The Cloud Collector

by Brian Freemantle

  It still wasn’t the direct answer she wanted. ‘Working from here or Fort Meade?’

  Now it was Johnston who paused. ‘Both. He’s got an office here but spends time there, where the technical facilities are.’

  ‘My security clearance has been verified and accepted, hasn’t it?’

  ‘Of course.’ Johnston frowned. ‘You wouldn’t have gotten past the gate if it hadn’t been.’

  Sally’s smile widened. ‘No impediment to my meeting the inner-core guys down here then? Or up at Fort Meade, either?’

  ‘I can’t authorize access to Fort Meade.’

  ‘But you can here, can’t you? It’s your operation,’ seized Sally. ‘It really is essential to be as close as possible to the raw-material source, remember.’

  ‘Of course you should meet them.’

  Not easy but then again not as difficult as she’d expected it might be, reflected Sally. Something else was surprisingly much easier on her drive back into Washington, and the concentration it required delayed a proper analysis of her conversation with Johnston. She was chilled, her mind momentarily frozen in disbelief, when the possibility occurred to her, but then she refused to accept it because it couldn’t be possible. Or could it?

  * * *

  ‘The son of a bitch hung me out to dry in front of the largest fucking Washington audience he could find!’ fumed James Bradley. ‘Bastard; cocksucking bastard!’

  Neither Irvine nor Packer said anything, watching the fury-driven man stride from place to place around his office, picking up and putting down unfocused-upon objects, too agitated to remain still.

  ‘It’s on the written record, all there in print. It’ll go beyond Graham to the Director himself. Anyone need a fall guy to dump all the shit on, they got it now.’ Bradley punched his chest, further crumpling the buttoned-up jacket. ‘Here’s the target; just pull the fucking trigger.’

  ‘There’s almost six hundred people already in the slammer, and that’ll quadruple by the day when the bounty is announced,’ reminded Packer. ‘We’ll get al Aswamy from among them.’ He hoped. Packer had seen his personal recognition by the president as his guarantee of promotion through the NSA executive to financial survival, but had been worried by the absence of White House staffers at the meeting.

  ‘That wasn’t how I heard what the Bureau jerk-off said,’ refused Bradley. ‘The way I heard it, every jerk-off and his dog are calling 911 if they see a guy in a beard and a bedsheet, and all of us know that the last thing al Aswamy has got now is a fucking beard and kaftan. And you’re right about the bounty. There’s going to be a roundup of more people than you can shake a stick at for al Aswamy to hide behind.’

  ‘There were as many photographs with the beard airbrushed out,’ said Irvine, searching for a contribution. ‘And a million bucks might ring the right bell.’

  Disregarding the effort, Bradley said, ‘I could sure as hell have done with more help from you, too!’

  ‘What goes around comes around,’ reflected Irvine, vindicated by the man’s earlier abandonment. ‘I gave a completely honest answer to Conrad Graham’s intercept question.’

  ‘There was time before the meeting for us to talk about the bounty idea.’

  ‘I didn’t have the bounty idea before the fucking meeting!’

  ‘You could have talked up your chances of catching a transmission again,’ persisted Bradley, changing tack. ‘What the hell are your guys doing up there at Fort Meade apart from scratching their asses!’

  ‘We’re the last of the last of the conceivable chances of finding him again, for Christ’s sake!’ insisted Irvine.

  ‘He’s got to speak to someone, somehow!’

  Bradley was flailing around like a blind man swatting bugs. More quietly but with his anger growing, Irvine said, ‘Of course he’s got to speak to someone. He’s probably doing it right now, from wherever the hell he is, which could just as likely be from a bazaar in Islamabad as from a cell phone in Lafayette Park across from the White House. We found him for you once, Jim. We played him like a puppet and did a lot of collateral terrorist damage. And then your guys lost him like a bunch of amateurs, and it was on your watch, which is why you’re getting the heat. And I’m not going to let any of my guys get burned by that heat.’

  ‘What the hell’s that mean!’

