The Cloud Collector (18 page)

‘You've seen all there is to see of the overnight escalation?' greeted Johnston in oddly weary resignation.

That didn't chime with their earlier conversation, despite her determined avoidance to be specific, thought Sally. Was that unprofessional misinterpretation or a weak attempt to prompt her immediate intervention? She remained silent.

‘What is there beyond what's on TV?' demanded Bradley, bringing the attention upon Sally by putting the question directly to her.

Centre stage earlier than expected, Sally accepted: an easy beginning, giving them all the chance to settle. ‘We've lifted a lot of forensics in London. And despite their both being hooded, we've got good images of two men who left the pod in which the bomb was planted. They're being put through terrorist photographic records, have been for the past three hours. The proof that they are the would-be bombers is unarguable. We're enhancing a CCTV film for definitive facial identification, but enough remained of the holdall for a positive facial match with what one of the men carried onto the wheel. And there's fingerprints to top it all off.'

‘They rode it?' demanded Bradley. He was predictably straitjacketed in the same tightly buttoned and even tighter creased suit he'd worn before, and Sally didn't think the shirt had been changed, either. His nervous fidgeting was more obvious, with a lot of discomfited foot shuffling.

‘To plant their explosive,' confirmed Sally. ‘It takes at least half an hour, sometimes longer depending upon the number of passengers, to make one complete revolution. They had plenty of time to secure it under the seat.'

‘It answers the questions about al Aswamy, doesn't it?' pressed Johnston, increasing Bradley's unease.

To openly show Johnston up didn't serve any purpose, least of all hers, Sally decided. ‘Why don't we set out those questions, make sure there aren't any misunderstandings between us?'

Johnston and Irvine frowned. Bradley, the most pressured, said, ‘For Christ's sake! There's only one question and that's surely been answered! Al Aswamy
has
set up other attacks and these were the first three!'

‘You hear any chatter to support that, Jack?' Sally asked.

The phraseology more than the unexpectedness of her question surprised Irvine, who blurted, ‘No, there hasn't,' before wishing he'd given himself more time to formulate a response. With no alternative, he went on, ‘I spoke to Meade this morning. There's been nothing from the usual sites that are the quickest to carry genuine Al Qaeda claims.' There'd been no approach, either, from Anis to Akram Malik's pre-dawn return to the Action chat room.

‘Nothing's been registered by GCHQ, either,' disclosed Sally, mentally crossing off an intercepted transmission hurrying Irvine to the NSA the previous evening. ‘And the naming doesn't fit the pattern, does it?'

‘No, definitely not,' recovered Irvine. Brains—if he'd needed proof—as well as beauty, for which he didn't need any more proof, either, decided Irvine, studying the woman. He hoped the darknet reaction to the overnight attacks—and more particularly a possible re-emergence of Anis—wouldn't keep him from the planned meeting with Sally.

‘What happened to the need to avoid misunderstandings?' complained Johnston in clumsy irony.

Sally intentionally ducked the question, deferring to Irvine; he had to be brought in, flattered, and the other two would more readily accept the opinion of a fellow American. And it was another chance, albeit slim, to get an indication of what had so fully occupied Irvine the previous night. The code-breaker said, ‘There's customarily very quick Internet traffic about any outrage Al Qaeda genuinely sponsors from Yemen's affiliated Ansar al-Sharia and al Shabaab in Somalia, as well as some Pakistani groups. That traffic's usually on Arabic media and broadcasting sites we permanently monitor. We didn't pick up anything overnight; still hadn't when I spoke to Meade forty minutes ago. Sally's just told you the UK didn't pick up anything, either. And there's a pattern to the Al Qaeda declarations, which doesn't fit here. Genuine Al Qaeda claims never name individuals, as al Aswamy was named during the night, with Horst Becker's added in Hamburg.'

Intent upon getting the slightest indication that her previous night's hunch had some basis, Sally concentrated upon Jack Irvine's Arabic pronunciation as he talked: definitely Middle East, not Gulf peninsula or Maghreb, she determined. Not sufficient to confirm her suspicion about Irvine's personal background, but an indicator that she could be right.

