Scott was truly impressed. This is where taxpayer"s money went.

Vinnie called Tyrone and by the time he arrived, the color photo- graphs and digital maps of the images were ready.

Scott followed Tyrone down one corridor, then another, through a common area, and down a couple more hallways. They entered Room 322B. The innocuous appearance of the door did not prepare Scott for what he saw; a huge computer room, at least a football field in length. Blue and tan and beige and a few black metal cabi- nets that housed hundreds of disparate yet co-existing computers.

Consoles with great arrays of switches, row upon row of video and graphic displays as far as the eye could see. Thousands of white two by two foot square panel floors hid miles of wires and cables that interconnected the maze of computers in the under- ground control center. There appeared to be a number of discreet areas, where large computer consoles were centered amidst racks of tape or disk drives which served as the only separation be- tween workers.

"This is Big Floyd," Tyrone said proudly. "Or at least one part of him."

"Who or what is Big Floyd?"

"Big Floyd is a huge national computer system, tied together over the Secure Automated Message Network. This is the most powerful computer facility outside of the NSA."

Quiet conversations punctuated the hum of the disk drives and the clicks of solenoids switching and the printers pushing reams of paper. The muted voices could not be understood but they rang with purpose. The room had an almost reverent character to it; where speaking too loud would surely be considered blasphemous.

Scott and Tyrone walked through banks and banks of equipment, more computer equipment than Scott had ever seen in one location.

In fact the Federal Square computer center is on the pioneering edge of forensic technology. The NSA computers might have more oomph!, but the FBI computers have more purpose.

Tyrone stopped at one control console and asked if they could do a match, stat. Of course, anything for Mr. Duncan. "RHIP,"

Tyrone said. Scott recognized the acronym, Rank Has Its Privi- lege. Tyrone gave the computer operator the pictures and asked him to explain the process to Scott.

"I take these pictures and put them in the computer with a scan- ner. The digitized images are stored here," he said pointing at a a rack of equipment. "Then, we enter the subject"s general description. Height, physique and so on." He copied the infor- mation into the computer.

"Now we ask the computer to find possible matches."

"You mean the computer has photos of everyone in there?" Scott asked incredulously.

"No, Scott. Just the bad guys, and people with security clear- ances, and public officials? Your Aunt Tillie is safe from Big Brother"s prying eyes." The reason for Ty"s sarcasm was clear to Scott. Tyrone was not exactly acting in an official capacity on this part of the investigation.

"How many do you have? Pictures that is?" Scott asked more diplo- matically.

"That"s cla.s.sified," Tyrone said quickly.

"The hackers say you have files on over a hundred million people.

Is that true?" Scott asked. Tyrone glared at him, as if to say, shut the f.u.c.k up. Scott took the non-verbal hint and they watched in silence as the computer whirred searching for similar photo files in its ma.s.sive memory. Within a couple of minutes the computer said that there were 4 possible matches. At the end of the 10 minute search, it was up to 16 candidates.

"We"ll do a visual instead of a second search," said the man behind the keyboard. "We"ll start with the 90% matches. There are two of them." A large monitor flashed with a picture of a man, that while not unlike the Spook in features, was definitely not him. The picture was a high quality color photograph.

"No, not him," Scott said without pause. The computer operator hit a couple of keys, a second picture flashed on the monitor and Scott"s face lit up. "That"s him! That"s the Spook!"

Tyrone had wondered if they would find any matches. While the FBI data base was probably the largest in the world, it was unlikely that there was a comprehensive library of teen age hackers. "Are you sure?" Tyrone emphasized the word, "sure".

"Positive, yes. That"s him."

"Let"s have a quick look at the others before we do a full re- trieve," said the computer operator. Tyrone agreed and fourteen other pictures of men with similar facial characteristics to the Spook appeared on the screen, all receiving a quick "no" from Scott. Spook"s picture as brought up again and again Scott said, "that"s him."

