The Cloud Collector

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘What about the registration?’

  ‘It all happened too quickly.’

  ‘Jesus!’

  There was a brief pause from the Langley end, where Bradley was bunkered in his locked office, the occupancy slot reading IN CONFERENCE. He was sweating profusely, his normally tightly buttoned jacket discarded, shirt collar open. ‘We fucked up big-time. Satisfied?’

  ‘Fighting among ourselves isn’t going to help,’ cautioned Burt Singleton.

  ‘Who’s listening to this!’ The irritation at his having made a public admission echoed in Bradley’s voice.

  ‘Speakerphone. Me and the team,’ said Irvine.

  Whose was the greater mistake, his and his surveillance team’s, or Irvine and his cryptologists’? If there was some way to recover, which at the moment he couldn’t foresee, he’d have to work hard to shift the majority of the responsibility on the NSA, Bradley calculated. ‘What chance is there of picking things up from your end?’

  ‘We’re routing high-velocity random programs,’ said Irvine. ‘But the Facebook account in Baghdad is dormant.’

  ‘Talk words I understand!’ protested Bradley.

  ‘Think of Baghdad as a PO box number, a place for receiving mail,’ lectured Irvine with forced patience. ‘It received today’s coded message from Yemen. The Baghdad operator, Taliban or Al Qaeda, copies it—typing it onto another, separate computer that has no electronic connection with the Facebook receiving machine. The link is broken: we can’t follow it. It’s downloaded from the new computer onto a flash drive, a memory stick, to be sent from an Internet café without leaving any trace to a sender or a recipient.’

  After another silence Bradley said, ‘So we’re entirely dependent on your breaking the code?’

  ‘We can’t rely on that being sufficient until we read the message. It might be incomplete, not giving us enough information. We need to find al Aswamy.’

  ‘What about al Aswamy’s cell phone; you’re tapping that, right?’ demanded Bradley, searching for wiggle room.

  From his desk Singleton said, ‘It’s not currently switched on. There haven’t been any e-mails or voice mails.’

  ‘There must be another way!’ insisted Bradley, hoping it didn’t sound like a plea, which it was.

  ‘Al Aswamy!’ exclaimed Irvine in abrupt awareness. ‘Was he carrying anything when he left Ely Place, a bag or an obvious computer case maybe?’

  After the third confused silence of the day from Langley, Bradley said, ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake, find out!’ yelled Irvine.

  * * *

  An official GCHQ car, with a security-cleared driver, enabled Sally Hanning to keep in cell phone contact with London throughout the journey. Sally had known Director-General David Monkton would be with Jeremy Dodson when she arrived at Thames House just after midnight. She hadn’t been told of a third man.

  ‘You convinced us sufficiently to call in the Cabinet Secretary,’ announced Dodson, as he introduced Sir Peregrine North, a grey-haired, patrician-featured man whose soft handshake matched a marshmallow voice.

  ‘Have you warned Sellafield?’ Sally asked at once.

  ‘Maximum alert, army units on standby,’ confirmed Dodson just as briskly. ‘Let’s hope you’re not mistaken.’

  Dodson very much hoped she would be, Sally knew. ‘After all the bungling there’s already been, let’s all hope I’m not,’ she retorted, ignoring the differing expressions between North and David Monkton. ‘What about identification from the photographs I had wired from Cheltenham?’

  ‘Have you any idea how big the terrorist suspect list is!’ protested Dodson.

  ‘I didn’t ask how long the list was.’ She was being peremptory, verging on impertinence, Sally accepted.

  ‘Which leaves us with the rest of your evidence to assess,’ urged Monkton.

  ‘And to act upon it quickly if you’re right,’ emphasized North, infusing urgency into his muted voice. ‘There’s been considerable emergency mobilization with nothing to substantiate it apart from your conviction.’

  ‘Is there a screen with a DVD player?’ asked Sally, aware of Dodson’s satisfied smirk at the Cabinet Secretary’s reservation.

  ‘Waiting,’ said Dodson. He was still flushed from their irritable exchange and knew it.

