On the Back Foot to Hell

by Roland Ladley

  What was interesting was Halvorsen was an unknown. His internet profile was low-key, and whilst his Facebook page made mention of Norway’s defunct National Socialist Movement, Zorn 88, no one had been able to establish a motive. Least of all the Norwegian police as the man had committed suicide shortly after his arrest whilst recovering from his injuries in hospital.

  The Christmas Pretoria attack was a simple pipe bomb: half a kilo of low-grade industrial explosive, shoved in a short, plastic tube, wrapped in duct tape, and primed with an industrial detonator attached to an unsophisticated burning fuse. Delivery had been a ‘lob’ at the front gate of the Embassy. No one had been hurt and little damage had been done. They still had no idea who the perpetrator was, or what his motives were – he was never caught, and no organisation had claimed responsibility. CCTV imagery showed a black local, with a bandana covering his nose and mouth; the rest of his face disguised by dreadlocks.

  And that was the only thing connecting the attacks: there were no discernible motives. Out of the 47 attacks, from Quito in South America to Tokyo in the Far East, there was no unifying cause.

  There certainly wasn’t any Islamic underpinning. Jane’s AO (Area of Operation) was the Middle East and Afghanistan. None of her 17 SIS stations had prior intel before any of the attacks. Significantly there wasn’t a hint of intelligence before the seven carried out in her AO. But that made sense. The targets had been unlikely Islamic terrorist hits. Whilst IS continued to attack western and Shia hubs in Iraq, Syria and Yemen on a regular basis, the ‘notable seven’, as they had been coined in Babylon, were hardly IS’s scene.

  The latest, a handheld rocket attack against Dubai’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, was carried out by a Bangladeshi worker. The rocket was an ex-British Army Carl Gustav 84mm rocket-propelled anti-tank grenade. The low-powered rocket had an effective range of 700 metres and carried a small shaped charge which was designed to penetrate the side armour of older Russian tanks. The rocket had struck a second-floor window, travelled across a small and exclusive atrium, and blown up in a Rolex boutique - frightening the life out of a shop assistant and sending $7,000 watches in all directions. The firer, who had been disorientated by the blast at his end, was arrested at the scene. He’d stuck to a story that he was making a stand against capitalism for all poorly-paid immigrant workers in The Emirates. Under pressure, he claimed he worked for an organisation called the NDRA, but had no knowledge of what the acronym meant, nor where they were based - or who his operative might be. Not known outside of intelligence circles was the Dubai police had almost killed the man under interrogation. But he hadn’t wavered from his story.

  From Jane’s sources, it seemed ISIS, al-Qaeda and their offshoots were as much in the dark as the world’s major intelligence agencies. In fact, the latest word was that ISIS were as frustrated by the maverick attacks as those trying to stop them. It hadn’t taken the world’s press long to coin the new wave of attacks as ‘neo-terrorism’, a term which begun to dominate the news cycles. Seasoned terrorist organisations needed media outlets to amplify their own brand of hurt. Now they were having to share those platforms with a burgeoning list of unknown cells, they weren’t happy.

  And the attacks weren’t all physical.

  The hacking of governmental systems, financial institutions and big industry was also on the rise. It was difficult to differentiate attacks carried out by criminals for financial or industrial gain, from those by terrorists hell-bent on spreading havoc amongst the users and beneficiaries of the systems that were attacked. In the UK, The Service (The Security Service/MI5) were now clear the website failure of a major UK bank earlier in the year, which had caused systems to crash resulting in accounts losing, and some gaining, cash, had been a deliberate act to undermine the financial system - rather than just an almighty cock-up by the bank involved. Whilst the connection had not been made the press, The Service was placing that meltdown under the banner of ‘neo-terrorism’.

  Political systems seemed no less susceptible to attack. Whilst the UK and US had its longer-term, self-generated divisions carved between Europhiles and Eurosceptics in the UK, and between the conservatives and the liberals in the US, other countries were also struggling with the rise of destabilising politics. If it hadn’t been for the ‘neo-terrorism’ label, it would have been easy to suggest this was just the way things were. A global push-back against decades of the elite few leading the less privileged masses for their own gains: the rich making themselves richer, whilst the poor spiral into debt, hit the floor and spill out onto the streets.

