Terminal Black

by Adrian Magson

  ‘Because someone caught snooping in restricted files even once shows form. It’s why he got canned, remember, delving into the nation’s electronic underpants. Perhaps we now know why. A bit of long-term planning coming home to roost, perhaps.’

  ‘Balls. Being nosey is a long stretch from spying for the opposition and you know it.’

  ‘I might agree with you … if he hadn’t bunked off with some sensitive data.’

  ‘How sensitive?’

  ‘I haven’t been given that information. My job’s to get him found.’

  This doesn’t sound good, Harry thought. To play for time he said, ‘But why would it matter? Anything pre-Red Station would be out of date, so why the panic? And why right now? It’s – what, ten years ago.’

  ‘Information is never truly old, you know that. Even the long-term, locked up, covered in dust stuff nobody wants to talk about has the power to haunt.’ Cramer studied his fingernails. ‘All I know is there are restricted files with his mucky fingerprints all over them – or, should I say, footprints.’

  ‘What kind of files?’

  ‘I’m not at liberty to say.’

  ‘Bollocks. You don’t know, do you?’

  Cramer coloured slightly and Harry knew he’d scored a hit. Cramer was a messenger and hadn’t got more than the few details he’d been told to help him do the job.

  ‘Before you jump to conclusions,’ Cramer continued, ‘I don’t mean he’s been seen with men in long leather coats or extremist jihadis with bombs in their backpacks. I’m talking about hackers with links to Moscow.’

  ‘Right. Next you’ll be telling me he helped get Trump into the White House.’

  ‘Not quite. That began way before Ferris disappeared.’

  ‘OK, so he knows some hackers. Didn’t it occur to anyone that it was an extension of his work with Five? He was expected to penetrate groups to expose them; why wouldn’t he have got friendly with some of them since?’

  Cramer blinked, and for a second Harry wondered if he’d scored another point. Logic was useful in intelligence work, but some people preferred looking at cold, hard facts to the exclusion of common sense.

  But Cramer scotched that immediately. ‘There’s been a lot of unusual cyber activity recently. Something’s in the wind and we think it’s related to some recent attacks – and we’re not talking about a DoS against a single target but serious stuff.’

  As Harry knew from Rik, a DoS – or denial of service attack – involved flooding a target’s computer system with messages from a vast number of computers, causing it to crash and become unavailable. He knew that just wasn’t Rik’s style. He might be nosey but he wasn’t malicious.

  ‘This has the hallmarks of something much bigger,’ Cramer continued. ‘The National Cyber Security Centre have their work cut out just keeping up. But these aren’t grubby little nerds with nothing better to do than make a nuisance of themselves; it’s organized at hostile state level.’

  ‘So send comrade Vladimir an email and ask him to stop. It still doesn’t implicate Rik.’

  ‘Why not? We’ve had word over the past few weeks that a number of known activist hackers have gone silent, mostly across Germany and eastern Europe, and a few here, too … experts like Ferris. It’s usually a sign that they’re being coordinated and trained up for some kind of offensive. As for Ferris, he’s on record as having been in contact with a hacker named Nebulus. We picked that name up a while back in connection with some hacks we believe were initiated by a Moscow-affiliated group, and we’ve been following it. Ferris and Nebulus exchanged messages recently about a meeting in London.’

  ‘It could be harmless.’

  ‘I agree. But it’s a hell of a coincidence.’

  ‘What do you expect me to do?’

  Cramer’s response was blunt. ‘Find him and bring him in. Clip his wings before he takes a stupid pill. I want to know what he’s been up to recently and who this Nebulus is. As you know the government’s recruiting a number of extra experts to boost our cyber-defensive capability, but they’ll take time to get into position. It would help if you can find Ferris and give us a heads-up on what’s likely to happen.’

  ‘Why should I help you?’

  ‘Well, there’s always Queen and country. On the other hand, if you don’t help, Six will send someone else after Ferris. And you know how that’s likely to turn out.’

  Harry stared at him, chilled by the brutal statement. ‘You’re talking about a state-sponsored execution of a former employee. That’ll run well in the tabloids. I thought Five and Six were supposed to be recruiting people, not knocking them off.’

  ‘I’m saying nothing of the sort. You’ve drawn the wrong conclusion. Maybe I was a little … dramatic in tone. Still, accidents happen, you know that.’

  ‘You really don’t know where he is, do you?’ Harry resisted a smile at the idea of Rik pulling one over on the might of the security services. In simple terms he’d gone to ground and they hadn’t a clue how to find him. The rise of the techies.

