The Old Enemy

by Henry Porter

  Bubble Wrap

  ‘What’s your question?’ snapped Jo Hayes when she answered Samson’s call. ‘I’ve got about two minutes before I see my boss.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  ‘Well, it’s not fucking ideal. I only dumped you this morning.’

  ‘It was about the Edgar Building. It was raided and someone was arrested. I hoped you might tell me about them.’

  ‘No, I bloody can’t.’

  He didn’t persist. There was no point with Jo. ‘How’s your arm?’

  ‘Shit. How’s your leg?’

  ‘Fine.’ It wasn’t. A doctor called from the hospital and said he shouldn’t have been discharged because he thought the knife might have cut into the muscular branch of the sciatic nerve as well as grazing the femoral artery. That would account for the shooting pain Samson was experiencing.

  ‘You looked terrible this morning.’ She stopped and exhaled bad-temperedly. ‘Oh, fuck it! I guess you did save my life. The people they picked up weren’t the ones they were looking for. They got the wrong building.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘I don’t flaming know.’

  But she did, and she had much more time than she’d made out. He talked it out of her over the next ten minutes, and used some guile in the process by deliberately stating things that he knew were wrong, such as the number of people taken away for questioning after the police raided the building – he said six were arrested – and the reason for the raid, which he suggested was suspected terrorist activity. No, she said, succumbing to the natural instinct of human beings, especially current and former lovers, to correct each other – just two people had been questioned and only one was taken away from the Edgar. As for the motive of the police and Security Service, he was completely wrong. It had nothing to do with terrorism and everything to do with some highly unusual encrypted communications coming from the area, which had piqued the interest of GCHQ, Cheltenham, who prompted the security services to look into the source at the Edgar Building; they in turn had involved the police. Some of this traffic had been decoded and found to contain establishment names in Britain and the United States – politicians and well-known businesspeople. But that was all they had extracted from the messages.

  Given the prominence of the people and the novelty of the cryptographic techniques, it was decided to watch the building and see who was sending these communications. One of the organisations that came under suspicion was a porn site called Secorum, which attempted to disguise the ugliness of its product with good lighting and tasteful surroundings; Jo called it the House & Garden of porn. Filming was done on sets constructed in a suite of rooms rented by a man named Harry Diamond. Above the porn site’s studio was the office of reactt.org.uk, one of the many inflammatory racist organisations the security services monitored as a matter of course. Run by an individual named Toby Fawcett and three others, all of them known to MI5, ReacTT seemed to be the likely culprit. However, GCHQ technicians realised the infrequent bursts of communication came from both organisations, plus another site that was engaged in the illegal sale of hard-to-find medications. And this struck them as very odd indeed.

  The Edgar was raided. Harry Diamond was invited to explain himself, as was Mr Fawcett, who was picked up at home, and after several hours it became clear that both organisations’ websites and broadband had been hacked to provide someone else cover. In the case of Secorum there was an actual Ethernet cable plugged into the office router, and that cable was found to run into the roof of an adjacent building, 209 Herbert Street. The other end had yet to be traced, though Samson was certain that he himself had seen it, together with many other cables, running through a hole punched in the wall of the Pit, about a hundred and fifty metres away from the front of the Edgar Building. He wondered if this was Naji’s idea, too, for he was damned sure that Naji was the author of the new encryption. Aged twelve, Naji had buried information about Islamic State in a game where kids built fantasy structures in the virtual world. He had made one that was also a kind of archive that only he could open.

  ‘That’s all I have,’ Jo said eventually. ‘They never found the source of the signals and won’t now, because they’ve stopped.’

  ‘I owe you, Jo. Thanks.’

  ‘You don’t – we’re quits. Our paths go different directions from now on, Samson.’

  ‘I won’t trouble you again, Jo.’

  ‘Don’t,’ she said, and hung up. He’d never heard that tone in her voice before.

