The Exphoria Code

by Antony Johnston

  The windows. Something about that bothered her. Why had each of the bombs flown into a separate window, rather than flying in through the first breach?

  There was definitely an element of terror to Bowman’s operation, and shattering the windows high up in a skyscraper had obvious connotations that would scare people. But radiation aside, nobody had been killed by the actual explosions. Half the material would have been directed outward with the blast in any case, and as each explosive took out the drone carrying it, they couldn’t somehow ‘inject’ the radiation through each broken window after it smashed.

  It was wasteful, inefficient, and left a lot to chance. And that didn’t seem right. Bridge had never met Bowman, but so far he’d been smart and careful. To put in so much work for such a low percentage of success in the final attack was out of character for any terrorist, and especially one who’d gone to so much trouble. According to Giles, Bowman hadn’t stuck around to see if he’d been successful. But then, he’d find that out in tomorrow’s papers. All he had to do tonight was set the drones off on a course and leave them to it, on a prearranged course.

  But Monica had said the patterns indicated he was controlling them directly. Both things couldn’t be true.

  “Shit,” Bridge cried out, making the police sergeant look in. She shooed him away, typing furiously. “It’s not over,” she said to the chatroom. “Hang on, I’m scanning again now…there, four of them.” Four more signal destinations on the same ultra-high frequency, this time with no high bandwidth side-stream of data. “I think those first drones were regular explosives, not the RDDs. Their job was to blow out the windows, and make holes for this second wave to fly through. These are the drones with the radioactive material.”

  “But how are they flying?” asked Steve. “Giles shut down Bowman’s laptop. And if they’re autonomous, how could he be sure they’d make it through the broken windows?”

  “Because that’s what this was about all along. They’re autonomous, self-guiding, error-correcting. They compensate for obstacles, re-target accordingly…this is the Exphoria code in action.”

  The chatroom fell silent as everyone digested the implications. Then Ciaran said, “Isolate and add them to the target list. The package will swamp them, too.”

  “The botnet’s not big enough,” said Monica. “It’ll distribute agent resources equally, and we saw how long it took to shut down the first drones.”

  “Monica’s right,” said Bridge. “I’m going to redirect the whole botnet away from the first wave. Hit this second wave head on, with the full force.”

  “Whoa, there,” said Steve, “we don’t know what the first drones will do when you let them loose. They might continue straight into the building and explode.”

  “Or they might just drop on my head and explode,” muttered Bridge, “but that’s got to be better than letting an RDD through, right?”

  “What if you’re wrong? What if that first wave was carrying the dirty bombs, after all, and you have two unexploded RDDs above your head?”

  Bridge took a deep breath. “I know it’s a hunch, but this is a classic setup. You set off a small bomb to get everyone’s attention, and then you set off a big one in the same place to take out all the people who come running to look. This has to be Bowman’s plan. It just…it has to be.” She imagined Andrea’s voice whispering “Quasi,” and realised she was trying to convince herself as much as the others, because there was no time for second-guessing. She couldn’t see or hear the new drones overhead, but it was now thirty seconds since they’d appeared in range. If they were designed to catch the party while people were still reeling from the explosions, they could hit the Shard at any moment.

  She half-stepped out of the police car, and called to the fire watch commander. Of the three fire engines that had attended the scene, one crew had entered the building after the first explosion, while the police began evacuating everyone inside. The firemen who’d remained outside were now raising ladders to reach the hovering drones. Bridge craned her neck to see, but couldn’t make them out against the night sky.

  The watch commander jogged over, followed by the police sergeant. “Right old mess, this, ma’am,” said the policeman. “What can we do for you?”

  She turned to the fireman. “How close are your ladder men?”

  “We’re getting there, ma’am,” he said. Every man here was willing to follow Bridge’s orders, but not a single one would stop calling her ma’am. “Rotation positioning is delicate when you get that high up. But we’ll get them down safely, so long as they don’t fall first.”

  “That’s exactly the problem,” said Bridge. “They might be about to do just that. How long?” The watch commander nodded and held a brief radio conversation with each of the fire squads operating and climbing the rotating ladders. The consensus was about two minutes. “Too long,” said Bridge. “You’ve got thirty seconds, and then you’d better be ready to catch them.”

  Bridge climbed back inside the car and started typing. “Diverting in thirty seconds,” she said to the chatroom. “Cross every digit and limb you’ve got.”

  The police sergeant leaned in. “Dare I ask?”

  “Best not,” Bridge shrugged. “Then you can tell everyone you had no idea what the mad woman who blew up London was doing.”

  “Oh,” he said, looking up at the fire ladders. “Happy days, then.”

  She entered the command to turn the MaXrIoT botnet on the new drones, and hit Enter.

  One second later, three million requests hit the second wave of drones. Bridge crossed her fingers and waited.

  Five seconds later, she heard a fireman call out, “Ladder one, capture achieved. Returning now.”

  Seven seconds later, the remaining first wave drone careered into the Shard ten floors down from the party venue and exploded on impact, showering more glass over the road. Bridge strained to see the fireman up ladder two, who’d been closest. He was still there, and she hoped he was OK.

