She opens up a window for her modem and dials 9 for an outside line.
The cursor on the screen is panting like a greyhound in the slips. So she taps in the number of Earwig's e-mail server at the House of Commons. The hound is off and running. It soon returns, bearing with it a prize – the command LOGIN.
She types in his User Name, presses Return.
Then she enters the difficult bit, Earwig's Password. HOMO.MAN.
Presses Return once again. She's in.
She creates a new file called Forward, and instructs it to copy everything to another address. Not just any other address, mind you, but the [email protected]. (This address involves a dash of guesswork, based on details included on the newspaper's letter page, but when her greyhound doesn't come back with its tail between its legs she knows it's OK. She smiles. She's there.)
Then she hits the Control and D keys simultaneously, a combination that instantly logs her off the system, neatly and quickly so as not to alert any system administrators at the House of Commons. No one knows she's been there.
It's done. A fraction more than thirty seconds, and an effect that will last a lifetime.
The rest of her evening's work on the laptop takes longer. She is completely engrossed, ignoring the distractions around her. Her concentration is total, as if she is under hostile fire, triangulating the position of an enemy mobile communications HQ that is on the move and directing the enemy's own fire upon her. She knows there is only one winner in this sort of game. The screen is becoming hypnotic; at one point she is forced to leave her work and wander into the bathroom to splash water on her face. It's a squalid little room. She ignores the tang of bleach and the mess of men.
As he watches her work, Amadeus feels equally engrossed, but for entirely different reasons. He knows they have now jumped, are out in the slipstream, winds of fate and all that. Nothing to do but wait and pray a little. He wipes the palms of his hand along the sharp creases of his trousers. The others sit around distractedly. Scully is watching television with the sound on mute, McKenzie is browsing through the bible left by the Gideons in the bedside drawer. Beside the door where he is standing lookout, Freddie Payne crushes a can in his hand.
Tonight, in a hotel room filled with drooping flowers and the smell of anxious men, they have gone to war. Many lives are about to be irreversibly changed, and some ended. Soon Amadeus will have blood on his hands.
– =OO=OOO=OO-= Mickey scurried into the Central Lobby through the morning crowds of sightseers and plaintiffs that had already begun to gather. Although she had never met him, she thought she recognized her man instantly. Tall, lean, hair a little longer than was customary in the military but neatly trimmed and swept back, a cleft on his chin that looked as deep as a duelling scar. He was no longer young but in altogether better decorative order than most men of his age. Disturbing slate green eyes, though, eyes that had seen too much.
'Colonel Amadeus?'
Amadeus turned from where he had been examining the almost overpowering mosaic of the ceiling and began to inspect her. His eyes seemed to take everything in; she found it disturbing, but also sensual.
'I'm Mickey Ross, Tom's secretary.' She held out her hand. It disappeared inside his own. 'This place is like a kitchen at Christmas right now. Somebody screwed up the vote last night and everyone's running around like chickens with their feathers on fire.' She was about to take him by the sleeve and guide him to a quieter corner but changed her mind – somehow he didn't seem like the sort of man you took by the sleeve, let alone pushed around. 'So Tom's had to disappear, rush off for a meeting with the PM.'
Amadeus's eyes arched in surprise. 'Now isn't that a pity.'
'He was so looking forward to that drink with you, believe me. And he'd like a rain check, if you'd be willing.' She wouldn't mind a rain check either, come to that. He had an unmistakable muscular intensity. Built for stamina, this one. Anyway, the man deserved more than a polite brush off. The drink had been arranged at Goodfellowe's request, it seemed rude simply to cast him back into the street without a proper explanation. 'I'm not sure whether I'm supposed to tell you this, but seeing as you're in – were in – the military, and an old friend, I know you'll understand.' Now she did take his sleeve. 'The Prime Minister's put Tom on a special Downing Street committee to deal with all the recent attacks.'
'I had no idea.'
