Pinkerton had clearly read William’s short email report. Sat behind his desk perched on an old green leather chair, he stared at William across the small office and shook his head. In his late fifties, Pinkerton was tall and thin, he had short grey hair. From obvious good breeding and good schooling – Eton, then on to Cambridge, Trinity college, of course – he had the look of an academic and dressed like an aristocrat. Originally a linguist for the Secret Intelligence Service, he had quickly moved up the ranks and had been in a comfortable senior position at F-Branch for some years.
‘Sir, I . . .’ William began, feeling like a naughty child for the first time in a long while.
‘Just sit down, Agent Temple,’ Pinkerton commanded.
William had seen many like Pinkerton in the Army; he readily believed that there was a factory churning them out somewhere in Wiltshire. Bright and articulate, they climbed the ladder fast and strutted around like they owned the place. Spoilt blue-blooded types, they were the kind of chinless wonders who went straight from a leading university into the service and reached the top jobs without ever having done a real day’s work, or having taken a real risk themselves. William doubted they would last five minutes on their own in the real world.
‘I was attacked, sir, totally unprovoked. Probably by one of the terrorists,’ William replied calmly.
‘Oh, they’re terrorists are they? Well, that’s all right then. But we’ll never know now, will we, because of your damned trigger happy finger.’ Pinkerton shut his eyes and took a deep breath; he let the air out slowly. ‘I do you hope your little incident in the Army has not affected your judgement. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder can affect people in many different ways. Believe me, I know. I’ve seen my fair share of physiologically damaged operators in my time.’
If Pinkerton had been closer to William he would have seen his pupils dilate and the veins in his neck throb. He may even have received a firm punch in the face. But William put his emotions in check before he answered.
‘I can assure you that there is nothing wrong with my judgement, sir,’ he managed to say calmly. William’s eyes bored into Pinkerton’s as if he was trying to read the man’s mind. ‘I’ve been . . . how do they put it . . . assessed, by a service physiologist.’
Pinkerton eyed him carefully before responding. He sat back and clasped his hands together. ‘All I’m saying is be careful in future. You’re new here, it’s only natural that you will be watched and judged more than the rest. If there are any problems – drink, drugs, women – I want to know about them before someone else tells me about them.’
‘There are none,’ William said firmly holding Pinkerton’s gaze. ‘Shall I update you on the job at hand?’
Pinkerton nodded. William reached into his jacket and took out the phone and wallet that he had taken from the corpse and laid them on the desk.
‘I relieved the suspect of these.’
Pinkerton peered over his glasses and eyed the objects with suspicion. He stroked his chin. ‘Well at least it’s something,’ he said. ‘But I don’t recall you mentioning this in your CX report. Which, by the way, was full of grammatical errors. Attention to detail Agent Temple, attention to detail. The way a report is written is as important as its content. Nothing should be left out, and nothing should be left open to interpretation.’
‘I was pushed for time, sir. And I was a little . . . perturbed.’
‘No excuse, you’ve seen plenty of action before, I’ve read your career history,’ Pinkerton stated coldly. ‘Anyway, as I was saying, don’t underestimate the importance of accurate grammar. Just remember the Jameson Raid of 1896.’
‘Noted, sir,’ William said, although he hadn’t a clue what the Jameson Raid was and had no intention of taking any English courses to brush up on his grammar either. ‘There was a lot of cash in the wallet, but no credit cards or IDs. There may be some fingerprints, but my money is on the phone. There’s bound to be something interesting in there once our techies get their hands on it.’
‘I hope you took the battery out of it,’ Pinkerton said, nodding to the sleek black device on the table.
‘Afraid you can’t with these ones, sir. But I did power it down, it’s been made safe. I’ll never forget a little job in Afghanistan I did with the Americans.’ William recalled the hunt for a prominent al-Qaeda commander. After much difficulty, and at great cost to the tax payer, he had managed to get the target’s mobile phone number from an informant. The CIA tracked the phone by triangulation of its signal, and then followed it with an unmanned spy plane fitted with a single Hellfire missile. With great hilarity the CIA officer, a thuggish former US Marine, phoned the terrorist to say goodbye just seconds before the missile struck.
