Sleeper Cell (18 page)

‘You seriously think I’d do something like that?’ she said.

‘Not the wording, no. But this is a forensic photograph. No one outside this investigation has access to the digital archive.’

‘I didn’t leak it, if that’s what you’re driving at. I’ve never even seen the Scene of Crime stuff.’

‘OK.’ He closed the image. ‘You know why I ask.’

‘Of course. I’m going to be your prime suspect for the rest of my career, aren’t I?’

‘Go and get Shaw, DS Reid. Then clock off.’

‘Sir.’

Leila left the office and walked quickly to the stairs.

She did not check in her gun.

Leila parked in the same car park beneath Martlesham that Stiles had left a few hours earlier and walked across the open green space to the Northolt tower block. A group of men sat by a low wall passing a two-litre plastic bottle of cider around. One, a white skin-head who looked about sixty but may have been in his twenties, eyed her suspiciously as she passed.

It was stultifyingly hot: ninety degrees and high humidity. The sky was so pale it was almost white. What little breeze there was only made it worse.

She walked slowly, sure that she was being watched. She doubted she would make it as far as the address she had been given. In their own way, the gangs were as cautious as the police, never giving full information where partial would do the job.

She began to climb the stairs. A couple of black men passed her going down but did no more than glance at her. Despite the heat she kept her thin leather coat closed to conceal the gun nestled under her left arm. She wore nothing else that would identify as her police, though she knew people around here had a sixth sense for anyone who was not their own.

She reached the address she had been given on the sixth floor and still no one had approached her. She banged on the door and waited.

It was almost three o’clock, some five hours since Stiles had first made contact with Scaz Bones. Shaw had probably been moved. The Waterboys would not risk the fact that the delay in getting anyone out here might mean trouble for them and the boy.

She banged again but there was no sound of movement within the flat.

After another thirty seconds, she turned and retraced her steps down the stairs and out across the open area between Northolt and Shaw’s home block. She reached her car and wondered what to do now. She could not leave without him – he was their best lead right now. She was about to get back into the car to phone Lawrence to tell him she would be delayed when there was a rush of footsteps behind her.

She didn’t even have time to turn around. A hand grabbed her around the mouth and she was hauled backwards towards the stairwell. She tried to kick out behind her, but she was moving so fast that she could get no backwards momentum.

She and her attacker came to a stop against a wall and a hand reached deftly into her jacket and stripped the gun from its holster. She was pushed forwards and turned to find herself looking at a short, very dark-skinned boy of about fifteen, pointing the gun at her head. He had already clicked the safety off.

‘You Reid?’ he said.

Leila nodded.

‘You come alone?’

Again she nodded.

The boy looked indecisive. He waved the gun in the direction of the stairwell and Leila walked into the enclosed space that led up to the flats above.

‘Stop there,’ the boy said.

‘I’ve come for Phillip Shaw,’ Leila said. ‘I was given an address for a man called Scaz Bones. Is that you?’

‘No. Why you bring a piece?’

‘I’m counter-terrorism. We always carry a gun.’

‘You ever kill anyone?’

‘Not yet.’ Leila looked him in the eye. The kid was doing his best to look intimidating, but neither of them was fooled. ‘I’m not here to cause trouble. Just take me to Bones. Shaw asked for me specifically.’

‘Gimme your mobile and radio.’

‘Here.’ Leila slowly took her mobile phone from her jacket pocket and handed it over.

‘This all you got?’

‘Yes.’ She opened her jacket then ran her fingers through her hair to show she was not wearing an earpiece. ‘The radio’s in the car.’

The boy removed the battery and sim card from the phone and slipped the lot into this jeans pocket.

‘This is a lot of trouble for one lost kid,’ Leila said.

‘He got himself in some bad CIA shit or something.’

‘I’m British police. We’re your friends.’

‘You ain’ my friend, bitch. Now go back up where you came. Bones’s waiting.’

‘What about my stuff?’

‘I’ll send it over when we clear you’re alone. Now get going.’

Leila jogged across the area between the buildings and up the stairs. This time when she banged on the door it opened immediately.

‘Come in,’ the man said.

‘You Bones?’

He nodded. He was tall, skeletally thin, with long dreads in a bunch down his back and a straggly beard that failed to be entirely convincing. He looked about thirty.

