Ascension

by Oliver Harris

  “I don’t know. Maybe not.”

  Taylor felt a ripple of trepidation as she started the engine.

  “You’re going to have to go into the office,” Taylor said. “Tell them you’ve lost contact with me. Tell Chris Hawkes about Lau—where he is, what he needs. Chris is in a better position than us when it comes to arranging protection. Then we need to find out what happened to Andrew. There’s not that many officers trained to handle agents overseas. Narrow that down to Chinese-speakers, someone with the confidence and experience to manage a multiterritory operation, and I think we can identify him. Product on China’s intelligence service comes around once in a blue moon. He’ll either have been on the China desk or working on defense technology. If the intelligence touched on space or satellites, Helen Jackson may have been receiving reports. She’s trustworthy. See what you can do.”

  Taylor dropped Kudus on the north side of Vauxhall Bridge and drove on, keeping to back streets. Eat something, she thought; inject some caffeine. Had she slept? Maybe an hour or two. She got a pastry at Pret and checked the news on her phone as she drank one espresso, then another. Nothing on the events on Ascension Island yet. She stared at the street outside but saw only the seaweed-coiled remnants of space stations. What had Andrew got from Lau to justify those meetings? That bit didn’t make sense: Taylor had no impression of what Lau delivered in terms of intelligence.

  She found a public phone behind the store and called the number she had for Markus Fischer.

  “Someone in Six was on this before us,” she said. “Do you have any idea who?”

  “No. We’re picking up reports of trouble on Ascension. Another girl gone missing.”

  “What have you heard about that?”

  “Just a suspect name: Edward Pearce. Know him?”

  “Yes.”

  “You think this connects to Quadrant?”

  “I’m sure it does. Quadrant have a lease on a research facility on Ascension Island.”

  “I’ve just discovered that. Do you know what they’re up to?”

  “No.”

  “We need to find out what they’re doing there.”

  “What’s your exit plan for me?”

  “We’ve been discussing this, Kathryn. There’s something very wrong going on, and it needs to see light of day if we’re to stop it. That means someone who can speak with authority.”

  “You want me to be a whistleblower.”

  “We would protect you. The truth would protect you.”

  She laughed.

  “It’s not just your career at risk anymore,” he said. “This is growing rapidly out of control.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Can we arrange to meet?”

  “I’ve got one more thing to do first,” she said. “I’ll be in touch.”

  Kudus called half an hour later.

  “An officer named Ian Latham moved from the China desk to Defense Intelligence in 2014, looks like with a focus on China’s space capability.”

  The Defence Intelligence desk supported military ops, defense policy, capability assessments of other countries’ weapons systems. This fit what she was looking for.

  “Did you get a personnel file?”

  “Yes. Latham trained in 1988; he was based at Six’s Moscow station in 2002, then Beijing. Fluent in French, Russian, and Chinese, left the service in July last year.”

  “That sounds like our man.”

  “I thought so.”

  “Any idea where he went?”

  “Not one hundred percent sure, but an Ian Latham comes up as a languages teacher in Guildford. Joined the school eleven months ago. Cambridge graduate, specialist in Mandarin.”

  “Any pictures?”

  “No. It says he has extensive experience overseas, though.”

  “It’s him.”

  “Maybe. I got a home address off an alumni directory.”

  “You’re very good at this.”

  “That makes me responsible if anything happens to you.”

  “Welcome to the intelligence service.”

  “We can run a security check.”

  “We don’t have time. Send it through.”

  Kudus sent through the name and address: Ian Latham, 11 Chesterfield Grove, Bellfields. This time she went alone.

  28

  Bellfields was a suburb to the north of Guildford, a cluster of residential streets bordered by the river Wey and the A3. It was close to the school at which Latham taught. His home address was a freshly bricked house on a private estate, quiet on a Saturday morning. Taylor rang the bell and a woman answered the door, balancing a baby on her hip. Taylor hadn’t prepared for this possibility and froze.

  “Yes?”

  The woman was East Asian, in her late thirties, tired. She wore a dressing gown. A man appeared behind her. He saw Taylor, saw her study his face, and something triggered an alarm bell. He met her stare and very subtly shook his head once.

  Taylor thought fast.

  “I’m looking for Naomi,” she said. The woman frowned.

  “Not here, I’m afraid.” She turned to the man. “Is there a Naomi on the street?”

  Latham stepped forward so he could see the street outside while also shielding his partner and child. He matched the description Lau had given, only older. His fair hair was thin now. He had silver bags under his eyes and a thin blue vein at the side of his head. He checked for backup, then smiled at Taylor.

  “Perhaps try the house opposite. Number thirty-nine.”

  “Thank you. Sorry to disturb you.”

  The door closed. A van passed at the end of the street, very slowly. By the time she’d got to the corner it had gone. She checked the other cars as she walked back, listening for the tick of hot engines, looking for the silhouettes of individuals waiting. No one. But her skin prickled.

