Official Secrets

by Andrew Raymond

  ‘Left them? Where is he?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Stella kept looking through the transcripts. ‘He took off. And there’s no signal on his mobile. Wherever he is, he doesn’t want to be found.’

  Novak cleared his throat. ‘We, uh...need to talk about the bigger problem here.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘First, we have to prove Bishop and Hawkes were having an affair. How are we doing that?’

  ‘The voicemails.’

  ‘We’re not actually using them, are we?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because they were recorded illegally by a convicted phone hacker? Didn’t Diane ask where you got them?’

  Stella sighed in frustration and moved back from the desk. ‘They’re second-hand, Novak. The facts are still in those voicemails. We’re not using them as a source, we’re using them to confirm what we already know.’

  ‘What do we know? From who?’

  ‘Jonathan Gale, for one thing.’

  Novak, ramping things up, said, ‘Yeah? On the record? Maybe you could show me your notes when he told you he was on the record.’

  Stella was mortified at making such a rookie error. She replied quietly, ‘He wasn’t on the record.’

  ‘Sorry?’ asked Novak.

  ‘I forgot to ask him, alright.’

  Novak started walking circles. ‘That’s OK. That’s not a big deal.’ He shrugged ironically. ‘Maybe we could just write up some notes and pretend like he said it. We could fake a signature underneath it so it all looked above board.’

  ‘That is not the same thing as what these recordings are. OK, they were sourced unethically–’

  ‘Unethically? Try illegally!’

  Stella shouted back, ‘Oh, this is great coming from Mr Reliable Sources Guy! Can you tell me when your ethics lectures start up again, I’ll be in the front row.’

  The pair went to opposite ends of the office. Novak, his hands behind his back. Stella, arms folded. Neither looking at the other.

  Stella had calmed down enough to speak at her normal volume again. ‘So would you rather we just walked away and let the magazine fold instead? Does that serve democracy better? Does that bring Abassi, Bishop, Lipski and Gale’s killers to justice?’

  Novak paused. ‘I fucked up, Stella. I know, I fucked up massively. Once all this NSA source stuff lands I’ll be out of a job. And if I end up in jail, I’ll be in my mid- to late forties by the time I get out. Do you know many forty-year-old journalists who lied about sources who make it back to the top? Ask Stephen Glass how forgiving the media world is to liars.’

  Stella said, ‘He invented entire stories from thin air. You picked up a memory stick. You are not Stephen Glass.’

  He looked up at her. ‘I don’t want to see this happen to you. I know how badly you want it. But trust me. You don’t want it like this.’

  Stella made her way slowly back to the desk in the middle of the room. As she stood against the desk she relived the moment from the night before. ‘They shot him like it was nothing, Novak. Last night he was about to run away with his family. Now a little girl and a wife have lost a father and a husband. Because of me. Because of this story.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I can’t walk away. Not after the things I’ve seen. We have to get these guys. I don’t care what it takes.’

  Novak held his temples, trying to think of a way out. ‘We can’t use the recordings themselves as sources. But we could take something existing in the recordings and work around them instead.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Like a name, or a phone number, something that leads to something or someone else. Then we get them on the record.’

  Stella rustled through the notes. ‘There was something I wanted to show you actually.’ She turned to the relevant transcript page. ‘There was one voicemail that stood out.’ She showed Novak:

  “[voicemail left for NH]: several then END OF CALL.”

  Stella clicked to the original MP3 recording she’d downloaded earlier from Dan’s dropbox. She put in one of her earphones and held the other out to Novak.

  He came back to the desk and listened with her.

  There were more than several beeps. Eleven to be exact.

  ‘That sounds like a phone number being dialled,’ Novak said.

  Stella asked, ‘Why would she start dialling in the middle of a voicemail?’

  ‘Hang on,’ Novak said. ‘Hawkes and Bishop must have been using burners. Exclusive use for calling the other. Someone in Hawkes’ position wouldn’t take a chance on something like that.’

  ‘There’s eleven beeps,’ Stella said. ‘That’s got to be a U.K. mobile. And there’s no one else recorded on here other than Abbie Bishop or Hawkes.’

