The Russian Affair

by Adrian D'hage

  ‘You’re lucky – you don’t have to swim in it,’ said Murray. ‘The Dark Web is partly to blame for a reduction in ISIS cell phone use, although I suspect they’ve been using some of their oil revenue to purchase a barn full of clean ones. That said, they’re still unaware we’ve got a raft of hidden miniature network towers in Afghanistan. I’ve gleaned some intelligence, but I’m still hoping for a major breakthrough.’

  Chandler nodded knowingly. Small, hidden solar-powered network towers were invaluable. Even if a target took the precaution of switching their iPhone off with the ‘power off’ animation confirming the shutdown, their cell phone would automatically connect to the nearest network tower. When the tower was accessed by the NSA or CIA, radio waves would send a command to the target phone’s antennae: the baseband chip. The target phone was then commanded to fake the shutdown and stay on.

  Admiral Chandler listened intently while Barbara Murray outlined what she had gathered to date. ‘Well, it’s not conclusive – yet,’ he said finally, ‘but when you find something definitive, you better get over to the CIA and brief McNamara and his top agent . . . what’s his name – the one that blew up half of Brazil last year?’

  ‘O’Connor.’ Barbara Murray allowed herself a smile. She had more than a soft spot for the CIA’s good-looking Irishman, but so far, neither had been in the same zip code for long enough to have more than a drink.

  ‘O’Connor – that’s the guy. Quite an operator by all accounts – dual Intelligence Cross winner.’ It was never publicised, but it was the highest honour a CIA agent could receive. ‘I’ll give McNamara a call and let him know you’re on the case. And incidentally, thanks for all the long hours you’re pulling. I can’t do much about that at the moment, but when things settle down a bit and POTUS stops demanding results yesterday, give me a leave application and I’ll shove it in my top drawer to cover you for insurance. When you get back, I’ll tear it up. Those wankers down in human resources will never know.’

  ‘No problem, Mike. When I’ve got something more concrete I’ll get over to Langley.’ Murray made her way back to her office. The admiral was right. The hours had been long, and getting longer, but at least he had her back.

  Murray settled in front of her computer screens and once again turned her attention to the problem of cracking ISIS’s communication networks on cell phones and in the Dark Web, and she connected with the NSA’s massive bank of servers over 2000 miles to the west, in Bluffdale, Utah. To the east of that complex lay the Wasatch Mountains, and to the west, the Oquirrh Mountains. Murray smiled at the admiral’s earlier comment on God having an off day and religion. Bluffdale seemed an odd choice for the world’s most powerful computer complex. Like Los Alamos, Bluffdale was originally a remote outpost, although populated by Mormons instead of ranchers. The Mormons had gone there to escape civilisation and to study the texts of the golden plates which the angel Moroni had revealed to Joseph Smith, the founder of the Latter-day Saints and the Mormon religion. But unlike the ranchers of Los Alamos, the Mormons of Bluffdale were still there. The Apostolic United Brethren had thousands of members, with multiple wives. Polygamy was a practice that was a pre-requisite for entry into the higher celestial realms. Murray shook her head. Twenty-first century mainframes had moved in alongside the wooden pulpits of the 1830s.

  The US$2 billion electronic listening complex, inconspicuously named ‘the Utah Data Center’, was five times the size of the Capitol in Washington. To prevent the huge banks of computers from overheating, 60 000 tons of cooling equipment pumped 1.7 million gallons of coolant through the system every day. Billions of electronic emissions from around the world were sucked out of the ether. Foreign and domestic business, stock market and banking transactions, military and diplomatic cables and the contents of personal emails, cell phone texts and computer search history were all susceptible to being captured and stored in a bottomless database. But it was the code-breaking and cryptanalysis capabilities in Utah that Murray set about harnessing. Her fingers flew across the keyboard and she guided the Utah Center’s massive Cray XC30 into the ether of encrypted iPhone conversations and the underworld of the Dark Web. The NSA’s supercomputer was capable of more than 100 petaflops, or 100 000 trillion calculations a second. She adjusted her headphones. Two hours later, a very worried Murray interrupted Admiral Chandler’s schedule.

