The Manganese Dilemma

by Ian Miller

  His phone went. He picked it up and found Bernard Lawton wanted something. Specifically, Burrowes was to go to a specific location at four that afternoon, and nobody was to follow him. So, now he was a message boy. Still, there was no point in getting offside with Lawton. He would go tell Burrowes.

  * * *

  Burrowes left work at about three forty-five, and offered no excuse or explanation. Svetlana mentioned that she was supposed to help him, and since he had left, it was unlikely he needed help that afternoon, so she would leave too. She had a rather non-descript car, and she entered the road very soon after Burrowes. She saw his car in the distance, so she decided to follow him.

  She saw him stop, so she stopped a good distance behind and watched. Burrowes got out of the car and started walking towards a bridge over a rail line. There was a man standing there. So, a secret meeting, she thought. She drove back onto the road and over the bridge, sneaking two photographs of the man from her mobile phone. Nobody took any notice of her. She drove on and entered a parking lot for a supermarket. She sat there for a while, thinking about this, then decided to have a peek back at the bridge. There was Burrowes and the somebody walking towards them. Svetlana saw them get into a car. She also noticed four other men who were clearly agents, and who were keeping watch. This was not the time to draw attention to herself. She entered the supermarket.

  * * *

  Burrowes walked up on the bridge, and recognised Bernard Lawton. He had only seen him twice before because Lawton was in the stratosphere of the NSA. He almost turned around and walked away, but he recalled Rutherford's instructions. Talk to him. You don't have to talk long, but talk. He understood. Lawton was the source of the envelopes of currency he received from time to time.

  "You wish to see me?" Burrowes said, his voice devoid of emotion, but also devoid of any warmth.

  "I do. I've got a car parked nearby, so why don't we go and sit down out of this wind?"

  There was little option but to agree, so Burrowes followed, and perhaps a little nervously, he got into the passenger side of a rather large SUV that looked as if it were armour-plated.

  "So?" Burrowes asked, when Lawton got in, and was clearly not going to drive.

  "I have something I want you to do."

  "You may recall I no longer work for the NSA," Burrowes said. "You may recall you had me fired."

  "And you may recall you get envelopes of cash with remarkable frequency, and you should be seriously better off."

  "And maybe I owe the source of that cash, but –"

  "I control the source of that cash."

  "So, you're going to fire me again," Burrowes said in a depressed tone. However, he had achieved something; he had forced this man to admit he was the real boss.

  "I said I had a job for you," Lawton said as he tried to ease the tension.

  "And then, or sometime later, when I'm no longer of any use to the project, you dispose of me don't you?" Now there was real bitter anger in his voice.

  "Exactly what is your problem?"

  "Quite simply," Burrowes said as firmly as he could manage, "Two things. First, I want to know what the end-point of all this is."

  "I see," Lawton replied. "Before we go into that, I want answers to some simple questions."

  "Like what?"

  "You hacked into Kapralov's offshore bank accounts?"

  "I did," Burrowes said. "I was instructed to and –"

  "And you removed money?"

  "I did nothing of the sort."

  "Eighty million dollars went walk-about. How do you explain that?"

  "First, that money went back in and –"

  "I don't care about that. Did you take it?"

  "No, but I believe I know who did."

  "And that was?" Lawton's eyes bored into Burrowes.

  "Dennis. He works for Rutherford." He saw that Lawton did not seem to believe him, so he continued, "I came in late one evening and found Dennis going over my computer there. When he left, I found he had followed and made a copy of my route for breaking into Kapralov's account, so my guess is, Dennis did it again."

  "Not very secure, were you?"

  "You're the one who put me in with that lot," Burrowes countered. "I can't take home those desktop computers every night so what did you expect?"

  To Burrowes' surprise, Lawton gave a chuckle. "I guess that's a point. OK, in answer to your question, if you see this job through to the end, if you wish you'll be able to return to the NSA with a promotion, or alternatively you can go on your way with our good wishes and a going away gift. That's as long as you don't start stealing. Behave like a thief, and you'll be treated as one."

  "I have not stolen anything," Burrowes protested.

  "I believe you. As an aside, who's this Dennis?"

  "It's probably not his real name. I can get you a photo if you wish, and I can try for further information, like his car plate number and –"

  "Yes, do that, but not obtrusively. Dennis' antics are not really our concern at the moment. Your second issue?"

  "Quite simply, you have set me off looking for something, but I have no idea what it is. You don't trust me, so how do you expect me to succeed?"

  Lawton nodded, then said, "I was wondering whether this would come up. I have been ordered not to tell you, or anybody else for that matter."

  "And I'm supposed to be psychic?"

  "You're supposed to stumble on it," Lawton said, then he held up a hand to stop Burrowes from saying any more. "I'll give you a slight clue if you promise not to tell anyone, including the Russian woman helping you."

