The Cloud Collector

by Brian Freemantle

  She’d off-balanced him, Sally decided; she had to maintain the pressure, not give him time to recover. ‘We can talk as we eat,’ insisted Sally as their food arrived. ‘You can talk as we eat.’

  Irvine did both carefully. Sally had pushed aside her plate long before he finished but didn’t immediately respond, looking directly at him as if expecting more, mentally filtering the explanation for what he hadn’t told her. Eventually she said, ‘You locate a questionable Facebook and satisfy yourselves it’s a terrorist route by hacking into it? Getting in gives you the sender’s complete contact list? The identifications increase with every interface that group has with others: suppliers, sympathizers, government links? You infiltrate misinformation, and if or when you get enough to indicate a possible attack, you press the button and stop it before it happens?’

  ‘Take your prize from the top shelf.’ Irvine smiled, believing he deserved one, too. If he wrapped this up soon, he could still go down to Meade.

  What hadn’t he told her! Sally wondered again, not smiling back. ‘Tell me about the misinformation?’

  Irvine shrugged, disinterested. ‘Slipping stuff in here and there, creating distrust or suspicion, turning them against each other.’

  Possible sensitive spot, detected Sally; certainly an unthinkingly weak response. ‘Is that what you did with al Aswamy?’

  Too close, Irvine recognized; still not a problem though. The trick would be to avoid lengthy answers that she could pick at. ‘In the beginning.’

  She gestured the waiter to clear the table, shaking her head in refusal to anything more without consulting Irvine, who stopped the man before he could leave to order coffee and brandy he didn’t want. He didn’t ask Sally if she wanted to change her mind.

  ‘Tell me more about that,’ persisted Sally, ignoring the petulance as she’d ignored the earlier innuendo.

  ‘Followed his contacts list; leaked Sunni to Shiite and vice versa.’

  Sally easily hid the satisfaction, hurrying on before Irvine could reflect upon what he’d said. ‘And created chaos?’

  Irvine shook his head. ‘They broke away from what they were planning, certainly. There was some infighting.’ Which was virtually the truth, dependent solely upon interpretation.

  ‘What’s al Aswamy?’ she asked, taking the chance.

  ‘Shiite.’

  She had enough information! Sally determined triumphantly. But to cut off at once would be too obvious. ‘What about last night?’

  ‘Last night?’ hedged Irvine.

  ‘Sounded as if there was something going on at Fort Meade?’ Would he finally mention the muted cell phone call she’d heard?

  ‘We thought there might have been something,’ allowed Irvine cautiously. ‘We’re still working on it.’ Singleton’s frustration had stoked the distracting guilt that was now crystallizing in Irvine. He definitely shouldn’t be here, doing this. He should be at Fort Meade working grids and graphs and computers and randomly generating number sequences with the rest of them, not sexually fantasizing over someone who could probably scarcely wait to get home and wash her mouth out for uttering a forbidden word.

  ‘Involving al Aswamy?’

  ‘Too early to say.’ He’d be wasting time going all the way to Fort Meade now, he determined, his mind switchbacking just as he was wasting his time here to no purpose. He could be back at Owen Place in thirty minutes, remotely accessing what Singleton and the others were doing, making it clear that he was on board.

  ‘Anything our GCHQ could do to help?’ His attitude had changed. Had he realized his mistake?

  Irvine shook his head. ‘Nothing that would make any sense; nothing that would make sense to anyone yet.’

  It had to be an enciphered code they couldn’t break. But if they hadn’t broken it, how could they suspect it? Obviously from its source. Al Aswamy’s control had been very publicly identified. ‘Iran makes sense.’

  ‘So would your backing off just a little,’ began Irvine, finally losing his temper, and continuing as far as ‘I’ve told you…’ before his cell phone vibrated. Sure he hadn’t paused but speaking slightly louder, he finished, ‘… everything there is to know, so why don’t we call it a day?’

  ‘Don’t you think you should take that call?’

  * * *

  ‘You let me look like an asshole!’ accused Charles Johnston, his anger worsened by Conrad Graham’s delaying their meeting this late into the evening.