'After last night, well, it's all hit the fan again and Tom's been summoned. Orders, orders. I'm sure you'll understand. He's so very sorry. He was really keen to catch up with you.'
'So was I. But if I'd known how important he'd become to the Prime Minister I truly wouldn't have bothered him.'
The irony, inevitably, went beyond her. 'Tom is full of apologies. He insisted that I rearrange the date and take you for a cup of coffee in the Strangers' canteen – not elegant, I'm afraid, but the coffee's wet. Then I can throw you out with a better conscience.'
'That…' – he hesitated, weighing up the invitation – 'would be very kind, Miss Ross. I'd enjoy a coffee. Dry as a bone, in fact. But I wonder if I can ask you for a small favour in addition?'
'Anything.'
'I'm supposed to be meeting a Sergeant Harris at Wood Street police station in a little while and the traffic is the very devil. It'll probably make me…' – he glanced at his watch, calculating – 'a little late. Would you telephone him? Tell him I've been delayed at the House of Commons visiting my old friend Tom Goodfellowe, and that he's got time to issue a few more parking tickets before I get there.' And, while you're doing that, Mickey Ross, you can begin giving me the cover I'm going to need. Glorious cover, as a friend of the friend of the Prime Minister himself.
The police officer had been quite explicit on the phone. He apologized for bothering Amadeus, but they were making enquiries into the attack on Trafalgar Square and other matters. Apparently there had been suggestions it might have had something to do with former military people, and as a matter of routine they'd been asked to look at all recently retired officers. Routine, did he say? There were hundreds of them, thousands, the sergeant wearily admitted. 'And after your letter to the Telegraph, sir…' Amadeus had assured the sergeant that he quite understood. 'Simply a matter of eliminating as many people as possible from our enquiries, Colonel. Just routine. A little chat, at your convenience.'
They were getting closer. But not that close. The military grapevine had already told Amadeus he was no more than one amongst thousands, many hundreds of whom at some time or another had bitched and bawled about higher authority. No, it shouldn't be a problem, so long as he played a straight bat. Hell, with the use of Tom Goodfellowe's name, he might even score a few runs while he was about it.
Amadeus smiled. 'You make the phone call, Miss Ross, I'll queue for the coffee.'
– =OO=OOO=OO-= The precise constitutional grounds for summoning a fresh meeting of COBRA were open to question, but as the Prime Minister had pointed out, since Britain didn't have a written constitution the question – and any questioners – could go hang. He'd left the Cabinet Secretary debating with the Lord Chancellor whether making fools of the Government Whips threatened the end of civilization while he, Bendall, got on with the matter in hand.
There had been an unfortunate turn of events to encourage his impatience – unfortunate, that is, for Bendall and his hopes of containing the situation, for Amadeus had grown weary of sending letters that remained unread and unreported, and so, prompted by Sergeant Harris's phone call, he had decided on a change of tactics. Sergeant Harris had explicitly requested that Amadeus keep the matter confidential. Instead, Amadeus telephoned the editor of the Telegraph. The public had a right to know. There were no mad environmentalists here, no army of Swampies. No fanatics, no Fascists, no Freemasons, neither Ayatollahs nor Iraqis, and not a bloody Marxist or Leninist amongst them, Amadeus had explained. Nothing more than a group of retired and disgruntled but very British army officers. The editor had, at first, struggled to contain his surprise.
'You're saying you were responsible for the attacks? The water? Trafalgar Square?'
'The pager system too.'
'But why?'
'To show that this Government has lied when it says it can defend the country. We're simply proving it can't even defend itself.'
'So you're not eco-warriors as the Prime Minister claims.'
'Bendall's lied about that, too. He knows we're military. He's putting the squeeze on all retired officers even as we speak.'
'What's your next step?'
'You don't seriously expect-'
'But you're going to carry on?'
'Of course. We have a duty.'
'Like Oliver Cromwell?'
'We're retired, not antiques.'
'Sergeant Bilko, then?'