  To the other two men, Sally said, ‘You probably already know that the photographs I sent from GCHQ are pornographic. So are the DVDs I want you to see. I’m not uncomfortable; please don’t be on my account.’

  The viewing was set up in an anteroom to the Director-General’s office, chairs already arranged. The three men sat. Sally remained standing and said, ‘What you’re going to see could be dismissed as teenage obscenity or average stag-night entertainment, which is precisely what I believe it was intended to be mistaken for were it intercepted: the sort of stuff that’s on a lot of computers belonging to men of Roger Bennett’s age and background. He was twenty-one, remember.…’ She turned to the television. ‘Here’s the first. It had been wiped, but GCHQ recovered it from the hard drive.’

  On the screen appeared a pastoral scene—hedgerows, a country lane, cows in a distant field—with a sound of birdsong. Into the frame came a group of Western-dressed men and women, all Caucasian. Some of the men were darker, more Mediterranean complexioned than the others; two of them were bearded. Three of the women had the same dark colouring. The group came to a crossroads and had an animated although mostly inaudible discussion in what nevertheless sounded like English. One of the darker-skinned men pointed, without comment. Unquestioningly the group took the indicated direction. The film cut to a hedged field, in which the women in the group were laying out picnic rugs and food hampers but being jostled by the men into feigned wrestling that quickly degenerated into supposed rape, two blond-haired women held by some of the men for the pleasure of the others.

  Sally abruptly stopped the DVD, putting the disk on rewind before turning back to the room. ‘What did you see?’

  ‘Filth,’ said an even-redder-faced Dodson, looking for agreement from the Director-General, who ignored him.

  North said, ‘I presume the significance was in the background? They took the direction of the street sign to Seascale, the nearest village to Sellafield.’

  ‘And the signpost had the county identification of Cumbria,’ endorsed Monkton.

  ‘Sellafield,’ confirmed Sally, ‘scene of a disastrous fire that destroyed a reactor and released 750 terabecquerels of radioactive material into the atmosphere, including dangerous iodine-131 that can be absorbed by humans. That closed-down reactor still contains fifteen tons of uranium fuel that can’t be finally decommissioned until 2037, according to the information I accessed from my iPhone on the way back here.’ Neither Monkton nor North was betraying any embarrassment or outrage at the film, she saw as she started the DVD again.

  Almost at once Sally freeze-framed the rape scene, using the remote-control zoom to enlarge as much as possible the features of a man who still remained indistinct, almost hidden at the rear of the watching group. ‘I believe this man is our murder victim, Roger Bennett. And hope that identification will be confirmed when the film is subjected to better forensic enhancement.’ Sally moved the zoom, isolating the bearded, direction-choosing man and two blond women. ‘Remember these particular faces.’

  She unfroze the film but stopped it again at the fake orgy. ‘Look particularly at the faces of the two blond women who are the supposed victims and the man at the signpost who is one of the rapists. They seem almost anxious to show their facial features.’ She stopped and extracted the disk, replacing it with another. ‘This is the stills collage that I had individually transmitted from GCHQ for the comparison with known or suspected terrorists. There are twelve in total, and in all the two bearded men and the two blondes predominate. I’d guess the still photographs were taken on the same day as the first movie: the discarded clothes are the same, and I think we might be able to date it by enhanced photo-ana
lysis. They might be naked, but both men and the smaller of the two blondes are wearing elaborate wristwatches, which might have a calendar facility. I don’t know what significance it might have, but I think it’s worth forensically testing. I also suggested there should be very careful analysis of every piece of dialogue, beyond the usual porn-movie grunt and groan, that can be recovered from the first film and the one you’re about to see.’

  Sally changed disks again. ‘Different day, because there are different clothes discarded and it’s consensual sex this time, which isn’t the intended focus. And the Roger Bennett figure doesn’t appear. There’s no mistaking the establishment in the background: it’s the positive identification of Sellafield, the first British nuclear-processing site to produce weapons-grade plutonium-239.’

