by N C Mander
‘Of course they’ve worked out that I’m looking for something. That’s my cover,’ Edison scoffed and immediately regretted it when Kat shot him a hurt look. He nearly reached out for her hand by way of apology but stopped himself when he spotted Tanya observing their interaction keenly.
She raised her expressive eyebrows and spoke calmly, ‘Edison, do you have any reason to suspect that your cover could be blown?’
‘Not my cover. Jamie, I think, has worked out that I might have, in my capacity covering a security and regulatory audit on the systems, sussed that he’s syphoning off funds.’
‘How’s he doing it?’ asked Tanya.
‘So, I’m not one hundred per cent sure because the malicious code has been erased. But I’ve …’ Edison hesitated. When he had been an MI5 officer, his methods for tracking criminality on the Dark Web were considered risky, tiptoeing along a fine line of legality. His head of section had largely turned a blind eye to his questionable practices, focusing on his astounding results instead. On the rare occasions that a red flag was raised by a senior officer, Donald Hughes’ patronage had come to his rescue, and the flag was always hastily lowered again. Now though, thought Edison, as a regular citizen, recruited as an agent without any of the official or unofficial protections he’d grown used to over his fifteen years at Thames House, he needed to tread more carefully.
‘You’ve what?’ Tanya pressed.
‘I’ve an inkling of how it’s being done. I’m guessing in the malicious code, the foreign exchange rates were fixed at ten per cent lower than the spot rates. That ten per cent was digitally transferred into an offline wallet. I don’t know where that is, but my guess is that it lives locally on Jamie’s machine, and he’s moving that out of the bank on a lowly USB stick.’
‘So, who is Jamie?’ asked Kat.
‘He’s a techie. Twenty-four years old. He’s been behaving rather oddly, and I think that’s down to me showing up.’ Kat looked at him as he paused, her next question was implicit. ‘I can’t see him being mixed up in Jihad,’ he said. ‘Someone is pulling his strings.’
‘So,’ said Tanya, ‘he’s taking the USB stick home and transferring the money from there. We can get the team to check that. We know where he lives.’
‘I think it unlikely he’s executing from home.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Although he’s probably using an encrypted browser, the connection is still linked to his identity via the ISP.’
‘Do you think you’ve spooked him entirely?’ said Kat.
‘Not sure. My guess is that he’ll leave things running kosher for a few days before changing it back and pocketing his percentage. Leave it with me.’
Tanya looked perplexed. ‘You mustn’t deviate from your brief, Edison. If you need backup or surveillance, I can set up a detail on Jamie.’
‘I don’t think that’s necessary.’
‘If there’s a risk your cover is blown, we should pull you out,’ Kat tried again.
‘No,’ Edison said, firmly. ‘We don’t have the list of investors. We need to know where Jamie’s moving the money and on whose orders.’
‘The first question, you can answer. Your cover story means you’re ideally positioned to secure that information. The second gets into much riskier ground.’
Edison looked at Tanya defiantly. Tanya sighed and turned back the way they had come. She began walking. She raised a hand and waved. With her back to them, ‘I’ll leave you to agree where we go from here.’ Edison detected a hint of irony in her voice. ‘Be careful, Edison.’
Once her boss was out of earshot, Kat turned to Edison. ‘I really think we should put a surveillance detail on Jamie. At least at his home. We can dig into his internet history too. See what we can find out.’
Edison shrugged. ‘If you think that’s the best use of resources,’ he said. ‘But you know I can find him much more efficiently.’
‘How?’ Kat challenged him.
‘If I told you that, I’d have …’ Edison didn’t have the opportunity to deliver his punchline as Kat landed a hefty punch on his upper right arm that knocked him sideways.
‘For fuck’s sake Edison. This is my investigation. I need to know what’s going on.’ They had stopped walking and were standing facing one another. Kat bristled, fixing Edison with an angry stare.
