Decoy

by Simon Mockler

  “You’re doing an important thing, Jack, I hope you realise that,” he said, looking out over the river. “A serious step forward for Cyber Crime. For the safety of the UK against a potential attack.” Jack had nodded. Still not sure of his motivation, he was almost satisfied he had made the right choice. It was the danger that appealed to him, the chance to be tested. And somewhere at the back of his mind the unshakeable, irrational idea that Paul would have done the same thing. Jack wanted to see if he measured up.

  The train pulled into Cambridge station. Jack eased himself out of his seat. It felt strange to be arriving in the university town without any luggage, without bags and suitcases he brought up at the start of each term, and for a very different purpose. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the two secret service men Sir Clive had instructed to stay with him. They did a good job of blending in amongst the tourists, didn’t have any of the military stiffness he’d expected. He hailed a cab outside the station. Normally he would never have taken one for the ten-minute journey to College, he was too frugal a student, but today was different. He had enough on his mind without worrying about whether the walk would upset the hastily stitched together wound in his side.

  The roads were clear. The journey uneventful. A typically cloudy Cambridge sky above him. He made his way through King’s, the College the same as ever. Tourists taking photos of the Chapel. Students playing pool in the bar, laughing, drinking away the Sunday afternoon. He recognised a couple of them from his Computer Science class. Geeky guys but interesting to hang around with, full of facts, good on a pub quiz team. The normality of the life he no longer enjoyed called out to him. Like a dream that stayed with you when you woke. Forget it, he thought to himself, at least for now. Wait and see what the next twenty-four hours hold.

  24

  Human nature. The one thing no amount of careful planning and preparation can fully predict. Ahmed Seladin was seated in the back of a Mercedes people carrier listening to Monsieur Blanc’s instructions. Normally a careful, calm, if quietly calculating man, he had been driven to the edge of paranoia by lack of sleep and the constant unrelenting pressure to complete the mission. He was also beginning to doubt whether he would ever get away, whether Monsieur Blanc would pay him and let him fly back to Morocco or simply have him dispatched, throat slit and buried in some dark and damp woodland on the edge of Cambridge.

  “Please Monsieur Blanc, take me through this again, just so I’m clear,” Ahmed said, a nervous smile on his lips. Monsieur Blanc raised his eyebrows, the Moroccan was beginning to trouble him. He’d had his doubts ever since he read the initial report on the man. It described in detail the rumours that buzzed around him when he was a surgeon, the accusations he had abused his position of trust with female patients. Monsieur Blanc did not approve, but he was singularly limited in the people he could recruit for the task. Although ruthless in business there were certain values he considered sacrosanct. The Catholic education drilled into him as a boy was not easily discarded.

  Monsieur Blanc opened up the tourist map of Cambridge. “King’s College is here, the boy’s room is in third court, over here.” He pointed his stubby finger at the map. “He’ll be there this afternoon. If he isn’t there when we get there we wait. Once he arrives you remove the device. The car will meet us back here. We drive to a private airfield. As agreed we’ll move funds to your account once we’re in the air. We’ll drop you in Morocco.”

  Ahmed’s eyes widened. Although the choice of words had been innocent, a vision of one of Monsieur Blanc’s team pushing him out through an open aeroplane door, falling thousands of feet to his death, swam before his eyes. He forced another of his sickly smiles.

  “Yes, yes I see. And it is a good plan. But the thing that troubles me, Monsieur Blanc, is the boy. You did not see him with the attackers earlier. He was very quick, very, what is the word? Efficient. I would feel more comfortable if I had some form of protection for myself. A gun for example.”

  Monsieur Blanc looked at him for a moment. The man looked on edge, close to panic. A dangerous state for a man with a gun. On the other hand, if he didn’t give him a weapon he suspected the man might simply flip. Refuse to fulfil his part of the bargain, extract the device.

  “Very well, Dr. Seladin. You will have your gun.” Monsieur Blanc reached behind him and unlocked the flight case containing the two spare Glock 45s. He handed one over. “I trust you know how to use that thing?”

