Official Secrets

by Andrew Raymond

  ‘Where?’ Baxter asked. ‘On the tapes no one has?’

  ‘That Malik was MI6 is not even up for debate.’

  Baxter smiled. ‘Do you have any thoughts on that, Bob?’

  Weiskopf answered, but he didn’t look happy about it. He knew he might be about to bury one of his most loyal and respected agents. ‘Blackstone told myself and Director Millar that he confirmed to you Malik was once MI6, but had been disavowed. He says this was communicated to you at the time. Also that Malik should be considered highly dangerous and a suicide risk if captured.’

  ‘That’s impossible,’ Sharp said, taking out his phone. ‘Take my phone, give it to NSA. They’ll have recorded the damn phone call.’

  ‘Your phone’s encrypted, Walt,’ Weiskopf said.

  ‘Bob. Right after the call, we spoke about it.’

  Weiskopf shuffled awkwardly in his seat. ‘Maybe in the heat of the moment...with Malik’s outlandish claims – the credible threat, the MI6 claim, and you’d been working long hours – you might have misunderstood Blackstone.’

  Sharp wasn’t about to turn on his own boss in a room with strangers, so he said nothing. He knew it wasn’t Weiskopf’s fault. Someone at MI6 had given him a stacked deck. Now Sharp couldn’t work out his next move. He hadn’t prepared for this.

  Baxter, glowing at this turn of events, pushed a file with the letters “HVT” stamped on the front across the table towards Sharp. ‘MI6 sent this to us this morning. If you turn to the bottom paragraph of page three, they highlight concerns Malik had quote “gone off the reservation.” Page four concludes Malik as high-value and should be brought in.’ He looked wearily at Weiskopf. ‘They just never got around to telling us.’

  Weiskopf added, ‘Our special relationship seems to be more of a friends with benefits situation these days.’

  Sharp couldn’t believe what he was seeing. ‘They’re disavowing Malik?’

  Millar decided it was time to step in. ‘I spoke to Sir Lloyd Willow earlier.’ He turned to the others. ‘And if you really want to piss him off forget the Sir when you call.’

  Everyone laughed. Except Sharp.

  Millar said, ‘He said Malik had been dark for nearly a month. They’re convinced he turned.’

  Baxter sat back and folded his arms, wondering what Sharp’s story would be now.

  Millar added, ‘Malik’s got rogue agent written all over him.’

  ‘What about Secretary Snow?’ Sharp asked.

  Baxter flicked through his notes. ‘Did Malik specify a credible threat against London?’

  No had never felt like such a hard word for Sharp to say. ‘That’s not the–’

  Baxter kept the heat on. ‘I have your report here. You said he referred constantly to a U.S. target. He was trying to throw you off the scent of an attack in London. Can’t you see that, Officer Sharp?’

  ‘So Secretary Snow was just a coincidence?’ Sharp said.

  Baxter deferred to Director Millar, who nodded his permission at Weiskopf.

  ‘MI6 have a video confession from the bomber,’ Weiskopf said, flicking to a still from the video. ‘The target is made explicit: it was the British Prime Minister. Secretary Snow’s not even mentioned on the video. Just some very convenient collateral damage for them.’

  Millar said, ‘I’m looking at the report here and he’s got you tied in knots. Giving you code word clearance intel and cryptonyms – which an agent in his position would have. He convinces you he’s for real, sets you off on the wrong path, then he kills himself before anyone can untangle his story. The Downing Street cell must have had help from somewhere. Malik must have been one of them.’

  Sharp wouldn’t even look at Baxter anymore. He held his finger out at Weiskopf. ‘I want it on record–’

  Baxter gestured at the lack of note-taking going on. ‘There is no record here.’

  ‘– on record, that there’s something highly suspicious about General McNally and JSC’s actions in Camp Zero two nights ago.’

  Baxter tapped his pen on the table. ‘You’re carrying a truckload of nitro glycerine on a very rocky road, Officer Sharp. That’s a three-star general you’re talking about.’

