‘Perhaps one other thing I should know,’ said Komarov. ‘Does anyone else know of this plan?’
‘No; no one else knows anything and I want it to remain that way,’ said the president. ‘In fact, I’ll go further. I want you to erase all previous connections to Bazarov and, whilst using what he had discovered so far, I want you to make a fresh start.’
‘Eliminate all connections with Bazarov to date?’ repeated Komarov.
‘Yes, I have some suggestions for you regarding that,’ said the president. As he spoke he rose from his chair, crossed the room to a small delicately inlaid desk and opened it. From a drawer within it he took out an envelope which he brought back and handed to Komarov.
‘This needs to be done without delay,’ said the president. ‘I understand that from the fiasco in Chechnya that you saved a female FSB operative who now owes you her life and does odd jobs for you?’
Komarov, shocked by this level of presidential inside knowledge, dropped the envelope as it was handed to him, cursed and bending down, picked it up again.
‘I thought so,’ said the president. ‘My dear Igor you really must get used to the idea that I do have my own sources. Her name is Izolda Valik is it not?’
‘It is,’ muttered Komarov, wondering just how much more his old friend knew about his private affairs.
‘Then I would imagine that Miss Valik will be ideal for this job. One of the FSB’s top ranking operatives until the Chechnya debacle was she not?’
Komarov just nodded agreement but said nothing.
‘As I said,’ continued the president, ‘get what’s in the envelope done just as soon as you can, and keep me personally informed of progress will you?’
Soon after this last exchange Komarov left and went straight home. With the instructions that he and Silayev were to be on their own, he needed time to think – and to read the contents of the ominous file he had been given.
* * * * *
The suggestions contained in the envelope the president had handed him as to how he was to get Bazarov’s files and laptop were detailed and explicit. All that Komarov had to do to set about implementing the plans was to contact Izolda Valik and get her over for a thorough briefing and as her work consisted largely of jobs for Komarov, she was able to come over to his place right away. Komarov gave her instructions but left the details of its implementation to her. In less than an hour after his call to her, she had set off to complete the task. Quite a simple one – to get Bazarov’s files off his assassin and then kill him, leaving no sign of who was responsible.
Bazarov’s assassin had been picked with care. A professional and a loner who lived simply from job to job though he also had the skills to quickly assemble a team if such were needed. His instructions had been simple too. Bazarov was to be removed and all trace of him personally were to be expunged from all records. He was tipped off as to where his vital laptop and files were hidden in Bazarov’s apartment and he was to take personal charge of these until he heard from someone who would identify themselves by a password phrase. Instructions would come from this contact regarding what then to do with the files. He was to disband the team of assassination helpers as soon as Bazarov had been disposed of. The financial arrangements were straightforward and generous.
It was not until three days after Bazarov’s body had become part of the foundations of a new office block on the south side of the city that he was sitting on his usual stool in his usual café and the contact was made. He was just finishing a bowl of Borsch and rough bread when a young man bumped into him on his stool, apologized, gave the password and passed him a note. He waited till after the young man had gone and then read the note. It was brief but made sense to him.
‘The packages you hold are not safe at your place. Take them and leave them in a left luggage locker at the Kazansky railway station. You will be told later what to do with the locker key.’
As soon as he had finished his meagre meal, he left the café, went home and got the files and laptop from their hiding place. These he placed in a worn leather hold all and left for Kazansky station. When he got there he slowed down to a saunter and before taking the hold all to a left-luggage locker, he sat down at a small café and ordered a coffee. He sat for some time pretending to look through a newspaper whilst carefully observing those around him, looking for anyone who might have followed him. No one looked remotely interested in him and he assumed that, as the note had suggested, he would get his instructions about the locker key later; abandoning his earlier caution he rose from his table and walked slowly over to the lockers.
Izolda Valik had prepared the trap well. She had followed him but only far enough to see him enter the station; a young drug-addict girl that she had chosen as a temporary accomplice was waiting for assassin by the banks of lockers, knowing of course that was where he was heading. His photograph had been sent to her smartphone and she waited there in her hoodie, smoking a thin self-rolled cigarette and looking as though she was just waiting for a rendezvous. Her rendezvous was the assassin of course.
From where she lounged, leaning against a pillar, she saw him get up from his table at the café, pay for his coffee and bring the hold all over to the bank of lockers. With her smartphone she took videos of him as he arrived and as he placed the hold all in one of the lockers; she took more as he closed the locker door, and placed the locker key in the top left-hand pocket of his overall jacket, close to his heart, effectively immune from a pickpocket.
As he left the station the girl followed him far enough to see him cut down a small alleyway, a shortcut back the way he had come. She called the number Izolda had given her and simply said into it ‘he’s turned down the alley as you said he would,’ and sent the videos she had taken of him hiding the locker key.
The last part of Izolda’s plan was going to be the most difficult to get right. She had originally thought that she would just go to the assassin’s apartment, shoot him there and take the key – simple as that. But there were a couple of snags to that plan, the most important of which was that it would establish a link between herself and the assassin which might be followed up later if anything went wrong. She decided that a virtually deserted alleyway was going to be the better bet as there would be no possible later link for a follow-up.
