The Cloud Collector

by Brian Freemantle

  As the waiter left, Irvine sniggered. ‘That was ridiculous, wasn’t it?’

  Sally laughed back hesitantly. ‘How about I go out, come back in, and we start all over again?’

  ‘You might not come back. I’d understand if you didn’t.’

  ‘Maybe I should stay.’ This infantile, schoolkid repartee was even more embarrassing, but Sally decided to go with it.

  ‘That’s what I’d like you to do.’

  She had to stop it, get back on track. Feeling no hypocrisy, she said, ‘Let’s talk about progress on Smartman and what happened at today’s meeting.’

  Irvine seemed physically to straighten, helping them both to more wine. ‘We’re stonewalled on Smartman.’

  ‘Why aren’t you at Meade then?’

  ‘It’s routine now: computers working in milliseconds to programs that there’s enough people down there to load.’ Irvine didn’t look directly at her. ‘We’ll break it; of course we will. We expected too much, too soon.’ He looked up. ‘So it made better professional sense to be here.’

  As artless as the greeting, judged Sally. She actually welcomed the waiter’s return, breaking the atmosphere it seemed Irvine was striving to create. When they were alone again, she said briskly, ‘So let’s hear about Conrad Graham.’

  For a moment Sally thought Irvine was going to continue in the direction she didn’t want. Instead he said, ‘Yes, I should, shouldn’t I?’ and launched into what she quickly realized to be a near-chronological account of his encounter with the deputy CIA director, the punctuating pauses as much for recall as to eat. Sally didn’t interrupt, not even during the hesitations, wanting Irvine to completely talk himself out. It took a further fifteen minutes, but Irvine finished a very different person, someone she gratefully recognized in preference to the gawky man who’d first confronted her.

  ‘He didn’t challenge you about Stuxnet until the very end?’ Sally said, gauging Irvine’s need for reassurance.

  ‘And it didn’t amount to a challenge, more like he just wanted to hear it again, specifically.’

  ‘There’s no way he can prove the contrary: no surviving records, documents, stuff on computer hard drives?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Positive.’

  ‘You’ve gotten away with it,’ declared Sally. ‘He needs you, even if he may not fully believe you.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘I know.’ Hurrying on, she said, ‘And I’m still part of it, included in everything?’

  ‘Part of it.’

  ‘But not included in everything?’ she demanded, inferring the qualification. Could it be that they didn’t have the Smartman transmission that GCHQ had intercepted? Far likelier from that remark was that he was holding back.

  As if aware of her doubt, Irvine said, ‘You’re completely in as far as I’m concerned.’

  There was more she had to establish, to be sure, thought Sally. ‘Who else is going to know about Vevak?’

  Irvine hesitated. ‘Conrad Graham. Me.’

  ‘You’re not making sense imagining you can control it between the two of you.’

  ‘He’s going to handpick his field people. Don’t forget how recently he was director of covert operations: he’s got a lot of loyalty where it matters.’

  ‘We’re not talking field level here.’

  ‘You have any idea how many different agencies with fuck knows how many separate agendas with the CIA at the top of their hit lists make up Homeland Security!’

  ‘You just spent an hour telling me.’

  ‘It gets to Homeland Security, it gets to the national media—the international media—that quick.’ Irvine snapped his fingers.

  ‘There’s got to be an inner group, a leakproof caucus.’

  ‘Graham openly confronted Jack Lamb, who’s a retired admiral: humiliated the man. The director of Homeland Security is Joshua Smith, a retired admiral. You know what the Wedge is?’

  ‘No,’ said Sally, who did, but wanted a moment to consider her own strategies.

  ‘It’s Hoover legacy, carved—and forever sealed—in stone: the barrier that J. Edgar drove permanently between Pennsylvania Avenue and Langley when he was refused the combined directorship of both the FBI and the CIA. They don’t co-operate on anything: they compete, on everything, inside and outside their specified jurisdictions.’