"All right, Mike," Tyrone said to the man running the computer, "do a retrieve on OBR-III." Mike nodded and stretched over to a large printer on the side of the console. He pushed a key and in a few seconds, the printer spewed out page after page of informa- tion. OBR-III is a super-secret computer system designed to fight terrorism in the United States. OBR-III and Big Floyd regularly spoke to similar, but smaller, systems in England, France and Germany. With only small bits of data it can extrapo- late potential terrorist targets, and who is the likely person behind the attacks. OBR-III is an expert system that learns continuously, as the human mind does. Within seconds it can provide information on anyone within its memory.

Tyrone pulled the first page from the printer before it was finished and read to himself. He scanned it quickly until one item grabbed his attention. His eyes widened. "Boy, when you pick "em, you pick "em." Tyrone whistled.

"What, what?" Scott strained to see the printout, but Tyrone held it away.

"It"s no wonder he calls himself Spook," Tyrone said to no one in particular. "He"s ex-NSA." He ripped off the final page of the printout and called Scott to follow him, cursorily thanking the computer operators for their a.s.sistance.

Scott followed Tyrone to an elevator and they descended to the fifth and bottom level, where Tyrone headed straight to his office with Scott in tow. He shut the door behind him and showed Scott a chair.

"There"s no way I should be telling you this, but I owe you, I guess, and, anyway, maybe you can help." Tyrone rationalized showing the information to Scott - both a civilian and a report- er. He may have questioned the wisdom, but not the intent.

Besides, as had been true for several weeks, everything Scott learned from Tyrone Duncan was off the record. Way off. For now.

The Spook"s real name was Miles Foster. Scott scanned the file.

A lot of it was government speak and security clearance inter- views for his job at NSA. An entire life was condensed into a a few files, covering the time from when he was born to the time he resigned from the NSA. Scott found much of his life boring and he really didn"t care that Miles" third grade teacher remembered him as being a "good boy". Or that his high school counselor though he could go a long way.

"This doesn"t sound like the Spook I know," Scott said after glancing at the clean regimented life and times of Miles Foster.

"Did you expect it to?" asked Ty.

"I guess I never thought about it. I just figured it would be a regular guy, not a real spook for the government."

"s.h.i.t happens."

"So I see. Where do we go from here?" Scott asked in awe of the technical capabilities of the FBI.

"How "bout a sanity check?" Tyrone asked. "When were you in Amsterdam?"

"Last week, why?"

Tyrone sat behind his computer and Scott noticed that his fingers seemed almost too fat to be of much good. "If I can get this thing to work, let"s see where"s the Control Key?" Scott gazed on as Tyrone talked to himself while working the keyboard and reading the screen. "Foster, Airline, Foreign, ah, the dates,"

he looked up at a large wall calendar. "All right . . .s.h.i.t . . .Delete . . . OK, that"s it."

"What are you doing?" asked Scott.

"Just want to see if your boy really was in Europe with you."

"You don"t believe me!" shouted Scott.

"No, I believe you. But I need some proof, dig?" Tyrone said.

"If he"s up to something we need to find out what, step by step.

You should know that."

"Yeah, I do," Scott resigned. "It"s just that I"m not normally the one being questioned. Know what I mean?"

"Our training is more . . .well, it"s a moot point now. Your Mr. Foster flew to Amsterdam and then back to Washington the next day. I believe I have some legwork ahead of me. I would like to learn a little more about Mr. Miles Foster."

Scott talked Tyrone into giving him a copy of one of the images of Miles aka Spook. He was hoping that Kirk would call him tonight. In any case, Scott needed to buy an image scanner if Kirk was going to be of help. When he got home, he made room on his personal nightmare, his desk, for the flatbed scanner, then played with it for several hours, learning how to scan an image at the right sensitivity, the correct brightness and reflectivity for the proper resolution. He learnd to bring a picture into the computer and edit or redraw the picture. Scott scanned the picture of the Spook into the computer and enjoyed adding mous- taches, subtracting teeth and stretching the ears.

At midnight, on the b.u.t.ton, Scott"s computer beeped. It was Kirk.

WTFO

You got my message.

SUBTLETY IS NOT YOUR STRONG POINT