Official Secrets

by Andrew Raymond

  Trevor Billington-Smith of GCHQ fumbled through his notes. ‘There may have been something, let me see...’

  The others exchanged troubled glances. It was well-known in Westminster that Trevor was not the most technically astute for a GCHQ Director. Typically a position taken by a civil servant, Trevor was a rarity in being more of a political appointee. Outspoken in favouring security over privacy, he’d ascended first as a ministerial advisor, and was also somewhat derided in higher political circles for his obsession with gaining a knighthood. Every GCHQ director bar one since the 1940s had received one, and seemed to concern Billington-Smith more than any other issue.

  Sir Teddy King of MI5 stepped in. ‘We haven’t seen evidence of suspicious online behaviour, Prime Minister. I will say, though, that you don’t get your hands on the sort of materials required for a bomb like this without help.’

  ‘How the hell did he get into Downing Street in the first place?’ Curtis asked. ‘The entire country assumed we would have made that place impregnable.’

  Pringle switched the screen to a picture of a Downing Street press pass for a BBC employee, with a passport photo on it. ‘This is Riz Rizzaq, a BBC cameraman. His body was found at his flat in Hackney two hours ago, in what we thought was a burglary-gone-wrong. We found this,’ Pringle switched to a shot of a charred press pass with Rizzaq’s name on it, but a different photo. ‘It was practically at the gates of Downing Street. A reporter at the scene, Sophie Barker, has given a statement that her cameraman, Mr Rizzaq, didn’t show up as planned for the press conference. She later saw the bomber, identified as Mufaza, wearing this ID.’

  ‘So they killed Rizzaq and stole his ID,’ Bannatyne said as if that were the end of the matter.

  ‘But how did they get Mufaza’s photo on Rizzaq’s ID?’ Hawkes asked.

  Pringle switched to a scene-of-crime photograph from Rizzaq’s flat, then zoomed in on Rizzaq’s wallet. ‘They didn’t steal it. It was still there when officers arrived.’

  Sir Teddy King summarised. ‘If it looked like Rizzaq had been robbed for his ID, it could have blown their plan. They wouldn’t risk a hand-off on the morning of the bombing. And if it was taken any earlier, it would have raised a red flag at Downing Street.’

  Curtis looked to Trevor Billington-Smith. ‘It’s GCHQ who make these cards. Can they be copied or faked?’

  Trevor took off his glasses, looking a little lost. ‘I must admit, Prime Minister, I’m not entirely familiar with the process.’

  ‘If I may, Trevor?’ Teddy King took over once again. ‘It’s important to understand, Prime Minister, you can’t just cut out an existing photo and replace it. The entire card is seamless like the ID page of a passport. Then there’s the watermark, which to the naked eye appear as simple blue lines. But when you magnify a few hundred times, it reveals a complex, unique number string assembled by GCHQ cryptographers.’ He zoomed in on the charred ID, revealing a number string. ‘There is simply no way Rizzaq’s card could have been copied, and certainly not on the morning of the attack. Our forensics team are in no doubt about this. The technology required is not in the public domain.’

  All eyes fell on Curtis to draw the daunting conclusion Trevor was tiptoeing towards. ‘Gentlemen, am I to understand you’re saying the press pass Mufaza used was genuine? That there’s a mole in GCHQ?’

  Trevor looked like a man who knew his career was dangling by a thread. ‘We think so.’

  As Foreign Secretary, GCHQ fell under Hawkes’ responsibility and he sensed a scandal brewing – and on his watch. ‘GCHQ screens employees for nine months,’ he said. ‘How is this possible?’

  Trevor was a picture of anguish but trying his best to keep it together. ‘We have somewhere in the region of a thousand-plus analysts who have access to classified software. It’s a complex system, Prime Minister.’

  Hawkes sniffed. ‘I don’t understand why so many people are able to access sensitive material.’

  Trevor didn’t appreciate Hawkes sticking the knife in. ‘I thought you of all people would understand the risks involved, Nigel,’ Trevor replied. ‘It was your own Information Security Bill last year that created–’

  ‘I don’t care about that,’ Curtis interrupted. ‘What about the other cell members? Are we close to tracking them down?’