  ‘It’s higher than me; higher than you,’ said the deputy CIA director. ‘Everyone’s hunkered down after all the shit there was about rendition after 9/11 and Guantánamo. We’ve got to be careful.’

  ‘I’m supposed to be heading the fucking operation!’

  ‘I’ve just told you it’s gone wider than that now. There’s too much in the public domain. Now it’s damage limitation on what we’re going to do about it.’

  Johnston hesitated, trying to peel away the nuances. ‘You mean I’m no longer involved?’

  ‘I mean you and your guys are part of a bigger operation, making every possible contribution, but that some things are being negotiated higher up the chain,’ said Graham, impatiently looking at his desk clock.

  Off the responsibility hook, judged Johnston. Which was what he himself wanted. But not to be marginalized. Remembering his morning session with Sally Hanning, he said, ‘When are we going to get our guy from the Brits?’

  ‘Still being negotiated. That’s what we’ve been discussing upstairs until now, how to make it work.’

  The motherfucker didn’t know! realized Johnston. ‘The conditions seemed pretty straightforward to me.’

  Now it was Graham who hesitated, no longer occupied with the desk clock. ‘What are you talking about!’

  ‘We get a British prisoner to interrogate when the Brits are satisfied their gal is getting access to everything here. And I mean—and they mean—everything.’

  ‘Why the fuck didn’t you tell me this before?’

  ‘Those higher up than me didn’t keep me in the loop, remember?’

  * * *

  Sally sat unspeaking in the passenger seat of the ’92 Volkswagen in its Canal Street lot, for the first time that night not trying to lead. Irvine remained silent for several minutes, staring down at his phone’s text window. She could see a message, but wasn’t able to read it from the intentionally awkward way he was holding the cell phone. Still unspeaking, he turned the phone off and put it back in his pocket.

  Keeping the exasperation from her voice, Sally said, ‘Anything I should know about?’

  ‘There’s a volume of traffic we can’t read: a pattern.’

  ‘What are you going to do.’

  ‘Go back to Langley and give a warning.’ More quickly than I did before, Irvine thought.

  ‘I want to come with you.’

  He hesitated. ‘Why not?’

  Sally twisted briefly in her seat to see if her followers were in place as they crossed the Key Bridge back towards Langley and exploded into laughter.

  ‘What the hell…,’ Irvine said.

  ‘You haven’t been left out.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I picked up my surveillance the moment I left the embassy, itemized the cars around the restaurant—where you already were—when I got there. Your watchers are in line behind my watchers watching us. Gives you a warm feeling, being so well protected, doesn’t it?’

  * * *

  How could things go from the president’s calling him Harry to hell in a handcart? thought Packer. Because of that presidential recognition he would still have been okay, the way the others were still okay, if that asshole Burt Singleton hadn’t pissed his pants and filed the formal disagreement declaration against Cyber Shepherd. Now he not only had to acknowledge an official document in writing but comment upon it before lodging the complaint with the counsel’s office. He wouldn’t hurry, Packer decided. If al Aswamy was detained and the threatened outrages prevented through Irvine�
�s team—including Singleton—two floors below, the man’s protests could be judged for what they were, pant pissing. Packer’s problem was not knowing what to do if al Aswamy wasn’t caught and there was an atrocity on American soil.

  19

  They would obviously have met earlier, if only to agree to her presence, and it clearly wasn’t the full crisis committee. But it was still a far higher table than that at which Sally or David Monkton had expected her to sit. In addition to Conrad Graham there was a man she knew without introduction to be retired admiral Joshua Smith, director of Homeland Security, who sat facing her. He was flanked on his left by FBI director Frederick Bowyer and on his right by State Department deputy secretary Wilbur Denver. Charles Johnston, Bradley, and Jack Irvine were spread out farther around the oval table. Immediately behind Graham was an official recording bank of two stenographers, supported by four sound technicians independently keeping a backup audio transcript.

  Everyone visibly showed the tiredness of a much-interrupted night that had only allowed a maximum of three hours’ rest between various meetings, which had included arranging this limited gathering and a conference call between Sally, Monkton, and an anxious, promise-guaranteeing Johnston.