  Ten seconds later, straining her neck to see up, she thought she saw a couple of dark spots move across the sky, toward the windows.

  Thirteen seconds later, Andrea called her phone and said, “What the hell just happened? The last drones dropped out of the sky, and now there’s a new bunch hovering twenty metres outside the windows up here. What did you do?”

  Bridge laughed with relief. The botnet had neutralised the second wave before it reached the target. “I think,” she said carefully, “that we won. But the firemen might need some fishing nets.”

  She climbed out of the police car to stretch her limbs, and massaged the back of her neck. It was cool to the touch.

  * * *

  When Giles returned to the Shard, the clean-up was in full flow. Andrea was co-ordinating debriefings from the back of an ambulance, assigning officers to watch over certain attendees, and making sure Sir Terence Cavendish went directly to a secure hotel suite where his family would be brought to him. The firemen were busy snagging the hovering second-wave drones, with a hazmat team ready to oversee their safe transport and disposal. The surviving drone from the first wave had been checked with a Geiger counter and the hazmat team had confirmed they contained only explosives; no radioactive material.

  Bridge stood on the edge of the activity, smoking one of her last cigarettes and gazing up at the building.

  “I thought you quit,” said Giles as he stepped out of Andrea’s car.

  Bridge looked at the cigarette as if seeing it for the first time, and threw it into the road. “Old habits die hard,” she said. Giles looked as if he was about to say something, but didn’t. Bridge shrugged. “We stopped the drones, and Andrea said there are some injuries from the explosions, but no fatalities. We have to call that a win, don’t we?”

  Giles grimaced. “Not while Bowman’s in the wind. Either he knew we were coming for him, or he abandoned the broadcasting uni
t immediately after commencing the operation. Hell, the whole thing could have been on a timer and he’s in Timbuktu by now.”

  “He might,” Bridge nodded, “but I reckon he’s still around.”

  “And why is that?”

  Bridge smiled. “Fancy a lunchtime walk tomorrow?”

  85

  5 Across: Newcastle

  21 Down: Intransigent

  The lunchtime crowds in Whitehall Gardens had thinned out, leaving only tourists, executives, freelancers, and the unemployed — those without offices waiting for them to return. Bowman glared at them all from behind his sunglasses. He’d spent the previous evening shaving his sandy beard and cropping his hair, and now wore a driver’s cap, light blazer, trousers and brogues. Nobody would recognise the modern hipster he’d been a few hours before. Even Novak might walk straight past without knowing him.

  Bowman had always planned to change his appearance before returning home, but the night’s events had forced him to move up his timetable. The Rotherhithe unit was raided, preventing him from monitoring the mission through completion. But according to the morning’s papers, the command code he’d written for the second wave of drones had been enough. The attack on the Shard was the lead story in every rag he could see, and while details were sparse, that would change as the day went on. Mainly, he was waiting for word of Sir Terence Cavendish. Had he died in one of the first wave explosions? Or was he now merely cursed to die an excruciating, agonising death by radiation poisoning? Bowman hoped the latter, but either would suffice.

  July 28 - “1400 - Tyndale”

  A tall, dark-haired woman, all in black, walked to the bench facing the statue of William Tyndale and sat at the far end from Bowman, reading something on her phone. He turned away slightly, hoping she’d leave before Novak arrived, and that the Russian wouldn’t be late. It was Novak who’d arranged the rendezvous, after all. Bowman was ready to leave the country, having arranged no-questions-asked passage on a private jet to Tripoli. From there he could use any one of a dozen fake passports to hop his way back to Hong Kong, and pay tribute at his parents’ shrine. Now they could truly rest in peace.

  “Have you seen this? It’s amazing,” said the woman. Bowman assumed she was making a phone call, then realised she was talking to him while looking at something on her phone.

  “Not really interested, thank you,” he said, as curtly as he dared without causing a fuss, and looked away.

  “Oh no, you really have to see this, Daniel. It’s quite special.”

  She held up the phone to show him the screen. On it was a photograph of a concrete floor somewhere, arranged on which were four black, unmarked drones. His drones.

  He grabbed for the woman’s arm, but she was ready. As his fingers closed around her arm she unleashed a can of pepper spray, hidden in her other hand, at his eyes. He screamed, reflexively releasing her and staggering to his feet. He fumbled for the pistol tucked inside his blazer, but the pain was incredible, even with his eyes closed. Almost as painful as the impact when someone heavy tackled him from behind, and his head struck the ground.

  Somewhere, through the sound of his own screaming rage, he heard the woman laugh.

  86

  Bridge cradled a cup of coffee and looked out across the river. This was her favourite chill-out space in the Vauxhall building; a low, wide room with a Thames view, cushioned sofas, and machines for tea and coffee. The tea was awful, and the coffee wasn’t much better, but the view made up for them both.

  She heard the door open behind her, and the scent of hazelnut reached her nose. “How’s Bowman?” she asked.

  “Still sitting pretty in Belmarsh,” said Giles, taking a seat next to her. “He’s convinced we captured Novak and tortured the rendezvous code out of him.”

  “Hubris is a powerful thing. I was relying on that when I posted the fake ASCII.”