  What now? Taylor kicked herself. She could have thought of some way of speaking to Latham alone. She wasn’t prepared to give up just yet. She spent ten minutes circling the block, smoking a cigarette as she contemplated options, alternative ways of drawing Latham out. When she finally got back in her car, the glove box was open.

  She hadn’t used it today. As Taylor leaned over to see if anything had been taken, she felt the cold metal of a blade at her throat.

  “Drive.”

  She looked in the mirror. Ian Latham met her stare.

  “Now,” he said.

  “I need to speak to you about Ascension Island.”

  “Trust me, that’s the last thing you need.”

  “I’ll drive. Take the knife away.”

  He sat back. It was a chef’s knife, Taylor saw, razor sharp, gripped tight. She started the car, drove to the end of the road, where he told her to take a right and keep going.

  “Try anything and I’ll put it in the back of your skull.”

  “I need to talk to you, Ian.”

  “Who are you?”

  “My name’s Kathryn. I’m head of the South Atlantic desk.”

  “Which floor’s that on?”

  “Sixth.”

  “Describe how you get there from the pool.”

  “There’s no pool.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Information about Ascension Island and Quadrant. What they’re doing there; why it’s so sensitive.” She kept her voice steady, as authoritative as possible.

  “Who sent you?”

  “No one.”

  “You’re on your own?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you’re really fucked.” He shook his head in amazement. “Turn right again, then in by the leisure center. Stop at the side.”

  They waited to see if anyone caught up. She could hear his breath. After a moment Latham got out. She thought he was going to run, but he climbed into the front passenger seat.

  “What makes you think I have anything to do with Ascension?”

  “You entered a file on the system: Quadrant and Ascension. It was product from Jerry
Lau.”

  “And what do you know about Jerry Lau?”

  “You were running him, then got interested in Ascension—then you disappeared.”

  “You need to go back to Vauxhall and forget all this.”

  “There are several lives in danger. Jerry Lau’s is one of them.”

  “Why? What’s happened?”

  “His boat was found with all the crew killed. Lau’s in hiding.”

  “Any suggestion who killed them?”

  “No.”

  “Was the boat searched?”

  “Torn apart.”

  Latham swore quietly under his breath.

  “Tell me exactly what the situation is on Ascension Island,” he said.

  “An officer of ours died there. It appeared he hanged himself, but I believe he was killed. He was over there to assist with some GCHQ work, but seems to have stumbled into something more dangerous.”

  “On Ascension?”

  “Yes.”

  This provoked a few seconds’ silence from Latham.

  “Is it connected to what’s happening today?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “For Christ’s sake. Drive.”

  He directed her onto a rocky path, through a jumble of allotments, past an old barn and a burnt-out trailer. A sign warned of guard dogs but there was nothing moving in sight, just dilapidated farm buildings and a muddy track.

  “Let’s leave the car here.”

  She stopped the car and they walked fast, in silence, past empty fields to a shallow wood with an abandoned fridge deep in its wet leaves.

  “What was your man over there for?” Latham asked.

  “Cable tapping.”

  “Purely technical, or security elements?”

  “He was assessing security.”

  “On the island.”

  “Right.”

  “My guess is that your officer stumbled into Gemstone.”

  “Who’s Gemstone?”

  “I’ll tell you what I can. You listen at your own risk.” He checked his watch. “Then I think you’ll see why this isn’t a situation for you to get involved with.”

  “Okay.”

  “Jerry Lau was a convenient cover. He didn’t have much useful information to share himself, but he unwittingly provided us with cover to run an agent who was dynamite—a general in the technology division of China’s Ministry of State Security. His name was Zhao Mingqiu. He was in charge of over three hundred technical spies, all focused on space warfare, but over the last ten years he’d developed doubts. There was also some hostility toward the government. A cousin of his had been arrested and disappeared. And he found the work he was tasked with increasingly troubling. It took two years for us to get close to him, another year to gain his trust. But when he began to deliver, it was a gold mine. Let’s walk.”

  Latham glanced over his shoulder as they set off. They walked along a barbed-wire fence beside a thin, brackish flow of oily water.

  “He was code-named Counsellor. We paid him hundreds of thousands of pounds and he was worth a lot more. The only question was how to get regular intelligence off him while keeping him alive and out of the camps. We couldn’t see how to establish secure procedures while he remained in his position. Then we heard about Jerry Lau—saw he was in trouble, that he might be open to an offer: someone mobile who we could both access. Zhao thought if we could get receivers onto Lau’s ships, he’d be able to transfer data and we could collect it at our leisure. Like a dead drop. It was a brilliant idea. I approached Lau and we were in operation a couple of months later.”

  Latham paused as the woods thinned and the blank walls of an industrial estate appeared on the far side of the water. When he was sure they were still alone, he continued.

  “For over a year General Zhao was our most important agent in China. We had twenty specialist officers dedicated to processing the product he brought in: Chinese research, weapons systems, command structures, but also the details of their intelligence penetration of the West, what they knew about us. And that was where the problems began.

