The room was bathed in the dull glow of a computer still active but with light dimmed. She took the stapler off the ENTER key then tapped into Mackintosh’s personnel comms files.
In the same way the White House and Downing Street kept a meticulous log of phone calls in and out and emails on every server, so did GCHQ.
There wasn’t time to look through the files, but even a quick scroll through Mackintosh’s inbox showed messages with the subject: ‘Abbie Bishop (NOFORN)’, meaning no foreign nationals were to be given access to the memo. It was also marked as STRAP Three security clearance.
Rebecca had never seen a STRAP Three before. It meant all of Abbie’s movements on her desktop computer that Internal Security had taken away would leave no trace of what she’d actually been accessing, creating or sending. A ghost user, they called it. Like someone walking across snow and leaving no footprints. Whatever Abbie was working on, someone had given her clearance to work in total secrecy. Which meant the files sent from Abbie’s laptop would be the only evidence left of Operation Tempest.
Rebecca clicked into his ‘burn box’: messages that had already been deleted. On a regular computer, deleted messages were more like hidden messages. With some inventive programming, and if you knew where to look, deleted items could still be found. A GCHQ burn box went one step beyond that: the process was meant to be failsafe. But Rebecca had found a way. She started up a program of hers from the memory stick called PHOENIX, which resurrected deleted messages. Such was the beauty of modern data, nothing was really gone forever.
‘Deleted’ was now a meaningless word: everything left a trace.
As flash drives weren’t allowed out of GCHQ, she fished out a blank DVD (a CD would be too small for such a large cache of documents) to copy as much material from the hard-drive as she could fit on the DVD: 4.7GB. More than enough space.
As the files wrote to the DVD Rebecca kept watch on the GTE office door waiting on Matthew arriving any second. When she looked back at the screen, she noticed the red dot next to the clock at the bottom corner of the screen turn green.
Mackintosh had logged in remotely from his tablet.
The blood drained from her face as she tried to think of a valid reason for being on his computer. An MI6 agent would have a prepared answer, or be able to blag something convincing on the spot. Rebecca had nothing but blind panic. If he checked the cameras facing his office after suspicious activity, she’d be history.
If she ejected the DVD before it had burned she’d lose the lot, and she might not get another chance to copy the material again. He might even wipe his entire hard-drive if he returned to a suspicious scene.
There would be a lag of about ten seconds between what was shown on screen – the window showing a massive cache of files being copied onto a disc – and what would appear on Mackintosh’s tablet.
Rebecca’s feet tapped rapidly on the floor as the time remaining – five seconds – threatened to overlap with the lag time. They were almost the same.
The moment the window cleared, Rebecca ejected the disc and snapped the drive tray shut. She stared at the home screen.
Had he seen any of her activity? There was no way of knowing.
Rebecca took her memory stick and disc back to her desk, just as Matthew reappeared.
As Matthew passed her desk he said, ‘That was weird. I couldn’t see anything.’
‘Really?’ Rebecca said. ‘I’m sure if it’s important they’ll raise it again.’
Matthew looked over at Mackintosh’s office, seeming to linger on something.
Rebecca realised she’d left the door slightly ajar.
Matthew didn’t say anything, but he’d noticed it. Of that, Rebecca was sure.
When the office quietened down later, Rebecca put the DVD into her own computer and wrote a cryptonym on to it, meaning if anyone other than her tried to open it the files would crash and break into meaningless random code. She wrote ‘Windows 10 Boot Disc’ on the disc in black marker, then slid it into the drive of her personal laptop. No one was going to bother making a trusted, established officer boot up a laptop with what looked like a basic OS boot CD on the way out the door.
This is it, she thought. Am I really going to walk out of here with STRAP Three intelligence? In the eyes of the law that’s espionage.
Normally a civil servant who unearths malpractice or corruption can benefit from whistleblower protection under the Public Interest Disclosure Act. But The Official Secrets Act 1989 couldn’t have been clearer on the point: for those in the security services (MI5, MI6 and GCHQ) whistleblowers had no protection.
