“Exactly. So much of this data is stored centrally at gigantic server complexes around the world. Think of it as massive file cabinets organized by countries, states, cities, towns, suburbs, or divided tactically into government buildings, banks, commercial office properties, even military facilities, and dozens of other subcategories. The images are typically saved for years, or even in perpetuity. It’s not like you’ve got billions of photos stacked somewhere. It’s all digital. The storage footprint is relatively small.”
“And you never know when some of this data might have value?”
“Exactly. Let’s say there’s an image of an employee meeting outside a building with the same person for weeks. It might not mean anything then, but two years from now when business secrets are stolen it might very well aid in building a corporate espionage case against that employee.”
“I see. Go on.”
“Years ago entrepreneurs saw opportunities in this fledgling field and took advantage to build substantial global businesses from the fact that we really have become a Big Brother society. Now, here is the key for our purposes. Certain people within some of these companies quickly realized that the stored images had value to many others besides the original client. This is so because a camera captures many things outside of the original intent of why it was placed in a certain location. For example, aside from anything to do with the client who put the camera there, if you know someone was at a certain place at a certain time and you want a compromising picture of that person, chances are very good there was an electronic eye there and that the feed exists on some server.”
“So in effect employees of these companies are selling the images to people who want them for reasons unrelated to why the surveillance was conducted in the first place?”
“Exactly. They let it be known discreetly that they can run checks for the right price and the picture is delivered for a fee. Some have gone a step further and the actual companies that collect this data and store it are also selling images to third parties. Apparently the law is vague in some countries, or at least inconsistent enough about the uses that can be made of the stored information to allow sufficient wiggle room for the companies to do this. And the original clients either don’t care or more likely are unaware of these additional uses of the data.
“And that’s where we came in. We sent one well-known server platform covering a number of countries in Europe the digitized images taken from your drawings and the photo of the woman. They ran it through every file they had. We didn’t get a hit the first go-round, but we did the second.”
“And the hit?”
Rice keyed in some commands on his computer and turned the screen around for Kuchin to see. “It was only one hit, but it was better than nothing. Zurich. Outside a hotel, seven months ago,” Rice explained.
Kuchin sat forward and studied the picture. That was the tall man all right.
“But who is he?”
“We don’t know yet.”
Kuchin slapped the table with his palm. “Then this is useless to me.”
“Wait, Evan, please, there’s more. Look at the woman beside him.”
Kuchin did. She was tall, slender, and blonde. Then he noted that the woman’s arm was touching Shaw’s hand. He shot a glance at Rice. “They are together?”
“Apparently so, yes. We checked with the hotel. They would give out no information on either of them, so we next ran her photo through the image data banks.”
“And you got a hit?”
“More than that.” Rice handed him a file. “I know you prefer paper to digital.”
Kuchin took the file, but did not open it. “Her name?”
“Katie James.”
CHAPTER
73
CAN’T WE at least eat our meal before the pretend time is over?” said Reggie earnestly.
“Does it mean that much to you?”
“Actually it does.”
Shaw rifled a glance at the waiter hovering nearby. “Okay, this is probably not the best place to do it anyway.”
Their food came and they talked about things other people would normally talk about over a meal out. Another bottle of wine, this one a red, was ordered and fully drunk. Coffees followed and they shared a dessert that had coconut and ribbons of white icing on top. Shaw paid the bill with a credit card.
“A. Shaw?” said Reggie as she spied the name on the plastic. “What’s the A stand for?”
“Absolutely nothing.”