With access to Milraud’s computer and his password, Thibault had been able to follow current communications easily enough. He was also working hard to reconstruct the archive of Milraud’s previous exchanges with the Yemeni middleman who had first introduced him to the young Arab now known as Zara.
But it was taking time and the Yemeni middleman was no longer responding to emails, as Thibault had found out when he initiated messages purporting to come from Milraud. Expand the net – that had been Seurat’s instruction to Thibault, and Thibault had done his best. But efforts to work his way into Zara’s system had been balked by a sophisticated firewall that Thibault quickly realised would take months, possibly years to break. And there was no question of that; Seurat had made clear that he wanted results yesterday. He had instructed Thibault to seek the help of the British, who were in any case the senior partners in this operation. Peggy in turn had passed the problem to her colleagues in GCHQ.
The day before, her contact in GCHQ had rung to say that they had got something and asked Peggy and her French colleague to come urgently for a meeting. So Peggy, early as ever, was stamping her feet and waiting for Thibault, who had caught an early Eurostar from Paris, to turn up at Paddington so they could catch the 10.15 train to Cheltenham.
Not for the first time she wondered why GCHQ had put itself in Cheltenham. It was such an awkward place to get to from London. It took at least two hours by train, and you had to change and get on an uncomfortable little local train for the last part of the journey. It was no better by car, she thought crossly as she looked at her watch again. It was still only five past ten, so there was nothing to worry about, she told herself, but she was still relieved to see the tall, slim figure of Jacques Thibault walking with long strides across the concourse towards her. She waved and he smiled back with a schoolboy grin that made Peggy feel quite motherly. With his longish, wavy hair, anorak and laptop bag over his shoulder, he looked about eighteen, though Peggy guessed he was probably more or less the same age as she was.
Thankfully for Peggy, whose French was not very advanced, Jacques Thibault had one English grandmother, which meant that he spoke fluent English, honed by annual visits as a boy to Granny Fairfax in her crumbling rectory in the Norfolk Broads. The train was crowded so they didn’t talk much in any case. Peggy read the Guardian on her iPad while Thibault opened his laptop, plugged earphones into his ears and tapped away on the keyboard.
After they had changed to the local train for the final part of the journey, Peggy explained that they would be met at the station by Charlie Simmons, who had been working on Zara’s communications. They would have a sandwich lunch in his office so not to waste any time. ‘He said he had something urgent for us,’ said Peggy. ‘And he particularly wanted you to be here.’
‘It’s about Zara,’ said Charlie as they sat down in his office, overlooking the walkway known as The Street, which ran round the GCHQ headquarters building, whose shape made it inevitable that it would be called ‘The Doughnut’. ‘We’ve been following his chat. There’s a lot of it – he seems to have contacts all over the globe.’
‘Yes,’ said Thibault non-committally, munching a sandwich, his long body slouched in his chair.
‘I can’t say we’ve got very far,’ Charlie Simmons went on. ‘Most of the messages are encrypted; a few are not. They’re pretty humdrum – Facebook messages to his friends, that sort of thing.’
‘And the encrypted ones?’ asked Thibault, in a voice without much hope. ‘I know that even with supercomputers, it can take a lot of time to crack the latest kinds of coding.’
But Simmons surprised them now. ‘Oh we’ve cracked that easily enough. Only Level Two. I’m about to send you the results, but I’m sure you’ll agree they’re disappointing. It’s just a lot of jihadi chat-room stuff – nothing firm. It’s as if they’re egging each other on, but in the most general ways.’
Peggy was familiar enough with these kinds of jihadi online discussions and she was sure that Thibault was too. Death to the West; death to the Jews; death to the Infidels. A kind of OCD with Death, but rarely much specific detail about how to bring these deaths about.
