by N C Mander
Chapter Four
0825, Monday 26th June, St George’s Wharf, Vauxhall, London
The tuneless ringtone on a mobile phone cut through Edison’s torrid dreams. He ignored it, not wanting to open his eyes, sure that doing so would only make the pounding in his head worse. It rang again, demanding attention. Edison tested his theory and was proven right. Pain roared through his head, and he struggled to focus on the screen of the phone. He rubbed his eyes and was able to read the caller ID on the iPhone that Tanya had handed him the previous day. It served a number set up for his alias, Steven Edwards. Steven Edwards has a truly abominable taste in ringtones, Edison thought before exclaiming, ‘Shit,’ seeing Tom Woodward’s name, his soon-to-be boss, written large across the screen just as the phone rang off for a second time. The curse caught in his throat. His mouth was painfully dry. With a superhuman effort, he hauled himself off the futon and, ignoring the drumming behind his temples, staggered toward the kitchen where he gulped down three glasses of water in an attempt to smooth the sandpaper adhered to his gullet. He retched as he tried to force down a further glass. Spitting out the bile and remnants of whisky still sloshing in his stomach, he turned his attention back to his phone and fumbled through the missed call log. His haste made him clumsy, and he twice dialled the voicemail before he lighted upon Tom’s number. Tom picked up the phone within a couple of rings, giving Edison very little time to compose himself.
‘Steven,’ said Tom, his tone was warm.
‘Tom,’ Edison attempted, but his greeting came out crackly and muffled. He swallowed, wetted his lips and tried again with a cough, ‘Tom, sorry, got a bit of a frog in my throat. Sorry I missed you.’ He fished for a plausible excuse and was thankful that Tom cut in before he offered a barefaced lie. Jeez, Edison thought to himself, you’re a former MI5 intelligence officer, you lied for a living. But, he admonished himself, you were always crap at subterfuge on a hangover. It’s why you are no longer a spy.
‘How are you?’ said Tom.
‘Pretty good thanks,’ Edison lied as convincingly as he could. ‘You?’
‘Oh, wee bit sore. A couple of my team tricked me into running a marathon yesterday. They’re a bunch of fitness nutters in this office. Hope you can keep up,’ he laughed. ‘Listen, Steven, I’m dashing into another meeting. Could you come to the Wharf for a drink later today? A bit of a “getting to know one another” exercise.’
‘Sure, what time?’
Tom consulted one of the four screens he had in front of him. ‘I’ll be tied up ’til seven-ish. Could we put seven thirty in the diary? We could grab a bite.’
‘Sure,’ Edison said again.
‘Awesome,’ Tom enthused. ‘Anna will book somewhere and send you a location. Gotta run. See you then.’
Edison wondered how late he had slept if Tom was already between meetings. He consulted his phone for the time. It was half-past eight. He double-checked it. Yes, only eight thirty. I guess that’s the world of high finance and twenty-four-hour business. Not unlike agent running, mused Edison looking reproachfully at the empty whisky bottle on the countertop. It had left a sticky imprint on his list from the previous day. Things were just about falling into place, he thought.
*
Barely an hour later, Edison was crossing the river at Vauxhall. All that he owned was crammed into the rucksack and holdall that he had packed yesterday. He had showered before loading up the final few items, carefully packing away his computers.
Ellie smiled at him from the silver-framed photograph on the drink’s cabinet. He looked at her and fiddled with his wedding ring. His heart tumbled over itself in his chest as he remembered what Tanya had told him the previous day. Steven Edwards isn’t married. The words echoed in his head. With some difficulty, he manipulated the silver wedding band up his finger. The pain he felt as the ring pressed against his knuckle, refusing to budge, was unmatched by the agony he experienced when eventually he liberated the jewellery from his hand. He slipped the ring into his pocket and offered Ellie’s photograph an apologetic smile. ‘I still love you,’ he told her and packed the frame into his holdall.
He left the keys on the kitchen island for Jane to recover when she arrived later that week. Hurriedly, he left the flat, choosing not to look back at the memories he was leaving behind.
