Little Sister (A James Palatine Novel)

by Giles O'Bryen

  ‘Put on clothes, dirty pig!’

  Salif gestured at the clothes, but James only stared at him wide-eyed. Behind the disgruntled guard, James saw a puff of dust wafting from the shower room. If he looks in there, he’ll find debris all over the floor.

  ‘Let me go, you shits!’ he yelled again, and the dogs responded in kind. Then he turned onto his back, took hold of his penis and began to masturbate.

  Younes sniggered. Salif couldn’t leave quickly enough. ‘Dirty hamada!’ he snapped as he slammed the door. James heard Younes yammering excitedly – Did you see that ramzi with his zep out? He fancies you for sure, Salif! – heard Salif’s furious response, heard their footsteps as they walked back to the guardroom.

  He waited for an hour, then dressed and went back up the shower-room wall. He eased up the two remaining bolts until they were clear of the ceiling, then slowly pushed the cowling aside. He went back down and collected the broken vent and the debris from the floor of the shower room. The top end of the bolts was latched, he noticed, with a small steel projection you swung in place over the inner rim of the cowl to clamp it in place. Probably made it easier to fit – certainly made it easier to remove. He wrapped everything in his T-shirt and deposited the evidence of his night’s work on the roof.

  He levered himself half way up through the narrow opening and checked the guards at the main gate. They had their backs to him – and their postures suggested they were asleep. A generator growled and stammered from somewhere behind the barracks. As for the dogs, noise might disturb them, but they were used to his scent by now.

  He pushed himself up the rest of the way and lay down on the roof. A breath of cool air caressed his shoulders and he shivered. The sky was pitch black and studded with stars to every horizon. He allowed himself to savour this moment of triumph, then started to plot lines of escape, over the dog run to the razor wire and across the dark areas of the compound to the perimeter fence. There were lights strung around the barracks and the warehouse, but the administration block was illuminated only by an iron lantern that cast a baleful yellow halo over the double doors beneath the flag. The rest of the building was in darkness, a black void excised from the glittering sky.

  What was this place, with its excellent cook and mannered little doctor, its cohort of guards and their black-capped commander, its unlimited supply of white plastic patio chairs? Nazli, Mansour. . . And what about the dignified old officer who had brought the beheading to a merciful close? None of it made any sense. But one thing was sure: he was not going to be set free at the end of his stay with a holdall full of cash and a goatskin of water to tide him on his way, whatever Nazli believed.

  He was about to go back down and re-fit the broken vent when he heard footsteps. A light came on in the enclosed yard behind him. He pulled himself towards the edge of the roof until he could see over: Mansour, wearing his bisht and a shemagh. He strode towards the centre of the yard, stopped and gazed up at the sky. He threw up his arms in a gesture of theatrical exultation and started to mutter some incantation. Then he seemed to change his mind, and went and unlocked the door to a room in the south-east corner of the yard.

  Not good enough for a berth in the barracks, thought James, feeling a grim pleasure at the discovery that the inept executioner was housed here in the guest wing, with nothing but a cheap wooden door to protect him.

  Chapter Seven

  When James turned up for his session with Nazli the next evening, his host showed no signs of knowing that the Sun server had been hacked. James told him to carry on familiarising himself with the IPD400’s operating parameters, then logged in to the Sun using the access-restricted account Nazli had set up for him. As soon as Nazli turned his attention to the IPD400, James swivelled the Sun monitor aside so his fellow tech wouldn’t see the screen if he glanced up. That done, he launched his keystroke logger – and there was Nazli’s sysadmin password, neatly trapped. khwar1zmi. Interesting choice, thought James. A ninth-century Persian mathematician, populariser of the decimal system, whose name had been adapted to form the word algorithm. He logged out of his low-level account and re-logged in to Nazli’s, then created a new account called sysadmin_old. It wouldn’t arouse suspicion – computers are littered with filenames suffixed with ‘_old’, geeks having a morbid fear of deleting things that may turn out to be better than their replacements.

  ‘I can’t get these commands to execute,’ Nazli said.