  Sally knew it was true. It added to some of her concerns but ironically resolved other lingering doubts. ‘You genuinely believe there aren’t any records of your meeting?’

  ‘He’d be recording himself, wouldn’t he?’

  Irvine was on the periphery, in an esoteric adjunct of espionage, Sally reminded herself. ‘I want you to make me a promise.’

  ‘What?’ He frowned.

  ‘That from now on you’ll tell me everything that happens between you and Graham.’

  ‘I’ve already told you that’s our deal.’

  ‘Not just the obvious things: asides, remarks, or his doing something you don’t expect … don’t understand.’

  ‘You frightened he’ll try to use me?’

  ‘I know he’ll use you, if he believes he has to. And that will be after he uses me.’

  ‘I can look after myself.’

  Would Irvine’s naïve father have believed that, descending from the diplomatic mountain into the terrorist gutters? wondered Sally. ‘I know you can,’ she soothed, another decision reached. ‘So you’ve already picked up the surveillance?’

  ‘What surveillance?’ said Irvine blankly.

  ‘It’s back on, on both of us.’ She passed her scribbled note of the Ford registration across the table. ‘It followed you all the way from Langley to Owen Place, and from Owen Place to here. It’s outside, right now.’

  ‘I don’t believe you!’

  ‘Go take a look: the black Ford four spaces back towards M Street. I followed it, following you. There was a tail on me, from Watergate, but I lost it.’ She wouldn’t tell him about the tradecraft inconsistencies, not yet, nor about her conversation with John at GCHQ.

  ‘Graham can’t deny it: we’ve got the proof,’ said Irvine, gesturing with the slip of paper.

  ‘You’ve just given me a list of Homeland agencies this long!’ said Sally, arm outstretched. ‘It could be any one—or several—of them in the circumstances you’ve described—’

  ‘We can find them from the registration!’ broke in the man, angrily insistent.

  ‘The majority of Homeland Security is intelligence,’ reminded Sally patiently. ‘Intelligence surveillance vehicles aren’t identifiably registered to their organizations. It’ll be a shell-company ownership hidden inside another shell. And maybe it’s not intelligence at all but another Homeland affiliate that doesn’t operate the way they should.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Professional vehicle observation is never single-manned. The attempted tail on me was, which made it easy to lose him: I simply ducked into the metro knowing the driver couldn’t abandon his car in the street—certainly not one in the vicinity of the White House. There’s only one guy in the Ford outside.’

  ‘Who then?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ admitted Sally honestly.

  ‘What are we going to do?’

  The mind-set she’d worked so hard to inculcate, Sally recognized, satisfied. ‘Be aware of it all the time, even when we can’t identify it. Turn it back on whoever’s initiating it, if it serves any purpose: run a false trail they’ll misconstrue.’

  Irvine had become introspective as Sally spoke. Now he looked up. ‘I’m trying to think who else it might be.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘It can’t be Iranian.’

  ‘No, it can’t,’ she agreed, keeping any condescension at the suggestion from her voice.

  ‘What about your people?’

  The possibility hadn’t occurred to her. Now it did, and Sally accepted at once that it answered virtually every discrepancy. There was pr
actically as much animosity in London between David Monkton’s MI5 and the MI6-supervising—and antagonized—Foreign Office as there was here in Washington between Conrad Graham and Homeland Security. That was the reason she hadn’t phoned Irvine from the legation communications room. It had been a diplomatic requirement to register her apartment address at the resentful embassy, and she’d been followed from Guest Quarters to Owen Place, which would have identified Jack Irvine. The begrudging Nigel Fellowes would have been the first to volunteer for an MI6 stakeout—persuading as many of the MI5 rezidentura as he could to join him—but there still wouldn’t be sufficient manpower properly to staff it, which would account for there only being a driver in the pursuit cars. So would something else, Sally abruptly acknowledged. Maybe MI6 weren’t involved at all. It was David Monkton who’d initiated—and persisted with—the talk of her being compromised that had led her to admit the relationship with Irvine.