Arriving at Thames House, Edison pulled out his mobile to dial Tony’s number. As he did so, two familiar figures approached from the direction of Lambeth Bridge.
‘Hello stranger,’ said Colin. ‘What brings you here?’ Holding out his hand and shaking Edison’s warmly. Colin was a friendly Welshman, and Edison liked him. He was dedicated to his job, and Edison knew he could rely on Colin to investigate quickly when he needed intelligence. He had four children with his partner, Pete, which kept him exceptionally busy when he wasn’t working all hours of the day behind his computer at Five, so didn’t often join the pub-goers. Edison hadn’t seen him since he’d left the Service. His companion was Kat, and Edison felt himself redden in her presence, but she seemed the picture of cool, despite Edison’s unexpected appearance.
‘Just meeting Tony,’ Edison said. ‘I’m renting his spare room for a while.’
‘Good for you,’ Colin said. ‘About time you stopped rattling around in that flat.’
‘Shall we tell him you’re here?’ asked Kat.
‘That would be great, thanks,’ said Edison.
‘I’ll do it,’ offered Colin. He disappeared into the imposing building behind them before either Kat or Edison had a chance to protest.
Edison shifted uneasily, recognising the face of an analyst from counter-espionage who was emerging from the building behind them with a co-worker. He caught Edison’s eye and nudged his companion. ‘That’s Scott Edison,’ he heard him say. They both stared wide-eyed.
‘The best hacker ever employed by the Service.’ Edison cringed, he hated the term ‘hacker’.
‘And field officer. Did you ever meet him?’
The second analyst shook his head in response. ‘I heard he had a nervous breakdown.’ Edison rolled his eyes and turned his back to the two desk monkeys, and they hurried away. The last he heard one of them say was, ‘Do you think he’s back? He looks dreadful.’
‘How are you?’ Kat asked, smiling at him.
‘Good thanks, contrary to what they might say.’
‘You do look a bit tired.’
‘Thanks.’ They stood silently for a moment before Tony appeared out of the double doors, breathless from his hasty descent from the upper floors.
‘I’ll leave you to it,’ said Kat, disappearing through the same doors before Edison had a chance to say goodbye. Tony eyed Kat lecherously as she left then turned to Edison.
‘Hey, here you go,’ Tony said, thrusting a bunch of keys in Edison’s direction. Carefully, he picked up the first of the three keys that dangled from the keyring. ‘This one’s for the downstairs door. Main door deadlock.’ He picked up a second key, ‘And this one’s for the Yale lock,’ indicating the final key. ‘Ok?’ Edison nodded. ‘Your room is the first left on the landing. The other bedroom is empty, but you can’t use that one as it’s above mine, and I don’t like the noise.’ His brow furrowed at the thought of Edison’s heavy footsteps overhead. ‘Make yourself at home.’
‘Thanks,’ said Edison.
‘Ok, better go. See you later.’ The perfunctory exchange over, Tony scuttled back up the steps into Thames House. Edison pocketed the keys and trudged off toward to tube station at Westminster.
*
1921, Monday 26th June, Canary Wharf, London
Shortly before 7.30 p.m., Scott Edison emerged from the tube station at Canary Wharf and consulted the email that Tom’s secretary had sent, providing directions to the brasserie restaurant Tom defaulted to for informal evening engagements. Edison gave Tom’s name to a beaming concierge who fussed over taking his coat before escorting him to a table near the bar. ‘This is Mr Woodward’s favourite spot,’ she explained.
‘Can I bring you a drink whilst you wait? We have a fine selection of craft beers on offer, or if you’d prefer to review the wine list …’
‘Just a water for now, please,’ replied Edison.
‘Ok sir, that will be right with you.’ She smiled and backed away, stopping to relay Edison’s drink order to one of her colleagues. The colleague appeared moments later with a bottle of water and poured a large glass. He sipped it as he looked around. The restaurant was filling with bankers and lawyers escaping from a long day in the office, greasing the wheels of capitalism. There was a crowd of young men and women opening a bottle of champagne at the bar, loudly celebrating the closing of a big deal. Elsewhere, a couple sat in awkward silence at a high-top table. A first date gone horribly wrong, Edison mused. He surveyed the room and spotted Tom striding toward him, smiling.
