Caffrey Disclosure

Chapter 37 - Danny Boy

Federal Building. Thursday morning. July 8, 2004.

In the conference room dedicated to the Winslow case, Peter tried not to worry about the conversation Neal and Jones were having. He'd realized that Jones was feeling some guilt over his part in monitoring Neal, now that the junior agent had a chance to step back and think about what they'd done. Peter had been glad that Neal found friends in the team, and regretted that assigning Jones to monitor him might have undermined one of those friendships. So he would be patient if the two of them wanted a chance to talk things through.

A few minutes later they arrived carrying cups of coffee. They weren't joking as they might have in the past, but they weren't glaring or avoiding each other, either. Peter would take that as a positive sign.

Once they were seated, Neal opened with a question. "Have you heard of Vernon Heinemann?"

"That name sounds familiar," Jones said. He opened his laptop and started a search.

"I met him," Peter said. "He was in academia at the time, but working on some government projects. He spoke to my class at Quantico. He's a software expert, with an interest in algorithms for matching evidence to people. He pioneered improvements in fingerprint analysis that help us get more accurate hits from partial matches, but what he was most excited about was getting usable data from those cheap, low resolution video feeds that most surveillance systems use. I'm surprised we haven't seen any innovations in that area yet. He made it sound like he was on the verge of a major breakthrough."

"He was," Jones confirmed, looking up from his search results. "At least, he claims to have developed a new facial recognition algorithm that could be used reliably even with those low res feeds, but..." He trailed off when Neal's phone buzzed.

Neal shrugged. "Graham Winslow." He didn't look surprised that he was calling. "Mind if I put him on speaker?"

"Go ahead," Peter said, curious what their Win-Win liaison wanted.

"Mr. Winslow," Neal said when he answered the phone. "I've got Agents Burke and Jones with me. I was about to fill them in on my ideas for catching Robert, and I'd like you to hear, too."

"I thought I told you to call me Pops."

"Of course. I'll –"

"Is this meeting I've stumbled into going to cover why you called a U.S. Marshal this morning?" Graham interrupted.

Neal's conversation with a marshal was something Peter was also interested in, and he promised, "It will if I have anything to say about it." He recapped a background of Vernon Heinemann and then asked Neal, "What does this have to do with finding Robert?"

"I'd like to try manipulating Robert by getting to his accomplice. Now that we have an agent undercover at the company where we think that accomplice works, I'm proposing an experiment. Tonight I want to make it look like Henry sent an email to my FBI address. And then a minute later recall that message, as if he'd accidentally sent it to my work address instead of to a personal address that wouldn't be monitored."

"But a copy of the message will stay on the server," Jones said. "The accomplice will be certain to open it."

"And pass it along to Robert, if we're lucky," Neal added.

"That's why you were asking me about viruses this morning," Jones continued. "You want us to include something in that email to track who opens it. We can get data back about IP addresses, at least for the accomplice, and probably for Robert, too. It can't be anything malicious, or the email servers would filter it out, but I think I can get what you're looking for."