The Network

by Jason Elliot

  As soon as it’s dark, I’m thus able to waste several hours. In pitch blackness, viewed through the camera in infrared mode, the little screen on the mobile is, as promised, as bright as a searchlight. It lights up the entire room and is even visible from under a blanket. Handy, as Seethrough has suggested, for landing a helicopter in the garden.

  The ultraviolet is equally distracting. It makes my fingernails seem luminous. I wave it over objects that take my fancy, and discover the hidden watermarks and security devices in my chequebook and passport. There are hidden phosphor bands on stamps, and images and tiny flecks of specially dyed paper in banknotes, invisible to the eye in ordinary light. Shining as if white-hot in the darkened room, they seem strangely beautiful. I also look at the postcard with it, and am disappointed to find there’s no hidden message.

  It’s Saturday evening. I’m alone, and feel alone. As night falls, the familiar beast of despair begins to creep up on me. I have no tobacco and am too lazy to go and buy any. Worse, there’s virtually nothing to drink but a final bottle of Château Batailley, which I’ve promised myself I’ll save for a special occasion. This calls for a difficult decision. It’s either the Batailley or the sole other source of alcohol in the house: roughly half a bottle of Armenian cognac, which a so-called friend has palmed off on me as a gift. It’s so bad I haven’t touched it for six months, having discovered what damage it can do to the untrained nervous system. I retrieve it from the back of a kitchen cupboard, mix a slug with some mineral water and discover to my surprise that it’s quite drinkable. I also find a cigar, which I’ve similarly promised myself to save for a special occasion. I light the cigar, dig out my topographic maps of Afghanistan, and return to the cognac.

  At ten o’clock I lurch into the grey morning with a sharp pain in my head where the cognac has etched Category 2 damage in the region of my cerebellum. The house reeks of cigar smoke, so I throw open the windows and put the coffee percolator to work in the kitchen. Taking the first sip, I hear myself whisper, ‘I must not do this again,’ and wonder how often I’ve uttered the same words. My Afghan maps are scattered on the floor by the sofa where I’ve fallen asleep. As I’m gathering them up there’s a triple knock at the door. I flee upstairs, throw on some clothes and return to the door.

  The daylight is painfully bright. In front of me stands a clean-shaven middle-aged man with a sheaf of paperwork in his hand, and for a terrible moment I think of all the letters from the Television Licensing Authority which I’ve thrown away unopened.

  ‘Good morning, sir. I hope I’m not disturbing you.’

  I don’t like the ‘sir’ part. It makes him sound like a policeman. But he doesn’t look like one. He’s wearing a black suit like an undertaker’s, for which he’s grown slightly too big, and a tie with green and red diagonals that hurts to look at.

  ‘Of course not,’ I reply with an unconvincing smile.

  ‘I wonder if I can ask whether you read the Bible?’ he asks. Resting in the crook of his arm like Moses in a basket is a sheaf of denominational literature.

  ‘I do, as a matter of fact.’

  A smile of pleasant surprise spreads across his face, but it’s not a morning to give the enemy too much room for manoeuvre, because I don’t do religion on a hangover.

  ‘I also read the Qur’an. I have a soft spot for Marcus Aurelius too, and he was a pagan.’

  The smile fades. He’s not really expecting this and a slight stutter comes into his voice. ‘But … but do you believe your actions in this life make a difference in the world to come?’

  ‘If we’re going to be judged on something in an afterlife, I think it’ll probably be our inactions. It’s not difficult to live a pious life, if you think about it, imagining you’ll be saved if you stick to a few rules. But think of all the good things you could have done but didn’t because you were too lazy or complacent. I think we’ll be judged on our potential.’

  He’s frowning now.

  ‘I forget where I first heard the idea, but it does stay with you. I think it’s somewhere in the Qur’an.’

  I pluck a copy of the Watchtower from his grasp and thank him warmly, saying I hope I’ll see him again soon. The speed at which he walks away up the drive suggests I won’t.

