The Cloud Collector (35 page)

Sally emerged for a brief, in-between calls respite from cubicle claustrophobia to the Italian foreign minister's voice-over reaction to mobile-phone footage of the Madrid carnage, preparing her for the conversation she would be having with David Monkton. He, predictably, was unemotionally monotone, rejecting pre-conception and the invited hysteria from nervous Downing Street support staff anticipating parliamentary demands for Italian explanations. He told Sally he was awaiting reports from the Rome embassy
rezidentura,
as well as inevitable approaches from Italian and Spanish counter-intelligence. She was to keep in closer touch—from her CIA office, to establish her presence there—in case any positive associations were established.

Sally was confident by now that she'd mastered navigating Monkton's psychologically unnerving habit of listening without interruption, although it was still unsettling hearing only the echo of her own voice. Prepared by the earlier conversation with Poulter, Sally concentrated upon establishing herself as the conduit between Poulter and Irvine, minimizing—without being obvious, she hoped—how she would fulfill the role. She was sure, she insisted, that by positioning herself between both men she'd learn most of what each was working on, thinking as she gave the undertaking that it was guaranteed from Jack.

‘Impressive,' allowed Monkton.

‘We're not there yet,' cautioned Sally, getting the qualification in ahead of the Director-General. How long would it be before he demanded to know why she hadn't first discussed it with him?

‘You sure Poulter's going to co-operate?'

‘I can't be, not totally. I'd put it at seventy-five percent. But we're in a much better position than we were,' said Sally, satisfied at how her argument was echoing back to her. ‘And I'll still have the NSA team input—which should provide a double check on how much or how little Poulter's telling them as well as me. But I'm as sure as I can be that I've persuaded him of the professional benefits of talking things through with us first.' She felt a twinge of unease at how close she'd come to saying
me
instead of
us.

‘Greatly influenced, as he obviously was, by your recognizing the domain similarities, which neither he nor the NSA team isolated?' pressed Monkton.

Here it comes, thought Sally. ‘It might lead to nothing.'

‘Poulter appears to believe it could.'

‘When we next talk, I'll have a reaction from the Fort Meade team,' Sally tried to hurry on.

‘They'll be receptive because of Poulter's response.'

Honesty time again, Sally recognized. ‘I'm going to imply the domain repetition was the reason for Poulter's direct approach, which in future will come through me. That's how I get to be the go-between.'

‘So everything depends on your being right!'

‘Not at all,' refused Sally, ready for the cynicism. ‘Poulter knows now that in addition to whatever GCHQ discovers, he can get either through Jack or me what's going on at Cyber Shepherd and Fort Meade at a finger snap, without having to wait for communication through official channels. He's not going to endanger a source like that even if there's no significance in the domain names. Neither is Conrad Graham—who also needs all the help he can get to survive—going to throw away a back-door route to GCHQ if the domain peculiarities turn out to be nonsense.'

‘And if it's anything but nonsense, you're more valuable as a continuing participant in Operation Cyber Space than as a convenient sacrifice.'

‘That's occurred to me, too.' Sally wished that hadn't sounded so smug.

‘You've worked it all out very well,' congratulated Monkton, after the briefest of pauses.

No rebuking criticism at all? wondered Sally. ‘Thank you.'

‘I don't believe I could have offered a better, more worthwhile, contribution. But in future I want to hear in advance, not after it's been initiated, about anything as potentially important as this. Which I thought I'd already made clear.'

It would be a mistake to fall back upon her prepared defence, Sally decided. ‘I understand.'

Conscious of having been at the embassy far longer than she'd anticipated—and now officially part of the CIA's Cyber Shepherd group—Sally for the first time openly called Irvine from the communications room, startled after Monkton's monotone calmness by Irvine's agitation.

‘Where are you! All hell's broken out! Graham's been summoned by the Director: we're on conference standby.'

‘I'm on my way,' promised Sally, following Monkton's example by refusing to be caught up in the Madrid frenzy.