‘So sorry I’ve made you wait,’ he said warmly, reaching out a hand and shaking Edison’s.
‘I haven’t been here long,’ Edison reassured him. Tom took a seat and scanned the wine menu.
‘What are you drinking?’ he asked, then spotted Edison’s water glass. ‘Will you join me for a drink?’ he ventured.
‘Just the one,’ Edison replied, promising himself that he would maintain his sobriety.
‘Ok,’ said Tom to the waitress who had served Edison his water. ‘We’ll have a bottle of the Burgundy. Thank you.’
Edison smirked at the wine choice. His companion looked at him quizzically, and Edison was about to explain that that that particular vineyard neighboured his father-in-law’s estate when he remembered that he was Steven Edwards, home counties born and bred, not Scott Edison with the tragic personal life.
Once the ceremony of tasting and accepting the wine had been completed and the waitress had furnished them both with generous helpings in their oversized glasses, Tom sat back in his chair and said, ‘So, I understand from Charlotte that you’re the best of the best.’
‘She’s paid to say that, but I do know my way round a distributed ledger.’
‘You collaborated with Luke Patterson on the blockchain working group at the Bank of England, right?’
Edison knew the name of the central bank’s lead on cryptocurrency regulation from his speed read of his cover story notes on the tube. ‘Indirectly,’ he said evasively. The banking community was a small one and he couldn’t risk Tom mentioning his name to Luke or members of his team expecting them to recognise him.
‘I need to make sure our systems are adhering to and keeping up with the changes in regulation. It’s becoming a very profitable part of the business, but if the FCA chose to crack down on cryptocurrency, like they did in New York, we might have some issues. I think, with someone like you on board, we can stay one step ahead. You may even be able to help spot some opportunities. We’re already managing some bilateral trade transactions over our in-house blockchain, all hard-currency stuff at this stage but could quickly evolve to altcoins – would be good to get your view on those.’ Tom continued to talk excitedly about the opportunities available at the bank whilst Edison purposefully metered the consumption of his wine and interjected occasionally with a soundbite from the literature he had memorised that afternoon.
They ordered, and as they ate, Edison steered the conversation toward gathering further intelligence on Tom’s employees. ‘So, tell me about the team … you said they tricked you into running a marathon.’
Tom laughed. ‘Yes, I’ve been hobbling around all day, thanks to losing a bet to Jamie last summer. I’d rather just stick to my bike, but I think he’ll be pushing me to join him on his next ultra or ironman or whatever it is that he and Tariq are doing.’
‘Tariq?’
‘Tariq Mahmoud, he’s one of the fund managers along with Emma and Christoph.’ Tom rattled off the names and job titles of the rest of the team, adding nothing to the picture Tanya had painted earlier that day.
‘What about fundraising? Does that sit with your team?’
‘No,’ Tom explained, shaking his head. ‘Sales sit centrally. A handful of relationship managers report to a guy called David Murray. They’re pretty good at bringing the cash in. But you won’t have much to do with them,’ he finished, dismissing the topic. He looked at his watch. ‘I need to go, I’m afraid. Could you come in for a formal interview tomorrow? Tick the HR box and just run through some of the more technical stuff. I need you in place as soon as possible, so hopefully, this is just a formality, and we can expedite the paperwork. I’ll get Anna to get a time in the diary.’ He pulled out an iPhone and dashed off an email.
*
Edison made his way to the bus stop, having seen Tom onto the tube. On the bus, Edison combed through all the information he’d gleaned from the conversation, he carefully evaluated each piece of intelligence and made a mental note of lines of enquiry he would pursue. He would have to get under the skin of Emma and Jamie’s algorithm. That wouldn’t be easy, fund managers are notoriously cagey about disclosing their investment strategies. Jamie would likely be the better source there. He guessed that Jamie, the marathon-running triathlete and self-made man, might be keen to show off to the new boy in the office.
