The Cloud Collector (27 page)

Sally smiled wryly. ‘And you're forgetting it was my idea to claim that we had al Aswamy.'

‘They won't,' predicted Irvine. ‘And I was being gallant.'

‘London thinks Abu al Hurr—if you don't already know, he's the guy you've got—is disinformation,' disclosed Sally flatly.

‘Disinformation!' Irvine frowned, the beer halfway to his lips.

‘He was terrified at being handed over to the CIA. Passed a polygraph test that showed he was telling the truth, that what he's told us is all al Aswamy ever told him; that's what the other three have also said under polygraph interrogation, as well.'

‘Shit!'

‘Spraying in all directions.' Sally poured herself more wine. Abruptly she declared, ‘But I'm not going to be covered in it to become anyone's scapegoat.'

‘Then we'll—' began Irvine, but halted at the competing cell phone and computer alerts. His hand over the mouthpiece but still looking at his computer, he said, ‘I hope you weren't hungry.'

‘Not anymore.'

*   *   *

There was no natural light, but it wasn't a cell. The walls were simulated wood—the inevitable one-way glassed observation panel distorted to merge into its surroundings—and the chairs were comfortably padded. There was no psychologically disorienting sound track. The polygraph operators had gone, but their machine and its attachments remained, although now pushed to the side of the room. Two interrogators faced Abu al Hurr across the table. Neither wore ties. One had his jacket looped casually over the back of his seat in staged, casual friendliness. Both were black. Again, neither of the two men had ever worked together, nor would ever again. Both were strangers to Cuba, to which they would never return. Abu al Hurr was in a clean orange jumpsuit. He'd been allowed three hours of sleep from the moment of his recovering consciousness. The only physical indication of his earlier ordeal was hand tremors.

‘We want you to know we had no part in what's happened to you,' opened the man in the jacket. ‘We're very sorry that it did, but you're here with us now, safe. We're not going to hurt you. We want you to believe that, okay?'

The Pakistani grunted, head lowered to avoid looking directly at either man. Both waited for more. Nothing came.

The first man went on, ‘We're your way out, out of all your problems. We're responsible for what happens to you now, not the British. In England you were going to go on trial, be jailed for ten, fifteen years, maybe even more. Some slime pit where every day white racists would hurt you more than you got hurt today. You want to think about that—worse even than today?'

‘Stop! Don't want to hear!'

‘That's what we're talking about,' broke in the second man, leaning forward over the intervening table. ‘We're going to stop it all … stop everything. Here's how we do it. You tell us every single thing al Aswamy told you about the attacks he set up, where and when they're going to be, and we give you enough money—we're talking millions here, Abu—to live in luxury for the rest of your life wherever you choose. And to make sure it's a long and very happy life, we give you a new identity, new everything, and make sure no-one ever finds you.'

‘I don't
know
any more than I've told you! You know I don't!' pleaded the man. ‘All he said was that he was going to lead more attacks. He wouldn't say where.'

‘So you asked him!' seized the first man.

‘Course I asked him.' Al Hurr hesitated as he looked up for the first time. ‘I told him I wanted to go on fighting the jihad against Satan's people.'

‘What did he tell you!' urged one of the interrogators.

‘What I told the others … that there were more people … other “armies,” he called them. That we could only fight once.'

The short-sleeved man thrust himself exaggeratedly back into his chair. ‘Abu al Hurr, let us help you, for God's sake! It wasn't easy for us to get you out of where you were earlier. We made ourselves responsible for you, promised we'd come to an arrangement. You keep on lying that you don't know anything more, you're strapped back on that bed and they're drowning you again, and maybe this time they'll manage to do it.'

‘No! Please no!' It was an agonized wail. He began to cry.

‘Tell us what we want to know!' demanded the first man.

‘I don't know anything more than what I've told you!'
screamed the man. His face was puce and he was choking on tears that mixed with the uncontrolled flow from his nose, both shaking hands stretched out imploringly.

The interrogators thrust up together. Struggling into his jacket, one said, ‘You had your chance, Abu. You blew it.'