  Dr. Seladin nodded, greedily taking the gun, turning it over in his hands, examining it. One of the few things he been successful at during his brief period in military service was target practice. He tucked the weapon into his jacket pocket.

  The driver leaned over his shoulder and spoke quietly to Monsieur Blanc. It is time, he whispered. Monsieur Blanc nodded. He passed a map and a digital camera to Dr.Seladin. “Hold these, try to look a little more like a tourist and little less like a terrorist.”

  25

  Carla entered Harvey’s office and placed the coffee on his desk, flashing another of her seductive smiles at the boss.

  “I’ll be at my desk if you need anything,” she said, somehow managing to make the phrase sound both innocent and loaded at the same time.

  “Can that woman actually type?” Bob asked once she’d left the room. Harvey nodded, “she types, does great shorthand, manages my diary and makes a damn good coffee,” he said. Bob sipped the coffee, his face said he didn’t think the coffee was that great, but he didn’t bother speaking his mind, didn’t have to.

  Harvey found that part of his character grated. The impression he gave that he knew more than you, but wasn’t going to bother explaining because you probably wouldn’t understand.

  Still, you had to give the man his due, an astrophysicist, who’d graduated top of his year group at Harvard then gone on to complete his doctorate before he turned 24, followed by a highly successful career in research and development at a number of blue chip defence firms. The man had earned certain privileges, he obviously thought not explaining himself was one of them.

  It was Bob’s suggestion they develop a PEP device and the suggestion had taken Harvey by surprise. Pulsed energy projectile weapons, known as PEPS, had been around since early 2000. Large prototypes, vehicle mounted non-lethal weapons sold as a means of crowd control to an assortment of friendly dictators. They emitted an infrared laser pulse using the chemical deuterium fluoride. The plasma produced exploded on impact. A small dose delivered quite a shock. A large dose simply burnt up those who got in the way. The weapon they’d developed could fire that dose over an area fifty metres in length and ten metres in depth, or it could be set to pin point one particular target.

  So far no one had been able to get them down in size to something an infantryman could carry, not without reducing their effectiveness. Bob’s Systems and Development division had finally achieved it, that was until the conflict in the Congo had disrupted supplies of coltan, the only place with a large enough quantity of the ore in the ground to enable them to meet the contract they’d secured with the Defence Department.

  Bob’s mobile buzzed. He flipped open the receiver, muttered a series of low ‘hmms’ that sounded like a fly buzzing against a window pane, and turned on the screen that sat at one end of the boardroom table.

  “Sir Clive’s online,” he said.

  “Sir Clive, how you doing?” Harvey announced loudly to the less than impressed features of Sir Clive Mortimer. “Not interrupting your Sunday afternoon are we?” Sir Clive waved at them irritably; he was dressed in a dinner jacket and white bow tie.

  “Well, I was rather hoping to catch the end of the matinee. It’s bloody difficult to get tickets for this performance of Tosca, but you did say it was urgent and I think you pay me enough to warrant me leaving the opera.”

  “The heroine throws herself off a cliff.” Bob said, deadpan. Harvey raised his eyebrows; he knew Bob had a range of i
nterests but he hadn’t ever pictured him tucking his long limbs into the stalls at the Met and settling in for a night of overweight caterwauling.

  Sir Clive laughed, “and they say you chaps have no sense of irony.”

  “How did it go with the boy, is he willing to play a part in this, let them take the tenth device?” Harvey asked.

  “He’s on board. Taking to this like a duck to water. I spun him the line we agreed, nuclear bomb for the Internet, cyber terrorism, usual schtick. Same stuff I use on government ministers. If those cynical bastards fall for it then anyone will. If he comes through this I’m thinking of offering him a job. What about Monsieur Blanc, you heard any more from him?”

  Harvey shifted in his seat. “Not yet, but he assures me he has matters in hand,” he replied.

