The Trust Of The People

by Christopher Read

  * * *

  The study looked to be a well-ordered refuge, the rear wall one large book-case, the shelves overburdened with books and files. The Professor sat at his desk, looking relaxed, obviously well used to the intricacies of a video link. Anderson would have preferred to visit the man in person, and Cambridge wasn’t that far away, but Roche had been unwilling to waste yet more of his Friday.

  A professor of physics, author of several dozen books and publications, Callum Roche was an internationally renowned expert in submarine acoustics. So far he had been very helpful, only once referring to algorithms, and with enough experience of journalists to be able to talk down to them without appearing to be patronising.

  Anderson’s pretext of a future article on anti-submarine warfare was accepted without question, his first priority to ensure that he had a reasonable understanding of the factors affecting a sub’s acoustic signature, and how any upgrades would be likely to alter it.

  It was only when Anderson gave Roche the hypothetical scenario of terrorists having access to a submarine database that the professor’s slightly superior air turned to one of puzzlement.

  “You mean by hacking into the database? That’s not likely; security nowadays is extreme. And what would be the point?”

  “I just wondered whether you might have some idea as to the point – assuming such a thing were ever to happen? Maybe, rather than hacking into the database, what if the terrorists had somehow acquired an inside source.”

  Roche stared at Anderson, the computer screen flickering as though in sympathy. “I can’t think of any sensible reason why such a database would be of any interest.” He rubbed his chin reflectively, “I find it helps with these hypothetical questions to give the insider a name. How about Paige Hanson – it has a particularly nice ring to it.”

  Anderson had to work hard to control his surprise: Roche was either very perceptive or someone had already asked his opinion. “Paige Hanson sounds good,” he said after a brief pause. “So you’re saying that if Hanson had a copy of the submarine database, it would be pretty useless.”

  “I imagine so. If Hanson happened to work for the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence then she would certainly have had access to it. The database is there to identify submarines – what would terrorists do with that information? China or Russia might quite like to compare it with their own database, but I doubt it’s a high priority.”

  “And if this Hanson attended a symposium looking at recent submarine upgrades and whether the relevant algorithms are still valid – why would that be of interest to her?”

  Roche paused, looking thoughtful. “A good question, Mr Anderson. It would obviously give her a heads-up as to future changes to the database, but I don’t know why that would be of any use…” He gave a broad smile, “I checked your profile after you phoned up; you’re a bit of an expert yourself it seems – August 14, so I understand.”

  “Not an expert, just someone who knows a little more than most.” Anderson decided to move on, keen to eliminate various other possibilities. “Could a decoy be programmed to fool a warship’s sonar? Make the ship think it’s tracking a submarine?”

  “Such decoys exist; the more complex ones produce a similar acoustic signal to the parent submarine but a good sonar operator can still tell the difference. They’re mostly used to distract torpedoes away from their intended target rather than trying to fool the sophisticated array on a warship.”

  “What about somehow altering an actual submarine’s acoustic signal so that it appears to be a friendly?” Anderson was quite taken by his idea of some mythical submarine marauding its way through the South China Sea while pretending to be what it was not.

  Roche slowly shook his head, “Submarines are complex animals; minor differences can have significant effects on an acoustic signature, even within subs of the same class.” He hesitated momentarily, “What submarines might have been discussed at this purely hypothetical symposium?”

  Anderson checked the list he’d made after his visit to Berlin, reading out the details.

  “No pennant numbers,” Roche said, frowning. “That makes it a little more difficult. Forget the Shang-class: it’s a nuclear attack sub and the design is unique to China. The same for the Yuan-class: it’s supposedly based on a Russian Kilo but it’s not that close a match.

  “The Ming is a Chinese export of the original Russian Romeo design; North Korea has about twenty boats left in service, Bangladesh and Egypt three more. Russia decommissioned their boats decades ago; China still has a handful left but not for much longer. I guess you could adapt a Chinese Ming to match one from North Korea, or indeed vice-versa; although I can’t imagine why China would want to. North Korea might see some advantage in doing so – assuming they really wanted to start a war.”