  Sharp could sense his career hanging in the balance, so he decided to go all in. ‘I want to know why a three-star general showed up in the middle of the night, carrying orders from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, demanding I hand over my detainee, and why not even half an hour later my detainee winds up dead in circumstances that can politely be described as suspicious. Agent Malik was on to something, and whatever it was, both JSC and MI6 wanted it covered up.’

  When Sharp was done, a heavy silence fell across the table.

  Director Millar, looking to wrap things up, took a long, deep breath. ‘Walter. Listen to me now. You were a good Marine, you were a good sniper, and your whole career you’ve been a damn good SSO. And a smart one. Twenty long years. There’s a decent pension at the end of that rainbow too. Don’t start making mistakes now. There will be no Critical Incident Report into Malik’s death, which will be ruled accidental. The details classified. As far as the Agency’s concerned, there will be nothing on your permanent record.’

  ‘I don’t follow, sir,’ Sharp said.

  ‘Bob,’ Millar said.

  Weiskopf looked reluctant. ‘It’s not a suspension,’ he said. ‘We’re just taking you out of the field for a little while. But you gotta stop sending the emails, Walt.’

  Millar put the period on proceedings. ‘That’s all. Dismissed.’

  Sharp stood up and buttoned his jacket. ‘Sir.’ As he walked to the door, and while Weiskopf and Millar conferred at the front of the room, Sharp stopped behind Baxter, then leaned down and pointed to the video screen. ‘That’s not his name.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ Baxter said.

  ‘His name isn’t Abdul.’ Sharp loosened his tie on the way out.

  Once they were alone, Millar lit a cigarette, offering one to Baxter.

  Baxter declined with a little too much fervour for Millar’s liking.

  ‘What do you think?’ Baxter asked, hands webbed behind his head, feeling at home.

  Millar used a remote to switch off the video wall that still had Malik’s mugshot up on it. ‘There’s nothing about this that doesn’t stink.’

  ‘The Brits are leaving us holding the bag.’

  Millar leaned back and exhaled towards the ceiling. ‘Sharp is right. It’s win-win for them. They deny Malik, and now he’s our mess. I’ve got to hand it to them. MI6 played this beautifully.’

  ‘What else did Lloyd say?’

  ‘They’ll bury the Malik thing if we do too. Nobody wants this out there. Especially Goldcastle.’

  ‘Surely they knew going into this there would be a few stumbles along the way.’

  ‘Stumbles, Baxter. Not falls.’

  ‘What about this Polish guy with the camera?’ Millar asked. ‘Korecki. Is he going to be a problem?’

  ‘As your deputy legal advisor I’d recommend all you know is that we’re handling it.’

  ‘And Novak?’

  ‘He’s got nothing.’

  ‘I don’t want to see a picture of Malik’s face on the front page of The Republic.’ Millar stood up and took Baxter’s cigarette from him. He stubbed it out in the ashtray and slid the ashtray towards Baxter. ‘Think of that as a visual metaphor for your career if I do.’

  GCHQ, GTE Division – Monday, 9.02pm

  Rebecca had been ploughing through ECHELON data for nearly seven hours, her share of the hundreds of thousands of text messages sent in the Westminster area in the hours leading up to the bombing. From somewhere across the office someone called out, ‘Does anyone know the capital of Belarus?’

  ‘Minsk,’ Rebecca replied as fast as someone would answer “What’s the capital of France?”.

  ‘Who do we go through for their intel? Romania?’

  ‘KGB,’ Rebecca said, her mind wandering to the DVD she’d hidden in the drive of her personal lap
top. ‘Good luck with that,’ she mumbled, having experienced the intractability of the Belarus security services in the past.

  Mackintosh had returned from his briefing and was in his office prepping for the evening rundown: GTE senior staff’s summary of the day’s activity. It was proving to be easily the biggest and longest rundown GTE had ever had.

  Rebecca kept waiting to be summoned by Mackintosh and questioned about activity on his computer during his absence. Looking up in his direction was becoming a compulsion for her every ten seconds, almost.

  After hours of scrolling through lines of text – black words against a white background – Rebecca’s vision held traces of the colours each time she looked away from the screen.