  General Waheeb walked into the lobby of the stylish five-star Jumeirah Zabeel Saray hotel located on the western crescent of Palm Jumeirah island, the first of three artificial islands to be constructed in the shape of palm fronds off the coast of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. The world’s largest man-made island had originally been billed as the Eighth Wonder of the World, and the grandeur of the Sultan’s Lounge – high Ottoman arches, emerald and ruby chandeliers, elegant gold and turquoise upholstered chairs and silver and gold coffee tables – was nothing short of stunning. Waheeb casually looked around and chose a setting against one of the far arches and sat down. It was nearly 3 p.m. and he didn’t have long to wait.

  His face drawn and pale, the father of the modern Russian nuclear program, General Dragunov, looked nervous as he entered the lobby. The confident rock star image portrayed in the Russian media had seemingly disappeared. Their eyes met and Waheeb nodded in recognition.

  ‘Welcome to Dubai, General,’ Waheeb offered easily. ‘Your first trip to this part of the world?’

  ‘I’ve been here many times, General, but never at the behest of someone like you,’ Dragunov replied acidly. ‘Just what is it you people want?’

  ‘All in good time, General, but not here. I have a room where we can discuss things in private. Shall we?’ Waheeb led the way to the lifts and his top floor suite.

  ‘In answer to your question, General,’ said Waheeb, after they had settled onto the balcony overlooking the Persian Gulf, ‘we are after two of these.’ Waheeb pushed a piece of folded paper across the glass coffee table.

  Dragunov opened it and his eyes widened. ‘You have to be joking!’ he rasped.

  ‘We’re deadly serious, General,’ Waheeb replied softly. ‘We will, of course pay you handsomely for them.’

  ‘They’re not for sale, and even if they were, nuclear warheads are the most tightly controlled items in the country. And not only that, you seem to think I work in some sort of bubble. How the hell would you expect me to manage to authorise something like this? At my laboratories, there are any number of people around me, working at all hours of the day and night.’

  Waheeb nodded calmly. ‘We know that. People like Colonel Rabinovich. A curious choice for a deputy.’

  ‘Rabinovich is one of the world’s best nuclear physicists,’ Dragunov responded defensively.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Waheeb, ‘but also a special forces colonel in Spetsnaz. An interesting combination, but I doubt she will give you difficulty for much longer.’ ISIS were now tracking Rabinovich’s every move, waiting for the right time to assassinate her.

  Dragunov was taken aback by Waheeb’s menacing tenor.

  ‘You see, as you’re already aware, we are not without contacts in your organisation. At the appropriate time, you will be provided with exact dummy replicas that will pass any stocktake. But as well as having a detailed knowledge of your laboratory, we also have a great deal of information on you, General, which you must know, otherwise you wouldn’t have shown up to this meeting. And were that information to become public . . .’ Waheeb raised an enquiring eyebrow.

  ‘I’m here because your contact told me you had proof of what are outrageous accusations against my character. I won’t tolerate such defamation. Where is this “proof”?’ Dragunov demanded.

  ‘All in good time, General, all in good time.’

  Dragunov looked furious, but Waheeb was now quietly confident there was more than a little substance to the rumours.

  After Dragunov stormed out of the suite without a backward glance, Waheeb stood watching the evening gather over the Persian Gulf. Patience, he though
t. The Dragunovs of the world would eventually let their guard down. The ISIS cell inside the Russian nuclear laboratories had managed to install undetectable key logger software in Dragunov’s laboratory office and Pavlenko had gained access to all of Dragunov’s personal communications. More importantly, Dragunov’s passwords had given them unprecedented top-secret access to the Kremlin. Waheeb smiled to himself. As the Americans had found to their cost with Edward Snowden, top-secret compartments were only as strong as the weakest link, and the unsuspecting Russians were now very vulnerable from within their Sarov nuclear laboratory. Once inside the Russian system, it had been relatively simple to crack the codes of the Kremlin’s inner workings, all the way to the top. For the moment, as they were doing with Rabinovich, Waheeb’s ISIS cells would also track Dragunov. In the meantime, General Waheeb prepared to head back to the mountains on the Afghan–Pakistan border.