  Burrowes stared at Lawton. What could this be? In the end he took a breath and said, "I promise."

  "It's something to do with Russian warplanes."

  Burrowes stared at Lawton. "What on earth has manganese got to do with –"

  "That is what you're supposed to stumble on," Lawton said with a shrug. "Now, your next job is a bit trickier. I gather you located a building in the woodlands around Ufa?"

  "I did."

  "I want you to try to hack in and find out what's going on inside there."

  "That's not going to be easy," Burrowes warned. "I don't know what the place is called, and I have no idea what its URL will be."

  "I know this is not going to be easy," Lawton acknowledged. "Here is a file that might help you. You will have to read it here, and you can take simple notes, but if so, those notes must not be left lying around. You understand?"

  "Give me the file," Burrowes said. This was not exactly the way he wanted to spend the late afternoon, but there was little choice.

  "When you're finished, we can go get a drink," Lawton said. "Take your time."

  Chapter 16

  Burrowes was sitting at his desk, not doing very much. He should be searching assiduously, but for what? He could hardly do a search for the internet address of "a shed in the woods near Ufa". He had no idea what the target organization was called, and he had no idea whether it was even connected to the web. The fact of the matter was, the second best defence against hacking was not to have selected computers connected to the web, and the best defence was not to even have an internet connection.

  This was where Lawton could do something for him. US satellite surveillance should be able to tell whether there was any traffic coming from the building through electromagnetic radiation, and he had asked Lawton to check. The short answer now was there were no detectable signals. That almost certainly meant the building was not connected to the internet via satellite, or if it were, it was using some frequency that he could not receive, which was effectively the same thing from the practical point of view. There were also no obvious landlines going in. Either this building was operating at genuinely top security, or it meant the building was not doing anything that required exterior communication. In either case, it meant he was not going to succeed. Of course he could hardly give up, but he felt that it was wrong to just devote time to random searches in the full knowledge that he would fail.
>
  It was also wrong, he acknowledged somewhat glumly to himself, to sit there doing nothing. He needed inspiration. Staring at the desk was not providing any.

  "Hey Sveta!" That was Dennis, who seemed to be infuriatingly cheerful lately.

  Svetlana scowled at him.

  "Sveta!" Dennis was undeterred by the scowl. "You'd better check on our Newbie. He hasn't moved for over five minutes –"

  "Shuddup!" Burrowes scowled back.

  "Oh. There's life. For a moment, I thought you must be dead, or asleep at the wheel and –"

  "Dennis, why don't you go back to doing what you're supposed to be doing?" The way Svetlana said that, it might have looked like a question, but it was not intended as one.

  A more interesting question, Burrowes thought to himself, was what was Dennis supposed to be doing? He had been infernally upbeat for over a week or so, but he had refused to make any comment as to what caused such optimism. Yes, they had celebrated a success some time previously, and it seemed that Rutherford was quite happy to celebrate success, but that had passed. Dennis had come down from the celebratory high and more or less returned to normal Dennis, but recently he was back up again. Not only that, but Dennis most definitely became more subdued whenever Rutherford was around, and that suggested that Dennis might be doing a bit of freelancing. Well, if so, good luck to him. Back to his problem.

  One bad part was how to involve Svetlana? Lawton had made it very clear that he was not to tell anyone about the contents of the file, and he had forgotten to tell Lawton what he already knew, and he had forgotten to ask what he could tell his co-worker. The last thing he wanted was to be caught up in the latest bout of anti-Russian sentiment, and if it became known he had been fired from the NSA and was leaking information to a Russian, anything could happen. Amongst other things, he did not trust Lawton. Lawton was a high flier, and you did not get to be a high flier without greasing up the necessary links on the promotional path. If Lawton needed to make an example of Burrowes to achieve his career goals, Burrowes would be sacrificed irrespective of what promises had been made.

  Svetlana was showing interest in what he was doing, but she was not offering much in the way of suggestions, which, he realised, was not exactly surprising because there were no simple ways around this problem. It took her three days to come up with the suggestion that was similar to one he had considered.

  "Why don't we check on manganese chemists in Ufa?"

  That was a rather long way around it, but he was not supposed to tell anyone he knew about Doctor Bazina. "What will that give us, other than a lot of work?"

  "If we hack their emails, we should be able identify the inventor." When Burrowes gave a vacant expression, she continued, "The inventor would presumably maintain correspondence with whoever is developing the invention."

  "It's not that easy to hack into various computers," Burrowes grumbled, "and it is not made easier in that if this is real, security will be tight."

  "Of course it's not easy," Svetlana countered, "but at least you should try. I mean, it's not as if you're swamped with alternative ways of filling in the day."

  So Burrowes pretended to agree, with strong reservations. It was then he had an idea that could not get him into trouble with Lawton. "Before we do that, why don't we check institutions themselves?"

  "What do you mean?" She seemed a little perplexed at this heading off on a tangent.

