Novak added, ‘Plus stock options.’
Her smile was all steel. ‘We’re sinking, Tom. I know you know that. And right now Bastion looks like a pretty good life raft. But out of three houses, Henry just sold two and re-mortgaged the third to keep the lights on around here. If he finds a generous bank we might have six months.’
He didn’t show it, but Novak was stunned. He had no idea things were that bad.
‘You belong here,’ Diane said. ‘You can turn this place around. Yeah we make mistakes, but we hit more than we miss. You know that. You’re not going to win any Pulitzers across the street. You know that too. But that’s not what you want anymore, is it.’
‘My dad didn’t get into the media for ideals, Diane. It was a job.’
‘Yes, in the end it was. But he didn’t start out that way. And certainly not when he was your age. You want to talk about fire? I watched Seymour Novak storm into board meetings and demand resignations over a misattributed photo credit.’
‘And the last fifteen years of his career involved a live hour of filmed narcolepsy in front of five million people every weeknight. He was thirty-eight when he went to NBC. I’m thirty-six, Diane. Fires go out.’
Diane said, ‘Fires can be relit.’
Novak shook his head.
‘You’re a great writer,’ she said. ‘But Bastion will butcher your copy, and when they realise you’re not the right-wing hatchetman they want you to be, they’ll throw you overboard when some twenty-five-year-old Alt-Right vlogger with half a million YouTube subscribers comes along.’ She paused, wearing the look Novak’s mother used to have when he did something disappointing. ‘You’ve already made up your mind, haven’t you?’
Novak took a beat. ‘Stella’s been here a week. London hadn’t happened yet, obviously, so she’s not just helping on this particular story. Is she?’
Diane had never lied to him. She wasn’t going to start now. ‘No.’
‘She’s here because you don’t think I can do the job anymore.’
She tried to choose her words carefully. ‘I think you need to focus on some basic journalism for a while. Find your chops again.’
Novak nodded. It was the answer he feared. ‘You’ll have three thousand words by Friday.’
As Novak opened the door, Diane added, ‘Tom. I know I might be asking a lot, but try not to use the words “massive government conspiracy” at any point.’
Stella was waiting on the other side of the door, holding a sheet of paper. ‘Hey. I didn’t mean for that to get so...’
‘Stella,’ he sighed, ‘kick my ass or make nice. I don’t care which, but pick one.’
Stella handed him the paper. ‘Wires from AP. You’ll never guess who they’ve made interim Prime Minister.’
Novak looked at the wires for a moment, then said, ‘You’re right. I’ve never heard of her. Who the hell is Angela Curtis?’
GCHQ, GTE Division – Monday, 2.32pm
It was no secret that, like many private technology firms, GCHQ had many ex-hackers on their payroll. A lot of hackers made a point of attacking only government sites in order to show off. A peacock hack, they called it. Strutting around in the gaping hole of security vulnerabilities, waiting for someone to notice their signature. Many hacks are done for money, but what a hacker wants most of all is credit. Mostly from other hackers: the only people who can appreciate the complexity of what they’ve done. The only credit Rebecca wanted was from the recruiters at GCHQ. She had gone the ‘white hat’ way: a hacker who points out vulnerabilities in order to fix it, rather than exploit it for personal gain like ‘black hats’.
Ultimately, to GCHQ, hacks were like puzzles. And if a hacker happened to be the best puzzle solver then GCHQ wanted them. It was the same reason why each year they issued their Christmas puzzle: if someone was clever enough to solve puzzles set by GCHQ then maybe they were smart enough to work there. The only criteria they cared about was who got correct answers. Everything else was irrelevant.
And if you proved yourself like Rebecca did, they would give you the biggest puzzle in the world to play with.
They called it ECHELON.
The ECHELON system had once been for military and diplomatic communications only, but since 9/11 it had been adapted to collect data on any phone call GCHQ wished. The data didn’t even need to be recorded in real-time. Searches could be backdated by up to thirty days: seeing what numbers a target called, and when and where they took place. A potential goldmine in the aftermath of a terror attack. Not to mention the biggest violation of privacy in the history of telecommunications. All of it now legal.
