Official Secrets

by Andrew Raymond

  The LED display said, ‘Please swipe again.’

  After swiping again, the door released. She was through.

  The air in the List X room felt different: the temperature was carefully regulated to be exactly the same at the floor as it was at the ceiling, to prolong the life of the computer terminals.

  They had a multitier system that didn’t require a different password or code for different types of clearance. An officer simply entered their name and employee number then the system let them into STRAP areas they were approved of on the BIGOT list.

  Rebecca logged in, but instead of the opening screen she was normally presented with, there were a whole series of folders available in the drop down menus. Thousands of them, for GCHQ, MI6 and MI5. MI5’s old records repository had once swelled in the fifties to half a million files. Every single one had since been scanned, even the old “Y Boxes”, containing the most highly sensitive files on defectors and spies – named as such for the yellow card slipped in the inside cover of the box.

  As an ardent scholar of the Cambridge Spies who spied for Russia during the Cold War, Rebecca could have spent days lost in the files, reading personal memos written from the desks of such infamous figures as Kim Philby and Guy Burgess.

  But for now, Rebecca’s interest lay much closer to home.

  She couldn’t deny herself, that painful need to know that had driven her so relentlessly through her teens. That had her coding and reading programming textbooks instead of hanging out with friends or having what most teens would call fun.

  She typed into the search bar: ‘Stanley Fox.’

  For a moment Rebecca hovered the cursor over the personnel file icon, almost scared of what she was about to discover.

  After the cursory details on when Stanley joined GCHQ in 1979 – his formative years in cryptography and advanced mathematics – it appeared Stanley’s work on encryption theory had led to him heading his own division within GCHQ.

  By all accounts Stanley was a genius and spearheaded several major breakthroughs in cryptology, but without any major funding that reflected his success.

  Then in 2004, his division’s operating budget ballooned from a mere £137,000 to £4.2 million. His staff increased from three to forty. Whatever he was onto, he had the full belief of GCHQ top brass.

  The budget topped out at £78 million in 2005. The really strange thing, though, was a sudden and unexplained cull of his staff. At a time when the division was being given the most money, Stanley was working entirely on his own.

  One man given an eight-figure operating budget? Rebecca had never heard anything like it. It also meant if the cash wasn’t being spent on staff, office space and logistical resources, then it must have been going on computing power – GCHQ had a habit of inventing things they didn’t know how to power. £78 million would get you one hell of a computer.

  Then suddenly that winter all operations halted. Stanley was hospitalised after New Year following an acute mental breakdown. He was taken to Bennington Hospital, a specialist in mental health, and never returned to GCHQ. Just five months later the hospital burned to the ground, taking Stanley with it.

  That was the end of it. The file pronounced Stanley Fox dead in the summer of 2006.

  In a way, Rebecca was relieved there was nothing that toyed with what she knew about her dad. She was certainly surprised to learn how much his work had evidently been valued. It did, however, make her wonder what exactly he had been working on that was so valuable. Whatever it was had demanded the highest secrecy, but she couldn’t understand why any of it had been classified STRAP Three.

  She was about to find out.

  A simple scroll down a few pages, and the word seemed written in a font twice as large and bold as any other.

  Goldcastle.

  Operation Goldcastle, to be exact.

  Rebecca was looking at the original mission file: the root document, stating an operation’s start date and operating budget.

  It had been authored thirteen years ago and carried the digital seal of the Advanced Cryptography division.

  She had to look at the name at the bottom for several seconds before it really sank in. ‘It can’t be,’ she mumbled. She checked the dates again. They all worked out.

  The mission file had been signed off by Stanley Fox, “Director of the Goldcastle Research Group”. He’d been liaising directly with Alexander Mackintosh.

  Another curious thing was a misspelled mention of Goldcastle – “Goldcaslte” – in a footnote. Rebecca clicked on it, and before she could make sense of what she was seeing, the page filled with a stream of folders all on Operation Goldcastle.

