The Cloud Collector (17 page)

*   *   *

Sally's frustration at taking ten minutes to exit the labyrinthine CIA building was doubly compounded by being told, when she was finally able to make a cell phone call from her car, that David Monkton was in conference. She transferred the call to Jeremy Dodson and demanded she leapfrog any other held calls once she made secure contact from the embassy, refusing any further conversation on an open line.

When the embassy connection was made and without any greeting, Sally blurted, ‘Have you spoken to Johnston?'

‘No.'

Got in first! she thought. She could be the manipulator, not the manipulated.

Monkton listened in customary silence. When Sally finished, he said, ‘Yes, I can do that. And there's something else.'

‘What?'

‘The government has made a political decision.'

‘Oh,' said Sally in immediate understanding. Monkton was being protectively ambivalent to allow them both a pedantic legal denial if it ever became a public scandal: the Sellafield detainees were—pedantic again—MI5's responsibility.

‘Don't approach Johnston until tomorrow. I want to give him time to calculate his reliance upon us.'

For such an inconspicuous, insignificant-appearing man, David Monkton was a true Machiavellian bastard, she decided. ‘There's something else from this end, too. I'm under permanent CIA surveillance. Started directly after I left Langley after my initial meeting with Johnston. I demanded today that it be lifted, but I don't expect it to be.'

‘Do you want me to raise it?'

Sally hesitated. ‘No. Let's see what happens.'

 

16

Jack Irvine was swept by an aching frustration at eavesdropping on Akram Malik's chat-room conversation with Anis, his hands initially hovering involuntarily over the computer keyboard through which he'd gained remote access to the younger man's machine at Fort Meade. Irvine had entered Akram Malik's computer with its page register at three, preventing his reading the already-scrolled-up beginning of the conversation until after the disconnection. That Malik had sustained the exchange for that long had to mean that Anis did not suspect the person to whom he was now talking was not the Shamil25 to whom he'd spoken the first time. Although he'd never experienced or seen definitive proof—and therefore didn't subscribe to it—the legend persisted among a number of professional cryptologists that some were so proficient in their art that they could recognize differences between keyboard transmission patterns purporting to be from the same sender, a technique that
was
established with Morse-code traffic in the Second World War. Irvine reassured himself that if such prowess existed beyond acknowledged key counting, it would be at Vevak level, not that of Anis. A more objective suspicion was a differing command of Arabic, which again was unlikely. Arabic was Malik's second language, as it was Irvine's.

Irvine came into the exchange on an incomplete Anis response to a post from Malik that Irvine could not see. What Irvine was able to read was
baubles of the Great Satan.

The bounty? Irvine immediately wondered.

Malik:
If a flea had money it would buy its own dog.

They were talking in euphemisms, recognized Irvine, who knew the proverb.

Anis:
A friend that you buy for money will be bought from you.

Definitely the bounty, determined Irvine. But after almost three pages tiptoeing on a private, one-to-one link, he would have expected—hoped at least—that they would have progressed to more direct exchanges.

Malik:
As easily perhaps as an enemy.

Irvine tensed forward, expecting a disconnection, imagining Malik held by matching fear. Then …

Anis:
Depending, of course, upon the price of both.

Malik:
And how it is dispersed.

Malik was doing well, decided Irvine. He didn't think he could have done better.

Anis:
Perhaps among many.

What the hell did that mean? questioned Irvine, struggling for the response he would have attempted.

Malik:
But for a single cause.

He wouldn't have chosen that remark, thought Irvine worriedly.

Anis:
Which requires the strength of many.

Malik:
An army of sheep led by a lion would defeat an army of lions led by a sheep.

The perfect response! gauged Irvine, again recognizing the aphorism.

Anis:
Which army would you join?

The invitation to commit! identified Irvine, once more physically leaning towards his screen for the Fort Meade response.

Malik:
Lions led by lions.

Anis:
Who would welcome you.

Malik:
I am honoured.

Anis:
Marg bar Amrika.

Malik:
Marg bar Amrika.

Anis:
Inshallah.

Malik:
Inshallah.

