Ethereum

by N C Mander

  ‘Operation HAPSBURG. We’ve had eyes on a sleeper cell of jihadi sympathisers – we call them VIPERSNEST – in Vienna for some time now, after links to one of the 7/7 bombers surfaced. In fact, they would have been on our radar before you left but you wouldn’t have been read in on it.’ Edison winced. He’d suspected he’d been handled with kid gloves for months before he’d left, but this was the first time it had been confirmed that he had been purposefully kept in the dark on live operations. ‘Separately, the Met has been keeping tabs on a bunch of drug runners bringing merchandise from Afghanistan via the Middle East and through to ports in Northern Europe for shipment to the UK on fishing trawlers. The goods ended up at Billingsgate and were sold on from there.’

  ‘Drug trafficking,’ Edison interrupted. ‘Hardly a matter of national security.’

  ‘True, unless the proceeds of such sales are going toward purchasing weapons and explosives for terrorist groups in Northern Syria. Which was our working hypothesis at the time.’

  ‘Probably a good bet.’

  ‘Do you remember about a year ago, a dismembered body was discovered at Billingsgate?’

  ‘Vaguely, delivered in a packing crate wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. Everything went quiet after that on both the drug route and with our cell. Until a few weeks ago when Six picked up chatter on the wires that the same trawler is back in business. It all looks like a perfectly legitimate fishing operation on the surface, but our assets tell us there are men being shipped over too.’

  ‘So, the body was linked to this operation? HAPSBURG did you say it was called?’

  ‘Yes, HAPSBURG. We haven’t been able to dig up the link, but we have to assume there is one.’

  ‘Tell me about the corpse.’

  ‘He was identified as Metin Dastan, a Syrian national who had applied for a visa just before Christmas the previous year. It was declined.’

  ‘Why?’ Edison’s brain was whirring, and he was carefully filing the details of the operation into his memory.

  ‘Dastan had a brother. Kerem Dastan, who emigrated to the UK five years ago. He was a naturalised Turk. He was well known to the Met.’

  ‘A criminal record?’

  ‘Yes, nothing desperately exciting. Some money laundering, he was almost done for intent to supply on a couple of occasions, sources suggest he was involved in a bit of forgery too. More than enough for a red flag to pop up when brother Metin tried to get his visa. The same happened to his sister and two children three months before.’

  ‘What happened to Mr Dastan, the one with a pulse?’

  ‘He’s completely disappeared.’

  ‘How convenient.’

  ‘Indeed. We know VIPERSNEST is on the move. We think the shipping channel is being resurrected but for transporting human cargo not just white powder.’

  Edison whistled. ‘What’s the threat level?’

  ‘Severe.’

  ‘So VIPERSNEST is now in the UK. We need to find them. Where do you need me undercover?’

  ‘At a boutique investment bank in Canary Wharf, Penwill & Mallinson.’

  ‘How do we get from North Sea drug runners to high finance?’

  ‘Another of Six’s officers in Vienna reported an uptick in their activity a month ago. More comings and goings and a few new faces making appearances. Transiting through. All this costs money. They’ve increased their income somehow. Have you heard of cryptocurrency?’

  ‘You mean like Bitcoin?’

  ‘Exactly like Bitcoin, but there are a couple of others which are less well known and, as a result, more difficult to track. We managed to drop an asset into the heart of their operation in Vienna, and he reported that they were receiving income in Ethereum from an unknown source in London. They’d been using that to fund training camps, weapons and transport.’

  ‘And this links to the bank how?’

  ‘Penwill & Mallinson operate the only Ethereum exchange in Europe.’

  ‘Can’t they mine this stuff themselves? There’s no guarantee that they’re using an exchange to buy the currency,’ Edison asked, digging into his memory for newspaper reports he’d read about the development of digital currencies. There had been a time when he would have lapped up news of any digital developments such as this, but his brain had been on low power mode for months and he’d only occasionally dipped into the financial and technology press.

  ‘True, but our source thinks this is a wire transfer. They don’t have the computing facilities to be mining it themselves, and there are suggestions of a link to a more mainstream Bitcoin income from their online drug sales.’