  ‘Not yet,’ Cramer admitted, looking a little sore. ‘But whose fault is that?’

  ‘Mine? You’re kidding.’

  ‘Of course yours. He was a pinhead IT geek until Red Station. Then you got your hands on him and turned him into Junior fucking Action Man.’ He stood up in a smooth movement and flexed his false leg. ‘You trained him, Harry, so it’s up to you to find him. Before somebody else does.’

  Harry wanted to tell him to sod off but thought that unwise under the circumstances. Beneath the seemingly calm exterior, Cramer seemed to be under some pressure. All it needed was for him to overreact and push a go-button and sooner or later Rik would pop up somewhere in the world in the gunsights of a professional cleaner. ‘What’s my motivation?’

  Cramer tapped the table with a blunt finger. ‘Your freedom and his life. How’s that for starters? Play dumb on this and we can tie you up on holding charges as an accessory for years. It’ll make Guantanamo look like play-school.’ He smiled without humour. ‘That’s not me talking, but there are people out there who will make it so, given a push.’ He dropped a card on the table. All it held was a phone number. ‘That’s where to find me. But make it quick because time’s a-wasting. Enjoy your coffee and cake.’

  ‘What did the spookies want?’ Jean reappeared through the door at the end of the room, where she had been waiting for the two men to leave. As the widow of a former army officer, she had learned long ago to recognize government men when she saw them. She also knew Harry’s background and what he now did for a living.

  Harry stood up to greet her and murmured an apology. The waitress appeared as if by magic and tilted her head in the direction of the exit where Cramer and his minder had gone.

  ‘Sorry, but I got the impression you weren’t ready to share.’

  ‘I wasn’t,’ Harry said with a smile. ‘Thank you.’

  As soon as she left to bring their order, Harry gave Jean a quick run-down on the reason for Cramer’s visit. He figured he wasn’t breaking the Official Secrets Act by telling her that a friend was in trouble, although he doubted a prosecution lawyer would see it that way. But he trusted Jean implicitly. Certainly more than he trusted Cramer. And the fact that Cramer had known what his movements were meant he’d been under observation for a while. The thought was unsettling but too late to worry about now.

  Jean listened in silence and waited while the waitress served them and departed, then scooped up a forkful of chocolate cake and ate it with an appreciative roll of her eyes which made his heart flutter. But she also looked concerned. ‘You’re going to look for him, aren’t you?’

  ‘You know it and so do they. It’s what they’re counting on.’

  ‘Do they think you know where Rik is?’

  ‘I doubt it. But they’re hoping I can draw him in.’

  ‘Couldn’t that be dangerous?’

  ‘Not for me. I don’t think Cramer’s the sort to carry out terminations.’

&n
bsp; ‘I was thinking about who else might be looking for him; people behind Cramer.’

  ‘Yeah, there is that.’

  ‘Would Rik really have done what they say?’

  ‘I doubt it.’ As he knew well, it wouldn’t be the first time either agency had made mistakes in pinning guilt on someone. ‘But it looks as if I’m going to have to find out.’

  They concentrated on their coffee and cake, enjoying the silence and each other’s company, albeit with an unwanted hint of tension in the air. All the while Harry was faced with a burning question: if he didn’t track down Rik very soon, what was he going to do if Cramer’s people got impatient and sent a team out into the field to take what some euphemistically called ‘executive action’?

  More importantly, what the hell could Rik have picked up ten years ago that would merit the threat of a kill order?

  SEVEN

  Rik Ferris was cold. Not skin-chilled, the way you get in the open air on a brisk afternoon, but deep-in-the-bone numb, the way sitting in a freezer for an extended period would work its way into your soul. He lifted his head, awareness making him shiver uncontrollably as the air moved around him, and began building a picture of his surroundings.

  He was sitting on a hard-backed chair. He could feel that much. It was uncomfortable. A quick scan of his surroundings showed he was in a large, empty shell of a structure, with grey concrete flooring, rough cinder-block walls and, high above, a latticework of rusting metal beams and struts holding up a weather-beaten corrugated roof. Holes in the puddled floor by his feet showed where unknown machinery had once been bolted, the surface heavily stained with oil and the accumulated dirt and labour of many years. The air smelled musty and dead.

  His chair was the only item of furniture, placed in the centre of the floor. He looked for and found window spaces, which were few and high up and blanked out with black paint. It was enough to tell him that he was as much a prisoner as if the place had iron bars and unscalable walls.