  Roche mulled over the remaining option. “That just leaves the Kilo-class itself. India, Vietnam and Indonesia also operate Russian-built Kilos. Maybe a Kilo could be modified to approximate the signal from another sub of the same design. Such modifications would surely be well beyond any terrorist group; you’d need a Kilo to start with and some serious cash, not to mention a shipyard. That puts it more in the league of one of the aforementioned nations.”

  Anderson hadn’t given up just yet, “What if Hanson was working for the Russians – that would give you a Kilo-class submarine.”

  Roche looked more puzzled than surprised at Anderson’s suggestion, perhaps getting used to Anderson’s offbeat ideas. “That makes no sense. The Russians sold the Kilos to those countries – they would have a far better idea of their acoustic signature than any Western database. If Hanson was working for the Vietnamese, for example, that would be more logical – maybe alter one of their Kilo-class to make the U.S. Navy think it’s Russian. It still seems a little far-fetched to me.”

  It was nothing more than Anderson had expected, his clever ideas shot to pieces, his naïve assumptions shown to be foolish. Maybe the database was irrelevant and Hanson was after something else… or maybe Anderson was simply out of his depth.

  Time now to move on and leave the complexities of Wilhelmshaven to the experts. A couple of days and Anderson would be driving through the heart of Virginia, studiously avoiding any irate black bears whilst trying not to breathe too hard. For the time being, that was more than enough to worry about.

  Eastern United States – 14:45 Local Time; 18:45 UTC

  McDowell sat and studied the various computer displays, trying to make sure he was fully up-to-date with the progress of each specific thread. His interest was instantly drawn to one particular segment, it showing an internet video, the clip uploaded just an hour earlier but already generating a healthy number of hits; the corresponding audio had just been broadcast on talk radio, the hit count accelerating even as McDowell watched.

  The video showed one of California’s two Senators verbally abusing a hotel maid, the two women face to face, the Senator literally spitting with rage. What had upset her wasn’t clear, but the language used was exceedingly colourful, the Senator’s right arm raised high, almost as if to slap the maid.

  McDowell gave a thin smile: it had taken several thousand man hours to get just one thirty-second clip of a Senator misbehaving – not a particularly good return when compared with the relatively high outlay. Still, they hadn’t known quite what to expect when they’d started and the clip was enough to maintain the momentum from earlier stories. Since the beginning of October, there had been a steady trickle of minor political scandals, some genuine, some based on innuendo or rumour. Apart from the standard drug and call girl revelations, there were the more sellable ones such as an angry mistress, a sextortion scam, or an obscene email sent in error. Thanks to an influential associate within The Wall Street Journal, the stories often received a higher profile than might normally be the case, the profusion of incidents in turn creating its own headline.

  Surveys regularly illustrated the public’s distrust of politicians and the political system
, the two-party status quo too rigid to allow for much variation and differing opinions. The disillusioned were now being given a regular dose of evidence to reinforce their complaints, the Establishment invariably unwilling or too slow to mount an effective defence.

  McDowell’s occasional residence for the past five months had once been a farmhouse, the improved facilities and systems a result of lessons learnt from August 14’s British base. The state-of-the-art computer facilities required far fewer operatives than in the UK but were no less sophisticated, the room dominated by the curved bank of computer consoles and the massive monitor above. The latter was able to show any number of separate displays, although there were presently just eighteen on show, covering the latest from relevant areas of interest: TV news and business reports, live satellite images, projected Midterm election turnout and results – even the weather in the Spratly Islands.

  One difference to before was the decision to move the command-and-control centre to the target country: for Russia, they had been dealing with a spread of agents and data feeds across a dozen countries and some six thousand miles; this time, the main focus was generally never more than fifty miles from Washington, and with limited human resources it had seemed sensible to be much closer to the capital.

