Decoy

by Simon Mockler

  “All I did was point a gun gently in their direction. A little encouragement to get them moving. There was no time for explanations. We weren’t the only ones after you, as I’m sure you’re fully aware.” He added. Jack stepped down, turning his attention to Amanda.

  “I’m sorry about this. About all of this. I should never have got you involved. Should’ve gone home.” Amanda shrugged.

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “A-hem,” Sir Clive cleared his throat noisily. “I hate to break up this touching scene but I’d really like to get a move on. We should be finished with both of you in a few hours.” What was it with young people today and their insistence on public displays of affection? So very American, he thought derisively.

  Amanda ignored Sir Clive and hugged Jack, kissing him briefly on the lips. “Doesn’t hurt too much does it?” she said, her hand hovering over the stitches.

  “It’s fine. Look I better go with old bog brush hair. We’ll catch up later.”

  15

  Jack followed Sir Clive to the car park, a vast galleried space beneath the main building. He opened the door of a jet black Range Rover. Jack was grateful they weren’t going far on foot, though he’d never have admitted the pain walking caused him to someone like Sir Clive.

  “You know the biggest threat facing the world today, Jack?” Sir Clive said, turning the key and starting the engine.

  “Crazy pharmaceutical companies carrying out bizarre tests on innocent members of the public?” Jack answered. Sir Clive laughed, pleased to see the boy had retained his sense of humour. No mean feat given the stresses he had been subject to in the last 24 hours.

  “Well for a start Jack, I’m the last person you’d be able to convince that any member of the public is actually innocent, and as for the drug trial . . . ” He paused, pulling up beside the security guard’s booth and showing his pass. “You might find it hard to believe but that trial was actually part of the solution, not part of the problem.”

  Sir Clive accelerated out of the car park and onto the main road, following the one-way system round to Vauxhall bridge. Jack didn’t say anything. He was tired. In no mood for a game of conversational cat and mouse.

  “Curry alright?” Sir Clive asked, heading down Horseferry road, toward the network of narrow streets and squares between Parliament and Victoria Street. He liked to eat in that part of town. Very quiet in the evenings. The restaurants there seemed to do most of their business at lunchtime. All-you-can-eat buffets for the money-conscious civil servants swarming through nearby offices.

  He pulled up outside the Golden Tandoori. A suitably shabby looking place. Chose a table at the back with a view of the restaurant and passed Jack a dog-eared menu. There was enough food stuck to the pages to give you a clear idea of which dish to choose. Or which dish not to choose, Jack thought.

  “I’ll have the madras, hot as you can, please, waiter,” Sir Clive said.

  “Lamb tandoori,” Jack said. “And a korma, some curried aubergine too. Naan bread would be good. And a beer. Large. Onion bharji, double portion of rice.” He felt hungry enough to tackle the entire menu, but thought it best to show a little restraint.

  “Good to see a man with a decent appetite. Now, where was I?” Sir Clive said, breaking off the corner of a poppadom and dipping it in a cucumber and yogurt source.

  “You were about to try and impress me with some scary facts.” Jack replied, deadpan. Sir Clive crunched on the poppadom. Such cynicism, he thought, wondering idly what Jack’s generation would do if the country ever faced another World War.

  “Cyber terrorism,” he said quietly. “The primary threat to UK security. A web-based attack on our IT infrastructure, targeted and highly organised, could take out public institutions, power stations, hospitals, banks. Hell, even a sewage works if they were so minded.” He stopped, the waiters had arrived with the food, filling the table with bowls of yellow and red radio-active looking sauces, pinky-white pilau rice.

  “Cyber terrorism.” Jack said, “That’s it?” he helped himself to most of the contents of each bowl. “Here’s a radical idea, why don’t you just turn off the computers?”

  Sir Clive sighed. “Come now Jack. Don’t play dumb, I’ve read your CV. You’re studying Computer Science. You know full well how vulnerable IT systems are to abuse, to malicious code. All it takes is one hacker with a lot of time on their hands. Only last year someone hacked into the Pentagon’s secure database.”

