Fuelling the Fire

by Roland Ladley

Wolfgang stopped breathing. How could the man not see him?

  The man took a couple more puffs of his cigarette and then threw it on the ground.

  Turning, he stopped abruptly and blurted, “Guten Abend.”

  Wolfgang recognised the “Guten Abend” reply straight away. It was Sam.

  The man shuffled off, back into his house, humming away. Sam walked forward a couple of paces and stood over Wolfgang’s laptop.

  “I can see you. You can come out now,” she quietly teased.

  “That was close! How come he didn’t see me?” Wolfgang’s whisper was hissed at Sam.

  “You hid well.”

  “How come you saw me?”

  “Because I’m good at this.”

  Wolfgang ignored Sam’s playful conceit and got down on his knees and checked his laptop.

  “I have the e-mail address and computer details of someone here . . . hang on.” He tapped away on his keyboard. “The e-mail is a familiebischoff Gmail address. I know the port details. Good!” He was talking to himself. He looked up at Sam. “I now know how to find him and hack his machine from a distance. I can do that later.” He started to pack up.

  As he rose with his laptop under his arm, he said, “Did you get anything?”

  “Not a great deal. Let’s talk about it in the car.”

  “Where now?” He realised they hadn’t discussed “what next.”

  “I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for food. And I need some sleep. In that order.”

  Hotel Hiemann, Leipzig, Germany

  Sam was full. And exhausted. They’d booked into the hotel as Mr. and Mrs. Schultz—taking a twin-bedder—eaten Wiener schnitzels in the hotel dining room, and showered. With Wolfgang sitting on his bed, his laptop on his legs, and Sam on the end of her bed with her Nexus open, they went back to work.

  “Can you connect my tablet to the TV so I can look at the pictures on a bigger screen?”

  “Sure,” replied Wolfgang. He put his laptop down, jumped off his bed, and walked around to where she was. He sat next to her, playfully pushing her along with his hips.

  “Oi!” she said, laughing.

  He smelled clean. He was wearing one of the three Thomas Pink shirts he’d brought with him, doubling it up as a nightshirt. She hadn’t meant to peek, but he also had on a pair of blue-striped boxers. She wore a clean version of the same nightie she’d sported the other night. For modesty’s sake, she put one of Wolfgang’s cashmere sweaters on top. They were like an old couple, sharing clothes.

  Where had they got to?

  Frank had been in touch by e-mail. The assailant was a Herr Gert Mauning from Berlin. The embassy, without too much trouble, had spoken to the local police. He had been released after questioning. Without testimony from Wolfgang, there was no evidence that he’d committed a crime other than trespassing. The local police said the man had no criminal record.

  GCHQ was still working on the telephone numbers from Mauning’s phone. They’d have something in the morning. The US number was a landline in Abilene, Texas. Frank had found that out himself. He had added that, when he had told Jane, she had almost fallen off her chair. He had no idea why.

  Finally, Frank had looked over the SMS and e-mails that Wolfgang had sent through that had been taken off Mauning’s phone. So far he’d picked out nothing significant, unless e-mails about family members and Amazon orders were some form of code. Probably not, Frank.

  So nothing of significance from Gert Mauning’s phone —or what is it that Jane isn’t telling me?

  “There. It’s up on the screen.” Wolfgang pointed. His arm seemed freer, now that she had cleaned and re-dressed the wound.

  “Thanks, Wolfgang. How’s it going with getting onto Bischoff’s machine?”

  He was on his feet, heading back to his laptop.

  “I’m not there yet. On the face of it, the security looks low key. But it’s much more complicated than that. It’s clever. Overly so. I’m linked to my servers in Munich. I’m going to use them to attack with some high-level coding. Probably overnight.”

  “Sounds very dull, if you ask me.” Sam smiled across at him.

  “Like looking at photos of the desert isn’t dull?”

  She stuck her tongue out at him.

