Hugh Middleton was on the telephone with General Chillicott, and gestured to her to sit down. The speaker was on and they were discussing their upcoming meeting with the UN Security Council. ‘Ilona just came in, Billy. I suggest you send your draft topics and text to her, and she can arrange for one of our people to mock up a presentation package that we can play around with to perfect. We have enough time and might as well take advantage of it. The meeting may not produce any results, but at least we’ll present a convincing argument.’
‘Hello General, Ilona here,’ she said into the speaker. ‘Just send me what you’ve got and I’ll add the recent items that we’ve unearthed on our end. The problem with these reports is not finding enough material to add, it’s looking through the dross to find the gold. There have been over 100 million stolen records offered on the dark web in the last few months.’
‘What kind of stuff are you seeing?’
‘You mean apart from the “WannaCry” ransomware attack?’ She was referring to the global cyber-attack the previous month, where an estimated 230,000 computers in 150 countries were blocked until ransoms were paid.
‘Don’t remind me, Ilona. That was the scariest attack we’ve seen. It cost world businesses, including your own NHS, billions in costs and ransoms. We’re pretty sure it was organised by the “Lazarus Group”, that Russian outfit, working on behalf of North Korea, raising more dollars for arms purchases.’
‘Indeed,’ interjected Middleton, ‘and since they have very few Internet connections in their own country, the west can’t even make a “tit for tat” response, most regrettable. What else have you uncovered, my dear?’
‘Take your pick: WikiLeaks published 9,000 documents stolen from the CIA, 77 million accounts exposed on the Edmodo Education platform, more than 250,000 at Wonga, the payday loans company, and 14 million at Verizon Telecoms, £2.5 million stolen from 9,000 online customers of Tesco Bank, and about $150 million has been stolen from 30,000 investors into ICOs, Initial Coin Offerings, using the Ethereum crypto-currency. The latest industry projections are for global cybercrime damage to hit $6 billion by 2012, even though they expect cybersecurity spending to exceed a trillion dollars over the next five years. Is that bad enough?’
‘Well, we’re starting to get some traction with the SEC. They’re publicly agreeing with us that the biggest risk faced by the financial system is cybersecurity. And, just like we’ve been doing, they’re calling for more stringent management and controls. Our people are also uncovering a lot of very interesting social media activity around our elections. Everyone knows there was a whole lot of crap went on that seriously disrupted the process and could come back to bite you-know-who. Maybe that kid, Leo Stewart, was right. It’s going to take a massive catastrophe to get people’s attention and that’s certainly where we’re headed. Anyway, thanks for your help, Ilona. I’ll get Lloyd to send our draft over to you today.’
‘Speaking of Leo Stewart, General, I dropped you a note about the Lee-Win ownership. Did you make any progress on it? We’ve made none at all.’
Chillicott’s tone changed. ‘I was coming to that, Ilona. I’ve got somebody on it and the whole ownership issue looks like a can of worms. You mind telling me what this is all about?’
Middleton interrupted, ‘Just commercial information, Billy. In view of the lack of support from the lower echelons who attended the conference in San Diego, I’m considering contacting the companies directly at a much higher level, to try to bring them onto our side in keeping up the pressure on the UNSC.’
Ilona raised her eyebrows, but said nothing as Chillicott replied, ‘So this is nothing to do with Leo Stewart and XPC?’
‘Billy, since I had never heard of Leo Stewart until you mentioned him to me the other day, I don’t know why you’d make such an assumption. However, if there is anything untoward about that company, I think it’s in the interests of everyone concerned to be aware of it.’
Ilona Tymoshenko left the room with a frown on her face. I don’t believe that’s Hugh’s motive. He’s looking for something specifically about Leo Stewart and XPC that has nothing to do with our programme. She was even more determined to find out what it was.
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
‘How are you getting on with Ed? He’s quite a guy, isn’t he?’ Leo Stewart had called in to the Corner House for breakfast on his way to the office and Lynne, the Welsh waitress, was on duty.