A guttural noise broke from the man, a much deeper choking than before, and his face became a deeper purple seconds before he pitched forward, hitting the table edge before crashing sideways. Blood was mixed with the spittle that bubbled from his mouth.

The first man said, ‘Oh, fuck!'

His partner was at the door, banging at an alarm button.

From where he crouched beside the Pakistani, the first man said, ‘He's not breathing. I can't find his heart … I mean a beat.'

The second man stood back from the door as two medics burst in. One fumbled a defibrillator onto al Hurr's chest and administered the first shock without warning his partner. Calming, warning this time, he gave ten further bursts before sitting back on his haunches to look at the two interrogators. He said, ‘My name's Matt, not Jesus.'

The second man said: ‘This'll cause a shitstorm.'

*   *   *

Irvine unthinkingly made room for Sally to position a chair so she could look over his shoulder, his concentration entirely on his terminal. She realized at once that Irvine's screen was remote-access-linked to Fort Meade, the curser moved by someone there. But it was a fleeting awareness, like the recognition of an unintelligibly encrypted message. What truly shocked her was hearing the slow-drawl voice from NSA almost casually identify the Iranian intelligence service at the same moment that the remotely moved cursor rested on an account including the name Hydarnes and immediately afterwards mention the Halal Web site, described to her during her telephone cramming session with GCHQ's John as the unattainable Holy Grail of Western intelligence eavesdropping.

‘… didn't have the Nigerian router,' the anonymous voice drawled on. ‘But I'd isolated the Paris account during the earlier run I followed. Then came the familiar transfer. And silence.'

‘So who—and where—is [email protected]?' said Irvine.

‘We do know it's military, which frightens the hell out of me,' came the Fort Meade voice.

‘You and me both,' said Irvine. ‘
Mil
is a restricted military designation on which we also know there's an Iranian intelligence transmission. Somewhere, somehow, Tehran is inside a U.S. military installation or facility.'

‘Including them all, the global count will be in the thousands … tens of thousands. But it could be a bot hacked into an ordinary account anywhere.'

‘My instinct is that it'll be hidden in something genuinely military.'

‘I wouldn't expect us to agree, would you?'

Irvine shifted, discomfited by Singleton's aggression. Refusing to respond, he said instead, ‘What's organized?'

‘You can see for yourself it's straight encryption: short enough for a direct order or target identification,' said the voice in time with the darting cursor. ‘Marian's already arrived. Shab and Akram should be here soon. We'll try for algorithms on SHA 2 as well as 3, see if 3 can justify its setup costs. We'll generate a random-number search in tandem. But this is pure mathematics-based decryption, and we know it'll be good because we know the source. It isn't going to be easy.'

‘We've got the destination account,' said Irvine. ‘You're putting a code search through a numbers run?'

‘That's what I called you about: everything else I've started is routine.'

Irvine hesitated. ‘You run a code run from there. I'll do the registration search from here, where the Pentagon is.'

‘You going into the Pentagon?'

The predictable objections, Irvine recognized. ‘It's justified.'

‘It's illegal.'

‘Iranian intelligence is using a U.S. military designation. That comes well within our remit.'

‘Not if it's inside a civilian shell.'

‘It is, by my judgment.'

‘You're authorizing it?'

‘I'm authorizing it. And doing it.'

‘Are you coming up?'

‘Nothing I can't do from here, and you've got everything else covered up there, haven't you?'

‘I guess.'

‘Thanks for getting it organized from your end.'

‘I thought that's how we're working now.'

Irvine hesitated again, suppressing the sigh. ‘Yeah, that's how we're working now. Keep me up to speed.'

‘You going to ring bells?'

Another predictable demand, thought Irvine. He was surprised it hadn't come up sooner. ‘Let's give ourselves a little time to narrow the search field.'

‘Time is what we don't have.'

‘Which is why I'm going into the Pentagon right now.'

‘It'll be a botnet, even if it's military.'

‘There might be a subcatalog indicator.'

‘You're clutching at straws,' accused the voice.