‘Could he have inserted more secret information in these emails?’ Thibault asked. ‘I’m thinking of the odd coordinates in the emails Zara sent to Milraud. I wondered if it was something a bit like those old codes, the book codes and the one-time pads that needed some sort of external reference to translate them.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Simmons said. He sounded cheerful, and Peggy wondered why, and why he had invited them urgently to come to Cheltenham. Maybe he was one of those oddballs who were happiest with bad news.
Thibault was obviously thinking the same thing. He asked bluntly, ‘So nothing to report then after all?’
‘On the contrary, I’ve got plenty to tell you. It just came as a bit of surprise. You see, it seems our Zara is something of a mother’s boy.’
‘So?’ said Thibault, his impatience now undisguised.
Charlie Simmons wasn’t going to be rushed. ‘He goes home practically every other weekend. All the way up to Manchester.’ He paused, then went on. ‘And while he’s home he’s often online – like most students these days. He takes his laptop home with him, and engages in the usual correspondence. But then something else happens, and here’s the funny thing.’
‘What’s that?’
‘His mother goes online as well.’
‘His mother?’
‘So it seems. It’s a Gmail account in her name, and the recipients – on the surface at least – are other ladies who appear to be of Middle Eastern origin and of a certain age.’
‘I don’t get it.’ Thibault was sitting up now.
‘Neither did I. But then I had a closer look. The PC his mother apparently uses only comes to life when Zara’s at home. The rest of the time it’s in deep hibernation mode. I mean deep – I bet the old lady doesn’t even know how to turn it on. Not surprising; it would be odder if the old lady were actually internet-savvy. I think it’s pretty clear she’s not. Zara’s using her machine, and the people he’s talking to are doing the same thing – using some unlikely dummy as the supposed sender of the emails.’
‘That sounds clever,’ said Peggy.
‘And simple,’ added Thibault.
‘Yes. So simple I almost overlooked it. We could have wasted half the firepower of GCHQ on this and got absolutely nowhere, when the answer was staring us in the face. Though if you read the emails you’d be none the wiser. A recipe for tabbouleh. A discussion of how best to cook lamb shanks, with an awful lot of talk about whether it should be four and a half hours or three days. Food is the usual topic, which means numbers – one hundred and fifty grams of couscous, ninety minutes simmering etc.’
‘So have you broken this food code?’ Peggy was awestruck by the almost basic ingenuity of this. A circle of middle-aged Middle Eastern women, babbling about cooking techniques and recipes and food shops – perfect cover for what she assumed were in fact lethal instructions and commands.
‘Pretty much. I’ll spare you the details, but basically, every time numbers get used they have to be prefixed by something to indicate what they’re referring to – is it time, or quantities or the geographical coordinates of a place?’
‘Can’t the prefix be in the numbers themselves?’ asked Thibault, leaning forward, his elbows on the table, his hands supporting his chin.
‘They could be, but then too often they would be the same. The repetition would be suspicious. Anyway, I’ve made enough progress to want to let you know.’
Oh gosh, thought Peggy. Simmons has made a breakthrough, but it’s still only conceptual. He’s brought us all the way here to tell us that he’s cracked the code, but he doesn’t know what the decoded material actually means. It was the classic folly of cryptanalysts the world over – fantastic excitement when they cracked a code, as if that were the be-all and end-all. If code breakers had run Bletchley rather than worked in it, the G
ermans would have won the War.
‘I congratulate you,’ Thibault said gravely. ‘You have done remarkable work. Please keep me posted with any results that come from it.’ He reached for his coat. ‘I need to be getting back now.’
‘What?’ Simmons suddenly was almost shouting. ‘It’s the results I’ve brought you here about. Don’t you want to know them? You should. There are five conspirators heading for Paris – they’re going to meet up with an associate of Zara’s called Michel Ramdani. He lives in Paris. He’s going to send the five men on to England – it’s not clear how they’ll be travelling but he’s responsible for the arrangements.’
‘When are they due to arrive in Paris?’ asked Peggy, reaching for her notebook.