  ‘The Silk Road,’ Edison muttered, remembering his own covert forays onto the Dark Web’s illicit e-Commerce platform, when he had been tracking down drug dealers, gangsters and porn barons as part of MI5 ops. ‘So why do you need me?’

  ‘We know enough, thanks to our techies, to be sure that the transfers are not coming directly from the bank. The cryptocurrency market has really heated up in recent months though – unbelievable exchange rates, and we think that might have encouraged our guy back into action.’

  ‘Do we still have our man inside the sleeper cell?’

  Tanya shook her head. Edison didn’t press what might have happened to the officer.

  ‘So, someone is moving the money “legitimately”,’ Edison air-quoted the word for emphasis, ‘and then out of the country by some other means. But it all has to be done digitally. Surely we can track it?

  ‘You’d be amazed how easy it is to hide on the Dark Web.’

  ‘Yes, Tanya, of course I know how easy it is to hide on the Dark Web.’ At MI5, Edison had spent all the time he wasn’t in the field navigating the shadier corners of the internet, rooting out communications between terrorists, right-wing activists and anarchists. ‘What I mean is, I can track it.’ Edison’s heart beat slightly quicker, and he felt a prickle of goosebumps on his bare arms. He tried to squash the sense of excitement he felt under another question. ‘So, what are we dealing with at Penwill & Mallinson?’

  Tanya shuffled through the papers to find a glossy brochure. It profiled the investment capabilities of the small investment bank. ‘Boutique bank,’ she said. ‘Mostly concerned with fund management but creating a profitable niche in the emerging world of digital currency and blockchain payments.’ She paused. ‘You know about this stuff?’

  ‘Yes, distributed ledger technology, cryptocurrencies, it’s gone pretty mainstream lately.’

  ‘You’ll need to swot up on it. Colin pulled some homework together for you.’ Colin headed up the research team within counter-terrorism and spent his time, among other things, preparing plausible cover stories and pulling together background for officers about to head into the field.

  ‘So, what’s my legend?’

  ‘You are Steven Edwards. You’ve worked at the Bank of England for the last six years where, latterly, you were responsible for identifying and implementing regulation for digital currencies. Before that, you were a digital payments specialist at a small start-up and even further back on a graduate scheme at Lehman Brothers. Kat has been working undercover as a recruitment specialist and has an initial meeting with the MD, Tom Woodward, pencilled in for you tomorrow. They will call you to confirm the details.’

  Mention of his team prompted a further question from Edison. ‘Who knows I’m back? Who’s assigned to HAPSBURG?’

  ‘Kat is the team lead. She’s also got Colin. Jock and Natalie are on surveillance. Mo is her junior intelligence officer.’ All but one of them had been on Edison’s team. Mo was new to him, and he felt a strange sense of loss that they had been reassigned to a new team lead.

  ‘Not Tony?’

  ‘No, not Tony.’

  ‘Tell me more about the bank set-up.’

  Edison eyed the collection of photographs on the table. They had been printed from the firm’s website and showed expensively dressed young men and women, mostly in their late twenties and early thirties. Tanya pulled
them forward, one by one, reading off a short biography for each as she did so. ‘Emma Pearson – fund manager. Twenty-nine. British. Lives in Greenwich with her boyfriend and cat. Christoph Langer – fund manager. Thirty-four. Austrian – originally from Innsbruck but studied in Vienna.’ Edison made a note of the Viennese link. He had, as Tanya had been speaking, semi-consciously pulled the notepad, that was still on the table from yesterday’s list-making, toward him and started scribbling key points down. ‘He lives with the office manager, Anna on the Isle of Dogs.’

  ‘Are they an item?’

  ‘Not that we can tell from the usual social media trawl. Just roommates.’

  ‘Tariq Mahmoud.’ Tanya pulled forward a photograph of a dark-skinned man with almond eyes that shone as brightly as the broad smile he wore. ‘Muslim. Third-generation son of Pakistani shopkeepers from Bradford. His parents wanted him to be a medic. He’s twenty-four and a trainee fund manager.’