‘You telling us these weren't organized terrorist attacks!' demanded Bradley hopefully.

Time to re-enter the exchange, establish her presence. Sally said, ‘No, I'm not suggesting that at all, and I don't believe Jack is, either. The MI5 assessment is that the attacks were too quickly combined and badly carried out terrorist operations, the one in Germany—probably carried out by remnants of Becker's original group—just slightly more professional than those in France or England. But that alliance wasn't with al Aswamy or orchestrated from Tehran, which is the assumption we were supposed to make to fit a global campaign.'

‘That's the evaluation I'm offering, too,' confirmed Irvine.

‘NSA's considered evaluation or just yours?' challenged Johnston.

‘Mine, to be included in any NSA submission requested by Homeland Security,' insisted Irvine.

‘And is it just your judgment?' pressed Johnston, turning back to Sally.

‘What I've set out is also the opinion of my director-general; the MI5 assessment is being submitted today to the government and anti-terrorist committees, prior to the prime minister's statement to Parliament.'

Johnston was momentarily silenced by her answer, the effect Sally intended. ‘Is that what he's actually going to say?' pressed the man.

‘I believe the thrust is to be that despite the anonymous claims, there is no definitive evidence linking the London attempt to al Aswamy or Iran, and therefore no proof of a concerted, well-organized global terrorist campaign,' paraphrased Sally, conscious as she spoke of the visible surprise on the faces of all three men—particularly Irvine—at her apparent high level of knowledge of government thinking. Sally knew from their earlier preparations that David Monkton would confirm that inference when Johnston spoke to him, which she had no doubt the man would do immediately after this meeting.

‘You think that's enough to reassure people there is no international jihad?' questioned Johnston, his tension easing. ‘They're still acts of terrorism.'

‘It won't reassure everyone; conspiracy theorists are always waiting in line,' conceded Sally, wanting to move on. ‘But there are more than enough disparities to make the case for the majority. And there are other possibilities involving al Aswamy.'

‘What!' immediately seized Bradley, coming forward in his chair.

Sally staged the hesitation, wanting to register uncertainty in Johnston's mind. ‘There could be further reciprocity between our two services.'

‘What's that mean?' persisted Bradley.

‘There's been some discussion about prisoner access.'

‘With your Sellafield detainees?' demanded Johnston, the tone and the immediate facial colouring betraying his ignorance of the higher-authority Washington request.

‘Everything's still at a very preliminary stage: it's not as straightforward as my coming here,' said Sally, avoiding the positive answer but wanting to imply her personal participation. ‘Technically their custody is MI5's responsibility: we're conducting the interrogations at the moment.'

‘And you are aware of these discussions?' pressed Johnston, as she'd hoped he would.

‘I'm included in the consultations.' Come on, she thought, give me a way in!

Irvine said, ‘Seems like we're looking to you for quite a lot of co-operation?'

Good enough, decided Sally. ‘That's what we've agreed to, isn't it? Total co-operation and intelligence exchange of everything?'

‘Yes,' said Johnston. ‘That's our agreement.'

Jack Irvine only just held back from snatching for his muted cell phone, pressing into his chair to suppress its vibrating alert. He said, ‘I'm sure it's going to work out just great.'

James Bradley said nothing.

*   *   *

‘He broke his own record: you could scarcely have shut the door behind you,' timed Monkton.

‘He ended the meeting straight after I mentioned prisoner exchange,' said Sally, back in the uncomfortably familiar communications cubicle. ‘I'm sure Johnston didn't know.'

‘So am I, although he obviously didn't admit it. Conrad Graham's not doing a lot for morale.'

‘He's doing a lot for ours, though.'

‘The PM took our lead for his Commons statement. And Berlin is dismissing any link between Hamburg and al Aswamy.'

‘What about bounty response?'

‘No-one's bothering to count public-report sightings anymore. None we've got in custody have broken rank yet.'

‘How are you judging that?'

