The Cloud Collector

by Brian Freemantle

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  For Camille Colon, my über-fan and friend

  The mystery of how he [Osama bin Laden] kept in touch with his followers was at least partly solved yesterday by U.S. intelligence officials … to send an e-mail bin Laden would type a message on his computer, copy it to a flash drive and hand it to a courier who would then drive miles to a distant Internet café. The courier would then send the e-mail from the café, making it all but untraceable.

  —Report of a CIA briefing on how Osama bin Laden controlled Al Qaeda from his Abbottabad, Pakistan, lair, London Times, May 13, 2011

  I think it’s a violation of human rights.… It [the use of drones] means you assassinate people without bringing charges, without finding them guilty, and in the process inadvertently causing collateral damage, that is the killing of completely innocent people who might be in the neighborhood.

  —Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, London Times interview, July 4, 2012

  1

  The forensically enhanced clarity from such a neglected CCTV was remarkable. Closing the blinds of the CIA’s Langley viewing room into semi-darkness helped. The original TV camera on the wall of the single-storey winos’ bar had been ten yards from the assassination, which was another advantage. The target car, a bumper-crumpled, windscreen-cracked Ford with a red offside front wing that didn’t match the rest of the faded blue paintwork, came surreally into the silent picture from the left of the screen. It wasn’t hurrying, slowed further by vehicles haphazardly parked on either side of the street: it was still too early for traffic restrictions or people. The front passenger had his window down, arm on the sill. The wristwatch was a heavy mix of dials, control knobs, and numerals that would have glowed in the dark or been legible underwater.

  The Ford driver found a tight space just before the telephone stand and put another dent in the bumper shunting into it. The passenger rolled his window up, but didn’t get out. Neither did the driver or the scarcely visible third man in the rear. All three were heavily bearded. No-one appeared to be talking. A time counter had been superimposed on the screen: it registered six and a half minutes past five before the two men in the front got out and walked, still not talking, to the telephone. Neither attempted to get inside the hood. The driver rested his arm against the telephone ledge to keep his watch in front of him. Like the other man’s, it had a lot of dials and knobs. Both men physically reacted to what must have been the incoming ring. One man grabbed the receiver, crowded beneath the hood by the other, preventing either from becoming aware of the ambush until the man they’d left in the Ford emerged from its rear, waving and obviously shouting. By that time the three who’d come from an unobtrusively parked fawn Toyota were close enough to fire point-blank. They did so precisely, bringing both men down with body hits and finishing off with single head shots. The other Ford passenger was running, and one of the hit squad broke away in pursuit but almost at once accepted that the intervening distance was too great and gave up, walking casually back to the other two bent over the bodies, rifling through their pockets. They straightened, laughing, as the returning man reached them. All three walked unhurriedly back to the Toyota and drove off in the direction of the Capitol, obediently halting at a red stoplight just visible to the CCTV.

  * * *

  ‘So how does it work?’ demanded Charles Johnston, the newly appointed CIA director of covert operations.

  Jack Irvine knew that having gotten this close he couldn’t afford any mistakes. He could not give this unknown man the slightest excuse to cancel, question even, the operation on which he’d worked so hard for so long to the exclusion of girlfriends, any other social life, even his belovedly restored but now neglected ’92 Volkswagen. His operation—his, no-one else’s—had to be preserved, and he’d do everything and anything to ensure that it was. The Anacostia video provided the proof that it worked.

  As the cliché went, pictures were worth a thousand words and words were what Irvine intended to limit. Neither Johnston nor the other two men with him needed to know the full details of what he’d achieved as a National Security Agency highflier roaming way beyond Iran’s official Halal Web site to discover its use of unrestricted, anonymous cyberspace darknets.

  Irvine said, ‘It’s anti-terrorism, using the Internet—Facebook and chat rooms—as the jihadists use them: how bin Laden himself used them. And Al Qaeda and every other militant Islamist, anarchist, and would-be terrorist is still using them.’ It had echoed impressively when he’d mentally rehearsed it. Spoken aloud, it hadn’t sounded quite so good; neither had the hesitation in his voice.

  ‘How?’ demanded Johnston. He was a large, heavy-featured man of self-protective conformity whose suits were always grey, shirts always white, and ties always plain. At that moment those heavy features were expressionless, betraying nothing.

  ‘Taking terror to terrorists: we hack into their traffic, manipulate it.…’ Irvine, who despite the abandoned jogging routine was an athletically slim man suited to jeans, T-shirts, and loafers, gestured towards the now-blank screen. ‘Atrocity-planning terrorists killing other atrocity-planning terrorists with no collateral damage: no dead, innocent civilians and children caught up in a Reaper drone attack; no accusations against our military. All are identified by the NSA from overseas intercepts leading us to individual groups within the United States. Proof of intended terrorist attack is never obtained from illegal phone, computer, or radio wiretapping or hacking in this country.’ Irvine again indicated the screen. ‘That’s not our first success. If we can’t create an internal war, we alert Homeland Security or other enforcement agencies overseas.’ He was covering all the obvious objections, Irvine knew, disappointed there was virtually no reaction from the covert-operations director.