  “As well he bloody should, the amount of leaked information we’re spoon-feeding him.” Sir Clive replied indignantly. “He’s already made a balls-up of this twice. If he can’t get the devices to the buyer in the Congo then we’ll have no excuse to invade the bloody country, and you won’t get your precious coltan.” Harvey gritted his teeth, no one in his company ever spoke to him like that. Bob watched him warily, wondering if he would lash out. He breathed deeply, bringing himself under control. He needed the whinging Brit on side. Might as well let it go for now.

  “Like I said, Monsieur Blanc assures me he has matters in hand. From where I’m sitting there isn’t a lot we can do. You sure your boy isn’t about to go all Kung Fu on the man and will let him take the device?”

  “I am sure, yes.” Sir Clive replied confidently. “We’ve pumped him full of painkiller and made it clear we’ll step in if necessary.”

  “And he believed you?” Bob asked incredulously.

  “He did Bob, yes. Like I say, he’s cut from a different cloth to the average boy. Stroke of luck for us.”

  Of course if he hadn’t woken up in the lab before the team got there we wouldn’t be in this mess, Harvey thought, but again he kept it to himself.

  26

  Clement Nbotou checked his watch. The shiny Rolex glinting against his dark skin. It was the one extravagance he allowed himself when out in the jungle, and the only reason it stayed attached to his wrist was because his troops assumed it was a fake. If they thought for one moment it was real he had no doubt they would take it from him with a machete. He might control the largest Islamist militia in the Eastern Congo but mercenaries were still mercenaries, and the temptation to steal such a prize would be hard to resist. Besides, they were a rag-tag bunch, poor as dirt and half of them barely as tall as the AK47s they slung over their shoulders. A professional army would demolish them on open ground. Here in the jungle, where their enemies were other child soldiers, civilians, and the occasional chancers who decided to open up their own mine and dig for coltan, they were cruelly effective.

  The journey from the capital city, Kinshasa, to the North Kivu district was by private plane. A twin-engine Cessna that belonged to a UK mining corporation. They let him use it from time to time. They had little choice; if they wanted to pursue their mining operations unhindered they had to make certain concessions. In Kinshasa, Clement had attended to business matters. For these he wore a dark-blue Armani suit and cream shirt, which he changed several times a day to stay fresh. He liked to upset the preconceptions of the people he did business with, the Chinese and Indian businessmen who expected him to arrive in military get-up, greasy from the jungle, bandoliers swung over each shoulder.

  Once the air-conditioned Mercedes reached the airport he’d changed into combat fatigues, ready to assume the role of commander over the forces that kept control of over half of the region’s coltan mines. Most of the area was under his command now, and the miners who weren’t knew they had to expect him to interfere with their exports, seize control of their shipments.

  Clement pulled a small velvet jewellery bag from his top pocket and spread the blue-grey metal out on the tray in front of him. Columbite tantalite. Known to everyone in the Eastern Congo as coltan. You never knew what would become valuable, what mineral the rest of the world would suddenly decide it couldn’t do without. Rubber in the previous century, then industrial diamonds, gold for fillings and cables. Tantalum extracted from coltan. Its chemical inertness, high melting point and superb conductor qualities meant it was highly sought-after for capacitors in mobile phones and personal computers. Weapon technology too. Any kind of complex circuitry.

  Clement shook his head. It was also extremely rare. Only one area in the world produced the metal in sufficient quantities and he had most of that area under his command. He didn’t care what they used it for, as long as the money ended in his Swiss bank account he was happy to keep control over the supply chain, disrupt the efforts of his competitors, use whatever means necessary.

  He looked out the window at the lush green of the vegetation below. One of the most fertile countries on the planet, rich in mineral resources, but saddled with successive governments that were too weak, too fractured by infighting and ethnic wars to impose any kind of order. And the UN had spectacularly failed to prevent the fighting. It was a country where ruthless and uncompromising men like Clement could flourish. You either took control of that world, or it took control of you, he had discovered at an early age.