‘The day after tomorrow. I’d better tell you Ramdani’s address. It seems that’s where this little conclave is supposed to meet.’
Chapter 44
It was half past eleven, dark, windy and pouring with rain, when a small convoy set off from Greater Manchester police headquarters. There were six black Range Rovers with tinted windows. In one was Technical Ted and two colleagues, in a second, three more from Thames House. Both of their vehicles had an assortment of oddly shaped bags and holdalls in the back. In the other four were eight police officers, two in each vehicle, but only one of each pair was recognisable from the word ‘POLICE’ on the front and back of his black pullover. All the other men wore anonymous dark clothes.
The cars stayed in convoy as they joined the southbound M60, Manchester’s ring road. Some miles on, at a junction marked Denton, one of the Thames House cars and two of the police cars peeled off, while the other three kept on the M60, circling the south of Manchester until they reached the turning for Eccles, where they too left the motorway and at a small roundabout headed into an industrial estate, led by one of the police cars. Ted, who was in the passenger seat of the Thames House vehicle, was talking to one of his colleagues in the other convoy.
‘All’s going fine here,’ he was hearing. ‘No problem with the alarm. It’s just the usual Chubb as we’d been told. The whole place is quiet as the grave. There’s nothing in here but empty wine crates and cardboard cartons, doesn’t look as though it’s been used for ages. We’ve put in three mikes and we’re doing two cameras; Frankie’s just working on the first one now. Then we’ll be testing it back to the Ops Room and we should be off to the next place in less than an hour.’
‘Sounds good,’ said Ted. ‘We’ve just arrived at our first stop, so let’s hope it’s as easy.’
The three cars pulled up on a square of tarmac outside a large metal warehouse which stood on its own, separated by at least fifty metres of grass and weeds from the next building on the narrow road. The wind was rattling the structure, making it reverberate like a drum. Dim lights on tall concrete lamp posts weakly illuminated the road and the front of the warehouse. One of the police officers came across to Ted’s car.
‘There’s resident security on this estate. They’ll be holed up in their hut on the other side. We’ve warned them we’re doing a search here and told them to keep away. If they come out, leave them to us.’
Ted nodded. ‘Suits us. We’ll be inside and we’ll stay there unless you alert us to get out.’
The policeman nodded, and as he did they both saw the lights of a car across the estate.
‘Looks as though they’re out of their box,’ said Ted. ‘Over to you.’ And as he turned away, one of the police cars drove off in the direction of the headlights.
By this time the small door to the side of the roller door was open and Ted’s two colleagues were inside. They had rigged up a couple of lights which showed that the interior of the warehouse was partitioned along one side, forming what seemed, judging by the doors, to be three separate rooms and leaving a large open space in which a lorry or several cars could be parked. It was not what Ted had been expecting. He opened one of the doors and found a room with four bunk beds in a row, very close to each other. The next room was a very small shower room with a lavatory and wash basin, and in the final room, which was a primitive kitchen, there was a pile of boxes, some open, some taped up, all of which seemed to be full of bedding – duvets, pillows and towels.
‘Looks like he’s expecting visitors,’ said Ted.
‘Or maybe he’s had visitors,’ replied Ted’s colleague Alfie, who had come in behind him, clutching a drill. ‘Some of this stuff has been used.’
‘We’re going to need six cameras to cover this lot,’ said Alfie, ‘so we’d better get going. We need to fit four mikes as well.’
‘OK. While you do that I’ll get onto the others and see how they’re getting on. This is going to take longer than we thought.’
The other team had just arrived at their second target, the warehouse on the industrial estate near Stockport, and reported back over a mobile phone. ‘Looks as though he uses this one as a store for his club. It feels quite used, as though people have been in recently. There’s restaurant-type tables and chairs, boxes of glasses and china and crates of wine and beer.’
