The Cloud Collector (24 page)

Charles Johnston said, ‘I've got yesterday's postponed meeting with her scheduled in an hour. I'll enjoy doing it.'

‘You
and
Jim,' insisted Graham, the smiled satisfaction gone. ‘Nothing unilateral anymore, remember?'

Jack Irvine couldn't believe he'd made the impression he'd hoped.

*   *   *

Sally gave no reaction because there was none to give: she was neither surprised nor angry at the reversal. The tables simply had to be turned back as quickly as possible, and from her experience so far of the two men confronting her, she didn't imagine that would be too difficult. Except that they were the monkeys, not the organ grinder, and from what they'd already disclosed in their bullying eagerness to intimidate her, it was upon Jack Irvine and his Facebook intercepting team at Ford Meade that those tables had to be turned. Whatever else there might be for her to learn depended upon what Johnston and Bradley had been told, which she didn't imagine to be a lot.

‘You haven't spoken yet to my director-general?' she prompted mildly.

‘I will,' said Johnston heavily. ‘But knowing how closely you liaise, I didn't think it essential that he was the first to be told.'

That was a lie of Pinocchio proportions, Sally recognized: Johnston obviously imagined it would be easier to intimidate her than to verbally confront David Monkton. Which suited her perfectly: always an advantage to be underestimated, she reminded herself. ‘I appreciate the courtesy of your telling me in advance, but as I've made clear from the outset, the decision about detainee exchange has to come from London.'

Bradley gave an overly pained grimace. ‘We want a detainee on a plane now!'

‘I'm sure you'll make that clear to my director-general.' Sally smiled. ‘I'll reiterate it, of course, when I do speak to London. I'm as anxious as everyone to get this resolved: I certainly don't want any obstacles to our continued co-operation.'

‘We want a response by tomorrow, better still before this day's out,' repeated a tightly red-faced Johnston. ‘You seem to be having difficulty understanding that continued co-operation depends upon an immediate detainee release.'

Neither of them was infuriated enough yet to let anything slip, but she was getting there, Sally decided. ‘There's no misunderstanding. The problem, as it's always been, is that extraordinary rendition is politically very contentious in the UK, as it is here.'

Johnston said, ‘There's a terrorist cell in the UK that we can lead you to, for Christ's sake! You really think you've still got a bargaining position!'

Getting closer, Sally thought. ‘Since the three concerted attacks, we've stepped up everything at GCHQ. I'd expect them already to have picked up something of what you're indicating. And there's the wider seine net of Echelon, but anything extra that NSA has would obviously be a bonus.'

Johnston visibly smirked. Bradley actually snorted in derision and said, ‘You really don't understand, do you! The only way you're going to get anything about a UK attack is through us, and the only way you're going to get anything through us is by putting one of your prisoners on the flight we've already got fueled and crewed at Andrews air base.'

‘In fact,' quickly took up Johnston, ‘I don't think there's an exchange limit anymore. We want them all.'

‘Something else to take up with my director-general.'

‘He won't be surprised,' said Johnston, the smirk still hovering.

Another snippet, gauged Sally: in addition to this pantomime, separate political pressure was being exerted. Enough, Sally decided. She had to find out more, but this wasn't the place and these weren't the men to provide it. ‘You've made yourself very clear. I'm grateful.'

‘Which we expect to be, too, ASAP,' said Bradley, a bully imagining he'd won.

Sally didn't hurry the return drive to Massachusetts Avenue, intentionally detouring twice to satisfy herself that surveillance hadn't been re-imposed. Nigel Fellowes was leaving the communications room as she approached. When she reached him, the MI5 station chief smiled and said, ‘I'm damned glad I'm not in any way involved.'

Continuing on, Sally said, ‘Don't you own another tie?'

*   *   *

‘A direct threat?' demanded David Monkton.

‘Unequivocal,' confirmed Sally. ‘All Hollywood tough-guy stuff.'

‘You don't sound impressed.'

