Antonia shrugged as she enthusiastically cut through her steak. ‘By accident really,’ she said. ‘I was at university studying computer programming and had a gap in my final year subjects so I signed up for a political sciences course. Before the semester finished, one of the Government departments approached me with a job offer. I thought it would provide me with stability and a steady income.’
Dan laughed. ‘The last few days must’ve been quite a shock for you then.’
Antonia smiled as she raised her wine glass to her lips then put it down again. ‘It was better than being stuck in the office,’ she said, and grinned.
Over their three-course meal, Dan found himself wanting to spend more time with Antonia. As they exchanged stories and experiences he realised he’d been spending far too much time on his own and wondered if it was time to permanently return home to England.
The waiter returned to refill their wine glasses. ‘Would you like another sir?’ the waiter enquired, holding up the empty bottle.
Dan shook his head and turned to Antonia. ‘Coffee?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a better idea.’
***
The lift doors opened and Dan led Antonia along the plush carpeted hallway. As they slowed and stood facing each other outside her room, he let go of her hand and caressed her bare arm, feeling her shiver under his touch. He glanced down at her, their eyes holding.
‘What are you thinking?’ he whispered.
‘Don’t leave me,’ she said, and leaned into his chest.
Dan buried his face in her hair and inhaled deeply. He closed his eyes, aware he was about to break every professional rule he’d ever set himself. Don’t get involved.
He ran his hands down her back, feeling her spine through the thin dress then settled on her hips, pulling her to him.
Too late.
She gasped as she felt him, pulled away to look in his eyes, then nodded and dragged him into the room with her. As the door closed behind them, she began to tear at the buttons of his shirt, pulling it over his broad shoulders and down his arms.
He wrapped his fingers in her hair, pulled her head back and began tracing his lips down her neck, along her collarbone. She shivered under his touch and groaned, then sank her teeth into his shoulder, nibbling the skin as she ran her fingers over his nipples.
Dan groaned, pulled back and slipped his fingers under the thin straps of her dress. His eyes met hers, their breathing heavy.
‘Your father will kill me,’ he murmured.
She shook her head. ‘Deniable ops,’ she smiled, and leaned forward to kiss the scars laced across his chest.
‘Jesus,’ he whispered, closing his eyes. ‘Turn around.’
She did so, and he pulled down the zip on her dress, hard. He turned her around to face him as the dress fell to the floor, exposing her breasts and a lace black g-string.
He grinned. ‘If I’d known you were wearing that in Malta…’
‘…we’d be in a hell of a lot more trouble,’ she said, pulling him to her, and kissing him deeply.
He lifted her up and, as she wrapped her legs around him, carried her over to the bed. Laying her down, he tangled his fingers in her hair as she began to loosen his belt, her breathing shallow now, desperate.
‘Here, I’ll help,’ he said, and inched out of his jeans.
She leaned up on her elbows, her eyes blazing as he turned to her, and then she reached out for him, pulling him down onto her, guiding him inside.
As their bodies began to move together, he buried his face in her hair and closed his eyes. ‘You realise this breaks every single operational rule ever invented?’ he murmured.
‘So shoot me.’
***
Dan’s eyes slowly opened and took in the room around him. A grey dawn broke through the heavy curtains, the sound of sleet beating against the window shifting with the gusts of wind howling through the city.
He glanced down at Antonia’s head resting on his chest, and stroked her hair. She stirred and peered up at him, tracing her fingers over the pockmarked scars which covered his skin.
‘You okay?’ he said.
‘Mm,’ she murmured, and smiled. ‘What time is it?’
Dan moved his arm out from underneath her and held up his watch to the light, squinting through bleary eyes. ‘Seven. We’re going to have to get moving.’
Antonia growled. ‘Sometimes I hate this job. Pity we can’t stay here.’ She looked up at him slyly as her hands began to move down his chest and across his abdomen.
He laughed and caught her hand before she went too far. ‘Later.’
She stopped, and raised herself up on her elbows, her dark curls cascading over her shoulders.
Dan caught his breath. ‘Do you realise how beautiful you are?’
Antonia smiled, then leaned down and kissed him. As she broke away, she noticed he was frowning. ‘What’s wrong?’
He shook his head. ‘Nothing. I was wondering what the chances were of persuading you to stay here once all this is over.’
She laughed throatily, pushed back the sheets and straddled him. ‘I think that’s a possibility.’
He groaned as she started moving. ‘And I think we’re going to be late…’
Chapter 38
London
The murmur of voices around the conference table grew quiet as Dan and Antonia entered the room.
Dan closed the door behind him, nodded at Mitch who was in conversation with Philippa, then strode over to the table and pulled out a chair opposite Antonia. He winked at her as he sat down then looked up as David began to address the team, pacing the length of the room as he spoke.
‘Right people, it’s been a busy forty-eight hours, so let’s have a quick overview of what’s happened so far and see if we can draw any conclusions,’ he said. ‘Bear in mind I’m due at the Prime Minister’s office in three hours, so you’d better have some results. Dan – you first.’
