Biery shrugged. “Damn. We IT guys never get to have any fun. Okay, here’s the thing: Both of these pictures, the ISI guy and the LeT guy, have been in the database the CIA uses for facial recognition for a long time, but they were never matched with one another.”
“Why not?” asked Clark.
Gavin seemed glad to be asked this question. “Because facial-recognition algorithms aren’t perfect. They do better when the faces being compared are photographed from the same angle with the same light values. By using facial metrics, that is to say the distance between key landmarks, like eyes and ears and such, the software determines a statistical probability that it is looking at the same face. If there are too many anomalies, either because the faces don’t match very well or because the photographs are taken at different resolutions or one of the pictures is registering some movement of the subject, then the match probability goes down precipitously. We can solve for these external discrepancies somewhat by using something called the active appearance model, which removes the shape of the face and only uses the texture as a comparison.”
Dom Caruso said, “Sorry, Gavin, but we have to be back upstairs in ten minutes. Can you cut to the chase?”
“Dom, let’s indulge him for another minute, okay?” asked John.
Dom nodded, and Biery addressed Clark directly now, as thoughnowlge the other men were not in the room. “Anyway, the picture of Khalid Mir on his passport and the picture of Riaz Rehan crossing the street in Peshawar are just too different for current facial-recognition software to connect, because there are too many variances in angle, lighting, type of equipment used for the photograph, and of course Rehan is wearing sunglasses, which is not as much of a problem as it used to be before a newer software design began being used, but it sure doesn’t help. So these two pictures”—he drew his cursor back and forth between the two older pictures on the monitor—“do not match.” Then he took the cursor over to the Cairo picture taken three days earlier. “But both of these two pictures do match this picture, because it retains just enough of the characteristics of the other two. It’s in the middle, so to speak.”
Chavez asked, “So all three shots are definitely the same guy?”
Biery shrugged. “Definitely? No. We don’t like to use that term when discussing mathematical probabilities.”
“Okay, what is the probability?”
“It’s about a ninety-one percent chance Cairo dude, general dude, and dead dude are all the same dude.”
All eyebrows in the room raised high. Ryan spoke for the group: “Holy shit!”
“Holy shit indeed,” said Wills. “We have just learned that a known terrorist for LeT is not only not dead but is now a department chief for Pakistani intelligence.”
And Granger said, “And this department head for the ISI, who is, or was, an LeT operative, is now meeting with a known bad guy in Cairo.”
“I hate to state the obvious,” Dominic said, “but we need to learn more about this Rehan guy.”
Granger looked at his watch. “Well, that was the most productive lunch break we’ve had in a while. Let’s head back up to the conference room.”
Back upstairs, Granger filled Hendley in on the developments. Immediately the discovery made by Tony Wills and Gavin Biery superseded the Paris operation as the main focus of the meeting.
“This is big,” said Hendley, “but it’s also all very preliminary. I don’t want to jump the gun on this and leak intelligence to CIA or MI6 or anyone else that isn’t one hundred percent solid. We need to know more about this general in the ISI.”
Everyone agreed.
Hendley said, “How can we check this out?”
Ryan spoke first. “Mary Pat Foley. The National Counterterrorism Center knows as much about Lashkar as anyone. If we can find out more about Khalid Mir, before he became Riaz Rehan, maybe we can use that to link the two guys together.”
Hendley nodded. “We haven’t paid a visit on Mary Pat in a while. Jack, why don’t you give her a call and take her to lunch? You can run on down to Liberty Crossing and show her the Mir-Rehan connection. I bet she’ll find that very interesting.”
“I’ll give her a call today.”
“Okay. Keep our sources and methods under your hat, though.”
“Understood.”
“And Jack? Whatever you do, don’t mention that you just got back from Paris.”
The conference room erupted in tired laughter.
23
Sixty-one-year-old Judith Cochrane’s rental car came with in-dash GPS, but she did not set it for the forty-mile drive down from Colorado Springs. She knew the way to 5880 State Highway 67, as she had been here many times to visit her clients.
Her rented Chrysler pulled off South Robinson Avenue, and she stopped at the first gate of ADX Florence. The guards knew her by sight but still they looked over her documents and identification carefully before letting her pass.
It wasn’t easy for an attorney to see a client at Florence; it was harder still for an attorney to see a client housed in H Unit, and a Range 13 client was nigh on impossible to meet with face-to-face. Cochrane and the Progressive Constitution Initiative were in the later stages of drafting a lawsuit to address this issue, but for now she had to play by the rules of supermax.
As one of the most regular visitors to ADX Florence, Judith had come prepared. She would carry a purse with nothing of value in it because she would have to leave it in a locker, and she would not bother entering with her laptop or cell phone, because these would be taken from her immediately if they were on her person. She knew to wear comfortable shoes because she would be walking from the administration unit to her prisoner’s cell, a journey of hundreds of yards of hallways and covered outdoor walkways, and she made sure to dress in an especially conservative pantsuit so that the warden would not refuse her entry due to the preposterous accusation of provocative attire.
She also knew she’d be going through X-ray machines and full-body scanners, so she followed prison rules for visitors and wore a bra that was free of underwire.
She drove on past the guard shack, past a long, high wall. She looped around to the south and went through more remote gates, and as she drove slowly she encountered more guard towers, shotguns, assault rifles, German shepherds, and security cameras than she could possibly count. Finally she pulled into a large, half-empty parking lot outside the administration wing. Behind her, at the entrance to the lot, a row of bright yellow hydraulically operated spikes rose from slats in the concrete. She would not be leaving until the guard force here was ready for her to leave.
Judith Cochrane was met at her car door by a female guard, and together they walked through a series of secure doors and hallways in the administrative wing of the prison. There was no conversation between the two, and the guard did not offer to help the much older woman carry her briefcase or pull her laptop bag.
“Lovely morning,” Judith Cochrane said as they marched down a clean white passageway.
The guard ignored her comment but continued to lead the way with professionalism.
Most guards at ADX Florence didn’t think much of the attorneys who defended the prisoners incarcerated here.
Cochrane didn’t care, she could schlep her own bags, and she’d long ago decided that she much preferred the company of the inmates of supermax prisons to the guard force, who were, as far as she was concerned, just uneducated thugs.
Her worldview was as bleak and cruel as it was simple. Prison guards were like soldiers who were like police
