It took Harvey a moment to realise what she was referring to. “Oh, that. Just some dickhead at the British Embassy in Manila. I’ve been waiting for news about Knight Logistics Management, the company Smart and Baines were supposed to be working for. I sent the request in over a week ago and he’s still dragging his feet.”
“Want me to have a word with them?” Ellis asked.
“No, it’s okay. I’ve put a flea in his ear and he promised to get back in touch later today.”
“So how long before we can identify Timmy?”
“We’ve eliminated four so far,” Farsi told her. “Of the other three, one left the country a few years ago and we think he might be the one we’re looking for. His name is Timothy Hughes and he served with Levine eight years ago.”
“Who was his sergeant at the time?” Ellis asked, hoping the pieces would just drop into place.
Her momentary excitement evaporated when Farsi told her that it had been Tom Gray.
“Any idea where Hughes is now?”
“We already sent out a request to the British High Commission in Singapore,” Harvey said. “They came back with an address and I’ve asked them for all information they have on him.”
“Let’s hope they don’t take as long as Manila,” Ellis said.
Harvey was about to respond when his phone rang. He took the call and indicated for Ellis to hang around. After a minute he asked the caller for all phone records and emails for the last month and hung up.
“That was the Commission in Singapore,” he said. “The good news is: they’ve found Timmy Hughes.”
“And the bad news…?”
“He’s in the morgue. It looks like a professional hit.”
* * *
James Farrar rubbed his temples as he digested the news he’d just received from the British Embassy in Manila. Why hadn’t he considered the fact that MI5 might make a connection between Levine and Campbell and tie them to Baines and Smart?
Yet another sleepless night was beginning to take its toll, and he’d been unable to come up with a quick and satisfying answer, instead telling the attaché to just stall any further requests for the time being.
The last thing he needed was Ellis and her team poking around in his operation, and he decided to nip that activity in the bud.
“Veronica,” he said with his most pleasant voice when she answered his call. “I understand you are doing some investigation into Simon Baines and Len Smart.”
“And just how would you know that, James?” Ellis asked, her curiosity aroused.
“Well…obviously…I want to be kept abreast of developments, and as you haven’t done a very good job of finding my two fugitives I decided to look through the logs to see what your team had been doing all this time.”
Farrar was relieved at having come up with such a good excuse, yet angry for leaving himself wide open like that. In future he would think it through before calling Ellis: She was nobody’s fool and one day he was going to dig himself a hole too deep to climb out of.
“We’ve been doing what you asked,” Ellis said, indignation in her voice. “We know there is an obvious link between all four men and we want to —”
“Forget about them,” he interrupted. “Baines and Smart have nothing to do with this case, so stop wasting valuable time on them and concentrate your efforts on finding Levine and Campbell.”
“James, we have to investigate all possibilities if —”
“Veronica, I want you to drop it!” He shouted. “Now!”
Farrar took a few moments to calm himself, the phone shaking in his hand. “I’m sorry,” he eventually said. “This whole case is being closely watched by the Home Secretary and he wants results sooner rather than later. I can’t have you sending your people on wild goose chases when resources are so limited.”
It was Ellis’s turn to pause, and for a moment Farrar thought she’d already hung up. Her voice came back, the tone one he recognised from their time together: Compliance, but not wilful. “Okay, James, we’ll ignore Baines and Smart and concentrate on your two suspects.”
Farrar started to thank her but found himself talking to a dial tone.
Great, he thought. Just when the day couldn’t get any worse, a quick chat with Veronica and it turns to complete shit. He was wondering for the umpteenth time how they’d managed to stay together for so long when his phone rang. The caller simply gave him a twelve-digit number before hanging up.
Farrar recognised Palmer’s voice and logged into his computer, and then brought up the website he had used earlier in the week. After entering the code he was redirected to a page with a short message that improved his mood a little:
Sorry about the delay in replying, was waiting for the right moment. Spoke to subject 1 yesterday. Knows that they travelled by boat (Huang Zhen) to Durban but no onward itinerary available. Subject 2 confirmed same. Additional: there are now 4 (four) passengers heading your way. Names unknown.
Farrar wondered where the hell this fourth person had come from, but the more pressing issue was how to track them once they reached South Africa. He opened a new browser and searched for a website offering shipping itineraries. Once he found one he entered the name Huang Zhen and found that it was due in to Durban on the seventh of May, a week from today. That was plenty of time for Palmer to get to South Africa and head them off.
He wrote a quick note in reply to the message and hit the Send button.
* * *
Ellis was still fuming when Small knocked and entered her office. Before she could even begin to complain about the intrusion he gave her some much-needed good news.
“Farrar logged on and the software has been activated.”
He hit a couple of keys on her laptop to minimise the open files and clicked the icon he had placed on her desktop. A new window filled the screen and Ellis soon found some human-readable data.
“What are these other characters?” She asked Small, pointing to what appeared to be random keystrokes. He told her that they were non-alphanumeric keys, such as Backspace or Shift.