‘It's difficult to be. It'll be something NSA has picked up on, maybe from one of the anonymity-guaranteeing sites: GCHQ will know how difficult it might be to catch up. I'd guess virtually impossible. And I know there's political pressure, although I can't imagine official State Department involvement in extraordinary rendition. Johnston virtually turned political pressure into another threat, and Nigel Fellowes made it clear the embassy's in the loop.'

‘The complaint at their being sidelined is at embassy to Foreign Office level, which is still astonishing if it ever leaks,' confirmed Monkton. ‘It shows the panic that's going to skyrocket at the thought of something else happening here.'

‘When's the flight?'

‘Tonight. There's an unmarked C-130 en route to Northolt as we speak. CIA, of course. Unfiled destination.'

‘Johnston said he wants them all.'

‘He tried that with me. I told him we couldn't release any more until we'd finished interrogating them ourselves.'

‘I'll be excluded from now on.'

‘Until we find a way to get you back in,' said Monkton.

‘Until we find a way back in,' echoed Sally in agreement.

‘What's your next move?'

‘Getting myself invited out to dinner. But before that I'm going to try to talk to a man I only know as John at GCHQ.'

‘Let's hope that's enough to find him.'

It was.

*   *   *

That afternoon anti-terrorist police arrested the two men caught on CCTV running from the failed bombing of the London Eye. They were identified from that footage by a former IRA commander, now a Belfast city councillor, following a £10,000 newspaper reward. The two were members of the still-active breakaway Real IRA who'd intended the destruction as a pay-up warning to British Airways—one of the original sponsors of the tourist attraction—and Thames riverboat and ferry operators from whom they planned to extort operational funds.

Coincidentally, within two hours of the British swoop, an informant guided the DCR, the French internal-security equivalent of Britain's MI5, to a planning session of an Algerian anarchist group in the Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine. Among evidence recovered were the blueprints of the original Eiffel Tower attack, including the names of its unsuccessful perpetrators, and even more detailed drawings of their intended second, hopefully more successful, attempt. As with the first set of documents, every attacker named was seized by the DCR.

The time difference between London, Paris, and Washington, DC, enabled extensive background on both arrests to be established for the early-evening news that Sally watched in her embassy compound apartment. Government security ministers and spokesmen for both intelligence services appeared on every station through which Sally flicked, all emphatically insisting the arrests proved there was no organized global terrorist campaign. Without exception, the news reports also carried longer segments from other politicians and intelligence agencies criticizing the total news blackout of Ismail al Aswamy's supposed arrest. Sally stopped bothering to count the open accusations that the FBI had got the wrong man.

‘Long time no speak,' brightly greeted Sally when Jack Irvine answered his telephone.

‘I was about to call. You fancy the same place?'

‘It's noisy enough not to be overheard.'

Irvine didn't immediately reply. Then he said, ‘Eight okay?'

‘Check for company on your way from Owen Place,' advised Sally, the idea prompted from her earlier precautionary drive back to the embassy.

 

24

Recovery—however, by whatever means—was Sally's sole objective. She arrived thirty minutes early to her already-booked table, the one they'd occupied the first time, and had almost finished her first glass of valpolicella when Jack Irvine got there. She'd worn the same indigo Gucci silk shirt, faded jeans, and Chanel pumps. She guessed Irvine had left his apartment in what he'd been wearing—holed jeans, a blank sweatshirt, and scuffed loafers—when she'd phoned. She wasn't overpowered by his cologne, either.

He smiled down, not immediately sitting. ‘This time you won.'

Sally smiled back. ‘By my reckoning I lost.' As he finally sat, she said, ‘I didn't know what beer to order.'

‘I'll stay with the wine.' He looked around at the closeness of adjacent tables. ‘It's not as crowded as before.'

‘Still noisy enough for us not to be eavesdropped: I checked while I was waiting. You want to make your own voice-level check?'

Irvine shook his head. ‘What's there to talk about?'

‘Please! I'm up to here with this morning's bullshit from Johnston and Bradley.' Sally took his twisted smile as confirmation that he already knew.