  Sir Teddy said, ‘The bomb was certainly not assembled in Mufaza’s flat. Its complexity, the conditions required for handling the materials...I’d say we’re looking for at least another two or three people.’

  Curtis paused, trying to think of a plan. She said to Bannatyne, ‘I want a DSMA-Notice issued on that detail about the press ID. Tell the news editors if anyone prints it the British government will own their paper before the first editions hit the pavements.’

  Trevor said, ‘GCHQ has been combing through mobile phone records from this morning and lunchtime to track down the remaining suspects. I’ve got our best people at Global Telecom Exploitation division on the case.’

  ‘Lloyd,’ Curtis said, trying to figure out why her head of MI6 was present, but yet to speak. ‘Are we looking at foreign suspects?’

  Sir Lloyd Willow cleared his throat. ‘All our channels are open, Prime Minister, but this is looking like an entirely home-grown plot, unfortunately. There’s another situation we need to make you aware of.’

  ‘Oh good, because this was all rather dull so far...’

  Sir Lloyd passed Curtis a file marked HVT. ‘Late on Sunday night CIA took custody of a high-value target by the name of Abdul al-Malik. He was arrested at a checkpoint, making for the Pakistan border out of Afghanistan.’ The video screen changed to the CIA mug shot of him. ‘After a routine interrogation Malik was shot during a struggle in his cell. Suicide, the Americans are saying.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Curtis said.

  Willow hated having to say it. ‘He was one of ours.’

  ‘He was British?’

  ‘It’s a good deal worse than that. He was MI6.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘He’d gone dark for several weeks. We thought he had been killed, then CIA alerted us they had him.’

  ‘Where?’ Curtis asked.

  Hawkes said, ‘Some Abu Ghraib hellhole, knowing that crowd.’

  ‘It’s a, uh...’ Willow tried to put it delicately. ‘It’s a black site, Prime Minister. We don’t have the full facts yet, but it seems Malik might have turned.’

  ‘A double agent,’ said Curtis. ‘For who?’

  ‘That’s still unclear. The Americans say they’re investigating the shooting.’

  ‘I want the CIA Director on the phone after this.’ Curtis caught herself in the speed of her own calculations. She turned to Hawkes, thinking he knew best. ‘Can I do that?’

  Sir Lloyd said, ‘Normally best to let CIA matters go through me in the first instance, Prime Minister. There are certain intelligence matters we’re not fully ready to share with CIA yet.’

  Curtis examined the HVT file. ‘This says he was working on an operation called Tempest. I just got a question about Tempest linking it to the death of this GCHQ officer, Abigail Bishop.’

  Willow said with more than a little embarrassment, ‘We don’t know where he’s getting that, Prime Minister.’

  Bannatyne said, ‘I don’t see why we can’t just revoke Leckie’s press credentials.’

  ‘Because this isn’t Moscow?’ Curtis replied without looking at him. She waved the HVT file at Willow. ‘This is precisely what High Court injunctions are for. Or are we saving them up for a free coffee the next time a journalist wants to out a classified operation during a live press conference?’

  A chill came over the room.

  ‘Sir Lloyd,’ Curtis said, ‘how did Leckie even find out this operation existed?’

  ‘I’ve no idea, Prime Minister,’ Willow replied a little too honestly.

  Curtis surprised everyone by slamming her hand down on the table. ‘I don’t want to hear that anymore! Lloyd, Trevor, for Christ’s sake clea
n up your house.’

  Willow and Billington-Smith hadn’t expected to feel the weight of the new PM’s wrath quite so early. They each replied, ‘Yes, Prime Minister.’

  ‘And I want hourly updates on these other cell members. If you’ll excuse me, I have a Home Office briefing, then I need to find out where exactly I’m going to be sleeping tonight.’

  Willow and Hawkes shared the lift down to their cars, standing at opposite sides. It was the first time the men had been alone since before the bombing.

  Hawkes snapped, ‘I thought your people were monitoring journalists.’

  Willow gazed up at the floor ticker, unperturbed. ‘No one takes The Post seriously.’

  ‘How the hell did someone like Dan Leckie slip through the net?’ Hawkes asked.

  ‘The problem with nets, Nigel, is that they’re full of holes. And our net has about sixty million people in it.’

  ‘Well, someone is leaking classified information to the creep.’

