Bruckner pressed him. ‘What’s your concern?’
‘Motive,’ replied the staffer. ‘If he’s out for revenge he’s more likely to embellish.’
‘Thank you for that important lesson,’ Novak said sarcastically. ‘I’ve only been a reporter for fifteen years.’
Diane fired him a warning glance. ‘Tom.’
Feeling secure while the red team was on the offensive, another staffer spoke up. ‘While we’re on motive, I want to raise an issue I have with Arthur Korecki. I–’
Novak interrupted, ‘That’s not his name. Artur Korecki. There’s no H.’ He tossed his notes aside then rubbed his eyes. ‘Look, I get that you’re enjoying being in a room with Diane and Henry for longer than your usual five-minute pitch meetings on a Wednesday morning, but if you’re going to do this seriously can we at least get the names of the players right?’
The staffer continued, ‘Korecki’s not reliable. There are clips of his videos on conspiracy websites. It’s Alex Jones stuff. Even the name TruthArmy...is he one of these nine eleven inside-job guys?’
Novak replied as calmly as we was capable, ‘He has never said nor claimed that nine eleven was an inside job. He has never made any public statements or made any videos on that subject. Can you tell me, please, what about the material you actually have that’s unreliable?’
Undeterred, the staffer went on, ‘OK, what about these payments made from Goldcastle Group to Abbie Bishop every month?’
Stella turned to the relevant page in her folder. ‘This is in tab five A. We traced the payments to an address in Liechtenstein.’
The picture showed a crumbling two-storey building surrounded by rubble and already demolished properties.
Stella went on, ‘As you can see from the accompanying picture, the address is for a shell company. Liechtenstein’s a tax haven. Sixty-two square miles, population of thirty-seven thousand, yet it holds around seven billion dollars in its banks. There’s also no border control between it and Switzerland. You get guys literally driving cases of cash back and forth. A company registers with an address like this one, and it can wash vast sums of cash through it at very little expense.’
‘How is it linked to Goldcastle?’ asked the staffer from finance.
Stella said, ‘About seventeen accounts down the line, but we have a solid link to a Goldcastle subsidiary in the U.S..’
The staffer tried to get things clear. ‘So Abbie Bishop was employed by MI6, then sent in to steal data from GCHQ on behalf of Goldcastle?’
Novak said, ‘Yeah.’
‘Do you know why Goldcastle were having her steal the data?’ the staffer asked.
Reluctantly, Novak replied, ‘We’re getting to that,’ while he wrote something down on a notepad, out of sight of the webcam.
‘Seeing as you’re so convinced Bishop was murdered as part of some conspiracy, why would Goldcastle – or anyone else – want her dead?’
Novak showed Stella the notepad discreetly. It said “Ass hat” on it with an arrow directed at the screen.
‘We don’t know,’ Novak said.
The staffer flashed his eyebrows up in surprise as he wrote something down. He mumbled just loud enough for the mic to pick it up. ‘Definitely rusty.’
Novak’s eyes widened. ‘Excuse me?’ he said.
The staffer threw down his pen and shook his head. ‘You haven’t got it.’
‘I agree,’ another said. ‘It’s a no for me.’
Diane put her hand up. ‘Hang on. We’re not taking a vote just yet.’
Bruckner sat with his forefinger placed over his lips. It was impossible to tell if he was impressed or bewildered at the reporting he was listening to.
Wanting to break the tension, Henry clapped his hands. ‘Why don’t we take a break,’ he said.
Both ends of the Darkroom call went mute during the break, but the camera feed kept going.
Novak did a full-body stretch in his chair. When he relaxed he said, ‘Sorry. I let that get away from me a bit. But two hours... Honestly, there’s only so much grandstanding I can take.’
Stella laughed. ‘Seriously? Tom Novak complaining about someone else grandstanding?’
‘Yeah, laugh it up, Mary Poppins. It’s your byline too.’ Novak groaned loudly. ‘Oh shit... What are we going to do?’
Stella was perfectly calm, judiciously scrolling through her phone. ‘The story’s good, Novak. We need to trust that.’ She showed him the screen from a news website.