  With a feeling of guilty victory I return to my coffee. Then I close the windows in the sitting room because the light is hurting my eyes, and sit down at the table, taking the postcard from the mantelpiece where I left it. I read it again several times. There’s nothing out of the ordinary about the text. I wonder if the picture, depicting a nomad leading a line of camels, is intended to convey a meaning. It’s the identity of ‘Mohammed’ that bothers me. I wonder if it might be worth looking through my diaries from the period I was last in Kabul, but if the card was sent months earlier, whoever Mohammed is will have given up hearing from me.

  I take the card to the kitchen and boil the kettle, hold the card in the steam and gently work a corner of the stamp with the tip of a knife. I’m not sure what to expect – anything strange or out of the ordinary.

  As the stamp begins to curl back in the steam, what I see is even stranger. Under the stamp, in the same ink as the writing on the card, is a tiny drawing of a dinosaur with a smiling face.

  It’s a stegosaurus.

  Cryptography is the science of hiding the true meaning of a message by disguising it; encrypting it by some means known to the recipient but not to others. As long as the sender and the recipient keep their means of encryption secret, the effort needed by the codebreaker is determined by the difficulty of the code. Some codes, like alphabetical substitutions, are easy to crack because the frequencies at which letters appear in words are well known. Others, like one-time pads based on random numbers, can only be cracked by computers, if at all. The most complex codes that use block ciphers and multiple algorithms need both computers and time, and modern computing power means that few codes are truly impossible to crack, given enough of the latter. But the science of hiding a message by disguising it as something which on the surface appears innocent is called steganography.

  Strictly speaking, a message written in invisible ink across an ordinary letter is an example of steganography: the visible or cover message is innocuous. It’s an ancient idea. Herodotus describes a king who tattooed a secret message on the shaven head of his slave, whose hair was allowed to grow before he travelled through enemy territory to deliver it. More recent applications allow secret text to be hidden in the data of digitised photographs sent over the Internet. The advantage of a steganographic message is that, unlike a coded message, the secret part doesn’t attract attention to itself. It resembles something ordinary, and hides itself thereby.

  My ex-wife, come to think of it, has a steganographic personality: an innocent-looking face concealing a cruel agenda.

  I decide it has to be the numbers: thirteen and forty. ‘Degrees’ in the cover message also seems to be an overt clue. I find an atlas and look up the latitude and longitude. Problem. Thirteen degrees north and forty degrees east puts me in the mountains of northern Ethiopia. Forty degrees west is equally challenging – somewhere in the mid-Atlantic trench. Southern readings for the latitude land me in thick rainforest in Mozambique and Brazil. The numbers are not an obvious location.

  They’re too short to be a phone number or a postcode. The only other reference I can imagine they might give is a book code, indicating a page and line number in a book known to both sender and recipient. But I haven’t agreed on a book with anyone called Mohammed.

  Then it hits me like a delayed reaction, as I hear the echo of my very own words: I also read the Qur’an. The ‘old friend’, Mohammed, is the clue. It’s so obvious I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to realise. Now I regret my uncivil behaviour towards my visitor.

  For centuries the mas-haf code, virtually unknown in the West, has been used in the Islamic world to encrypt messages using the numbers of the Qur’an’s sacred verses. Being identical in every version of the t
ext, irrespective of country or date of publication, the verses retain the same numbers and provide thereby an unchanging key.

  I go to my bookshelf, pull out an English translation and race to the thirteenth chapter, called Thunder. The fortieth verse, or aya, is a short one: ‘Whether We let you glimpse in some measure the scourge with which We threaten them, or cause you to die before we smite them, your mission is only to give warning: it is for Us to do the reckoning.’

  There’s no need to look for any more clues. The reference to a warning is confirmation enough of the message. The question now is how to interpret it and, if necessary, respond. It’s strange news to get and I’m annoyed with myself for being hungover and slow. I regret my mind isn’t feeling sharper and that the whole significance of the message isn’t coming to me more quickly. The only thing I know for sure about the message is that it’s been sent by someone who knows enough of my background to be confident that I’ll figure out how to decipher it, and then how to interpret it. Whoever sent it also knows how to find me.

  There’s a another sudden knock at the door, which has an effect similar to a powerful electric shock. I yank open the door with a scowl. There’s a different man standing on the doorstep, this time wearing a fake Barbour, jeans and trainers.

