by N C Mander
*
As Mo and Kat made their way out of the building, a voice called after them. They turned to see Charlie haring down the corridor. He was carrying a buff-coloured folder. On reaching them, he said, catching his breath, ‘Glad to see you’re still here.’ He looked around, but the corridor was empty. ‘Let me walk you out.’
The front desk staff greeted Charlie with warmth and smiles, which he returned as he ushered the MI5 team from the building. Kat turned to him as they reached the pavement, but Charlie took her arm and guided her to start walking toward Thames House. ‘Make as if you’re leaving,’ he said under his breath. They acted casually, although Mo, the least experienced of the three, was visibly agitated and kept glancing back at the exit of New Scotland Yard from which they had just come.
At the corner, opposite the Houses of Parliament, they merged with the crowds of tourists that milled around the famous site, and Charlie slowed his pace. He handed the folder he’d been carrying to Kat, ‘You’ve just been with Colchester, correct?’
‘Yes,’ Kat confirmed.
‘Did he tell you Yorkshire police have found the skipper?’
‘No,’ they exclaimed in unison and Kat felt her face flush with anger.
‘When?’ Kat asked.
‘Saturday morning.’
‘No way,’ Mo protested, looking from Charlie to Kat in disbelief. ‘There’s no way that news came in on Saturday. I was with the operational team all weekend.’ Kat rested a hand on Mo’s arm to calm him and assure him that she believed that her officer hadn’t missed anything whilst he’d been shadowing the police.
‘I had a suspicion Colchester might have been choosing to be economical with his information sharing,’ Charlie spoke as much to reassure the distraught Mo as he was imparting information, ‘so I thought I’d check in on the inquiry this morning. One of the guys let slip that Colchester had explicitly told them that this file was not for sharing.’
‘Why the hell would he cover this up?’ Kat spat out her words.
‘He wasn’t keen on how quickly you got the information about the inhabitants of the West Ham flat is my working theory,’ Charlie nodded at Mo who was simmering, going back over his memory of the tedious hours wasted in the operation room at the weekend.
‘Thanks, Charlie. So, what do we have here?’ Kat said. She opened the folder. It contained a handful of glossy photographs. She looked closely at the one on the top and saw the prostrate body of a man, draped over the steering wheel of a car. The image was artificially lit with the bright white light from the photographer’s flash. She thumbed through the images to one taken from further back from the scene. The body, for the man was evidently dead, was in a red Ford Escort which was parked in a cluttered garage. Another image showed the pipe running from the exhaust and in through the nearly closed driver side window of the Ford. There were further pathology images of rooms inside a frugally furnished home. One of the photographs captured a collection of empty pill bottles.
‘Jack Fleming killed himself.’ Kat’s shoulders slumped. She had been hopeful that they might be able to use the skipper to their advantage. She’d reasoned that a Yorkshire fisherman in his early sixties was highly unlikely to be working with a terrorist cell driven by motives of idolatry. He needed the money, was her working theory. Perhaps he’d been promised funding for treatment of his sick wife. It was a common trope for coercion. It was possible he didn’t even know who he was working for. With some careful questioning, she’d hoped he would have given up a huge amount of useful information pertinent to Operation HAPSBURG.
Charlie raised his eyebrows. ‘I don’t know the circumstances well, but I’d hazard a guess that his demise may not be wholly self-inflicted.’
Kat was skimming the notes in the file and was rereading the house’s inventory, she looked up, ‘You might be right, no note. And the stomach contents don’t match the empty packets found in the house. Just a few over-the-counter painkillers as opposed to the cocktail of anti-emetics and narcotics pictured. What does Colchester think?’
‘A professional hit that he’s unlikely to be able to track down.’
‘Unfortunately, he’s probably right.’
The great bells of Big Ben began to chime above them. ‘Listen, I have to go. I’ll keep my ear to the ground on the investigation, but my suspicion is that you lot are set up to run with it from here.’