  Willow’s face stiffened, standing back against the lift with his arms folded. ‘Don’t worry about Dan Leckie. He’ll be writing freelance for the Norfolk Gazette this time next week.’

  Hawkes said, ‘His story’s still out there. Angela Curtis won’t let this just drift away. She was a nightmare when she was in the Home Office. She’s going to be ten times worse running the shop.’

  ‘You said you could control her.’

  Hawkes countered, ‘You said you could control Simon Ali and look at what nearly happened. Christ knows what he was about to say if that bomb hadn’t have gone off.’

  Willow replied, ‘Listen to me. The right honourable Angela Curtis doesn’t understand that it benefits no one to let this get out. It’s easy demanding full exposure of the truth when you’re on the backbenches. But once Curtis has spent a few weeks seeing exactly how the sausages are made she’ll back down.’

  Seeing the lift one floor away from ground, Hawkes hit the ‘Stop’ button, and the lift jarred to a halt. ‘Are you not worried that whoever is leaking this stuff isn’t on our side? We need to find them. Quickly.’

  Willow nonchalantly reached over and started the lift again. ‘Our man at GCHQ is in control of the situation.’ As the doors opened, Willow stepped out first. ‘Oh, and Nigel.’ He looked back, as serious as Hawkes had ever seen him. ‘Don’t ever talk to me like that in front of the others again. The things I could do to you are disgusting.’ As he turned he mumbled, ‘I hate when politicians try to do politics.’

  CIA headquarters, Langley, Virginia – Monday, 9.59pm

  Officer Sharp checked his phone while waiting in the corridor outside the briefing room. Being summoned to Langley for a ten o’clock debriefing was not a good sign. Sharp could hear distant footsteps somewhere, the corridors sparsely populated at this hour. Only the extremely dedicated or those being punished by manning night desks were left. Night debriefings were only ever called when extreme secrecy was required. Sharp had a bad feeling about it.

  Bob Weiskopf, division chief of CIA’s Counterterrorism Centre, called Sharp into the briefing room from behind the closed door. When Sharp entered Weiskopf gestured for him to sit in the empty chair at the end of a long mahogany table with a harsh fluorescent tube light hanging over it.

  Unaccustomed to wearing a tie, Sharp pulled at his shirt collar. A quick survey of the room told him why they’d scheduled so late: at the end of the table was CIA Director George Millar, looking grim as he took the battery out his phone; opposite Sharp was Weiskopf, and three strangers in dark suits conferring and passing notes to each other, no visible ID hanging from their jacket pockets.

  One of the strangers nodded to an assistant standing by the video wall at the end of the room. A profile of what little details they knew about Abdul al-Malik filled the screen.

  ‘Coffee?’ Weiskopf asked Sharp.

  Sharp said, ‘I’m good,’ but kept his gaze fixed on the strangers.

  Director Millar leaned forward and the room hushed. ‘This was already a long day before London happened, and it’s going to be a long-ass night. Let’s get things rolling.’

  Weiskopf took his cue. ‘So Walt. We thought it would be a good idea to have a proper sit down. About what happened at Zero.’

  Sharp pointed with his pen at the unidentified men, talking to Weiskopf as if the men couldn’t hear him. ‘They can’t be NSA because we’re on government property and they’d have their badges on display. And seeing as they’re two seats down from the director of CIA, and no one has yet told me what any of this is about, perhaps these gentlemen can identify themselves.’

  They were around Sharp’s age, early forties, and had the grizzled, humourless expressions of men whose careers had floundered on desk jobs. Sharp had met plenty like them in his time: budget men, policy men, and the closest they had come to combat were tersely worded memos to the Pentagon. Men who thought they could ascend the company purely by saying ‘Yes, sir’ to every request. They went home to their wives each night and made out like they were the last line of defence.

  Weiskopf tried introductions. ‘This is Baxter, he’s–’

  ‘We’re with the General Counsel’s office,’ Baxter said.

  The presence of the CIA Director’s legal advisor wasn’t a good sign.

  ‘I thought we were to discuss the investigation into the death of Abdul al-Malik?’ Sharp asked.

  ‘We are, agent,’ Baxter replied.

  ‘I’m an SSO,’ Sharp corrected him. ‘Specialized Skills Officer. I’m not an agent.’