He reached Tony’s dingy maisonette buzzing. The mystery of an operation was like a drug to Edison. He felt energised. In his small bedroom, he sat at the table onto which he’d unpacked his laptops earlier. Reverently he lifted the lid of the ThinkPad.
His fingers trembled a little as they hovered above the keys. The black screen offered him a reflection of a man he didn’t recognise. His ragged features looked back at him, his cheeks sagged and the bags beneath his eyes aged him by a decade. He shook his head, banishing the thoughts of his physical demise and reached for the power button. The machine whirred into life. Spidery white writing shuttled across the screen, and as if on autopilot, Edison typed in the commands that would take him to the Tails operating system on the external hard drive he’d plugged into the USB port. He needed to work with total anonymity, and The Amnesic Incognito Live System, Tails for short, was the best way of guaranteeing nobody could track what he was doing online.
He pulled up the Tor browser that would transport him into the darknet. He paused. Was he ready to re-enter the shadowy underworld of the internet? Largely frequented by hackers, drug dealers and peddlers of child pornography, once inside the maze of unindexed sites, he was always just one click away from something disturbing or illegal. As if preparing for a free dive, Edison took a deep breath and plunged into the murky waters.
Carefully, he typed in a seemingly random string of letters and numbers followed by ‘.onion’, the top-level site suffix reserved for the anonymous side of the internet known as the Dark Web. He waited. Patience was a virtue when navigating this hidden digital world. Every move needed to be pinged through a host of Tor servers. It took time, but it was essential for remaining untraceable.
Time ticked by as the message board loaded, and Edison’s thoughts drifted. He worried about whether any of his multiple aliases would be remembered. For years, he had tended to the false identities, creating voices for a gamut of characters, identified online by their different handles. They all had questionable motives, from an outspoken member of the alt-right to a cypherpunk supporter of small government, total digital freedom and requisite anonymity. He’d been a terrorist sympathiser, a desperate junkie and a member of the dissident group, Anonymous. Over time, he had retired some usernames and birthed others, depending on the needs of the operation. He’d come to know the denizens of countless online hangouts well. He wondered, as he scrolled through various message boards, whether he would be able to slot back into this nefarious world.
He skimmed over the trolling and flaming that made up most of the chatter on the boards until he found the conversation he was looking for on a dedicated hacker forum known as 0Day. He typed a message into the Internet Relay Chat and waited. Nothing. For an hour, Edison distracted himself, digging around his old haunts on the Dark Web as he waited, hoping for a reply. The ni
ght was deepening around him. The dull thud of Tony’s computer game soundtrack stopped at just gone midnight, and silence descended on the flat in Bethnal Green.
Edison was about to give up for the night when the IRC chat box glowed, indicating a reply.
Another message followed almost immediately.
Edison considered his reply. Rumpelstiltskin had been a black-hat hacker for hire, willing to sell his services to the highest bidder. An arrest and a prison stay were a feasible explanation for an extended absence from the chat boards, but Edison didn’t want to undermine his credibility.
IRL meant ‘in real life’. Edison’s use of the jargon was rusty. Before MadDog or m1ck had a chance to challenge him any further, another user joined the conversation. Edison recognised the username of another hacker renowned for sophisticated ransomware attacks.
<4hire> omgomgomgomg rumpelstilskin
<4hire> missed u
As Edison chatted, his fingers started to fly across the keyboard. Being back on IRC was like riding a bicycle or speaking a mother tongue after years living in another country, tricky at first but as he immersed himself further in the Dark Web’s counterculture, his fluency returned. The clock in the bottom right of his screen read 3.00 a.m. when the conversation began to dry up. He itched to probe his contacts about cryptocurrency but knew better than to look too curious so early in his return.
Reluctantly, he shut down the computer before anyone had a chance to reply.
Chapter Five
0227, Wednesday 28th June, Internet Relay Chat