Kat looked after the retreating figure. ‘Charlie,’ she called after him as he weaved in and out of the tourists with their camera phones trained on the chiming clock. Charlie looked back. ‘Thank you,’ Kat mouthed. He gave her a thumbs-up and disappeared into the crowd.
Turning to Mo, Kat said, ‘I know I promised you a coffee, but I think it might be best if you got back to the Yard.’
Mo nodded. ‘You’ll put someone on the landlords?’
‘I’ll give that to Colin. We should be able to track down where the cell has moved to that way.’
‘I just hope you find them before Colchester’s trigger-happy mob do.’ Kat nodded. ‘And the skipper?’
‘That’s got institutional hit written all over it.’ Mo looked at her blankly. ‘Probably a hitman, hired by whoever’s behind this. They will have covered their tracks fastidiously,’ Kat explained and Mo looked crestfallen. ‘Disappointment is part of this job,’ Kat counselled the junior officer, as members of the public skirted around them, oblivious to their role in keeping them safe. ‘Finding VIPERSNEST is top priority, and that’s not going to happen with you moping along the Embankment.’ Kat spoke confidently but she felt overwhelmed. The loss of the captain as a potential intelligence source was a major blow. ‘Stay focused on whatever’s in the works,’ she said to Mo as a parting missive and ushered him in the direction of New Scotland Yard.
*
0025, Monday 3rd July, Telegram Messaging Service
*
0806, Monday 3rd July, Penwill & Mallinson, Canary Wharf, London
Edison’s weekend had been uneventful. Other than a few titbits of information he’d been able to glean about the mysterious RubiksKube, his progress on the case had been limited. He had been for a couple of short jogs and was beginning to recognise some of the benefits of the active regimen. He was no longer quite so breathless on arriving at the top of the three flights of stairs at the flat. Tony had watched him incredulously but didn’t comment on his flatmate’s routine. Swallowing his pride, on Saturday evening, Edison had knocked on Tony’s bedroom door and suggested to his reclusive flatmate that they might get some pizza. He looked shocked by the proposal. Edison’s intrusion had come at a particularly sensitive point in his online multiplayer game. Despite this, he made his excuses to his fellow players, firing off multiple messages in quick succession and followed him into the sitting room. The pair had watched a terrible film and consumed three large pizzas. Tony had offered Edison some of the beers he kept in the fridge, and the evening had ticked over pleasantly. On Sunday, Edison had had the flat to himself as his flatmate went to visit his children. And so it was, that on Monday morning, Edison arrived at the office in good spirits and well rested.
He opened the code repository and skimmed through it. Billy looked over. ‘How are you getting on with that?’
‘Not bad. There are a few syntax issues that are taking a little bit of translating, but I think I’m getting there.’
‘Is there anything you need in particular? I’m sure Jamie could point you to the right bit of the script if necessary.’
As if summoned, Jamie appeared on the fifteenth floor, clad head to toe in Lycra and carrying a bike helmet. ‘What was that?’ he said, having just caught his name as he arrived.
; ‘Oh nothing,’ Edison interjected, who didn’t want to be pressed on his views on the code by Jamie. ‘You cycled in today?’
‘Yeah,’ Jamie said, placing his helmet on his desk and rummaging around in the drawers below to retrieve a washbag. ‘It’s hard to work up a sweat between the lights but you can get up a decent speed coming along the cycle highway.’ Jamie turned and started to make his way toward the lifts that would take him to the showers. ‘You and I need to go for that run,’ he said to Edison as he left.
‘Definitely tomorrow,’ Edison promised as the young man disappeared. ‘I might know what questions I want to ask you by then, with a bit of luck,’ he added under his breath. Edison turned his attention back to the screen, on which lines and lines of spidery white script appeared against a black background.