  She finally turned off the television, picking up the printout bundle from the side of the television table. ‘These are the entire textural content of the hard drive that was wiped before the NSA interception and what remained afterwards. There’s nothing of obvious significance, but there is what I consider a peculiarity. A substantial amount of the text material is gambling tips, horse and dog racing. At least six are specifically interesting: they show no sender locations, apart from coming from a German Internet source, meaning they were sent from anonymous memory sticks. That was how Bennett got the message that was picked up by NSA.’

  Sally waited for a reaction, but none came from the three men facing her. Hurriedly she went on, ‘I believe what I’ve recovered indicates an imminent attack upon the Sellafield nuclear installation. If it succeeds—certainly if it causes a nuclear leak—it’ll rank with 9/11 in New York or 7/7 here in London—’

  ‘Stop!’ broke in North, at last. ‘On precisely what are you basing these assumptions!’

  Sally saw another satisfied smirk from Dodson. ‘The presence of the man I believe to be Roger Bennett, whose personal and police photographs I’ve studied. And the memory stick e-mails from a German source, from which the NSA interception emanated.’

  ‘We don’t know that the e-mails you’ve isolated are from the same German source, that they’re even from Germany!’ seized Dodson, exaggerating the incredulity. ‘It isn’t sufficient for you just to believe that one hazy image could be Roger Bennett to have raised an alarm like this; we’d need more than that even if it were Bennett. I think we should consider standing down.’

  ‘I didn’t decree the alarm level, although I think it’s justified,’ defended Sally. ‘It’s the middle of the night now; it would be inconvenient as well as a mistake to reduce or withdraw what’s been put in place until the full forensic examinations are completed.’

  ‘The longer we leave the emergency in place, the greater the danger that there’ll be an information leak, screaming headlines, public panic, and embarrassing parliamentary explanation,’ persisted Dodson.

  ‘Better a false alarm than the screaming headlines and public panic that would result from a nuclear leak we’d failed quickly enough to prevent,’ said Sally.

  ‘A drawdown at this hour is impractical,’ decided Monkton. ‘We’ll give forensics until the morning.’

  ‘But no longer than the morning,’ stressed North. ‘I fear we’ve cried wolf here.’

  The Director-General answered the anteroom extension to his personal internal telephone, listening without interruption and remaining momentarily silent, head bowed. He replaced the receiver and turned back to the others. ‘The man at the street sign is Hasib Hussain, but in Germany he calls himself Horst Becker. He tops their most-wanted terrorist list.’

  Dodson’s face was ashen.

  7

  ‘We’ve got him!’ Palpable relief was in James Bradley’s voice.

  ‘No, we haven’t,’ refused Irvine, concealing his similar feeling in front of what remained of his blank-faced audience. After the conclusion of the first exchange with Langley, Barker and Malik had left to compare the minimal transliteration they believed already achieved from the ongoing random high-velocity sweep.

  ‘We’ve got an area,’ insisted the CIA man.

  ‘We enhanced the signals search for his cell phone and computer after your surveillance supervisor finally remembered that al Aswamy was carrying a computer sack,’ persisted Irvine. ‘The signal was traced somewhere in Brentwood, Northeast DC, but it was too faint for coordinates. The area’s still too big. And presumably he’s still got his motorcycle transport.’

  ‘It’s a good enough location to put in a new team.’

  ‘Try to make it a better crew than the last one,’ said Irvine heavily.

  ‘I’ve briefed them personally,’ assured Bradley, reluctant to capitulate again, but conscious of his weaker position. ‘We’ll find the son of a bitch, and this time we won’t lose him. You staying at Fort Meade tonight?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I’ll be here at Langley. That’s where to find me.’

  ‘We need to meet tomorrow, whatever happens,’ said Irvine. ‘Your fieldwork has got to be better than this.’

  ‘All of those things and more. Let’s talk in the morning, assess where we are. Fix a meet then.’

  ‘You’re right,’ agreed Burt Singleton, as Irvine replaced the receiver. ‘This is a bad start that could turn into a full-scale disaster. We’ve already gone over our agreed deadline: the other Homeland Security agencies should be brought in first thing tomorrow.’

  ‘I know.’ Irvine paused. ‘It went too well and too easily in the beginning, made us forget there’d be setbacks.’ Made me forget, he mentally corrected himself.