  ‘Exactly what every word meant. Your watch, your ass. Don’t try to off-load it. We can’t do any more than what we’re doing now.’

  ‘What do you think of Johnston’s analysis theory?’ intervened Packer to defuse the confrontation, his decision to distance himself from Bradley confirmed.

  ‘It’s bullshit,’ dismissed Bradley, finally sitting at his desk. ‘He just wanted to sound like he was taking everything forward, which he didn’t.’

  ‘Who knows?’ Irvine shrugged, disinterested.

  ‘You think Cyber Shepherd can survive?’ Packer asked him, voicing another concern.

  ‘With changes,’ predicted Irvine.

  Bradley turned sharply at the remark but said nothing.

  14

  ‘Johnston’s already been on,’ David Monkton said at once, hurrying through the perfunctory greetings. ‘How was the meeting?’

  Sally hesitated in her cramped cubicle in the embassy communication room, hopeful the remark indicated more immediate openness than Monkton had so far shown. Establish the parameters, she decided, confirm the hope. ‘What time did he call?’

  Now the Director-General hesitated at the unexpected response. ‘Four fifteen, your time.’

  ‘I left him at four ten. He was anxious to get in first, wasn’t he?’ And Monkton was still at Thames House at 10:20 p.m. London time, she calculated from the cubicle clock set on English time.

  ‘We’re in the middle of a crisis,’ reminded the man, unwittingly meeting Sally’s reflection. ‘Did he appear pressured, face-to-face?’

  ‘He’s very positively distancing himself from the loss of al Aswamy. Actually insisted it wouldn’t have happened if he’d been in place earlier, so there’s clearly some responsibility-shifting going on.’

  ‘He tell you about the bounty?’

  This is encouraging, thought Sally. ‘Said it was the idea of the NSA cryptologist assigned to the operation.’ There was no reason to mention the Middle East diplomatic background. It was only of curiosity interest to her, nothing at all to do with her professional assignment.

  ‘Working how?’ seized Monkton. ‘What’s different from normal NSA activity?’

  ‘We didn’t get that far. But I am going to meet him and the CIA supervisor heading the unit, so I should find out.’

  ‘When?’ demanded the Director-General. ‘We’re never going to be side by side with whatever they’re doing, but I want to be as close to Johnston’s shoulder as it’s possible to be. He’s got to go on believing we’ve got stuff he needs to stay just that far in front.’

  Confirmation she scarcely needed that she was piggy in the middle, acknowledged Sally: roasted if she got it wrong, farmyard queen if she got it right, whatever it was. Sally eased her shoes off against the chair leg and felt a stocking ladder.

  ‘What about the bounty?’

  Sally frowned at the phrasing: Monkton wasn’t giving her any leads. ‘They’ve worked in the past for America. Us, too, although not quite on the same publicity scale.’

  ‘He give you a figure?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He claimed the CIA paid twenty-four million for bin Laden. When I told him our intelligence was that it went directly to finance Al Qaeda, who’d decided to sacrifice someone past his sell-by date, Johnston said so what, it made the right headlines.’

  ‘It answers your question about pressure, doesn’t it?’

  Monkton laughed approvingly. ‘The State Department are going to press European governments to make big-dollar commitments as well, to make the eventual pot impossible to refuse. And for us to dangle the carrot right away in front of our four particular detainees.’

&nbs
p; ‘You think our government will go for it?’

  ‘It would be a reward for information leading to the eventual arrest and conviction of al Aswamy, which is quite different from paying a ransom, which we officially don’t do. And publicly it would look like positive action, which Downing Street’s anxious to be seen taking.’

  ‘When do we pay ransom?’ demanded Sally, continuing the cynicism.

  ‘Whenever it’ll get people back alive,’ answered Monkton without hesitation.

  ‘You believe our four know more than they’ve so far admitted?’

  ‘It’s possible, although they haven’t moved their initial claims forward. Johnston wants us to make them available for American interrogation.’

  ‘In England?’ questioned Sally, practically before the man finished speaking.

  ‘America.’