It took Edison most of Monday through to the following morning to find the section of the algorithm he was looking for. The associated database was equally impenetrable. It recorded every position taken by the bank and traded, on average, once every three minutes. The volume of information was staggering, but Edison persevered and eventually unpicked the mechanics of the trading strategy. By early afternoon on Tuesday, Edison felt confident in challenging Jamie on some of the detail. ‘Hey Jamie,’ Edison said.
‘Yup,’ said Jamie.
‘Could you clarify something for me on your algorithm?’
‘Sure.’ Jamie pushed himself away from his workstation, and without getting out of his wheeled chair, scooted himself to Edison’s side.
‘So,’ Edison said, waving the cursor at a section of code, ‘am I right in thinking that this is a volatility play? Buying BitCoin and selling Ethereum almost simultaneously? The return is on the difference between the two currencies?’
‘Bingo, you got it,’ said Jamie. ‘FCA shouldn’t have a problem with that, right?’
Edison pretended to ponder the question. ‘As long as the system registers the spot price for each trade, no.’
Did Edison detect a slight shift in Jamie’s confidence? There was a hint of a flush in the young man’s face and he swallowed audibly. He needed to dig deeper. Jamie’s composure had slipped only momentarily, and he was back to his usual confident self. ‘Spot prices are all recorded and backed up in the primary database, you can see them here,’ he said, snatching the mouse from Edison and pulling up a list of numbers, each coded to a particular trade. ‘No issues!’ Hurriedly, he wheeled himself back to his desk.
Edison put his head down but observed his mark as Jamie began to pack his things. He pulled a USB stick from his own machine, burying it in his rucksack. Within five minutes of their conversation, Jamie stood up and announced, to no one in particular, that he wasn’t feeling great and was getting away early.
Edison watched him retreat to the lifts. He walked with the familiar gait of someone who was trying to disguise his haste. What was he up to? He was certainly acting like a man with something to hide.
Edison focused and entered his password. He may have lost Jamie for the day, but he still needed to identify exactly what he was up to. That would take a few more hours of sieving through the original data on the server and digging into the commit history, the log indicating every time a change was made to the code, by whom and what they did. He also wanted to make a few subtle changes of his own in the system, and that was going to require every bit of his intellectual might to pull off without raising suspicions.
Before he immersed himself in the task, he shot a text to Tanya – Think I know where the money is coming from. The head of section picked up Edison’s message an hour later, having emerged from a tedious meeting about budgeting. She smiled at the news. ‘Good old Edison, he really is a genius,’ she said to herself and her empty office. She replied to Edison and then went to find Kat. They would meet Edison for a debrief that evening.
The notification of Tanya’s summons to Thames House drew Edison out of his focus with a start. He looked down at the vibrating mobile phone on the desk as if it were an alien creature and he had no idea how it had ended up there, so deeply engrossed was he in the programming language. Thames House, Edison thought to himself, maybe his exile was over, and he would be permitted onto the Grid for their discussion.
With plenty of time to cross London, Edison shut down his computer and packed his few belongings into the messenger bag he’d taken to carrying.
As the Jubilee line train rumbled through the darkness, Edison wondered where Jamie had gone in such a hurry. There were strict rules about removing information and data from the building. Any home working was done from a carefully monitored, secure remote desktop system. Who wanted what was on that USB key? Was he meeting someone? Was it a missed opportunity not trailing him today? It would have been impossible without blowing his cover completely.
*
Edison navigated through the tourists around the Houses of Parliament and made his way along the Embankment to Thames House. He was surprised to find both Tanya and Kat waiting outside.
‘Lovely evening isn’t it,’ was Tanya’s greeting as Edison approached.
‘Lovely evening for a walk along the river,’ added Kat, it sounded rehearsed.
‘I thought we’d meet upstairs. Could do with the loo,’ said Edison.
Kat returned a sympathetic look and Tanya said, ‘You know I can’t register you onsite, Edison.’ She crossed the road, and Kat followed. They both turned to look at Edison, his shoulders slumped, the picture of dejection. He was struggling with being on the edge of the team. He missed the buzz of the Grid; the team’s headquarters, where they could retreat, regroup and kick ideas around. He was battling too with a sense that he wasn’t getting to the bottom of the mystery of the Penwill & Mallinson’s hacker quickly enough.