  ‘That’s the flaw,’ picked up Marian Lowell. ‘It only needs one glitch. There’s a straw to clutch at if the cell and computer signals stay in Brentwood. I can’t think of an obvious target there.’

  ‘What reason do we have for believing al Aswamy’s still with his phone or computer?’ punctured Singleton. ‘From the bus-and-motorcycle routine, he suspects he’s under surveillance, taking precautions at least. Wouldn’t the obvious evasion be to lay a false trail by dumping them?’

  ‘If he were doing that, he would have left both turned on, to give out a stronger signal,’ argued Marian. ‘He’s being cautious, is all. He’ll be imagining it’s a gang dispute with the Annapolis group.’

  Barker and Malik filed back into the room. Malik shook his head, not needing to say anything. Barker said, ‘Looks like a long haul.’

  ‘I’ll sleep over, too,’ decided Singleton. ‘Keep on top of the signals check.’

  So far the team had every reason to doubt his leadership, Irvine accepted; now Singleton had even elected himself the protective guardian.

  * * *

  Unlike their American counterparts, Italian carabinieri, Special Forces units, and the anti-terrorist division of the CISR, Italy’s security service, were well prepared. Within a day of receiving the NSA warning of a potential attack, they’d traced the Internet café just off the via Ludovisi to which the original suspect e-mail had been sent from Cairo and attached monitoring intercepts on all its terminals. The café was also put under physical surveillance. CISR code-breakers, equipped by the original NSA interception with the domain code, took only half a day deciphering the next transmission from Egypt. It identified the Colosseum as the symbolic target to be rigged on a linked chain of charges set to explode at the height of the following day’s tourist excursions; the expectation was that people who survived the blasts would be crushed beneath the total collapse of the remaining complete wall of the two-thousand-year-old structure.

  The Italian military-led operation in the event of the attack materializing was devised in two days. To avoid detection by the still-unidentified terrorists during the day of the possible attack, a hundred Special Force commandos in civilian clothes infiltrated the ancient amphitheatre in twos and threes among the guided tourist groups. Their bags and backpacks contained AK-47 rifles and Beretta handguns. Another thirty army engineers, in civilian overalls, went in as apparently part of the permanent maintenanc
e staff. As well as more weaponry, their tool bags and backpacks contained infrared night-vision scopes and heat-seeking sensors as well as heavy battery-generated floodlights and special noise equipment.

  The buildup was matched outside the structure. During Rome’s frenetic evening rush hour, unmarked cars and vans began gradually moving into position on all approach roads, with backup squads radiating out behind them. Each was connected by dedicated radio link in addition to open-channel conference telephone facilities. The entire outside of the Colosseum was under night-vision infrared surveillance. Two helicopters were on take-off standby in the Borghese Gardens.

  The attack began precisely at 2:30 a.m., at timed intervals, down the via Claudia in four vehicles, a lead car and three vans carrying their explosives, detonator caps, and connection cables to ensure a simultaneous detonation sufficient to destroy at least a hundred yards of the still-intact outer wall overlooking the area where tourist coaches disembarked their passengers.

  Two men in the lead car were instantly visible on the external infrared surveillance, silently alerting those waiting in ambush both inside and outside the Colosseum. The moment the two got out, both carrying heavy satchels, their vehicle moved away towards the shadowed Nero Park. Despite the infrared facility it was impossible to see the tools with which the two worked on an entry door into the Colosseum. It opened as the first of the following vans approached down the via Claudia. From the rear three men emerged, formed a chain, and transferred equipment sacks into the monument. As the first van followed the car into the park’s shadows, the second van arrived to continue the explosives transfer, followed by the third to the vacant unloading area.

  It was completed by 3:30 a.m.

  The vehicle drivers spaced their return from the parking area, the last two lingering at the door through which the others had already entered, checking all the outside approach roads. The telephone alert that the entire group was inside was duplicated over the radio. Initially only four Special Forces teams moved. One squad completely blocked the door through which the terrorists had entered with a large, multi-spiked control barrier ironically similar to some of the outwardly spiked fighting machines manipulated by gladiators two thousand years earlier. The other groups blocked every other possible exit with identical barriers.