Secret Service and the marines, dual releases were required before a third party could examine White House security tapes.
'Mr. and Mrs. McCaskey have been cleared by the office of the chief of staff ' Kearns informed him.
'Then you have my permission, sir,' Vlad told the Op-Center officer.
'Thank you,' McCaskey said.
Agent Kearns had booted the digital videodisc on which the images were stored. The SSOC officer swung the monitor toward the McCaskeys. The couple must have friends in high places to have been given access to these images. Few people even knew they existed.
The image was time-coded and book marked in five-minute chunks. Kearns jumped directly to the times the McCaskeys wished to see. Vlad stood back while Darrell and Maria bent very close to the monitor and to each other. There was something touching about it.
A woman walked past the screen.
'Hold on!' Darrell McCaskey said. 'Can you hold the image and enlarge it?'
Agent Kearns obliged. A blurry green image of a woman filled the screen. She was walking away from the hotel toward Pennsylvania Avenue. Mr. McCaskey pointed at the monitor with his pinkie. He traced what appeared to be a faint smudge of dress beneath the woman's long jacket.
'See the line under the hem?' McCaskey asked his wife excitedly.
'Yes,' Mrs. McCaskey said.
'What do you think?'
'That could be satin,' she replied.
'Sir, if you give me a minute, I'll extrapolate the color information and sharpen the image,' Kearns said.
'Please do,' Mr. McCaskey said.
No one spoke as the computer did its job. Though the image was entirely in tones of green, the image processor was capable of matching a color to each particular shade. The saturation of green corresponded to the comparative brightness of a color. By removing the green and matching the remaining light intensity to a color, the image could be accurately colorized. At the same time, the computer scanned the picture to differentiate between legitimate information and pictorial noise such as blurred motion, video snow, and other artifacts. It removed these flaws by replicating information from adjoining pixels.
Within two minutes, the woman looked as if she had posed for a profile picture in daylight. The McCaskeys studied it for a minute, then asked Agent Kearns to print the image. He obliged. He handed the eight-by-ten to Mr. McCaskey.
'Do you recognize the individual?' Kearns asked.
'Yes,' Mr. McCaskey replied. 'Gentlemen, you have been of immeasurable assistance. Thank you.'
Mrs. McCaskey smiled. It was formal but sincere. For Vlad, it was worth coming back to work. One day, when his assignment ended and the pressure of his job was behind him, Vlad hoped to find a woman like that. A woman with poise, intensity, and beauty.
The captain returned to his car and driver. Vlad had to admit it was encouraging how people from four nations had just worked together to solve the death of someone from a fifth country. There was probably a lesson in that for the United Nations and the world in general. But he was too tired to search for it. And maybe it was not worth analyzing.
As Yuri used to say with a dismissive wave of his hand, 'It's politics.
My keeshkee cannot take it anymore.'
Maybe the Krasnov gene pool and intestines were averse to chaos in general. It was lunch hour, and Vlad found the traffic disturbing. It was thick with growling buses, limousines, and Washingtonians who honked at tourists who slowed as they passed each familiar landmark.
Vlad shut his tired eyes, and the comfort of darkness returned. Along with a troubling realization.
He shared a love of nighttime with someone else. Someone whose values were the antithesis of his own: the assassin.