‘I also found this.’ William held out a tiny white pill. ‘It was hidden in the wallet. I doubt it’s a fresh mint, but best not to taste it to find out.’
‘A suicide pill? I’ll be damned.’ Pinkerton said with a frown and inspected the deceptively innocent looking item. ‘Cyanide would explain the rapid demise of our informant.’
‘It looks that way. The lab will analyse it, we’ll know for sure soon enough. And with any luck they may be able to extract a sample of the contaminated champagne from my handkerchief too for a comparison.’
‘And the micro-chip?’
William produced the tiny black memory chip and placed it on the desk. ‘It’s a micro memory chip, the kind used in phones.’
‘Hmm. So our virology professor was coerced into doing some unknown work for an unknown group who blackmailed him. He was silenced by poison and they tried to silence you.’
William regarded Pinkerton, unable to read him. ‘Yes, it looks that way, sir. But if he is right, then something unpleasant is going to happen soon, maybe in the next few days.’
Pinkerton sat back in his chair and threw his arms back and rested them on his head. ‘Get the phone and the chip to the duty TSU and get back to me as soon as you know something useful. In the meantime, I’ll see what I can dig up on the professor. I’ll also have a sniff around for any chatter in the community about virus plots.’
Pinkerton replaced his reading glasses and placed his hand on his mouse, an indication that the meeting was over. Without further ado, William stood up and strode over to the door.
‘One more thing,’ Pinkerton added as William reached the exit. ‘This investigation will remain F-Branch eyes only for the time being. Nothing must leave these walls without my authorisation.’
‘Understood, sir.’
‘And William?’
‘Sir?’
‘Well done.’
*
In the basement lab, two floors under the main building, William strolled through the cellar-like corridors and found the man he was looking for in one of the state-of-the-art computer rooms.
Ollie Slack was a long haired, sandal wearing techie that William had met during one of his induction briefings. In his early twenties, he was a particularly talented hacker who had been seconded to F-Branch from GCHQ. Several members of the Technical Support Unit were drawn from the ranks of GCHQ where the country’s leading code-breakers, hackers and forensic computing specialists, quietly protected the nation’s secrets – and broke into everyone else’s. A few of their best in each discipline were periodically hand-picked for F-Branch service, and between them there was no end to their technical wizardry. If it had a micro-chip they could hack it, crack it, and uncover its secrets.
‘Ollie! Just the man. How are you?’ William said thrusting his hand outwards.
‘Hi. William, isn’t it?’ Ollie took the proffered hand and shook it vigorously. ‘Settling in I hear, making your mark.’
‘News travels fast,’ he said with a wry smile. ‘I need a favour.’
‘Always happy to help.’
William produced the phone and the tiny memory chip and held them out to Ollie. ‘I need these looked at.’
‘Wonderful,’ Ollie exclaimed and keenly took possession of them. ‘
You’ve come to the right place. Follow me.’
They headed straight for the Faraday room, a specially sealed room protected from any incoming or outgoing radio signals. Phones and other communication equipment could be switched on safely without fear of any unwanted signals being sent to or from the devices. Ollie hooked the phone up to a computer and switched it on. He was met with a passcode.
‘Not a problem,’ he said. ‘I have a way around that.’
Using forensic software specially designed for modern phones, he copied all the data stored on its hard drive, internal memory and SIM card. Once done, he switched the phone off again, and bagged and tagged it. After, they returned to Ollie’s workstation in the lab.
