Hacked

by Tracy Alexander

  ‘I suppose so.’

  She called herself @DanLangleyssister. As soon as I sent her a tweet, all my followers followed her. It was a bad decision for my reputation, but excellent for pulling heartstrings. El sent tweet after tweet saying that the chickens would miss me, and Gran would miss me, and she’d need my help on Club Penguin and loads more – all lies.

  he buys me chocolate when I’m sad #saveDanLangley

  he makes Mum tea in bed when she’s on nights #saveDanLangley

  Ruby was off with the wildlife volunteers but she called me from some bit of countryside somewhere to see how I was, which gave me an excuse to slide off to my room, lie on the bed and remember when she was in it with me.

  ‘Isaac’s filed a petition to have your case discussed in the House of Commons,’ she said.

  ‘Say thank you for me,’ I said.

  ‘Already have. I think it’s going to be OK, Dan.’

  ‘Me too,’ I said.

  ‘Got to go – we’re hacking back nettles.’

  ‘I’m not happy about you hacking.’

  She snorted at my bad joke and ended the call.

  I heard El running up the stairs, but before I had time to jump up and block her way she was standing with her face in mine.

  ‘Out,’ I said. ‘Being nice now doesn’t make up for the snot on my sock and the Facebook —’

  She shoved her hand over my mouth to shut me up, pointed at my computer with her other hand and said, ‘Log in.’

  There was a tweet from @4liberty

  @DanLangley Fast-track extradition is justice denied #saveDanLangley

  ‘Dad said they’re important.’

  I knew more about 4Liberty than Dad, because the Guardian gets delivered on Saturdays and I occasionally read it. Dad only scans the sport and does the puzzles – enough said.

  ‘They campaign to protect your human rights,’ I told El. We went on to their website, clicked on something called ‘Extradition Eyes’ and read the whole thing – the press releases, the cases, the ways in which the Extradition Act 2003 was flawed, and why it should change.

  I went onto 4Liberty’s Facebook page to join, and spent ages reading all the notifications and messages on my page while I was there. El must have drifted away. I clicked back, intending to copy some of Liberty’s stuff to show Charlie Tate, and got a surprise. They’d updated the page to put the basics of my case up there with a Twitter button to click to join the #saveDanLangley campaign.

  Awesome! Hate the word, but truly, it was awesome.

  55

  A couple of journalists arrived before breakfast.

  ‘Coffee?’ Mum asked them – bit of a change of heart!

  El took out the drinks and sat on the low wall outside our house, posing for photographs and telling them all about her plans to be a doctor. She dragged the four of us out to have a shot done together, before I headed off to my chemistry exam.

  ‘That wasn’t bad,’ said Ruby afterwards.

  ‘Was for me,’ I said. ‘I messed up.’ No revision over the weekend, plus the media frenzy, meant I couldn’t remember half the bits I did know.

  ‘I could come back to yours for a bit?’ she said, as Ty and Joe appeared.

  ‘That’d be great,’ I said, ‘except the press are outside.’ Sad face.

  ‘We’ll all come,’ said Joe. ‘Ruby can pretend to be with me.’

  ‘Dream on,’ she said.

  While the four of us walked through the park, more dominoes were falling – dominoes the size of bricks.

  No one was outside the house. The neighbour said they’d gone for fish and chips. Ruby got the bread out and shoved it in the toaster. Ty got cheese and helped himself to a lump. I got my laptop. Joe went to the loo. We had cheese and jam (Ruby’s choice) on toast, washed down with Ribena at the kitchen table. I scrolled down the tweets. More of the same. Except one from @d_89johnson.

  @Annacando @DanLangley And then there were three … youtube.com/watch?v=pVD8ac

  I clicked the link.

  ‘This might be interesting.’

  He was … maybe fifty, American, jacket and checked shirt, actor-type face, spoke slowly and carefully, probably reading from a script.

  ‘I am not going to say this as formally as an affidavit, although I am willing to do so if the situation regarding the young Brit, Dan Langley, does not resolve itself. My name is David Johnson and I am a research scientist at the University of Southern California. I am recording this at home in Pasadena.’