  He phoned Macy and left another message. ‘I’m at Cedar and I’m coming round now.’ He got up and stood, grimacing for a second or two as the pain ran up and down his leg and into his buttocks. Then he moved towards the stairs and hobbled down, using his stick to break the force on his leg. At the bottom of the stairs was a short passage that led to a door with a transom light above it. If there was sunlight in the street the shadows were sometimes projected upwards and played on the surface of the glass. He could make out two distinct shapes, which he estimated were standing about six feet away from the door. He heard the rumble of Ivan’s voice making excuses. They must be police. He cursed to himself. By now he knew the routine. An unmarked Range Rover or some other SUV would take him to a police station, most likely West End Central in Savile Row. An MI5 officer would be waiting in the vehicle and he or she would say nothing. It wasn’t an arrest, of course, but an invitation to speak about matters of common interest, an update, or ‘sharing of perspectives’, as Peter Nyman liked to put it, though the needs of the state and attendant menace loomed in the background. Nyman usually had something to do with setting up these sessions, which he amused himself by calling ‘tea and chat’.

  Samson opened the door and was confronted by two men looking straight at him. The cut of their suits, the polished shoes and general care taken with their grooming told him that they were American intelligence officers, who, on the whole, are more crisply turned out than their British counterparts.

  ‘We’re from the US Embassy,’ said a man in his late forties with a dark moustache. ‘And we’d very much like to speak with you. We have a car outside.’

  Samson frowned and shook his head. Ivan looked as though he might retrieve, for the first time, a baseball bat that he insisted on keeping hidden under the maître d’s desk. ‘I’m sure you’re kosher,’ said Samson. ‘It’s just that I’ve had a difficult few days. People keep trying to kill me.’

  ‘Let me introduce us. I’m Frank Toombs from the Central Intelligence Agency and this is Special Agent Edward Reiner from the FBI.’ Reiner showed him ID. ‘We’re kind of here unofficially.’

  ‘You don’t want the security services and SIS knowing what you’re doing.’

  ‘Oh, they know we’re here, for sure. But we just want to hold some conversations without them in the room. Does that seem strange to you?’

  Samson looked at Toombs. ‘There’s a famous expert on tradecraft in the Agency who retired a few years ago,’ he said. ‘Can you give me their name and tell me which office they worked in?’

  Toombs grinned. ‘You’re testing me! Sure! Okay! That was Mavis Hoyle, and her last post was in the Office of Mission Resources, though that’s classified information, Mr Samson.’

  ‘What’s her passion?’

  ‘Some kind of dog – she shows them all over the country now.’

  ‘Weimaraners,’ said Samson.

  ‘So you knew Mavis? The best-looking fifty-five-year-old on the planet, and certainly the smartest.’

  ‘Yes, I spent three months on attachment in Virginia and I attended classes with Mavis. When do you want to do this?’

  ‘We would appreciate just an hour or so of your time now,’ said Reiner. ‘It really is important.’

  Toombs put on sunglasses and, gesturing to the door, said, ‘Shall we, Mr Samson? It’s a short ride.’

  They drove to an office building
near the new US embassy, south of the Thames, and entered a loading bay very much like the one where Samson had glimpsed Naji. A young woman met them and showed them to a room, with which Toombs and Reiner were evidently unfamiliar. Reiner explained, by the by, that they had only just flown into Northolt. Two younger men joined them. Samson assumed they were CIA because they deferred to Toombs. They all sat down.

  ‘So,’ said Reiner, pinching his lower lip. ‘We have two missions. The first is to establish who is behind the attack in Congress and understand their motive. The second, which is more Mr Toombs’s area of interest, is to eliminate the threat that brought nerve agent into the heart of our democracy and to make sure that it never occurs again. That means identifying the person or persons who ordered this attack, the chain of command and supply line for the material. We make the assumption that you cannot help us with the second but that you are crucial to the first part. You have much in common with the victims in that you are one of the assassination targets and you have worked with both of them closely at different times. We know all about what happened in Macedonia, we know about Hisami’s role, and we are fully aware of what occurred in Narva, Estonia. By the way, I think I should mention that we don’t – repeat: don’t – think this has anything to do with that incident, but do you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then why are your people pushing it?’ asked Toombs.