  As it had done for hundreds of millions of years, a fiery red sun slowly sank behind the soaring peaks of the Hindu Kush. Waheeb believed there was a spiritual power in these mountains and they never failed to energise him. In the darkening steep valleys below, tributaries coursed toward the mighty Kunar River. The Hindu Kush stretched across no fewer than eight countries, from Afghanistan and Pakistan in the west to Myanmar in the east and they were the source of ten massive river systems including the Yellow River, the Ganges, the Mekong and the Irrawaddy; rivers that provided water for over a fifth of the world’s population. Far below, Waheeb could make out the twinkling lights of Asadabad on the banks of the Kunar.

  General Waheeb looked at the coded message on his phone and smiled grimly. His men had succeeded and Caliph Abu Muhammad al-Rahman was now safely protected in the ISIS fortress in Pankisi Gorge. Waheeb pulled his lamb’s wool coat more tightly around him. While he waited for his commanders to assemble, he checked on his sentries. Waheeb was only too aware that the Infidel still maintained a presence of more than 10 000 troops in Afghanistan. Their big air base at Bagram was still active and drones were being used to target the Taliban.

  ‘They are here.’ Waheeb’s trusted lieutenant appeared by his side to announce the patrols had arrived. As a precaution, Waheeb switched off his phone and made his way to where the four commanders he had selected to recover the radioactive material were seated on stones around the fire.

  ‘Alhamdulillah! Allah be praised. Caliph al-Rahman is safe,’ he announced, careful not to declare the location.

  ‘Alhamdulillah!’ his commanders responded in unison.

  ‘The Caliphate can now regather in strength to spread our message around the world. But the Infidel is not listening to us, and you have a vital task to ensure he wakes up. We might be facing difficulties in Iraq and Syria, but we’re expanding in Europe, Russia and South-East Asia,’ Waheeb said, echoing the Caliph’s enthusiasm at their last meeting. ‘We’re on the move and Insha’Allah, God willing, we will win.’

  Waheeb was not nearly as confident as he sounded. He knew that in addition to their losses in key cities like Mosul and Fallujah in Iraq, along with Raqqa in northern Syria, ISIS was struggling to control the many towns and villages dotted along the Euphrates River that flowed through both countries. The loss of oilfields and refineries like Alas and Ajeel in Iraq and Kabiba in Syria had also seriously curtailed ISIS revenue. And Waheeb also knew ISIS were struggling to maintain a corridor across the north of Syria into Turkey, and when the Kurdish forces had defeated his fighters and recaptured Kobani on the border, the ISIS supply route used to move equipment and fighters was also under threat. Rather than the Iranian–Turkish route to the east, Waheeb had decided the best means of getting the radioactive strontium-90 out to the teams waiting in the four cities he intended to attack – New York, Paris, London and Sydney – was to the south through Pakistan. Waheeb’s fighters had a presence in Pakistan’s major port of Karachi and he knew the Karachi customs officials struggled with the sheer volume of contraband. The port terminals handled over 150 000 sea containers a month, which equated to over 200 an hour and Waheeb also knew that only a small percentage of those would be X-rayed.

  ‘The Russians have done us a favour,’ Waheeb continued. ‘When they withdrew, they left behind a number of old generators which are powered by radioactive elements. We’re after the power source, which in this case is strontium-90. It’s radioactive and will need to be wrapped in lead sheeting.’ Waheeb neglected to mention that in shielding the strontium, his commanders and their men would be exposed to deadly radiation. They would, he knew, suffer from nausea and vomiting. Depending on the dose, their DNA and molecular cells would be damaged, and if they didn’t die early, then cancer would certainly get them, though that was of little concern to Waheeb. It was a small price to pay. He switched on his laptop and brought up a schematic diagram of the Russian Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator or RTG.

  ‘You don’t need to know any detail, other than the location of the radioactive heat source, which is here,’ said Waheeb, pointing to a compound located at the heart of the generator. It was surrounded by myriad cooling tubes, foil insulation and finally, an aluminium outer case. Waheeb then pulled up Google Earth, which showed the innumerable creeks, rivers and valleys surrounded by the mountains and impossibly steep hillsides that constituted the Hindu Kush. ‘We’ve located four of the generators and two of them are here,’ said Waheeb, indicating a point near Nangalam, a small town at the junction of the Pech and Waygal rivers to the west of Asadabad. ‘Mohammad, Abdul – your teams will go for those. Once you’ve secured the material, you are to deliver it to our cell in Asadabad.’ The western military were not the only ones to work on a principle of ‘need to know’. Waheeb only ever gave out enough information for them to complete a mission. If they were captured by the Infidel and waterboarded, it meant they would only yield a minimum of intelligence.