“I can filter them out if you like, but it will take time and you’ll have to wait until he logs out and back in again.”
“Never mind,” she said. “I can make it out.”
Near the top of the screen she saw what looked like a website URL suffix, but the random characters before it didn’t look like any internet address she’d ever seen, and she dismissed it as a coincidence. Small, however, had found it more curious. He grabbed the mouse and highlighted a series of characters.
“This is the first website he visited after logging on,” Small explained. “I’ve been there and found just a textbox and Submit button.” He moved down the screen and selected a twelve-digit number. “It looks like this was his login. I tried entering the same code but it simply redirected me to a porn site.”
“Do you think that was Farrar’s intended destination?” Ellis asked.
“I shouldn’t think so,” Small said. “After logging in he went to another website and did a search for ‘Huang Zhen’. I retraced his steps and saw the itinerary for a cargo ship.”
“Is he expecting a delivery?” Ellis asked.
Small nodded and pointed to a section of text further down the screen:
Passengers arriving Durban May 7th 3PM. Meet them, get the information and ensure no onward journey.
Ellis read the succinct message a few times, and a couple of questions popped into her head: who were the passengers; and who was being sent to meet them?
“Any idea who’s behind the website?” She asked.
Small shook his head. “First thing we tried, but whoever it is, they know how to cover their tracks. I’ve got one of my guys working on it, but I’m not hopeful.”
“Then we need to know who these passengers are. What was the port of origin for the Huang Zhen?”
“Port Kelang in Malaysia,” Small told her. “It left there last Monday.”
South-east Asia again, Elli
s thought. First there was Timmy Hughes in Singapore, then Baines and Smart in Manila. Now Farrar seemed to be tracking some people who’d recently departed from Malaysia, and all this in the last couple of weeks.
She called Harvey and asked him to bring Farsi to her office. When they arrived, she also told them about Farrar’s request to stop searching for Baines and Smart.
“And you’re going to do as he says?” Farsi asked.
“Of course not,” Ellis said. “Those two are the key to finding the others. What we must do is try to keep any searches off the record.”
The operatives nodded, and Ellis gave them a rundown of the information gleaned from Farrar’s computer and laid out her findings.
“It could be just a coincidence,” Harvey said. “Maybe Farrar has more than one thing on the go.”
“I agree,” Farsi said. “There was that terrorist attack in the southern Philippines last week. Maybe he’s working that up.”
The attack on Jolo had slipped Ellis’s mind. Although it had been flagged to her department and was being investigated, there was nothing to suggest a threat to Britain. The CIA had jurisdiction and had shared some of their data — it had, after all, been an American base which had come under attack — and her team of analysts had created a summary report for her. It suggested Abdul Mansour had been responsible for the attack, although there was no concrete evidence, just an eye witness statement, but they were working hard to confirm his location with several other agencies around the world.
Ellis conceded that Farrar might be working a different case, but it couldn’t hurt to go over the Jolo data one more time.
“Andrew, get over to the Asia desk and have them send everything we have relating to the attack on Camp Bautista. Once that’s organised, contact our friends across the pond and ask them for the very latest information. The stuff we have is at least three days old.”
Harvey nodded and left to carry out her orders.
“Hamad,” Ellis said, turning to the other operative, “get a manifest of the Huang Zhen and see if you can find a connection with anyone we have on our radar.”
Farsi followed Harvey out of the room, leaving Gerald Small alone with the boss.
“One thing puzzles me,” he said, his eyes still on the short message Farrar had sent. “If he has his own team, why isn’t he communicating with them through normal channels? Why go through the trouble of setting up an untraceable website?”
Ellis hadn’t picked up on that fact, but the more she thought about it, the more intriguing she found it. “An outsider,” she said, and began pacing the room, throwing ideas around in her mind. Why would he use an outside contractor? Whoever it was, they were interested in some people originating from Malaysia, which placed them in the same area as Timmy Hughes. And the fact that Hughes was linked to Levine and Campbell meant that whoever had taken him out could well be looking for them, too. It could of course be a coincidence that Hughes was taken out by a professional just a few days after contacting Levine, but the more she thought about it, the more unlikely it seemed.
Ellis knew that in order to confirm her suspicions, she had to discover who Farrar was in contact with. “You said that whoever created the website covered their tracks: does that make finding them impossible, or just very difficult?”
“As I said, I have someone working on it. We might get lucky if the host has been careless, but at this moment in time I wouldn’t hold my breath.”
It wasn’t what Ellis wanted to hear, but she was determined to either verify the connection or dismiss it as an avenue of investigation.
“How about gaining access to Farrar’s files? Would you be able to do that undetected?”
Small thought about it for a moment, not wanting to offer hope if there was none. He knew the network inside out, but as several agencies had access to the core functionality a lot of it was compartmentalised. Gaining access to a sub-net would be no easy task, but as he’d never even explored the idea before, it didn’t mean it would be impossible.
