The Cloud Collector

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘He talked about his father with you?’ asked the surprised Harry Packer, who’d imagined he’d be the only one to check out Irvine’s background.

  Bradley shook his head. ‘Came up in all its sorry detail during his background check: hell of a mess. Sure as hell don’t want to be caught up in a repetition.’

  ‘That’s hardly likely: this is altogether different.’

  ‘It’s got the potential.’

  ‘Everything we do, either here or at Fort Meade, has the potential for disaster,’ Packer argued back, more for his own reassurance than the other man’s. Shaking his head against a refill, he said, ‘What about Chuck Johnston?’ Today had been their first personal encounter.

  Bradley considered his answer. ‘Word is that there’s never been a decision, right or wrong, with his name on it.’

  A responsibility-avoiding principle he also studiously observed, Packer recognized. ‘This hasn’t got his name on it. Conrad Graham signed off.’

  ‘That’s why I knew Johnston wouldn’t pull the rug from under us.’

  ‘Still right to handle it as we did.’

  ‘Don’t want anything to come up and bite us in the ass, do we?’ invited Bradley, adding to his own glass.

  ‘Absolutely not.’ He’d be back in Baltimore soon enough, Packer decided. He had a good feeling—a winner’s feeling—about tonight.

  * * *

  ‘I’ve made all the necessary police approaches: gone back to Scotland Yard and GCHQ, as well. There’s nothing beyond what you’ve already seen,’ Jeremy Dodson told Monkton. ‘And I’ve drawn up a list of officers if you want us to get physically involved.’

  ‘I definitely intend our getting involved,’ said the Director-General, for once behind his overwhelming desk. ‘And I’ve already decided upon an officer.’

  Dodson hesitated, covering his awkwardness by retrieving the sheet of paper he’d already pushed partially across the desk. ‘You won’t be needing this, then?’

  ‘No, I won’t be needing that.’

  ‘I’ve still got time to brief him this afternoon,’ offered Dodson hopefully.

  ‘I’ve already done that, too.’

  3

  ‘So MI5 is recruiting women now!’ The desk plate identified Edward Pritchard as a detective superintendent. The undisguised implication was that the employment barrel had been scraped from its absolute bottom, including splinters. The wall behind the man was a collage of overseas police-force pennants and framed photographs of foreign events all featuring Pritchard in the foreground.

  ‘They have been for a long time now.’ Sally Hanning smiled, contemptuous of the chauvinism of the man who sat with both hands cupping a bulged gut, as if it needed support. It would have been charitable, which she rarely was, to think its burden was the reason for his not standing when she’d entered the room.

  ‘Actually licensed to kill!’

  ‘No,’ she said, impatient with the condescension. ‘Just to get easily irritated by irrelevant nonsense. Your chief constable promised every assistance. And that he’d send you a memo setting that out.’

  Pritchard’s superciliousness slipped. ‘What, precisely, do you want?’

  ‘That promised assistance. I’d like to see the full case file on Roger Bennett, be updated on what progress there’s been about a possible Pakistani terrorist connection, and hear whether it had any connection with his murder.’ Sally smiled again, happy at the abrupt change in attitude. ‘In fact, I’d like you to talk everything through with me from the very beginning.’

  ‘I’m having the case file copied; it’ll be ready before you leave,’ said the detective chief stiffly. ‘There’s no connection whatsoever between Bennett’s killing and any Pakistani terrorism. Apart from what was passed on from America, which only amounted to half an A4 page, there’s absolutely nothing to substantiate a Pakistan connection to the man. We didn’t find any mosque he attended and therefore no evidence of any conversion or interest in Islam.’

  ‘What assistance did you get from Cologne?’

  ‘Cologne?’ queried Pritchard blankly.

  ‘The contents of that half A4 page were routed through Cologne,’ Sally pointedly reminded him. ‘Are the German details in the file being copied for me?’

  ‘I’ve just told you we don’t believe Bennett was involved in terrorism.’

  ‘Are you telling me you haven’t had any communication with Cologne?’

  ‘It wasn’t necessary. Bennett was a petty crook, nothing more.’

  ‘Why do you think he was killed, had his tongue cut out?’ broke in Sally, irritated at the returned dismissiveness.

