It was never a good sign when Celia Nevinson addressed him by his rank. But she smiled and asked Monica to put some music on. ‘Preferably happy and preferably Mozart. It relaxes the good colonel.’
It wasn’t just the women who smelt good. There was something that smelled quite impressive happening in the kitchen as well. And then the wonderful sound of Mozart filled the room. It was “Soave sia il vento” – a duet from Cosi Fan Tutte. Appropriate for a safe house thought Jacot. They were, after all, in hiding because things were not quite what they seemed.
Monica introduced the young man as Alphonse. ‘He is a chef at the embassy in London and from time to time helps us with our work. Sometimes he is just a very good chef, at others he is just pretending to be a chef. As you might expect his speciality is North African cuisine.’ The young man poured the champagne cheerfully and went back to the kitchen.
Trust the French to have a chef in their safe house. Actually the young man seemed to be a hybrid – a kind of chef-spook combination, useful in the dingy North African suburbs of Paris. But thank God he was here. If he had been hiding out with the British it would be warm sugary tea and corned beef sandwiches, or endless curries and Coronation Street and even then the expenses would not be admissible.
Celia Nevinson stood up in a swirl of silk and cashmere and sat on the fire seat. ‘I think I had better update you both on what has been going on – particularly you Jacot, since you came very close to being murdered last night. But also you Monica. We are hugely grateful that you have been able to help us out at short notice. To be honest it was something of a desperate throw. I have been both appalled and pleasantly surprised at the extent of your intelligence set up here. But that’s for another time. We have been watching various things all day since the attempted murder and we are not sure who was behind it – but we do know the men who came to Cambridge last night. Six Bosnian Serbs who used to be involved with Arkan, the Bosnian Serb war criminal and ethnic cleanser. They were former Special Forces types who, when not running prostitutes and drugs, undertook occasional assassinations. They were good but not that good, thank God. They had come to our notice a few months ago – as you probably know there are some Serb families that take a dim view of Tony Blair for his part in the bombing of Belgrade in 1998 but we do not know yet who was paying the bill. I hope we will find out today.’
‘Perhaps we should try to find the Serbs and get the information from them?’ suggested Jacot.
Nevinson looked away and said quietly ‘I am afraid our Serb assassins won’t be able to help us and they won’t be able to take their case to the European Court of Human Rights either. They were victims in a way, but there are limits to what we will tolerate. They can’t have been surprised when we came for them – not that they would have realized until too late. By the way’, she continued ‘only a very few people know what happened in Cambridge last night. I called the Master of St James’ College this morning to say that you Jacot had been called suddenly to London. I fluttered my eyelashes or whatever the telephone equivalent is and he was happy enough. Another peerage I will have to lobby for I expect.’
The hairs on Jacot’s neck stood up. He had long suspected it to be the case but this was the first time he had actually seen it. There it was in front of him, the iron fist of British Intelligence encased not in velvet but in cashmere and silk. It did not kill often – not in this country anyway. But it would if it had to. Given that Lady Nevinson had serious doubts about the loyalty and reliability of some elements of our intelligence agencies it seemed unlikely that she would have turned to them to dispose of a half dozen troublesome Serb assassins. He wondered who she had used for the killings. It would have been a decision taken by her alone without any political authorisation. How could there have been any? Strange, wonderful and mysterious things were discussed in the tastefully lit recesses of Downing Street, but not murder.
It was strangely reassuring in a world of so much equivocation and regulation. This handsome, beautifully dressed woman in her early sixties was answering every day the age-old question “Who Guards the Guardians?” It was almost a whiff of the 18th century. Individuals could act decisively in defence of the national interest or just plain common sense and everyone pretty much agreed what those interests were. We used to hang pirates then. Now we give them asylum. In the last minutes of their lives perhaps the six Serbs thought they would be arrested and given a cup of tea. Their bodies would never be found. It was partly good security house-keeping, partly a warning to others. The British State still had fangs.
Jacot knew better than to ask any more about the men, but felt another question was appropriate. ‘Any idea who commissioned the hit?’
Her pale blue eyes met his. ‘Who do you think?’ There was anger in them – a blazing anger. But there was also fear. ‘I will have proof soon. And once we have it we will act. For now let’s enjoy being with our French allies in the most comfortable safe house I have ever seen.’
Dinner was magnificent. The French had clearly made an effort to produce food which they felt their English allies would enjoy. It’s what the spooks at the Rue de Nélaton thought would go down well and they were right. The starter was inevitably a prawn cocktail; a little joke, no doubt, by Gilles Navarre. But with just a hint of garlic in the dressing. The brown bread and butter was perfect, thinly cut in a way Jacot could never manage in his flat. Quite how the physics of cutting bread translucently thin worked Jacot wasn’t sure. The only places that seemed to achieve the required thinness were the best London Clubs. The wine was a Chablis, flinty dry and ice cold. French spooks had a lot in common with the fellows of St James’ College, Cambridge. The main course was a Lamb Tagine meltingly, sweetly tender served with couscous and a salad accompanied by the DCRI’s excellent house red Burgundy.