‘Yeah. Well, that makes sense. It’s the one nearest his club. Stick in a couple of mikes and cameras and make sure you leave it as found. Then get out asap, just in case anyone turns up. We’ve got him under control but he must have staff who go there to get stuff, though probably not in the middle of the night – let’s hope not anyway. Then let me know when you’re finished, as it may be best for you to do the last one. This one’s a bit complicated and we’re going to be here some time.’
As he finished speaking, one of the policemen came in.
‘We’ve just had the alert that Jackson’s leaving the club. It’s about the time he usually leaves so I don’t think there’s anything to be worried about. We’ve got a static surveillance near his house and they’ll report in when he gets there. And we’ve got a team trailing him just in case he comes this way.’
‘Thanks. We’ll be at least another couple of hours, so let’s hope he goes comfortably to bed. Do the others know? They’re nearer him than we are.’
‘Yes. Everyone’s been warned.’
It was four thirty by the time Ted and his colleagues were ready to leave the warehouse near Eccles, having fixed and tested enough mikes and cameras to provide comprehensive coverage of all the rooms, including the bathroom and the open garage space. There had been no more interest from the security guards, who had been told firmly by the police officers that they would never work in the security business again if they spoke a word in the wrong place. Jackson had gone straight home and apparently gone to bed; his lights were out.
It was still pitch-dark and raining as the little convoy left the industrial estate. The other team had taken on the fourth target, the warehouse near Sale, but were finding it less straightforward than their other two and they were still there.
‘There’s something not right with this lock,’ they had reported when they’d arrived. ‘It’s wired up to something. Could be some sort of a remote alarm.’
‘Well, for God’s sake go carefully,’ Ted had replied. ‘Liz Carlyle and that little Peggy’ll kill us if we cock it up. Send us a photograph.’
And with advice from Ted, sitting on the edge of one of the bunk beds and working from a greatly enlarged photograph on his laptop screen, they had managed to disable what was indeed a remote alarm that would have triggered an alert somewhere, possibly in Jackson’s bedroom, if they hadn’t noticed it. Once safely inside they had found that this building too had been partitioned down one side, to make what was in fact a set of offices. The three rooms contained desks and chairs and carpets and heaters and a number of large locked filing cabinets.
‘Do you want us to open them?’
‘No.’ Ted made the decision without consulting anyone. ‘Leave them alone. We can look at them another time when we’ve got someone with us who can make sense of what’s in them. Just do the mikes and cameras and then get the hell out. It’s getting late.’
Chapter 45
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‘You look tired.’ Liz was watching Martin Seurat closely as they sat in the restaurant.
He started to deny it but then smiled, ‘I am a bit,’ he acknowledged.
‘Small wonder,’ she said, and signalled to the waiter to come and take their order.
It had been a long day, especially for Martin – he would have got up in the dark to catch the first Eurostar from Paris, arriving at St Pancras as most people were on their way to work. He’d taken the tube to Westminster and joined the hordes of civil servants heading for their desks in the government offices around Whitehall. Liz had given him coffee in the Thames House canteen, then they’d gone upstairs for the first of the day’s meetings, a catch-up with Peggy. The three of them had sat in Liz’s office while Peggy pulled together the different strands of the investigation so far. She described what had been found at Jackson’s four lockup warehouses the previous night.
‘It looks as though he’s been using one of them to store his most confidential papers,’ she said. ‘That was the one with the tamper alarm on the lock and all the locked filing cabinets. The police are going to want to have a look at them when this bit of the operation is over. The only other interesting one is the one near Eccles. That looked as though it had been used for sleeping in, presumably for some of the girls he brings in. But there is space in any of them for a lorry to be parked, so if the guns are coming in concealed in one of his deliveries, they could arrive at any of the four warehouses. We’ve fitted them all with mikes and cameras so we should be able to see and hear what’s going on. We just have to hope that we get enough warning to be able to do something about it.’
‘What about the lorry that’s supposed to be coming soon from Dagestan?’ asked Seurat. ‘Any more news on that?’
Close Call Page 19
