Markov sat in his office with Commander Drefnig, going over a few loose ends.
'You understand why we need him alive?' Markov said.
Drefnig sat in a black padded chair, with one leg hanging over the side arm. He nodded and brushed his hair back with one hand. 'You want to know what he knows.'
'Not just that. Trent monitored communications that were sent by Central Command. We know Gail Thompson spoon fed him information when she wanted to.'
'About Havers Compound?'
'Yes, amongst other things, but we have every reason to believe that he was monitoring our communications even before that. He may have been doing it for several years. I want to know if he was working with her.'
'Wouldn't we have detected that?'
Markov laughed. It was a short barking laugh that didn't go much deeper than the surface of his barrel chest. 'If only that were true, my job would be ten times easier than it is. We have to assume that he did, and we have to assume that we didn't. There have been too many leaks in the past. This is not the first time a mission has turned sour because the Kamari seemed to be one step ahead of us.'
'Do you think he is feeding this information out? Selling it to the highest bidder?'
'Why not? He's a hacker. He deals in information. I'm sure he gathers whatever he can, and he sells whatever he can gather. The information he gets hold of may not have direct value to him, but he's smart enough to know when it has value to someone else. From what I heard, he was trying to blackmail Central Command and his own employers at the same time. Who knows how many other individuals or factions he may be dealing with?'
Drefnig sat back in his chair. 'That's not good.'
'He could be the cause of many past disasters.'
'We don't know that. There could be others like him. Do you really think Trent is responsible for all this? I think he's just one of Ario Neech's tools. Maybe he's just a hacker who got lucky one time and tried to use it to his advantage?'
Markov looked pensive. 'Maybe you're right, but we need to follow all lines of investigation. My guess is that Trent is the hub in a larger network. If he provides information to other people, we need to know who those people are. They could be just as dangerous as he is.'
'Do you think he'll just tell us all these names if we find him?'
'No, but I'm sure his address book will make interesting reading.'
Drefnig tilted his head, gazing up at the ceiling. 'I'm sure his address book will be tripled encrypted and stored some place that will take us forty years to find.'
Markov laughed. 'Maybe you're right about that too. He's certainly given us the run around so far.'
A buzz interrupted their conversation. Markov looked up, checking the wall console, and saw Commander Harris waiting outside. He was fiddling with a console in his hand. Markov pressed a button on the desk and the door slid up into the ceiling.
'General,' Harris said, nodding in greeting as he walked into the small office.
Drefnig looked over his shoulder. 'Hey, Harris. Get the wrong door again? Maybe it's your age catching up with you.'
Harris rolled his eyes but didn't respond to the jibe.
'Good morning Commander Harris,' Markov said in a more respectful tone. 'Have you got something for us?'
Harris stood beside the desk glancing back and forth between the two of them. 'Well, I doubt you'll be interested. I know Drefnig has everything in hand, lolling around in his chair like a five-year-old, but I have some satellite images here that show a man with a thick bushy beard sitting in a wheel chair.'
Drefnig was on his feet in an instant. Markov joined him, and together they stared at the console that Harris had brought with him. Harris flicked his finger from right to left and a satellite image appeared on the display. It was an overhead view of the Old Quarter, taken with a low zoom setting. Layers of jumbled box cabins weaved amongst each other like mating snakes. Harris pointed at a couple of dots somewhere on the east side.
Drefnig leant closer. 'What's that?'
'It's a bit small for my eyes,' Markov said.
Harris flicked his finger down and the image zoomed closer. It now centred on a smaller area, consisting of two or three narrow streets and half a dozen box cabins. The dots had grown into people who were shopping in the market stalls or walking along the streets. Harris pointed again, and this time Markov saw it. In between a bright red box cabin and a long blue tubular construction, a narrow alleyway was partly obscured by an overhanging yellow roof. In the alley, a trader stood with a box in his arms. He was talking to another man who was sitting in a wheelchair. The seated man's face was adorned with a thick bushy beard. His face was looking down, partly obscured behind the corner of the building.
'Is that him?' Drefnig said.
Harris looked at him. 'You tell me,' he said. 'I've never seen the guy. He fits the profile that you gave me. He looks right on the mark to me.'
Markov patted Harris on the shoulder. 'It has to be him. We should pick him up.'
Drefnig leant closer to the console. 'It does look like him,' he said, 'but I've only seen grainy images of his face from the profiles. I suppose it could be someone else as well. There must be a dozen or more wheelchair users in Cinnamon City. How many have beards?'
'I'm no statistician,' Harris said.
Markov looked from Harris to Drefnig and back again. 'My hunch is we have our man.'
Drefnig straightened his back. 'I can't really get my head around the fact that Harris might have done something useful. Has this happened before?'
Harris gave Drefnig a sidelong glance. 'I have grandchildren with more experience than you. When did you graduate from the kitchens? Was it last week?'
Markov shook his head. 'You can both spend a week working in the kitchens to refresh your memories if you like?'
Drefnig held up a hand in apology then returned his attention to Harris' console. 'When was this image taken?' he said.
Harris tapped his console, scrolling metadata across the image. 'After you spoke to me yesterday, I organised an overnight reconnaissance scan using one of the satellite platforms. We captured around five hundred images per second, and focussed our search on Cinnamon City. We also ran a second scan over a wider area. After each sweep, the satellite platform automatically processed all the images using custom pattern recognition algorithms. They compared them against features taken from Trent's profile. Face shots were next to useless since the images were being taken from an orbiting satellite. We wouldn't have been able to use them unless Trent looked straight up at the sky.'
'How did you find him then?' Markov said.
'We used other features that would be visible from above. We searched for anyone sat in a chair, and we weighted this against corresponding matches for anyone with any noticeable kind of facial hair. We also ran concurrent pattern searches based upon his approximate body weight, and hair colour. We processed all the results together and applied filters where possible to remove people with different skin tones and so on. That gave us a list of around one hundred possible matches. Now for the really hi-tech part.'
Markov looked up with interest.
'Penning and me spent half an hour going through all the images by hand until we found this.'
'Penning and I,' Drefnig said.
Harris huffed. 'You weren't there.'
Drefnig rolled his eyes.
'That was good work,' Markov said, nodding to Harris.
Harris smiled. 'Thanks, General. Once we had what we thought was a good match, I brought it straight here.'
'So it was taken in the last hour?' Drefnig said.
'The image itself was captured about two hours ago. The pattern matching algorithms were doing several other tasks at the time, so we had a large backlog of images to process. We had to reshuffle a few priorities. It was about an hour before we could use the main pattern matchers, and it took thirty minutes to narrow down the list of possible matches. The manual part took twenty minutes after that. I'd say Trent has about a two hour jump on you - if it's him.'
'You'd better get moving,' Markov said to Drefnig.
Drefnig nodded. 'I have a good feeling about this one,' he said, patting Harris on the shoulder.
Harris winked at him.
'Good work Harris,' Markov said. 'This could well be significant.'
Harris grinned and they all headed for the door.