'British, we're British. Not Bilko. More like – I don't know. Beaky? That's it. More like Captain Beaky,' Amadeus had mused, citing a comic song based upon a band of woodland animals who had set out to deal with an evil snake named Hissing Sid. It had been an extraordinary hit back in the early Eighties.
'It's coming back to me- "The bravest animals in the land are Captain Beaky and his band…" Isn't that it?'
Amadeus had laughed, then hung up.
Conscious of his public duty, the editor had called the Prime Minister to tell him what had happened. The Prime Minister had thanked him profusely and indicated that in view of the great sensitivity of the matter he felt sure the editor wouldn't be publishing. The editor had replied that the Government had been weaving such a web of nonsense it was in serious danger of throttling itself, so he was going to do the Government a considerable favour and publish the lot.
The Prime Minister had begun to shout. Something about issuing D-Notices on grounds of national security, to which the editor had suggested that if hacking into the Whips' paging system was so life-threatening the Prime Minister shouldn't be encouraging his bully boys to lay the blame at the doorstep of the Opposition.
At that point the Prime Minister had almost choked. He recovered sufficiently to insist that the editor cooperate fully with the ongoing police investigation. The editor had assured him that he would withhold nothing. In fact, he was going to publish everything he knew in his newspaper, and he would be happy to send a copy round to New Scotland Yard.
This was the moment when the Prime Minister lost touch with his sense of humour and suggested he was going to 'do' the editor personally. The editor enquired whether the Prime Minister had ever heard about freedom of the press and then, like Amadeus, had put the phone down. Faced with an outbreak of insurrection on the news stands, the Prime Minister had decided to summon the unscheduled meeting of COBRA.
Goodfellowe found himself able to listen to the ensuing discussions with only half a mind. He sat fiddling with his watch strap, distracted by the telephone call he'd had the previous night from Sam. It had been an unsettling conversation. She'd asked for money, eight hundred pounds for a summer trip to Florence in order to pursue her university course in the history of art. It was unsettling in two respects. In the first place, Sam wouldn't normally have asked for money, since she knew all too well the financial desert on which his tent was pitched. She demanded his loyalty, not his wallet, so it was clear to him without the need for elaboration that this trip to Italy was important to her. In the second place, it forced him to make a difficult choice. Normally, her request would have caused him few problems because he had no money, so the answer must be no. Yet life was no longer quite that simple. Thanks to the small bequest from his constituent, for the first time in three years he was receiving bank statements printed in black. It wasn't so straightforward saying no any more. He had the money, but it was earmarked for his trip to Paris with Elizabeth. Now Sam was calling upon it. He could split his affections, but not his finances. Elizabeth or Sam, which was it to be? It was a dilemma he found unusually discomforting. He'd lost sleep, didn't want to decide. This was giving him more grief than when he was broke. Somehow he found poverty so much simpler.
Suddenly he brightened. He was a fool. Why did he need to worry about his wallet when he had in his pocket a promise that he was soon to be kicked up to the Cabinet? That was worth money, hard cash, and a considerable amount of it, about another sixty thousand above his backbencher's salary. Come to think of it, more than he'd ever earned in his life. He'd soon be able to afford both Paris and Florence and a hell of a lot more beside, just as soon as the Prime Minister had seen off these irritating Army types.
However, he had to admit that today wasn't proving to be one of the better days in the campaign. True to its editor's promise, the morning's Telegraph had shouted from the top of its front page that the Government had been caught in a lie. Bendall had stretched the truth so tight that the elastic had burst. He wasn't fighting eco-freaks but former soldiers, Britain's best and bravest, and suddenly the morality of the situation was no longer so simple. Slowly but perceptibly, the sands on which the pillars of public opinion rest had begun to shift. What yesterday had been termed 'outrages' were now referred to simply as 'attacks', and Bendall was seen to be fighting not so much for freedom as for himself. The conspirators had an identity, too. 'Captain Beaky' was excellent headline fodder and there wasn't a single newspaper in the land who could resist it.