‘There'll be a lot of codes, too many for me to handle alone.'

‘You giving the formal authorization for the access-code search to be conducted from here?'

Irvine sighed openly this time. ‘I already have.' Would Singleton be recording this exchange just as formally?

‘We'll keep in touch.'

‘We'll need to.' Irvine started slightly at Sally's presence beside him, the smile uncertain. ‘Well, you wanted to know it all. Now you do.'

And she wasn't going to miss one iota of the opportunity, determined Sally. ‘It's a hell of a lot at one go. It makes al Aswamy almost irrelevant.'

‘That guy's anything but irrelevant.'

‘How long have you been this deep in a Vevak Web site!'

‘Almost from the beginning: more than a year, operationally. Took me a long time before that, virtually from the conclusion of another CIA project I was involved in.'

‘Stuxnet.'

‘How did you know I worked on Stuxnet?'

‘I didn't,' Sally admitted. ‘It's the only computer-intrusion operation I know about.'

‘I want to believe you.'

She couldn't lose him, not after getting this far! ‘Then believe me! Johnston called you a whiz kid, which had to mean with computers and implied you'd worked with the CIA before. Stuxnet's public knowledge: the Israelis openly admit co-operating with the CIA, building a mock-up of the Natanz installation.' She could see he wasn't convinced. Where the hell was her way back in? ‘We've already identified where the risks to Cyber Shepherd come from, and it isn't me. And you can take that personally as well as professionally.'

‘Johnston and Bradley don't know.'

That was inconceivable because … oh no, it wasn't, she corrected herself; it was totally conceivable from someone with Irvine's history. Quietly, all indignation gone, she said, ‘Jack, how many people
do
know?'

‘The guys at Meade, obviously: they have to know.'

‘Who else?'

‘You've seen the way Langley works! How Bradley and Johnston fucked up. How al Aswamy's surveillance fucked up.'

‘Langley doesn't know?' she persisted, determined to get a definitive answer. ‘Conrad Graham?'

‘He signed off on an operation to combat radicalized terrorists before they organized themselves to attack us. Or any other Western target. He knew me, knew what I could do.'

It was so feasible, so understandable: a relationship formed during an earlier, hugely successful operation, two men with differing agendas, one elevated to high authority welcoming another potential coup, the other providing—and initially proving—how that could be attained by word-of-mouth undertakings, no need for specific details. The credo in practise: anything and everything that achieves an objective is acceptable. None of which affected her attitude or her thinking. She'd gained her personal objective far, far above and beyond any expectation, including her own. Sally said, ‘But you've told me. Shown me.'

‘I already told you I don't know why I did.'

I believe I do, she thought. ‘You've no cause for worry.'

‘I've got things to do,' Irvine announced, stirring himself.

‘I want to stay.'

He shrugged. ‘Why not?'

Sally was bewildered at the ease with which Irvine hacked into the Pentagon Web site and just as easily worked his way through their subsites until he remarked it was NSA technicians and operators who'd recommended its design and installation. He explained, ‘And fifteen-year-old kids still get in and put the country on war footings.' In the first hour Irvine forwarded what Sally estimated to be in excess of three hundred Pentagon entry codes to Fort Meade for supercomputer comparison against [email protected]. By 5:00 a.m., when Irvine called a halt, Sally guessed he'd downloaded more than a thousand, in addition to whatever registrations had independently been logged at Fort Meade. None had disclosed the Vevak recipient address.

‘What are you going to do?' asked Sally.

‘Start again tomorrow.'

‘You going to tell someone at CIA?'

‘I don't know.'

‘You should—know, I mean. And tell someone.'

‘It's late.'

‘We should go to bed,' she agreed.

They came together like longtime, familiar lovers, each knowing the other's wants and pleasures, he unhurriedly undressing her and savouring her nakedness, Sally taking her time to undress him, tasting his body. They kept the pace, touching and feeling and luxuriating in each other, waiting for each other, and arriving together. They stayed locked together in sleep and awoke anxious for each other, and again it was perfect.