There wasn’t much Ollie Slack couldn’t do with a computer. His fascination in computing had started in his teenage years and he quickly earned himself a reputation. The first incident happened after he took a dislike to an arrogant teacher at his secondary school. When taking attendance at class the teacher would sarcastically call out, “Slack by name”. Taking quiet revenge, Ollie hacked into the teacher’s school email account and caused him a near nervous breakdown by faking an erotic email to the headmistress. By the time he had started at university, Ollie had become an accomplished cyber-warrior. It always amazed and surprised him how many things had IP addresses – the computer equivalent of a phone number that allowed communication over the Internet. Phones, fridges, TVs, planes, cruise missiles, submarines; the list was dangerously endless. And if it had an IP address, it was a good bet that Ollie could hack into it. During an anti-war protest when Ollie was at university he ‘did his bit’ by hacking into a defence satellite and caused a major national security alert. After a highly embarrassing, and hushed up, MI5 investigation, GCHQ offered him a job. That kind of talent, in their opinion, should be put to good use. With little real choice, Ollie accepted. He convinced himself that he would be able to prevent further conflicts and unnecessary deaths. It was also a great wage and it kept him out of jail. In his few years in the job he had hacked into foreign governments and stolen sensitive information, tricked enemy radar systems and had even planted an untraceable spying Trojan within a rogue state’s nuclear development programme. He was in his element.
‘Right, let’s see what we have here,’ Ollie said getting to work with the forensic software. He worked his way rapidly around the program, it was like second nature. Most of the searches were standardised and all he had to do was tick the boxes and click on run. It scanned the data in seconds and the results were presented on a tab within the program.
‘It has a British phone number,’ he said. ‘I’ll just check it on the subscribers’ database . . .’ He opened another database and searched for the number, when the result came up he tutted. ‘Unregistered pre-pay, totally anonymous. Always a favourite.’
‘Is there a call history?’ William asked.
Using a database that collated call data from all the phone companies, Ollie clicked away. He frowned at the results. ‘That’s odd, there’s nothing, no calls at all, not incoming nor outgoing.’
‘That’s disappointing. Is there anything else that we can use?’
‘Let me go back to the phone data. I think I know what’s going on.’ Ollie navigated to the forensic results and scanned through them.
‘Bingo!’ he said.
‘What is it?’ William leaned in towards the screen.
‘Smart-phones are more like tiny laptops than phones,’ Ollie explained. ‘Look, see that? He’s got the Skype application on there, an Internet phone application. He’s been making secure, Internet calls instead of normal phone calls.’
William nodded, he recognised the icon. ‘I’ve come across that one before, it’s popular with the terrorists.’
‘Secure communications free for all to use across the globe. Sheer genius,’ Ollie moaned sarcastically. ‘Data, voice and video is sent over the Internet using strong encryption. Even if you could tap the line, which you can’t – not in the usual way anyway – you wouldn’t be able to listen in. It’s very clever stuff, a well written program.’
‘But you have a way in?’ William inquired, always hopeful. ‘A government back door?’
Ollie laughed. ‘Ha. No, oh no. If there were any back doors in public encryption algorithms the hackers would find them, publish the fact, and no one would ever use the product. No, there really aren’t such things these days.’
‘Pity.’
Ollie looked over his shoulder, then leaned towards William and quietly said, ‘But there may be something I can do, although officially we’ll need Home Office approval.’
‘Officially?’
Ollie smiled. ‘There will be a list of the suspect’s Skype contacts in there. Let’s have a closer look.’ After Ollie extracted the data a list of names and email addresses came up on the screen.
‘Hades, Asclepius, Erebus and Nike,’ William said reading the names out.
‘Unusual names. And the owner of the phone used the name Morpheus to log in. Codenames?’ Ollie proposed.
‘Probably. The informant asked us to use the codename Asclepius to contact him. Evidently he’s the Greek god of medicine.’ William wondered why this name would be on the terrorist’s phone.
‘The King of the dead,’ Ollie said.
‘Come again?’
‘Hades was the brother of Zeus, gods of ancient Greece. He was lord of the underworld and ruled over the dead. He was also the god of wealth, greedy and unpitying.’