  Sally smiled across the table. ‘That’s a very clever suggestion! I want you to give Graham the number, see what or who it might bring out of the woodwork.’

  Irvine was silent for several moments, again not looking directly at her. ‘Who’s going to leave first?’

  ‘What?’ asked Sally, openly curious.

  ‘I guess you can’t come back now, that maybe you didn’t intend to after.… Just tell me what you want to do.’

  ‘I’ve got another rental in the stacker on M Street. You can drop me off on your way to Langley in the morning.’

  ‘I’m confused!’ complained Irvine, finally looking at her.

  ‘I know you are. We need to talk about that.’ She needed to talk to Monkton, too; hopefully going home with Irvine would provide the reason to do so if the surveillance was still in place.

  * * *

  ‘I’m estimating 250 characters, 270 tops,’ declared Burt Singleton.

  Marian Lowell shrugged. ‘There’s no way we can estimate the numeric equivalent. And there could be multiple-word significance in the switch between Latin additions to the Kurdish, and the Urdu in the Pashtu. We’ve identified twenty-four numbers, which include eight repetitions that we can’t match, and six different common Iranian languages—on an IP address in Roman script—and got ourselves nowhere. This is one of the most difficult codes I’ve ever encountered.’

  ‘Okay, so they’ve got great cryptologists.’

  Neither looked away from his or her individual station as they talked, instead scrolling intently through the latest supercomputer downloads from the search programs being operated by Barker and Malik from a separate SHA logarithm annexe.

  ‘I thought we were supposed to be the best.’

  ‘It’s got to be a binary code,’ insisted Singleton. ‘The recipient’s already got the first half with which our intercept meshes, to make a whole.’

  The woman frowned but still didn’t look away from her screen. ‘Or is it the key, enabling this to be read?’ She paused. ‘You believe what Jack said on the phone, that this is continuing as an active operation?’

  ‘I told you all that he told me,’ avoided Singleton awkwardly. ‘I’d like to know what’s kept him in DC. He’s supposed to be running all this, not leaving it to us.’

  ‘Is he coming up tomorrow?’

  ‘He didn’t say.’

  ‘Any regrets at not quitting when we had the chance?’

  ‘I think I’ll drop by Hank Packer’s office tomorrow,’ said Singleton, again avoiding direct answers.

  A new download registered on their screens.

  * * *

  It took Sally a long time to come down from the lovemaking, which had been as good as ever, and which she didn’t want to end until it absolutely had to, which made what she needed to say as important to her as it was to make him understand. She said, ‘That was wonderful.’

  ‘More than wonderful.’

  ‘But now we must talk.’

  ‘I made a mistake and I’m embarrassed about it: wasn’t thinking properly. I’m sorry.’

  ‘What we’re doing, this assignment, won’t go on forever: I won’t be here forever. While I am here, I want this to go on, and I hope you want it to as well. But we’re not making commitments.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you offended, shocked?’

  Irvine shook his head. ‘No commitments is what I want, too.’

  She was doing the right thing, keeping the GCHQ discovery to herself, Sally decided. She wasn’t abandoning him. She’d share it when the proper moment came: when everything was in place and couldn’t be ruined by internecine ambition and ego wars. Waiting until then meant she had to be included in everything.

  31

  Sally’s decision to withhold the GCHQ interception wavered during her night-time stirrings, ending in a moment of awakening guilt at treating Irvine with the arrogance with which she believed he’d kept the Vevak penetration from Conrad Graham. Just as quickly came the justifying contradiction. There was no comparison between her holding back GCHQ’s Smartman interception and what Irvine still hadn’t told Conrad Graham. So why was she seeking one? It was ridiculous to feel—even to imagine—guilt, because guilt about anything she did or had to do was unprofessional, an unacceptable relapse in the profession she supposedly practised. It was not one that allowed morality at any level or for any normal reason.

  The self-correction made—and proper professionalism restored—Sally acknowledged that to stay ahead, where she believed she now was, she had just slightly to adjust that day’s schedule. Which sadly didn’t allow for any early-morning repeat of the previous night’s lovemaking. She eased herself carefully from the bed and managed to shower and dress without waking Irvine.

