San Francisco International Airport, July 1997
Bryan McDonald leaned against a pillar in SFO's international terminal, his Navy uniform making him just another face in the crowd of military personnel common to the Bay Area. His eyes scanned the arrivals board where the Air Canada flight from Vancouver showed "LANDED." Right on schedule.
The Motorola StarTAC vibrated in his pocket - one of the new models that could actually receive text messages, though sending them was still a hassle. A message from his Vancouver contact: "Package in transit. Clean passage."
Through the glass walls, fog rolled across the runways—typical San Francisco summer weather that would make most tourists complain but made Bryan smile. It was the perfect cover for what they were about to do.
Bryan watched as passengers from the Vancouver flight filtered through immigration. The new INSPASS biometric system had just been installed - supposedly to speed up processing for frequent travelers, but Bryan knew better. Every handprint scanned, every passport manually checked and stamped, feeding into databases that grew hungrier by the day.
The Lees would bypass that entirely. Their new identities had been carefully crafted - not just papers but digital histories backdated through Immigration and Naturalization Services' recently upgraded systems. The carefully placed inconsistencies in their records would ensure any checks would default to human verification - where their contact at immigration waited.
"Lieutenant McDonald?"
Bryan turned to find Xian Lee standing behind him, her father and mother a few steps back. They looked exactly like tired tourists who'd just completed a connection through Vancouver - exactly as planned.
"Mr. and Mrs. Lee," Bryan nodded to her parents, using their new surname. "Welcome to California."
Xian's eyes darted to the bulky security cameras near the exit. Even here, she was watching the watchers. Good.
"Your cousin's shop is ready," Bryan said, maintaining their cover story. "Mei-lin is eager to see you."
The "cousin's shop" was actually a carefully chosen location in Chinatown - 1521 Grant Avenue, just off Sacramento Street. The building had belonged to the same family since before the 1906 earthquake, its basement connecting to the underground tunnels that had once sheltered Chinese immigrants from exclusion laws and now served a different kind of refugee.
They took the SamTrans airport shuttle into the city, disembarking at the downtown terminal near the Embarcadero. The fog was burning off, sunlight glinting off the Financial District's glass towers. As they walked up Grant Avenue, Bryan noticed Xian taking in the details - the mix of tourists and locals, the produce markets spilling onto sidewalks, the occasional security cameras mounted above bank entrances and jewelry shops, their chunky grey casings marking them as recent additions to the streetscape.
Grant Avenue, San Francisco
"Different from Hong Kong," he said quietly.
Xian nodded. "Less obvious," she replied. "But they're still watching."
"Not here," Bryan assured her. "This block runs on closed-circuit only. Old systems, VHS tapes changed daily. No network connection. Your father's friend made sure of that."
Her father, David Lee,- was already adapting to his new identity, haggling with a street vendor in Mandarin instead of his native Cantonese. His banking connections had helped arrange their escape, but it was his understanding of financial networks that made him valuable to Bryan's group.
The herbal shop on Grant Avenue, with its weathered wooden storefront advertising traditional herbs and teas, looked exactly like dozens of others in the neighborhood. But Mrs. Wu's family had been helping people disappear into America since the 1880s.
In the back room, while Mrs. Wu served tea in delicate cups that had survived the journey from Guangdong Province a century ago, Bryan laid out the next steps.
"The apartment upstairs is yours," he explained. "Mrs. Wu's grandson has wired it with what Xian would call 'creative' dial-up routing. Any monitoring will show normal AOL and CompuServe traffic, just like the other residents."
Xian, who had been examining the shop's ancient brass scale with professional interest, looked up. "Through the university's modem bank?"
Bryan smiled. Advanced Networking at Berkeley was the perfect cover for certain types of traffic. "Among other routes. Your new school records are already in place."
"And my working papers?" David asked quietly.
"A tech consulting firm in Oakland. Small enough to avoid attention, connected enough to let you watch the financial networks. We need to know when they start implementing the systems you saw in Hong Kong."
Through the shop's front window, tourists posed for photos with the Bank of America building looming behind them. None of them noticed the gentle dance of surveillance and counter-surveillance playing out in the heart of Chinatown.
"One more thing," Bryan added, reaching into his briefcase. He pulled out an OmniBook 5700CT - newer than Xian's 800CT, with its active-matrix color display. "Consider it a welcome gift. It's been... modified."
Xian's eyes lit up as she examined the laptop's impressive specs - 32MB of RAM, 2GB hard drive, and a PCMCIA slot holding what looked like a standard Hayes-compatible 33.6k modem. But she could see subtle differences in its construction that suggested capabilities far beyond standard data transfer rates.
"The shepherd looks after his flock," she said softly in English.
"Aye," Bryan replied, letting his Scottish burr slip through for just a moment. "That he does."
Wondercraft narrates this Episode. Please provide feedback via the comments.