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘The thing I’m having a problem with is this,’ continued Toombs, now altogether less friendly. ‘Our people here have been watching closely and it’s like your guys don’t give a fuck. A paid assassin murders one of the greatest spies in the last fifty years, and what do they say? “Oh dear me, where shall we have the memorial event, and will there be cake and tea?”’ For this he attempted a British accent. ‘Seems like they just want to shove the whole thing into the office incinerator and move on – right?’

  ‘I can’t say,’ said Samson. ‘I’m out of the loop.’

  ‘But you aren’t. You’re the main man – the guy everyone wants to off. And I ask myself, where’s the fucking bubble wrap? They’ve done nothing to protect you. Why?’

  ‘I don’t want protection.’

  ‘Sorry, I gotta tell you this – right now, it looks like they actually want you dead. And that really interests us. Because it means you know something that a lot of people don’t want the world to hear – maybe even your own frigging MI6. You were a serving British Intelligence officer, and a good one. You’ve done them a lot of favours since they let you go – big, important stuff like tracking down the Syrian boy with that mother lode of IS intelligence. They owe you, right? So why don’t they give a shit if you’re dead? And you have to ask yourself – do they really care that Robert Harland was murdered? Maybe they think he deserved it.’

  He looked at Toombs and Reiner and told them he had no idea what MI6 suspected because, humiliatingly enough, he didn’t know anything.

  ‘That’s exactly what your girlfriend said,’ said Toombs. ‘Yet you’re the only people in the world who can help us.’

  ‘Mrs Hisami is not my girlfriend and we haven’t been in touch for over two years, so that’s completely irrelevant. Look, just accept that I happen to agree with you about the British end of this investigation. I think it stinks, but I don’t know why that is.’

  ‘A smart guy like you, and you don’t know!’ said Toombs. ‘I don’t buy that. You know that you know something they don’t want you to know.’

  ‘That’s getting into the territory of known unknowns.’

  ‘What would you do if you were us?’ Reiner asked.

  ‘Focus on what Harland and Hisami were doing. They were on to something and it was big. Then, using the four hit men, I’d triangulate to find the person who paid them. At least three of those men knew each other, and the Ukrainian who killed Harland has the exact same profile, so there has to be someone who’s plugged into that network, or already knew them. What about the Ukrainian? Have you interviewed him?’

  ‘He’s sick, pneumonia,’ said Toombs. ‘But you’re right about the rest of it.’ He studied him. ‘But this is not just a gangster who hires a few shooters. We’re dealing with an individual who has access to an experimental nerve agent.’

  ‘Experimental?’

  ‘It was an early version of the binary agent used by the Russians in Salisbury. The agent used in Congress was unitary, which means—’

  ‘I know what that means,’ said Samson testily, and shifted his leg. ‘It’s crude, difficult to transport and very awkward to handle. So you’re wondering where the heck that came from. If this is not a sophisticated binary agent favoured by the Russians, there may be more of this cheap moonshine on the market.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Toombs.

  ‘Ukraine,’ said Samson. ‘In 2018, Russia was about to deploy chemical weapons in the east of the country. Maybe some of that material found its way to the US. Plus, Ukraine is a really good conduit. I guess the fact that the nerve agent was crude could be a sign that someone is covering their tracks, which would be the same tactic as using a bunch of amateur gunmen instead of professionals.’ He glanced at the two younger officers, who had said nothing. One was making a note on his phone. ‘Look, there’s not a lot I can tell you, but when I learn something, I will. I want to help.’

