The Cloud Collector

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘I’m expecting a call from Conrad Graham. You already know what I’m going to tell him about Abu Hurr. He’s not going to like it, which puts you on the scapegoat list. You ready for that?’

  Instant improvement, Sally judged, taking her time to factor the Times disclosure into the question. ‘I might even find a way to use it.’

  ‘You should have been told about Piscataway,’ conceded Monkton. ‘It was a mistake.’

  ‘Is there anything else I should be told?’ persisted Sally, maintaining the criticism while accepting that was the closest the man would come to apologizing.

  ‘No.’

  ‘We need—I need—to be distanced from the Times disclosure,’ insisted Sally. ‘What was Algeria’s distribution?’

  There was a hesitation from London. ‘Wide. “Reply all” to MI6, CIA, Spain, and Italy.’

  ‘Simultaneously?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Timed?’

  ‘Afternoon: three ten.’

  Sally used the pad in front of her to calculate the comparative time adjustment between North Africa, London, and Washington, DC. Allowing herself a two-hour error variation, the CIA would have received the Algerian advice by 5:00 p.m. their time the previous day. She’d been at Langley then. Remained there for a further two hours, been with Jack Irvine and Conrad Graham—Conrad Graham, who’d been enraged at having the Madrid bombing taken from Operation Cyber Shepherd. Today he’d be apoplectic when Monkton told him MI5 were washing their hands of Abu al Hurr’s rendition. ‘I hope the Times—or any other media outlet here—doesn’t have any more surprise leaks: there’s too many sources in Homeland Security.’

  ‘There’s not a lot you can do about it.’

  Sally thought there might be something but decided not to mention it at that time. Instead she said, ‘Except go on being very, very careful.’

  ‘Does being very, very careful apply to personal situations?’

  Sally frowned sharply at the unexpected tangent. ‘If it becomes necessary.’ Would she be as careful as she was making out? Of course she would! Whatever there was with Jack would always be secondary.

  ‘Your Langley telephone could have a lot of listeners.’

  ‘Could!’ echoed Sally, irritated at the remark. ‘Most certainly will. Which I’m unlikely for a moment to forget. Or neglect.’

  ‘Neither will I. That’s why we’ll repeat this conversation on the Langley line later today, to ensure no-one’s disappointed. I’ll put in some caveats about over-interpretation and some reminders about Sellafield to enhance your input value from an external agency with a focus not solely confined to Cyber Shepherd. It’ll put us on the right footing if we need to find different workplace friends.’

  Monkton’s hadn’t been a casual remark, Sally corrected. He’d been thinking laterally, as she would have been if she hadn’t been distracted by his personal question. ‘I’m calling Poulter directly after this.’

  ‘Get back to me if there’s anything I should know. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll give it at least an hour before I follow up to let him know we’ve talked, to reassure him he’s not risking his professional future coming back to us.’

  * * *

  None of the interceptions were so far decipherable, but among the other cryptologists was a palpable satisfaction at the gradual, letter-by-letter unpicking of the Hydarnes IP codes. After his earlier breakthroughs, Akram Malik felt irrationally isolated from the centre of things monitoring the targeted Action chat rooms of Moscow Alternative. He looked unnecessarily at the wall clock he’d consulted four minutes earlier, impatient with Irvine’s posting restrictions, hoping today wasn’t going to be as fruitless as the previous two—more than two, he corrected. There hadn’t been any responses to the Shamil25 bait for fifty-six hours, which didn’t sync with the increased volume of Facebook-routed traffic the rest of the group all around him were huddled over.

  He hit the log-on key at Irvine’s stipulated moment, between hour-designating 2 and 3 to avoid its appearing timed. Shamail25@akhoulgo.org.ru registered on the screen. So intent was he upon it that Malik didn’t properly hear the acknowledgement of another letter identification, although he recognized Shab Barker’s excited voice.

  His concentration broken, Malik looked instinctively at Barker’s triumphant ‘And another!’ When Malik looked back, Redeemer was on his screen.