‘What the hell was all that about?’ Leila said. ‘You ask to see me then give me that shit?’

‘We just checkin you came alone. Checkin you not talking to anyone. Our man’s nervous, and that makes us nervous, yeah?’

‘Fine. Where is he?’

‘Out the back.’

The flat was almost dark; curtains had been taped across the windows and only a little of the strong summer sunlight lay in shafts across the bare floor and mismatched furniture.

Bones opened a door to a bedroom at the far end of the flat. Two black men, neither more than twenty, looked up at her. One was sprawled on a bare mattress, the other leaned against the windowsill facing the door. A boy with a shock of curly hair like an Afro on the way to full maturity sat with his back to her, leaning on a desk. Only when he looked around did she see he had an open laptop in front of him.

‘Mr Shaw?’ Leila said.

‘Phillip,’ the boy replied. ‘With two ls, Shaw, S-H-A-W, not like next to the sea.’

‘Right… I’m Detective Sergeant Reid,’ she said.

‘You were at my house last night. I saw you looking at my sister.’

‘I’m sorry for your loss.’

‘I didn’t lose them,’ he said. He turned back to the computer and began typing.

Leila looked at Bones.

‘We can see right into the flat from here,’ he said. ‘We been keeping an eye on the place. The shooter ain’t been back.’

Leila stepped back to Bones, who had remained on the threshold of the room. She spoke to him in a whisper.

‘How is he?’ she said.

Bones shrugged. ‘He’s Phillip. He’s always the same.’

‘But he knows someone killed his family.’

‘Sure. But you seen him. Phillip’s… not like us. He’s… a good kid, but odd.’

‘Drugs?’

Bones laughed. ‘Phillip’s eaten nothing but fish finger sandwiches since we brought him in. He only drinks water. If anyone wants a smoke they’ve got to leave the room. Like I say, he’s odd, but he was born that way.’

Leila approached the boy. She crouched down beside him and put her hand out. The man who was leaning on the windowsill stood and shook his head.

‘He don’t like it,’ he said.

‘Sorry.’ She watched Phillip for a moment. He was totally absorbed in what he was doing on the computer. She had no idea what it was.

‘Mr Shaw, Phillip, I need to ask you some questions, then I can take you somewhere where you will be safe.’

‘Safe here,’ he said.

‘OK, yes, you’re safe here, for now. I need to know what you found last night. A man downstairs said something about CIA involvement? Is that what you found?’

‘In the Langley mainframe, there’s a file cluster…’

‘You’ve hacked the CIA?’

‘Of course.’

‘Why?’

‘The person who uploaded the video used a screen name. He’d set up the account using an anonymised IP and he was disguising his movements with routing cloaks. I followed him around for four hours until I couldn’t go any further.’ His fingers never left the keyboard as he spoke.

‘Just like that?’ Leila said. ‘You traced this file thing just like that?’

‘Yes. DemonAgent wrote the source code for the cloak. Someone’s tried to customise it but they’ve not done a very good job. Then I had help from other people from DemonAgent to probe the American servers and we tried to locate the original source of the ID for another four hours. We didn’t get very deep into the system. The Americans have better security now. Better than the Chinese but not as good as the Koreans.’

‘Hold on…’ She held her hands up in the boy’s peripheral vision. He didn’t look at her but he did stop typing. ‘Please, just slow down a bit. What exactly did you find in Langley?’

‘I don’t know yet. I printed out what I had and went for a walk. I think when I walk.’

‘And that’s when the man came to your flat?’

Phillip nodded.

‘OK, let’s back up a bit. You say you traced whoever posted the video from his screen name, right?’ Phillip nodded. ‘Does that mean you know who he is?’

‘No.’

‘But you know he works for the CIA.’

‘No.’

‘I thought you said you found the origins of his name at Langley.’

‘I traced it back to the Langley servers. I’m not saying that was where it started. At some point beyond that, branch data associated with this ID was encrypted using a system none of us has been able to crack yet. It’s based on something we wrote for Chinese hackers last year. Once the Chinese government got hold of it it makes sense the Americans would get it too. But it’s been customised using a key system that can’t be hacked from the outside. They did this one properly. So we’ve found the algorithm, but not how it works.’

‘And that algorithm is also in the CIA?’