  Toombs raised his eyebrows at Reiner. Reiner nodded, thought for a few moments and looked at Samson. ‘This is a story of two briefcases,’ he started. ‘One briefcase, belonging to the lawyer, was destroyed, and that is a dreadful shame because in it we believe was some material, a dossier – call it what you will – which we think Mr Hisami was going to use if things got rough in the hearing. But the briefcase was pretty much marinated in the nerve agent and it was the first thing to be burned. We don’t know the nature of the material, and Mr Steen’s office can’t help. We have copies of all the documents that his assistant gave him that morning and there’s nothing unusual among them. The second briefcase belonged to Mr Hisami, and that contained a mystery in the shape of a two-year calendar with entries that we don’t understand. What’s so strange about this is that Mr Hisami’s assistant and Jim Tulliver kept his calendar electronically, so there was no need for a physical one unless it was a record of activities that he wished to keep secret. Neither Mr Tulliver nor Mrs Hisami were able to tell us what was in the first briefcase, which isn’t surprising, and they insist they have no understanding of the entries in the calendar.’

  ‘You don’t believe them.’

  ‘We don’t know who or what to believe. But we wanted to share some of it with you.’ He nodded to one of the young men, who worked a laptop. Five words appeared on the television screen: PEARL, BERLIN, PITCH, AURORA and SAFFRON. ‘These mean anything to you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘They’re code words for operations or individuals, and they sometimes appear in the calendar alongside numbers which we believe are encrypted IBAN numbers. The National Security Agency is working on these and we’ll have them pretty soon, unless they’ve been really scrambled.’ Samson thought of Naji. If these numbers had been through Naji’s hands, he doubted anyone would get the right result: Naji had his own approach to encryption. Reiner continued: ‘The words appear with varying frequency. BERLIN is the most common, with forty-four mentions. PEARL gets twenty-nine, SAFFRON fourteen, PITCH thirteen and AURORA eleven. Over the last couple of months all five words make more appearances than they did in the two previous months, so, obviously, this signals increased activity of some sort, which we think may have been focused on the hearing in Congress this week.’

  Samson had stopped listening. The image in his mind was the poorly cleaned whiteboard in the room known as the Pit in 209 Herbert Street. He wanted to consult the photographs on his phone, but there was really no need because he recalled the remaining letters in at least two of the column headings, which had not quite been wiped
clean. PIT did not refer to the room of that name, which was his original supposition, but consisted of the first three letters of the word PITCH. Likewise, EAR was part of the word PEARL. He considered this for a few seconds before deciding that he would tell Reiner and Toombs about this once he had reached either Naji or Zoe Freemantle to ask them what they meant.

  Reiner noticed he’d tuned out. ‘Is there something on your mind?’

  ‘My leg’s giving me gyp – sorry.’

  ‘Are you able to help us with any of this?’

  He shook his head. ‘Can I make a note of some of these words, or take a photograph?’

  ‘We don’t allow photography in the facility, sir,’ piped one of the young agents.

  ‘Have you got a photocopy?’

  Toombs looked sceptical, but Reiner handed him a printed sheet with the numbers and the five words.

  ‘What about the dates in the calendar where the words appear?’

  Reiner shook his head. ‘See if you can help with these and then we’ll talk about the dates. You may figure something out. And if you do, we would like to hear from you.’ He flicked a card across the table.

  Toombs got up, tucked his thumbs into the front of his waistband and walked around the room. ‘I’ll give you my number momentarily, but you may not have time to use it. The reason we came to your restaurant is that Special Agent Reiner heard through his sources that the police are going to use the death of the man you killed in self-defence as an excuse to arrest and detain you. We wanted to speak with you before that happened. I know things are fucked up in this country, but why would they arrest you? To stop you talking? About what, for Chrissake? You don’t know anything.’ He paused, removed his thumbs from his trousers and clapped his hands together. ‘I got it. They know you’re going to find out their big secret.’ He put air quotes around that. ‘And why would that be? Because they know the secret is headed towards you.’

  ‘I’m not sure I understand you,’ said Samson.