Dan nodded, and proceeded to bring the team up to speed on what he, Mitch and Antonia had uncovered in Malta. He stood up and walked over to a small table in the corner, picked up the clear plastic evidence bags that stood on the surface and brought them back to the conference table. Passing them round, he explained where the contents had been found.
‘So to finish up,’ he said. ‘We’ve got a cigarette packet with a partial text print in a foreign language that looks a bit like Arabic – I’m not sure – and some food packaging. We’ve got a bit more text on that, but,’ he glanced over at Philippa and handed her the bags, ‘I could use one of your linguistics experts to confirm what language it is.’
Philippa nodded and took the bags. ‘I’ll get these processed now. With any luck, we’ll have a positive identification for you within the next thirty minutes.’
David nodded, and Philippa hurriedly left the room. ‘Right – what’s the outcome of the reports from the Ras Laffan attack? Antonia – you’re our programming expert, so why don’t you get us started?’
Antonia nodded, stood up and walked around the table, handing each person a report. ‘You can read this afterwards, but I’ll give you the overview,’ she began. ‘That way, we can get moving on this straight away.’
She sat down in her chair, pulled it closer to the conference table, and opened the report. ‘The team began by dumping the memory of each of the operators’ computers so we could capture the system time, network connections made, any files opened and a note of logged-in users. For each computer, they also took a hard drive image which your analysts will need if they want to do any further work on this. They then identified any user accounts which looked like they’d been compromised.’ She turned a page, and flicked her hair over her shoulder. ‘The next thing they did was interview each of the operators – the people who are using the system on a day-to-day basis. All of them have access to emails so the team began by asking if they’d received any unusual emails over the past three months.’
‘Why?’ asked Dan.
‘The easiest way for a hacker to infiltrate a system is to send an email to a recipient,’ explained Antonia. ‘The email contains a hyperlink, and when the recipient opens the link, the hacker gets in. All the user sees is an error message which says the page being looked for can’t be found – the user simply shrugs, closes down the window, deletes the email and carries on working. The user doesn’t even realise someone has broken into the system.’
‘Surely at a facility like that, they’re going to have firewalls and stuff to capture any rogue messages?’ asked Mitch.
Antonia nodded. ‘Yes, they do – but the hacker posed as Grant Swift, who was the lead engineer on the programme upgrade project, and sent an email explaining a new update was available. More than one controls engineer clicked on the hyperlink contained within that message.’ She looked at the people gathered round the table. ‘Those engineers would have received an error message on their screen and just closed their internet browser. Unknown to them, that’s all it took for the hacker to infiltrate the system.’
She turned the page and scanned her notes. ‘Once the hacker was into the email system, he was able to access every single email address for the facility. The next step was to try to take control of the system. To do that, the hacker used an email address of an engineer who had recently retired, and sent a message which supposedly included his contact details. The hacker included a hyperlink to a website that didn’t exist, which of course most engineers opened to see what their colleague was now doing. Again, by clicking on the hyperlink, they triggered an error message. By doing this, the hacker could simply gain access to each individual’s computer then key-stroke log everything the system was doing and find out how the facility was run.’
‘How long had this been going on before the facility was attacked?’ asked Dan.
Antonia flipped through the report. ‘Based on interviews and the forensic evidence, the team over in Qatar reckon about six months prior to the attack.’
‘Something like that has to take up an enormous amount of computer power,’ said David. ‘How on earth did they achieve that?’
‘Easy – zombie computers.’
Dan leaned forward. ‘Zombie computers?’
Antonia nodded. ‘It’s a way of giving the hacker more processing power – and it protects his identity because he simply implements the same trick of sending a spam email to several computers. Not just in Qatar, but worldwide. By distributing the malware across several zombie computers, then utilising those computers to launch his attack, the hacker is able to reduce the risk of his own identity being uncovered…’
Antonia broke off as the conference room door swung open and Philippa strode into the room.
‘Got it,’ she announced. She walked up to David with the two evidence bags, put them on the table and pointed to the first one. ‘Right, the cigarette packet’s been matched to an Iranian brand of tobacco,’ she said, ‘and your food packet is also originally from Persia.’
‘Could’ve been imported,’ suggested Mitch.
Philippa shook her head. ‘Trust me – if you were in Malta, you’d be smoking a Western brand, not these. In the words of our Farsi language expert downstairs, he’d rather smoke old shoe leather.’
‘So someone on the submarine has stockpiled a supply of cigarettes,’ mused Dan.
‘And his mum packed some snacks for him by the look of it,’ added Mitch, raising a small round of laughter from the other team members.
David held up his hand. ‘Okay, settle down,’ he said. ‘We’re running out of time – I need more…’
He looked up as the conference room door opened and an analyst hurried over to him. David’s face paled as he read the message.
‘In the early hours of this morning, a cruise ship was attacked off the coast of Gibraltar,’ he read, his hand shaking. ‘Reports indicate an estimated fifty-seven people remain unaccounted for, including eight crew members.’
A shocked silence filled the room.
‘Attacked?’ prompted Dan.
David nodded. ‘Communications from the ship prior to it sinking indicate the Captain believed the vessel was hit by a torpedo.’
The room filled with a cacophony of voices as the assembled analysts all began speaking at once.