Edison softened. ‘Kat,’ he reached out for one of her hands that were planted firmly on her hips. She stepped away from him shrugging off his advance. A jogger approached and looked at them curiously. He slowed, wondering whether he ought to intervene in the altercation. Kat forced a smile, and with a look of relief, he sped up again and disappeared into the night.
‘It really is better if I don’t tell you the detail,’ Edison said. He saw Kat’s shoulders slump and knew he’d won that mini battle. They walked in silence for a while before Edison ventured, ‘Anything else new on the case?’
Kat glanced at him. ‘I’m really not sure I should tell you too much.’
Edison didn’t respond. He let the silence hang between them. He was confident she would crack.
‘The captain committed suicide,’ Kat conceded after five minutes of frosty silence had passed between them.
‘Shit. Really?’
‘I think it was a hit.’
The conversation continued in a staccato fashion as Kat slowly recounted details of the brief she’d received at New Scotland Yard. Edison absorbed all the information, asking the occasional question.
‘It’s difficult to see how these two link up, isn’t it?’ was his conclusion as they reached Thames House.
Kat nodded and looked at Edison affectionately. ‘I’ve probably told you way more than your security clearance allows.’
‘What security clearance?’ Edison joked, and they both laughed.
*
Less than one week to go. My brothers, my new brothers, have settled into their new home and everything is set. It was unfortunate that we had to move. But they still have time to prepare themselves and their materials.
A few more payments yet. The money is important. They tell me what the weapons cost. She tells me we will have a couple more payments. Her puppet, for that is the most appropriate word, is working hard for us. But he expects his reward in this life, not the next, as I do. It is a significant burden to pay for such skills, but it matters. It will be done. She can deal with that soon.
I must focus on the end. The purpose. My own calling.
Just seven days now until we bring Dar al-Harb. The lands of war will reach these British shores once more. And I have led the mujahideen here. I feel alive. I have a purpose once more. For all those years living amongst the kaffir, these unbelievers, following their customs, their culture, ignorant to their hatred of me and my brothers. I regret this. But I shall avenge my own shortcomings as I shall avenge my family. How could I have forgotten? Allāhu akbar.
Chapter Twelve
0303, Tuesday 4th July, Telegram Messaging Service
*
0945, Wednesday 5th July, Penwill & Mallinson, Canary Wharf, London
Before he had left her flat the following morning, Kat and Edison agreed that he would shadow Jamie if he moved that afternoon. As they’d lain in bed before dawn, they’d run scenarios together. ‘What if he’s on his bike?’ Kat had asked. He had already, without consulting Kat, made an excuse to Tony about needing to get to a meeting on the other side of London quickly and arranged to borrow his moped. Kat hadn’t argued, but Edison knew, from the way her body lay tense beside him in the silence that followed, that she wasn’t particularly happy. The way in which Edison�
��s role in the investigation had moved from the relative safety of a desk-based surveillance job to a fully active operative in the space of just a few days meant she was not only worrying about the escalating threat levels on HAPSBURG but also for the safety of the man she was developing deeper affection for every day.
‘And you’ll get Colin read in on the flagged Ethereum so he can track it?’ Edison had asked her earnestly as he’d laced up his shoes.
‘Yes. Are you sure everything he needs is in here?’ She was scrolling through her device to find the instructions that Edison had written up, hunched over her laptop at three o’clock that morning after they’d had sex. He’d taken the opportunity to exchange some messages with the mysterious RubiksKube whilst Kat lay dozing. He was finding it hard to believe that whoever was on the other end of the chat was Jamie, but the trap he’d left in the executable file he’d sent over might go some way to smoking out whoever lay behind the avatar.
‘Colin will understand every word, I promise,’ replied Edison, thinking back to the years of working with the Welshman, whose knowledge of complex programming languages was unmatched by anyone at MI5 except Edison. He brushed a kiss across Kat’s lips and retreated into the dawn.
On his way back to Bethnal Green in the early hours, to shower, shave and collect Tony’s moped, Edison had mulled over whether Kat’s concern was purely a professional one. He didn’t allow himself to admit to hoping that she was worried for his safety on a personal level too.
