Beijing Smog

by Ian Williams

  He’d told them they had to look at everyday stuff in a different way. That a car wasn’t a car anymore. It was a computer with an engine and four wheels. A smartphone was a computer that happened to make calls. It was the same for connected cameras, fitness trackers, kettles and fridges. Even pacemakers and toys.

  They were all computers, and they were all online.

  “All of them can spy on you. Some of them could kill you,” he’d said.

  He’d looked around at blank faces, at least those not looking out the window at the consulate’s rock garden and carp pond.

  “And you want to know who’s most vulnerable? Just take a look at the Communist Party’s five-year plan. The last one named energy, healthcare and steel as areas they wanted to develop. And guess what? That’s where we saw most US companies hacked. And suddenly Chinese companies are coming out with technology which looks a lot like ours.”

  He’d paused for questions.

  One lonely arm at the back; its owner had identified himself as a man called Bud from Alabama. He’d asked whether this wasn’t all a bit paranoid and whether a good anti-virus would do the trick. Drayton had said that a little paranoia wasn’t a bad thing, and that an anti-virus looked at known threats, not new ones. And that it was the unknown ones that were really worrying.

  Bud and another man then left, saying thanks, but they had a meeting to get to. Drayton had said no problem, he fully understood, but hating them for walking out on him like that and thinking about fingernail extraction, thumb-screws or something worse.

  He’d ploughed on.

  “Now they’re talking about green tech, renewables, defence, health. And you know what that means?”

  More blank faces. At least they’d had no phones to play with. They’d had to surrender them as a security measure on the way in.

  “If you are into any of that, or any advanced technical processes for that matter, then you’ve got to bolster your cyber defences. And even if you’re not into any of that, you’ve still gotta be vigilant.”

  He’d told them if somebody stole from you something physical, cardboard files say, then you’d know about that. Maybe the thief hits you on the head and runs off. You’d certainly be aware of that. But with cyber you may never know it’s gone, at least not for months or longer, only after your plans have been copied, and some Chinese company has brought your Big Idea to market before you.

  “And even then, it’s hard to prove who stole it,” he’d said. “Digital forensics is tough.”

  He’d then gone through a bunch of defences, like never opening attachments you’re not really confident about, and absolutely avoiding memory sticks, since they’re the most common ways of passing on an infection. He said both might contain malware, the weapons that can take over computers, suck out information. He’d explained about using a VPN, software to disguise where you are at and access banned sites.

  “And cover the camera on your computer. They can take over that too,” he’d said, asking them to tell him about their own experiences, but just seeing more blank faces.

  “You won’t make this go away by pretending it isn’t happening,” he’d said to the group, which appeared to be doing its best to pretend his talk wasn’t happening.

  He’d just felt like screaming, come on, guys, have you not listened to a fucking word I‘ve said?

  He ordered another Airpocalypse Pale Ale. Forty per cent off this time, since the air quality reading had just passed another fifty-point threshold. He’d be drinking for free soon if this continued.

  He’d asked how many of them used encryption, and they just looked at him like he was speaking some ancient language or was describing a mind-bending drug. He’d said to think of encryption as like Ironman or the Hulk. Pretty menacing, but basically on your side. Which got a smile or two, kind of deranged smiles that got Drayton thinking that maybe they’d been popping their own mind-benders.

  He’d finished his talk with another plea to share their experiences, absolutely confident they wouldn’t. They might whinge to the consulate or the Chamber of Commerce privately, but he knew that few would want to jeopardise their relationship with Chinese partners who in many cases were the ones ripping off their secrets.

  And if they had been attacked they wouldn’t want to advertise their cyber stupidity to rivals or clients.

  It made no sense to Drayton.

  Right at the end, as a kind of experiment, he’d asked the group how many of them did social media. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, that kind stuff. Just a handful of arms went up, and with no great enthusiasm. Sure, they were an older crowd, but when they didn’t even do social media, how would they even begin to grasp the threat from bad guys breaking into their computers?

  He was sure glad that was over, and now tried to focus on his beer and a sorry-looking plate of fries. Then his iPhone rang, the Mission Impossible theme. At first he ignored it, switching the phone to silent, and went back to the beer. But moments later the phone rang again, and this time he took the call.

  “Hey Debbie babe, what’s up? Must be kinda early over there.”

  “Yeah, it’s real early, Chuck, but every other time I’ve tried you your phone was off. It’s always off, or else you just don’t pick up.”

  Drayton said sorry, he’d been busy, and if it was about the house, the roof stuff, then to go ahead and get that fixed and he’d get the money over by the end of the week.

  “That’s what you said last week, Chuck, and these roof guys they want to see money up front before they start climbing up there.”

  She said the roof would never have been damaged if he’d sorted the trees, cutting them back, like she asked, that it was an accident waiting to happen. She said that all it took was one winter storm, the branches hammering the roof.

  Drayton said, sure, he’d deal with it, but that he really needed to go now, that he was in the middle of something.

  “Oh yeah, and what’s her name? The wife of a Chinese Government minister this time, or are you sticking with the Germans? You cooking up another diplomatic incident there, Chuck? Just let me know before I read about it in the papers.”