Irvine didn't risk entering Malik's screen, unsure if Anis had closed his connection. Marian Lowell answered the telephone and said Malik wasn't immediately disconnecting either for the same reason, although it appeared that Anis had gone. Singleton came on the line, agreeing at once that Malik had handled the conversation perfectly.

‘What about Shab?'

‘Still number crunching. No luck this soon; unrealistic to expect there could be. I'm obviously concentrating on the Anis IP code.' There was a hesitation. ‘You can see Akram's disconnected now. I'll put you over.'

‘You did a hell of a job,' at once praised Irvine, finally scrolling back to the beginning of the computer conversation with Anis.

‘Thank you,' Malik said modestly. ‘I was lucky to sync with his thinking.'

‘Luck didn't come into it. You had a handle on it from the start. So how do you read it?'

Malik hesitated, reluctant to endanger the praise by a misjudged remark. Finally he said, ‘We're being groomed for something.'

‘Right on the button. We're going forwards, no longer backwards. I'll be with you in just over an hour.'

‘And I've downloaded two other IP domains to target,' said Malik, bringing up a new page. The first was Mohammed@homagebridge with a YE country code, denoting Yemen. The other was Nek@dangerrange. The country code, NG, identified the registration country as Nigeria.

‘Why these two?' asked Irvine.

‘They came into the room immediately after Anis. And they approached me,' said Malik. ‘Both IPs were originally in Arabizi.'

*   *   *

Objectivity is the primary mind-set of a man obsessed with self-preservation, and objectively Charles Johnston acknowledged, without distracting rancour, that he had been totally outmanoeuvred by David Monkton. Or possibly by Sally Hanning. More objectively still, by the two of them. But only he knew that, would ever know that. With the merest tweaks the setback could—and most decisively would—be reversed into an unquestionable coup amid the otherwise tail-chasing panic to find Ismail al Aswamy.

The woman had to be his focus. She'd manipulated their first meeting to get what she imagined to be open-book access to Irvine and was obviously the conduit to Monkton, who'd emerged a far-harder hard-ass than he'd anticipated. His disadvantage was that he needed them, both of them. Was he adept enough to outmanoeuvre the manoeuvres? Remaining rigidly objective, Johnston conceded that he wasn't sure; worse, if the woman—who'd always suspect deception because of the business they were in—saw as much as a shadow of double doubt, they'd beat him again, and the next time it might not be as easy to reassert himself as the ringmaster.

He had a conduit of his own, Johnston abruptly remembered. Sally Hanning would accept what Jack Irvine told her far more unquestioningly than from him. Not the ideal solution but the best available for the moment, until he could devise something better.

*   *   *

‘Hi! Remember me!' uncomfortably gushed Sally, forcing the brightness. Monkton's ‘no contact' edict didn't include Jack Irvine.

‘Who is…?' began Irvine, disorientated at the cell phone intrusion within minutes of his arrival at Fort Meade.

‘After this morning's arrangement I thought—'

‘Sally.' He stopped, recognizing her voice. ‘I'm not at Langley now. You're on an automatic telephone switch system. I'll be back—'

‘What's happening at Meade?'

‘I can't talk now. I'll be back tomorrow. I have to go now.'

‘Who the hell's Sally?' demanded Burt Singleton, as irritated as Irvine at the intrusion.

‘The Englishwoman who Johnston's so impressed with: the one who pulled everything together in the UK.'

‘I didn't think she was going to be any part of what we're doing here?' challenged Marian Lowell.

‘She isn't!' said Irvine, his irritation at the confrontation turning inside the room. ‘Let's get back to what I came down for.'

‘I think we've talked ourselves out here,' said Singleton. ‘It looks like something's going down, but I've got an uneasy feeling about it.'

‘Like what?' demanded Malik, resentful of his coup being doubted.

‘A feeling is all.' Singleton shrugged.

‘Maybe it'll help if I get the other access codes,' said Shab Barker.

‘And I break into Anis's to get some idea of who he really is,' said Singleton, sensing the other man's discomfort at not having contributed anything so far.

‘I've come out of the chat room,' reminded Malik unnecessarily. ‘You want to take over or for me to go on?'