  ‘I’ve told your friend I’m a Muslim,’ I say gruffly.

  The man’s eyebrows go up and down and he let outs a gravelly chuckle.

  ‘Well, in that case, As-salaamu aleikum.’ His voice is low, even and has a rasping quality as if something rough is being continually ground down in his throat. I frown at him. I’ve never met an Arabic-speaking Jehovah’s Witness and wonder if they’ve sent for a specialist to check my theology. He’s going to get a run for his money.

  ‘Wa aleikum as-salaam.’ I return the greeting out of reflex and look at him more closely. His frame is lighter than the other man’s, and the lines on his cheeks suggest leanness. He has short sandy-coloured hair, a neat moustache like an ex-soldier’s and looks a youthful fifty. His eyes have a watchful and mischievious sparkle. But he has no documents or bag. Before I can think of anything else to say, he speaks again.

  ‘Ana rafiq min landan.’ I am a friend from London. He speaks Ministry of Defence Arabic. ‘I parked down the road,’ he adds, gesturing with a thumb over his shoulder. Then it sinks in.

  It’s Seethrough’s man from the Regiment. The SAS has arrived.

  ‘Oh, Christ. Sorry. Come in.’

  He smiles and his eyes dart watchfully over the hallway as he steps inside. ‘It’s H—— by the way. Friends call me H.’ The handshake is firm. ‘Late night?’ he asks with a knowing look.

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘We’d better have some coffee.’

  ‘I’ve just made some.’

  ‘Good man.’

  He sniffs the air as we go into the kitchen, puts his coat neatly over the back of a chair and sits at the table. The room’s a mess. I’m embarrassed and surreptitiously cover the ashtray in the sink with a plate as I rinse a pair of cups. I ask where he’s driven from this morning.

  ‘Hereford.’ That figures. Hereford is home to the Regimental HQ of 22 SAS.

  I’m about to ask whether he lives there, but he answers first.

  ‘Settled down after I left the Regiment ten years ago, give or take.’

  ‘Marry a local girl?’

  ‘The whole nine yards. Wife, kids, cats, dogs.’

  ‘What have you been doing since?’

  ‘The security and protection circuit – rigs and pipelines, mostly. Some BGing once in a while. Sorry – bodyguarding. And the occasional special request.’

  ‘Isn’t it all a bit dull after the SAS?’

  ‘Better than sitting around in a damp hole all day.’

  This is modest, coming from a member of the most elite special forces regiment in the world.

  ‘There’s a company that helps the blokes who want to stay active – the ones who don’t become postmen, mostly.’

  ‘Remind me not to tangle with the postman.’ I sit down opposite him and pour the coffee. His eyes fall on the dark red and blue bands of my watchstrap.

  ‘Regimental flash?’

  ‘Scots Guards.’

  ‘Alright for some.’ He grins. ‘When did you pack it in?

  ‘After the Gulf. Granby, wasn’t it? Stupid name for a war,’ I say. I know that military code names are chosen by computer and run alphabetically, but still.

  ‘Stupid war, if you think about it.’ He blows thoughtfully on his coffee. I like his irreverence.

  ‘Regiment did well out of it,’ I say.

  ‘The usual balls-up,’ he says, dismissing this. ‘Typical Regiment story. A lot of guys spread out all over the world in different theatres, and then up comes a deployment like the Gulf.’ His fingers trace a phantom squadron gathering across the tabletop. ‘All of a sudden every one of them wants a piece of the action, and a lot of jostling goes on. You get guys who’ve been training for something else doing the wrong job, and the right guys getting bumped down the line.’

  ‘What did London tell you?’ I ask.

  ‘I only get a phone call from the liaison officer with the where and when. Sounds like they’re going to leave the details to us. We’ve got a month. Should be plenty of time.’

  This is a very low-key approach, and unlike anything I’ve encountered in the military. I also find it hard to reconcile the softly spoken almost boyish manner of the man in front of me with the more sensational tales told popularly about the Regiment.

  ‘I don’t suppose you were on the balcony at Prince’s Gate, were you?’ I’m joking, but every soldier knows how many thousands of men have claimed they were part of the spectacular hostage rescue at the Iranian embassy in London twenty years earlier.