‘I want to think that the threat was an empty bluff, to achieve the reaction it has, but I'm keeping my options open. Nothing on al Aswamy?'

‘Not as of an hour ago, when I left Langley.'

‘Have we done enough to keep you in the loop?'

‘If it's about al Aswamy, yes. If they get him, they'll believe their immediate problems are over and want to tell the world. I'm still not learning anything about Cyber Shepherd: certainly not sufficient to understand what it's been set up to achieve.'

‘You sure you're right about Irvine?'

‘Not at all. It's still a hunch, a feeling without anything more to it than the name and a Middle East connection, which could just be coincidental. But I don't believe in coincidence.'

‘Pity there isn't a photograph.'

‘It would be an old one.'

‘The ambassador's protested to the Foreign Office at how you're being allowed to operate.'

‘We expected that.'

‘And Records have complained at your insistence upon having the material you wanted dictated on an open line instead of being scanned over. They claim it risked security.'

‘It would have been scanned to the communications room. Fellowes is the bureau chief, known and acknowledged. I'm not. I don't believe the scan would have been sent solely to me, even with an Eyes Only restriction.'

‘What would the name have meant to Fellowes, even if he'd read it?'

Sally was damned if she was going to be pressured by the man as he'd harassed Jeremy Dodson and God knows how many others. ‘Not a lot, to begin with. But what if he'd bounced it off one of his CIA or FBI friends on the cocktail circuit? And they'd asked around among themselves and discovered a resented MI5 officer—on an assignment her ambassador isn't allowed to know about—was asking about a disgraced former ambassador?'

Monkton was silent for several moments. ‘I don't want to provide ammunition for continuing complaints.'

‘Neither do I.'

There was further silence before Monkton said, ‘I thought you had a meeting with Irvine today?'

She hoped Monkton hadn't regarded the exchange as a contest. If he had, it was too bad. ‘He's calling me; promised it will be today, sometime.'

‘I'll wait to hear,' ended Monkton, replacing the receiver in London without any farewell.

Wait was all that she could now do, accepted Sally. And if she was right that the soft burr she'd heard from Irvine's direction at the end of the meeting had been a muted cell phone, it might be a long wait.

*   *   *

Burt Singleton's remotely accessed screen came into focus as the man picked up his telephone at Fort Meade. Instantly recognizing the images on his screen, Irvine said, ‘Tehran's back on?'

‘Loud but not clear,' confirmed Singleton. ‘[email protected]—Djibouti's a first—is a new domain in the Action subcatalog. Not on our watch list, either. And we haven't encountered the code before, either. Obviously it isn't broken yet; it's not going to be easy getting repetitions. Like the two that Malik picked up, it was originally in Arabizi. It was switched into Roman script at a Sana'a Facebook account. Which is where we lost it. I'm guessing a public-facility receiver, maybe a teahouse.'

‘Something—al Aswamy, most likely—is moving, from a message concentration like that!' said Irvine.

‘No trail after Sana'a. The bastards have well and truly learned the memory-stick trick, haven't they?'

‘It's their job,' said Irvine pragmatically. ‘And ours to beat them at. How do you rate our chances?'

Irvine imagined the shrug that went with the pause from the other end before the man said, ‘Is it that twitchy up there?'

Now Irvine frowned, discomfited at so unwittingly conveying the attitude at Langley. ‘I'm trying to keep our part of the operation afloat.' Which might not be Singleton's ambition, he thought, remembering the man's initial reaction to his complete explanation of Shepherd.

‘
If
it's to al Aswamy, we might pick up a response
if
the messages require responses, and
if
by the time we do that we've broken the new code, and
if
that reply establishes a route, and
if
that route doesn't get broken by another memory-stick transfer…' The pause now was for effect. ‘To save you the trouble, that's five
if
s.'

‘I kept up with the count and take your points,' said Irvine. ‘No reappearance from Anis?'

‘Akram wants to know what to do.'

‘Go back into the room,' decided Irvine. ‘Try one of the others you've isolated if Anis doesn't show. And if Anis does turn up, tell Akram to wait for him to make the approach.'