  ‘So we know the first two digits are going to be 0 and 7.’ Novak flicked to the keypad on his phone and hit the zero then seven. ‘Phone keypad frequencies are standardised. My number seven sounds the same as yours or anyone else’s.’

  Stella tried it on her phone too. ‘The tone’s the same for one, four and seven. And for two, five and eight. And for three, six and nine.’

  ‘To the untrained ear, it sounds like that. You’re hearing the primary frequency – the louder one is the same – but there’s a quieter secondary frequency in the background. You’d need to be an experienced musician to make it out, but it’s there.’ Novak turned Stella’s laptop to face him and quickly navigated to a website called Find DTMF Tones. ‘I used this before on the NSA papers. You wouldn’t believe the tools that developers put online for free.’ He converted the MP3 recording to a WAV file, then uploaded it to the website. After one click and a five-second wait, the website reported back on the phone number dialled.

  Stella wasn’t slow in realising its value. ‘I could get Rebecca Fox to trace this.’

  Novak rocked back in his chair. ‘OK. What other source do we have on Hawkes and Bishop?’

  Stella shook her head, taking long blinks as she rejected possibilities. ‘Rebecca didn’t know about them... An affair that went on this long, someone had to know.’ She snapped her fingers. ‘Hawkes said he needed phones, cars and logistics to keep it a secret.’

  ‘For that, you need a trusted aide.’

  Stella scooped up her things and shovelled them into her bag. ‘Charlie Fletcher.’

  17.

  The Republic HQ, New York – Thursday, 2.04pm

  WALTER SHARP AND Artur Korecki had been resting on some couches pulled into Diane’s office. The blinds were closed, and none of the Republic staff had been told who the strange men were who were taking up so much of Diane’s day.

  For Sharp, dizzying jetlag was the least of his worries. He had been bandaged around his shoulder and his arm was in a sling. The medic had pulled a 0.5 Barrett from his shoulder, a bullet favoured for deep penetration and commonly found in M107 sniper rifles. And, as Sharp knew, a favourite for elite military units all over the world, but a particular favourite of U.S. special forces.

  Artur, meanwhile, couldn’t do enough for Sharp. Fetching him glasses of water to take his painkillers, helping take his boots off, fluffing a cushion to lay his head down. He would have run out for food for him, but Sharp wouldn’t let him leave the building without him. With Sharp incapacitated, Artur decided to take on the role of personal bodyguard, facing his chair towards the door. Which, with Artur weighing in at barely one hundred and fifty pounds, was a nice idea but largely impractical.

  Diane had Artur run through his entire story, start to end, then back again and round and round. One of her first editors taught her to do it that way. Reason being, liars remember events by rote: there’s a clear order to things, which if you jumble it up makes it hard for them to think around. Artur had no such trouble. After an hour Diane was completely convinced of his account. She even had Kurt in tech support analyse his phone to check he had been where he said he had been. Kurt confirmed he was telling the truth.

  Before Diane co
uld proceed with interviewing Sharp, she confided in Mark Chang about where the story was.

  ‘Artur’s solid,’ Diane told him, ‘but we need a second source on Abassi. Sharp’s fine for background. Stella has GCHQ files detailing Abassi’s work, and Tom has a CIA transfer request for taking him to Camp Zero.’

  Mark grimaced. ‘We need a second source that definitively says Abassi was at Camp Zero on Sunday night.’

  Diane looked to the ceiling, searching for a curse. ‘Nan...tucket.’

  They would have continued discussing it, were it not for the sound of applause out in the office. It wasn’t just applause, it was a standing ovation.

  Diane and Mark were met with the sight of Martin Fitzhenry walking gingerly through the office, still sporting his hospital stubble.

  He announced, ‘I only came back to check one of you sharks hadn’t stolen my desk already.’

  Sharp emerged from Diane’s office.

  Fitz embraced him like a long lost brother.