  ‘He was a thug, small-timer imagining he was big-time,’ recited Pritchard wearily. ‘Offended someone who’d watched too many Hollywood films and didn’t like something Bennett said. We’ve got a lot of lowlifes of too many nationalities in Bradford, all fighting among themselves. Roger Bennett isn’t any loss to the community.’

  ‘I don’t understand your remarks about the tongue cutting and Hollywood movies?’

  Pritchard gave an exaggerated sigh. ‘All those Hollywood films about the Mafia: what happens to gangsters who shoot their mouths off.’

  Sally didn’t immediately respond. ‘We’re discussing possible Middle East terrorism. Tongue cutting is for a different sort of offence there.’

  Now it was the police chief who remained briefly silent. ‘You weren’t born in this country, were you?’

  ‘No,’ confirmed Sally, with no intention of satisfying the man’s curiosity. She’d inherited her Jordanian mother’s olive complexion and Chanel-chic, small-busted figure, and her blue-eyed natural blondness from her English father.

  Again Pritchard waited, but when she didn’t continue, he said, ‘What is it a punishment for?’

  ‘Mostly dishonour.’

  ‘I’d say that’s the same thing.’

  ‘There’s a big difference,’ insisted Sally. ‘You know the lowlifes with whom Bennett mixed?’

  ‘None that know anything about his killing. Or who’d tell us if they did.’

  ‘What about family?’

  ‘He didn’t have any. Only son, mother died in the nineties, father nine months ago, when Bennett was at college in London.’

  ‘There were surely schools or colleges here he went to before graduating to the London School of Economics?’

  ‘Got there from a probation-rehabilitation scheme after convictions for violence; would have gone to jail, where he belonged, if the save-the-world evangelist couple he held—and stabbed—at knifepoint hadn’t pleaded in court for leniency to save his soul for God. People in the parole office ran a book on how long he’d last in London. His probation officer won thirty pounds, bought drinks all around.’ Pritchard looked pointedly at his watch.

  Sally relaxed back in her chair. ‘Where did he live?’

  ‘In whatever gutter he woke up in. There was a room at a hostel, but it’s been emptied now, of course.’

  ‘I’d like to go through everything from the crime scene that you’re still holding: clothes, what he had in his pockets, stuff like that.’

  ‘You can help yourself to whatever you want.’

  ‘And an officer to take me to the hostel to see if there’s anything Bennett left behind.’

  ‘You can have anything you want,’ repeated the man, shuffling ineffectually to stand, to end the encounter. ‘Is that all?’

  ‘Unless something else comes up.’ Sally smiled. When it did, she’d decide to take Pritchard’s offer literally.

  * * *

  Jack Irvine’s chosen team was already assembled in the smallest of the first-floor conference rooms at the National Security Agency’s sprawling Fort Meade complex.

  During their work together on Stuxnet, Irvine had recognized Burt Singleton—around whom it was said the NSA had been built—not just as one of its foremost cryptologists but as one of its most innovative thinkers. Marian Lowell, who positioned herself two rows farther back from Singl
eton, was an equally revered legend, a married-to-the-agency professional whose encyclopedic memory virtually made unnecessary the meticulously maintained research that Irvine believed to have shortened by months the final development of the Stuxnet worm. On either side of Marian, mother hen protecting her chicks, sat Shab Barker and Akram Malik, American-born grandsons of two Pakistani immigrant families whose respective hotel and leisure empires made possible Yale and Harvard educations with magna cum laude mathematics degrees. Proud of their American citizenship—the family name of Bibi had become Barker, Shabaz shortened to Shab—they’d also inherited a pride in their ancestry, which they considered shamed by the terrorist complicity and corruption of Pakistan.

  ‘Marian’s given me three-to-one against our finally hearing what the hell’s going on,’ declared Singleton, a flop-haired man who hid his prowess beneath a convincingly adopted Louisiana-ole-boy accent to match an appearance of constant perplexity. The elbows and cuffs of his jacket were leather patched, and the cord trousers puddled over scuffed combat boots.

  ‘You should have held out for ten.’ Irvine smiled back, grateful for the man’s unwitting icebreaker. ‘But first you’re going to hear an apology. We’re going to run a highly classified project, Operation Cyber Shepherd, partnered with the CIA, who until now has insisted on my working with them on a need-to-know basis. What you’re being told today you should have been told earlier, and I’m sorry you weren’t.’