Once again they were in front of the fire. Monica was regaling them with accounts of her time as an undercover agent in the northern Paris suburb of Saint Denis, burial place of French kings from Louis Capet to poor old Louis XVI. But amid the gothic splendours it was almost as if the battle of Poitiers had never been won. Much of the banlieue had now been taken over by Muslim fundamentalists.
In the corner of the room was a small steel briefcase containing a blue telephone. Nevinson glanced at it from time to time during dinner. The conversation was jolly enough but the dinner party had the slightly forced jollity of a family waiting for exam results they expected to be bad.
In the end, much to Jacot’s surprise, the blue phone purred rather than rang. Nevinson started at the noise.
‘Madame la Baronesse’, said Monica. ‘I am sure it’s for you.’
Nevinson walked slowly, almost reluctantly, over to the phone and picked it up.
‘Hallo Gilles’, was all she said. And then she listened. It wasn’t like a social conversation. It was pure business. Everyone knew in the room what kind of information was being passed. There were no “are you sures” or “is this definite?” All she said at the end was thank you and then she put the phone down. She was a beautiful woman and lucky to have a slightly olive skin. But as she walked back to the table she was sheet white. She moved slowly, sat down at the table, took a long slow sip of her wine and turned to Jacot. She smiled and said very softly ‘I’m afraid Colonel that it was an American hit. Probably not officially sanctioned. The operatives, I think they call them, were Serbs, but the money was courtesy of some sort of secret offshore fund. It is clear who was behind this but needless to say there won’t be any fingerprints so we can prove it. Proving it probably wouldn’t help in any case.’
‘For sure?’
‘For sure.’
‘How do we know?’
‘Most of the six lost their families in Kosovo – murdered by Albanian militants. Usually it was the other way round, but not always. So they were victims too. The world forgot that the Serbs were ethnically cleansed as well. They came to the attention of the Americans and were recruited by their Black Ops people to help out in Afghanis
tan. Mountain men with a strong grudge against Muslims. Ideal fodder for the CIA Black Ops people.
‘Some loose talk about Tony Blair brought them to our attention. The money and the man-hours spent on that man’s security would bring tears to your eyes Jacot. It was odd though that we could not get anything about them from their Afghan days. GCHQ drew a blank. We didn’t think they were that serious about Blair – it’s the kind of thing Serbian militia men say after too much slivovitz. All the children in Kosovo are called Toniblair. All the hard men in Serbia want to imitate Lee Harvey Oswald.’
‘Not just Serbian militia men Lady Nevinson.’
She laughed. ‘It does cause NSA and GCHQ a few problems. So many people seem to hate the man it’s hard to tell the wood from the trees. But the guys after you were the real thing and capable of killing both Blair and you.’
How flattering thought Jacot – to share an assassin with the great man himself.
‘Anyway, after last night I asked the French to check up on the men. They had been trained at some point in America. In exchange for disposing of you Jacot they were promised new identities and US citizenship for themselves and some additional family members. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as you might say. And on a mobile phone found on one of the men guess what?’
‘Don’t tell me. The suspense is too much. Dixwell’s number.’
‘Well we thought it likely. So we rang it. Our friend answered and will be meeting us here tomorrow. He was I think surprised and very rude.’
‘No cut-outs. No false trails. Just a plain vanilla telephone number?’
‘Yes, Jacot. I can see why. There is no need for caution or secrecy. Why bother with it if you are in a country where you believe you can behave with impunity? And if they had got you that would have been it. Our Serbian militiamen would have been spirited out of the country to new lives on a trailer park out west. And even now there doesn’t look as though we can do much to John Dixwell the Third.’
‘I thought it was the Fourth.’
‘Yes you may be right. “Whatever” as our American allies say.’
‘What are we going to do Jacot? Go to the police? Tell the Security Service that the CIA killed Verney and that we have uncovered a CIA plot to kill some Cabinet Office people – who by the way are spying for the French. Tell the prime minister? I reckon friend Dixwell thinks he can get away with it.’
‘Why don’t we just kill Dixwell when he comes tomorrow morning? Our French chums have a lot of firepower upstairs.’
‘Come off it Jacot. We would be signing our own death warrants and you know it. Let’s get a good night’s sleep and enjoy the hospitality of our French allies.’
XXVIII
Ford’s Theatre,
511 Tenth Street, NW, Washington DC
In the middle of a rainstorm a white van with District of Columbia plates drew up outside Ford’s Theatre in Washington. The driver sat for nearly an hour reading a newspaper and smoking cigarettes. But he wasn’t waiting for the theatre to open. He had no interest in drama and his van barely attracted a second glance. Passers by on the pavement, if they noticed that sort of thing, might have found the smell of the cigarettes stronger and rougher than those most Americans were used to. The van’s specially reinforced suspension meant that it did not look heavily laden, even though there were four men in the back and at least a hundredweight of sophisticated electronic equipment. The heavy soundproofing meant that it sounded like an ordinary, empty van. Just as there was no sound coming from the van a different kind of insulation, more usually found in stealth bombers, ensured that the equipment in the back did not produce an electronic signature of any kind. You had to be careful in Washington. Security was tight for the President and other senior figures in the American political, military and intelligence hierarchy. A van or an apartment that emanated strange electronic signals would soon find itself raided by the FBI, or worse.