  Breath.

  ‘Around two months ago I made a video simulating a drone crashing in a wooded area for someone I believed was working on a school project. We met on an amateur videographer forum. Angel, as she was called, thanked me and I heard nothing more from her. I gave no further thought to either the video or her, until an assistant in my laboratory told me about Anna Rothenberg. At this point I realised I too had been party to the work of Dronejacker. I believe it was my video that was used to fool the operator and replace the live feed from the drone that threatened the lives of innocent civilians in England. I have made this statement to support Dan Langley, because my conscience will not allow me to ignore his predicament. So,’ he paused and looked a bit bashful before saying, ‘I join Anna Rothenberg in asking you, please, to save Dan Langley!’

  We laughed and laughed. We played him again, and then for fun I played him backwards. The fact that a grown-up with a good job was involved seemed to make what had happened a whole lot more believable. Kids might muck about but not the likes of David Johnson. The media felt the same. Having a new victim of Angel’s cunning prompted more coverage. We were on a roll. And we hadn’t even seen the Boston Globe by that time.

  Anna Rothenberg’s dad had written a piece on the opinion page. It was two o’clock British time when the article made its way across the Atlantic.

  ‘Although it is the involvement of my daughter, Anna, that has compelled me to declare, today, my lack of faith in the way the Extradition Act 2003 is being used, it is a view I have long held. The act was intended to expedite extradition of terror suspects in the aftermath of 9/11, not to target clever children and teenagers operating at a level above that which the lawmakers themselves can understand.’

  Wow! Big me up, why don’t you?

  I won’t forget that afternoon. Me and my three mates sat at the table for ages, being happy. Ty temporarily abandoned his revision schedule – that’s how good it felt. Charlie rang and apologised for not being more proactive when I told him about finding Anna. Ruby, before she left, said she was going to tell her mum about us as soon as the hearing was over. My mum came home with a bunch of flowers from the staff on the ward. Dad picked up El, whose class had made a good luck card for me. Supper was chatty, the shadow hardly there.

  Seven days till E-Day and it was all good.

  56

  A Guardian journalist came to talk to us Tuesday evening. She had mad, wavy hair and glasses and laughed a lot.

  ‘I want this piece to compel the Home Secretary to throw out the request before Monday’s hearing. That’s my raison d’être.’

  She was called Amanda and we all liked her, and what she wrote. I got a snippet on the front and a whole page inside Wednesday’s paper, which Ruby and I read in the café after English. She pointed at the black and white portrait.

  ‘You’re the next Johnny Depp,’ she said and then laughed on her own for a few minutes.

  Amanda rang me while we were saying goodbye, both going off to revise for our last paper. I planted a kiss on Ruby’s lips before picking up.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Dan, Amanda here. Have you read the comments?’

  ‘No, I’ve been in an exam.’

  ‘That’s something I don’t miss. Check it out online. There’s a distinguished list supporting your campaign.’

  She wasn’t wrong. The sort of faces you see in Mail Online were dotted among the hundred or so comments. Gary McKinnon got Sting, from The Police, whereas I had
Olly Murs. It was probably our age. Almost as interesting was my first Hitler reference.

  If Dan Langley didn’t know what he was doing Hitler didn’t either

  Nice to see proof of the theory.

  I was lying on my bed staring at yet another vocab list, trying to care. French definitely wasn’t on my list for ASs, and I was bound to do well enough in the other exams to get into sixth form. I decided to revise till tea, and read more Dan Langley web content after that. The hearing had stopped feeling like a public hanging. Everyone was convinced the Home Secretary would deny the request before I got to court. It had become a question of when. Paddy Power were taking bets on the day and time. Charlie told me that when he brought round a copy of an article he’d written in a law magazine – ‘No defence of fast-track extradition’.

  ‘Dan! El! Tea!’

  I leapt up, let the book drop and raced El down the stairs. Dad was pouring wine, Mum was dishing out bowls of chilli con carne.