  Inshallah.

  Malik: Inshallah … and at last.

  There was no immediate response. Then: Arranging a wedding is more difficult than arranging a funeral.

  Redeemer didn’t talk in proverbs—even paraphrased!—immediately remembered Malik, but he had to follow the theme here. My friends anticipated the wedding.

  Redeemer: Sometimes such things have to be cancelled.

  Had Malik’s greeting been too impatient, irreverent even? A shared domain, he remembered, conscious again of the different style: this could be a different Redeemer, a rival faction perhaps. That would cause great sorrow. Many have prepared gifts.

  Redeemer: The gifts list is changed.

  Malik: They surely still have to reach their destination.

  Redeemer: Inshallah.

  Malik moved to speak, but the disconnection came even before the traditional invocation. Turning into the room, Malik announced, ‘We’ve got a problem.’ That I may have caused, he thought.

  * * *

  In the heightened back-watching atmosphere of the competing Homeland Security agencies—coupled with the TV and print media descent upon the town—the CIA inevitably learned of the FBI invasion of Piscataway before it properly awoke. By mid-morning Conrad Graham, in direct contravention of the law prohibiting American spying on Americans, had two CIA, not NSA, technicians in place. By noon they were successfully eavesdropping on the FBI’s temporary-field-office communications. From those intercepts Graham heard of the identification of Milton Kline and of Bowyer’s intention to establish, with Homeland’s tacit agreement, an Abu al Hurr task force in Peshawar, which was also, technically, in contravention not just of American but Pakistani law.

  Since the American invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and the discovery in 2011 of Osama bin Laden, the CIA has built its rezidentura in neighboring Pakistan into its largest overseas presence in the world. Graham assigned a six-man priority response team from the Islamabad embassy to pursue every monitored lead from the former Piscataway laundry before the FBI task force boarded their scheduled flight to Pakistan from Washington’s Dulles Airport.

  By mid-afternoon, Washington time, Graham was already getting preliminary but encouraging Eyes Only reports, wondering as he read how long it would be before Frederick Bowyer publicly staked his claim to Cyber Shepherd leadership.

  It wasn’t a long wait.

  36

  But Graham never imagined it would be on prime-time TV news. Or trailed in advance to maximize the viewership figures.

  It was stage-managed by FBI director Frederick Bowyer, a heavy-bodied, small-featured man who invited the comparison with the Bureau’s founder by bringing his thinning hair over incipient baldness. Against the background of a flag-draped photograph of the president, Bowyer declared major success against the jihad being waged against the West. FBI agents, employing the traditional fast-track technique of J. Edgar Hoover in times of national crisis, had in less than twenty-four hours confirmed the extent of the global terrorist conspiracy. Direct connections had been established between the Madrid bombers and Abu al Hurr, a known associate of Ismail al Aswamy, the Al Qaeda mastermind of the attempted attacks on the Washington Monument, Rome’s Colosseum, and a British nuclear facility. Evidence indicated that al Hurr, in U.S. custody after that failed British attack, was an equally important Al Qaeda figure who had gained a place on the Rutgers engineering faculty as a post-graduate student. Within the next twenty-four hours Bowyer expected further information from an FBI task force in Piscataway, New Jersey, about the cell created there by al Hurr and Americans James Miller and Milton Kline, both of
whom served in the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan, where they had been radicalized. Another task force was at that moment en route to Peshawar, in Pakistan, where al Hurr was understood to have other known Al Qaeda associates. Bowyer also anticipated progress from the interrogation of al Hurr in the ongoing hunt for al Aswamy. These Bureau successes would seriously hamper al Aswamy’s terror campaign.

  ‘That was totally unbelievable!’ said Conrad Graham in genuine surprise. He added more bourbon to his glass, again gesturing to Sally with the bottle between them on the desk.

  ‘Beyond total.’ She shook her head against the repeated offer, all irritation gone at being summoned from the floor below by the deputy director to watch the transmission. ‘You think he actually tries to do a Hoover impersonation there!’