  Baxter raised his palms to gesture no offence intended.

  Weiskopf said, ‘There is no official record being taken here. This meeting does not exist, nor will it ever exist. All the men in this room are code word clearance or higher.’ He leaned forward and clasped his hands together. ‘We just need to clear a few things up. Informally. You understand.’

  Things felt far from informal to Sharp.

  Baxter explained, ‘The General Counsel’s office have been asked by Director Millar to go over some of the details about the death of Abdul al-Malik in Camp Zero.’ He had a reedy voice and rakish build. His neck fit his fifteen-inch collar with room to spare. With one look Sharp could tell Baxter had never done so much as a pull up in his life. Sharp couldn’t understand a man like that.

  He was also distracted by the video screen, staring at it with seeming irritation.

  Baxter noticed this but kept talking anyway. ‘You’ve made a number of serious accusations against JSC and General McNally in particular with regards to the events of that night.’ Distracted by Sharp’s continuing wandering eye, Baxter asked, ‘I’m sorry, is there a problem?’

  Sharp pointed at the screen where Malik’s details were. ‘Who wrote up that profile of him?’ he asked.

  ‘I did,’ Baxter said.

  Sharp replied. ‘OK.’

  Wondering what the issue was, Baxter said, ‘I’d like to play a recording taken from the prisoner’s cell two nights ago, but unfortunately the tapes seem to have disappeared. Do you know anything about that, Officer Sharp?’

  Sharp was as surprised as anyone. He thought McNally would have been desperate to use them against him in some way. ‘JSC took them. Ask General McNally.’

  ‘You are aware that those recordings are CIA property, and if they’re found in your possession you could be–’

  ‘I don’t have them! And if you’re going to insist on asking each question twice, can you let me know now because I’m going to need some coffee.’

  ‘Would you care to tell us what Malik told you?’

  Sharp paused, then said to Baxter, ‘I’m not willing to disclose that information at this time.’

  ‘Not willing?’ Baxter said, incredulous. ‘Would you care to explain why?’

  ‘Because I’m not under subpoena, this is not a deposition, I have not been read Miranda, and I’m not sitting in front of a grand jury–’

  Weiskopf put his hand out for calm. ‘OK, settle down. No one’s tal
king about grand juries here...’

  Baxter took out a printout from his file and laid it on the table. ‘This is an email you sent to Congresswoman Donna Kershaw of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on national security. Could you tell us why you sent it?’

  Sharp replied, ‘I would have thought that was pretty obvious to anyone who read it.’

  ‘You asked her to open a murder enquiry,’ Baxter said, as if the severity of such an act were obvious. ‘Of a prisoner at a classified overseas facility.’

  ‘The congresswoman has clearance for classified material like everyone else on that committee, which regularly holds closed door hearings on all manner of classified articles,’ Sharp said. ‘And I did not name the facility, or the victim.’

  ‘You sent the same email to each member of the committee,’ Baxter said. ‘The reason we’re sitting here is some of them contacted me saying they’re concerned you’re going to leak this to The New York Times. You know how the President feels about leaks.’

  Sharp maintained perfect composure, but inside he wanted to rip Baxter’s head off. ‘I’ve never leaked anything in my life, sunshine. I’ve got twenty years in the field. I passed BUD/S when I was nineteen. That’s SEAL training in case you don’t know. I was one of only five guys in my intake who passed. You know how many started? Thirty-seven of the toughest Army guys around. I passed sniper school when I was twenty-seven, and have thirteen confirmed kills. I’ve been awarded the Intelligence Medal of Merit, a Bronze Star Medal for valour, and the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal. What have you got? Five years in private practice and two in the stationery cupboard?’

  Weiskopf made a half-assed intervention. ‘Walt...’

  Baxter passed across a printed copy of Sharp’s phone records. ‘Why did you call SIS in London?’

  ‘MI6,’ Sharp said derisively, taking the log. ‘No one calls them SIS in the field.’

  ‘Why did you call them?’

  ‘Malik said he was one of their agents.’

  Baxter smirked at Weiskopf, then looked back at Sharp. ‘And you believed him?’

  Sharp said, ‘Malik referred to two different code word CIA locations, as well as the TCS Act. Not to mention a cryptonym that was accepted by his MI6 London station chief William Blackstone.’