  “Yeah I read about that. Made me laugh. You know how he did it, Sir Clive?” Jack asked, waving a fork in his direction. “Pentagon staff hadn’t re-set the password from its default setting. Which was of course ‘Password.’ So he could just march on in and take a look at whatever he felt like. Someone like that isn’t a threat. There’s no big ideology behind them, no political agenda, just a lonely man engaged in a painful piece of attention seeking.” He chewed thoughtfully on a mouthful of korma, it wasn’t half-bad.

  “An IT system is only as secure as the people who use it,” he continued, warming to his theme. “You want to guard against Cyber Terrorism, try teaching your staff to change their password on a regular basis.” He could feel his strength coming back with the food, he was starting to feel more bolshie.

  Sir Clive picked at his madras. It wasn’t up to the usual standard.

  “There’s more to it than that, Jack. Estonia last year. Defence websites brought to a standstill. A highly co-ordinated attack by a network of high-jacked computers. A botnet. Zombie machines.”

  Jack sat back in his chair. He could feel his belly expanding, seemed to be pulling against the stitches. Maybe he’d have to save the bharji for later. “Botnets?” He said thoughtfully. Sir Clive sensed he’d got his attention.

  “I wrote a paper on the topic last year.” Jack said, “they’ve been around for a while, but no one really knows how many are out there. Malicious code is downloaded as part of an innocent-looking app, then lies dormant in a home PC awaiting an order. People don’t even realise they’re part of a high-jacked network. So easy with all the kids file sharing.”

  Sir Clive relaxed a little, satisfied Cambridge still appeared to be teaching its students something useful.

  “Exactly. Once the malicious code is installed, it simply waits to be told what to do, and then . . . ” He paused, “and then you’ve got yourself a problem.” He pushed his plate away, dissatisfied at the mildness of the dish. “But you know what the real problem is in preparing for Cyber war?” Sir Clive asked, pausing for effect.

  “No, but I suspect you’re about to tell me.” Jack replied.

  “You can never be certain who’s attacking you. Impossible to trace who set up the servers, who wrote the code. A network of zombie machines in China can be programmed to send an attack from anywhere in the world, to anywhere in the world. Does that mean the Chinese are behind it? Of course not. Could be anyone.”

  “If it could be anyone then it could be the Chinese,” Jack said belligerently. Sir Clive laughed, shook his head. “You’re right, good to be suspicious. Coffee and a brandy?”

  “Why not?” Jack replied, watching Sir Clive, sensing he might finally be about to get to the point. Sir Clive leaned in close, drew a deep breath.

  “It was a carefully planned operation, Jack. You and the other nine patients. The implanted devices. A careful set-up, a steady leak of information from our side, a couple of servers not quite as secure as they should be, discussing a new project. We knew the concept would be irresistible. Once the word was out about the devices we’d developed they’d be queuing up to try and steal them. The price of a thing like that on the open market would be astronomical. All we had to do was set up the clinical trial then sit back and watch who blundered in. See who they tried to sell it to. Of course, we didn’t imagine they’d be quite so brutal,” he added as an afterthought.

  The brandies arrived, along with two luke-warm coffees. Jack picked up the bell glass, swirled the co
ntents round and breathed in the aroma. Sir Clive’s story was beginning to hurt his head. He downed the double measure in one swift swallow.

  “Two questions, Mr. Clive,” Jack said. He’d never been a particularly patient person and wasn’t sure how much more of the night he wanted to spend listening to the man, he had better things to be doing, comforting Amanda for one. He looked Sir Clive square in the eye.

  “What does the device do, and what do you want with me?”

  16

  Sir Clive pulled a clear plastic container from his jacket pocket and dropped it casually on the table. There it was. Transparent pinkish outer skin, tiny circuits inside. Exactly as Jack remembered. He couldn’t help but shudder.

  “You ask what the device does. Well,” Sir Clive rubbed his chin, “Hard to put into words. Try and think of this as a nuclear bomb. For the Internet.” Jack frowned, picking up the perspex container, getting a closer look at it.

