Fischer gave her one of the wines, then collapsed onto the sofa with an arm along the back, brogues up on the coffee table.
“So what took you to the event?” he said.
“You first.”
“I was working.” He said it with a slight smile. “You seemed to be getting on well with Geoffrey Payne.”
“Until you came along.”
“Spying on your own MPs?”
“Maybe there’s more to Payne than meets the eye.”
Fischer leaned back, watching her carefully.
“I suspect there’s plenty more. In fact, I thought you might be able to fill me in.”
“It’s not going to be that easy,” she said.
“But you’re here. You want something from me, don’t you, Kathryn.”
“I’d like to know about Quadrant.”
He stretched, studied her again.
“Quadrant, indeed. Majestic, mysterious Quadrant. Yes, I’d certainly like to know about Quadrant too. What have you heard so far?”
“They clear up junk.”
“Will do. So they say. Been working on a system called ClearSky for the last three years, but it’s just gone big-time. Eco space. Green space. You’ve cried about the oceans, now let us remove the debris from low earth orbit. It’s an eye-catching initiative, enough to get them a hell of a lot of funding up front. A strange amount of funding. Something’s very wrong there.”
“Go on.”
“Are we going to be open with each other, Kat?”
“I wouldn’t be here otherwise.”
“Until recently, Quadrant were at risk of bankruptcy. They’d always struggled to attract investment. There’d been seed funding but that had gone. Then there was a very rapid turnaround. In February last year, the company received an injection of one hundred twenty million dollars from two venture capital funds about which I can get very little information other than that one’s registered in Delaware and one in the Cayman Islands. That was a few days before your government announced a further twenty-five million would go to the company via the UK Space Agency as part of an attempt to boost the space industry in this country.”
“Something must have attracted them.”
“Right.”
“Maybe Quadrant have got groundbreaking technology.”
“I hope so. The following week Payne flew to Brussels, attended a meeting of top European policy makers, and announced that all UK cooperation in the European space program was off.”
Fischer watched Taylor’s reaction. She tried to remember if she’d seen this in the news. There had been a lot of negotiations, a lot of cancellations, too.
“The European space program’s world class,” Fischer said. “Navigation systems, high-precision positioning, space surveillance and tracking. The UK were central to it, of course. You had access to research grants, manufacturing contracts, prestige. But no, suddenly the word goes out: You guys would explore alternative options. No more data sharing, you’d do your own thing. My bosses came to me and said: What’s going on? How are they going to afford that? This is insane.”
Fischer’s incredulity seemed genuine, but Taylor took a mental step back. Lesson one: Ask yourself what’s their game? Why are they talking to you at all? Germany was an ally, but one with its own ambitions. So she added a pinch of salt and kept her mind open.
“I started looking into it,” Fischer said. “And I got to Quadrant. They’ve been channeling a lot of resources to Geoffrey Payne and he’s not been shy in returning the favors. Those resources came out of nowhere, as far as I can tell. But whoever’s behind it has clearly been pushing for total autonomy. Why? There are bigger players in the UK space industry but none as strange, none operating in such secrecy. When do you start talking?”
“In a minute. Tell me what else you know about the money trail.”
“One of the funds that propped up Quadrant when it looked like it might go under is called Celestus Ventures. They were lead investor in the last financing round. From what I can tell, they have twenty-five active portfolio companies, all space related, and they put seventy million into Quadrant without blinking an eye. They don’t appear to seek any control. They don’t answer their phones, either. Quadrant must have something pretty incredible in development. So that’s one thing that took me to the British Museum, but I didn’t find anyone who could shed any light. So I’m really hoping my luck changes now. Your go.”
“Nine Russell Square.”
“So you do know something.” Fischer sat back and appraised her. “It’s an interesting address. Can you throw any light?”
“Owned by FSF Holdings, based on Guernsey. Geoffrey Payne and Stuart Adair were there this afternoon.”
“Is that right?”
“Yes.”
Fischer considered this. “Know what FSF stands for?”
“Go on.”
“The Free Space Foundation. Nine Russell Square is going to be the foundation’s prestigious new home. They fund research into space policy, advise government on space law, promote investment in the industry. Advocacy work. All sounds very proper, and it’s where you’d expect to find an official research center, but it’s shady. More a lobbying company than anything academic. No official university affiliation. Trace the cash back and you get to Quadrant. It seems to be a useful address for a lot of Quadrant business that they don’t want in their head office.”
“Like what?”
“There were eight rival companies working on space debris, all in the running for the UK government funding. In the weeks leading up to the funding allocation at least six of them were subject to surveillance: employees bugged, computers hacked. The trail ran straight back to the foundation and onto Quadrant. They’ve targeted the European Space Agency and they’ve targeted the UN’s Office for Outer Space Affairs. We know that. They play dirty. They also play rich. Since Quadrant’s recent windfall they’ve used the Free Space Foundation to make almost half a million in political donations.”
“What do they get for that?”