The breaking news headline: “Director of GCHQ Trevor Billington-Smith found dead at home.”
Stella quoted from the story, ‘Police have said there are no suspicious circumstances...the director had been under pressure for serious intelligence failures leading to the fatal terror attack on Downing Street last Monday which claimed the lives of eighty-six.’
Novak said, ‘Goldcastle are wrapping up loose ends.’
When they got back from the break, Diane led things off. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘Let’s start over, because there are some things we haven’t got to yet. I want to hear it from the top. Stella, you go.’
Stella found her place in her notes, but at this stage, she could have done it all from memory. ‘On Sunday night, Abigail Bishop was killed at Moreton House in Pimlico, a GCHQ safe house. There was a go signal from the man at GCHQ who located Bishop by her mobile, which had received a ping request. Location confirmed, then a hit team arrives at Moreton House. They get rid of the Abbie Bishop problem.
‘Her autopsy, as detailed in tab one C, clearly shows she was not intoxicated as claimed by MI5’s doctors. We also have a police source and a corroborating source in British intelligence, that state key witnesses on the ground were in fact MI6 agents who gave police false statements and gave false identities. Why? She found out about a plot to assassinate Robert Snow and threatened to expose the people behind the conspiracy. I had this confirmed just a few hours ago through a senior source in GCHQ.’
‘Sorry, guys,’ Diane said to the staffers, ‘I need the room a moment.’
Mark Chang moved to get up, but Diane touched his arm to tell him to stay.
The room cleared except for Diane, Henry, Mark and Bruckner.
‘We haven’t talked about this yet. Who’s the source, Stella?’ asked Diane.
‘Trevor Billington-Smith,’ Stella answered. ‘They just found his body at home. Before that, he sent me memos from Abbie Bishop, highlighting security concerns raised by Goran Lipski, the undercover GCHQ internal affairs officer. You should have the memos at your end now.’
As they came through, Diane skim-read the first. ‘Heavens to Betsy.’ She turned her laptop screen to Bruckner.
Once he’d read some, he nodded and turned Diane’s screen back to her.
‘OK. We’re good.’ Diane motioned at the others through the glass conference room doors to come back in.
When everyone was seated again, Stella continued.
‘Though she was being paid by Goldcastle to steal GCHQ data, learning of the plot against Snow was the last straw for Bishop. She wanted out. But Goldcastle needed her. When they failed to persuade her to stay in the fold, they convinced senior political figures to deal with it. That’s where our phone recordings come in. Tom?’
Novak cued up the recordings, playing the first one of Ali giving the go-ahead to bringing in Abbie Bishop.
Stella said, ‘Bishop had been having an affair with Nigel Hawkes: another aspect of her deal with Goldcastle, which was to keep an eye on their investment.’
‘Investment?’ asked a red team staffer.
‘Our GCHQ source has passed us emails between Goldcastle CEO Jarrod Warner and senior figures in GCHQ and MI6, discussing his anger that Ali might be coming out against the Freedom and Privacy Act. Warner talks openly about what the process might be for replacing Ali as the Conservative candidate at the General Election.’
Diane said, ‘Goldcastle are political consultants. Why is the F and P so important to them? Do they want ac
cess to public data to help win elections?’
Stella said, ‘Tom and I suspect so, but we don’t have anything firm enough to back that up.’ Stella nodded at Novak, who hit play on the first two phone calls.
When they were done, the room was silent. No one moved. No one wrote anything.
Novak played the third.
Male One: ‘Lloyd. It’s me. Sorry, I know it’s late. We have a problem.’
Male Two: ‘Let me guess: Simon Ali.’
Male One: ‘He’s not listening to reason on this Abbie Bishop thing. He’s talking about going to the press.’
Male Two: ‘Jesus Christ. We have to do something.’
Male One: ‘What can we do? We have between now and the next time someone points a camera and microphone in his direction.’
A pause.
Male Two: ‘There might be something...There’s a memo going around. From an MI6 agent in the field out in Nimruz. A terror cell in Birmingham. I’ve been contacted by GCHQ’s internal affairs man, Lipski. He’s talked to them apparently. He says they’re going to move tomorrow.’