  ‘How you doin’, buddy?’ Sharp asked, pulling Fitz’s arm across so it was between their chests – the only way Sharp ever hugged another man. He turned to Diane. ‘Whaddya say we let Fitz sit in on this thing?’

  Diane, Fitz, Sharp and Mark sat in the office with the blinds closed, covering every angle of the whole affair at Camp Zero and Malik.

  When he was done, Diane said, ‘Officer Sharp. You said you were in the interrogation room alone both with Abassi, and when JSC stormed your command. You’ve given us lots of details that only you could know. Although your name won’t appear anywhere in this story, I wanted to make you aware of the possibility you could be identified from some of these details.’

  ‘I understand, ma’am,’ Sharp replied.

  Diane nodded back sympathetically. She knew he was protecting someone. If it wasn’t clear certain details had come from him, CIA would speculate Captain Hampton or Fahran were behind the story. Sharp didn’t want any chance of that.

  Over an hour passed, and Artur fell asleep on the sofa outside Diane’s office. The group were still talking to Sharp when Diane’s phone rang.

  She picked up, saying firmly, ‘I said no calls.’

  It was the front desk.

  After hearing the explanation for the interruption, she said, ‘Don’t let him past. I’m coming out.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ asked Sharp, standing up.

  ‘It’s fine.’ She said to Fitz, ‘Keep going.’

  At reception a young man with a Middle Eastern complexion was waiting with a padded envelope in his hand. He was wearing a baseball cap unusually low down his forehead.

  ‘What appears to be the problem?’ Diane asked the receptionist.

  ‘No, no, no,’ the man said. ‘I need Walter Sharp. Not you.’

  ‘Sir,’ the receptionist said, ‘there is no one here by that name.’

  Diane added, ‘Please leave, or I’ll call security.’

  The man seemed immune to their denials. ‘Please. I have a package for Officer Sharp.’

  Diane pulled the man away from reception around the back of a large pillar. She said, ‘You’re going to have to–’

  ‘Please,’ the man insisted, handing the envelope to her.

  A few reporters stopped their work, rising at their desks at the commotion.

  ‘Just give to him,’ the man said. ‘He is expecting.’ He walked off towards the elevators, keeping his head dipped low so the cameras didn’t pick up his face.

  When Diane returned, the interview had stalled. In fact, the entire office was waiting to see what was going on. Diane whispered in Sharp’s ear.

  He smiled, then said quietly, ‘Khaleel.’ One of many Arabic words for friend, and the one he and Fahran always used. When he saw what was inside the envelope, he said, ‘Shukraan.’ – Thank you.

  In appreciation for his translation services CIA had set Fahran up in an apartment in Queens. If they knew what he had just handed over to Sharp, that offer would have been swiftly retracted.

  ‘Can you check if you have a cassette player?’ Sharp asked.

  Diane looked expectantly at Mark.

  ‘I think we do,’ Diane said, dialling Kurt.

  Sharp admired the tapes – the ones he thought General McNally’s crew had stolen from his command. ‘When you think of the money we’ve spent safeguarding our most vital digital documents. You know what the Russians still use to this day?’ he asked.

  Fitz smiled, knowing the answer. He’d been a Corona man since the early sixties. He answered, ‘Typewriters.’

  ‘You can’t hack what’s not online.’ Sharp took out a note from inside the envelope:

  “I owe you my life. Thank you, my friend. Fahran.”

  ‘Do you know what’s on those tapes, Agent?’ Diane asked.

  ‘Proof of George Abassi’s existence,’ Sharp replied.

  Diane nudged her fist into Mark’s arm and whispered, ‘Double-sourced.’

  Rebecca Fox residence, Cheltenham – Thursday, 6.52pm

  Rebecca had no intention of sticking around for a return to work in a week’s time. As far as she was concerned her GCHQ career was over. She’d glimpsed what was on the other side of a world that had been closed off to her for so many years: STRAP Three classified material. Now all she wanted was to start again, even if she had no idea where that would be and what it would look like.

  There was little in the flat she would feel sad at walking away from: everything important to her was on her laptop, or kept on hard drives and Cloud storage. She unpinned all her research on her father and Bennington Hospital from the living room wall, pouring the contents into a plastic zip wallet which went into a holdall along with whatever clothes she found first.