*   *   *

And continued to refuse even when she learned more about Madrid, at Langley, insisting what she had to say was still more immediately important.

‘That's what Poulter wanted, to know if we'd isolated the domain peculiarities?' Irvine blurted the moment Sally finished her edited explanation.

‘Yes.'

‘Why didn't he ask outright?'

‘Didn't fit the normal patterns, I guess. Which it doesn't, does it?'

‘No,' agreed Irvine, concentrating on the quartered screen he had displayed in front of him. ‘But why didn't we pick up on it! It's there, right in front of us!'

‘
Because
it's there, right in front of us:
too
obvious.'

Irvine logged on to Fort Meade as they talked, his screen now turned sufficiently for Sally to read as he wrote. Sally hadn't expected Irvine's unquestioning acceptance and was curious of the Fort Meade response. It came from Burt Singleton, who dismissed the suggestion as idiotic.

Irvine ignored the dismissal, ordering a decrypt effort to include a search for matching IP variations in earlier suspect traffic on file. He'd join them, Irvine advised, directly after a CIA review of the Madrid attack; he wanted any relevant material copied back right away.

Sally's initial thought was that Irvine was physically stretching when he leaned back into his seat until she realized he was offering his computer reply to John Poulter's original approach. It was a courteous recognition of what Irvine referred to as “a curiosity”—which Sally considered another way of saying idiotic—upon which they should “clearly and jointly co-operate.”

‘Okay?' he asked.

Theirs was a united aim: she wasn't cheating or manipulating anyone, Sally assured herself. ‘We got this far because John Poulter trusts me, expects me, a member of the British service now seconded here, to be our link. I think that should be acknowledged, made official from this end.'

‘You're right,' agreed Irvine, adding her name to the message as the Cyber Shepherd conduit.

She'd jumped all the hurdles, Sally decided; she wished she could see the finish line.

*   *   *

Only one office—unoccupied—separated Irvine's CIA accommodation from hers on a mezzanine floor directly below that of Conrad Graham. It was windowless and sterile, fitted with a desk and matching chair, with another against the side wall against which a single filing cabinet was also set. The computer was on a wheeled, metal side station, at that moment to the immediate left of a desk bare except for a green internal telephone beside a black handset with its dialing-instruction booklet alongside. The computer came on at a touch of its power button. She was invited to select her own password. She chose Selwa, her Arab name, interspersing the Roman script with the numerals of her birth year. Acceptance was instant. The telephone manual warned no calls could independently be dialed. Being channeled through the switchboard guaranteed the stipulated security. As it guaranteed a verbatim transcript to go with the record that would be kept of any Internet communication on the supplied computer, Sally pragmatically accepted. But which, absurdly, she wasn't supposed to realize.

Her quick annoyance was not at the assumption of her naïvety but at how slow she'd been not to understand Monkton's earlier remark about using the acknowledged monitoring as a misinformation conduit if the need arose, which was not, as nothing the man ever said was, a casual throwaway line. The CIA's switchboard responded instantly. The London connection was just as swift. The line was echoingly clear, with no blur of interception. She told Monkton she was happy with her CIA office. He said he was glad. The Madrid investigation was ongoing; the Washington embassy
rezidentura
could handle background checks on the two American bombers. He had a fairly comprehensive dossier from Rome and offered Sally the opinion he was formulating. Sally agreed it could fit the facts so far available, and that maybe the Italians had over-estimated Giovanni Moro. Monkton hoped there'd be some developments soon from her complete CIA inclusion. Sally said she hoped so, too.

Conrad Graham's summons came as an already-alerted Irvine arrived at her door. On their way to the floor above, Irvine said, ‘It's measuring ten and rising on the Richter scale.'

Which was how the deputy CIA director presented it, in the beginning actually slapping the desk in frustration. ‘Madrid's ours, had to be ours! It's overseas, CIA's remit. It's part of the al Aswamy operations, our remit. But Admiral Joshua Fucking Smith has assigned it to the FBI because investigating the bombers' background will be
in
America, the Bureau's jurisdiction. And it's being publicly announced. Homeland is determined to bury us, take it all away. Sons of bastard bitches!'

