When Carter went out to get the coffee, Fanning suggested that Martin sit down. There were two sofas in the office, large enough to sleep on, and there was a small bathroom off to the side, so that there was no need for Martin to leave the room. Patsy Ellis had made it clear that Martin was to remain confined to the office, but that hadn't been a problem – he'd shown no desire to leave. All he'd done was to pace up and down and from time to time to stare at the silent phones.
The black phone was the line that had been diverted from the Hayes home in Dublin. The white phone was a direct line to Patsy Ellis's mobile. At least half a dozen times Martin had asked if they were sure the phones were working. Fanning had assured him that they were.
'I can't sit,' said Martin.
'There's nothing you can do,' said Fanning, loosening his tie a little. 'The ball's in your wife's court. We just have to wait.'
'But what if she doesn't ring? What if they don't let her use the phone?'
Fanning winced. He was an only child, he'd never been married and his parents were fit and healthy – he'd never had to deal with the death of a relative or a friend, never mind a wife or child. He could only imagine the torment that Martin was going through, and while he wanted to put the man's mind at rest, he didn't want to lie to him.
'Tim, what if she's dead already? What if they're both dead? Oh, God.' Martin dropped down on to one of the sofas and sat with his head in his hands.
Fanning stood up and went over to him. He put a tentative hand on his shoulder. 'Everyone here's doing everything they can, Mr Hayes. I can promise you that.'
Martin closed his eyes and shook his head. 'I don't think it's going to be enough.' He bunched his hands into fists and banged them down on his knees. Fanning took his hand off Martin's shoulder and sat down next to him.
'Patsy's right,' said Fanning. 'The closer your wife is to completing the device, the more leverage she has. She'll know that. There'll come a point where she'll be able to put pressure on them. She'll call.'
'But the guy that shot at me? He must have been one of them, right? He'll know that I'm not at home. Why would he let Andy call me if he knows I'm not at home?'
'We don't know,' admitted Fanning. 'Patsy said that maybe your wife would be able to get to a phone herself, without them knowing.'
Martin grimaced. 'That's hardly likely, is it?'
'It's a possibility. And just because you were attacked doesn't mean they know you've left the country, does it? They've no way of knowing where you are. For all they know, you could have returned home.'
'So she calls, then what? I know phone traces aren't infallible. Things go wrong.'
'You're going by what you see in the movies, Mr Hayes. It's not like that. With a digital exchange, we can get the number almost immediately. And a trace within seconds. Even with a mobile. If she's in the City, we'll know to within a hundred feet where she is.'
Martin leaned back so that his head rested on the back of the sofa. 'And Katie? What about my daughter?'
'If we get the terrorists making the bomb, we'll find her.'
Martin wiped his hands over his face as if he were wiping away tears, though his cheeks were dry. 'There's too many "ifs", Tim. Too many fucking "ifs". Are the Gardai looking for her?'
'Patsy thinks it best not to call in the local police,' said Fanning, choosing his words with care. 'We're looking, but we're using our own people. And we're monitoring all calls to Ireland. If they make a call to the kidnappers, we'll know. And we'll have their location. We'll know where your daughter is being held.'
'Oh, come on, Tim. That's not feasible. You can't possibly monitor every single call between England and Ireland.'
Fanning sat back, wondering how much he should tell Martin. The man was at the end of his tether and needed some reassurance, but much of what MI5 did was classified. 'We can, Martin. And we do. All the time.'
'Every call?'
Fanning nodded. 'It goes on every hour of every day. All around the world.'
Martin looked at Fanning, intrigued. 'How?'
Fanning sighed. 'Can't you just accept that we can, Martin?'
The door opened and Carter came in with a mug of coffee which she handed to Martin. He thanked her, then turned back to Fanning. 'Well?'
Fanning looked up at Carter. 'I was telling Martin not to worry. That we've got all bases covered.'
'He was telling me about tapping phones between England and Ireland so you can find out where they're keeping Katie.'
