The Traveler

Mr. Bubble settled himself in the chair next to the television set. Michael sat on the corner of the bed and faced him. Ever since they had run away from the farm in South Dakota, Gabriel had watched his brother convince strangers that they had to buy something or become part of his plan. Mr. Bubble was going to be a hard sell. You could barely see his eyes behind the tinted lenses and he had a slight smile on his lips as if he were about to watch a comedy show.

“Did you talk to your friends in Philadelphia?” Michael asked.

“It will take some time to set that up. I’ll protect you and your brother for a few days until the problem is solved. We’ll give the Melrose building to the Torrelli family. As payment, I’ll take your share of the Fairfax property.”

“That’s too much for one favor,” Michael said. “Then I won’t own anything.”

“You made a mistake, Michael. And now some people want to kill you. One way or another, the problem has to be solved.”

“That may be true, but-”

“Safety is the first priority. You lose control of two office buildings, but you’re still alive.” Still smiling, Mr. Bubble leaned back in his chair. “Consider this a learning opportunity.”

8

Maya retrieved the video camera and tripod from the Hotel Kampa but left her suitcase and clothes in the room. On the train to Germany, she carefully searched the video equipment but couldn’t find any tracer beads. It was clear that her citizen life was over. After the Tabula found the dead taxi driver, they would hunt her down and kill her on sight. She knew that it would be difficult to hide. The Tabula had probably taken her photograph numerous times during her years in London. They might also have her fingerprints, a voice scan, and a DNA sample from the tissues she tossed into the rubbish bin at the office.

When she reached Munich, she approached a Pakistani woman in the train station and got the address of an Islamic clothing store. Maya was tempted to cover herself completely with the blue burqa worn by Afghani women, but the bulky clothing made it difficult to handle weapons. She ended up buying a black chador to cover her Western clothes and some dark sunglasses. Back at the train station, she destroyed her British identification and used a backup passport to become Gretchen Voss, a medical student with a German father and an Iranian mother.

Air travel was dangerous so she took a train to Paris, went to the Gallieni Métro station, and got on the daily charter bus that traveled to England. The bus was filled with Senegalese immigrant workers and North African families carrying bags of old clothes. When the bus reached the English Channel everyone got out and wandered around the enormous ferryboat. Maya watched British tourists buy duty-free liquor, pump coins into slot machines, and stare at a comedy on a television screen. Life was normal-almost boring-when you were a citizen. They didn’t seem to realize, or care, that they were being monitored by the Vast Machine.

There were four million closed-circuit television cameras in Britain, about one camera for every fifteen people. Thorn once told her that an average person working in London would be photographed by three hundred different surveillance cameras during the day. When the cameras first appeared, the government put up posters telling everyone that they were SECURE BENEATH THE WATCHFUL EYES. Under the shield of new antiterrorism laws, every industrial country was following the British example.

Maya wondered if citizens made a deliberate choice to ignore the intrusion. Most of them truly believed that the cameras protected them from criminals and terrorists. They assumed that they were still anonymous whenever they walked down the street. Only a few people understood the power of the new facial-scanning programs. The moment your face was photographed by a surveillance camera, it could be transformed into a head shot with a consistent size, contrast, and brightness that could be matched against a driver’s license or passport photograph.

The scanner programs identified individual faces, but the government could also use the cameras to detect unusual behavior. These so-called Shadow programs were already being used in London, Las Vegas, and Chicago. The computer analyzed one-second images taken by the cameras and alerted the police if someone left a package in front of a public building or parked a car on the shoulder of a highway. Shadow noticed anyone who strolled through the city observing the world instead of trudging to work. The French had a name for these curious people-flâneurs-but as far as the Vast Machine was concerned, any pedestrian who lingered on street corners or paused at construction sites was instantly suspicious. Within a few seconds, images of these people would be highlighted in color and sent to the police.