Rebecca’s dictionary- and brute-force attacks were still running on her computer, coming up blank. If she couldn’t access the files Abbie sent her it was going to be almost impossible to figure out what she had been doing in London in the first place. Rebecca couldn’t rely on the American diplomat emailing again, so the only other angle she could work was Mackintosh. And if she was to get access to his computer, she’d have to get creative.
In his afternoon briefing Mackintosh gave an update on MI6 and MI5’s progress to a packed room of GTE analysts and technicians.
Mackintosh had just declared he wanted a list of every text and instant message sent in the hours preceding the attack. He said, ‘Rebecca’s going to explain how we can do this.’
Rebecca, sitting at the front with Matthew, went to Mackintosh’s computer which was hooked up to the projector screen on the wall. She typed in ‘5,000,000’.
‘That’s how many texts are sent each hour in London,’ she said. ‘At rush hour that number can go as high as seven.’
Mackintosh looked carefully around the room, assessing who looked out their depth, sceptical or scared. There were a few. It was one thing to be a genius with a GCHQ entrance exam in front of you, but it was quite another to know your calculations were a matter of life and death. It was too real for some.
They had made the mistake of thinking now they had signed their contract that the vetting process was over. They couldn’t have been more wrong. Some of them wouldn’t even survive the length of their shift. With the stakes so high, Mackintosh couldn’t afford to be complacent.
Rebecca wasn’t the most confident presenter, but her reputation as the most brilliant analyst in GTE kept the room in the palm of her hand. ‘We only need to narrow those five million down to the Westminster area. Bombers like this can’t operate alone. There will have been some kind of confirmation message from the bomber to the rest of a sleeper cell. They wouldn’t risk meeting, but I’ll bet there was visual contact made at some point. The Paris attacks, Boston bombing, Brussels, Madrid, they all had these things in common.
‘We have to widen our search to around three hours before the bombing. So how do we narrow down those messages sent in one of the most populous areas in London? We can discount all messages ending with an “x”, or anything with “love” in it. Bombers use blank, anonymous codes – something prearranged. And they don’t waffle, so ignore anything longer than one hundred and sixty characters – the length of a standard SMS. They think they’re smart not using Arabic or Farsi. They think in a world of marginal voices, anything untoward stands out even more. I’d bet the house on them using English.’
Rebecca deleted 5,000,000 and typed 3000-5000.
‘It’ll be hard, but if we can narrow it down to that – which I think is more than realistic for an area and time frame like this one – split between us in ops, that’s only a thousand messages each. I doubt they would be stupid enough to use “Downing Street” or “Prime Minister” at any point, but I’d check it anyway. The language of the confirmation message will be stiff, a non sequitur. The cell will ask something like, “Is your bag packed?” and the bomber will reply, “The trees are green and the sun is shining.” Ironically, the more they try to remain anonymous the more they stand out.’
Mackintosh stepped forward. ‘Out there, somewhere, is an active terror cell. We can’t build virtual fi
ngerprints on any of them until we get that text.’
While Mackintosh spoke, Rebecca took a stapler and rested it on the ENTER key.
As the room cleared, Rebecca was the last to leave. On her way past Mackintosh caught her arm. ‘Becky, a word.’
Mackintosh could see Rebecca wasn’t herself. ‘I know I’m expecting a lot from you so soon. This is hard for everyone.’
It was only then that it occurred to Rebecca just how lacking in grief she’d been feeling. Grief felt impossible to let in, not when there were puzzles outstanding. ‘We worked in the same office together,’ she said. ‘Let’s not pretend like we were sisters or something.’
Mackintosh said, ‘If I’m expecting too much, you can tell me.’
As long as he seemed more pliable than usual Rebecca took a shot at upping the ante. ‘I was thinking...with Abbie gone, Matthew’s now the only senior officer in GTE authorised for STRAP Three material. I thought you might need more cover in that area the next few days...’