‘I couldn't have done better than you did today; none of us could. You go on,' said Irvine, who'd made the decision on the drive down from Washington.

‘When?' pressed Malik. ‘Immediately, like later tonight or tomorrow? Or maybe wait a little?'

‘Damned if we do and damned if we don't,' mused Irvine. ‘I'd like to let in a little slack. But in the current Washington hysteria we need something positive to justify our continued existence.'

‘Tomorrow then?' Malik pressed, determined to prevent any misunderstanding.

‘Early,' decided Irvine emphatically. ‘Let's see if he's testing us like we're testing him. Log in around dawn. See if he's waiting. Or if anyone else takes over or joins the discussion. If you don't get a ping by nine, nine thirty, come out.'

‘You telling Washington about this?' demanded Singleton.

‘There's nothing to tell them yet.'

Marian Lowell waited until she was being driven home by Singleton before asking him, ‘Would you have gone in so soon?'

‘No,' said the man shortly.

‘So you think Irvine's taking shortcuts to save his precious project?'

‘Something like that.'

‘Worried?'

‘It won't be our faces it blows up in, will it?'

‘That's DC diktat.'

‘It's contagious, like a plague.'

*   *   *

‘I could have scanned all this to the embassy restricted to Your Eyes Only,' protested the Records supervisor at Thames House, at the end of their forty-five-minute exchange.

Which wouldn't have kept it from Nigel Fellowes, suspected Sally, from the seclusion of her compound apartment. ‘There's a reason. I owe you.'

‘I hope it's worth it.'

‘So do I.'

 

17

Hamburg was the initial target. Separate devices were linked to explode in sequence beneath the three main fuel-storage tanks in the port, but only the first properly detonated, and the resulting blaze did not spread to the other two. Four ready-for-shipment containers were destroyed. Six firemen were injured, none seriously. The names of Ismail al Aswamy and Horst Becker were included in all three anonymous calls to Hamburg police within an hour after the explosion, claiming Al Qaeda responsibility. The second assault came an hour later with the detonation of phosphorous-packed bombs beneath two of the support legs of the Eiffel Tower, ridiculing earlier French-government guarantees against any terrorist act upon national monuments. Here again, no-one was injured, but the ferocity of the phosphorous heat caused substantial burn-pitting to both support struts, which now needed extensive metallurgical examination. Ismail al Aswamy was named in the three Al Qaeda claims. The timer malfunctioned on the bomb secreted in a pod of the London Millennium Eye, although the detonator flared sufficiently to ignite its canvas holdall. Had it exploded during the Ferris wheel's thirty-minute rotation, the capsule would have been ripped from its mountings and potentially thrown as many as thirty trapped people into the Thames. Some would inevitably have drowned. Instead the malfunction left substantial forensic material and sufficient eyewitness descriptions of two men hurrying from the sabotaged capsule for three different photo-imaging reproductions.

David Monkton waited until Sally transferred to the security of a communications-room cubicle for their twenty-minute conversation. She was able to watch an hour of CNN updates and to shower and dress before Charles Johnston's call.

‘I've been waiting,' said Sally, unsure how her carefully planned day was going to be disrupted. That she was being involved so immediately was encouraging, though.

*   *   *

On this second occasion Sally got to the covert operations director's office ahead of anyone else, guessing when they finally arrived that Johnston had given them a later arrival time in the hope of learning more about the London episode in the thirty minutes they'd been alone together. Which he hadn't. She'd used the time against the man, seeding what was to come with the vaguest suggestions of intelligence gains over any losses, but stopping short of expanding on what they might be. She and Monkton had agreed during their predawn discussion that the failed London attempt—and their equally agreed assessment of the other two—added to their potential negotiating advantages. Monkton would automatically have known of her earlier archive search, but it had been absolutely essential that she'd told him then rather than during their later, scheduled morning contact. Sally was passingly disappointed when only James Bradley and Jack Irvine finally arrived, but at once balanced the regret with the thought that it might make it easier to concentrate upon Irvine, which had been her original intention after her records search. He'd obviously been stressed, impatient at her interrupting whatever was happening at Fort Meade the previous evening.