Their waiter interrupted the conversation. Sally had decided on what she'd order while she waited. Irvine ordered what he'd eaten last time, without bothering with the menu or the specials recitation. He waited for the waiter to get out of hearing before saying, ‘They're not my favourite people, either.'

A way in? wondered Sally. ‘Or unique, although those two are in a league of their own. You know what always surprises me? How many people like Johnston and Bradley get to be department heads or managers and wreck entire operations—hugely important, essential operations—through incompetence. That's what's happened here. If Bradley had properly organized his surveillance teams, we wouldn't have lost al Aswamy and be in the shit state we are now.' His face had tightened as she spoke, but at what?

‘My operation isn't wrecked! And you know it because you also know, from today's confrontation with Johnston and Bradley, that we're onto something new.'

‘I know you've got a new lead you're using to get a UK detainee you hope will lead you to al Aswamy,' seized Sally. ‘A UK, not a U.S., lead.'

The waiter returned with their appetizers, and this time Irvine didn't wait for the man to get beyond hearing before he said, ‘It isn't the only one.'

‘Threatening America?' Sally persisted, drawing upon her earlier con-if-you-can briefing from GCHQ. ‘Or something you'll have to pass on to the UK or some other participating country under the Echelon agreement as you did with the Sellafield attack: something else outside U.S. jurisdiction that doesn't get you any closer to al Aswamy?'

Pointedly, like someone believing her argument won, Sally began eating, pausing only to add the neglected wine to both their glasses. Irvine started eating, too, concentrating on his food without saying anything for several minutes.

She'd unsettled him, Sally decided. And felt a twinge of regret at doing to Irvine what Johnston and Bradley had far more clumsily attempted—and so pitifully failed at—with her. Irritably pushing the out-of-place reflection aside, she said, ‘This shouldn't be a fight.'

‘I'm not trying to make one.'

Had the Meade team really uncovered something separate from a UK lead: another potential attack there'd be an advantage in her learning?

‘It was the asshole double act, Johnston or Bradley. Or more likely both, trying to impress each other.' Irvine pushed his plate aside. He'd eaten little.

‘The same asshole double act you've still got around your neck,' Sally determinedly continued. She had to go on abrading the sensitive nerve she'd obviously touched.

‘Maybe not for much longer.'

Braggadocio, to impress her? Or insider pull from his time with Conrad Graham on Stuxnet? If Johnston was sidelined or removed altogether, David Monkton would lose whatever benefits remained from his direct contact with the covert operations director. ‘It's good you know Graham as well as you do, I guess.'

The waiter shared the last of the wine between them as he cleared their appetizer plates for the salad. Irvine ordered another bottle.

‘You really want to spend the rest of the evening talking like this?' suddenly demanded Irvine.

She had to back off. Oddly—illogically again—she wasn't upset at the break. ‘What else is there to talk about?'

‘You. Me. Anything but what we're talking about now because I'm not going to tell you anything more about the UK lead, am I?'

Sally smiled what she hoped he would imagine to be a rueful smile. Maybe the time she'd spent in the embassy library hadn't been wasted after all.

*   *   *

Akram Malik got the positive English connection at nine fifteen Washington time that night: three words, in English and clear—
Order en route
. It came to Malmö on the multiple-shared, Russian-registered Anis address, but the English sender was [email protected]. Malik, who was working the night shift, was actually ready, alerted by the incoming-message trigger with which he'd armed his eavesdropping Trojan horse.

Burt Singleton, also alerted by the trigger, was at the younger man's shoulder when the recipient-only e-mail arrived.

‘Everything's coming on quicker—faster—than we could have imagined!' exclaimed Malik. It was his coup: the total justification for his selection to such an elite operation!

‘Maybe too fast,' cautioned Singleton, more subdued.

‘What?' Malik frowned.

‘You ever caught a fish by hand? Dangled your arm into the stream until that great fat trout senses no danger from the smooth, tickling fingers that'll kill it quicker than you can hit that
SEND
key there?'