  But by the Spring the governmental view was that it was more sinister than that. Election meddling was widespread - all for no apparent discernible gain, other than breaking the status quo. It certainly wasn’t right versus left; or Christian versus Muslim. In the past six months two countries in South and Central America had voted in quasi-communist parties, and a third, a nationalist, right-wing organisation. There was no pattern.

  In Botswana, a stalwart of African democracy, the recent election was so badly called – with final ballot sheets looking nothing like those called at the polling stations - the election had to be declared null and void. The rerun was planned for the week after next. In the meantime the country was on tenterhooks, so much so an unprecedented night-time curfew had been called in its capital Gaborone. GCHQ’s review of the election e-processes discovered a small team of hackers working out of Algeria had interrupted, and then discarded, the poll results as they were transferred electronically to the Botswanan electoral commission. The hackers had then substituted the original results with new ones. Surprisingly, the forged result gave no one party a majority, so it wasn’t as though the infiltrators were hoping to influence the decision – they were just disrupting it.

  SIS had a small team working out of the British Embassy in Algiers. Within 24 hours, and with support from the CIA and direction from GCHQ, they’d raided the location of where the hack had originated. They found a three-by-three metre square room on the top floor of a crumbling apartment block. In it was a single desk and two chairs – nothing else. On the outside wall, by the only window, was a new metal bracket with nothing attached. SIS immediately shared photos of the bracket with GCHQ. After less than a minute’s worth of consultation in the Doughnut (the nickname for GCHQ), they’d concluded the bracket was designed to hold a small microwave dish - probably no more than 30 centimetres in diameter. Such a dish would have a maximum range of 1000 metres – and connect, by line-of-sight, to a second dish. ‘Could you guys find the target dish?’, was their question.

  With a pair of binos it took one of the SIS case officers less than five minutes to find the connecting dish. He was convinced it was one of about 50 on a large communications tower toward the edge of the city. With the distances involved and the equipment they had available, they had little chance of finding the exact dish. Even if they could, GCHQ’s view was it would be wired to an rx/tx mobile phone antenna, which was how they had found them in the first place. In short they’d be no further forward. As a result the team had little choice but to close the in-country operation. They had hit a dead end.

  By the time the post-op report was written, the conclusion was no more than two people, working with reasonably sophisticated, but commercially available, equipment, had undermined the Botswanan election. They’d hacked the system from a distance, routing their disinformation via microwave, UHF radio and then satellite, around the world. They’d been swift and clean, possibly without motive – other than to undermine the election results. And they had bugged out within 12 hours, leaving little trace of their existence.

  Jane had an intelligence officer still working the case, but so far they were no further forward.

  It didn’t end there. The list of potential ‘neo-terrorist’, non-physical attacks were endless. Fake news continued to test even the most open minded person, with spurious but highly plausible new events popping up on every media outlet. Twitter had increased its s
ecurity identification requirements for its ‘blue-tick’ users, but even these had been ‘botted’. Bots were regularly hacking blue-tick accounts, tweeting untrue and spurious comment until Twitter had closed them down.

  Both the BBC and CNN’s websites had been hacked. Fake news reports of seemingly incidental - but locally explosive - events were subtly included in news feeds. ‘Army veteran murdered by deranged farmer’, was one BBC report that stuck in Jane’s mind. The story was completely false, even though the particular web feed looked wholly realistic. The fictitious report was from Humberside. Almost immediately Facebook and Twitter were alive with ex-military and local farmers having a go at each other. In the evening, post the afternoon report, a small group of ex-soldiers marched on their local dairy farm. There was a stand-off and the police were called, but not before the farmer’s barn had been set on fire killing 25 cows.