It all sounded a shade too comic, almost comfortable. So the Prime Minister grew ever more impatient and Earwick sought the opinions of others – a sure sign he was in difficulties and wanting to spread the responsibility, although he had come to one solid conclusion, that whoever else might be included in the ranks of the enemy, the editor of the Telegraph was going to be right up there on the list. Earwick told COBRA so in terms that were remarkably colourful for a Home Secretary. At the point where he suggested that the editor was a national menace and they should bug all his phones, the Police Commissioner went puce. There'd be hell to pay if they were caught bugging an editor. So what? Couldn't they bug a bloody telephone without getting caught? What had the capital's police force come to?
The discussion was beginning to get undignified and more than a little unconstitutional when it was interrupted by a commotion from the door. A dishevelled figure burst in, pursued by a protesting security guard who continued in a state of considerable agitation until the Prime Minister waved him away. After all, it wasn't every day that the Downing Street press secretary kicked down his door looking as though he'd run all the way from Hyde Park pursued by a pack of Chelsea supporters. It had to be more than a bad set of inflation figures. It was.
'They've stuffed up the phones,' the press secretary, Arnold Jumpers, almost choked. He was experiencing considerable difficulty coordinating his need to take in great gulps of air with his need to speak. 'Everything in central London. All the 0207 numbers. It's chaos out there.'
They've cut off our phones?' Earwick gasped, incredulous.
'Oh, more than that, Home Secretary, much more than that.' Bendall let out a slow moan of understanding. 'They've just cut off our balls.'
– =OO=OOO=OO-= In fact, Bendall had it wrong. They had cut off no one's telephones. The press secretary's description had been the more accurate one, if technically a little obscure. The telephones had simply been 'stuffed up'.
All around the centre of London, whenever an 0207 number was dialled, the telephone system chose at least one random digit. The result – constant wrong numbers. From eleven o'clock that morning London had begun to buzz like a nest of dyspeptic hornets. Pick up a phone and the only thing you'd get for sure was chaos.
It was an adaptation of a hacker software program originating in Texas that Mary had pulled from the Internet and that had played the crucial role in a scam inflicted upon one of the more popular TV evangelists during his annual fund-raising drive. As followers phoned to make their credit-card pledges, every second call had been diverted to a different number where their pledge was taken by computer and transmitted to a different bank account. It couldn't last, of course, not for more than a few days, but by the time the autho
rities had caught up with the operation both the perpetrator and the profit, running into several millions, had been lodged out of harm's way in the Cayman Islands.
The matter hadn't been allowed to rest there. Under pressure from the evangelist who explained that he believed in an eye for an eye and brimstone heaped upon the bitch who had cheated him, the police had proceeded to arrest the perpetrator's husband on a flimsy charge of conspiracy, hoping to lure the wife out of hiding. Instead, out of spite, she had shoved the software on the Internet, making it freely available to everyone and anyone. Ouch. The American telephone companies had been forced to move quickly in order to ensure that Elijah, as the software programme was called, could never be resurrected, but it seemed that their British counterparts had been far less agile. It had taken Mary many days and most of her nights to adapt the Elijah programme, but at the end of it she had been able to talk to the computer that ran the Telecoms regional management centre responsible for central London and persuade it to divert calls, not to a specific number, but simply at random. Anywhere would do, so long as it was wrong. Of course, in normal circumstances such problems would have been overridden by the central network management centre at Oswestry, but these weren't normal circumstances. Mary had fixed Oswestry too.
As COBRA broke up in confusion the capital's streets began to echo with the sound of numbers dialled and redialled in vain. Truly essential services on freephone numbers – police, ambulance, fire, gas leaks and so forth – weren't affected, and Mary had spent a full afternoon of painstaking programming to ensure that all hospitals, doctors' surgeries and other medical facilities listed in the Yellow Pages were passed over by the plague. Yet in a modern city, communications are as important as water, more important than roads. Cut off from its communications, a modern city begins slowly to die. And with it begins to die the authority of those who govern it.
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