Male One: ‘What are you saying?’
Male Two: ‘I’m saying it might already be too late to stop them. If they were to get through...’
Male One: ‘You’re out of your mind, Lloyd. We can’t let that happen!’
Male Two: ‘Nigel, listen to me. Lipski says they have guns stockpiled. It’s going to be a Paris-style attack. They’ll hit Snow, hit Ali, then SO1 will take them out from the roof. It’ll be over in seconds.’
Male One: ‘I can’t believe you’re actually talking about this.’
Male Two: ‘Then tell me what the alternative is! Do you understand how many lives we could save with Goldcastle’s technology? How many other terror attacks could be averted as a result?’
Male One: ‘You’re talking about state-sanctioned assassination of a sitting Prime Minister.’
Male Two: ‘No, that’s what you’re talking about. I’m talking about securing vital intelligence technology that’s going to keep our country safe for the next fifty years! My analysts assure me that given the armed detail on duty at Downing Street, the cell will be lucky to put down even five people. Also, I don’t think you’re considering what this will mean for your own future. Goldcastle want a leader they can really invest the next decade in. Think what you could achieve in ten years. You know what they can do. If Goldcastle believe in you, Nigel, the General Election won’t be a vote. It will be a coronation.’
A long pause.
Male Two: ‘Nigel?’
Male One: ‘Take him.’
The recording stopped without any notice. Just silence. The silence this time seemed somehow more intense than after the other two calls.
Everyone was in their own little worlds of disbelief. Mark Chang just started at his notes, shaking his head slowly.
Bruckner was the first to manage to speak. ‘The attack mentioned. A gun attack. Why the disparity with what actually happened?’
‘Memos show Goran Lipski’s initial intelligence pointed towards a gun attack, as Lloyd Willow says, a Paris or Mumbai-style attack. And there was a cache of guns found at the terror cell’s base in Birmingham, possibly for use in a follow-up attack. But GCHQ found them before they could carry it out.’
‘What about the press pass?’ Diane asked. ‘The evidence shows conclusively the genuine press pass made for Mufaza to gain entry to Downing Street was made weeks ago by Alexander Mackintosh in GCHQ.’
‘I agree,’ Stella said. ‘What Lloyd Willow says in the call doesn’t stack up. Tom and I think Willow and Goldcastle were testing Hawkes to see if he was really worth them all going to the wall for. The Americans had already decided to take out Robert Snow. They just wanted to see if Hawkes could be trusted with the biggest secret of all. But Lloyd Willow did what Goldcastle wanted him to do: get rid of Snow and Ali. His mind was made up long before he convinced Hawkes to order the hit.’
A staffer, exasperated with the scale of the conspiracy, complained, ‘What on earth were Goldcastle doing that was so valuable to everyone? They’ve got politicians killing rivals? For what?’
Stella fielded it. ‘The documents our senior GCHQ source sent show the data Abbie Bishop stole for Goldcastle was to test a new decryption program. It would render all online encryption useless. Everything online, or via a phone signal, would be wide open for GCHQ and NSA to see. The software was valued by GCHQ analysts as being in the region of four billion pounds.’
Henry exhaled. ‘Not a bad pay day.’
Stella emphasised, ‘That’s just for a ten-year contract, by the way. So yeah, I’d call that motive for protecting an investment. Ali wouldn’t support it, so they found a man who would: Nigel Hawkes.’
Novak said, ‘The Americans, of course, wanted a piece of the action too. Secretary Snow, like Ali, paid the price of not supporting the bill. Now they have Bill Rand on message. He tweeted his support of the bill this afternoon.’ Novak couldn’t hide the disdain in his voice. ‘Along with an American flag emoji.’
Diane said, ‘Tom, maybe you can take us through the American angle on this now.’
‘So on Sunday night, Abdul al-Malik, an MI6 agent working undercover in Nimruz, Afghanistan, was renditioned to a CIA black site in Poland called Camp Zero in a small town called Szymany. He warned that his handler in London, Abbie Bishop was in danger. Malik knew what she was going to do, and knew Goldcastle and the British would do whatever they could to silence her. He told my CIA source that he had evidence of a credible threat against a U.S. target – which we now know to be Robert Snow – and that Malik’s own life was in danger. He said the men pursuing him would do anything to ensure the threat was successful. The man he named as being behind the threat was the President of the United States.’