They'd tentatively talked about what to offer Graham before Sally left Irvine's office to examine her own, and she waited for him to open the discussion, but he said nothing.

‘Well!' Graham demanded.

‘That's good,' tempted Sally. ‘Takes the pressure off us.'

‘What the hell are you talking about?'

‘I was talking to London when you called,' expanded Sally. ‘Director Monkton doesn't believe there's a Madrid connection with al Aswamy. Or Giovanni Moro. We're not getting that guidance from Italian intelligence. According to all our
rezidentura
sources in Italian intelligence, the justice minister didn't get any briefing to justify what he said on television. We're putting significance on the suicide videos: there's no reference whatsoever to al Aswamy or any of the attacks al Aswamy organized. Nor was there in what Giovanni Moro originally said in court. He only claimed the association
after
being told Madrid was the reason for the trial postponement.'

‘Is London going to go public with that?' Graham smiled, his frustration easing.

‘I don't imagine so, not this early,' said Sally. ‘But you'll get all the guidance that I get.' Enough was on her monitored call for Graham to be convinced of everything she was telling him, she reflected, looking invitingly to Irvine beside her.

‘There's something else we're working on with England that you should know,' picked up the code-breaker.

Sally was impressed at Irvine's domain summary, actually giving her the liaison credit but not over-inflating the potential in his argument against Graham's making a premature disclosure of something that could turn out to be nothing.

‘And nothing goes beyond this room,' insisted Graham sourly. ‘We give Smith anything we haven't got already in a zipped-up bag, the son of a bitch will screw us, like he's done today.'

*   *   *

Irvine didn't call from Fort Meade, which was the arrangement they'd made after the Langley meeting, and Sally was glad, hoping it indicated progress. She waited until after midnight, though, filling the time listening to the BBC World Service, from which she learned that the following day's
New York Times
carried a sidebar linking a man named Abu al Hurr with their Madrid bombing story. Hurr was believed to be one of the attackers arrested at the UK's Sellafield nuclear plant. The Pakistani passport upon which he'd entered England contained a still-valid student visa to the United States, where he'd failed to take up a post-graduate course at Rutgers School of Engineering in Piscataway, New Jersey. Piscataway was also the town in which James Miller, one of the confirmed suicide bombers, had once lived.

 

35

Alerted by the first editions of
The New York Times,
the entire Trenton FBI field office, led by Agent-in-Charge Ben Hardy, traveled overnight the forty-three miles to Piscataway to establish a task force. By 8:00 a.m. that task force was supplemented by a further ten agents and technical support staff from the New York and Baltimore field offices. By then the Trenton party had identified twenty-five senior staff and practical instructors from the Rutgers mechanical, chemical, and civil engineering faculties—some already awakened during the night by catch-up media enquiries—who'd possibly had personal contact with James Miller during his time there or who had knowledge, however hearsay or trivial, of Abu al Hurr.

A substantial amount of information was available on Miller, who'd actually attended Rutgers. He'd enrolled in an aeronautics course under the Pell rehabilitation bursary for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. He'd served in a Rangers division in both conflicts; in Afghanistan he'd been awarded a Purple Heart. He'd been twenty-eight at the time of his Rutgers enrollment in October 2012. A first-semester notation from his practical instructor said that Miller hoped to qualify as a helicopter technician. Further instructor notes showed an early if average aptitude had deteriorated into erratic behavior and absenteeism. Miller was also officially warned—on two occasions dismissed the sessions—on suspicion of excessive alcohol use. His medical and psychological assessments gave no indication of post-traumatic stress disorder. Urine and blood tests, however, disclosed alcohol and cocaine abuse. He received written cautions about his behavior and treatment recommendations. He'd listed his religion as Presbyterian. The absenteeism worsened after eleven months, and he finally dropped out completely three months later. The only address in the personnel file was a rooming house off Sidney Road.