  Sitting there, using technology that cost tens of millions of pounds to create, using decades of research and development, she felt like she was back in her family home, lying on the floor with her puzzle book. Listening to her dad working in the next room. There was no other feeling than that brief moment of realisation, that the puzzle had been solved. Her joy lasted precisely as long as it took her to walk from the living room to her dad’s study, and wait for his judgement on how hard the puzzle had been. He would say, ‘Good.’ Then he would turn the page and point to an even harder one.

  There was always another puzzle.

  About to turn away from the screen to give her eyes a rest, Rebecca noticed a text message that met her first criteria: semi-broken English.

  Rebecca felt like someone trying to toss a coin and land on heads ten times in a row: the first heads is a good start. But there is so far to go it’s hardly worth getting your hopes up.

  Until she realised it met the second criteria too: a non sequitur.

  Now she was cooking with gas.

  Then criteria three: no reply to the text.

  ‘The sphinx look to the right.’

  It was just what she was looking for. A textbook go code.

  She edged forward in her chair, dialling into the FAIRVIEW system. It brought up the origin and selling point of every mobile phone number in the country. With a retailer’s location Rebecca could pull up CCTV in shopping centres or on nearby streets, then run facial recognition software. In a matter of a few hours Rebecca could have a picture of at least one of the suspects. With a bit of luck one of the terror cell members, other than the bomber, made the purchase, then photos could be circulated, and foreign intelligence agencies consulted on who their suspects are.

  ‘I’ve got it,’ she said. She stared at the screen, almost disbelieving what she was seeing.

  Matthew got slowly to his feet. ‘Are you sure?’

  Rebecca printed the mobile phone data and passed it to Matthew.

  He read it to himself. ‘The sphinx look to the right.’

  Rebecca said, ‘There’s no reply and no context before it.’

  He broke into a smile as he passed it back to Rebecca, then he shouted to Mackintosh. ‘Alexander! Becky’s cracked it!’

  All across GTE heads suddenly bobbed up into view from behind computer screens, eager to find out what Rebecca had done this time.

  Her body felt made of air as she took the data to Mackintosh who had now come out his office. Rebecca felt like she was running to her dad’s study all those years ago. She passed him the ECHELON printout.

  Mackintosh asked, ‘What about the mobile?’

  ‘It’s a burner,’ Rebecca answered. ‘Bought from a newsagent in Stoke Newington eight days ago.’

  He wouldn’t allow himself even a smile yet. ‘What about CCTV? Tell me there’s something.’

  Rebecca couldn’t stop grinning. ‘There are two brand new HD cameras covering both sides of a pedestrian crossing over the road. I checked the map. The newsagent’s in a cul-de-sac. Whoever bought the phone will be on at least one of those cameras.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’ He looked up and finally smiled. ‘We’ve got it.’

  As it approached two a.m., the GTE staff relented to their exhaustion after a sixteen-hour shift. They shuffled out slowly, yawning but buoyed by their success. The night team was now in, following up on Rebecca’s CCTV leads.

  Someone looked back at Rebecca still sitting by herself. ‘Shouldn’t we tell her to call it a night?’ she asked.

  Someone answered, ‘She’s always here after midnight.’

  Mackintosh and Matthew made their way out together.

  ‘Don’t stay too late,’ Mackintosh told her. ‘It’s been a big day and I need you fresh tomorrow.’

  ‘Yes, boss,’ Rebecca said, ironically saluting him with her pen.

  She relaxed a little in her chair as she heard the main doors swoosh shut. Other than the “Action On” night team working in a separate block down the hall – monitoring GCHQ systems and worldwide news bulletins, twenty-four hours a day, every single day to take immediate necessary action should the country come under sudden attack – Rebecca was left on her own. Finally free to follow up her lead on the black Merc from the U.S. embassy.

  With the car being diplomatic issue, the DVLA had nothing they could give Rebecca. So she’d have to get a little creative.

  She tapped into the National Data Centre’s number plate recognition technology. Using over eight thousand cameras on British roads, the NDC captured nearly thirty million number plates every day, along with their time, date, and location. Information that could be kept for up to two years.