  ‘No known links?’ Edison asked, referring to the network of mosques in Bradford with well-publicised connections to some of the most prolific terrorist organisations known to the security services.

  ‘None that we can dig up, and we have looked very hard.’

  ‘So, who are the techies?’ Edison asked, looking at the remaining three photographs and carefully laying them out in front of him.

  Tanya pointed at the first, ‘Billy – William – de Santos, Brazilian – has lived in Stockwell for a couple of years since he moved over from Sao Paulo. He’s a payments expert and oversees all the technical aspects of the team’s currency trading. Both the other two work for him. Maria Zinovyeva.’ Tanya dabbed a finger on the picture of a blonde-haired woman. She wore heavy make-up which accentuated her fine features. Her lips parted in a broad smile to reveal a set of perfect white teeth.

  ‘Russian?’ Edison asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Tanya replied. ‘Moved from Moscow to study Econometrics at the LSE before studying a computer sciences masters at Imperial. By all accounts, the sharpest of a pretty bright bunch.’

  ‘Anything we need to be worried about?’

  ‘We don’t think so. Her family have links to the oligarchy but aren’t particularly active politically. Her cousin’s a diplomat in Scandinavia. No red flags although Six were a bit cagey about him.’

  ‘And this guy?’

  ‘Jamie Dunn. Brit. Brought up on a council estate in South London. Self-taught programmer. Self-taught everything really. Didn’t go to university. Got the job winning a hackathon in the city that he went along to during his lunch break from his job as a barista. Real rags to riches story. And that’s your lot,’ Tanya concluded, gathering the photographs together and sliding them back into the folder.

  ‘What do I need to know about Tom?’

  Tanya shuffled through the pictures, fanning them out like a card deck and pulling the familiar face of Tom Woodward from the pack. ‘Tom Woodward. Originally from Newbury in Buckinghamshire. Privately educated at Eton before studying natural sciences at Cambridge. Went into fund management straight out of university and held down a series of jobs around the City and Canary Wharf before joining the leadership team at Penwill’s almost three years ago with responsibility for building up their digital currency capabilities. He also oversees some minor emerging market currency trading and an infrastructure portfolio. It’s a boutique bank, so he’s one of three directors who sit below the CEO.’

  Edison considered the dossier he had in front of him. ‘It’s not desperately thorough, is it? I could have just printed this from the firm’s website.’

  ‘That’s why I’m sending you in, Edison. Get under their skin. Find out who might be syphoning off funds to Islamic extremists. Dig into the code and get me some answers.’

  Edison nodded.

  ‘A couple more things – we also need insight on the investors. See what you can get once you’re in, and Colin can take a look at it.’ She thrust an encrypted USB stick into Edison’s outstretched hand.

  ‘You said a couple more things.’

  ‘We’re still keeping an eye on Billingsgate should our men return. Their drop day was Thursday, but Jock’s had a member of his ops team there every week for the past month ever since the volume went up on the chatter.’ Edison whistled. Such commitment to surveillance meant this was serious. ‘You should go along on Thursday. Take a look.’

  ‘I’ll be there.’

  Tanya looked pointedly at Edison’s left hand. ‘Steven Edwards is not married.’

  Edison twisted his wedding ring and nodded, acknowledging what was required of him.

  ‘I had better move,’ Tanya said, looking at her watch.

  In the hallway, before opening the door, Edison said, ‘There’s one thing I need from you if I’m going to do this.’

  ‘Are we negotiating, Edison?’

  ‘Yes, we’re negotiating. I believe you said I’m the only one capable of going undercover at the bank. I need some security.’ Edison explained what he wanted.

  Tanya conceded the point with a subtle tilt of her head then disappeared down the corridor.

  *

  Edison closed the door softly behind him and stood with his back to it. He was shaking. The adrenalin that had been coursing through his veins was beginning to subside, and he felt cold, his clammy skin still caked with sweat from his run.