  ‘So that’s how it’s different from the NSA’s Prism Project and the Brits’ Tempura programme of 2012 that got us so much heat. We hunt, don’t wait?’

  ‘Exactly!’ agreed Irvine, acknowledging that Johnston had tried to prepare himself. Irvine was sure there was still no danger of his being found out.

  ‘And what we’ve just seen is the result of an already-sanctioned feasibility trial?’ pressed Johnston, ever cautious.

  ‘Officially designated Operation Cyber Shepherd,’ confirmed Irvine. ‘I’ve already established a NSA team at Fort Meade; they’re waiting to be briefed.’

  Johnston jerked his head in the direction of the dead screen. ‘What about the guy that got away?’

  ‘Ismail al Aswamy, an Iranian in the U.S. on an expired student visa.’ Irvine looked sideways at James Bradley, the operation’s CIA supervisor, who continued studiously to ignore him. ‘Jim assured me Aswamy’s ours whenever we want to take him. For the moment we’re ready to follow wherever he leads us.’

  ‘What’s the body count so far?’

  ‘The two you just saw taken out brings those eliminated here to a total of five. The other three were in Boston. Anti-t
errorist police in Rome, Italy, have a group we’ve identified under surveillance. We’ve given the UK a lead in a town there called Bradford; no playback yet.’

  * * *

  Three and a half thousand miles away, in the Thames-side headquarters of MI5, its diminutive Director-General was even more curious at a lack of results.

  His critics saw David Monkton’s reluctance to delegate as the man’s most obvious failing, while his matching number of supporters judged it his major attribute. In an organization as large and as complex as Britain’s counter-intelligence service, delegation was operationally imperative. Monkton, whose life was tightly structured on self-imposed rules, evolved an equally reluctant compromise. He insisted upon daily, not weekly, updates on priority-designated cases from his divisional directors and carried out unannounced, unpredictable spot checks upon what he considered inadequate briefings.

  This practise would uncover the nightmare scenario feared by every Western intelligence agency since 9/11 and 7/7.

  2

  David Monkton conducted the meeting not from his inherited desk, which he knew to be too large for someone of his stature, but by moving around the river-view suite, sometimes, such as now, out of his visitor’s sight. Re-emerging, the MI5 Director-General went to a much-smaller side table upon which he’d spread the dossier retrieved earlier. Without looking back to Jeremy Dodson, his operations director, Monkton said, ‘Why didn’t this intrigue you as much as it intrigues me? As it should have properly intrigued you!’

  Dodson, who’d actually consulted reference books for the diagnosis, decided Monkton’s behavior was a classic example of a Napoléon complex, the insignificantly small man’s constant need to bully. ‘The police are adamant there’s no link whatsoever between what came from America and the murder.’

  ‘Which police? Special Branch? Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorist division? Who?’

  ‘A combination,’ avoided Dodson uncomfortably. He shouldn’t have left himself so exposed.

  Monkton collected the file and finally returned to his over-sized desk, leaning forward over it and smoothing into place his immaculately trimmed toothbrush moustache that didn’t need smoothing. ‘I don’t understand that answer, as I don’t understand too many other things. Let’s go back to the very beginning, to when we got the alert from the National Security Agency.’

  The operations director breathed in heavily, only just preventing it from becoming a sigh. ‘Fort Meade picked up some low-level Pakistani chatter and followed it to Germany. It included the name Roger Bennett with an indication that he was British, and so they passed it on to the Government Communications Headquarters at Cheltenham.’

  ‘Who, quite properly, following established procedure, passed it on to us, which in practise means you. So tell me, what did you do? That’s what I really want to know.’

  ‘I strictly followed established procedure by passing it on to Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorist unit,’ recited Dodson. It wasn’t going to be enough, he knew.

  ‘And left it there, as someone else’s responsibility?’

  ‘No!’ denied Dodson, the forcefulness just short of impertinence. ‘The Yard traced Bennett to the London School of Economics; he’d dropped out and returned to his home in Bradford after two terms. He apparently knew Arabs there, but there was no evidence of radicalization or of his attending a mosque in Bradford or anywhere else. The Yard is overstretched, as you know. They judged him too low-key to justify an intercept warrant on his phone or any other electronic equipment.’

  Monkton let an accusing silence build. ‘There was a Pakistani connection: positive suspect chatter. You have the authority to apply for an electronic intercept warrant.’

  ‘The Yard passed it on to the local police,’ tried Dodson desperately.

  ‘Who are now trying to find out why and how Roger Bennett ended up in a Bradford alley, stabbed to death and with half his tongue cut out.’

  ‘Bradford police are investigating it as a gang killing. They have Bennett as a petty criminal, not a terrorist.’

  ‘Did he have a criminal record?’

  ‘In his late teens. Robbery with violence and aggravated assault.’

  ‘Which I don’t see in this file,’ persisted Monkton, tapping the papers before him.

  ‘It had nothing to do with terrorism.’

  ‘Who, then, was making contact with him from Pakistan, through a German intermediary? And why was he on NSA’s suspect airways list six months before he’s found murdered?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ miserably conceded Dodson.