  Giles frowned. “I wish you’d told me about that before we all went running off to Rotherhithe.”

  “Didn’t want to give you false hope. He might have known it was a trap.” Bridge sipped her coffee. “What about Sir Terence?”

  Giles sighed, and Bridge knew what was coming next. Bowman had confirmed that Air Vice-Marshal Sir Terence Cavendish was his real target, and why. Then-Squadron Leader Terry Cavendish had an affair with Bowman’s mother while he was stationed in Sek Kong. After the handover he’d continued to fly over there from time to time, under pretence of a holiday, and see her in secret. But Sir Terence came to realise the Bowmans had been turned by the Chinese, and were in fact preparing to blackmail him to use as their own double agent. After all, if the British government discovered one of their soldiers was sleeping with a Chinese spy…

  To save his own skin, Sir Terence instead reported his suspicions about the Bowmans to the Foreign Office, claiming the reason he’d slept with Mrs Bowman in the first place was to discover if she was a spy. The FCO believed him, and simply made it known to Beijing that the family’s cover was blown. When the National Security Guard Bureau arrived to remove the source of embarrassment, the ‘Pandas’ made sure Daniel, then just a child, knew exactly how his parents had failed to honour the glorious people’s republic. And throughout his subsequent upbringing by the state, they never let him forget.

  Now it was Sir Terence’s word against Bowman’s. A knight of the realm versus a confirmed terrorist and Chinese spy, one highly motivated to smear the decorated military officer in charge of the project he’d just infiltrated, and whom SIS had since linked to four prior Chinese espionage attacks in the past decade.

  “Cavendish is going to get away with a slap on the wrist, isn’t he?” said Bridge. More of a statement than a question.

  “Not even that. Exphoria looks set for success, and a little birdy told me he’ll retire as Lord Cavendish in the new year. No public interest in making a fuss.”

  She turned back to the river. “So they boot him upstairs with a peerage, to get him out of the way. Lovely.”

  “And what about you? Are you all packed and ready? Got everything you need?”

  “It’s only Ireland, Giles. I’m not going camping in the Andes.”

  He stood. “All the same. I hope you, um, well, not exactly have a good time, but you know what I mean, I think?”

  She did.

  87

  GROUP: uk.london.gothic-netizens

  FROM: ponty@top-emails.net

  SUBJECT: the death of shadows [Tenebrae_Z RIP]

  sad news. our friend and fellow goffik netizen Tenebrae_Z recently passed away. tonight we raise a snakebite and black to the stubborn old bastard, and find ourselves wishing for just one more tale of automotive tomfoolery.

  goodbye, my friend. you’ll never know what you did for me, and so many others.

  [in accordance with his family’s wishes, no more details will be forthcoming]

  --

  ponty

  // a wind of promise in an empty house //

  Less than twenty-four hours later the thread was 143 posts strong, but Bridge had muted it immediately after posting. She had no idea what his family’s wishes actually were, but the Government’s were explicit. It would be impossible to go into any details of Declan O’Riordan’s death without revealing confidential information about Exphoria. O’Riordan’s family had been told he suffered a massive heart attack while walking by the Thames one evening, and simply fell into the river. The coroner’s report was ‘adjusted’ accordingly, and his body sealed from family viewing under the pretence of extreme damage and disfigurement from the water. All they received were his personal effects.

  Bridge had never been to Ireland before. Driving across the country from Dublin, she marvelled at how beautiful the landscape was. Completely different to France, especially the Lyon of her childhood, but every bit as lovely, and extraordinarily green. Ten had never spoken about his childhood. Until his death, sh
e hadn’t even known he was Irish.

  The cemetery was atop a hill outside the town where Ten’s widowed mother now lived, after returning here from Dublin following her husband’s death. That’s what the records said, anyway. Bridge wasn’t insensitive enough to call on the family and introduce herself.

  The old graves stood in front of the church, nearest the car park, weathered and beaten by the centuries. Names and dates faded to impressions so faint, only the ghosts could read them now. Crumbling angels clung to broken crosses, praying with their half-eroded hands. One reached for the sky as if struggling to return to heaven, to escape the climbing, winding plants that bound it to the earth.

  Ten’s grave was behind the church, in the modern section where headstones were thick, sharp-cornered, and whole. A fierce wind swirled around the hill, and Bridge was glad of her long woollen overcoat. This coat had seen many a graveyard over the years, mostly at two in the morning with a bottle in her hand, and she imagined Ten would approve of the way its hem pooled on the ground when she crouched to place a deep crimson rose in his vase.

  Standing, she had an urge to say something, anything; to apologise. He may have known Bridge worked for SIS, but when he arranged a meeting by the Thames with Marko Novak, he had no idea what he was getting into. What Bridge had unwittingly got him into.

  But even here, in a cemetery atop a wind-blown hill in the green divinity of western Ireland, she couldn’t bring herself to speak to a spirit she knew didn’t exist. Seeing Adrian in Syria was an effect of her subconscious coping with trauma, nothing more. His body was out there somewhere in the desert, while Ten’s was here in the ground, and both were nothing more than that.