‘Can you trace the other contacts? Find the owners real names or numbers?’
‘Probably not,’ Ollie shook his head and screwed his face up. ‘I’ll try my luck with the email addresses, but these accounts can be set up without any proper identification – totally anonymous.’
‘So what can you do then?’ William asked, hopeful that Ollie had some technical wizardry up his sleeve. ‘There must be something.’
‘There may well be something, my friend,’ he said grinning. ‘If all the contacts are using a smartphone then it should be easy to hack the actual phones themselves. There’s usually no additional security on smart-phones, it should be child’s play with tools I have. Even if they’re using PCs instead of phones I shouldn’t have any major problems, I get advanced access to all sorts of exploitable vulnerabilities. There’s also something else I can do to trace the IP addresses from the Skype calls he’s made.’
‘Do it.’ William encouraged. He had no doubt Ollie had the skills, and importantly, the drive to do a thorough job. ‘But first, I want to see what’s on that memory chip.’
After making an exact copy of all the data on the chip, Ollie analysed the contents of the copy using another forensic tool. He opened the data viewer on the screen and sifted through the contents of the chip.
‘It’s just a jumble of random characters, William. I recognise what it is though. All the files are encrypted,’ Ollie said. ‘We’ll need to crack the passwords. It may take a while, but I have access to a pretty powerful supercomputer.’
‘I think the agent was about to explain what the password was before he was silenced,’ William said.
Ollie regarded William and wondered what it would be like to be on the front line in the thick of the action. Dangerous, was his main thought, frightening, was another. He was more than happy to be safely hidden away in the depths of his high-tech fortress.
‘I’m sure he said something like, “it’s the name of this . . .”, before it was lights out.’
‘The name of this what?’ Ollie picked up a pencil and chewed on the end of it.
‘This city, this country, this building?’
Working fast, Ollie typed away on his keyboard trying out various combinations of the most commonly used passwords. It always amazed, and frightened him how often they worked. Governments spent millions developing strong, uncrackable encryption algorithms, only for their dozy staff to choose ridiculously simple passwords. But the professor had been more careful. Ollie tried Vien
na, Austria and Wiener Staatsoper.
‘No luck,’ he said after exhausting his mental list. ‘It could be anything. Let me crack it, it won’t take long, trust me. I can extract the hashed key and use our terabytes of rainbow tables to find the corresponding password.’ There was little Ollie enjoyed more than the challenge of password cracking. Not that it was too much of a challenge with the computing power he had available to him. Encryption worked like a lock and key, to open the lock you had to have the correct key: the password. And with the kind of supercomputers F-Branch had, passwords that would previously have taken years to crack could now be found in days or even hours.
But William’s very own supercomputer was processing the possibilities. People were predictable, he knew, and he was confident that the professor, the opera loving virologist . . .
‘Try Don Giovanni,’ William suggested.
After a few tries of the words with and without spaces and capitals, one of the files opened up on the screen. Ollie beamed. ‘Nice one,’ he said.
‘The name of this Opera,’ William said thoughtfully. ‘That’s what he was going to say.’
After decrypting all the files, Ollie scanned through the forensic program and tried to make sense of it all. He tapped away harshly at the keyboard, frowning and cursing under his breath as he did so.
‘Is there a problem?’ William asked.
After a barrage of more curses, Ollie threw his chewed pencil at the screen. ‘Damn it! It doesn’t make sense. There must be another level of encryption. They’re data files all right, but the entire data is just a series of letters. There’s thousands of lines of them all consisting of the same four letters, G, C, A and U. Sorry, but this is going to take a while to figure out. I’ve never seen anything like it. Well, except for Enigma, but that used all the letters of the alphabet, not just four of them.’
‘Wait a minute, Ollie. The professor’s work involved gene sequences,’ William said. In his mind the pieces were falling into place. ‘He dissected the genetic codes of lethal viruses.’
Ollie brightened up, he was following William’s train of thought.
The Secret of Hades' Eden Page 5