  Graham snorted a laugh. ‘He’d look even more ridiculous than J. Edgar in a little black dress.’

  ‘Homeland’s Joshua Smith can’t have authorized this.’

  ‘Bowyer wouldn’t have moved without some sort of approval. My guess is that he got carried away.’

  Which she couldn’t imagine David Monkton ever having done. Or drinking three fingers of bourbon at a time, which was another surprise of the evening. ‘He’s brought Abu al Hurr into play.’

  ‘Personally identified with him,’ enlarged Graham. ‘No longer our concern.’

  No apoplexy after all, thought Sally. ‘Something that shouldn’t go unrecorded, though.’

  ‘It won’t be,’ reassured Graham. ‘What’s the latest from GCHQ?’

  ‘Slow but going in the right direction,’ said Sally, continuing the myth of not knowing her conversations were being listened to. She was anxious now to get back to the incomplete transliterations from Meade and GCHQ that she’d been comparing when Graham called.

  ‘Nothing I can use then?’

  ‘Use?’

  ‘Fred really did get carried away up there in the limelight.’

  ‘Even associated himself with a dead man.’

  ‘And he should have waited until he heard from his task force in Peshawar,’ said the deputy CIA director, who’d heard from his own more strategically posted team three hours earlier.

  * * *

  ‘Did you see the television!’

  ‘Yes, Mr Director.’

  ‘Whad’you think?’

  ‘Very impressive, sir.’

  ‘Your input, Ben, won’t be forgotten.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘You got any news for me?’

  ‘Our guy’s Jimmy Lowe. Grade five, good agent. Lives on the same street as a NSA guy named Packer, an administration executive.’

  ‘I remember him now from Homeland sessions,’ said Bowyer. ‘Tall guy, never contributes. I never expected to get this close.’

  ‘Neither did I,’ acknowledged Hardy. ‘Both are Friday-night poker players. Jimmy’s cried off tonight, of course.’

  ‘No, he hasn’t,’ hurriedly corrected Bowyer. ‘Tonight Jimmy plays better—or worse, if it suits the purpose—than he’s ever played before. What’s he know already about Packer?’

  ‘Divorced about three years ago. Wife got the two kids and the guilty husband’s alimony that Packer tries hard to supplement from the Friday-night games but usually doesn’t.’

  ‘Here’s what I want. I want to know everything about how Irvine’s team works, how close they are—or aren’t—to al Aswamy. I want to know everything they’re doing about the Madrid attack, and what this gal Hanning passed on from the interrogation of al Hurr before the Brits passed him over to us. I particularly want to know all there is about her, too, including how to get her into the sack.’ Bowyer hesitated. ‘You get the picture of what I want?’

  ‘I’m sure I do, Mr Director.’

  ‘And as quick as you’ve organized everything else so far, Ben, okay?’

  ‘May I ask a question, sir?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Is the Bureau leading the investigation now?’

  ‘There’ll be a statement tomorrow.’

  * * *

  ‘You got misled at the start,’ sympathized Conrad Graham.

  ‘Each is greatly resented; none will be forgotten,’ threatened the man.

  ‘Nothing came from the CIA,’ quickly reminded Graham.

  ‘That’s accepted. We don’t like being misled. We’re not being misled again, are we?’

  ‘That’s for you to decide when we’re through talking.’

  ‘Yes, it will, won’t it?’

  ‘This guidance isn’t too late for tomorrow’s paper?’

  ‘There’s plenty of time to go into everything.’

  ‘That’s what I want to do, go into everything,’ said Graham.

  37

  Forewarned, Sally stayed up for the BBC world news report of the following day’s New York Times, which studio commentators variously described as staggering, disgraceful, scandalous, and unprecedented, all of which Sally considered understatements when she got her copy on her pre-dawn drive to the British embassy.