  ‘No, not on the balcony,’ he says in a thoughtful tone. ‘Anyway, the blokes on the balcony were only there for the TV cameras.’

  Good answer. I ask how long he’s been in the Regiment.

  ‘I’m a twenty-fourer.’ He chuckles. ‘Boy soldier.’ He’s served in every major theatre where the SAS has deployed. Aden, Borneo, Oman, Northern Ireland, the Falklands, Iraq, Bosnia and, between training some other military units in far-off places and what he calls ‘extra-curricular stuff’, a dozen other countries.

  ‘I’m surprised you haven’t thought of a literary career,’ I say. ‘Wasn’t it your CO who started the trend?’

  He shrugs cynically. ‘DLB was a good soldier. Anyway, it’s his memoirs they’ll be reading in ten years, not the other bloke’s.’

  He’s loyal too, I’m thinking to myself, to his former Regimental commanding officer, Peter de la Billiere. By the sound of it he doesn’t care much for the celebrity authors the Regiment has also produced over the past few years. Then I remember what Seethrough told me the day before.

  ‘What’s a Mirbat vet?’ I ask.

  ‘I am, for starters,’ he says.

  ‘Then what’s a Mirbat?’

  ‘Mirbat? That’s the name of the town. On the Omani coast. Operation Storm.’ His eyes light up. ‘The Regiment’s golden hour. Have you got an atlas?’

  A vet, it now dawns on me, is obviously a veteran, but I’ve been thinking a Mirbat is some kind of animal, not the site of a battle. Feeling very ignorant, I fetch the atlas from the sitting room, where I’ve left it. We push our cups aside and a few moments later our fingers are trailing southwards across the Arabian peninsula. I’ve forgotten how strategically placed Oman is, with its north-eastern tip pointing into Iran across the narrowest stretch of the Persian Gulf. H’s finger comes to rest on the coastline not far east of the border with Yemen.

  ‘We were down south, here, in Salalah. And there,’ he says, pointing to a long mountainous shadow running east to west, ‘was where the Adoo were, up on the Jebel.’

  ‘What were you doing there?’

  ‘We weren’t. Officially. Too secret at the time. No one back home knew we were out there. But look.’ He points t
o the map again. ‘Everything coming in and out of the Gulf has to run through the Straits of Hormuz. Imagine if we’d lost it.’ He smiles and then does a comic caricature of an officer. ‘We couldn’t very well let them have our oil, could we?’ Then as if he regrets making light of the subject, adds, ‘That wasn’t the point at the time. We were British. We knew we’d win.’

  He flattens out the sheet gently with his hand, and we lean over it to peer at the names. From the coastal plain around Salalah, several dark lines cut into the looming escarpment that H calls the Jebel, which means mountain in Arabic. The lines split and waver like veins as they travel north. They’re the giant wadis that lead into the hinterland of the enemy, he explains, verdant in the monsoon season and blisteringly barren in the summer.

  ‘That’s Wadi Arzat,’ he says. He smiles. ‘God, I remember hiking all the way up there with a jimpy.’ Jimpy is army slang for GPMG, the unpleasantly heavy general purpose machine gun. He takes a key ring from his pocket and uses the tip of a key to follow the coastline to the east, until it comes to rest on a town at the foot of the great Jebel.

  ‘There,’ he says, ‘that’s Mirbat. That’s where I got my first souvenir.’

  There isn’t much written about Mirbat or Operation Storm, so I’m pleased to be hearing about it from someone who was actually there, and I fill in the gaps later. Mirbat itself was the most dramatic engagement in a six-year-long campaign spanning the final days of British control in the Gulf. In 1970 the British protectorate of Aden had fallen to a Marxist-oriented government. On its eastern border lay Oman, governed by an ageing and autocratic sultan with the help of a small army run by British officers. When intelligence reports began to suggest that communist-trained guerrillas from Yemen, as well as others from revolutionary Iraq, were infiltrating the country, there was a reappraisal of British interests in the region. The prospect of allowing the country to fall into communist hands was unthinkable.