‘He’s a typical Scouser,’ she laughed. ‘All those Liverpool guys are the same, it’s like they think they’re the Beatles reincarnated. But he’s intelligent and really funny. I like his company, reminds me of home.’
‘I’m glad to hear it. He’s doing a great job for us, so I don’t want him to get homesick and leave me in the lurch.’
‘Oh. I didn’t realise you’re his boss. He just said you work together at XPC.’
Leo could have bitten his tongue off. Ed would be bound to brag about his job, it was in his nature, especially when there was a girl involved. He didn’t want to dispel anything he might have told her. ‘I’m not exactly his boss,’ he answered a bit too quickly. ‘Just different responsibilities and I have to check some work he does for the team, so I kind of think of him as working for me.’
It didn’t sound very convincing to him and it obviously didn’t fool her. She flashed him a smile, ‘I’d better be extra nice to you then, it might do Ed a favour. Want another coffee?’
I’d better get out of here before I screw Ed’s chances, he thought. ‘No thanks, got to run for a meeting.’ He put some change on the plate. ‘Thanks, Lynne. See you next time. Ciao.’
Leo raced back to his office on the Harley, cursing under his breath. He hated making mistakes, and had possibly hurt a new-found friend in the process. Professionally speaking, he also couldn’t afford to upset Ed. With everything that was happening at XPC, he needed every asset he could muster if he was going to get the job done. No point in trying to fix it, he decided, it’ll only make things worse. Just let it go and hope for the best.
London, England
‘You seem very preoccupied, anything you want to share with me?’
Jenny Bishop was having lunch with Bill Redman, her boyfriend, in Mario’s Trattoria, a popular Italian restaurant in the city. They had spent the morning looking over the results from her growing collection of shareholdings in BPE and she was in a mood to celebrate, but Bill seemed ill at ease, constantly checking his mobile and chewing the ends of his glasses.
‘Just something at the bank. Nothing to worry about.’
‘You’re a terrible liar, Bill. Come on, a problem shared is a problem halved, or something like that. You know I don’t talk, I just listen.’
He looked around. The restaurant was full, which meant that no one could hear anything over the decibel level of the crowd. ‘We’ve taken a big hit,’ he said with a frown. ‘Both Fletcher Rice and the BIP.’
‘Oh dear, I’m so sorry. Was it a fine?’
‘No, not that, we’ve never been involved in anything we could be penalised for, thank God. It was an Internet fraud, altogether it cost almost 200 million.’
‘My God, not another? Seems like there’s one every day now.’ Jenny could sympathise with him. Her mind went back to 2008, when $12 million was stolen by an Internet transfer from one of her accounts in Geneva. It was a miracle she and Leticia hadn’t also been murdered by the culprit, Ray d’Almeida, the Angolan killer. Then she’d had to manage another near-miracle to recover the funds from the bank, after baring her teeth in a fraught battle with lawyers and bankers alike.
‘It’s the first we’ve ever had and it’s entirely the fault of those bloody fools at the BIP in Paris. Bunch of incompetent idiots.’
‘Would I understand how it was done?’
‘It was as simple as child’s play. They launched a marketing campaign with some holiday vouchers as prizes. You know the kind of thing, “Tell us why BIP is your favourite bank in less than twenty words. Send to ema
il address, etc.” All the European subsidiaries were involved, including us. The customers had to have at least 2,500 Euros or equivalent in their account to qualify, so the BIP hoped there’d be an influx of funds from people topping up their accounts to qualify. Then some half-witted IT twit linked the email address to the client account database, so they could compare them as they came in and disqualify any accountholders with an insufficient balance.’
‘And someone got through to the clients’ accounts and emptied them?’