  James was beginning to find his companion’s whines and grumbles unendurable. Apparently Nazli didn’t like working on his own; and it was becoming increasingly obvious that his knowledge of the techniques in which James specialised was not profound. James stood and looked over his shoulder.

  ‘You can’t tell the system to sidestep a procedure and then wait for its outcome.’

  ‘Show me.’

  James did so, then returned to the Sun and started to browse the vast collection of logfiles to which the sysadmin account gave him access. He soon found something that interested him: a cache of files with a CDElog suffix. Anonymous enough, unless you happened to know that they were put there by a piece of software called Centuries Deep.

  Centuries Deep was a so-called ‘lean-profile’ encrypted communications package, used mainly by multinational corporations (and, to their shame, Her Majesty’s SIS) for sending sensitive data across a multi-site network. ‘Lean profile’ was a joke. It was a monster of a program that muscled itself self-importantly to the front of every resource queue like a nightclub bouncer in need of a toilet. It was also fiendishly complex to install, demanding decisions on every aspect of its operation but wording them so incomprehensibly that Select default was the invariable choice for any technician wanting to complete the job before taking retirement. But the default settings logged all communications sent and received by the system, turning a Centuries Deep installation into a comprehensive and wholly pregnable repository of so-called ‘secure’ information. The fact that he’d been able to install a keystroke logger on a CDE-protected machine was further testament to its general shoddiness.

  A loud sigh made him jump. Nazli had tipped back his chair and was staring at him thoughtfully.

  ‘I’m comparing the configs with the new settings,’ he said. ‘It makes sense to use the XML.’

  You approve, James thought. What an honour.

  ‘Any luck your end?’

  ‘There’s a low-level conflict, and the workaround’s not pretty.’

  ‘We should look at it together, see if I can bring some fresh thinking to bear.’

  MIT, James thought. Nowhere else do they teach arrogance to such an advanced level.

  ‘I must have the password for Little Sister.’ Nazli’s voice came out unnaturally loud and toneless.

  ‘No.’

  Nazli reddened and started to go through his repertoire of tics, concluding with a soothing cup of orange soda.

  ‘I have to show progress. I can’t even turn it on,’ he said, the familiar griping tone returning to his voice.

  ‘Are they threatening you?’

  ‘No, not at all.’

  James thought that was a lie. ‘Tell them to wait. Get technical.’

  It was an unwelcome development, but James was impatient to return to the CDE logfiles: finding them was like being reunited with an infuriating classmate and realising that everyone has their purpose in life. Centuries Deep was probably logging every single item of communication that went in or out of the compound. He started to copy the logfiles to a server belonging to the Pixelite Design Company in Mexico City on which – amidst the terabytes of rejected drafts of designs for soft drinks cans and pizza leaflets – he’d secured for himself anonymous access to a couple of gigabytes of storage space. The stream of bits stampeded up to the rooftop satellite dish, but there was so much data James didn’t think the process would complete before the guards arrived to take him back to his room. To cover for that, he knocked up a script that would carry on the good work for twenty minutes
at 5.00 a.m. every weekday morning for the next five days.

  He checked on Nazli: jiggling his knee and copying something into his notebook – good for a few more minutes. James opened a random selection of the CDE logfiles:

  [BEGIN] CONFIRM RECEIPT OF CONSIGNMENT 4500HLE98097 DATED 03.09 DELIVERED 05:40, HANDOVER POINT B. [END]

  [BEGIN] UNABLE TO SUPPLY ITEM 89008. SUBSTITUTE 89016-B IDENTICAL MODEL WITH IMPROVED SIGHTS. YOUR ACCEPTANCE ASSUMED UNLESS WE HEAR BY 00:00 TONIGHT. [END]

  [BEGIN] REF ANEMONE, NO SIGNIFICANT ACTIVITY TO REPORT. [END]

  Most of the messages implied a commercial organisation of some kind – the last thing he had expected. The phrase ‘improved sights’ was suggestive of the arms trade. He thought of the military-industrial corporates whose expensively groomed executives took out consultancy contracts with him and Vanic, his partner at Imperial College: such organisations were perfectly indifferent to strictures of ethics and the law where a chance to enlarge their already swollen fortunes was at stake, but their skulduggery was the kind usually fronted by lawyers and accountants. It was surely absurd to believe that a BA or a Lockheed might have arranged the abduction of an eminent British scientist. And what was Anemone? A stubborn customer? A service that wasn’t working? James checked more messages but found only a morass of cryptic references to inventory numbers and logistics: whoever used this network was being very circumspect, especially considering they’d paid Centuries Deep to protect them from prying eyes.