Mackintosh knew where she was going with this. He shifted weight from foot to foot. ‘Rebecca. I appreciate the work you do here. As does the Director. But you’re twenty-five. Matthew is an exceptional case, and he’s still three years older than you. Your own father didn’t make STRAP Three until he was thirty-one. And he was the best cryptographer GCHQ has ever had.’
Rebecca nodded. ‘I understand.’
‘I remember your interview notes,’ Mackintosh said. ‘We never had a candidate asking about STRAP Three access at a preliminary interview before. Why is it so important?’
Rebecca was angry at herself for making her position so obvious. ‘It’s the highest clearance there is. And I want to be the best.’
Mackintosh took her hands gently. ‘Patience,’ he said. He let her hands go to check his watch. ‘I’ve got a briefing on the third floor, but I’ll be back for the evening rundown.’
Just as Rebecca had hoped. The Doughnut had been designed to encourage communication between all the different departments, making it easy to go from one end of the building to the other in no more than five minutes. Which made it likely Mackintosh would vacate GTE at some point during the day rather than conduct his business by conference calls.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘Hopefully I can get my hands on something by then.’
He took his briefcase and shut his office door behind.
Rebecca returned to her desk, thinking about the stapler still resting on the ENTER key, stopping Mackintosh’s computer from timing out while he was gone.
Rebecca sat in the canteen doing The Times cryptic crossword in pen. Between clues she flicked in and out of her email inbox, even though she had desktop notifications on. Still nothing from Novak. She needed to get his attention.
She typed: ‘We need to talk ASAP. Abbie Bishop’s death wasn’t an accident.’
She highlighted the text then changed it to plainscript before encrypting it. Then she hit send.
As she was about to return to her crossword, the dictionary- and brute-force attacks finished up: no successful password found for Abbie’s files.
Rebecca tilted her head back to stretch her neck. She had such little time on breaks to try and get somewhere with the password she was forcing it, thinking too hard.
The news was muted on a large wall-mounted TV at the end of the room. Rebecca watched it impassively, trying to clear her head. The primetime anchor on TV looked shifty and uncomfortable near the police cordon on Whitehall, missing the safety of the studio with its autocue and distance from tragedy. It was wall to wall coverage on every channel, which at least meant the Abbie story had become minor news. On TV, anyway. Not so the newspapers whose late editions went to press at three on Monday morning.
Rebecca pulled over a copy of The Post from a neighbouring table, recognising the exterior of the safe house in a photo above a report on Abbie. When she saw the headline Rebecca picked the paper up in astonishment: ‘Tragic balcony fall of GCHQ officer linked to MI6.”
Mackintosh hadn’t mentioned anything about the story. Plus, it was The Post, which was better known for its pictures of topless models and extensive celebrity coverage rather than intelligence scoops.
The report would have been rushed out to make the print deadline – even so, it mentioned details that the reporter, Dan Leckie, couldn’t possibly have found out in the three hours between Abbie’s death and his deadline.
“The GCHQ intelligence officer who died after falling from the balcony of a GCHQ safe house in Pimlico in the early hours of Monday morning has been named as Abigail Bishop...”
Rebecca skimmed it, her heart racing.
“... sources that link her to an MI6 operation called Tempest... The Foreign Office has issued a statement saying that ‘it is government policy not to comment on security matters.’”
Rebecca slowly put down the newspaper.
Tempest.
She took out her notes from earlier where she’d written all the synonyms for STORM. The word Tempest now seemed to light up the rest of the clues. They were all synonyms. With that in mind, now there were few possibilities she could think of for SMALL SETTLEMENT other than hamlet. Once she had that, the others fell like tenpins.
She scribbled them down:
“KING OF SCOTLAND > MACBETH.
OGLING MONARCH. Ogled > leer. Monarch > King. KING LEAR
MOORISH GENERAL > OTHELLO
SMALL SETTLEMENT > HAMLET
STORM > TEMPEST’
She grabbed her laptop which was still open at the password window, then typed ‘William Shakespeare’ and hit ENTER.
