Caleb Goodspeed looked out of the window of Dr Adina Porter’s office. The view was commanding, taking in the entire breadth of both runways. From where he was sitting, the tails of aircraft moved across the bottom border of the window like plastic sharks’ fins. A memory popped into his head – his last flight from here, a trip to Barbados – and he swallowed hard to maintain his composure.
Porter pursed her lips and regarded Caleb with cool professional detachment. Everything about her exuded poise and professionalism: from her Chanel trouser suit to the framed photographs on her credenza of her shaking hands with international dignitaries.
‘You probably know why I asked you back here, Caleb,’ she said. A perfectly manicured scarlet fingernail picked up a piece of lint from her otherwise immaculate leather desk and flicked it into the air.
‘Actually, I don’t,’ said Caleb.
‘You’re not a very convincing liar,’ she smiled. ‘Two years ago, you called me out of the blue and told me my new programme of training officers to detect suspicious passenger behaviour would fail. I chose to ignore your advice. And now we have this.’
She lifted up the newspaper on her desk between her thumb and forefinger as if it was germ-ridden. Caleb didn’t need to read the headline, he had seen it earlier that day. A damning report on the fifty-million-pound initiative had been leaked to the press.
‘You were right,’ she said. ‘It failed. I’ve brought you back so you can tell me why.’
Caleb’s eyes flicked over to Edward Freeman, the associate head of security at Heathrow Airport and Porter’s number two. His eyes had not left Caleb since Caleb had first walked in. Caleb’s Nikes, combat trousers and t-shirt probably didn’t help. Freeman looked like he had been pressed from a corporate mid-level executive mould: rail-thin, blue suit, Windsor tie, not one hair out of place and shoelaces double-tied and of equal length. The only movement was the pencil wedged between his index and middle fingers, which wiggled frantically like a hyperactive metronome.
‘You were trying to do something that can’t be done,’ said Caleb. His voice was gravelly and raw, and he cleared his throat before continuing. ‘Spotting disguised threat requires intuition, not observation. That can’t be taught. It’s genetic. The only way that programme would have worked is if you’d hired me to source the right people for you.’
Freeman gave Porter a sideways glance and a raised eyebrow.
‘You doubt that I could?’ asked Caleb.
‘I do,’ said Freeman, his voice more forceful than his slight frame would suggest. ‘The programme didn’t fail because we didn’t have the right people. It failed because it was a nineteenth-century solution to the problem. The right answer, the only answer, is technology. We need an upgrade in our software.’
Caleb stood up and walked to the window. In front of him the control tower rose up like a metallic mushroom from the concrete bulk of the main airport building.
‘Is that the control tower?’
Freeman spoke before Porter could answer.
‘I know where you are going with this. No, it’s not fully automated. And yes, we still use controllers …’
‘Of course you do,’ interrupted Caleb. ‘The risks are too high not to. Artificial intelligence can never match real intelligence.’
‘That’s not …’ started Freeman.
‘A hundred billion nerve cells,’ said Caleb. ‘That’s how many the brain has. More than the stars in our galaxy.’
Porter smiled, enjoying the performance, but Freeman’s face tightened even further. Caleb pressed on.
‘Our brains can make a billion billion calculations per second. A million times faster than the fastest supercomputer today. What if I could prove AI can never match human intuition?’
‘That’s an empty promise,’ said Freeman. ‘How can you do that?’
Caleb nodded to the computer sitting on Porter’s desk.
‘Find me a recent example where your screening systems missed a threat. Show me a picture of the person. I’ll tell you what one of my people could have told you.’
Freeman gave Caleb a thin smile.
‘Now that’s a decent offer.’
He leaned over to Porter and whispered in her ear. She nodded a few times and then typed on the keyboard until she found what she was looking for. She twisted the monitor around.
On it was a pristine, colour digital picture taken by a security camera embedded in a ceiling: a bird’s eye view of a young man walking through a metal detector. Behind him was a packed line of travellers waiting their turn. He was in his early twenties, dressed smartly in a blazer.
‘Adnan Shawab,’ said Freeman. ‘A detonator and C-4 found in his briefcase. Our behavioural detectives missed him.’