  Sam knew that what she was doing broke a zillion SIS rules. She was accessing secret images in the presence of someone who was not security cleared, who wasn’t even British! And she assumed that projecting the Yemeni satellite images onto a TV screen in a hotel, where all TVs are linked together to feed movies, broke many more rules.

  She couldn’t care less. She knew she had about an hour before her brain shut down, and she needed to look over these images now, with the best resolution possible.

  There were forty-five keyhole photos, covering four of the seven targets she had identified. The cloud also had another sixteen “closed” source images and another thirty or so public, “open” source shots—all from Yemen. She had to work smartly.

  For each of the keyhole images, she was looking for vehicles. They were all plan photos, taken from above. Unless a person were sunbathing, there was no way she could make out a face. It was pretty much vehicles or nothing.

  After about forty minutes, she popped to the loo, came back, and opened another image. She swiped gently, up and down. The quality was outstanding. The granularity very fine. Nothing. Hang on. No. Nothing.

  Sam had got to maybe the thirty-eighth image, the northeast sector of a hamlet named Shabwah, which consisted of around fifty buildings, and she checked herself. Stop. Look again. She swiped gently back and then zoomed in. She was staring so hard her eyes had started to dry out. She blinked a couple of times.

  There’s something here.

  The hotel room was quiet. It was close to midnight, and there was very little noise outside. Sam hadn’t noticed before, but Wolfgang had stopped typing. All she could hear was her own breathing. She swiped gently left and then enlarged again. Without the image-sharpening software back in Babylon, the picture pixelated, so she zoomed slowly back out again.

  “What have you got?” It was Wolfgang.

  His question interrupted her thinking.

  “Sshhh!”

  She moved the image about a bit and then stopped again.

  “It’s a black pickup. A relatively new one. In a compound.”

  Silence won the battle for the room. For a second.

  “Aren’t there scores of black pickups in the desert?”

  Sam wasn’t listening. She moved the image to its right a touch. The black pickup stayed in the frame. To its right was the roof of a building. It could have been the same as any of the other roofs that formed a hollow square around the courtyard where the black pickup was parked. But this roof was different. It wasn’t a roof over a dwelling. It was a roof over an open space. Sam knew that because, sticking out from under the eaves, was no more than fifty centimetres of white metal frame. She checked again. It was the back end of a second pickup. It was definitely the back end of a pickup. A white one. She couldn’t make out what the truck was, other than the back frame was thin—an older vehicle. But the paint was good. It was well looked after.

  She knew she was looking at a black Nissan Terrano in the centre of the courtyard. She’d recognise the vehicle from any angle. Wolfgang was right, though. There were many black pickups in the desert. But not that many new black Terranos. And, if you added the coincidence of finding an old white pickup in the same location, albeit almost hidden from view, you might just have something special.

  “It’s this, look.” Sam was on her feet, pointing to the roof.

  “It’s a roof.”

  “No, it’s not! It’s the back end of a white pickup.” She sat down again, grabbing hold of her Nexus. “Hold on, Wolfgang, I need to send this home.”

  Sam cropped the photo and, with accompanying notes, pinged it to Frank. He needed to check the original black pickup from the terrorist camp for bangs and dents against this one. And see i
f there were any connections. Then, he would need to check if he could get a nonpixelated view of the back end of the white pickup.

  Sam was 75 per cent sure these were the two vehicles she knew: Manning and Bell’s black Terrano and the old white Toyota Hilux with the chrome wing mirror. If she had been at work, she’d be 90 per cent sure by now—or would have discounted the work. Frank would add that extra 15 per cent in her absence. She pressed “Send,” and the e-mail disappeared into the ether.

  “Do you have anything?” Sam asked Wolfgang.

  “Maybe. My servers will run overnight, and they might be able dig deeper through the security wall. In the meantime, it seems our man Bischoff is interested in someone’s itinerary. There are maps of Köln, with some markings on them. I’ve no idea what they’re about.”

  Sam was sitting beside him now, looking over his laptop, which he had turned so she could see the screen.

  She pressed the “Up” and “Down” arrows to move the image.

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Me neither,” said Wolfgang.