“Payne’s been helping Quadrant acquire UK launch facilities. That involves a lot of licensing and planning applications, but the foundation’s generosity has paved the way. Doors seem to open for them. There’s a well-established institute for the development of space policy just around the corner. It’s respectable, independent. Until last year they were advising the government on its space strategy. Then suddenly they weren’t. In the last couple of months foundation staff have held regular meetings at both the Foreign Office and Department for Business, while a lot of experts in the field have been closed out.”
“So the foundation does have staff.”
“Sure. They’ve brought some pretty ruthless minds on board: former property lawyers, aerospace lawyers, a lot of individuals with a background in maritime law. The thinking seems to be that if you can draw lines in the sea you can draw them in space, carve out ownership. Last month Geoffrey Payne got them an audience with the attorney general.”
“To do what?”
“Get on the front foot. Space is going to be a trillion-dollar economy. Someone’s going to have to establish law up there. Who owns the moon? According to the UN Space Treaty of 1967, everyone and no one. So, do you need a license to operate there? Who’s going to give you a license? Anyone want to tax it? A lot of the existing treaties date back to the Cold War. It’s more about stopping people from putting nukes in orbit than establishing a competitive free-market environment. Space, the province of all mankind: That’s great, but not very commercially viable. According to the treaty, astronauts should be treated as envoys of humanity. What does that mean? All of them? There’s a hell of a lot of people heading into space in the next few years who really aren’t envoys of humanity. So who polices them?”
“And Quadrant are pushing this discussion.”
“So it seems. But why? A year ago, they were just another small startup chasing the New Space dollar. Where’s their power from? Why are they sudd
enly steering the UK’s space strategy?” Fischer let silence fall as if it might coax her. “You haven’t touched your wine,” he said, finally.
“I don’t drink.”
Now he looked at her with renewed curiosity.
“It has been a long time, hasn’t it, Kat.”
“You seemed to know Payne well.”
“Turns out we’re members of the same London club.” Fischer smiled. “What are the chances?”
“Does he know someone called Gabriel Skinner?”
Fischer hesitated. “Payne met with a man called Gabriel Skinner the day before flying to Brussels.”
“Where?”
“At a private address in Central London. It’s not the first time they’ve met. Skinner’s a colleague of yours, I believe.”
Taylor stood up and went to the floor-length window. The sparkling lights of the city twinkled beneath her. She admired the darkness of the Isle of Dogs, then the towers of Canary Wharf behind it, pointing up at the stars.
“There’s an island in the South Atlantic,” she said. “Called Ascension. Has it come up in connection with any of this?”
“Not as far as I’m aware.”
“A girl went missing there a couple of weeks ago. Heard about that?”
“On Ascension? No, I don’t believe so. Why?”
“Something’s not right about it. Someone on the island has been doing surveillance on one of my officers. I traced the activity back to Nine Russell Square. That’s the only connection I have so far.”
Fischer frowned, scratched his jaw.
“Is the connection solid?”
“Yes.”
“Does this girl connect to space in any way?”
“Not as far as I’m aware.”
The German officer took a deep breath as he pondered this.
“I’ll look into it. I think we can help each other, Kat. I’d like to know what Quadrant are up to, what makes them so special. You’re in a good position to find out what’s going on.”
“What do I get?”
“Just possibly, you get your career.”
Taylor felt a new sharpness in the air.
“What do you mean?”
Fischer glanced down, picked some fluff from the floorboards and flicked it away.
“Tomorrow they’ll try to fire you,” he said, without meeting her eyes. “They plan to use Oman and what happened there, all that nonsense.”
Taylor stared at him until he was forced to look at her.
“What do you know about that?” she said.
“Grapevine stuff, Kat. I’m not a stalker.”
“Were you there for me tonight? Were you following me?”
He put his glass down, walked over to her. “I can help you win, Kathryn. I can help you defeat the people trying to destroy you. They’re up to something, and when we know what it is, we can judge to what extent they deserve their secrecy.”
“Is this some kind of trap, Markus?”
“If it is, it’s not necessarily the worst one to be in.” He watched her from up close. Taylor felt cornered, but in that situation you fight with what comes to hand, and what she had was an offer.
“Let’s say I get you information on Quadrant,” she said, carefully. “What then?”
“It depends what it is. We would manage an appropriate response. That might involve exposing criminal behavior or merely threatening exposure. That could be enough to stop them. Same principle they’ve used with you. If things became heated in any way, we would get you out of the country. For the time being, at least.”
Things felt suddenly very big and very real.
“Time isn’t going to change the fact that I’ve leaked national security secrets, Markus. That’s a fourteen-year prison sentence.”
“No one’s going to prosecute you. Not if you’re in the right. They wouldn’t take that risk.”
“Any idea what they might do to me then? Geneva hasn’t softened you that much, has it?”
“I understand the magnitude of what I’m asking you to do.”
“I wouldn’t take any money.”
“No, I assumed not.”
“This is about finding out what happened on Ascension.”