‘You see, Jenny. You’re not a computer expert but even you can spot the stupidity of the link. The forensic people said there was a virus in his system. He must have been looking at porn websites or the like and he’d been hacked without knowing it. When he checked the customer account list to verify the details, the virus sent the list to the hacker and Hey Presto, he had access to the accounts and there was at least two and a half grand available to be stolen from every one. I’ve never been so bloody annoyed in my life. That money has to be repaid from reserves, it’s not insured of course, and part of it’ll come straight out of our bonuses. And I bet whichever genius was responsible has been promoted or paid off with a golden parachute. Bugger!’
‘That works out at about 80,000 accounts, right?’
‘And counting. But I don’t want to talk about it any more, sorry if I got a bit rattled. Let’s have another glass of wine.’ He called the waiter over.
Jenny remembered her conversation with Leo in Marbella. ‘It’s a mystery to me how the Internet is one of the most valuable tools of my business and millions of other businesses, and yet it seems to create almost as many problems as it solves.’
‘T’was ever thus. Man is capable of corrupting the purest of thoughts or intentions. Anyway, you were right about one thing. I feel a lot better having told you about it. Thanks for listening to my woes, darling.’
Zurich, Switzerland
‘Good morning, Daniel, how’s everything going?’ The caller was speaking in Swiss German.
‘It’s getting back to normal, thank God. Since Leo Stewart put his foot down and got some organisation into the development division we’re starting to see measureable results.’
‘So you think we’ll make the deadline?’
‘He’s hired another English guy, Ed Muire from ARM. That’s just the background we need for the Mark VII firmware. If Stewart can get ACRE sorted out, we should be OK. It’ll be tight, but I think we can make it.’
‘Does anyone suspect what’s going on?’
‘Not a chance. I gave Leo the cold shoulder the other day and we hardly ever speak. The only guy I’m friendly with is Sharif, and he’s not very intuitive.’
‘Was there any further noise about Scotty’s food poisoning?’
‘Nothing I’ve heard. Tom and Shen never mention it. It’s strange, as if it never happened.’
‘I’ve got to take another call. I’ll ring you next week unless I hear from you. Good luck, Daniel, keep it up.’
SIXTEEN
London, England
Friday, 2 July 2017
‘Hugh’s not here right now, he’s in Cambridge for a weekend conference and won’t be in the office until Monday morning. If you email him I’m sure he’ll see it sometime over the weekend.’ Ilona Tymoshenko was on the phone with General Chillicott. He was calling about Lee-Win and XPC, and she was more interested than she sounded.
‘It’s not a great idea to put this in writing. That’s why I’m calling on the encrypted line, it’s very sensitive information.’
Now she was really intrigued. ‘I’ll record the call and play it for him on Monday.’
There was a pause, as though Chillicott was weighing up her answer. ‘This is ultra- confidential, Ilona, it stays with you and Hugh. Anything you write gets shredded and you erase this message as soon as he hears it, understood?’
‘I understand, no records of any kind. This call never happened.’
‘Agreed, so here goes. You were right about the secrecy around the ownership of Lee-Win Micro-Technology. The short version is that after Chongkun Lee-Win died in 2012, or more likely was assassinated from what I can tell, a short while later his widow sold the business. The family kept the other manufacturing companies, but not the microprocessor unit.’
‘I knew it, that’s when she moved to Macau. How did you confirm that?’
‘I had to call in some really serious favours to find a back door into the shareholders behind the offshore holding companies. There’s dozens of proxy companies spread around just about every crappy little offshore jurisdiction in the world. Seemed like looking for a needle in a haystack for a while. Then we found four of the sub-proxies located at a registered agent’s office in Delaware. I know, don’t say it. We’re not supposed to harbour those kinds of shady outfits, but Delaware still has the most business-friendly legal system in the US, especially for offshore companies. They can’t operate in the States, but they don’t want to anyway, it would defeat the object. These companies still don’t give us the identity of the ultimate beneficiaries, but it might get us one step closer.’
‘It does sound promising.’
‘We’ve had stuff on one of the directors of that outfit for a couple of years, nasty stuff he won’t survive if it gets out. I won’t give you the agent’s name, ‘cos I’m not finished with them and I don’t want them to get cold feet, OK?’