  "What I mean is that if someone had really done something valuable for Russia, wouldn't you expect the Government to give them a reward?"

  "Yes, but scientists could not accept something for doing their job, other than promotion and –"

  "How about extra funding, or funding for special equipment?"

  "Oh, I see," she said. "Yes, I agree. And that will be a lot easier to find."

  "It will help sort the heap, and save us guessing our way through all the scientists in Ufa."

  "Then let's see what we can find."

  This took a surprisingly short search. As Burrowes said, they should start with the most prominent institutions, because they would have the best staff, and that is where the Government would look to first for help. That quickly paid off, and a web note of a massive increase in funding and equipment was proudly announced, followed by an acknowledgement in the bottom left hand corner of the announcement, in small print, that it was Doctor Bazina that had won this grant. It took very little time to discover that Doctor Bazina led the only research team at that institution into anything related to manganese.

  It took a surprising effort to hack into Bazina's email account on her server, and the results were at first simply confusing: lots of emails about manganese chemistry, usually involving difficulties others were having making certain substitutions in awkward oxidation states and asking for her advice; a battery of emails where she was refereeing a number of other submissions for publication; and finally a number of emails that seemed quite innocent to old friends and some relations.

  "There could be anything in these emails on chemistry," Burrowes noted, "and I wouldn't be any the wiser."

  "At least for the time being you can forget the ones where she is refereeing someone else's submissions," Svetlana suggested, "because that information is intended for publication. That's hardly likely to be secret."

  "That's true," Burrowes replied, "but superficially we can also reject those emails relating to other people's difficulties, and we can neglect the personal stuff, but if we do that we've got zip."

  "Maybe you have to go back further into the past?"

  "I know," Burrowes said. "This is going to take a lot of time, though."

  "Does it matter? You've got plenty of time."

  "The longer I'm in there, the more likely they'll find me," he said, "but you're right, I probably don't have much choice." He stopped talking while he concentrated on moving more quickly through files. "I suppose the good news is that the Russians can't come and arrest me," he finally said with a wan smile.

  "You never know your luck," she retorted.

  "You think the FSB is going to turn up any minute?" he asked with a laugh.

  "As I said, you never know your luck."

  He scrolled more furiously, then suddenly stopped. "Well, look at this. An anomaly."

  "What is it?"

  "An email from somewhere I don't recognize. It thanks her for her great efforts on behalf of the motherland."

  "So now what?"

  "I copy this address and search for any previous ones from that address."

  He quickly had five emails, each with sizable attachments. He copied the emails and downloaded the attachments, then quickly exited.

  He opened the attachments and gave Svetlana a challenging grin as he said, "This is where you earn your keep as a translator."

  "I was afraid you'd say that," she said. "Show me, but no promises."

  "You've forgotten your language while living in the decadent West?"

  "No!" she said, and gave him a punch on the shoulder. She quickly scanned through them. "These look very technical, and so far I don't understand them in the Russian, let alone know what the English equivalent terms are." She kept scanning, then said, "This one I do understand. It says the sender has been severely reprimanded for disobeying instructions regarding sending messages on the internet. Please only send messages by paper. And that is the last message."

  "So, they've cottoned on to what we were going to do," Burrowes mused. "Suggests this is important."

  "So what are you going to do?"

  "I'll give the attachments to . . " He almost said Lawton, but he recovered. " . . the boss. He can give them to whoever's paying us. Meanwhile, we can see what we can make from the address of the sender of these emails."

  Further probing suggested that the address from which these emails were sent had been discontinued. Burrowes was almost back to square one in trying to hack the shed.

  * * *

  Burrowes had given the attachments to Lawton, not Rutherford, and L
awton had contacted the White House Woman, who had them translated. She then called Telfar and Lawton to a White House meeting.

  "Our Ms Anonymous is not a happy person," Lawton whispered to Telfar.

  One glance at her face confirmed that.

  "Bernie's man has given us a clue," she said. "The trouble is, it's not a huge clue. He has found some emails to and from some organization of which we have little information . . ." She paused, then added, "No, that's dishonest. Up until we got these emails we had no idea it exists. Anyway, the emails commended on behalf of the motherland the recipient for her efforts and said that they will be strategically important. There were also attachments that I had translated and it seems they involved some detailed chemistry."

  "What did the attachments say?" Lawton asked.

  "That's the problem. Essentially nothing. They discussed the difficulty someone was having in scaling up the substitution reaction on a ligand, and enquired whether it could be done before the material was liganded."

  "And the answer?" Lawton said with a smile.

  "Would you understand it?" Telfar challenged him.

  "Probably not," Lawton replied, "but we need to know how valid this discussion is, don't we?"

  "The answer was a simple no," the woman from the White House said. "It was stated that the number of substituents was critical, and that could only be controlled by the slower reactions of the complex."

  "And the complex is?"