*
Jamie arrived in the office even later than normal. He looked pale and sported bags around his eyes. Despite this, he conducted himself with his usual bravado.
‘Are you feeling better?’ Billy asked when Jamie first turned up in the office.
Jamie shrugged. ‘Must have been something I ate. Still feeling a bit dodgy.’
‘You didn’t cycle today then?’ Billy went on. Edison had already spotted the absence of a bicycle helmet on Jamie’s desk and wondered whether he’d chosen to leave the bike at home. Edison was hopeful, this would make his plan easier to execute. His hand went instinctively to his inside leg, and he patted it reassuringly.
‘Nah,’ Jamie went on. ‘Couldn’t face it when I got up this morning. Stomach was still churning, and I’m not sure I fancied leaving my breakfast on the cycle path.’
Billy half-laughed, ‘Well, I’m glad you’re feeling well enough to come in, at least. I need you to take a look at some of Chris’ back office stuff.’
‘Sure. I’m sure it will be a morning packed full of banter and laughs. Where is the Schnitzel?’
‘I am here,’ a voice boomed. Christoph had materialised at the end of the bank of desks. Anna was hovering behind him. ‘I do not appreciate your jokes. We will work on my machine.’
Jamie turned to Billy and shot him a comical look, twisting his mouth into a mock expression of fear before wheeling himself over to Christoph’s workstation. He came to an abrupt halt next to the Austrian.
Edison, who had been eavesdropping on the conversation from the cover of his double monitor opposite Billy’s desk, heard Christoph announce, ‘I have the server login open ready for you to enter your password.’ He watched Jamie do so with a flourish as Christoph scribbled in his notebook.
‘You two play nice,’ said Anna, leaning over the two of them as Jamie typed.
‘Does Christoph often need tech’s help with his system?’ Edison asked Billy quietly.
‘Maybe once or twice a week,’ Billy replied. ‘It’s funny. You’d think he wouldn’t want to work with Jamie, but he always requests that it’s him who sorts out his stuff.’
A calendar alert flashed up on the left-hand screen on which he kept his email. His meeting with David Murray, the head of sales, was imminent.
‘Anna,’ he spoke to Tom’s assistant. The fair-haired secretary peered round her screen, her blue eyes looked at him through heavy rimmed, trendy glasses. ‘Where does David sit?’
‘Down one floor to the fourteenth, and you’ll see the sales team – you can’t miss them for all the racket they make. The team sit directly below us, and David’s desk is here.’ She waved in the direction of Tom’s office behind her.
‘Thanks.’
*
The fourteenth floor was filled with noise, as members of the enthusiastic sales team shouted into their telephones to be heard above the cacophony. As Edison navigated his way through the desks, he caught snippets of their patter. ‘Great returns, outstripping the base rate by in excess of a hundred points,’ one man was telling a client on the other end of the phone – he was dressed in a sharp dark grey suit, aggressively tailored, and a slimline tie.
‘If you want to offer your clients something a little different, I’d highly recommend the crypto fund. There’s a minimum sale of fifty for high-net-worth clients but I would have thought that your crowd might be looking at something closer to three figures, no?’ A woman was speaking animatedly into her headset. She was pacing confidently back and forth as she spoke, towering over her desk in skyscraper heels. ‘Ok, great, great, Michael, I knew it would appeal,’ she went on, a broad smile expanding across her spray-tanned face. ‘I’ll put you down for a hundred and fifty,’ she paused, and the smile contracted slightly, as Michael on the other end of the phone interrupted her. ‘Of course, of course, Michael, I appreciate it’s only a tentative commitment at this stage. I’ll send through the KYC stuff later for you to review. I must stress though, we have a hard stop at the end of the month, and this round of fundraising is already significantly oversubscribed.’