Carter pulled a face. 'Tim…' she said.
Fanning shrugged. 'He's not exactly an enemy of the state, Barbara.'
'I have a right to know what's going on,' said Martin quietly.
Carter held Fanning's look for a second or two, then she nodded. 'I guess it can't do any harm,' she said.
Martin nodded eagerly. 'So, what's going on?' he asked Fanning.
Fanning took a deep breath. 'I'll give you the idiot's guide,' he said. 'No offence.'
Martin smiled tightly. 'None taken.'
'The system is called Echelon. Don't ask me why. It's been around in some form or another since the seventies, but it's really come into its own in the last few years. It's the brainchild of the Americans, naturally, through their National Security Agency, but it also involves us, through GCHQ, the Government Communication Headquarters in Cheltenham, the Australians, the Canadians and New Zealand. Not through any altruistic information-sharing aspirations, but because the Americans can't physically cover the world on their own. Between the five countries, every single satellite, land line and undersea cable transmission is monitored. Every single one, Martin. Every phone call, fax, telex and e-mail in the world. Nothing escapes.'
Martin shook his head in disbelief. 'There must be millions every day. Tens of millions.'
'Billions, Martin. But Echelon can handle it. And more. It has the capacity to monitor individual transmissions, or it can search through all transmissions looking for a particular word, or combination of words. It can go back through several weeks, worth of transmissions, too. And there's more. It can even search out voiceprints, so we can be on the lookout for a particular individual making a call anywhere in the world. It gets flagged in one of the five Echelon HQs and Robert's your father's brother.'
'It sounds impossible,' said Martin, it's too big.'
'It's big, but computing power is now enormous compared with what it was just twenty years ago. And it's increasing by an order of magnitude every three years or so. You use the Internet, right?'
'Sure. Who doesn't?'
'And you've used a search engine? Yahoo or Altavista or one of the others, where you scan the Net looking for specific subjects. Words or combination of words?' Martin nodded. 'So you know how it works. If you get the search engine to look for a word like "heroin", in a couple of seconds it might tell you that there are some fifty thousand hits, places on the Net where the word occurs. Now, have you ever thought what that means? In the space of seconds, that search engine has looked at every site it has access to and found which ones refer to heroin. And if you want to call up a particular reference, it's on your screen in seconds.'
'I guess so,' said Martin.
'Then consider this, Martin. The Internet is old technology. Echelon is several generations ahead. It works at a speed you could never hope to comprehend. We ask it to keep a lookout for the word "Katie" or 'Mummy' and it'll flag any phone conversation that takes place in which both words are used. Immediately. Real-time. Within seconds we'll know which number is being called, and from where.'
'But I thought you could block your number from showing?' said Martin. He sipped his coffee.
Fanning smiled and shook his head. 'There's no way of hiding from Echelon,' he said.
Martin leaned forward, cupping the mug of coffee between his hands. The signs of stress were starting to diminish. He seemed much more relaxed now that he understood what was involved. 'The thing I don't get is if this system is so efficient, why doesn't it catch mor
e terrorists?'
Fanning grinned. 'What makes you think it doesn't? The NSA keeps a very low profile. So does GCHQ. Neither shouts about its results. Other agencies, ourselves included, usually end up taking the credit.'
'But you'd be able to locate anyone. Anyone in the world. Terrorists, drug dealers, criminals. People who've gone missing. Lord Lucan. Anyone.'
Carter leaned against the table, her hands behind her for support. 'Tim's telling you what's possible technically, but generally there isn't enough manpower to go after just one person, unless they're someone like Saddam Hussein or terrorists like Osama Bin Laden. There's a constant watching brief for top-ranking bad guys like that, but for run-of-the-mill criminals, it's just not worth the effort.'