  ‘Why so early?’ he protested as he emerged from the bedroom.

  ‘England’s been awake for hours. GCHQ might have something.’ She was keeping the exchange honest, speaking to Cheltenham ahead of Monkton, reflected Sally, so she was being truthful and at once wondered why she’d needed that self-reassurance.

  ‘You know there’s been nothing overnight from Meade,’ said Irvine, gesturing to his silent computer bank.

  ‘I want to be up to speed before today starts officially here,’ said Sally uncomfortably.

  ‘If there’s nothing moving at Meade, I’ll stay here, after seeing Graham.’

  ‘Let’s talk either way. There might be something from my end.’ And she’d be manipulating all the moves.

  Sally was an hour ahead of her usual time, but the traffic was just as heavy. She drove, keeping an eye on her rearview mirror, introducing one detour, but didn’t pick up any followers. The embassy car park was as unexpectedly crowded, forcing Sally to an outer bay. On impulse she took a circuitous path towards the building, searching for the two surveillance vehicles of the previous night, but found neither. She didn’t see the waiting Nigel Fellowes, either, until she was well past the staff entrance.

  ‘Earlier than ever!’ he greeted, smiling. He wore a new, unstained Eton tie that predictably clashed with the brown suit.

  Was it pure ineptitude, or did he want her to know he was monitoring her embassy visits? Either way, it was an opportunity to utilize. ‘Didn’t you say something about early birds when I arrived?’

  ‘I didn’t think you were taking any advice from me.’

  ‘You’re right, I’m not,’ she goaded.

  ‘Which is unfortunate.’ Fellowes flared at the mockery. ‘I could have given you a lot of help: the embassy could have provided a lot of support.’

  ‘About what, specifically?’

  ‘Specifically about the danger of arrogance and blind over-ambition,’ the man tried to mock back.

  Fellowes really shouldn’t have been allowed out by himself, Sally thought. ‘The downfall of so many.’

  His stick-on smile slipped. ‘Have you any idea what trouble you’ve caused in London! It’s all hell let loose back there: absolute hell.’

  She shouldn’t waste too much more time. ‘What car do you drive, Nigel?’


  The MI5 station chief was briefly speechless. ‘What!’

  ‘Your car? What make is it?’

  Fellowes still hesitated, finally stumbling, ‘Jaguar. British of course. The flag and all that.’

  ‘Not a Honda? Or a Toyota?’ There was no point in correcting the man about Jaguar’s corporate ownership.

  ‘I don’t understand—’ Fellowes started, but stopped abruptly. ‘We’re not riding shotgun for you, Sally. You told London you didn’t need help or intrusion from us, remember?’

  Why, then, had he been skulking in the entrance-hall shadows this early, watching her? She’d warned Fellowes that his surveillance had been detected if he or the MI6 rezidentura were involved, which was sufficient. ‘It’s good to know it’s not you: I didn’t want the embassy caught up in what’s likely to happen because of it.’

  ‘What’s that!’ demanded the man, the concern immediate.

  ‘Nothing you need to be concerned about: you’re safely separated from it all, don’t forget. Best to keep it that way.’

  * * *

  Sally settled expectantly into her soundproof cubicle with plenty of time to spare, judging the encounter with Fellowes an additional bonus in a still-to-come carefully manoeuvred—and hopefully fruitful—day. It was a short-lived aspiration.

  ‘Nothing,’ flatly declared the GCHQ conduit she still knew only as John.

  ‘There’s surely something!’ blurted Sally.

  ‘We’ve had Smartman exactly forty-three hours, forty-two minutes, and Anis@mukhtarbrigade.ru twelve hours, six minutes!’ retorted the man, irritably pedantic. ‘It’s not Scrabble we play here, you know!’

  ‘It wasn’t a criticism,’ soothed Sally, smoothing out the Hydarnes transmissions on the narrow ledge in front of her.