  Nazli had now regressed to fidgeting like an eight-year-old watching the classroom clock. Any minute now he’d stand up and come over. But if this baffling desert compound was merely an outpost of a powerful organisation, it wasn’t Nazli he should be worried about. Anyone might be watching. Perhaps Centuries Deep was logging his actions right now – it logged everything else, after all.

  On impulse, James committed to memory the IP address in the header of the Anemone message. Then he exited the sysadmin account and re-logged in to the one Nazli had created for him. He was annoyed that he’d left himself so exposed, but there was nothing he could do about it now. Anyway, thought James, I’m the leading expert in the entire world on this stuff. What did they expect?

  Holworthy’s was an over-starched kind of place a block shy of the ocean on Ventura. It catered for retired Hollywood elders who had their own favourite tables, checked their coiffured little dogs at the cloakroom the way others check a hat, and fussed about which mountain in Italy their mineral water sprang from. Nat had dressed soberly, but she still looked like an orchid in a cabbage patch. Anthony R. Schliemann, Chief Procurement Officer for the Signals Intelligence Directorate of the National Security Agency, stood up from a booth at the far end and held out both arms in a gesture of welcome that looked like it had been practised many times but still resolutely refused to come off.

  ‘Nat Kocharian, welcome to Los Angeles,’ he said in an unnecessarily loud voice. ‘It’s been too long!’

  ‘Hey Tony, thanks for making the time.’

  ‘Not a problem. You came all the way over to the West Coast just to see me. I’m flattered. Set yourself down and let me order you a cocktail. The martinis here are old school, just how they should be. You need to use the bathroom? It’s right over there by the bar.’ He beckoned to a waiter who was already approaching their table.

  ‘A vodka martini would be perfect,’ said Nat, passing up the opportunity to dash to the loo like an agitated twelve-year-old.

  ‘A vodka martini for the lady, with a twist, no olive, and a whiskey sour for myself. We’ll be ready to order in ten minutes.’

  He surveyed the restaurant from a standing position, as if reluctant to accept the diminution in his presence that would inevitably occur when he sat down. He was a tall man, and wanted everyone to know it. Nat remembered him like this in meetings, always the first to get to his feet and dominate the room, making his generally predictable points with a repertoire of movements of hands, arms and shoulders that were at once wooden and mesmerising. He had the makings of a handsome face, but the deep forehead was bland rather than sagacious, his eyes were too small, and there was an area of blank skin where the bridge of his nose should have been. True to form, he wore a tailored grey suit with a broad check over an off-white shirt and slate blue tie.

  ‘It’s easy to get sidetracked by the latest fad restaurants that start up every other day here in LA and always seem to get sensational reviews,’ he told her, ‘but Holworthy’s stands for something different: enduring quality.’

  ‘There’s not enough of that,’ said Nat.

  ‘You’re so right. Ah, here are our drinks. The martini can go here.’ He directed the glass to a precise point by Nat’s table setting. ‘And the whiskey here. Thank you. Six or seven minutes, please. Your very good health, as they say in London.’ He raised his glass so high Nat had to stretch forward to bring hers level, then laughed, a sequence of dry, repetitive exhalations that sounded like a cough.

  ‘And yours, Tony.’ Nat already felt enervated by his pedantically chivalrous manner, and was tempted to launch straight into her spiel just in order to avoid having to eat with him.

  ‘Now, the wine I ordered earlier, by email – an oh-four Montrachet which I think will stand up to most things we might choose, though not the boeuf en daube or the venison.’ He pronounced boeuf as if it had no e, boof. ‘We can order red by the glass if you decide on one of those dishes.’