Ford’s Theatre is more usually on the tourist rather than the intelligence itinerary. It was infamously where President Lincoln was shot at 10.15 pm on the evening of April 14 1865 while watching a performance of Our American Cousin – just five days after the surrender of General Robert E Lee at Appomattox and the end of the American Civil War. By a strange and lucky quirk of fate General Ulysses S Grant and his wife had refused the invitation at the last minute. But the street had not been chosen by the men in the van for its historical connotations. It had another more important quality. From much of it you could see a small nondescript federal government building at the end of the street, or to put it another way, lots of very convenient parking places in the street had line of sight onto the records annexe of the Federal Bureau of Investigation whose headquarters in the J Edgar Hoover Building is in the same part of the city. Line of sight was what the computer technicians and cryptologists in the back of the van needed to accomplish their task. They didn’t need to steal anything or destroy anything or insert a virus into the strongly protected FBI computer system. All they had to do was insert two lines of text into a file on a background check carried out on a federal employee a long time ago.
The FBI’s background files into those American men and women who came forward to join their intelligence services were well protected. They were an intelligence gold-mine and those responsible for protecting them knew it. The American system was similar to the British system of positive and later enhanced vetting, introduced in the UK after the Cambridge Spies saga of the 1950s. If you came forward to join any of the United States’ non-military intelligence agencies then the FBI was responsible for a detailed background check. The checks and the documents that went with them were regarded as definitive, way exceeding the evidential standards required in a federal court of law.
The original plan had been to activate a sleeper agent within the records establishment who would make the necessary amendments to the file. But the FBI’s security had proved too tough to break in this way. The file could be accessed without too much difficulty – their agent was after all a senior FBI official, but it proved impossible to accomplish the task without leaving a record that the amendment was recent. For the plan to succeed it had to look as if the two key lines of text had been in the electronic document since it was computerised in the late 1980s. As far as they knew the original paper documents had been destroyed. They would have to trust their luck on that. They had then considered trying to hack into the system. Again it was more difficult than it looked. Newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic often ran articles about students hacking into American defence and intelligence computer systems. But it was much more difficult to get in and out of a system without being detected than many thought.
The insoluble technical issue for a hacker was that there appeared to be an air barrier between certain parts of the system and the outside world. In other words there was no electronic connection that could be exploited. Much the same technical problems had been discovered by the Israelis as they planned to attack the computers controlling Iran’s nuclear programme in early 2008 by introducing the so-called Stuxnet virus – a simple enough piece of code which played havoc with the centrifuges processing uranium by turning them on and off at random – it was as if a naughty child with a sugar high was in control of the master switch. The Israeli solution had been elegant and simple. Ensure that Iran’s nuclear scientists were bombarded at international conferences by all kinds of electronic freebies including memory sticks of the most stylish and expensive kind. The most sensitive parts of the system were almost impossible to hack into. The Israelis were correct in thinking that it would only be a matter of time before someone, somewhere or a member of someone, somewhere’s family inserted one into a lap-top that would later become connected to the Iranian nuclear Intranet. You cannot build a nuclear bomb without sending emails.
It was going to be difficult but with luck they would pull it off. They would still need to activate their sleeper but in a much less risky role. The windows of the building were protecte
d from electronic intrusion by a special copper film on the inside. An electrical charge run through the copper molecules embedded in the glass made each pane behave as if it were a sheet of metal – even though, of course, it was still possible to see through the glass. The glass was also strengthened so that it did not vibrate in response to sound waves. In other words if you directed a powerful microphone at the glass it was impossible to hear what was being said inside. The system was about as good as it could be. Variations of it protected the White House and other sensitive installations.
It had one weakness. Once a month the FBI tested its back-up power generators. As an organisation that relied on a bountiful electricity supply to power its computer analysis and country-wide communications, it could not risk being caught in the kind of power cuts that from time to time afflicted parts of the United States, particularly in winter. Sensibly and properly, the Agency had bought a series of powerful petrol-run electricity generators stored in the basement of the building, hooked up ready instantly to take over the power load in the event of an interruption. Or almost instantly. And it was the almost instantly that had given the men in the van outside Ford’s Theatre their break. For perhaps a hundredth of a second at most the electric current through the copper molecules in the glass was interrupted as the mains current died and the generators switched in. The minute interruption did not even make a computer screen flicker. But it was enough.
Like the highly efficient organisation it is, the FBI tested these procedures every month or so. The precise dates and times of the test were highly classified. But if someone knew when it was going to happen they could get a tiny packet of information through the temporarily ineffective shield in a burst transmission and into the hard-drive of a computer, provided someone was standing near the window with a specialised modem. If the little packet of information had been prepared properly then it would find its way to the correct file and nestle there as if it had been there all along without leaving any footprints in the electronic snow. An attempt to hack into the system through the internet and it would alarm in short order. But the FBI security people had never envisaged an ‘outside job’ or at least the men and women in the van hoped they hadn’t.
The Falklands Intercept Page 22