be a professor only further explained how she was able to get close enough to him to end up in his room.

On the other hand, “Do you notice something odd about her bio?” I asked.

Julian read it again. He nodded. “Seven years.”

That’s how long Yavari had been teaching at NYU. An operative would never be in one place for that many years. Two was the norm. Three, max. Never as long as seven. My stint at Cambridge lasted thirty months. Coincidentally or not, I got made after twenty-nine.

“Of course, there is a simple explanation,” I said.

“A civilian recruit? It rarely happens,” said Julian, “and even less so with a woman.”

“Rarely, but not never.”

Sadira Yavari could’ve been recruited by the Agency for a specific assignment because she matched a unique profile that was needed—in this case an Iranian-born professor, and a very attractive one at that. But recruiting civilians fully entrenched in their civilian lives is a hard sell. Like ice-to-Eskimos hard.

And Julian was right—it’s even harder with women. As opposed to men, women don’t secretly harbor thoughts of being James Bond.

“Is it possible? Sure,” said Julian. “Think limited scope. Maybe all she had to do was cozy up to Darvish and set the table for someone else to kill him.”

“With a heart attack? And a bottle lodged up his—”