  Conrad Graham concluded his formal introduction of Sally by identifying her as the MI5 officer who’d prevented the attempted UK attack and whose experience—‘your thinking and your analysis of this worldwide Al Qaeda assault’—they considered invaluable. Sally acknowledged the tight-faced nods from the three new government officials, fully aware as she did so that it was an unthinkable concession for an agent from another intelligence service to be co-opted at such an echelon. Inconceivable, that is, but for the largely self-induced panic from which everyone was feeding. In addition there was the benefit of their having a readily available scapegoat for inevitable mistakes.

  ‘Where’s your evidence for an attack!’ demanded Smith, an indulgently large, red-faced man.

  Graham deferred to Irvine, who twice cleared his throat in surprise before saying, ‘There’s a pattern. A buildup of traffic that matches what we discovered when we reverse-analyzed the volume that preceded the previous attacks, not just here but in the UK and Italy.’

  ‘You intercepting this new traffic?’ picked up FBI director Frederick Bowyer, a diminutive, round-faced, round-bodied cottage loaf of a man, frowning in similar doubt.

  ‘Some. We haven’t yet deciphered it.’

  ‘My bureau needs to be involved if there’s an attack within America,’ insisted Bowyer. ‘That’s our remit.’

  ‘Let’s establish if there’s going to be one or whether we’re crying wolf here,’ said Smith.

  ‘I’m formally registering the responsibility,’ insisted Bowyer.

  ‘It’s registered,’ promised the Homeland director.

  Was Irvine crying wolf? wondered Sally. He hadn’t gone into detail during their various exchanges during the night, but she’d expect more than what he was offering now.

  ‘If it’s al Aswamy, we can get the son of a bitch!’ intruded the guilt-heavy Bradley. ‘We can trace him through his e-mail address!’

  ‘No, we can’t,’ refused Irvine. ‘Al Aswamy’s not using the e-mail address we had; he knows it’s not secure anymore. He actually left his computer on a beet delivery truck, remember?’

  ‘So you’re telling us you believe there’s going to be another attack, but that we don’t know where, when, or how! And that we don’t have a chance in hell of finding out!’ demanded Wilbur Denver.

  ‘Yes,’ said Irvine flatly. ‘The only chance we’ve got of locating al Aswamy through his e-mail traffic is to intercept another message that we can read and then follow to its end. Or in reverse, catch one of his to Tehran.’

  After a long moment of receptive silence, Denver said, ‘There’s got to be a public warning!’

  Admiral Smith turned to Sally from a cupped-hand exchange with Bowyer and said, ‘We need your detainee! Now!’

  We want your experience, your thinking, and your analysis, recalled Sally, all watch-and-wait resolutions discarded. ‘What you need is a lot more considered thought and far less knee-jerk panic.’

  The brief silence this time ranged between surprise, astonishment, and affront. Smith’s face became redder. With difficulty he said, ‘You have a point to make?’

  ‘Several,’ replied Sally, hurrying past the outburst. ‘It would be the worst possible mistake to renew a public alert linked to an apparent new threat. What would it achieve? More panic to compound the hysteria created by a ridiculously high bounty producing a response too great properly ever to be analyzed—conceivably, even, overwhelming any real sightings or locating information.’

  She was being too forthright, Sally realized, but she was too committed now to bite back the words: everything that David Monkton had warned her against. As well as being too negative. There had to be a balancing, positive contribution. She wished at that moment that she could think of one.

  ‘It’s my opinion, my judgement, that the most recent attacks weren’t anything to do with al Aswamy or Al Qaeda,’ Sally resumed. ‘Al Aswamy is our concentration; he’s state sponsored, Al Qaeda connected. Which means it’s organized, well planned, despite our managing to intercept and prevent the three original attempts. Al Aswamy wasn’t in direct command in Italy or the UK. He had to rely on others, who weren’t as good as he is. Which he knew and possibly made provisions for, in the event of their failing.’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about now!’ demanded Denver, irritated at the criticism of his new-alert suggestion.