  Monsieur Blanc was scheduled to arrive that afternoon. Flying into the same airstrip he was using. The unapologetically overweight Chinaman had provided him with a steady and reasonably priced supply of AK47s for many years, and had even supplied some of the larger American-built anti-aircraft rocket launchers they could bolt to the back of Toyota jeeps. He drew the line at landmines, which had surprised Clement, but he understood that every man had his limits, regardless of how illogical they might seem to an outsider.

  It was Monsieur Blanc who had first mentioned the Internet bomb to him. Told him about a source he had in British intelligence who was developing a very particular type of remote detonation device, something to turn the virtual world on its head. Clement had listened politely, a patient smile on his lips. He had no interest in the devices themselves, in his world they would have little practical application, but he was at heart a trader, and he identified quickly the potential profit for such a device on the open market. His contacts in the Islamist militias knew people across the seas, Afghanistan militants with access to oil money, people who could use the technology and were prepared to pay a high price for it. So he had made some inquiries and agreed to meet the fat little Chinaman. He was confident he could secure a good price in the Middle East, whatever the capabilities of the device itself.

  The plane tilted, signalling the start of its descent, a downwards swoop towards the runway that brought the lush green landscape closer to the window. His stomach lurched. The part of the journey Clement hated the most. There was always a chance a goat or chicken might wander into the path of the plane, get caught up in the wheels and send them careening into the undergrowth. The pilot held his line. A strip of pristine concrete a mile and a half in length, not the usual make shift jungle airfield of felled trees and flattened grass, reared up in front of them. It had cost Clement a small fortune to build, but when you were in the business of securing yourself a large fortune several times over it was well worth the investment. The wheels touched down with a jolt, the sudden deceleration, the pilot bringing the plane to a standstill, taxiing towards the soldiers grouped around an army jeep.

  Clement let out a deep breath. If God had intended him to fly he would have given him wings, as his mother used to say. Instead he had given him a large and powerful frame, hands big enough to wring to the neck of a gazelle and an exceptionally high pain threshold. God had intended him to be a leader, a warrior. His feet should remain on solid ground. He resented having to put his fate in the hands of pilot, even for so brief a flight, regardless of the skill of the man. One of these days he would learn to fly himself. He would make the time.

 
“Welcome, our leader.” His second-in-command, Uko Nbochigando, addressed him in the local Bantu dialect, their mother tongue, as he climbed down the steps of the plane. The languages and dialects of the region were splintered into as many fragments as the different villages and traditions.

  “I trust you had a good flight?” Uko asked, smiling broadly as he removed his aviator sunglasses. The deep scar above his left eye pulled the skin downwards, giving him a quizzical air. Clement didn’t offer any reply other than a grunt. The air was thick with humidity and he could already feel his army shirt sticking to his back.

  “Let’s get going. I don’t like hanging around in the open,” he said as he climbed into the back of the jeep. His second-in-command nodded and signalled to the driver to move out. He knew Clement well enough to understand that flying put him in an irritable mood.

  The jeep set off down a make-shift track toward their military camp, built in the grounds of a Colonial mansion that had once belonged to a Belgian rubber baron. An hour or so from the runway, depending on the rain and the number of holes that opened up in the dirt road. The Belgians were the first Colonial force to exploit the region’s resources, and they were certainly not the last.

  The house the rubber baron built was an anathema in the eastern Congo, no sooner was it finished than the heat and humidity began to peel the paint from its walls, to fracture the elegant stucco and plaster work with unsightly cracks. Despite himself, Clement admired the spirit of the people who had insisted on imposing their will on this environment, forcing the jungle to retreat, cutting back the creepers and the vines, transporting tonnes of raw material along the river to build the place.

  It was in a sorry state now, but some of the colonial grandeur remained. The white veranda with its stately columns intact, the tennis court just visible under the moss and tree roots that burst through the asphalt, the piano that played discordantly in what had once been a ball room, its wires rusted and sprung, wooden hammers warped.