  “We started seeing highly sensitive US documents coming up, ones the Chinese had acquired. These were classified beyond anything I’d encountered before—memos that weren’t even to be seen by their Congress or senior Defense Department officials. They pertained to a program code-named Ptolemy. It was huge, and entirely off the books, involving thousands of men and women, most of them employed by private contractors rather than the military, hidden in places like Quartz Hill, Palmdale.”

  “Lake Ravenna.”

  “Lake Ravenna, yes.” He glanced toward her. “You know about it?”

  “I know it connects somehow. What are they doing there?”

  “Preparing for war in space. As we got passed more details about these places, it became clear we were seeing a shadow space program under the command of the Pentagon. It was pulling in five times as much funding as NASA itself. What have you heard about Lake Ravenna?” he asked.

  “I came across a Jack Moretti, a psychologist who worked there. My officer on Ascension was looking into him. Does the name mean anything to you?”

  “No. Is he on Ascension now?”

  “He died about eleven years ago. But there are connections between his death and the death of my colleague.”

  Latham frowned.

  “What would he have been doing at Lake Ravenna?” Taylor asked.

  “I imagine he would have been working with military astronauts, the crews of a space defense force. Lake Ravenna was where a lot of this research began. NASA staff would disappear off the books, maybe reappear years later with some private aerospace company. In the intervening time they were based at Lake Ravenna. They developed strategies for space combat, the vehicles and weaponry involved, everything from putting arms depots on the moon to the use of particle accelerators, space planes, kinetic bombardment, you name it. More recently it’s been about exploiting the existing infrastructure up there. Disguised weapons. What Zhao saw emerging from the offices of commercial space companies in the West were designs that bore a strange resemblance to those he’d originally seen in development as defense systems. These were companies receiving a lot of political and financial support. That’s where I first came across Quadrant.”

  Latham stopped for breath. He wasn’t well, Taylor realized. He looked pale and she’d noticed a slight limp beginning to affect his walk. Latham asked if she had any water and when she said she didn’t he took another moment before continuing.

  “The documents I saw involved the movement of several million dollars to Quadrant’s debris program coinciding with new fears over China and Russia’s ability to knock out satellites. There was a big push around that time to ensure space became the new war-fighting domain. A new emphasis on establishing preeminence up there. The Pentagon was hijacked by space hawks, and anyone who objected was moved away. A similar thing happened over here. Vast amounts of off-the-books defense spending was redirected to the companies involved.”

  “Quadrant are military?”

  “If they need to be. The backbone of Ptolemy is a security net hung across several players. Quadrant come with wide-reaching orbital surveillance hooked up to an automated response system. Their technique for cleaning up space is to capture defunct satellites and drag them down to the earth’s atmosphere, where they get burned up, incinerator-style. But obviously you can do that with a live satellite, too. You can do it with anything. Most importantly they brought Ascension with them. Those at the top of the Ptolemy program channeled millions to Quadrant as a way of securing control of the island. There’s going to be some big changes on Ascension over the next couple of years.”

  “Why Ascension?”

  “Because there’s nowhere like it. You see, when the Chinese saw the plans coming out of Lake Ravenna, they shifted a lot of their research toward stealth technology. Zhao got us details of some ingenious means they’d devised of making military satellites disappear using mirrored sur
faces or the earth’s shadow, even merging microweapons with debris clouds. It was jaw-dropping. But it meant the defensive focus on both sides moved toward increasingly sophisticated surveillance.”

  They reached a muddy clearing beside the river, with a graffitied bench and the burnt-out carcass of a motorbike half hidden by brambles. Latham stopped, leaned against the back of the bench.

  “In 2017 there was an incident where an American satellite was disabled in a co-orbital attack. Officially it was a data relay satellite, but it had inspection equipment for spying on other craft, which was one reason they weren’t able to publicize what happened. It had been shadowing the Chinese space station Tiangong-1 when an unidentified object approached, latched on, and tilted it toward the sun. All the instruments burned out within seconds. At least, that’s what they guessed happened. The incident occurred in a blind spot directly over the South Atlantic, and no one could see. The Chinese knew exactly what they were doing and had timed it perfectly.

  “In the next few months a lot of attention got directed to Ascension Island, because its telescopes covered the blind spot. Whoever’s got Ascension would have the only comprehensive space surveillance system on earth. The US documents that Zhao was bringing us began to show back-channel discussions about bringing the UK into Ptolemy. Then we started seeing the names of colleagues coming up. And suddenly we were spying on ourselves—or, at least, on the corner of MI6 and the British government backing this scheme.”

  “Gabriel Skinner.”

  “He was one of the main ones. But he wasn’t alone.”

  “How were the Chinese getting all this?”

  “That’s the point. It became a very big question for us. When we saw what the Chinese had on American space defense, on Ptolemy, there was a lot of debate within Six about how to proceed. Protocol was to hand over to Washington, step discreetly away, lips sealed. But we decided that identifying the source of the leaks could give us some serious standing. And I knew that if we handed it over, we’d lose our chance. Done wrong and they’d go to ground, then the opportunity’s lost forever. If someone has managed to get that level of access, they’re exceptionally skilled, exceptionally well concealed. They’d been in place for years, which meant years of cover above them.