The window refreshed – PASSWORD ACCEPTED. Then a new window appeared:
“Hell is empty. And all the devils are here.”
Rebecca clenched her fist under the table.
The list of files unpacked in a stream so rapid she couldn’t keep track. The unencrypted ones were in their original, unblemished text, one file on top of the other, dozens of them piling up on Rebecca’s desktop.
When the files had unpacked they siphoned into a single folder named ‘AB’.
The last piece of the puzzle – the encrypted file – stood out with its black icon. Even the file name was blank. The truth so tantalisingly close.
She clicked into the folder, opening the first document there. The first page was a passport-type picture of Abbie from what looked around five years earlier. Her hair hadn’t quite grown out of the conservative bob she wore throughout her Trinity College, Cambridge days. What struck Rebecca most was how wide and bright Abbie’s eyes were, a look that was to slowly dim over the next five years.
Rebecca was familiar with the nature of the document. She’d seen plenty of them in her time.
It was an MI6 personnel file.
She moved on, scrolling down the page.
‘Name: Abigail Bishop
Start of employment: 2nd April 2009...’
Rebecca did some quick maths.
Two years after Abbie joined GCHQ.
The rest of the personnel file only obfuscated things further. Her date and place of birth were different to the ones Abbie had told Rebecca. Was she from Nottingham like she had told her, or from somewhere called Hadley Green as listed with MI6? Was she twenty-two when she joined GCHQ, or twenty-four? Rebecca had always thought Abbie looked older. Perhaps that was from the weight of the double life she had apparently been maintaining.
The other files were arranged chronologically – MI6 briefing papers on Operation Tempest, which was to be spearheaded by an agent whose name was redacted. They must have been the principal agent as the same size black bar cropped up on every page, multiple times.
It also meant the agent’s identity must have been of the highest secrecy.
It was then Rebecca realised The Post had been dead-on with their story: Tempest was a genuine MI6 operation. Which could mean only one thing: someone was leaking them classified information. But why leak it to The Post? Surely somewhere with some clout like The Guardian
or The Times – somewhere with recognised political influence – would be more credible?
Rebecca looked at the time on the TV. She should have been back ten minutes earlier.
She closed her laptop then hurried out the canteen, clattering into two GTE colleagues at the door. She mumbled an apology, before hurrying back to the main floor.
Although Mackintosh’s office had glass walls on the side facing the GTE open-plan office, Rebecca was respected enough that her presence there wouldn’t raise many eyebrows. Except from Matthew. As an SIO he would know there was no real need for her to be in there, alone. Once he was out the office then she’d have access to everything on Mackintosh’s computer. That would require something of a diversion though.
When she returned to her desk Rebecca tapped into the MI6 mainframe, where there was a shared intranet for file sharing on current cases – they called it Homeland.
As it was a shared space, when files were requested it didn’t show who made the request. The request was uploaded by the relevant personnel, then downloaded by someone with the proper clearance.
‘Matt,’ Rebecca said.
Matthew took out one of his earphone buds – he was listening to recorded phone calls on the ECHELON system. ‘Yeah?’
‘There’s a request on Homeland for Abbie’s personnel files. That would normally be Alexander’s remit, wouldn’t it?’
‘Yeah, I can do it, though. Give me a sec.’ He clicked to Homeland. ‘Yeah, I’ll need to go up to List X room. It’s STRAP Three.’
‘Oh sorry,’ she said, doing her best impression of someone apologetic.
Matthew stood up. ‘That’s alright. It’s just up the stairs.’
All the time Rebecca needed.
He said, ‘I need a break from listening to jihadi voicemails anyway.’
Rebecca smiled at him as he went past. ‘Cheers, mate.’ She kept eyes on him until he was up the stairs. She clicked into Homeland and quickly deleted the false request she’d just made. Then she went casually but quickly to Mackintosh’s office carrying a DVD and a memory stick.
Official Secrets Page 10