  ‘That means extraordinary rendition: torture somewhere.’

  ‘Probably,’ accepted Monkton in flat-voiced agreement.

  ‘Are you going to hand them over?’

  ‘I’m not. I understand the approach is also being made by the State Department to the Foreign Office, which makes it a political decision.’

  London would go along with that, too, Sally knew. With that acceptance came another awareness. Monkton was now telling her everything, if not directly then by inference. Taking the man’s lead, she said, ‘We got any harder information of new attacks?’

  ‘We never had hard information in the first place, only what the four told us without anything to substantiate what they’re saying.’

  ‘That’s what I told Johnston. He’s arguing there’ll definitely be more, according to the analysis division he used to head, based on what our four and the two in Italy are saying.’

  ‘You believe he said that at the crisis meeting?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He told me State were there. It’ll be spun back as a definite possibility through the Foreign Office.’

  ‘He didn’t tell you about the analysis?’

  ‘He asked if there was anything more from the debriefings; that was how he got round their being handed over for American questioning. You think yours was a good first meeting?’

  ‘I didn’t expect him to agree to my meeting people in the active unit, so I consider it a good start.’

  ‘How do you gauge that?’

  ‘I don’t, not yet. He made a fuss about being the man in charge, in control of everything. He won’t be if I meet the active unit by myself, will he?’

  ‘If you meet them by yourself,’ heavily qualified Monkton.

  ‘We’ll have to see.’

  ‘How’s it at the embassy?’

  ‘I’m only using the communications room and the compound apartment.’

  ‘No contact beyond Fellowes?’

  ‘Not even that, since the first day.’

  ‘It’ll come soon, now that the State Department are dealing with the Foreign Office.’

  ‘I haven’t forgotten what you told me.’

  ‘It’s been a good start,’ assessed Monkton.

  ‘Let’s hope it continues that way,’ said Sally, doubting that it would.

  Nigel Fellowes was waiting directly outside when she emerged from the cubicle.

  * * *

  Jack Irvine switched the telephone to voice mail, slid the additional interior security bolt into place after double-locking the door to his CIA office, and finally slipped the colour red code into its outside slot, isolating himself to reflect on the day. Having made the only positive contribution at the Homeland meeting, he should, he supposed, feel some personal satisfaction. But he didn’t. Conrad Graham was right: offering a bounty was too obvious, and for none of the other supposed professionals to have come up with the idea ahead of him verged on the unbelievable. Equally absurd was the blame-gaming between Charles Johnston and James Bradley, which was anything but a game. Al Aswamy had been lost on Bradley’s watch, and Bradley had to take the fall if sacrifice was inevitably demanded.

  Inevitable, that is, until five minutes ago and the arrival of the internal e-mail at which he was now looking, addressed not only to him but copied to James Bradley, setting a time the following day for both of them to meet the British MI5 agent, named for the first time as Sally Hanning. Or could it merely be a postponement of the inevitable? Irvine wondered, recalling Johnston’s heavy inference—unchallenged by Conrad Graham—that the woman would monitor the Cyber Shepherd fieldwork. If the infantile disputes continued between the two, Bradley’s humiliation would be compounded by having to confront the woman who’d be overseeing his every decision. What about me? questioned Irvine. All the indications so far were that the woman was a field operative, not a cryptologist. So what practical purpose could there be in his meeting her? Every purpose, if it achieved his overriding concern of keeping Cyber Shepherd alive. And the way to do that was to build upon the operation’s already proven success: locate new intended outrages to manipulate and destroy terrorists as sensationally as they’d so far prevented those they’d already uncovered.

  It was time to return to the momentarily untapped Moscow Alternative.

  * * *

  Burt Singleton picked up on the first ring, not speaking until Irvine finished his account of that afternoon. Then the man said, ‘You call that a crisis meeting!’

  ‘I don’t. They do.’

  ‘That doesn’t overwhelm a guy with confidence.’

  ‘Al Aswamy doesn’t need to do anything else, does he? He’s got us and half of Europe in lockdown panic just by walking away.’