  ‘I’ll have the crab to start with, then the turbot.’ Nat put her menu down. ‘So how’ve you been, Tony?’

  Grey Tony was reading the menu, tapping each item with a busy finger and evidently too absorbed in making mental notes to offer a reply. ‘Possible, maybe too sharp for the Montrachet. . . ’ he was telling himself. Eventually, ‘There, done. The char-grilled shrimp with asparagus and saffron rice, followed by the veal escalope with white truffle sauce. Now, how are Grosvenor Systems and all who sail in her?’ He pulled his carefully groomed face into a smile by way of acknowledgement of his mastery of British vernacular.

  ‘I’m taking time off from Grosvenor. Had a few family things I needed to attend to. . . Anyway, after three years of single-handedly kicking that company into the twenty-first century, I needed a break.’

  ‘Their idea or yours?’

  ‘It was mutual,’ said Nat. She leaned forward and lowered her voice. ‘Can you keep a secret, Tony?’

  ‘I should damn well think so, working for the National Security Agency for twenty years!’

  ‘Working for the NSA is a qualification for having secrets, not keeping them,’ Nat retorted.

  ‘Ha-ha, too right.’ Tony’s laugh was abrupt and toneless – a signal that he’d understood the joke rather than enjoyed it. ‘You always had a great sense of humour.’

  ‘About six months ago Clive Silk started pestering me, taking me out to lunch and pouring out his lovelorn soul, then moping like a teenager when I said no. Eventually I gave in, just to keep him quiet. He’s really not my type, Tony, so undistinguished. Anyway, he just got worse and worse. Eventually the chairman—’

  ‘Sir Peter Beddoes.’

  ‘Yes, Sir Peter. He called me in and said he knew it wasn’t my fault but how would I feel about a few months off, just to let Clive pull himself together. We had a short negotiation and that was that. Silk gets time to remember that he’s a married, middle-aged man with a wife and dog somewhere in Surrey, and I get a nice long holiday.’

  ‘How will they do without you? I heard you were the only person who ever sold anything for Grosvenor.’

  ‘Almost true—’

  ‘Maybe they want to see if they can get along without you,’ Tony continued, without waiting for Nat to finish. ‘Yes, that would figure. It’s essential for all organisations to plan the succession – hell, the Agency probably has a replacement for me already lined up!’ he declared, as if this were evidence of succession planning at its most extreme.

  They paused to give their order. Tony looked as if he w
anted to seize the waiter’s pad and write it out himself.

  ‘Anyway, here I am, finding out how I get along without Grosvenor.’

  ‘And the answer is?’

  ‘Between you and me, I may not go back.’

  ‘They’re good people, on balance, I wouldn’t throw them over too lightly,’ Tony said with the air of a man of the world addressing a wide-eyed waif. Nat gritted her teeth.

  Their first course arrived, allowing Tony to fuss over the arrangement of dishes and congratulate himself repeatedly on his choice. Twice Nat caught him eyeing her stealthily, and guessed he was trying to make up his mind whether making a pass at her was worth the risk of rejection. Their plates were cleared, the main courses served, the conversation plodded on. Having endured the sight of Tony arranging his food into a sequence of carefully planned mouthfuls and then tidying his plate with exasperating fastidiousness, Nat finally lost patience.

  ‘Tony, do you remember that intercept device you were always asking me about, the one built by James Palatine?’

  ‘Dr Palatine, the computer genius with the dark backstory?’

  ‘That’s right. The IPD400.’

  ‘A prototype – and not for sale, as I recall.’

  Tony’s eyes had become sharp and wary, so that Nat was reminded that this dull and even faintly ridiculous man wielded one of the US government’s largest capital budgets.

  ‘I think I can get it for you.’

  For a second, Nat saw confusion on Grey Tony’s face, then shock. It wasn’t the reaction she’d been expecting.

  ‘You’re working for Grosvenor again?’

  ‘Interested?’

  Tony shrugged, looked over his shoulder to summon a waiter. He ordered mineral water, then rearranged his place setting.