  ‘Last exam tomorrow,’ said Dad, as if I didn’t know.

  ‘Oui, c’est Français.’

  ‘You’ve done well, Dan. Managing to do your exams with all this going on.’

  I did the usual shrug.

  Mum sat down and we tucked in.

  ‘We all think it’s going to go well,’ said Dad. ‘But if not, the automatic right of appeal still exists – no thanks to the government —’

  ‘Dad just wants you to know that we’re prepared,’ said Mum, ‘whatever happens.’

  If they were trying to rein in my confidence in the campaign, it didn’t work. I wasn’t interested in the automatic right of appeal, because I wasn’t going to need it. The world was on my side. Liberty, Friends Extradited, loads of MPs, the Guardian, and those were only the well-known ones.

  I slept like the dead, and had to rush to get to my French exam. Quelle horreur! When I came out, desperate for breakfast, Charlie Tate was waiting. He ushered me to his car and got out his iPad.

  ‘There’s a fourth one about to confess.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘There’s a TV station in the States that has a morning show called Good Day, Oregon. They’ve been trailing that she’s coming in for the crack of dawn slot, which is about now.’

  Charlie got the video streaming from their website.

  The presenter – white teeth, big salesman’s smile – introduced Esther, a bookshop owner from Portland, who was enormous, with straggly hair and boho clothes. That was pretty much the only thing he managed to say. Esther was livid. Nothing to do with me. She was livid with Amazon, for cutting prices, getting exclusives, and generally killing the world’s love of reading. She accused them of ‘hating’ books. That was why she gave Angel the bots, because she thought the plan was to take down Amazon. She didn’t mention me, because she didn’t care. She wanted her moment of fame to rant. It was fine by me – she was another person that Angel had lied to, which was good enough.

  ‘Interesting,’ said Charlie when the presenter finally wrestled the limelight back and we turned Esther off. ‘Anna gets away with it because she’s a minor. David Johnson falls between jurisdictions – aiding the hijack of an American drone on German soil, but Esther … she was involved in the London end of the plot. That’s an offence the UK could request extradition for. Dan, I think we can safely say the pressure on the Home Secretary to do something has just increased. She won’t want to demand Esther’s extradition because she knows it’ll never happen – the US keep hold of their own – which means …’

  He chewed the right side of his lip while he waited for me to fill in the gap.

  ‘She refuses mine.’

  I got out of the car and went in search of food.

  We had an end-of-exams celebration on Friday on Joe’s living-room floor with the ‘borrowed’ projector. Ruby was rubbish, kept shooting at her feet or at me. Joe’s mum got pizzas, but Ruby had to go before they were ready.

  ‘Can’t you stay?’ I asked, a bit whiny.

  ‘How can I? Mum’s taking me out.’

  ‘You are going to tell her about us, aren’t you?’

  Ruby nodded. ‘Monday. Promise. Or sooner if …’

  I nodded.

  I left straight after tea. I’d been wired for days but, walking home, doubt started to creep back in. I hadn’t made any bets with myself about when the Home Secretary would pardon me, but knowing I would wake up on Saturday with the warrant for my extradition still live wasn’t in any plan. If she was going to do something, what the hell was she waiting for?

  57

  Friday night I didn’t sleep. My head was Prime Minister’s Question Time. All the rational arguments for rejecting the extradition were lined up but each one was shouted down. Hacker! Terrorist! Cyber-thief! I went downstairs at four in the morning and listened to the World Service, hoping for breaking news that the Home Secretary was back from a holiday and my well-being was now top of her agenda.

  As the day went on, my mood, and everyone else’s, dropped like the blade in an execution. We’d gone along with all the furore, imagining that the louder the noise, the surer my future was … but that was make-believe. The reality was that I was due at an extradition hearing, Monday morning.

  I told Mum not to let Ty or Joe in, and hid upstairs. I lay down on my bed but didn’t shut my eyes because the orange boiler suits were back, together with the clang of a prison door and the chanting to mark a new kid being brought in, wrists and ankles handcuffed.