As he took his short-cut down the alley, he never even heard the shot Izolda fired. As he crumpled to the ground Izolda rushed forward, seemingly trying to help him as he fell. Fumbling as the weight of him took them both down onto the ground, she used this confusion both to hide her gun in one of her pockets and to extricate the key from his breast pocket.
‘Help, I think he’s fainted,’ she cried out as she began to get to her feet again. Though the alleyway was practically deserted, two large middle-aged ladies came rushing over to help her to her feet and to tend to the fallen man. By the time they found the blood pouring from a neat hole under the peak of his cap, Izolda had gone.
As chaos mounted back in the alleyway and police were called, Izolda went straight to the bank of lockers. She paid the young girl another sum of money, enough for several fixes for her addiction; she deleted her own mobile number from the girl’s smartphone along with the call log and the photograph of the assassin she had sent earlier. She then left the young girl, retrieved the hold all from the locker and took it, as instructed, straight to Komarov’s apartment - the first part of his takeover of Bazarov’s work neatly accomplished.
* * * * *
The president’s warning that the whole business had to be conducted without direct state involvement gave Komarov a couple of interesting challenges. The search for the Bazarov weapon – as Komarov thought of it at present – would be greatly enhanced by using the FSB’s formidable surveillance resources in Lubyanka Square and at the SVR’s HQ and he decided he would work out later the details of how he could still use the search facilities without implicating the state. He would need to be careful also about how much he told his number two at the office, Pavel Rost
ov.
Whilst Izolda went off on the job of getting hold of Bazarov’s files and laptop and disposing of his assassin, Komarov used the hour to give Silayev an overview of the president’s commission for the two of them. In the process, he hinted at the profits the two of them could make once they found and acquired the weapon – in addition to enhancing their standing with the president – a win-win proposition if ever there was one. And, of course, as in past collaborations, Silayev’s eye for a business opportunity instantly outweighed and problems that might arise in actually finding and stealing the damned thing.
In due course Izolda arrived at Komarov’s apartment with the assassin’s leather hold all and vital contents. Komarov explained the need for these to be held by Silayev and gave her the address. He then rang Silayev.
‘The files and the laptop I was telling you about,’ he said, ‘I’m sending over one of my people, Izolda Valik, with all of Bazarov’s material. I shouldn’t have to say this but I will. As these are absolute dynamite, they’re to be kept under your personal lock and key when you’re not actually using them, got that?’
‘Yeah, yeah, I got the message and, seriously, I do appreciate the delicacy and dangers attached to this project, believe me,’ said Silayev.
‘Good. We need to meet urgently but before we do, I want you to go through as much of this material as you can. You’ll no doubt need your top IT man to explain the technical bits but, by the time we meet, I need you to be sufficiently familiar with it all to give me a thorough explanation of the weapon in language I can understand – no complex computer-speak, all right?’
‘I’ll get onto that as soon as Miss Valik gets here with his files,’ said Silayev. ‘And as to meeting later to go over it all, if you’re not doing anything for dinner, why don’t I book us a table at our usual Italian here on Tverskaya?’
‘Will that give you time to absorb enough from the files to give me a worthwhile briefing?’
‘Sure it will,’ replied Silayev. ‘I’ll also give some thought about how we might progress the search for this thing. So I’ll book for later rather than our usual time. Will nine do?’
‘Nine will suit fine,’ replied Komarov, ‘see you then at Romano’s.’
In their haste to make a quick start, the rush had caused Komarov to overlook one small but critical warning to Silayev. When doing major surveillance sweeps or searching the internet and telecoms channels, search professionals at the FSB and the SVR were always careful to disguise their searches so that the surveillance teams of the West – notably the NSA in the US and GCHQ in the UK – could not identify who it was who was doing the searches. This was a difficult art and one that did not even occur to Silayev and his team.
So, as Silayev and his people trawled through Bazarov’s material they quite frequently did internet searches on some of the phrases and names they found in the files. One of the names that cropped up frequently was the name the developers of the weapon had given to their invention. Athena was the name they had chosen – the goddess of war in ancient Greece.
Several times they did searches on the Athena name, linking it to where it was originally developed and by whom. This was all valuable information for Silayev and would make good sense when passed on this evening to Komarov. The trouble was, both the NSA and GCHQ spotted these searches being carried out, and alarm bells began to ring in a number of places.
Chapter 3
Friday 4 March, midday
Towneley-Vassilov Bank,
Isle of Man
Angus Macrae glanced at the small gilt travelling clock on the desk. The charter helicopter would be here to take them north within the hour. He stretched across to the desk he pressed one of the buttons on the intercom. He asked his Secretary-cum-PA Kim Bradley to come in and almost as though she had been waiting by the door, she glided into the room, her usual swift efficient self. Always prettily dressed, and usually smiling, her large blue eyes dominated her round face framed in brown curls; but her pleasant outward, almost country-girl look masked a quick intellect and a penchant for the martial arts.