  He breathed deeply and moved across the room slowly to the drinks cabinet on which stood a photograph in a slim silver frame. Eloise grinned at him from the glossy surface, her hair tousled and flying in the breeze. She was dancing barefoot across a sandy beach, her jeans rolled up around her knees. Edison recognised the beach at Tynemouth in the blurry background. It had been freezing that day. Edison remembered every moment of that trip – it had been the first time he had taken Eloise home to meet his mother. They had boarded the Metro from Byker out to the coast to escape the claustrophobia of his mother’s council flat. Despite the arctic temperatures, Ellie had insisted on dipping her toes into the icy North Sea. Much to the amusement of the dog walkers, the only other people on the beach in mid-February, Ellie had danced in and out of the surf, squealing with delight as the waves chased her up the beach. Looking at her in that photograph, she oozed life, she always did. Edison smiled. ‘What do you think, Elle? Am I mad?’ he asked the photograph. Silence hung in the air. ‘I should pack, shouldn’t I Elle? We’ll worry about HAPSBURG and VIPERSNESTs once that’s done.’

  In the main bedroom, Edison considered the task at hand. After Ellie’s death, Edison had tossed restlessly, and very occasionally slept, in the spare room – a cramped and desolate space, furnished only with the futon on which Edison had begged sleep to release him from the torment of consciousness. In contrast, the bedroom he’d shared with his wife was luxuriously furnished, reflecting his wife’s talent for design and love for textiles. The vast bed was lavished with cushions and throws in muted, neutral tones. He padded, in his socks, across the whitewashed floorboards to the enormous built-in cupboards that had once housed Ellie’s fashionable, expensive wardrobe. In what was, on the surface at least, an act of compassion, Jane had sorted through the flat shortly after the funeral on one of her many visits to London and packed away all her daughter’s belongings – which amounted to the majority of the flat’s contents. Edison was a man of frugal tastes. Jane’s enthusiasm for decluttering had, in fact, been spurred on by her desire to sell the flat. The de Courcy’s did not need the money, but displacing the heartbroken son-in-law, of whom she had never approved, was too good an opportunity to miss for Jane. Edison had won a stay of execution, thanks to the London housing market taking a dive in the aftermath of the financial crisis. Although Jane tried to press on with the sale, Gauthier convinced his wife that they would be mad to try to liquidate the asset at the time, although his true motive was to keep a roof over his son-in-law’s head whilst he struggled through his grief.

  Edison opened the wardrobe and stretched up to pull down a large holdall and a dusty camping rucksack. He spe
nt the remainder of the day moving around the flat, half-heartedly packing his few possessions. He tipped draws of socks and underwear directly into the holdall. His jeans and shirts hanging in the wardrobe went in a single armful into the rucksack.

  Dusk began to gather, and Edison was compelled to turn on the lights. He looked around the barren flat that had been his home for so long. He wandered in and out of each of the rooms, checking that he had packed everything he wanted to take with him. All that was left were his laptops.

  He found the two computers, a Dell Alienware laptop and an early model ThinkPad in the dresser, where he’d stashed them over a year ago. He ran his hand over the cold metal lid of the ThinkPad. He ran his thumb along the edge and pushed the button that released the screen, and the machine unfolded in his hand. He toyed with the power button. All afternoon, the conversation with Tanya had been preying on his mind. He was itching to dig into the detail of the case. That would involve reacquainting himself with the shady message boards and illegal retail sites that operated on the dark side of the web. The thought excited and terrified him.

  ‘So, Elle,’ he looked over at the photograph, ‘what do you think?’

  Silence hung in the air. A dull ache blossomed around his sternum and radiated through his chest. Carefully, he put down the laptop before he dropped it. Even after all this time, he couldn’t understand how these tidal waves of grief emerged out of such calm waters. He gazed through teary eyes at the picture. He wondered whether he would ever feel whole again. Her absence was as powerful as her presence had been in life. The weight of what he was about to do hit him hard. Would leaving their home lessen that sense that he was missing a part of him in any way? He couldn’t bear the idea of losing even more of her.

  He went to the drinks cabinet and poured himself a large measure of whisky. The feel of the cut-glass tumbler in his hand had a reassuring and familiar weight. He went to the window and surveyed London as it lit up in the gathering gloom, drinking in the view for the last time. He poured himself another generous helping and proceeded to get steadily more drunk, drowning in his melancholy.