  The intelligence services had found the originator of the breach. That is, they found his domain name: NineTenReadyOrNot; nationality unknown. By then the name was no longer in use. It only took five days for the BBC website to be hacked again, after which the site was closed for a week whilst further safeguards were installed.

  The UK was far from alone. Fake News everywhere, on all social media platforms, continued to chip away and enrage sensitivities throughout the world

  Mixing the physical attacks with the electronic painted an almost dystopian canvas. It was as if causing terror had become a new sport, like paddle-boarding - or a child’s hobby, like Loom Bands. There was no central tenet. No defining mantra. People just did it, because they could. For the fun of it

  Or that’s what it seemed like.

  But SIS profilers at Babylon didn’t agree with that diagnosis. And their CIA counterparts concurred. Yes, there was an element of copycat about what was happening. But the whole thing was too unsystematic, not to be systematic. Bangladeshis do not buy second-hand Carl Gustavs on the black market, train themselves using YouTube, and then take a pot-shot at the tallest building in the Middle East. Especially knowing they’d almost certainly get caught and end up hanging by the toes in a Dubai jail.

  Something was behind the chaos.

  And that meant, someone was gaining from it.

  Unfortunately, so far nobody had any idea who or what that was. Which was uncomfortable for all of the security services - everywhere. Because, just now, the world felt like a very unsafe place indeed.

  ‘Jane?’

  She was still staring at her mug.

  It was the Chief. He and she were the only two left in his office.

  ‘Yes, Clive. Sorry. I was deep in thought.’

  ‘That’s OK. There’s a lot to think about at the moment. Look, I reckon by tomorrow I’ll be ready with a blueprint to extend your domain.’

  This was news to Jane. She said nothing.

  ‘I’ve decided to start to move away from geographical departmental boundaries. I think, for you, it makes sense to extend your remit to include all economic and refugee migrants headed for the UK. Not just those from the Middle East and Afghanistan. In particular …’

  ‘Sub-Saharan Africa.’ Jane interrupted.

  ‘Exactly. I think it’s obvious that, however we cut this, we end up with a mix of nationalities in northern Europe. At Calais, Brest, Le Havre, Bremerhaven, etc. All along the coast.’

  ‘And it would mean that for once, here, we’d have one point of contact with the Border Agency, CT police, the Joint Intelligence Maritime Unit and, of course, The Service?’ Jane added.

  ‘Yes, indeed. Good. You’ve got it. Have a chat to your oppos. ‘Neo-terrorism’ may be the current flavour, but preventing all would-be terrorists crossing our borders will be with us forever. Indeed, they may well be connected. And start to think who, within your team, might lead in this area. Give them a heads up. OK?’

  Jane nodded.

  That’ll be Frank then.

  Sidestrand, Cromer, Norfolk, United Kingdom

  Sam listened to the slap of the waves and waited for the delayed rush as water backpedalled through pebbles back into the sea.

  Slap … rush. Slap … rush.

  It was melodic. Hypnotising.

  It was also the only thing she could do – listen. She was in a wooden hut, still wearing what she’d been in when she’d left work. Her hands were tied behind her back. Her feet to the chair legs. Tied, but not so tight she was losing circulation. And she was gagged: a cotton material, not polyester; easier on the mouth when wet with spit. The material was folded on itself a number of times, and knotted behind her head. It was tight, but not so much she couldn’t make a small amount of noise. It was a professional job. Very competent. She was sitting in an upright, cushioned chair which was bolted to the floor. She was tied to it with orange and green climbing rope, strapped around her waist. Again, tight but not so it dug in. She couldn’t move, but she wasn’t uncomfortable. And she hadn’t been hurt.

  Professional.

  All of her bits were they should be. Her stomach, always the first to remind her she was not invincible, didn’t ache.

  She had been kidnapped – but not abused. Somebody wanted to talk to her. Somebody who wanted her intact; unbroken. That didn’t mean that pain wouldn’t come. Just none had been inflicted up until now.

  Was she scared?

  Not really. Hurt was an old friend of hers. It was quantifiable and most of the time she could see it coming.