  The small community was isolated enough to be secure, yet still with good access to major highways, Washington roughly an hour away by road. The farm buildings had been extended and modernised from their original function and were hidden from casual view by a line of trees, McDowell presently more concerned by the prying eyes of the curious and the unwary than the FBI. So far, the façade of an agricultural research centre had worked well, local concerns allayed once Lee Preston had joined the local Agricultural Committee. And with a meeting every three months it was hardly an onerous challenge to Preston’s newly-acquired agricultural skills.

  Behind McDowell was the more low-tech area of coffee-machine, chairs and whiteboard; it also served as Jonathan’s Carter’s favourite place to explain his latest brainwave to a generally sceptical McDowell. Their business partnership had now lasted almost three years, their success based on a combination of Carter’s computer skills and McDowell’s ambition.

  Carter’s hacking skills were legendary but the last few years had seen a dramatic improvement in cyber security. The hack of Sony Pictures in 2014 had caught the public’s imagination, proving to everyone the true power of cyber warfare, the White House shocked into treating it a National Security issue. Russia’s cyber-attack on Estonia in 2007 had better shown what was actually possible: the websites of parliament, government agencies, banks, newspapers and broadcasters disabled, the internet effectively shut down.

  For two decades now China, Russia and the U.S. had attempted to hack into each other’s systems almost on a daily basis, cyber-warfare cheaper in terms of hardware and human lives than other forms. Army, Navy, Air Force – the cyber domain had become a fourth element in a country’s military forces, proving a potent sphere for potential conflict. August 14 had tried to repeat the Estonian model with Moscow as its target, but – other than with the soft targets of transport and energy infrastructure – their success had been sporadic, and the days of being able to hack into major computer networks without difficulty had passed. Even small companies had grown fearful of the possibility of a denial-of-service attack or their database being hijacked and cyber-security firms had consequently made a killing, offering a package of measures designed to protect even a modest network – anything from deliberately trying to outwit a company’s cyber defence and so identify problems, to an automated threat analysis providing a real-time warning of an attack. U.S. Government systems were safeguarded by various layers of protection, any unusual activity instantly grabbing the attention of the National Security Agency’s massive cyber-security centre at Bluffdale in Utah.

  Nowadays, when systems crashed, it was more usually due to a software glitch, often because of some update, rather than a specific cyber-attack. Carter and his team of three were thus having to be ever more subtle, searching out the vulnerable networks to then find some way through to the more secure areas. Mostly they failed, and success relied upon a high-level of skill, backed up by a significant amount of persistence and luck.

  So far, the research centre and its operatives had done all that had been asked of them; the team supplemented when necessary by other experts. The initial drop in the Dow had been brought about through rumour and complex manipulation of various stocks – the ability to access funds of up to $600 million had doubtless helped, with hearsay working its own nervous miracle. Yang’s expert broker had even managed to restrict the cabal’s own losses to just over $18 million. Such a sum was peanuts to Yang and his friends, Carter idly working out that it would take them just six days to recoup the sum from interest payments, and they’d probably be in profit once the stock market bounced back. Further dabbling in specific shares had kept the Dow Index in restless mode, fear of a serious crash spreading its own insidious message.

  There was far more to come, the ground prepared weeks earlier, the usual techniques of bribery and intimidation ensuring inside help was always available when needed. Some attacks would fail simply because the systems had been updated or security improved; others because the information received was intrinsically wrong; in certain cases, Carter might even have met his match. That was all to be expected. Yet some cyber-attacks would still be successful, and a paltry one-quarter success-rate was McDowell’s working target, Carter willing to guarantee it would be more like a third.

  McDowell’s various sources indicated that while the FBI and Homeland Security had picked up on certain concerns, no one had yet tied it all together as representing a single co-ordinated strategy with just one very specific aim in mind. That would change soon enough, but by then it should be far too late. Another week without any outside interference was all they needed, enough time to get everything into place and for the South China Sea to fully grab the news headlines.