  The coverage dominated the front page, the story Sally knew to be based on Conrad Graham’s unattributed leak, separated from Frederick Bowyer’s press conference—illustrated with a smiling photograph of the FBI director—by a feature headlined “Unacceptable Chaos.” Across five columns above all three articles ran a three-inch-deep strap disclosing the death in U.S. custody of Abu al Hurr, described as the Pakistani-born leader of the attack upon the British Sellafield nuclear facility.

  Sally did not read in detail until she reached the seclusion of the communications room, concentrating first upon what had come from the deputy CIA director. The introductory paragraph promised important developments in the fight against what was now unquestionably an organized global jihad. Progress in those CIA developments had been seriously impeded by the grossly inadequate investigation of another agency suggesting a connection between James Miller, one of the Madrid bombers, Abu al Hurr, and an Al Qaeda cell in Peshawar, Pakistan. That time-wasting, false, and totally unsubstantiated claim was solely based upon the coincidence of Miller’s having studied at New Jersey’s Rutgers University, at which Abu al Hurr had been offered an engineering-faculty place he had never taken up. Hurr had been accepted on the basis of completely false, forged information. He was unknown in Peshawar and had no connection with its university. The two men had never been contemporaries at Rutgers. There was no evidence of their ever having met. In conjunction with other intelligence agencies, the CIA had also dismissed the claims of conspiracy between Giovanni Moro and the Madrid bombers.

  The separate strap story said that a pathologist’s report was awaited to establish the cause of Abu al Hurr’s death. He was understood to have denied leadership of the nuclear-facility attempt to British interrogators or any knowledge of intended terrorist attacks the CIA believed to be imminent. It was not known how Abu al Hurr was transferred to U.S. custody or the whereabouts of the man’s death. No statement or explanation had been forthcoming from British authorities.

  The Times opinion column demanded immediate explanations from the CIA and FBI directors before a public hearing of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The enemy confronting the FBI and the CIA were the jihadists, not each other. Both directors and both agencies needed reminding of their remits and of the boundaries of their responsibilities. The director of Homeland Security should also appear before the committee to account for how such an appalling situation had been allowed to degenerate to the point of endangering America’s internal security.

  ‘How much advanced warning did you get?’ asked David Monkton, the moment Sally was connected.

  ‘None, not in any detail. What’s the reaction back there?’

  ‘The inevitable. A question already tabled in the House. It’ll completely dominate prime minister’s question time. Our story stays the same. We made Abu Hurr available for questioning in the UK, nothing—and nowhere—else. There was never any discussion and certainly no agreement about renditio
n. I’ve already asked through the Foreign Office for an explanation from the U.S. embassy of how he got there. I’ve already briefed our ambassador there, so don’t get involved. How’s it otherwise going to affect you?’

  ‘Personally, I’m still working it out. At the moment I think Graham’s been damned clever, which surprises me. And makes me question my judgment of the man up to now. He’s got the FBI and the two admirals who were ganged up against him all on the rack at the same time. Everyone will know Graham was the source, but if he can face down his accusers, he could emerge the kingpin, which puts me very definitely in the right place.’

  ‘This promised development is a code breakthrough, right?’

  ‘I can’t think what else, but I haven’t heard any justification of that from Meade. I’ll speak to them before calling GCHQ.’

  ‘And then call me directly afterwards,’ insisted Monkton. ‘I can’t be caught out on this.’

  None of us can, thought Sally. ‘It’ll probably be from Langley.’

  ‘We’ll speak carefully.’

  It was still only 6:45 A.M. Washington time when Sally emerged from the communications room to find Nigel Fellowes very obviously waiting in the outside corridor.

  ‘Here before dawn again!’ greeted Fellowes. ‘What ever happened to beauty sleep!’

  ‘I didn’t pick out your car behind me,’ challenged Sally. Why this ambush? she wondered, her curiosity piqued.

  ‘Parking-lot arrivals log, timed four forty-five a.m. Much simpler.’ Fellowes smiled easily, looking at The New York Times under Sally’s arm. ‘We need to talk.’

  ‘Monkton’s already briefed your ambassador,’ assured Sally, shifting the newspaper.