‘Sorry for this slight panic,’ he said as he waved for her sit down opposite. ‘I think I must have been naïve to think that launching Athena could be done quietly.’
Kim could see this was bothering him, his pleasant, angular face spoiled at this moment by a deep frown. Uncharacteristically, his mouse-colored hair was unkempt and she immediately saw why as, obviously not for the first time, he ran his fingers through it in a distracted manner.
‘I should have seen it coming, stands to reason doesn’t it, Athena’s so powerful it was just a question of time before it would become a problem to protect it properly. I rang for you because I now need to bring you fully on board with the whole project.’
‘I’d welcome that,’ said Kim. ‘Let’s face it now that the bank’s set up here and running so smoothly, I like a new challenge and as I speak to the team up on Craithe so often it seems a natural move.’
‘Glad you see it that way, because there’s a lot for you to learn and this morning’s news makes that all the more urgent,’ said Angus. ‘You’ve done a great job helping me setting up the Towneley Vassilov Bank and your fluent Russian was essential in that process, but I now need to put you through an emergency course on Athena – get you completely familiar with it. To make this easier I’ve asked Human Resources to look for an assistant for you to take the Banking side of things off you. Sorry to do this at such short notice, but there’s no alternative.
‘That’s fine; where do we begin?’ asked Kim, ‘I mean it took the Craithe team eighteen months of intense research to develop it. I can’t possibly learn all of that, so how much do I need to know to be of genuine help to you?’
‘I think we could get away with just an overview to start with,’ replied Angus. ‘Right now we’ve got time for me to give you that and what Athena can do; some of the technical content you can get from the professor when we get up to Craithe later today.’
‘Good. I’d better scribble a few notes so that I can go back over things or ask questions later.’
‘Okay get a pad then,’ replied Angus and as she went off, he considered how he might condense so much into the short time available. As soon as she returned and was seated attentively opposite, he began,
‘Around a year ago some of the World’s top investors said that their worst fear for the world’s financial stability was the possibility of cyber-attack on a big bank,’ said Angus. ‘Due to the interdependence between all the banks, the loans and deals between them, if an attack on even one big bank that brought it down, in turn it would result in bringing the whole lot of them crashing down like a collapsing house of cards.’
‘Yes, I’ve seen reports of that in the press as well,’ said Kim.
‘Since these fears were first voiced, State-backed teams of hackers are getting ever more sophisticated – think of the high-tech company Sony getting hacked into by the North Koreans not long ago. There are others too, Mafia and organized crime are all over the internet and now we’ve also got terrorist organisations getting highly proficient at hacking operations – look at Syria.’
‘Yes, the Prime Minister mentioned that just last week didn’t he,’ mentioned Kim.
‘That’s right, so it’s a dangerous world out there,’ said Angus. ‘But, getting back to Athena, you know my uncle, Sir Jeremy Towneley head of the Towneley Bank don’t you?’
‘Yes, I’ve met him a couple of times.’
‘Well he was damned if a collapsing pack of cards disaster for all the banks also meant the end of three-hundred and fifty years of the Towneley Bank. But instead of spending God knows how much on cyber-attack defenses like most other banks, he decided to go onto the offensive – to fight back at hackers. With me so far?’
‘I am,’ said Kim finishing a note, ‘what kind of offensive?’
‘He put together a remarkable team to build something that would deliver a fatal blow to any attacker – that team i
s the virtually the same one now at Craithe Castle today.’
‘It was you who moved them there wasn’t it?
‘It was. In developing what is now Athena, the professor and our secretive conglomerate partners persuaded us to get a quantum computer – they also helped to pay for it – twelve million pounds’ worth. Development then accelerated almost got out of control. In fact, the team developed not just a programme that would counter-attack bank hackers and destroy their equipment, almost as a side effect, its counter-attacking capability made it one of the most potent weapons of war ever devised.’
‘Weapon of War? Really?’
‘Yes,’ replied Angus. ‘Just imagine it – because of the quantum computer technology Athena is able to hack into the computer controls of virtually any facility you care to name - that could be power grids, air traffic controls, all are easy for Athena to get into because of the way quantum technology reads digital encryption. It can bypass any existing digital defense system – almost instantaneously. This makes it potentially devastating as a weapon, I mean how long could a country defy an enemy who was able to black out the electricity supplies to a couple of major cities? Or just imagine the horror of someone using Athena to shut down air traffic control at one airport and shortly after that, shutting down the other airports to which aircraft had just been diverted.’
‘But that would mean…’ said Kim pausing while the picture of aircraft heading off with nowhere to land. ‘But surely, with something as revolutionary as this, hasn’t the government commandeered it, taken it over …I don’t know, told you it needed to become part of the country’s defense strategy?’
‘Yes, they did. They even tried to do so sneakily by getting my old university friend Freddy Briston to talk to me about it.’
‘The Chancellor of the Exchequer?’ said Kim, ‘but it’s not even his domain – I mean I could understand if the Secretary of State for Defense … but…’
The President's Fixer: (A Financial and Conspiracies Thriller – a prequel to the Legacy Thriller Series) Page 2