  ‘But I want to know,’ insisted Monkton. ‘Use proper channels to reach the chief constable, seeking his authority and assistance to clear up something we don’t understand, that sort of approach. I don’t want anyone believing their toes are being trodden upon or their territory invaded. And I don’t want any media leaks.’

  ‘I’ll avoid that,’ promised Dodson.

  ‘I’ll be extremely disappointed if you don’t. And I’m already disappointed enough as it is.’

  * * *

  ‘Thanks a fucking lot!’ protested Jack Irvine as the door closed behind the head of the CIA’s covert division.

  ‘You got a problem?’ mildly queried Harry Packer, NSA’s liaison director to the Agency. He was a bespectacled, balding man with the stoop of someone uncomfortable with his height, determined physically as well as figuratively to keep well below the parapet until he’d worked out the personal benefits of this operation. So far, he believed they might be considerable, and to climb out of the toilet into which his personal life was being flushed away, he needed all the benefits he could get.

  ‘I think not getting any support or input from your two guys with whom Shepherd is being worked is a problem, yes,’ said Irvine, over-emphasizing the irritation. ‘I also think I was set up as the fall guy if Johnston scrapped the whole operation.’ He’d done the right thing, holding back until now: he still had the back channel to the CIA deputy director if Johnston changed his mind. He’d marked both as promotion-positioning backwatchers manoeuvring maximum advantages from Cyber Shepherd.

  ‘But he didn’t scrap it, did he?’ James Bradley, Irvine’s CIA counterpart, smiled. ‘There wasn’t a chance in hell of Johnston cancelling something already approved by our recently elevated deputy director. Johnston’s ass is Teflon-tempered.’

  Conrad Graham’s promotion created the vacancy Johnston now occupied following belated recognition of Graham’s role establishing the joint National Security Agency/CIA task force that devised, with the Israeli Mossad, the Stuxnet cyberwar weapon. A worm that without detection overrode already-installed computer control programs, Stuxnet was introduced into Iran’s uranium-processing facility at Natanz in late 2010 and unknown to its Iranian operators alternated between fast and slow the intended centrifuge rotations sufficiently to disrupt Tehran’s atomic development.

  They wouldn’t mock if they knew how much he’d gained from Stuxnet, Irvine thought. ‘So why the big silence?’

  ‘Shepherd’s your baby: you didn’t need any help from us setting it all out for the new man,’ said Bradley, a carelessly crumpled bachelor fattened by microwave TV dinners and whose invariably tightly buttoned jackets concertina-creased over yesterday’s shirt. ‘I thought we’d established the rules of engagement: you handle all the clever cyberspace shit. I pick up when everything gets down to ground level: a perfect combination.’ And one that was going to get him a $2,000 grade hike, reflected Bradley.

  ‘That made us little more than observers today,’ endorsed Packer. ‘What could we have contributed that you couldn’t explain better?’

  ‘So what did you observe?’ Irvine mocked back, even-voiced.

  ‘New guy on the block, feeling his way in, is all,’ said Bradley.

  ‘And now it’s time to move on,’ hurried Packer, determined to get away from the CIA’s Langley headquarters in time for that night’s poker, upon which the monthly alimony depended.

  ‘I
’m coming up to Fort Meade fully to brief the team,’ announced Irvine. ‘Meade is where the facilities are, from where we’re going to get the leads.’

  ‘I’ll make the arrangements,’ undertook Packer, a career bureaucrat, not a cryptologist, who’d already decided to associate himself with all that was safe—and probably documented—and to steadfastly avoid anything and everything that was not. Staff movements were his responsibility, and he was apprehensive that Irvine’s relocation to DC might prove too expensive.

  ‘That would be a contribution,’ said Irvine heavily, but then wondered why he’d bothered: he was going to keep them at a greater distance than they imagined they were keeping him. Looking to Bradley, he said, ‘We haven’t talked about al Aswamy.’

  ‘What’s to talk about?’

  ‘You pick up when everything gets down to the ground,’ irritably echoed Irvine. ‘We still don’t properly know how important he is.’

  ‘He’s locked in our box and we’ve got the key,’ guaranteed Bradley. ‘You look after your side, I’ll look after mine.’

  That’s precisely what he intended to do, thought Irvine.

  * * *

  ‘Arrogant son of a bitch!’ declared Bradley, generously pouring Jack Daniel’s for both of them. They’d finally moved from the viewing room to the man’s mission-assigned office, which had corner-window views out over the Virginia forest as far as Rock Creek Park, although the Potomac was hidden in the intervening valley.

  ‘He’s the best Arabic scholar at Meade, never known an encryption he couldn’t break, and he works a computer like Chopin played the piano,’ enthused Packer sycophantically, gauging he had a maximum of thirty minutes before he needed to get on the road. ‘And Conrad Graham judged him invaluable on Stuxnet.’

  ‘Which very obviously Irvine believes, too,’ said Bradley, settling behind his desk. ‘Important maybe, invaluable, no. This is a crusade against Islamic extremism, not a reputation-building exercise or redemption effort for the fuckups of his father.’