  It took her a moment to work it out. If someone had chosen to hide all documentation related to a word – like Goldcastle – the user could disable all the hyperlinks, and make it look like the word didn’t appear anywhere in the system.

  What the person hadn’t counted on was an innocent typo that had left one hyperlink still active. Leaving a back door to reactivate all the other dormant ones.

  Rebecca had only found the other Goldcastle material because she specifically searched for her father. If it wasn’t for that, she may never have found anything else.

  Someone had done their best to make it look like the files didn’t exist.

  Rebecca turned to the most recent entries, the last of which appeared late on Sunday night. It was a ‘ping request’, which sent an electronic signal to a particular mobile which activated its GPS receiver, giving you the mobile’s location to within sixteen feet.

  There were two ping requests.

  The first was to a mobile at 11.35pm on Sunday. Giving a location at coordinates matching Moreton Place, London.

  Rebecca took out her phone and searched for Abbie’s number. Sure enough, it matched the number on the screen.

  The second mobile had been pinged just after one a.m., giving a location next to Whitehall Gardens, beside the Thames.

  Rebecca said to herself, ‘Lipski.’

  But who had pinged the numbers?

  The server logged the requester’s ID each time. There was no way of hiding it. What was odd was that the request had been classed STRAP Three. Simple metadata like that wouldn’t normally even be classed STRAP One.

  Someone had doctored the records. Someone at desktop 28399.

  Rebecca’s eyes narrowed at that, as she was desktop 28402.

  She pulled up the GTE floor plan and scoured the desktop numbers around hers, but she couldn’t see 28399 anywhere.

  The floor plan never mentioned names, as it was too cumbersome a task to update it each time personnel moved offices or departments. Instead, it listed the desks by job title.

  “Director of GTE Division: 28399.”

  That one piece of information prompted a memory from Sunday night. What had seemed at the time a throwaway line but had been troubling her since Stella’s observation about the wine bottles.

  She quickly clicked out of the Goldcastle records and pulled up Abbie Bishop’s autopsy report – the second ‘official’ one that showed two bottles of wine in her system. Again, it had been filed needlessly under STRAP Three clearance.

  She read the autopsy’s issue time back to herself. There was no way around it.

  ‘This can’t be happening,’ she told herself.

  From the glass door, standing in the dark, Mackintosh spoke, startling Rebecca.

  ‘I remember the first time I saw a STRAP Three,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t believe some of the things we were up to.’

  Rebecca told herself there was no way Mackintosh could know what she had been looking at. The computer screens all faced the back wall, and the office’s glass walls were frosted.

  She tried to play things down, saying, ‘You gave me a fright.’

  He came in, letting the glass door close behind him. The soundproof seal suckered against the door frame. ‘You shouldn’t work in the dark like this, Rebecca. It’s bad for your eyes.’

  Rebecca found it
hard to move. Her breath felt stuck in her chest. It was too late to log out.

  He moved past her and saw the screen. ‘I see.’ He exhaled. ‘This is the trouble working somewhere you can’t delete anything,’ he said.

  ‘You never told me you knew my dad,’ she said. She wasn’t scared. It wasn’t like inside the Doughnut, with its thousands of cameras, was an easy place to kill someone.

  ‘He was a genius,’ Mackintosh replied. ‘That word gets thrown around a lot these days. Every time someone sends me a new recruit’s application test they tell me they’re a genius. They said that about you, too. Your dad was the real deal.’

  ‘What does he have to do with all this? Goldcastle. Abbie. Lipski.’

  ‘Goldcastle tried to recruit him. Which shouldn’t have come as a surprise to him. He was the best cryptographer we ever had.’

  ‘What did they want him for?’ asked Rebecca.

  Mackintosh smiled. He was enjoying still knowing a few things Rebecca didn’t. ‘We kept telling him it was impossible. We all did. Then we tested it. We spent tens of millions of pounds testing it, trying to prove it didn’t work. Up to two hundred and fifty-six-bit encryption. Out of thousands of tests, it came through one hundred per cent. He coded a tool to break encryption...The implications even fifteen years ago were enormous. Everyone could see what it might mean.’