  She didn’t look back as she closed the door behind her, leaving the keys on the kitchen worktop. The flat was let through a GCHQ employee programme, and she was damned if she was going back to the Doughnut to drop off keys to Human Resources.

  While she made her way towards the town centre, her phone began to ring. Out of habit she took out her regular mobile, then realised that wasn’t the one ringing. It was the phone Roger Milton had given her.

  She did a quick survey of the street – empty in all directions – before answering.

  ‘Thank you for getting me out,’ Rebecca said.

  ‘We’re going to have to be more careful,’ Curtis answered. ‘They know I’m helping you now.’

  ‘I’m out. I’m done. If I keep going like this I’m going to get locked up for a very long time. Last night was long enough.’

  ‘I can’t let you do that, Rebecca.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I need you inside GCHQ. For a few hours.’

  ‘You’re the Prime Minister. What do you need me for?’

  Curtis lowered her voice, as if someone had come into close proximity. ‘Do you trust me, Rebecca?’

  ‘Well...yes.’

  ‘OK. I need you to remember that while I pass you on to someone else.’

  Rebecca didn’t understand what was happening. Especially when the next voice she heard was Trevor Billington-Smith’s.

  ‘Rebecca,’ he said, ‘I want to apologise for what happened last night. I didn’t know anything about that.’

  Rebecca said, ‘I’m done, sir. I’m sorry.’

  ‘I need you to trust me as you’ve trusted Angela. It doesn’t just concern Goldcastle and Abbie.’ He paused. ‘It concerns your father, Rebecca.’

  ‘My father?’

  ‘I need you to go back to GTE and await my instructions.’

  Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Whitehall – Thursday, 6.30pm

  Charlie Fletcher came steaming out the King Charles Street entrance of the F&C building, looking urgently from left to right. He spotted Stella across the road, standing under a streetlight which illuminated a cloud of descending mist.

  He’d decided to come down without his suit jacket to make it clear he didn’t plan on hanging around long.


  ‘Stella, this is madness,’ he said, leading her to a secluded archway. He could only imagine what she’d been doing to make her look so beat, so exhausted. ‘You can’t lord these messages over me every time you want something. You asked for the minister, I gave you the bloody minister, alright?’

  It was as mad as Stella had seen him since their days together at The Herald, when Charlie’s tongue-lashings and temper were legendary.

  ‘I don’t want the minister,’ Stella said. ‘I want you.’

  ‘Your shit’s on Nigel, not me.’

  ‘Is it? What about Bill Patterson? I have it on good authority you two set Dan Leckie up.’

  ‘Don’t talk rubbish.’

  ‘Did the pair of you really think no one would ever ask how someone like Dan got Nigel Hawkes’ phone in the first place?’

  Charlie leaned in. ‘What. Do. You. Want?’

  ‘My magazine’s going to publish that it was you who sold out the minister.’

  That got Charlie’s attention. ‘Hang on–’

  ‘One question, yes or no: was Nigel Hawkes having an affair with MI6 agent Abbie Bishop?’

  Charlie spoke to the sky, ‘I cannot believe this. I cannot believe you’re actually doing this...’

  Stella took out a notebook, turning to a fresh page. She added, ‘And we’re on the record.’

  Charlie laughed and started walking away.

  ‘Yes or no, or we’re printing your name with “refused to comment”.’

  He stopped walking.

  ‘Yes or no, then you become an anonymous source close to the minister.’

  He still had his back to her. ‘And my name disappears?’ he asked.

  ‘Your name’s going to disappear from the corridors of Whitehall altogether if you let Hawkes pull you down with him. He’s finished after this, Charlie.’

  Charlie turned around. ‘An anonymous source close to the department.’

  ‘OK, then,’ Stella agreed.

  He came closer. His eyes – his whole expression and demeanour – suggested capitulation. ‘Yes. Hawkes was having an affair with Bishop.’

  ‘Did you cover up the affair for him?’

  ‘Yes.’