  Drayton did his best to laugh that off, telling her about the beer that was going down in price because of the shitty air, but she cut him off and said, “Fuck you, Chuck.”

  “You have a nice day too,” Drayton said, but by the time he got the words out she’d already hung up.

  They’d been separated for more than a year, Debbie still living in the Maryland house they’d once shared. She sent the big bills his way, and he always dragged his heels on paying them. It had become a kind of ritual. And every conversation they had, whether it was trees, the roof or whatever, always came back to Berlin. And Berlin had been a mess, that was for sure.

  They’d been together in the German capital, where Drayton was doing a grunt political job at the embassy. She had elderly parents back home, and when her mother fell ill she’d returned to the States, leaving Drayton in Berlin alone, which was when the trouble started.

  Soon after Debbie left, he’d met the wife of the German Energy Minister. She was a couple of years younger than Drayton, but almost twenty-five years younger than her husband. And she wasted no time in telling Drayton that she found the Minister a complete bore.

  She busied herself with charities that organised field trips for disadvantaged kids. The embassy also gave support, sponsoring competitions and awarding the winners free trips to the States, figuring it might also help relations with the Minister, who was considering buying American turbines for a new generation of gas-fuelled power stations.

  Drayton was told to stay close to the wife, which he did, joining her and one group of kids on a field trip to the Black Forest, equipped with specially donated US-made energy-efficient tents and stoves and low-water solar-powered showers. But there was
nothing energy saving about Drayton’s encounter with Frau Schoenberg in her tent at the end of the second day’s trek and after one and half bottles of Riesling, and which left the breathable, self-inflating mattress and groundsheet flattened and in tatters.

  Unfortunately for Drayton and Frau Schoenberg, the kids quickly realised what was going on. It was hard to ignore, and a good deal more entertaining than the trekking. And they knew a valuable story when they saw one.

  Frau Schoenberg’s husband, the Energy Minister, had political enemies, and there was strong opposition to the turbine deal. So it wasn’t long before the story of his wife’s romp through the Black Forest with an American diplomat in tow was front-page news in Germany’s tabloid newspapers, together with grainy photographs of the couple checking out the low-water solar-powered shower together, and apparently liking what they found.

  American newspapers picked up the German stories, beginning with the New York Post, which is when Debbie first discovered her husband’s recently found attraction to the great outdoors. He was soon on a plane back to Washington DC in disgrace, and she was consulting her lawyer.

  That had seemed to put an end to a hardly promising diplomatic career, as well as his second marriage.

  He’d been given a pen-pushing job on the Asia desk at the State Department in DC, which wasn’t busy and gave him plenty of time at his computer or on his phone, learning the digital ropes, though mostly shooting people and blowing them up in the latest versions of Grand Theft Auto and Global Offensive. He’d taken a course in coding, computer programming, thinking he could then make his own games and maybe come up with the next blockbuster. It was just a matter of creating sufficient mayhem. That sort of shit. He’d done another in cyber security, because that sounded cool, and he figured it was the kind of stuff that might give him a way out of government service and into a real job.

  When the State Department itself got hacked and somebody hauled off a pile of payroll data, Drayton was on hand with some practical advice, much along the lines of the things he’d told the seminar at the consulate that day. He instantly became an expert, the go-to guy on cyber security, since nobody else had a clue, and was despatched within weeks to China, the digital front line as far as the spooks were concerned, and where they suspected the payroll data had ended up.

  Inside the consulate, Drayton was known simply as the Cyber Guy. Which was kind of cool at first. But he soon learned it meant everything and nothing. They all agreed that what he did was extremely important, without quite understanding what that was. And he reckoned that when his co-workers couldn’t grasp it, what hope was there of convincing American businesses to take him more seriously?

  He finished his beer, paid and headed back towards the consulate, making another call as he walked. It just rang out, so he called again. This time Sakura picked up, saying, “Yes, hello”, sounding real formal, before slipping back into Japanese, continuing some other conversation.

  He just loved that accent, and listened for a couple of minutes before saying, “Hey Sakura, it’s me, Chuck, how you doing?”

  She ignored him for a while longer and then she said, “Chuck, hi. I can’t really speak now. I told you I have a trade delegation in town today and not to bother me. I’ll get back to you.”

  He said yeah, let’s talk later, and maybe they could get together that evening, have some fun. It had been a tough day.

  “I’m busy this evening, Chuck. I have stuff going on. I’ll call you when I’m free.”

  Then she hung up.

  It was like, get off my case, I’ll see you when I want to see you.

  She worked for a Japanese business group, and he’d been seeing her for a couple of months, but it was mostly on her terms and when she wanted. The way Drayton saw it, a bit more engagement wouldn’t do any harm, but then after the Berlin mess and all the crap he was getting from Debbie it mostly suited him just fine.

  He loosened his tie as he walked. It was a cool day, but he was more used to an open neck. He’d put on a suit for the seminar, which he hated to do, dusting off an old two-piece that he hadn’t touched in weeks, discovering that he could barely get into the trousers, which he put down to too much Peking Duck during his visit to the capital. Or all those stupid banquets while he was looking after that maestro.