  There were frowns between Singleton and Marian but no immediate challenge, which Irvine had half expected.

  ‘Some things came up during Stuxnet that didn’t specifically contribute to that project,’ continued Irvine. ‘They did, though, give me an idea that I ran past Conrad Graham, then the CIA’s director of covert operations. He approved my exploring them as a possible operation, which for a time I did as a research project.’ Irvine stopped, again risking an interruption he didn’t want and fortunately didn’t come. ‘It’s important for all of you to understand that everything you’ve so far done at my request was properly approved and authorized.’

  Irvine was conscious of renewed looks between Marian and Singleton. The two Pakistani Americans still gave no reaction.

  ‘It’s a CIA-financed operation, headed by a covert-division supervisor named Jim Bradley. Harry Packer’s the liaison officer from here,’ went on Irvine. ‘Everyone in this room has the highest security clearance, higher probably than a lot of the CIA people working on the periphery of what’s involved. We’re not on the periphery. We’re at the very core, the people making it work, and I don’t want it continuing as it has until now.’

  ‘I don’t think I do, either,’ intruded Singleton at last. ‘I’d like what at the moment sounds like nonsense properly explained, right now!’

  ‘We’d all like that,’ insisted Marian. ‘Our employment contracts are with the National Security Agency, not the Central Intelligence Agency, by whose operating procedures none of us is bound.’

  Irvine had forgotten Marian held a corporate law degree. ‘That’s why we’re having this meeting.’

  * * *

  ‘To make the Stuxnet sabotage work we had to get to the Programmable Logic Controller of Iran’s Natanz and Bushehr facility computers,’ reminded Irvine. ‘Which we couldn’t, not by direct hacking. The Iranians had anticipated the danger of an Internet connection. Their nuclear PLCs weren’t connected but ran independently. Our only way in was to hack the personal computers of the Natanz and Bushehr scientists to create our botnets—or Trojan horses or spiders, whatever you want to call them—the moment they put their memory sticks into their otherwise protectively isolated mainframes…’

  Marian and Singleton were nodding in recollection. Barker and Malik were both pressed forward, easily following the explanation.

  ‘Israel’s Mossad had a lot of personnel file details on the Iranian and Russian technicians at Natanz and Bushehr,’ picked up Irvine, his earlier tension easing. ‘Israel also have equipment similar to our own algorithm capacity and our dual random-number generators.’ Irvine cleared his throat, wishing he’d brought water into the room with him. Looking to Singleton, he said, ‘Am I making myself clear?’

  ‘I’ll let you know if you don’t,’ said the man with obvious reservation.

  Was it just an irritation at not being included from the beginning? wondered Irvine. Or was it deeper than that, the resentment of someone twenty years his senior believing he should have been the project leader? ‘Once we got into the personal PCs, we automatically gained access to every name—and computer—on each PC’s contacts list, multiplying our botnet trawl. They were careless, these guys; had every excuse to be, I guess. They were inside what was supposed to be the most secure facility in the entire country. No-one could get to them, read their mail, which was why they wrote in clear, never encryption. I read a hell of a lot, we used a hell of a lot. There was one guy I picked out early on, signed himself Hamid. Came to believe that at another time in another Cold War he’d have been described as a commissar. Hamid didn’t close down after Stuxnet so I went on monitoring him in my own time back at Meade; tried to follow his communication routes, which started to go through cutouts, although too often still unencrypted. His using the anonymous darknet chat rooms didn’t surprise me. Facebook did. It took me a year to hack into all Hamid’s cutouts—as well as Hamid’s shared darknet account—to be able to follow the traffic both ways, although not quite as long to realize that Hydarnes, his shared Tehran account, is that of a covert-operations division of Vezarat-e Ettela’at va Amniat Keshvar.’ Irvine paused, preparing his denouement. ‘We have our own Trojan horse deep inside, totally without Tehran’s knowledge or suspicion.’

  Singleton interrupted disbelievingly, ‘You got us inside Iran’s espionage service!’