  Rebecca said, ‘No secrecy on the internet. No anonymous instant messaging. The dark web would have a giant spotlight shining down on it. Nowhere for paedophiles to hide online. No illegal weapons or drugs on trading sites...’

  Mackintosh added, ‘It would cut terrorists off at the knees. No more messages that auto-delete after you’ve read them. We see every word they send, anywhere in the world. At least that was the plan. Until your father died. We lost everything in that fire. Him, and all his plans. That why it’s imperative to complete your father’s work.’

  ‘At what cost? You want to keep the country safe, but how many innocent people need to die for that to happen? Five? Fifty? A hundred?’

  Mackintosh stepped towards her. ‘Don’t make the same mistake your father did, Rebecca. I beg of you. I tried and tried but he wouldn’t listen. Then look what happened to him. And all his beautiful work.’

  ‘Are you saying Goldcastle were involved in my dad’s death?’

  ‘I’m offering you a seat at the table with the people who really matter. And trust me, Angela Curtis is not one of them. She’s not even going to be in Cabinet in three months’ time, let alone Downing Street. I’m trying to protect you. You must believe me.’

  ‘Like you protected Abbie?’ she said. ‘Two bottles, in case you’re wondering. That’s what your mistake was.

  Mackintosh stepped back. ‘I’m sorry?’

  There was just a glimmer in his eyes of what she was getting at. It had been lying dormant in his mind since Sunday night, when, deep down, he knew he’d made a mistake. Rebecca had just resurrected it.

  She said, ‘You told me the police found two empty wine bottles in Moreton House. But there are none in the crime scene photos, and forensics only found one half bottle of wine at the scene.’

  ‘Is this the best you can do?’ he asked.

  ‘If there was no evidence of two bottles at the scene, why would you claim that’s what she’d had? Unless you were the person responsible for doctoring the first autopsy report.’

  Mackintosh did his best attempt at not looking ruffled. He said quietly, ‘I always knew you were the real deal too.’

  Rebecca, undeterred, continued, ‘You pinged Abbie’s location on Sunday night. You were directing the hit team. Maybe you went along with them. I know she was sent here by MI6. She was stealing data from GCHQ systems. Whose idea was that?’ Rebecca made an educated guess. ‘Lloyd Willow? You? Everyone knows she ascended the ranks in here faster than was possible.’

  Mackintosh took a step back. ‘This is ridiculous.’

  ‘Abbie found out and that’s why she was killed, isn’t it. Or was it because she was blackmailing Nigel Hawkes over their affair?’

  ‘Pure fantasy,’ said Mackintosh.

  ‘Abbie told me you couldn’t be trusted. She discovered you had been helping a terror network infiltrate Downing Street.’

  ‘Do I even need to be here, or shall I just let you carry on?’

  ‘I’ve seen the press pass you had made for Mufaza.’

  ‘What? You think I’m the one who made that?’

  ‘It’s on your computer, Alexander.’

  ‘I don’t know what you think you’ve found, Rebecca.’ Mackintosh warned her, almost pleading, ‘Please. This can all be forgotten about. We can protect each other. Don’t do this when you know what they’re capable of!’

  She was undeterred. ‘MI6 is at the centre of all this. They sent Abbie here. They put agents at Moreton House to secure the scene. Because it needed someone powerful. Someone who could order a black ops team to take out any target they wished; who could relocate a Prime Ministerial press conference at short notice. He needed help for an operation like this, and he got it. From you, Trevor, and Hawkes. You all played your part. All to protect the real culprit: Sir Lloyd Willow.’

  Mackintosh had heard enough. He pushed the door open and called out, ‘In here, gentlemen.’

  Two GCHQ internal security officers bustled in. One took a pair of handcuffs off his belt, while the other pulled Rebecca’s hands behind her back and attached the cuffs.

  One of the officers said, ‘Rebecca Fox, under the authority of section three of the Intelligence Services Act, nineteen ninety-four, I am arresting you on suspicion of espionage and disclosure of classified material without legal authority, as recognised in law under the Official Secrets Acts, which you are a signee. As of now, all powers, privileges and clearances are hereby suspended pending a full investigation.’