Rebecca didn’t even know what any of this was about. Abbie’s double life with MI6, Tom Novak, Tempest. One thing was clear though, if the files she had were the tamest of what Abbie had, then what lurked behind that mysterious black icon and its encrypted contents must have been truly shocking.
If she wanted answers, she was going to have to find Abbie’s laptop.
6.
The Mall, London – Monday, 8:34pm
IT WAS ALREADY dark when Angela Curtis was driven from Buckingham Palace in her armoured, bombproof Jaguar XJ Sentinel – flanked by black unmarked Range Rovers – having accepted the Queen’s commission to lead the government.
‘I told you she doesn’t like me, Roge,’ Curtis grumbled, reaching for her mobile.
Roger Milton, her chief advisor sitting opposite, asked, ‘What makes you say that?’
‘She didn’t like me when I was Home Secretary five years ago. She actually seems to like me even less as PM.’
‘Name me a PM she did like.’ Milton’s face was lit up by his phone screen.
Curtis asked, ‘What’s happened while we were in there?’
‘They’ve set the COBRA meeting for later tonight,’ Milton said. ‘But first you’re going to have to do a press conference. You have to announce to the country that you’ve kissed hands with the Queen before you can move into Downing Street. It’s traditional. The party’s worried it’ll look like a coup, getting sworn in by the Queen then dashing off to bed.’
‘Does anyone honestly believe I’m going to sleep tonight? Ten hours ago I was a backbencher. Now because of one suicide bomber and two Tory toffs having a pissing contest while the smoke’s still rising from Downing Street, they’ve handed me the keys to Number Ten.’
‘They don’t actually give the Prime Minister keys.’
Angela Curtis swallowed hard. It was the first time anyone had called her that. ‘Figure of speech, Roge.’
Milton said, ‘We don’t know what the country thinks about anything to do with you. You haven’t had any polling done since before the Brexit vote.’
Curtis stared out the window, her eyes glazing over at the thought of being responsible for all the people now walking the streets. ‘I just keep thinking of Simon’s wife and those little girls. What the hell must they be going through.’ Curtis snatched for the grab handle above the door, as the car swung a hard left onto the Mall. ‘Christ, I’m never going to get any work done in this thing.’
The car thundered its way down The Mall – tourists and Londoners alike pointing and taking snaps on their phones of the new Prime Minister’s convoy.
In the long walk down the corridor to the Cabinet Meeting room, Milton handed Curtis some final notes. The last thing he said was, ‘Remember, no smiling.’
‘I’m too terrified to smile,’ she replied.
After some photos, the room was cleared of the press and the meeting started with a minute’s silence for former Prime Minister Ali and the other casualties.
‘I know that for many of you sitting here today, I am not your first choice for this job,’ Curtis began, the only one standing. ‘So let me spare us all the fatuous statements of having “more that unites us than divides us” and all the other crap one might say at a moment like this. We can save that kind of talk for the press.’
Milton scoured his notes. ‘She’s off page already,’ he whispered t
o an associate.
‘I expect a number of you in this room think the reason I’m standing here is because Simon Ali and many others were murdered this morning. But I’m also here because of a man named Thomas Hobson. For those of you who don’t know, Hobson was a hostler in Cambridge in the sixteenth century. Over time he acquired a reputation, that the only horse he would ever offer a customer was the one nearest the door. Whether I like it or not, I am Hobson’s Choice. I was voted in to act as caretaker until the General Election, nothing more. The only reason Ed and Nigel’s people got behind me was because Ed and Nigel don’t want to become electoral poison by having a public leadership battle in the aftermath of a national tragedy. So they’ve put aside personal ambition for the good of the country. At least for another six weeks. But let’s be honest, I’m standing here because everyone in this room – and quite a few outside it – knows I will never win a General Election. Not in six weeks, six months, or ever.’
Milton clasped Curtis’s notes to his chest and tried not to grimace too openly.