  ‘An active subversive operational unit of Vevak,’ qualified Irvine, using the acronym. ‘From that one discovery and the botnets we installed from the address-book links, we’ve established that they’re heavily using Facebook when they leave their darknet concealment to get into the West.’ The hesitation was again intentional, for effect. ‘And it hasn’t stopped with social networks. Through darknets I’ve got into chat rooms. I think we’ve got a handle on at least two, maybe three, darknets regularly visited by Al Qaeda groups in Arabia, Yemen, Pakistan, the Maghreb, Europe, and here.’

  ‘All that has emerged from social networks!’ questioned Marian Lowell, an angular-bodied woman whose blue-dyed hair was lacquered into a protective helmet and who always wore business suits. Today’s was brown check, with a belted jacket.

  ‘A lot of it,’ confirmed Irvine. ‘Don’t forget we didn’t then fully appreciate how social networks would be used to avoid censorship and security controls in the Maghreb revolutions of 2011. Then it was to publicize regime change. Think of the opposite. What better concealment can any sort of terrorist group have than to be among millions upon millions of social-network users, until now hidden from us, too, despite our worldwide signals intelligence-sharing with Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the UK and our bilateral exchange agreement with the UK. It’s the equivalent of double, even triple encryption with double, even triple anonymity.’

  There was a contemplative silence. Singleton stirred as if to speak, but before he could, Barker said, ‘Okay, so we’re ahead of the game. We can alert counter-intelligence to prevent the attacks before they’re mounted. That’s our job; what’s different with what you’re doing?’

  From anyone else Irvine would have considered the question sarcastic, but not from Barker, a soft-voiced, gentle-mannered man confronting a regretted teenage addiction to hot dogs, hamburgers, and molasses-soaked waffles with a self-devised white-fish, nut, and herbal-drink diet that contributed nothing to any weight loss but substantially to discomforting flatulence.

  Irvine breathed deeply, preparing himself. ‘We’re not stopping when we identify a planned attack. We hack into the planners’ computers, add or remove or alter their messages—sometimes
leaking to rival groups, intruding Shia or Sunni hatred—to turn one against the other.’ He paused. ‘So far two groups have destroyed each other instead of innocent Americans … innocent civilians anywhere.’

  There was utter silence for several moments. Then Singleton said, ‘I want to know a lot more than that.’

  ‘You picked up a private Facebook message to Boston six months ago that originated from Syria,’ reminded Irvine. ‘I got a botnet into the Boston recipient’s laptop. He was a Syrian immigrant. The CIA found an Al Qaeda suicide video in his apartment when they made a quick in-and-out intrusion. He’d formed up with two others, both Palestinian-born Americans with Hamas-based relatives in Gaza, all part of the Hamas–Al Fatah reconciliation.’

  ‘I don’t remember arrest publicity,’ complained Singleton. ‘When’s the trial? On what charges?’

  ‘There wasn’t a trial. I followed the Syrian-led group through their Facebook cutouts into their operational e-mails. They were buying weapons for Hamas through Mexican suppliers, shipping through Colombia on a drug-supply route. I introduced an e-mail through Colombia to the gunrunners’ Gaza control, showing they were operating a weapons-supply business on the side. All three got taken out by a Hamas hit squad.’

  ‘So we’re setting up our own Murder Incorporated and you’re inviting us to become part of a botnet hacking group to operate it?’ Singleton calmly asked.

  ‘Absolutely not,’ rejected Irvine, anxious to introduce the carefully prepared justification. ‘We got bogged down in an illegal war in Iraq, we got bogged down in Afghanistan—where no invader has ever won a war—and we’ve crossed too many borders of too many countries clandestinely fighting terrorists. And what’s the universal condemnation against America every time? Collateral damage, killing or maiming civilians. We identify a target in Pakistan, a Predator drone drops its bombs or fires its missiles, kills two or three terrorists—if we’re lucky—and wipes out twenty innocent old men, women, and children. You know our kill score of innocents so far in Pakistan? Three thousand and rising. And with every one of those innocent deaths also dies every hope of our ever winning hearts and minds and stopping America from being the most vilified and hated nation on the planet. This way there’s no collateral hurt. Those we trace who don’t kill each other we pursue and punish, legally if at all possible. No dead innocents, no America Go Home banners, no American-flag burning.’