‘What do we have on this guy, Malik?’ Bruckner asked, shuffling between tabs in the dossier.
‘We have the Korecki tape of Malik coming off the plane; the paperwork on the aircraft being CIA property; our CIA source is on background confirming Malik’s testimony; we have the prisoner transfer request, and multiple documents from MI6 confirming Malik’s operations; and Diane has the tapes from Malik’s interrogation in Camp Zero.’
Bruckner said, ‘And what do we have on Downing Street?’
Stella said, ‘We have the press pass created at GCHQ; multiple memos from a senior GCHQ source confirming the conspiracy; files from Operation Tempest, as well as Malik and Lipski’s warnings of a credible threat; the original autopsy report showing Bishop was sober; testimony from the first policeman on the scene at Moreton House, PC Leon Walker. And we have this.’ Stella held up a piece of paper.
Bruckner leaned towards the screen. ‘What is that?’
‘It’s Simon Ali’s speech,’ Stella answered. ‘Confirming his opposition to the Freedom and Privacy act. And assuming responsibility for the death of Abbie Bishop, as well as confirming he would stand down at the next election.’
The speech was only new to the lawyers and staffers in the red team. When someone asked, ‘Can that be verified?’ Diane answered, ‘I can vouch for the veracity of the source. It’s unimpeachable.’
Stella looked at Novak, and put down her pen. ‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘That’s everything.’
No one seemed to know who should talk next. Given the circumstances, a few seconds felt like the length of a Wagner opera.
Diane broke the silence. ‘Vincent. Where’s legal with this?’
Even for a man as experienced in media law as Bruckner he seemed taken aback. ‘First of all – and I want to be absolutely clear on this – Stella or Tom need to take all of this to London police. The audio and the copy of the speech. They’re under no obligation to reveal how they got it. Their sources are protected.’ He leaned his head to one side. ‘One could argue persuasively that you needed time to corroborate these sources. Something in the region of twenty-four hours from now would not be unreasonable.’
‘Convenien
tly enough time to prepare for publication,’ Henry said, withholding a smile. ‘I want to go round the room. Diane?’
‘The story is good,’ Diane said. ‘It’s really good.’
‘Mark?’ Henry asked.
Mark Chang had been unusually quiet. Mostly out of respect for what Stella and Tom had managed to put together in just four days. He answered, ‘Diane says it’s good, I don’t need to know anything else. I’m in.’
Once all hands were counted – and out of loyalty and trust, when Diane said yes, everyone else would always follow – Tom and Stella felt like they’d heard the bell ring at the end of a twelve-round slugfest. And the story had survived.
Henry asked, ‘How long till we publish?’
Diane said. ‘We can hold the printers a few more hours. Online we can go until tomorrow morning, London time. We’ll need to take this to Downing Street soon. Give them a chance to comment. Even if we run “Downing Street declined to comment”. We’ll need to ask MI6, GCHQ, NSA, CIA and anyone else too. But they won’t acknowledge Goldcastle.’
‘The British government will not have that luxury,’ Stella added.
Bruckner raised his pen in the air. ‘I do see one potential problem with regards to the source you’re using on this phone recording. The GCHQ officer, she’s still employed there, am I right?’
‘Yeah,’ said Stella.
Bruckner made a quick expression of pain. ‘They’re going to charge her under the Official Secrets Act. The nineteen eighty-nine amendment removed any public interest defence. I assume she was aware of this when she disclosed these documents?’
‘She knew what she was into,’ Diane said as an aside.
‘We still need to protect her,’ added Novak.
‘That’s very noble of you, Tom,’ Bruckner said, ‘but she cannot disclose information relating to security or intelligence. This,’ he motioned to the vast amount of paperwork in front of him, ‘is not a grey area.’
Having reported on a number of stories dealing with the Official Secrets Acts in the past, Stella herself was not inexperienced with the law.
‘But the disclosure itself must be deemed damaging,’ she said.
Official Secrets Page 40