Dan pushed his empty coffee cup to one side and began sifting through the documents strewn across the table. The voices washed over him, his mind working. His thoughts were interrupted by a polite cough from the far end of the table. He looked up to find David staring intently at him.
‘What are you thinking?’ asked David.
Dan leaned back into his chair. ‘Late last week an LNG tanker sinks at Ras Laffan in Qatar. That’s only a short while after the submarine is lost. Any exports of LNG are going to be on hold until they can get the ship unloaded and salvaged. We’ve a missing yacht off the north coast of Malta and find evidence of a submarine there. We have to assume Hassan is now going after the UK’s gas supplies.’
‘Why on earth would Hassan have the submarine attack a cruise ship?’ said Philippa. ‘That doesn’t make any sense.’
David held up the report. ‘It does when you consider the rescue and salvage effort is now blocking the entire Strait of Gibraltar to heavy shipping traffic,’ he explained. ‘Including the emergency supply of LNG the British Government secured from the Tunisians.’
‘Hang on,’ said Mitch, putting up a hand. ‘Slow down – I thought the UK produced its own gas still? Why are we so dependent on importing it?’
Richard Fletcher turned to the others in the room. ‘If I may,’ he said, and turned on an overhead projector. A series of graphs illuminated a screen on the far wall. ‘The UK’s gas reserves peaked in 2009 and have been in decline ever since. We went from being a gas producer, even exporting reserves offshore, to being a gas importer within a few years. The UK has been re-developing old gas fields for the past few years – some of these fields were previously abandoned because the gas was too difficult to reach. Lately, we’ve been implementing new technologies to reach it, especially as the price of gas currently supports deep water exploration like this.’
The analyst paused. ‘We’re still reliant on imports at times like these when we have a harsh winter and demand for gas is high across the whole of northern Europe. Our own gas production is currently supported by imports from Norway and the Netherlands via pipelines under the North Sea and English Channel, as well as what we buy from Qatar.’
‘That’s the liquefied gas which is pumped on shore at the Isle of Grain and Milford Haven, right?’ asked Dan.
‘Correct.’
‘After the United Nations imposed more and more sanctions on Iran, encouraged by us and the Americans, it has to be said, the Iranians started sabre-rattling,’ David interrupted. ‘They’re due to complete work on the final stage of the next trans-Persian pipeline in the next few months, supplying gas to some European countries.’
‘I wouldn’t imagine with the sort of sanctions currently in place they’d be allowed to trade with Europe?’ asked Mitch.
David shook his head. ‘Not Western Europe – Eastern Europe. They tend to be a bit more liberal about who their trading partners are. Especially with the price of Russian-supplied gas and the problems getting it out of Russia every time one of its neighbours throws a tantrum and disrupts supply.’
‘So the Iranians could be trying to expand their client base?’ said Mitch. ‘Is that what you’re suggesting?’
David nodded. ‘If you consider the pounding the European economies have been dealt over the past few years, you can see why. Even France and Germany are talking to them on the quiet. They’re struggling to get their economies into a budget surplus, so they’re less fussy about how they meet energy demands. If the rest of the problems regarding Iran’s nuclear programme are put to one side, they’re actually quite a lucrative supplier. Iran is pushing quite heavily for export contracts considering it’s only a matter of years before Israel’s fledgling gas fields
are up to full capacity and the North American shale gas industry floods the market. Given that the Iranians are becoming desperate to sell gas to wider Europe to offset the problems caused by UN sanctions, they could be getting more aggressive about their strategies.’
Fletcher shook his head. ‘It’s not enough for us to go on record and speak to the Iranian ambassador to accuse his country of attacking us.’ He switched off the overhead projector and sat down.
David sighed. ‘Well we can’t just ignore it – we’re in the middle of winter and all the forecasts are predicting this year’s cold season will be as harsh, if not worse, than in 2010. The UK’s gas supplies were seriously strained then. If we choose to ignore this threat, what happens then?’
Dan scratched his chin. ‘Iran has enough allies to supply it with illegal weapons. Makes you wonder why they’d want an old beat-up submarine headed for the scrap heap.’
Mitch nodded. ‘Has to be they want to avoid drawing attention to themselves. I can’t think what their intentions are though. I mean, if they were going to suddenly attack us, I don’t think they’d worry about what the world thinks of them – they’d just do it, and with their own gear.’
Dan ran all the scenarios through his head. He sat up straight as a thought occurred to him. ‘What if Hassan is working on his own, without his Government’s knowledge?’
‘Why?’ asked David.
‘Power. Greed. Perhaps he’s trying to work his way up through the Government to gain the attention of the mullahs,’ Dan suggested. ‘Maybe he thinks if he can pull off something like this, and force the UK to cancel the sanctions against Iran so we have to buy gas from them, he’ll force the current president out, or get elected into office.’
‘Which would help explain why he’s had to steal a submarine.’
‘Why kidnap Grant though?’ asked Philippa.
‘Maybe once the submarine is in place, Hassan will contact the UK Government with an ultimatum,’ said Mitch. ‘Start buying gas from his organisation, or else…’
Under Fire: (A Dan Taylor thriller) Page 20