Silence prickled across the room. No one could believe Curtis had actually dared to tell the obvious truth.
She went on, ‘But if you think for a second I’m only here to warm this seat until then you are all sadly mistaken. We’re going to find out who’s responsible for this barbaric attack, and we’re going to bring them to justice.’ Curtis spread her hands across the table in front of her, leaning forward with a look of strength and determination no one in the room had seen from her before. Her voice seemed to have welled itself several feet underground. ‘Wherever these murderers have come from, wherever they’ve been, or wherever they’re going, we’re not going to come back at them with coalitions, poems, hashtags, charity concerts, knee-jerk suspensions of civil liberties, internment, or a police state. We will be true to our ideals as British citizens, and we will defend the values that give us our moral authority. We will not have murder on the streets of London, or Manchester, or any other city they seek to terrorise in the name of Allah, or whatever nihilistic, Bronze Age superstition they use to dress up their hatred for women, homosexuals, liberty, justice and democracy. We of course don’t know the full facts yet, but I don’t need MI5 to tell me we’re not dealing with a new sect of Anglican suicide bombers.’
The atmosphere was too heavy for laughter, but the room seemed to appreciate the levity.
Curtis’s voice began low, steadily rising as she took in the nodding heads and looks of support she saw in front of her. Coming to a defiant crescendo, and the loudest voice anyone could recall in the Cabinet Office.
‘We’ve been here before. We came together before. And we’re going to do it again. We’re going to bury our dead. Our friends. Our colleagues. Associates. We’re going to mourn them. But we will not wait another day before we bring the roof of their poisoned house down upon these perpetrators, and drive them back to the gates of hell itself!’
The entire Cabinet were already on their feet when Curtis finished with, ‘This is Great Britain! We’ve beaten fascists before, and God help me we’ll beat them again!’
The room erupted with applause and slaps on the table, ministers waving their papers to wild cheers of ‘Hear, hear!’
Down the corridor, some of the waiting press were startled by the noise. They had never heard a roar like it from the Cabinet Office.
When the room emptied the press swarmed around the door. In the scuffle and cries of questions no one noticed Curtis passing a Dictaphone she’d had in her pocket to a reporter. The reporter exchanged a knowing look with her, then disappeared with the next major news cycle in his hand.
Milton escorted Curtis from the Cabinet Room, through the paparazzi throng to the press conference. Through a fixed expression, he mumbled caustically to her, ‘When the hell did you write that?’
Curtis waved away demands for comment on the meeting. ‘I just said what I was feeling. You never forget your lines that way.’
Milton wondered where this Angela Curtis had been all his political life. She was like a different person.
He struggled to keep up with her. ‘If only the press knew what happened in there...’
Curtis said, ‘You’re not leaking it, Roge.’
‘Come on, they gave you a fucking standing ovation!’
She wasn’t naïve. She knew the speech and its reception would play well in the media. But if they caught Number Ten’s fingerprints on it, she might as well have uploaded it to YouTube under her own name.
Milton asked, ‘What did you pass to Harrington?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘No one else might have noticed, but I did.’
Curtis shrugged. ‘Harrington and I go way back.’ She smiled fractionally at Milton. ‘Don’t worry about the Cabinet meeting story. It’ll get out eventually.’
The door leading into the press conference came into view down the hallway.
‘You’re the second Prime Minister I’ve said this to in my career. Nothing can prepare you for the chaos of what’s behind that door. The Home Office has nothing on what’s out there. There’s going to be yelling and shouting right from the first question, and you’re going to be blinded by flashes. Keep your eyes on the back of the room or the flashes will blind you, and you’ll end up looking blinking and terrified.’
‘Chaos, flashing, back of the room.’ She exhaled. ‘OK.’
‘What do you say when they ask about the General Election?’
Curtis took the speech from him. ‘Our first and only priority right now is keeping the people of this country safe.’
He held her shoulders. ‘This is the most important press conference of your life.’ Then he let go.
‘Really? That’s the last thing you’re going to say to me?’
Milton could tell she was ready.