  “Before we close up, can you Google ‘the Church of the White Cross’?”

  Wolfgang did that. There were a number of entries, including a local Californian report about possible linkages with a recent spate of mosque bombings in the United States and Canada.

  “Open up their main website. Please.” She realised that she was being a little officious and belatedly smiled at him. A soft smile.

  And there it was. The Church of the White Cross. Location: Abilene, Texas.

  Abilene? Mauning had the number of someone in Abilene on his phone. Result. That made two of them: Bischoff and Mauning. The two men they were pursuing had links with the German wing of the Church of the White Cross: die Kirche des weißen Kreuz. An organisation that threw bricks at police, burned apartments, and shot at people. Its sister church in the United States had bombed mosques, killing several people.

  And what had Jane said in her e-mail? Look out for it?

  Sam sighed. And then yawned. She realised that she’d not told Wolfgang about Ralph Bell. That was definitely a secret that he might not need to know. The whole thing made her brain hurt.

  “We need to get some sleep, Wolfgang. I think we’re dealing with something that is much bigger than we might have originally thought.”

  Chapter 16

  SIS Headquarters, Vauxhall, London

  Jane drew the meeting to a close. Even though it was a Sunday, she’d called in all her staff. Key to her decision was Sam’s report from last night concerning the new compound in Shabwah. They really needed to get eyes and ears on. And they desperately needed to find Captain Tony James.

  Tim, who at the beginning of the meeting had made some quip about his Sunday dinner getting cold, had perked up when Jane had told him that the Yemeni team had been allocated another hundred thousand pounds to get someone close to, or preferably in, the compound. Tim reckoned that after the executions of Groves and Jarman, the Sana’a team might chance an arm and get up there themselves—maybe come in from the desert, get close enough to the compound to secure some decent images.

  Jane had made it clear that any such action would need her and probably the chief’s nod. Nobody wanted to lose SIS agents in Yemen. It was bad enough having four SRR soldiers down.

  Mike had confirmed that he’d already tasked the Doughnut to search for mobile signals; should Tim’s men get within reach, they would try to tap the landline—if there was one. Sue explained that she’d been in touch with her SF colleagues. They were looking over plans to assault the compound should more reliable intelligence become available.

  It was all go, and the team had a real buzz about it. Thanks in no small part to Sam—and Frank. With Sam’s initial information, Frank had worked late into the night and had finally assigned a 90 per cent certainty to the two vehicles—which was as close to perfection as you could get with intelligence gathering at this level. The only outstanding question was whether or not Tony James was in the same compound as the vehicles. Her team had just dashed off to try to establish whether that was the case.

  Jane asked Frank to stay behind, just the two of them. Jane didn’t want Sam’s exploits in Germany to become common knowledge—although there was definitely a Ralph Bell connection between Yemen and Germany, bringing that detail to the team at this point would muddy the waters. When what they needed was a single focus.

  “Anything more from Sam overnight?” Jane asked.

  “Just some maps of Köln from a couple of loose Bischoff e-mails that Wolfgang was able to hack. What we all think is significant is that Bischoff’s machine is encrypted with 256-bit technology. That’s pretty impenetrable. I’m no expert, but what I do know is that Sam’s friend is very good at what he does. His machines, which are based in Munich and accessed remotely, are among the best you can buy. If he says Bischoff’s machine is tricky to get into, then I believe him. But, with Sam’s permission, I’ve given the e-mail and web addresses to Defence Intelligence. They may be able to do something that Wolfgang hasn’t been able to do. But I doubt it.”

  Jane was impatient to move on.

  “Anything from the stuff taken from Mauning’s phone?”

  “As well as the Abilene number, which we now know for certain is a landline into the Church of the White Cross, we have thirteen German mobiles with names assigned. One belongs to Heinrich Bischoff, which is good, as it links the two men. None of the others have Interpol records; without going to the BfV, it’s impossible to check if any of the names have local history.”