He crossed the road to join the two women, painting a picture of defiance on his face. ‘Do you really need to use the bathroom?’ Kat whispered. Edison smiled despite himself.
‘Of course not,’ he said.
The three of them set off in the direction of Vauxhall Bridge. Edison thought back to his recent chat with Charlie, covering similar ground and his friend’s counsel to embrace his unofficial status on the operational team.
‘So, what do you know?’ asked Kat.
Edison took a deep breath. ‘The core trading strategy relies on the volatility in the altcoin’s exchange rates. There’s an algorithm that’s trading BitCoin into Ethereum and back again, sometimes. The money’s made on the difference between the exchange rates.’ He was walking between Kat and Tanya. He paused briefly and shot a look at his companions for confirmation that they were following him. They both looked slightly vacant. He wished he was in the comfort of the office, with a whiteboard, pen in hand, scrawling diagrams to help his audience get to grips with this. Instead, the wind ruffled his clothes and blew Kat’s long hair into her face, forcing her to occasionally pull long strands of it from her eyes and her mouth.
‘So,’ he went on, ‘if you have ten BitCoin, the algorithm will trade that into Ethereum at a given spot price. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, every BitCoin buys you two Ethereum. So, you end up with twenty Ethereum.’ Tanya and Kat nodded. Edison went on, ‘On the next trade, the exchange rate has shifted such that every BitCoin is worth one point five Ethereum, so you end up with fifteen BitCoin. Gives you a return of five BitCoin.’ Edison had gained momentum and pressed on, ‘It’s an arbitrage on the relative spot values of the given digital currency at that point. It’s all set up to execute automatically and trades every three minutes, pulling the exchange rates from the Ethereum exchange.’
The two women nodded. Kat asked, ‘What if the price goes against them?’
‘There’s a choke switch built into the trading mechanism. If the exchange rate goes against the bank’s position, they don’t trade.’
‘So that’s the basics,’ Tanya said. ‘Where’s our money coming from then?’
‘It’s rather elegant really,’ said Edison.
Tanya raised her eye
brows. ‘I’m not sure I’d call aiding and abetting terrorism elegant.’
Edison ignored her. ‘There’s a loop in the algorithm, or at least there was.’
‘Was?’ Kat queried.
‘Yes, the code on the server was clean. Even when I dug into the code repository, it appeared totally clean. Nothing out of the ordinary in the commit log.’
‘The what log?’ asked Tanya.
Edison didn’t fancy delivering a full tutorial on Git, the distributed version control system used by all tech developers to track their projects. ‘Whenever a developer makes a change to the code of a program, he or she has to make what is called a “commit” which is logged. If the code is changed or merged in some way, there will always be a copy of what it was like before in the repository.’
‘So, we’re still at square one.’ Kat couldn’t hide her frustration as she pulled a chunk of hair from her mouth and spluttered in disgust.
‘Not at all. Last Friday morning, there was a reset of the master branch. Lannister rewrote the repository.’
‘Who’s Lannister?’
‘That’s Jamie’s username and avatar on the system.’
‘I thought his name was Dunn.’ Tanya’s brow furrowed.
‘Lannister is a house in Game of Thrones.’ The creases in the head of section’s forehead deepened. She opened her mouth to ask another question, but Edison interrupted, irritated by the diversion, ‘The pseudonyms the team use on their system isn’t relevant. What is important is that Jamie has been changing the code and then covering his tracks by rewriting the log repository. And not just last Friday. A little forensic analysis on the server proves someone has done the same thing twice this week, late in the evening, really late.’
Kat’s eyes flashed with concern, and she interrupted Edison’s flow, ‘Such behaviour suggests your cover is compromised. Surely, we should pull you out. Jamie has worked out that you are looking for something.’
