The ceiling at only eight feet, with its gray acoustic tiles, and the concrete walls and the concrete floor and the utter lack of windows summon in Booth Hendrickson thoughts of crypts and casketed remains and catacombs, in spite of the fluorescent lighting and the arrayed computers. As he waits for the current shift of the resort’s security technicians to complete the new task he has given them, he is profoundly nervous but determined not to appear unsettled.
Stacia O’Dell, unaware that she is an adjusted person—as all of them are unaware—discovers that Hendrickson went without lunch to make this trip. From the restaurant, she orders his favorite tea and a selection of little sandwiches. These fortifications arrive in a timely manner, and Hendrickson surreptitiously takes a maximum-strength acid reducer before sitting down at the wheeled service table to drink and eat in a pretense of nonchalance.
Having overseen the conversion of Iron Furnace, he is proud of how the plan was implemented back in the day. He’s distraught that Luther Tillman has come here, and he is mystified as to why. The sheriff is a hick, a rube, a hayseed who graduated from a third-tier college, who probably thinks the Ivy League is some women’s garden club, who would not be able to get a table in the best Washington restaurants if his life depended on it, a yokel, a boor whose entire wardrobe probably costs less than one of Hendrickson’s suits, not a likely candidate to be a contemporary Sherlock Holmes.
Because she has been instructed to have no curiosity about anything Hendrickson does, Stacia O’Dell makes no inquiry regarding this event planner, Martin Moses, about whom he is so curious. But the security men ask questions as they work. He turns them aside with vague assertions that Moses is engaged in a nefarious scheme on behalf of a corporate rival of Terra Firma, which owns the resort.
In this crisis, Hendrickson takes refuge in how smoothly the conversion of Iron Furnace has gone and in the conviction that it will not be undone by a rustic lump like Luther Tillman.
Those citizens employed at the resort had been induced to submit to injections sixteen months earlier, when their employer offered free flu vaccinations and implied that anyone refusing wouldn’t be paid for work missed due to influenza. Because these inoculations were also provided free of charge to family members of employees and anyone else in town who wanted them, within two weeks 386 of the 604 residents were programmed with nanomachine command mechanisms. During the next two months, those who hadn’t been converted in the first wave were, at the most opportune moments, sedated without their knowledge by family members; while sleeping, they were brought into the fellowship of the adjusted. Only seven had a chance to resist, and only two had of necessity been killed.
When everyone in Iron Furnace except children not yet sixteen were under Arcadian command, the town became a valued subsidiary of the resort, a single well-oiled enterprise. Multiple cameras were installed on every street of the town, so that nothing might escape the attention of those who owned its people and, by owning them, also owned their property. The video from all those sources can be monitored here in real time if there is any incident, and is stored for sixty days in case a reason subsequently arises to review it.
Now Hendrickson tasks them with discovering where this Martin Moses might have gone in town the previous day, after being taken on a tour of the resort by Stacia O’Dell.
Thirty-two minutes into the search, one of the technicians declares, “I’ve got him.”
Booth Hendrickson puts down a cucumber sandwich and bolts from his chair to attend the monitor. The feed from a single camera fills the screen. The security man freezes the image, blocks the face, enlarges it. Luther Tillman.
“That’s the bastard,” Hendrickson confirms.
Back to full image. Recorded at thirty clicks per minute. In the herky-jerky fashion of people moving in video compiled from two-second bits, Tillman exits a gallery named Beaux-Arts and stands on the sidewalk, perhaps thinking that he appears to be a connoisseur when in fact he has small-town self-righteous ill-educated sheriff written all over him. He seems to be watching someone. He moves to the curb. He disappears past one of the massive evergreens.
“Find him!” Hendrickson demands.
In moments, the security tech has the feed from one of the cameras on the farther side of the street. An angled downshot of Tillman looking through the front window of some establishment.
“What is that place?” Hendrickson asks.
“Genovese Ristorante.”
Tillman turns from the restaurant. Various cameras capture him as he walks to the end of the block, rounds the corner, goes into an alleyway, and enters the restaurant by a back door.
“Why would he do that? Show me an interior.”
The tech finds the numbers for the two cameras that cover the public area of the restaurant, specifies date and time. The video appears on a split screen. Tillman enters the room from the kitchen, approaches a waitress, indicates a booth, is escorted to it.
Fast-forward. Tillman orders. He eats. He leaves.
The technician calls up the exterior shot to see where the man went on leaving Genovese. Tillman steps to one of the Pembury Blue conifers and waits.
A woman exits the restaurant. It’s not yet twilight, but the overcast and the hour conspire to prevent a clear view of her face.
Tillman engages her in conversation. They move away together. He stops at a parked car to retrieve something from the trunk.
“Later, enhance that car and get me a license number if you can,” Hendrickson says.
Tillman and the woman proceed to a tavern. Wine for her, beer for him. None of the cameras gets a clear view of her face.
Fast forward. Neither Tillman nor the woman seems interested in drinking. They review some kind of book together. When they get up to leave, she all but directly faces a camera.
“Freeze!” Hendrickson says. He stares at the woman. Auburn hair. Glasses. He can’t see the color of her eyes. She’s striking but…she might be anyone.
He needs to use Stacia O’Dell and these three technicians to undertake tasks involving sensitive national-security databases that they must not recall having violated, for then they will know him as someone other than the CEO of Terra Firma Enterprises, and they will be agitated.
He says, “Play Manchurian with me.”
The four of them respond, “All right.”
“From this point forward, everything we do here will not be retained in your memory once I release you. Instead, you will have memories only that we tried and failed to track Martin Moses and this woman once they drove out of town. Do you understand?”
Four yeses.
“Okay,” says Hendrickson. “Let’s get busy.” He explains how to tap the NSA facial database and apply facial recognition. “Do it.”