‘Yes.’

‘OK, look… there’s a lot riding on this. You’re making some pretty serious accusations, and, excuse my scepticism, but if all this only took you few hours, why haven’t our people been able to do it?’

‘Because you people ask permission,’ Bones said from behind her. ‘And because it’s what Phillip and his crew do.’

‘Fair enough,’ Leila said. ‘Phillip, I can’t pretend to understand ten per cent of what you’re telling me, so strip it down for me: is there anything you found that might get us closer to finding the bomber?’

‘I don’t know yet,’ he said. His fingers hovered over the keys and he stared at the screen as he spoke. ‘I don’t know what would help you.’

‘Nor do I. Anything, some little clue we’ve not found yet.’

‘We got the name of the hidden partition where the data is stored.’

‘Really? Yes, OK, that would help. Tell me it’s al Sahm…’

‘No.’ His hands returned seemingly involuntarily to the keyboard. ‘Al Sahm’s just what the people on the TV are calling it. The partition is called L I Z H I N…’

‘What? I don’t understand…’

‘Look.’ He wrote the character string down – LIZHI NATS1BIY11ZH – and turned back to the screen.

‘Phillip, I haven’t mastered email yet. I don’t know anything about computer code.’

‘It’s not computer code. There are seventeen characters. It’s a secret code used by the Americans during the war. They used it now because it would be virtually impossible to find unless you knew what you were looking for. We only found it because we had some of the code used by the encryption system, and that’s stored in the partition. We found the outside by knowing a little bit about what’s on the inside.’

‘This secret code: it’s Navajo, isn’t it,’ Leila said.

‘Yes. It was used in the war because no one understood it. But Google does, with a bit of help. Well, a lot of help. Well, actually it’s total crap, but I tried some searches and got a translation in the end.’

‘And it’s not al Sahm?’

‘No. It’s Black Eagle. Is that what al Sahm means?’

‘Al Sahm means The Arrow. We’re linking it with Islamist extremists. Does that seem to fit?’

‘I don’t know. I linked whoever posted the video to a Langley partition called Black Eagle. That’s all I could do before someone stole my disks. And the police have taken away the rest of the computer. This one’s very slow.’

‘Right. We need to get you out of here. We’ve got people who can work through what you’ve found.’

She stood up. Bones was now standing right behind her.

‘Phillip ain’t going anywhere with you.’

‘I have to take him in. He’s got information that could stop another attack. And he needs to be somewhere safe.’

‘Like he says, he’s safe now. Out there, he’s not.’

‘I really need to get him where he can talk to someone who understands this.’

‘Maybe, but not now. If he’s going anywhere, we’ll do it tonight,’ Bones said.

‘Tonight? Why tonight?’

‘There’ll be trouble tonight. We can get him out so no one sees him go. That man who kill his fambly, he’s going to be back. But he’s a white dude. He gonna show up at night.’

‘Fine. Ten o’clock, I’m coming back here for Phillip. You stand in my way, I’ll arrest you. Aiding a terrorist organisation and obstructing an investigation. Phillip has his ways of getting things done: so do I.’

‘You come back here without trailing anyone behind you, you got him.’

Bones stepped back and Leila pushed past him.

‘Detective Sergeant Reid?’ Phillip called after her.

‘Yes?’

‘In the cupboard at the top of the wardrobe in my bedroom I have a box. I need it.’

‘A box? Why? What is it?’

‘I need a better computer. I have some parts there; I can build one.’

‘Why do you need a better computer?’

‘I want to know what Black Eagle is. Don’t you?’

Security had been massively increased around the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square. What had long been armed roadblocks now bristled with security staff toting machine guns. British police were flagging down vans and trucks approaching along Park Lane and checking drivers and cargos. Others pulled over seemingly random cars to quiz their drivers. They were planning for a car bomb that went off yesterday.

Leila had retrieved Phillip’s box of esoteric computer parts from his room (she told the constable standing guard at the flat door that she was collecting evidence) and exchanged it for her gun and phone back in the Martlesham car park. She had not called in the fact that she was leaving without the boy, but had driven straight down to Westminster, parking as close to the Embassy as she could. By now Harris and Field could already have left, but she doubted it. The Americans would have kept them waiting. It was possible they hadn’t even started their meeting yet.