  ‘It isn’t professional for the leader of a current militarily organized group to discuss future operations in which that current group isn’t involved; not even if they were to be involved,’ set out Sally simply. ‘It endangers those intended operations if they are caught, which both groups were in Italy and the UK.’

  There was another punctuating break. Johnston said, ‘You’re contradicting yourself. You started off saying al Aswamy’s a professional, now you’re saying he’s not.’

  ‘I’m doing nothing of the sort,’ corrected Sally, welcoming the proposal at last formulating in her mind. ‘I’d consider it extremely professional to insure against the failure of something you can’t personally command by carefully planting stories of further operations—’

  ‘Planting!’ seized the FBI director. ‘You saying you don’t think any more attacks are planned! Where’s your evidence for that?’

  ‘I don’t have any evidence for that,’ admitted Sally easily. ‘I’m simply putting forward an alternative to what everyone’s convinced themselves is going to happen, something that’s also completely unsubstantiated by any evidence.’

  ‘What about this!’ demanded Irvine, gesturing with his own message copy.

  ‘Indeed, what about it!’ echoed Sally, waving her own slip as if answering a flag signal but then reading from it. ‘Addressed to Hydarnes, Persia’s—now Iran’s—legendary warrior.’ She hesitated, realizing her own oversight or again something further she hadn’t been told. ‘What was al Aswamy’s operational addressee name on the original intercept?’

  ‘Jamshid…?’ responded Irvine, turning the identification into a question.

  ‘Another legendary Iranian warrior king,’ completed Sally.

  ‘Precisely why I said an hour ago that if al Aswamy isn’t still operated by Hydarnes, then there’s another cell we don’t know anything about and have every reason to worry ourselves shitless,’ said Irvine.

  Sally looked down momentarily at the paper slip, folding it into concertina strips. ‘Iran’s the third-largest Internet user in the world—in addition to its own Halal or darknet Web usage—isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes?’ confirmed Irvine, still questioning.

  ‘What level of expertise and competence would you put them at, compared with NSA?’

  Irvine hesitated. ‘Maybe a tad short in actual technology. Operationally about equal. They recovered far more quickly
from our Stuxnet malware than anyone expected, years earlier, in fact.’

  ‘Tehran planned a world spectacular, as spectacular had all three succeeded as America’s 9/11 or Britain’s 7/7. One failure, one possible electronic interception, would professionally be built into that planning. I’ve already suggested how al Aswamy might have expected it. But if I were sitting in Tehran, analyzing how all three misfired’—Sally looked at Graham—‘and don’t forget you’ve asked for my analysis … I’d conclude that three failures are too great a coincidence to be simply unlucky. I’d suspect that my communications chain’s been compromised—’

  ‘And if I were sitting beside you in Tehran, I’d close it down!’ Irvine fought back.

  ‘Because you think like a cryptologist, not as an intelligence officer who spends most of his or her time second- and third-guessing what your opponent is doing or might be doing,’ capped Sally. ‘Second- or third-guessing means working out how you lost three out of three operations to prevent your losing any more. What I’d do in Tehran is bait a hook—continuing the warrior code names, which almost makes it too obvious a bait—and cast it into cyberspace, counting the number of cutouts it passes through to discover how badly I’ve been compromised. Hydarnes was still on the Halal net at Cairo. If you react with a warning, it’ll tell them you’re that close. By successively reducing the number of cutouts, it’ll also tell them if you’re getting even closer still. And throughout all that time the panic and chaos already generated by twenty-million-dollar bounties and describing al Aswamy as public enemy number one will be compounded by renewed official warnings.’ Sally intruded an emphasizing pause. ‘Terror achieved without even bothering with a terrorist act. A perfect misinformation coup.’

  ‘That’s total hypotheses, from start to finish!’ dismissed Joshua Smith. The uncertainty in his voice didn’t match the intended rejection.

  ‘No more than believing what the detainees are saying, which at the moment is nothing,’ retorted Sally.

  ‘You can’t seriously be arguing that there shouldn’t be a fresh public warning,’ persisted Denver.