Martin opened his mouth to speak but Carter silenced him with a wave of a neatly manicured hand, the nails the colour of dried blood. 'I'll give you an example. Say a plane was bombed, flying over the Atlantic. We could search for every conversation in which the words plane and bomb were used. But think how often the incident would be referred to in general conversation by members of the public. Say it was just a hundred thousand, and believe me, that'd be a massive underestimate, Echelon will pick out the words, then include five seconds either side, so that analysts can listen to the snippet of conversation to decide if it's worth following up. That's a million seconds of conversation, Martin. More than two hundred and fifty hours. Every second has to be listened to and analysed. And I can guarantee that it'll all be time wasted, because terrorists would never use words like bomb or explosive over the phone. They'd use codes, because they know how the system works. It's the same with drug dealers. They're not going to say "heroin" or "cocaine" – they wouldn't even say "gear" or other commonly used slang. They'll say "the consignment arrives next week" or something equally vague. So Echelon isn't used for general trawling of domestic phone conversations – there just aren't enough people, even within the NSA, to listen to all the stuff that's recorded. Most of it stays on disk and is stored, never listened to.'
'So now you're saying it's a waste of time?' said Martin bitterly.
Carter held up her hand again. 'Absolutely not,' she said. 'Where Echelon is invaluable is in targeting specific conversations, in specific areas of the world. It's used to listen in on diplomatic transmissions, military transmissions, specific people and organisations. Or the way that we're using it. For a specific word that isn't going to be in general use. How often do you think the word Katie is going to be used in calls from England to Ireland? A dozen? A hundred? Those sorts of numbers we can deal with, Martin. We'll pick up the call within seconds, and almost immediately we'll have a location. The NSA and GCHQ have more computing power between them than any other organisation on the planet.'
'I hope you're right, Barbara,' Martin said.
'She is. We are,' said Fanning. He looked up at Carter and they shared a smile. Patsy Ellis might not approve of how much of GCHQ's work they'd revealed to Martin, but he was definitely a lot more relaxed having heard it.
All three jumped as the black telephone rang. The mug fell from Martin's hands and coffee splashed across the beige wool carpet.
– «»-«»-«»The two men in Barbour jackets drove Denham back to Belfast in silence. Denham sat in the back of the Rover, chain-smoking and staring out of the window. They took him to a nondescript office building on the outskirts of the city, and the one who'd been in the passenger seat escorted him inside. A uniformed security guard asked him for identification, but all he had on him was his driving licence. The guard noted down the details and Denham and the man with him went up in an elevator to the third floor. The man had a swipe card which he ran through a reader at the side of a glass door, and it clicked open. They walked down a white-painted corridor past a series of identical grey doors. The man opened one of the doors and nodded at Denham. 'I'll wait for you here, sir.'
Inside the windowless room was a soundproofed booth, and inside the booth was a metal desk, a plastic chair and a telephone without a dial or keypad. The walls of the room were lined with pale green foam rubber that had been moulded into an egg-box design. Denham went into the booth and closed the door behind him. He picked up the phone and almost immediately a man's voice asked him who he wished to speak to. He asked for Patsy Ellis. She was on the line within seconds.
'Liam, how did it go?'
'Better than I expected, to be honest. Things have changed since the Good Friday agreement, more than I'd ever have guessed.'
'Men like McCormack have, sure. But there are other leopards whose spots'll never change. So what did he have to say?'
'He gave me the five who were in Trevor's ASU, but he obviously knew that we had them anyway. And he was open about Denis Fisher, but Fisher's dead. The active service unit was under the control of Hugh McGrath, and that we didn't know because he dealt only with Nolan.'
'McGrath?'
'He's dead, too. At least McCormack reckons he's dead. He disappeared back in '92. McGrath was on the Army Council but his main function was to liaise with the Libyans during the eighties. McCormack was a bit sketchy on the details, but it seems that McGrath set up his own splinter group responsible for a bombing campaign in '92. Fisher was running the group.' Denham took out a packet of cigarettes and fumbled one out. 'They were all killed when the SAS stormed their flat in Wapping. McGrath disappeared just before the SAS went in.' He lit the cigarette and inhaled deeply.