  Waheeb scrolled across to the east. ‘Hafiz, Rustam, there are another two generators here,’ he said, indicating a grid reference on the Afghan side of the border near the village of Arandu that was nestled in the shadow of soaring mountains on the Pakistan side. ‘Once you have the radioactive elements, you are to move across the border into Pakistan and deliver the material to this house here.’ Waheeb magnified the Google Earth image until the roof of the house in question and its location could be clearly seen.

  Waheeb didn’t elaborate on what might happen to the material once it had been delivered across the border. His fighters didn’t need to know that another ISIS cell commander would make the hazardous journey along the Josh-Jalalabad Road into the Chitral Valley and from there, south through Pakistan to the port city of Karachi.

  ‘Are there any questions?’ His four commanders shook their heads. The mission was very clear. Secure the radioactive compounds and deliver them.

  ‘If you do encounter the Taliban, avoid them,’ Waheeb ordered. ‘Their focus is on Afghanistan, ours is on the world.’

  Once his commanders had briefed their fighters and set off down the steep trail that led to the Kunar River far below, Waheeb turned back to his laptop, intent on delving into the hidden recesses of the Dark Web. Technically, provided there was a satellite connection, it was not insurmountable to access it, even from out here. Waheeb assumed the Infidel’s intelligence agencies were aware that he was using the Dark Web, but that didn’t unduly worry him. To crack the encrypted access codes, he knew the Infidel would need to know where to look if they were going to have any chance of breaking into the URL.

  Waheeb punched a series of keystrikes into the Vidalia Control Panel that dealt with the random networks. Tor opened and Waheeb punched in another series of codes and the protected ISIS portal came up. He was in.

  All four cells in New York, Paris, London and Sydney had confirmed they were ready and waiting for their shipping containers, but it was the next report from Sarov that piqued his attention. Waheeb read it with mounting satisfaction and anticipation as he developed his ultimate plan.

  ‘Have a seat, O’Connor,’ said M
cNamara, gesturing toward one of his battered leather couches. ‘Murray will be with us shortly.’

  ‘Good. She’s easier on the eye than you,’ said O’Connor with a grin.

  ‘I’d expect that from you, O’Connor,’ McNamara replied, ‘but if you can get that mind of yours above your navel, we can focus on the latest grenades coming out of the White House. POTUS has got Chandler’s and my ass in a sling at the moment, especially when it comes to ISIS . . . ah, here she is now. Come and join us.’

  Murray smiled warmly at O’Connor and McNamara eased his barrel-like form from behind his desk and joined them at his office table. ‘Given the stream of invective coming out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, we’re going to need some results,’ McNamara said, reaching for the ‘SECRET IMMEDIATE’ report Murray had sent over before she left Fort Meade, ‘and if this report is right, we need to act fast.’

  ‘We do,’ agreed Murray. ‘As I’ve pointed out in the analysis, I’ve intercepted a critical conversation in the Pech River Valley near the Afghanistan–Pakistan border and voice recognition analysis points to one of Caliph al-Rahman’s senior strategists, General Mahmoud Waheeb. They know they’re on the ropes in Iraq and Syria, and they’ve also been routed in Libya, so their recruiting is suffering and it would appear the Caliph has ordered a series of dirty bomb strikes to reverse their fortunes.’

  McNamara and O’Connor listened as Murray outlined what she knew of the Caliph’s plans. ‘If I can have a map of the Pech River Valley?’ she asked.

  A wall screen came to life and McNamara handed her the remote. She homed in on the Afghanistan–Pakistan border area where the Pech River ran eastward to join the Kunar River at Asadabad.

  ‘ISIS is planning to loot the radioactive sources from four Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators, or RTGs,’ said Murray, switching on a laser pointer. ‘They’re left over from the Soviet era and they’re usually powered by strontium-90 or plutonium-238,’ she explained, ‘or less often by polonium-210 or americium-241. You can see the locations on our satellite imagery.’