“For sure. I’ll start investigating from our end immediately. Perhaps we’re after the same thing.”
His eyes held an entirely different light now, as if every moment she had spent with him he had been acting and now he’d stopped.
“You really don’t know anything about Ascension?” Taylor said.
“I would tell you if I did. But you’ve made me very curious.”
“Okay.”
They arranged secure means of contacting each other and a backup plan in case something went badly wrong. Fischer was insistent about this, as if he knew of dangers he wouldn’t share. Taylor said she’d see what she could do and stepped back into the night, trying to decide what she meant by that.
21
She went straight back to HQ. No time to waste. Betraying your country wasn’t something to dawdle over. Ten p.m., office to herself, windows dark. Security had nodded to Taylor as she entered but she didn’t feel too conspicuous. Intelligence work was a global and unpredictable enterprise; various demands meant people came and went at all hours. Everyone had something that might pull them in at midnight.
First on her list of checks was Markus Fischer himself. She ran him through the system to see if he came up as active, hostile, or monitored. Vauxhall’s counterintelligence on rival European agencies was substantial, and they had good penetration of both the French DGCE and German BND. There were no alerts on Fischer. Records had him based in Frankfurt since 2015, no suggestion he was currently in the UK, which made her wonder what paperwork he’d traveled in on, and why.
She studied the Quadrant website again. The company had been set up in 2014 by Stuart Adair, originally a professor of space robotics at the University of Southampton. In the late 2000s, he led a group of researchers experimenting with miniature, maneuverable satellites. In 2012 he attended the European Conference on Space Debris and, seeing the scale of the problem, redirected energy toward devising a system for orbital sustainability. Quadrant was formed two years later as a spin-off company to transfer the results of research into a commercial enterprise.
The website included a cute personal bio. Adair recalled attending Space Camp in the US as a child and meeting the UK’s first astronaut, Helen Sharman, who gave him a handwritten note with the message, “Space is waiting for you.” This note became the inspiration to pursue his dream. From what Taylor could tell, childhood dream segued rapidly into commercial vision: Quadrant seeks to create a freer and more prosperous life for each generation by using the unlimited energy and material resources of space. According to commentators in the press, they’d lobbied hard to ensure governmental support for the rapid commercial development of the solar system. In one off-the-cuff remark to a journalist at a space expo last year, Adair had said: “As a planet, if we don’t colonize space, we doom ourselves to stasis and rationing. As a nation, we miss our chance at dominating this fourth industrial revolution.” Debris was their in.
The danger to satellites and space stations from pieces of orbital wreckage after more than 60 years of space exploration has become a commercial opportunity. Our research suggests there are 900,000 pieces of debris in low earth orbit—and even a 1mm-sized object can have a devastating effect. If we continue the way we do, some regions in space will become too risky to visit.
Quadrant’s ClearSky system delivers the provision of both active and end-of-life debris removal services—cutting-edge technologies that enable missions toward capturing and removing environmentally critical debris, such as rocket upper stages and defunct satellites.
It got them big backing. Taylor browsed the information available on Bloomberg and a couple of other business intelligence platforms. The players pumping money into Quadrant had stakes in launch systems, orbital manufacturing, asteroid mining, and spa
ce tourism. Evidently, they regarded the clearance of debris as a fundamental necessity. As Fischer had described, two venture capital funds devoted to the commercial space industry—GTX Capital and Celestus Ventures—supplied 120 million dollars to Quadrant over the course of one week in April 2018.
Last month, the US Office of Commercial Space Transportation had approved Quadrant’s request to launch the first components of its debris removal system: a constellation of satellites that would track objects as small as ten centimeters in length. Soon it was hoped they could launch direct from the UK. The 25 million pounds that the British government had directed to Quadrant came via a new development fund for UK spaceports. Sites were under development in Newquay, North Uist, in the Western Isles and Snowdonia.
Taylor sat back, mind spinning. Where was she when the new space age had been announced? Fixated on the terrestrial matters of the Persian Gulf and North Africa. How twentieth century. There was a lot going on to which she had been oblivious.
She kept reading. Geoffrey Payne had attended the launch of the UK Spaceport Alliance. The Telegraph quoted from his speech: “As a nation of innovators and entrepreneurs, we want Britain to be the first place in mainland Europe to launch satellites. This would put the UK in an even stronger position as a leading commercial space nation, while filling the gaps in sovereign capability. Our space industry need be dependent on no one. This island has always thrived on its appetite for exploration, a willingness to seek our fortunes beyond these shores, channeling our creativity and industry and ambitions . . .”
In the week after Celestus Ventures had invested several million into Quadrant, the Financial Times carried an interview with Stuart Adair in which he declared that he was on a mission “to expand humanity’s economic sphere in an unprecedented way.” The FT reported that the recent injection of capital had allowed Quadrant to invest in new facilities in Hawaii, New Mexico, “and on Ascension Island in the South Atlantic.”
Ascension Page 20