  “We’ve developed 10 micro computers, circuits grown within organic matter, you were one of the hosts. The idea was to create a cell-based structure capable of out-sequencing the most powerful computers. The largest networks. A series of devices that, if used together, could generate so much code, so much malicious data they’d corrupt even the most powerful, heavily-protected network on the planet.” He paused, making sure he had Jack’s full attention. “A black hole blasted in the virtual world, IT systems collapsing under the weight of their own data, sucking in billions and billions of gigabytes of information in the process, whole technology infrastructures, whole countries. Imagine it Jack, Banking systems destroyed. No proof of how much money anyone has, how much money any business has, who owns what. Satellite control centres knocked off balance, armies unable to communicate, weapons systems useless.”

  Jack was listening carefully, noting Sir Clive’s deliberate choice of words, try and think of this as a nuclear bomb . . . imagine it, Jack. It was easy enough to assume the worst looking at the device, it was so alien, so unpleasant. But did that mean it really had those capabilities? Would MI6 really be prepared to let something as powerful as he was suggesting fall into the hands of a terrorist, a rogue state?

  Nothing in his teaching at Cambridge had prepared him for something like this, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t possible. He knew the government still managed to siphon off the best minds, the best researchers to plug away at outwardly incomprehensible ideas in their laboratories at GCHQ.

  Sir Clive opened the perspex container, picked up the device carefully, holding it to the light, looking at it speculatively.

  “Looks convincing, doesn’t it?” He said. “The world might have gone high-tech but human psychology remains the same. People still believe what they want to believe, whatever suits their cause.” The device slipped out of his hands and splashed into his coffee cup. He fished it out and gave it a quick wipe with a serviette.

  “We’ve got hundreds of these things in our lab and none of them do anything. Well, nothing like what I’ve just described. They tick over and look impressive, a neat combination of animatronics and micro-circuits. And sure, they mix organic matter and cell technology, but not in a very complex way. They even emit low level electro-magnetic waves, which is why it reacted so badly to the x-ray your friends organised.” He sat back in his chair, waving the device in front of him as he spoke.

  “The point of these things isn’t what they do, it’s who they lead us to. A good old-fashioned bluff. Classic cold war tactics. Like I said, the world might have gone high-tech but human psychology remains the same.”

  Jack looked at the device, thinking of the nine patients in the lab, thinking it was a high price to pay for a bluff that might not pay off. It was only a matter of luck he hadn’t suffered the same fate as them.

  “I had two questions, Sir Clive. You’ve answered the first but not the second. What do you want with me?”

  17

  Later that night, as Amanda nestled in the crook of his arm, sated and sleepy after their love-making, he thought about Sir Clive’s offer. Part of him had known what the man was going to suggest before he said it, but he still wanted to hear it out loud. Let the last device be taken. Let the people who’d attacked the ward and murdered nine people cut it from inside him. The only way for the bluff to work. The devices had to be sold as a group of ten. The information they’d leaked in the run up to the theft had stated that specifically. Without a sale they’d have no idea who the players might be in a future cyber war. No way of making an effective pre-emptive strike.

  His head was telling him not to do it, to forget it and get back to the routine of his student life in Cambridge, but his heart was saying something different He’d been presented with a choice, a challenge, the chance to prove himself. As he wrestled with the decision he thought about Paul, his brother, the dark thoughts he had bottled up and placed out of reach. Childhood memories too painful to revisit.

  Paul was three years older. A lifetime when their ages were eight and eleven. They were playing in the snow outside the Herefordshire army base. A winter day, the cold air cutting through their wool scarves as the evening sun dragged the last minutes of daylight below the horizon. Jack was throwing snowballs, his brother ignoring him, saying they needed to get home. He remembered getting angry, he remembered trying to get his older brother’s attention. Paul was dad’s favourite, the strongest swimmer, the fastest runner. He always tried to act the grown up. Wouldn’t rise to Jack’s taunts.

  “Hey Paul, look at me, look at me Paul, bet you can’t do this,” Jack had climbed on to the edge of the frozen lake, edging out cautiously, sliding his feet.