  I thought about Angel – of everyone, only she knew I was completely innocent. But she wasn’t likely to help out – it was because of me that her plan failed and she was on the run. What a crazy mess. If I’d let her carry on, we’d both be in the clear. I’d be safe – getting on with life. But a drone-sized patch of London and everyone in it would be dead or dismembered …

  It was unbearable, knowing that by trying to do the right thing I’d basically hanged myself.

  I put her out of my mind – the space was immediately occupied by a torture scene set in Guantanamo Bay. I started trying to recite Pi …

  Ruby came over about six but she sobbed and so did I and in the end I asked her to go. From my bedroom window, I watched her walk down the road. She was wearing cut-off jeans, a stripy red and navy T-shirt and flip-flops. Her head was down, her hair swinging. She didn’t look back.

  On Sunday, when it finally dawned on everyone that the Home Secretary wasn’t going to save me, two demos were arranged – one in Bristol and one in London. It gave the parents something to do. After all, I couldn’t eat and didn’t want to talk, and El had gone to Gran’s.

  I didn’t go online. Too scared that the journalists would already be discussing my likely treatment in the hands of the Americans.

  58

  And then it was Extradition Day.

  Mum asked me to wear a shirt. I refused. A teenager in a shirt is suspicious in itself.

  Charlie picked us up in the silver Mercedes. Mum sat in the back with me, trying not to cry. Dad put on quite a good show, but we all knew how we felt. Me, I was off my head. I hadn’t slept. My eyes stung. I had a headache that needed a bigger word to describe it and felt sick. And they were just the physical problems. I couldn’t trust myself to speak a whole sentence without breaking down. And my head wouldn’t stop playing videos of either my parents weeping as I was taken through immigration, or El hanging on to me as I was forced into a police van with blacked-out windows.

  In an attempt to lessen the unbearable tension in the car, Charlie said, ‘We’re expecting a good turnout at the protests.’

  ‘Great,’ I said.

  ‘It all helps,’ said Dad. No one believed him.

  Charlie tried again, asking Dad about the transfer window, but small talk, even about football, had deserted us.

  When we reached the Cromwell Road with its massive billboards, Charlie slowly and carefully went through the procedure again. I nodded, but it was all mashed potato. Too soon we were outside the court. My spirit
s rose, fleetingly, when I saw the crowds. There were at least a hundred signs, and two huge banners, held high above the heads of … maybe three hundred people.

  There was a roar as Charlie’s door opened.

  Amanda from the Guardian was at the front.

  ‘I won’t let this drop,’ she said, as the crowd moved to let us through. ‘That’s a promise.’

  Near the door were three faces I didn’t expect to see.

  ‘We’re here for you,’ said Ty.

  Joe nodded. ‘Everyone from school’s gone to the demo in Bristol.’

  Ruby flung her arms around my neck and kissed me. Her face was wet. Mine was distraught.

  ‘Good luck, Fella.’

  Charlie opened the heavy glass door.

  ‘In we go,’ he said.

  As it shut, it took all the noise with it, like an off switch.

  We had to empty our pockets to go through the metal detectors, like last time … like catching an easyJet to Spain. Better not to think about planes …

  ‘We’re in court five this time,’ said Charlie to my parents. The four of us walked over to the stairs. I stalled at the bottom step, like a horse refusing to jump.

  ‘I can’t …’

  ‘Don’t lose it now, Dan,’ said Charlie. ‘For your mum.’

  Somehow the wail that was rising stayed where it was. We marched up in time, like a funeral procession.

  There was a bit of a wait. We sat in a row in the corridor, no one speaking.

  ‘Breathe,’ said Charlie.

  The usher came along, wearing the uniform of Hogwarts, and stopped in front of us. As he opened his mouth, I prayed that he was going to deliver a last-minute reprieve, like in death row cases in films. In that split second I saw the whole scenario – a clerk running through the streets of Westminster, desperate to deliver the joyous decision (in writing, or they’d have phoned) before they strapped me down …

  ‘We’re ready for you,’ he said, arms by his sides, head slightly bowed.