  Much worse were her demons. Ralph Bell was dead, but he was still with her. In her dreams. On the TV news, a face at the back of a crowd.

  And … the unknown man from Croatia. The mastermind of the failed cruise missile attack on Mecca: Freddie. Known of – but never seen. No one had any idea what he looked like. But she had seen him. In the periphery of her vision. A fleeting movement; his eyes on her. A man without form.

  The devil.

  Am I scared?

  What was left to be scared of?

  She was worn out. Bored by it all.

  On a slope heading downhill. Nothing mattered.

  A shingle beach? She could be anywhere along the British coast. Large swathes of the coastline was shingle. She’d read an article, ‘The best beaches in England’, a couple of months ago whilst the UK had basked in an unusually hot summer. It seemed that pebbles were preferred over sand. Less bits of beach hiding in unnecessary places. Among the list were: Chesil Beach, the spit of pebbles that linked the Isle of Portland with the Dorset coast; Watergate Bay in Newquay; Blackpool Sands, surprisingly not in Lancashire, but in South Devon; West Wittering in Sussex. Among others. She’d not been to any of them.

  As a kid she remembered her Mum and Dad taking her to Sheringham, in Norfolk. That had a pebble beach. A short carriage-ride from The Queen’s pad at Sandringham, Sheringham felt very posh. Their accommodation was more caravan than castle, but the whole place was a bit of a leg-up from Skeggie, where most of her friends holidayed.

  She could be in Sheringham, or close by?

  None of that was helpful.

  She could be anywhere. She reckoned she’d been knocked out for about eight hours. She’d been taken in the dark – close to 10.30 pm. Looking at the poorly boarded up window – the only one in the single-skin, wooden hut she was in – it was dark again; probably about 8 pm, almost a day later. She’d come to about 12 hours earlier. At that point she was hungry and had a headache. And she needed a pee. But she was alone and there was no one to listen to her demands, let alone meet them.

  Now, as the sea continued to slap the shore and then rattle back from where it came, she was still hungry but the headache was gone. And thirst was a new sensation.

  And she still needed a pee.

  During the day she’d tried to find the sun through the cracks in the boarded-up window. The only other opening was a tongue and groove, wooden door. It fitted its frame tightly: no cracks. But there was no sun. Nothing to help orientate herself to a particular coastline. Mind you, in the eight or so hours she’d been uncons
cious her kidnappers could have taken her to any coastline in Europe. If she were facing west she could be in Wales, the north coast of Devon, Sutherland in Scotland … or Denmark. Or Finland? The possibilities were endless.

  God, I need a pee!

  She really didn’t want to wet herself. She bounced her right leg up and down to relieve the pressure on her bladder. She felt the skin reddening as her right ankle rubbed against the chair leg.

  Apart from the rubbing, the only sound was …

  … slap … rush. Slap … rush.

  She closed her eyes and concentrated on sleep. She was surprisingly tired for someone who had been sitting on her backside all day. OK, she had tried to break her bonds and that had taken some effort. She’d moved her hands about, wringing them and pulling them in opposite directions. She’d wiggled in her chair, slipped off both shoes and tried to pull one foot then the other through the ankle tie. But she’d soon given up. Whoever had bound her had known what they were doing. She’d get free when they wanted her to.

  One of the lighter moments of SIS case officer training had been a session on knots and trussing people up. This wasn’t in preparation for their inevitable capture by some global master-criminal so they could free themselves, kung fu their way out of the building and then fly the pre-flight-checked, carelessly unguarded Apache helicopter into the sunset just before the nuclear laboratory was engulfed in flames.

  It was much more practical than that.

  As a case officer there was always a possibility an agent you were running ‘just flipped’. Getting paid to rat on your own side was a high pressure job. For a few it became too much. SIS had countless examples of an agent breaking down in the presence of their case office. At that point the IA (immediate action) was to restrain them before they did themselves, and the operation, unnecessary harm. Often a hand on the shoulder and a strong cup of tea was enough. Sometimes it wasn’t. At that point, knowing about ropes and knots was handy.