  ‘That could be the extent of the threat.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘What’s the bounty?’

  ‘It hasn’t yet been internationally agreed.’

  ‘It’s worked in the past,’ conceded Singleton. ‘Any heads rolling, for losing the son of a bitch?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘We still in business?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t we be?’ Irvine questioned back, discerning the expectation in the other man’s voice.

  ‘Thought maybe there’d be a pause until things settle down.’

  ‘There’s no pause,’ insisted Irvine. ‘We continue with our part of the al Aswamy hunt by monitoring the Vevak site. I’d like you to handle that, with Shab and Malik on standby to help. I’m going to spend time in the chat room we haven’t properly explored yet.’

  ‘What about Marian?’

  ‘I need her available to help me with the chat room, as well as sifting anything that might look promising from our general target interceptions. I want to see if we can expand those. Shab and Malik could help there, too.’

  ‘And we’ll liaise all the time?’ demanded Singleton, concerned that Irvine might keep him out of the loop because of the doubts he’d expressed.

  ‘All the time. You know that’s the arrangement.’

  ‘When are you next up?’

  ‘Maybe in a day or two. We’ll see what develops.’

  Irvine guessed Marian would pick up the gist of his conversation with Singleton, but cautious of her feeling left out, he patiently went through his account of the afternoon for a second time.

  ‘The bounty response lines will be blocked by every con man with a faint pulse,’ predicted the woman.

  ‘They already are, before the amount’s even been announced.’

  ‘And we go on as before?’ she questioned, confirming Irvine’s belief that she’d been close enough to Singleton to overhear most of their earlier exchange.

  ‘Hopefully better than before,’ said Irvine briskly. ‘You’ve read my chat-room download?’

  ‘Of course I have,’ said the woman stiffly.

  ‘It was a rhetorical question, not a doubt of your professionalism: you’re on the team because of your professionalism,’ said Irvine more stiffly, wearied by the perpetual suspicion of both Marian and Singleton and determined against the sort of stupidity existing between Johnston and Bradley. ‘We got the Moscow Alternative darknet through t
he contacts list of the Annapolis group who killed two of al Aswamy’s team. So we know that group is an active cell who kill and who talk on the Action subcatalog of Moscow Alternative. I want us to talk to them, too, to get their trust and pick up any hint or indication of any attacks they might be contemplating or get involved in. I want you to organize an IP code search on the random-number generator. If necessary, extend it through our Echelon tie-in with Britain’s GCHQ, who did damned well with al Aswamy, and Canada’s CSE. You and Burt can divide Shab and Malik between you to share the workload.’

  ‘That all?’ The cynical stiffness now was at the rebuke stage.

  ‘No. You know the botnets I’ve already set up to get into Moscow Alternative. Get into the subcatalog using my Anis domain botnet. Create a repetitive programme to download every name listed on the wall over a twenty-four-hour period that we can compare not just with the Annapolis list but every other address we’ve got on record.’

  ‘What are you going to be doing?’ persisted Marian.

  ‘Working on it with you as soon as I finish what needs to get done up here.’

  * * *

  Sally Hanning had forgotten about the heel-to-thigh ladder in her tights until she felt the coldness of the chair she was ushered into by Giles Podmore, who had solicitously been waiting directly inside the door of his embassy office, as Charles Johnston had been a few hours earlier inside his door.

  ‘It’s very good to have you with us, Ms. Hanning.’ Podmore, pink faced, plump, was scarcely taller than Sally, who thought the man could have modeled for the Just William comic books that her grandmother had inexplicably sent every Christmas to whichever embassy her father had been stationed. The cherubic smile he was now giving would have suited the illustration, too.

  ‘I’m here on a very specific assignment.’

  ‘We can well understand that.’ Podmore continued to smile. ‘And I want to assure you right away that every help and assistance the embassy can offer is at your disposal.’

  ‘That’s very kind.’ Sally smiled back. ‘But my embassy needs are minimal: just the communication facilities and the convenience of a compound apartment.’