  He made a mental note to get a bit more exercise. Maybe start walking home from the pub. Still he didn’t think he was in bad shape for a man of forty-one. He much preferred a well-worn sports jacket, black jeans and an open-neck shirt, figuring he was going to set his own dress code, because isn’t that what cyber guys did? He’d grown his hair a bit too, brushing it back, thinking that was a geekier look. The glasses with their thick black rims might have to go next. They were decidedly pre-cyber.

  He arrived back at the consulate with twenty minutes to spare before a National Security Agency briefing, to get the latest on the hacking stuff, enough time to collect some papers from his office at the back of the old mansion. He then headed down a stairway that led to the wine cellar that was now the secure communications room, the Bubble Room. It was behind two heavy metal doors with biometric scanners. One read his retina, another his thumb and forefinger. Security cameras and motion detectors monitored the stairs.

  The room was long and narrow, a rectangular table running down the centre with chairs around the table. There were more chairs along the walls, where the original brick of the cellar had been covered with a special membrane to block electronic signals. Several big screens hung at the front of the room, though only one was live, showing another conference table at which two men and a woman were taking seats. A sign under the screen read, “Fort Meade”, the NSA.

  There were three others in the room with Drayton. The CIA’s Shanghai Station Chief, a liaison officer from the FBI and the man called Dave, who’d come down from Beijing and still had only one name.

  While they were waiting to get started, Drayton asked Dave about all the fuss at the Egg, whether they’d figured out what had actually happened that evening.

  “Nothing. Absolutely nothing. At least that’s what the Ambassador was told by his Chinese Government sources,” said Dave.

  “They told him nothing, or they told him nothing happened?”

  “Both, I suspect.”

  “But there were photos online of armoured vehicles,” Drayton said.

  “The Ambassador says they’re probably fake,” Dave said. “One even showed tanks in a desert, but they turned out to be frigging American tanks. In Iraq. He called it the internet rumour mill on steroids.”

  “But something happened,” Drayton said.

  “Bomb scare maybe. Perhaps a technical thing. Who knows? But the Ambassador’s satisfied it wasn’t a big deal.”

  “All pretty odd though.”

  “The funniest thing was the maestro,” Dave said. “Went ballistic when they stopped his show at the interval, then wouldn’t let anybody out of the hall. There’s a video online. Take a look.”

  Drayton said he’d seen it and almost felt sorry for the guy.

  “Well, you’re gonna love this,” said Dave, tapping a file in front of him as the picture on the big screen flickered a bit then stabilised. They all confirmed they could see and hear each other.

  One of the men in Fort Meade said digital forensics was an inexact science, that a lot of the attacks on American businesses had been routed through computers in Canada and Europe, which was a challenge. But he said the hackers hadn’t covered their tracks well.

  He said the digital fingerprints on the maestro’s computer were the same as those they’d found on bigger attacks, but even clearer, that the hacking came from the same source. Then he showed a picture. It was fuzzy, but it was clearly a face, a thin middle-aged face with closely cropped hair. Military-looking. Staring at the camera. Dave had a copy in his file, which he passed to Drayton.


  “This is one of our hackers,” said Dave, looking smug, enjoying the confusion on Drayton’s face.

  “Before we returned the laptop to the maestro we added a bit of our own spyware, which we embedded in a file we created called Notes on Ambassador Meeting.”

  The woman on the Fort Meade screen then said the decoy, as she called it, had worked well. She said that when the hackers went back into the maestro’s computer they couldn’t resist opening that file, which then infected the hackers’ computer, taking control of their camera.

  “So this is our man?” said Drayton, looking at the photograph.

  “Well, one of them,” Dave said.

  “Cool,” said Drayton. “Does the maestro know?”

  “He doesn’t,” said Dave. “I don’t think he was in a mood to be helpful. But he probably won’t notice. His computer’s a mess. He doesn’t even have the most basic security. And we can delete the decoy remotely if we need to.

  “And there’s another thing,” Dave said. “The maestro had photographs on his computer that shouldn’t have been there. He’s into some pretty weird stuff. Likes to party, dress up and take a bit of discipline when he’s not waving his baton around on stage.”

  “He kept photos like that on his computer?” Drayton said.

  “Actually they’d been deleted, but we recovered them pretty easily. Let’s just call it an extra insurance policy should Mr Abramovich feel like complaining.”

  And for the second time that evening, Drayton almost felt sorry for the maestro. Almost.

  Then one of the men on the Fort Meade screen showed a bunch of spiderweb-like drawings, and there was more techno-talk about routing and IP addresses. Drayton nodded like he understood. Then the NSA guy said the bottom line was they’d traced the attacks to a building in an area at the north end of the Bund. Satellite images showed it to be a white low-rise, maybe a warehouse, in an old neighbourhood close to the river. He showed the images on the screen.

  “We think this is where we’ll find our man. We need you to find out more about that place, Chuck. We think we know what they’re doing there. But who are those people?”