‘Sounds like your baggage screeners missed the explosives too,’ muttered Caleb.
Freeman nodded in irritation. ‘Touché. Anyway, lucky for us we did a random search.’
‘Where was the flight going?’ asked Caleb.
‘Boston,’ replied Freeman.
‘The bomb was planted on him. He knew nothing about it,’ Caleb responded without a pause.
‘How could you possibly …’ stuttered Freeman.
Caleb ignored him. He dug his hands into his pockets and walked back to the window. ‘Three, or four … maybe even five. That’s the real question.’
He looked back at Freeman, as if just noticing he was in the room.
‘Five,’ Caleb said definitely, nodding his head. ‘That’s the answer. Well, the actual answer is three. Look for number three.’
Freeman stared back in confusion.
Caleb then answered slowly, as if to a child. ‘Adnan is one of five children. It was the third one that planted the C-4 on him.’
Dr Porter raised a perfectly shaped eyebrow.
‘Impressive, Caleb.’ She twisted around the screen.
On it was a black-and-white still of a boy in his late teens being dragged out of a house by two masked policemen.
‘Fawaz Shawab. Adnan’s seventeen-year-old brother. Arrested a few days later. So how did you know?’
Caleb walked over to the computer and tapped a key to recall the prior photograph.
‘Look at that face,’ he said, pointing to Adnan. ‘That’s not the face of anyone planning something diabolical. It’s studious. And no kid that age dresses like that for a flight. It’s too formal. That’s a varsity jacket he’s wearing. I was going to guess Harvard or Yale. You said he was flying to Boston. So, Harvard. The blazer, it’s a uniform, a badge he wears, like a pennant of distinction. He’s defined by it. He’s not going to blow up a plane. So, the explosives must have been planted. But by whom? We’d normally look for suspect affiliations. But we all know Adnan wouldn’t keep that sort of company. The person who did this was family: someone he could not choose. Let’s dig deeper. Look at the shoes and the trousers: they’re threadbare and they don’t fit. Hand-me-downs. This is a smart kid but not a rich one. The family’s poor. He’s carrying an unusual briefcase. It’s a doctor’s case: old, but kept in great condition. It’s not something you’d buy on purpose, not if you were a foreigner trying to fit into an elite American school. Someone gave it to him, and it never leaves his side. Father, I would say. Shawab is an Egyptian name, a popular one. So, I’d say he’s the son of an Egyptian physician and the case is a gift from a proud father. Now here’s the tricky part. Proud fathers often mean neglected siblings. And Adnan has them. Quite a few. He’s the eldest: academic overachievement is almost always a first sibling trait. So how many others? This was a middle sibling, resentful and radicalized because of the family’s economic troubles. Being the middle of five is exponentially more impactful than being in the middle of three, so I guessed five.’
Freeman looked at him, stunned.
‘Jesus.’
Dr Porter twisted her swivel chair towards Caleb, in the process turning three-quarters away from Freeman.
‘OK, Caleb. Where do we start?’
Caleb took a pen and slip of paper from his jacket pocket and wrote something down, then folded the paper in two. Neither Porter nor Freeman took their eyes off the folded piece of paper that Caleb kept in his hand.
‘Step one,’ said Caleb, ‘you walk me through your current security measures: armed units, canine teams, baggage screeners and air marshals. Step two, I help you hire appropriate consultants from my network.’
‘We’re not talking about psychics, are we?’ asked Freeman, his face souring. ‘The press will string us up if they find we’re using psychics.’
‘There’s no such thing as psychics,’ replied Caleb, flatly. ‘Anyone who says they’re psychic is either lying or mentally ill.’
‘How much is this going to cost, Caleb?’ asked Porter, keeping things on track.
Caleb placed the folded piece of paper on her desk and pushed it towards her. As she read it, for the first time her poise slipped, and a flicker of anger ran across her face.
‘You can’t be serious,’ she said, looking up at Caleb in surprise.
Caleb walked to the door and opened it. Before he left he turned back to them.
‘How much is your passengers’ safety worth to you?’