“I can try,” he said, the excitement of the challenge plain to see.
“Go for it,” Ellis smiled.
Chapter 5
Tuesday May 1st 2012
Ben Palmer’s Emirates flight touched down at King Shaka International Airport just after five in the afternoon. An hour later, he climbed into an airport taxi which ferried him twenty-two miles to the Alteron hotel, a three-star establishment a couple of miles from the container port. A larger, more opulent choice of accommodation was available to him, but he preferred the low-key lifestyle while working. His cover as a British businessman would probably stand up to close scrutiny in one of the four- or five-star establishments dotted around the city, but he much preferred to be off the radar.
The hotel had been booked in advance, and after signing in at reception he took the stairs to the second floor and found the single room was as pleasant as could be expected for the price. He dropped his baggage on the bed and took a quick shower before opening his laptop and logging in.
The first thing he did was to visit the proxy server. As he was using the hotel’s internet connection, he couldn’t be sure that they weren’t logging every website he visited. To be on the safe side, he routed all requests through the proxy, so as far as any snoopers were concerned he would only appear to have visited one website.
Once signed in, Palmer went straight to his own website and composed a short email, which was encrypted and sent to a friend named Carl Gordon. Palmer’s knowledge of computers was limited to the end-user experience, while his profession required a deeper understanding and ability. Knowing at an early stage that he wouldn’t be able to learn enough to work alone, he had recruited a student a few years earlier. He’d scoured the web for court schedules, looking for anyone facing charges under the Computer Misuse Act 1990. Gordon had been caught hacking into the servers of a utility company threatening to cut the power to his shared accommodation and had been slapped with a hefty fine. Palmer had been in court listening to the case and afterwards he met up with Gordon and agreed to pay the fine in exchange for some well-paid ad hoc work in the future. The kid had jumped at the chance and they had worked together ever since, although Gordon had never discovered Palmer’s real name. All subsequent communications had simply been signed ‘B’.
An hour later he received a text message which simply said: “Hi, Billy. Fancy a drink later?”
It was Gordon’s signal to say the work had been completed. Palmer replied, saying he would try to meet up but wasn’t making any promises. What he was actually saying was that Gordon’s fee would be transferred to the usual account within the hour.
Palmer logged into his own website and looked at the information his specialist had managed to find in the shipping port’s system. He had requested the manifest for the Huang Zhen as well as the name of the haulage company that was scheduled to collect the container, and he found everything he needed on the screen.
After searching for the website of Wenban Freight Management he made a mental note of the livery, glad to see that the dark blue cab with lightning strikes on each door would be easy to recognise. It wasn’t a large company, and there was no online freight tracking system, which suggested their paperwork would be hosted internally rather than on a server Gordon could get access to. That meant he had the choice of either visiting the office to see where the container would be heading next, or simply following the truck to see where it dropped it off.
With six days to go before the ship arrived, there was more than enough time to check out the setup at Wenban.
He also had plenty of time to find a place to dispose of his targets.
* * *
Andrew Harvey was ploughing through the raw data the CIA had sent over and he had the feeling it was going to be a long day. The vast majority of the reports had already been couriered to Thames House a few days earlier and compiled into the summary which had been presented to Ellis, but he had to go through each one, just in case a r
elevant slice of information had been missed. It was the report highlighting the sighting of Abdul Mansour that got his attention.
A statement from the Special Operations Division commander, Travis Dane, mentioned that one of three western prisoners had claimed to have seen Mansour in a local Abu Sayyaf camp the day prior to the attack. There were no further details as to who the prisoners were, and the summary had assumed that they had escaped from Abu Sayyaf.
Having not heard of any hostages being taken in recent months, he did a search for known abductions in the region and found three, two British and one American. They could be the prisoners in the statement, he thought, but as he read more the timings seemed off. Two of the prisoners had been strapped to the attacking vehicles, suggesting they couldn’t have fingered Mansour the previous day. That left one — Victoria Phillips — but despite a thorough search he found no mention of her in the CIA documents.
Harvey put in a call to the British Embassy in Manila, though he wasn’t expecting a whole lot more co-operation than he’d previously received. His heart sank further when the familiar voice came over the phone, but he kept his composure and politely asked if there was any information available about her disappearance and release.
“I can confirm that we were informed of her disappearance at the start of the year,” the attaché admitted. “I haven’t been informed about her release, though. She certainly hasn’t been in touch with us.”
“Are you sure?” Harvey asked, astonished. If he’d been held by terrorists, the first thing he’d want to do was get to British soil, and that would require a passport.
“Positive,” came the reply, along with a little indignation. “If she contacted the embassy, I would know about it.”
“If you say so,” Harvey said. “What about the other matter, the one I called about last week?”
“I’ve got someone working on it,” the attaché said, “but things work a little slowly around here. Once I have something, I’ll be in touch.”
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