‘Understood.’
‘Well, this week I had a friendly pow-wow with him and he gave me just one name, nothing more. I know I had the guy frightened for his life, but he was even more scared to give me anything more than that. It’s the name of the person who instructed them five years ago to set up the proxy companies as shareholders in the next level of ownership of Lee-Win. He told me he’s set up dozens of companies for that same person over the last six years. He’s never met them, and the only thing he knows about those companies is that person was the common denominator.
‘It didn’t take me long to find a connection on our side. Several of our departments have got files on the name, big files, with nothing in them we can prove. For five years it’s been cropping up in investigations of drug-running, people trafficking, money laundering, cyber-fraud; you name it, the dirtiest businesses you can imagine, and all linked to offshore companies and the same name behind the scenes. We know so little about this person I can’t even tell you if it’s a man or a woman; we just don’t know. But there is one fact we’ve found out and we’re sure of it. There has been a direct connection between this anonymous person and GRU since 2011, still continuing as we speak.’
Ilona’s mind was racing as she analysed Chillicott’s revelations. ‘You’re saying there’s some kind of link between XPC and the Russian foreign military intelligence agency?’
‘That’s not what I said, Ilona. You might jump to that conclusion, but I’m not in a position to agree or disagree with you. We have a brittle level of entente with our Russian friends and I can’t be seen to be sabotaging it. Not unless I have some specific knowledge in my possession, but I have no such knowledge.’ He spoke quietly and carefully, weighing every word, emphasising his enforced neutrality on the subject, but leaving her to draw her own conclusions.
‘I understand, General. I understand your predicament, it was foolish of me to make such a suggestion.’
‘Good. All I can do is to give you the name I was given by the guy in Delaware.’
Ilona waited, hardly breathing in her anticipation.
‘The name is Tsunami. Did you get that?’
‘I got it, Tsunami.’ She stopped the recording. ‘Thank you, General, thank you very much. Is there anything else you need to say to Dr Middleton?’
‘One last thing, Ilona. I want to know from Hugh the truth behind his interest in Lee-Win, XPC and Leo Stewart. I don’t buy this “commercial information” crap. There’s something he knows and if I’m going to be useful in this business, I need to know it too.’
Exactly my feelings, Ilona though
t. Hugh won’t be too happy with that. Fortunately, it’s not on the tape. ‘I understand, General,’ she answered. ‘I’ll give him your message word for word.’
‘Good. That’s all for now. By the way, thanks for your clean-up of the presentation, it looks great.’
‘I’ll have the June data ready before your meeting, so we can include that and bombard them with current warnings they can’t ignore. Goodbye General, and thanks for your help.’
Ilona sat back and reviewed the unexpected news. 2011, that’s just after General Piotr Gavrikov took over as head of the Russian Main Intelligence Directorate: GRU. The following year, Lee-Win was sold into unknown hands and the Delaware proxies were created. Chillicott said it’s still continuing, that must mean Gavrikov has maintained the relationship with Tsunami. He said he needs specific knowledge before he can take any action. He’s asking me to help him to find something he can act on. He helped me, now he wants my help to get Tsunami. And somehow, Lee-Win and therefore XPC are involved in the jigsaw puzzle.
She sent the call to Hugh Middleton’s laptop and to her personal tablet, then erased it from the main phone system. That’s what I promised, she rationalised. I’ve erased it and I didn’t write it down.
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
‘Right, Ed. You’ve had enough time this week to discover the origin of the universe. What do you think?’
The two men were in Leo’s office, looking at the logs and results of the tests run by Ed with the ACRE upgrade group over the last couple of days. He had now officially taken over the firmware team, and this was his last look at the encryption software before Leo took it over completely.
‘Frankly, apart from a couple of specific areas that need attention, it’s looking very good. Sharif made some good progress over the last few months before you arrived, well done him.’
The Dark Web: The stunning new thriller from the author of The Angolan Clan (African Diamonds Book 3) Page 11