  The reality of what was happening finally hit her, and she started to struggle. Kicking her feet up against the edge of the desk and pushing back.

  ‘As a senior GCHQ officer,’ she called out, kicking all the while, ‘I demand you place Alexander Mackintosh under arrest for conspiracy to murder Abigail Bishop and Goran Lipski; and Sir Lloyd Willow for murder and treason...’

  She kept struggling all the way outside to the corridor where two more security officers carried her under the arms. Her feet didn’t touch the floor until she reached the holding cells in the basement, normally reserved for anyone arrested around or inside the perimeter fence. The last GCHQ employee to be taken there was Goran Lipski.

  Once her solitary cell was locked, Rebecca sat down on the padded bench trying to work out how to contact Angela Curtis with just one phone call.

  10 Downing Street, London – Thursday, 00.04am

  Angela Curtis sat in her dressing gown with her feet up on the armchair with a pile of briefing papers in her lap. Only the glow of the television lit the room – not that she had been paying any attention to it. She had been nursing the same glass of wine for nearly an hour now, her thoughts wandering back to what Rebecca had told her earlier.

  Roger Milton had demanded Curtis’s schedule be cleared for what he called ‘an early night’. Which was what eleven p.m. constituted for her. Even on the backbenches it was a challenge to get to bed the same day as you got up. Now as PM there were security briefings from the Met, MI5, GCHQ or Interpol, and campaign strategy and manifesto plotting with heads of the party. Then there were Cabinet meetings, media prep, and Simon Ali’s funeral protocol to be discussed. Over £3000 of taxpayers’ money had been spent finding options for the perfect black outfit for Curtis.

  When her private phone rang Curtis had half a mind to leave it. She had tried that game as Home Secretary: they come to your house and knock on your door, and phone every advisor and number they have for you until they get you. There is nowhere to disappear to.

  ‘No, I’m not asleep,’ she said, sipping some wine.

  Her night-shift secretary said, ‘Prime Minister, I have Sonia Ali at the
front door, along with Doug Robertson.’

  ‘Christ,’ Curtis replied, getting up and going straight to her bedroom. ‘Send them up.’ She grabbed the first clothing to hand: that day’s blouse tossed on the bed, along with her suit trousers.

  Curtis let them in, giving Sonia Ali a hug as she went past. Doug Robertson kept his distance, carrying a briefcase.

  He had the face of someone who could afford to chase summertime around the globe all year. He was a one-lawyer shop, representing a coterie of reclusive billionaires, foreign industrialists, some of the wealthiest banking families in Europe, and current and ex-heads of state – one of whom had been Simon Ali.

  The legal issues that arose from having a Prime Minister as your client were certainly a full-time job. Personal finance issues, property deals, future book deals. Ali had happened to be one of the few people in the country who could afford Robertson’s retainer, which was eye watering.

  Considering the circumstances, Sonia Ali seemed in pretty good shape. She had managed to coordinate her first break from crying for longer than two hours with this surreptitious meeting.

  ‘Can I get you anything?’ asked Curtis.

  ‘No, I’m fine,’ Sonia replied. ‘We won’t be staying long. Do you know Doug?’

  He hadn’t shaken hands at the door and he didn’t now. ‘Prime Minister.’

  Curtis liked that Robertson was used to spending intimate time in the company of a Prime Minister. They could get straight to business.

  Sonia couldn’t help but glance through towards the bedroom. How odd it was to see a stranger’s things all over the bed you had been sleeping in just a few nights ago.

  Normally when moving house you have time to process it. Not so Sonia, who had been shunted out of her home of the past several years without being able to even say goodbye to it.

  Curtis had the fire going – a kind of warmth emanating from it that central heating could never replicate

  Curtis tried to redirect Sonia’s attention. ‘Why don’t we sit down.’ Embarrassed at the television still being on something inane she quickly turned it off.