  “Yes, well, we’ve given Sam our word that we won’t approach the BfV until after lunch.” Jane looked at her watch. It was 10.45. In terms of “lunch,” they hadn’t agreed which time zone.

  “If you don’t mind me asking, Jane, why are we loath to involve the BfV at this point?”

  That’s a good question, Frank. She briefly thought back to West Africa, where David had been adamant not to involve their contacts in the CIA because he’d assumed there was a loose connection there. And he had been right. Here, now, there was absolutely no intelligence to suggest the same with the BfV, but . . .

  “Good question, Frank. I think the chief feels that the current German right-wing, anti-immigration lobby could well have one or two police sympathisers. Which might be true. He wants to give Sam time to get ahead of the game before we alert the BfV.”

  “Do we have someone in the BfV we know we can trust?”

  “I spoke with Tim this morning. He’s still got good contacts there and knows a couple of old pals he could have a frank conversation with. We’re going to do that after lunch. Sam’s aware. Now, let’s have a look at these Köln maps.” Jane pointed to Frank’s iPad.

  He opened it up and double-clicked on one of the attachments that Sam had sent through. It was a map of Köln’s city centre, with the tourist attractions penned in 3D. She recognised the dark, twin towers of the city’s cathedral. Overlaid on the map was a blue line, which looked like a route. At one end was the main railway station. The line snaked around the town and ended up at the university. She reckoned the route, which wasn’t direct, was about two or three miles long.

  Why would Bischoff have this? What does it mean—if anything?

  She pulled her head back as if to take in the whole screen. It was a puzzle.

  “What’s wrong, Jane?” Frank asked.

  “What are these marks?” Jane pointed loosely at the screen.

  “Which ones?”

  “These ones on the top and bottom of the map. It looks like something has been expurgated, just leaving a white splodge.”

  Frank looked closely at them, leaning forward. He used his fingers to zoom in. Jane guessed he hadn’t noticed them before.

  “I don’t know. It looks like it might be part of the original diagram. Or, maybe something has been taken out? A heading, or even a security clearance?”

  “I don’t know either.” She frowned. “Over to you, Frank. Let’s se
e if these blank bits can throw some light on what this is about.”

  “OK. I’ll do that now.”

  Frank nodded his head, closed his iPad, and looked to leave, when Jane interrupted him by gently holding his arm.

  “Well done, Frank. Thanks for coming in.” Jane smiled.

  Frank looked a bit embarrassed. “It’s no problem at all, Jane. Pleasure.” And, with that, he scurried away.

  Jane leaned back on the chair and took a deep breath. She looked at her watch. It was a few minutes later than the last time she had checked. She had a call arranged with the deputy director at 11:00 a.m. to talk about the note she had sent through last night on Greyshoe. It was going to be a very interesting conversation.

  She collected her things. Before she left the conference room for her office, she walked over to the window. Another good view of the Thames.

  I wonder what Sam Green is up to now?

  Outskirts of Berlin, Germany

  They both seemed to be enjoying the silence. Over breakfast Sam had reviewed where they were. Wolfgang thought that, apart from being in mortal danger at least twice in the last twenty-four hours, they weren’t any further forward. His servers had been unable to access Bischoff’s machine, they’d got very little from Mauning’s phone, and even Sam’s friends in the UK hadn’t come up with much from the stuff they’d sent through last night. The one big, but not surprising, thing was that Bischoff’s mobile number was on Mauning’s phone. They were obviously pals, possibly connected through die Kirche des weißen Kreuz.

  None of it had shed any additional light on the Lattice, nor were they any further forward on that British chap, Ned Donoghue. Had Sam mentioned it to her boss?

  “Sam?”

  “Mmmm?”

  “Did you mention Ned Donoghue to your boss? You know, the chap in New York?”

  Sam scratched her chin.

  “I did, didn’t I?”

  “I don’t remember you doing so. It’s just that we’ve been necessarily focusing on Bischoff and Mauning, or, should I say, they’ve been focusing on us. I wonder if we’re missing the bigger picture? Should we be in New York, not Berlin?”