'He could just have got wind of what was happening and gone underground.'
'There's more to it than that, but McCormack's not letting on. I got the impression that it was the IRA that did for him, you know? That they found out what he was up to and took matters into their own hands.'
'But this McGrath knew about Trevor?'
'Oh, yes. Quite definitely. And another volunteer. Micky Geraghty. Have you heard of him?'
'Doesn't ring a bell.'
'Aye, probably before your time. Bit of a legend was Micky Geraghty. He was a sniper, and a bloody good one, but he lost heart when his wife died of cancer. Long and painful, and by all accounts he was a broken man afterwards. Walked away.'
'Still alive?'
'McCormack said he wasn't sure. He hasn't heard from him for a while. Geraghty went to live near Thurso, up in Scotland.'
'I'll get him checked out. What was his involvement with Trevor?'
'He never met her, but knew of her. The ASU was setting bombs in Belfast, small ones, booby-trapped so they'd be hard to deal with, and Geraghty would be somewhere up high with his rifle. The plan was to shoot the bomb-disposal guys. Trevor let us know what was happening so we had saturation coverage plus helicopters all over the place. Geraghty didn't get a chance to stick his head up. They moved him to the border and that was that. But according to McCormack, on at least one occasion he heard McGrath telling Geraghty about Fisher and Trevor. Geraghty had a daughter about the same age, name of Kerry.'
'But no one else on the Army Council knew about Trevor?'
'Not according to McCormack.'
'And the other thing? Is he willing to help?'
'He said he'd make enquiries. But that it wouldn't be easy.' Denham looked around for an ashtray but couldn't see one. He pulled a face and flicked ash on to the floor.
'Do you think he'll do it, though?'
'I think so. But without putting himself at risk. It's a hell of a thing to be asking him to do, Patsy. If word got out that he was helping us… even under the circumstances, the hardliners wouldn't think twice about making an example of him.'
'How long before he gets back to us?'
'He didn't say. Couldn't say. He'll put out feelers, ask around, but softly-softly. If he does come across anyone who's gone missing, he'll get back to me.'
'That's great, Liam. Job well done. Now I'd like you back here as soon as possible. The plane's waiting for you.'
'I was thinking it might be an idea if I return via Scotland. I could pop in on Micky Geraghty.'
'Do you know him?'
Denham stubbed his cigarette out on the underside of the desk. 'Never met him. I know it's not exactly on the way, but until McCormack gets back to me, I'm not going to be much use.'
Patsy was silent for a few seconds, thinking it over. 'You're right, it makes sense. You go ahead and see if you can find Geraghty. I'll speak to our transport people, ascertain where we can get you flown into, and I'll have you met there.'
'I'm a big boy, Patsy. I don't need minders.'
'It'll save time, Liam. Just think of them as drivers.'
'Aye. Okay.'
'You be careful, you hear. And Liam?'
'Yes?'
'You're not supposed to smoke in the secure communications booth. It screws up the electronics.'
Denham was still chuckling as he left the room.
– «»-«»-«»Martin's hand was trembling as he picked up the phone. He took a deep breath and put it to his ear as Carter and Fanning encouraged him with nods and urgent smiles. The counter on the digital tape recorder had already started to click off the seconds. 'Yes?' he said, his throat so dry that he could barely get the word out. Carter picked up a lightweight headset and put in on so that she could listen in on the conversation.
'Mart?' It was a man's voice. An Irish accent. 'Mart, is that you?'
It was Padraig. The strength went from Martin's legs and he sat down. He put the receiver down on the table and looked at the two MI5 agents, then shook his head.
'Shit,' said Fanning. He picked up a glass of water and drank, then walked away to look out of the window, cursing under his breath.
Martin stared down at the handset. Padraig was still speaking but Martin couldn't make out what he was saying. He put the phone to his ear. 'Jesus, Mart, say something.'
'Hiya, Padraig. Sorry. I dropped the phone.'
'Are you at home, Mart? I've been trying your mobile but it's off.'
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