  “Look at me Paul, I’m the best skater and you can’t do it cos you’re a stupid scaredy cat,” he shouted, skidding over the ice, almost at the centre. “Scaredy cat scaredy cat sitting on the door mat!”

  “Come back Jack, don’t be stupid,” his brother finally replied. Only eleven years old, but already he knew the difference between stupidity and bravery.

  Jack realised he had Paul’s attention around the same time he realised the ice underneath him was starting to give way. A sharp crack, an unearthly creaking, like an ancient wooden ship. Then the black water seeping up onto the frozen white surface, covering his wellington boots. He turned towards his brother, his face no longer taunting. His face a picture of undisguised panic.

  The cold came upon him suddenly, paralysing, engulfing him in darkness. The world turned upside down. He flung his arms outwards, trying to grab at something, anything, but all he felt was ice, the water filling his mouth as he tried to scream.

  The next thing he remembered was hands pushing him upwards, pushing him towards the edge of the lake, smashing the ice in front of him, breaking a way through. He scrambled forwards, reached for the side, his fingers grabbing at the grass beneath the snow, numb to the knuckles, gasping for breath, coughing up water and rolling onto his back.

  Paul climbed slowly up the bank, stood over him, bent double.

  “Idiot,” he said, shaking his head, holding out his arm. Jack was too cold to cry. He reached up and took his brother’s hand. They walked home in silence.

  The coughing started two days later. Nobody thought anything of it. Paul had never had so much as a cold before. Then the fever. His mother and father consigned him to bed, thinking it was flu. By the time the doctor saw him he was worse, pains in his chest, clammy skin, blood mixed with the phlegm he coughed up. They took him to hospital. Acute bronchial pneumonia. Lungs full of fluid. Too late for the antibiotics. Jack remembered his parents by the hospital bed, their backs to him. Loud cries from his mother, his father silent. Broad shoulders heaving up and down, wracked by grief.

  Jack blamed himself. No matter what anybody else said, however much they tried to reason with him, he knew it was fault. He knew it and what was worse, his father and mother knew it, despite what they said.

  Jack shuddered. “What is it?” Amanda’s voice heavy with sleep, pulling hi
m into the present. He must have woken her.

  “Nothing, sorry Mands.” She mumbled something and drifted back to sleep. Jack was relieved to hear the sound of her voice, the real world rescuing him from the past. He owed his life to Paul. His brother. The hero. Who knew what Paul would have become if he’d reached adulthood?

  The men who’d died, the nine patients next to him in the ward. Did he owe something to them too? Did he owe his country something? He’d been presented with a choice, a challenge, the chance to prove himself, to make amends. He checked his watch. 24 hours to decide whether or not he was willing to go through with it.

  There was someone he had to talk to before making the decision. The one person who could help him, a man who had spent 20 years putting his career as soldier before and above anything else, before his wife, before his children. A man he hadn’t spoken to for the better part of three years. A man he did his best to avoid. His father, Archie Hartman.

  18

  Centurion International, Los Angeles

  Harvey Newman drove his Lexus SUV out of Centurion’s head office on Wiltshire Boulevard. From the air-conditioned building to the air-conditioned car with its soft leather seats, surround-sound stereo. Such pampering. He’d given up soldiering 20 years ago but he still couldn’t get used to the luxury of his civilian life. The complacent ease with which rich West Coast folk glided through their cosy existence.

  He knew he was one of them, if not in spirit, then at least in terms of the money in his bank account. Enough money to get invited to the Polo club, to all the right cocktail parties and tennis tournaments. As if he gave a damn. In a town that made its millions from the entertainment industry, he’d never felt at home. Centurion was his baby. His business. He’d built it up from scratch, from a rag-tag group of mercenaries paid to protect oil interests in West Africa to a billion dollar defence contractor advising the Bush administration on security in Iraq. More money than he’d ever dreamed possible. Modern warfare was an expensive and risky business and the last three presidents had shown themselves to be more than happy to farm it out to private companies like Centurion.