A Downing Street civil servant nervously put her hand out to Curtis, showing her the way to the press room. ‘They’re ready for you, Prime Minister.’
‘Remember,’ Milton added. ‘It’s not just an attack on London and Great Britain, it’s an attack on all civilised people, everywhere.’
The door opened and camera flashes went off all around the room. What seemed like every journalist in Britain was on their feet, microphones and phones poised to record, launching landslides of questions at her.
Standing at the lectern, seeing only the whites of the press’s hungry eyes, the realisation hit Curtis that there was an entire country hanging on her words.
Up and down the country, in living rooms and pubs, on phones, online, on car radios, on the entire range of televisions in electrical superstores, everyone watched. And waited.
After a pause for the room to settle down, she said, ‘Her Majesty the Queen has asked me to form a government and I have accepted.’
Live coverage of the press conference played on the video wall of the Cabinet Briefing Room before the emergency security meeting.
Foreign Secretary Nigel Hawkes and Home Secretary Ed Bannatyne, although seated next to each other, had their chairs pointed at forty-five degree angles away from the other.
While the security agencies huddled in a familiar clique, Bannatyne whispered, ‘We’ve got a bit of a problem.’
‘You don’t have to tell me.’
‘She looks...’ Bannatyne couldn’t find the words.
Hawkes found them for him. ‘Like a Prime Minister?’
‘I’ve never seen a PM get a standing ovation like that. Not in Cabinet.’
Hawkes showed Bannatyne his phone, which was on Twitter. ‘Patrick Harrington from The Mirror has got a recording of her speech.’
‘What? How?’
‘I don’t know. But it’s everywhere.’
The headline read, “Curtis gives rousing first Cabinet speech to standing ovation.”’
Hawkes said, ‘So much for unelectable.’
When it came to taking questions, Curtis fended off the usual procedural questions about the bombing investigation, deflectin
g ably when she didn’t know the answer. A grubby-looking man, unshaven and tie done up like an afterthought, called out, ‘Dan Leckie from The Post.’ The journalists around him seemed to scowl at his presence.
‘Prime Minister,’ Leckie said. ‘Do you have any further information about Abigail Bishop?’
‘I’m sorry,’ Curtis replied. ‘I’m not in a position to confirm casualties yet.’
‘She wasn’t a casualty in the bombing, Prime Minister...’
Curtis glanced over to the wings while Leckie kept talking.
‘She was an intelligence officer who was found dead at a GCHQ safe house on Monday night. My source tells me she was working for MI6.’
Milton brushed his hair back with his hand, their signal for “no comment”.
Curtis showed no signs of irritation. ‘I know you’ve been serving at her Majesty’s pleasure for the past year, Dan, but you’ve obviously forgotten it is government policy to neither confirm nor deny the identity of any individual working for intelligence agencies, so it would be wrong for me to comment further. Any investigation will be a matter for the police.’
Leckie persisted, shouting over the next round of questions coming from all sides. ‘What can you tell us about Operation Tempest?’ But he was drowned out by reporters calling out more questions on the bombing.
The Republic, New York – Monday, 1.11pm
Novak, Stella, and Chang had decamped to Chang’s office. Stella was checking the Reuters wires for updates on London, while waiting for replies from her contacts in the U.K. Foreign Office. Novak was distant and uninvolved, toiling with his laptop. The screen was oddly pixelated and flickering, like a TV receiving a weak signal. He could barely read the emails in his inbox.
While on hold with another reporter, Chang held his phone against his chest whilst giving out directions. ‘Stella, what do we know about the bomber? Has he ever been on a watch list? A no-fly? Where did he pray? If so, are there are any radical preachers there? Does he have siblings? Are they in custody also? What countries has he been to in the last five years? What’s his radicalisation history? This is going to work a little differently to what you were used to at The Guardian. Diane’s got a three-tick system here, so you’ll have to sit on things a little longer than you’re used to. Print goes out in a week, so we need to be dialling in bigger picture stuff by then.’
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