  Rebecca had been spent by six that evening, but the next day might throw up all kinds of Downing Street leads. If she wanted to find Abbie’s laptop, she knew the time was now.

  She logged into the NDC, navigating to its tracking page.

  Under the vehicle tab, Rebecca entered 273D101 into the ‘Registration plate’ field. The window listed plenty to do with the car itself (manufacturer, model, date issued to U.S. embassy), but nothing about any human personnel related to the car.

  She clicked instead to the ‘Live tracking’ tab. After a few seconds loading, a grid map of a small section of central London appeared. To the right was a list of cameras where the number plate had last been scanned.

  At first Rebecca just looked at the location of the cameras – unsurprisingly all around central London.

  Then Rebecca saw the time stamp against the camera scans.

  The journey began forty-two minutes ago on Upper Brook Street: the nearest main street to the U.S. embassy.

  The last scan was only thirty minutes ago on Praed Street.

  There were a number of places there that got Rebecca’s attention. Namely proximity to Paddington Station. But she could see from the listings that there were dozens of cameras closer to drop off points for the station that would have picked the car up.

  The Moroccan consulate on Praed Street was a possibility, but that didn’t feel quite right to Rebecca. No extradition treaty with the U.K., and no pedigree in intelligence.

  She flicked to Google maps and zoomed in on the street, dragging across, looking for landmarks. That’s when she saw it: The Frontline Club on Norfolk Place – the media hotspot in London for journalists of the crusading variety, with an emphasis on international affairs.

  Have they broken the password on Abbie’s laptop, and now they’re going to leak the files? Rebecca wondered.

  Rebecca clicked on ‘Update user’ then ticked ‘Live remote monitoring updates’. Now any time the Mercedes was snapped on registration plate recognition, the details would be sent to Rebecca’s computer.

  Before she logged off, she had a thought.

  As the diplomatic car had a ‘D’ plate for diplomatic staff (and legal immunity), Rebecca wouldn’t have access to a list of U.S. embassy personnel. Unless she wanted to hack the embassy. Which might have been possible, but it would require time and a lot of work. Two things she couldn’t afford right now.

  She clicked back to the search menu. Under ‘Date’ she selected ‘All’, bringing up every log of the car. Rebecca scanned down the extensive list to find recurring camera locations. The one that came
up most was a turnoff for Holland Villas Road – a quick check on Google maps showing what looked like an extremely expensive street of Georgian villas, with security cameras mounted on iron gates on most of the driveways.

  The traffic camera scan was every weekday morning between half seven and quarter to eight, then again at seven or eight at night.

  Holland Villas Road had two streets on either side, both with busy crossroads on them. And cameras at each. But the embassy car had never been scanned there. Which meant the car could only have been travelling down one road all of those times: Holland Villas Road.

  For the first time that day Rebecca smiled.

  The cameras had given her the vehicle and workplace of whoever took Abbie’s laptop from Moreton House. Now she knew where they lived.

  10 Downing Street, London – Monday, 11.11pm

  Terror attacks were difficult to explain to children at the best of times. But Sonia Ali – still in the throes of her own grief – had to explain it to her two seven-year-old girls, and that a bomb was the reason their daddy wasn’t coming home that night. Or any other.

  Technically, now Angela Curtis had formally announced her premiership to the country, Sonia Ali had no claim to Downing Street, or any other official residence of the Prime Minister. But Curtis insisted Sonia and the children be taken to Chequers, where the Ali family could grieve in peace for as long as they needed.

  Curtis stood in the bedroom doorway with her laptop under her arm, taking in the scene. It was all so suburban and normal. Although an aide had quickly packed a bag for Sonia – once the building had been deemed safe – the sudden end to the Ali tenure meant that upon entering the Prime Minister’s bedroom it was still filled with the Alis’ personal belongings. Framed photos sat out on the window sill; the duvet only half-made; discarded makeup wipes and lipstick-marked tissue paper still on Sonia’s dresser; a tie Simon had changed out of at the last minute was still strewn across the bed. Curtis couldn’t bring herself to touch any of it.