Edison found David. His desk was an imposing L-shaped affair that set him apart from the rest of his team, who were confined to single units. He was on the phone when Edison approached. ‘Listen, I have a meeting to get to. It’ll be ok. Tell him I’ll sort it out later,’ David said and slammed the receiver into its cradle. ‘Are you married?’ he asked Edison. Edison opened his mouth to explain his widower status but quickly remembered his cover and just shook his head.
‘Good man,’ David said. ‘More trouble than they’re worth sometimes.’ Edison felt a familiar ache tugging at him as David went on, ‘All she had to do was get the builders to move the outlet six inches to the right to fit the cistern she had chosen. If she changes her mind on the bloody bathroom suite one more time, I swear I’m going to have a meltdown.’ The tirade brought memories flooding back for Edison. Ellie had called him at the office when he had been working late one summer. The air-conditioning unit was on the blink, and somehow, the thermostat had got stuck at thirty-two degrees. She’d been sweltering in the sauna-like flat all evening, but rather than calling a plumber, she’d tried to fix it, which had resulted in the electrics blowing completely. Not only was the flat a furnace, but now there was no light. Edison had calmed her down and found the number for a twenty-four-hour plumber on the internet, who had come out, at great expense, to fix the situation. Edison felt angry that this man could be so callous, speaking ill of his own wife in front of a complete stranger. What Edison would have given to be dealing with the challenges of Ellie’s domestic shortcomings. Edison blinked hard in an attempt to rid his head of the ghost of his wife.
‘Anyway,’ David said, ‘enough of my issues. You must be Steven Edwards.’ He held out his hand and Edison shook it. ‘Why don’t we see if there’s a meeting room free? I understand I’m to give you a full introduction to the sales function.’
‘Yes, please,’ said Edison, trying to hide his cool feelings toward David. He was struggling to rid himself of lingering thoughts of Ellie, ‘And a list of all the investors in each fund, please.’
‘Of course, I’ll get the admin to print that for you.’
As they walked across the floor to a bank of empty meeting rooms, Edison wondered if the admin had a name. David addressed a young man who looked barely old enough to have left school, ‘Sort me out with a copy of all the investors by fund.’ The young man cowed slightly at being spoken to and nodded.
‘
He’s new,’ David explained. ‘He wasn’t here when I left for Switzerland last week. There seems to be a new admin every other week. Hardly seems worth learning their names.’
In the cosy meeting room, David indicated for Edison to take a seat with his back to the door and positioned himself opposite, leaning back in the chair and crossing his arms. ‘So, Steven, before I start, is there anything in particular you need me to highlight. I understand you’re checking that our credentials stack up for the FCA, so it’ll save an awful lot of both of our time if you could just let me know what, in particular, you’d like to know.’
The admin knocked timidly on the door and David waved him in.
‘Are these all the names?’ David asked, taking a sheaf of paper, stapled in one corner, from the young man’s sweaty hand and leafing through them.
‘Yes,’ he replied, his voice barely more than a whisper.
David placed the papers on the table and slid them across to Edison. The admin retreated quickly from the room. ‘Thank you,’ Edison called after him.
‘So, fire away,’ said David.
‘Can you tell me about your team structure?’ Edison began.
‘Sure. I have six salesmen covering all global territories. Four are based here. One in New York and another in Hong Kong.’
‘And who are the typical investors?’
‘That depends on the product.’
‘The infrastructure fund, for example.’
‘Only institutional investors in that fund. Pension funds, insurance companies and so on. There’s quite a hefty price tag, minimum investment is north of 100k.’
‘And the crypto fund?’
‘Now that’s a lot more fun. We can go out to the private banks and family offices with that one. We’re mostly talking new money here. The old family wealth doesn’t like the smell of anything too techie – more fool them. They’d rather stick with mines in Sierra Leone than the spoils of a bit of crypto mining.’ David paused and chuckled at his own pun. Edison raised a smile in response. ‘Of course there are some exceptions, but mostly, I’m selling that fund to ultra-high-net-worths who’ve made their money from finance or even in Silicon Valley.’