  He dropped his head, trying to take it all in. His face and neck hurt and he had no idea how he’d got here. Wherever ‘here’ was.

  A rumbling sound rolled around the space like subdued thunder, and he looked towards a growing patch of light, where a heavy steel door was sliding back on runners. The clank of a chain gave flight to a group of small birds in the roof, and when he lifted a hand to rub at his eyes, he was surprised to find he was free of any form of restraint.

  Dressed as he was in a t-shirt and jeans, he tried to control his shivers, waiting as the thin light washing through the doorway swept over two figures. They advanced towards him, footsteps echoing around the empty space, and stopped twenty feet away, moving apart. Backlit by the open door, their faces were in shadow. Two silhouettes, he could see that much. One on the left, smallish, stocky, the other tall. But that was all.

  He shook his head, trying to clear his thinking, and made as if to stand up. But the taller figure put out a hand to stop him.

  ‘Stay where you are.’ The voice was authoritative. Sharp. Male. It sounded flat in the large space, with surprisingly little echo, as if the concrete was absorbing the human sound like a sponge.

  He stayed still. Focussed instead on breathing and trying to calm the noises in his head. He’d been drugged, he knew that much. There was no other way he could account for the headache or the bitter taste in his mouth, or the feeling that he’d gone a couple of rounds with a heavyweight boxer. But he didn’t know why. Or who these people were. Then a memory surfaced: a feeling of pain, the sting of a needle in his arm back at the … the apartment block, that was it. But why had he gone there?

  ‘What’s this about? Why have you brought me here?’ His voice came out as a dry rasp, a little shaky because talking was something he hadn’t done in a while … maybe as long ago as yesterday, he couldn’t tell. Couldn’t remember much. Drinking, yes, he’d done some of that, along with others who were sinking pints as fast as they could. Strangers, though, not friends, people he’d met in a pub or club where your presence was dictated by how much you could put away. He didn’t normally do that because it didn’t interest him. But he must have overdone it this time.

  He un-gummed his tongue from the roof of his mouth. It was a reminder that he hadn’t had any liquid for what seemed like several hours. Not that time was an issue. He checked his wrist but his watch was gone, as were his iPod and his phone, which he last remembered using in a car. Not a taxi, though; he’d caught a bus from the airport then took a cab to … wherever the place was. He’d been texting someone, he remembered that, but the name was drifting on the edge of his memory. Harry? Why would he have texted Harry? They hadn’t spoken in months. He was sure he’d pressed ‘send’, before someone had leaned over from the front seat and snatched his phone away.

  He gave up the struggle to remember more and wondered how long he’d been here. And where ‘here’ was.

  ‘You don’t know why you’re here, Mr Ferris?’ The tall figure on the right again. The man’s accent was foreign, maybe German or further east. But not heavy. Someone at ease with speaking English, the contractions and intonation correct.

  ‘How do you mean? I don’t understand—’ He stopped. How did they know his name?

  ‘You help us, and everything will be good.’ This was the person on the left. A woman. She had a faint American twang; her tone sharp and loaded with menace. Oh, shit. Was this an interrogation?

  ‘I don’t know what you mean. Who are you?’ Then another flicker came back, surfacing slowly out of a toffee-like depth. ‘I came to see a friend of mine.’

  ‘At the apartment block?’

  Rik hesitated and counted to three. He wasn’t sure about the apartment block, although there was a vague image floating about in his brain. Some place old and unwelcoming. It was all a haze and his head felt full of cotton wool. Instinct told him to keep his replies simple. Keep them happy. ‘Yes. There.’

  ‘What friend?’

  A count of five this time. Spread it out but not too much: a distant instruction from a training course a long time ago. ‘Nebulus. I was trying to contact Nebulus.’ It sounded dramatic saying that name out loud in this cold room. As if he’d been aiming for a distant planet. But he didn’t want to say her real name. Nebulus was just a pseudonym, a tag. A handle. No threat to anyone, with no more significance to outsiders than a smiley-face emoji.

  ‘We don’t know that name.’

  ‘In that case I’ll be going.’ He got to his feet and winced, his knees cramped through having sat still for too long. He flexed them and made to move forward. ‘Sorry to have troubled you, but this kind of crap is really out of order. I’m going to complain to your tourist authority—’

  ‘Stop.’ The man moved forward as he spoke, revealing something in one hand. A mobile phone? ‘What does she do, this Nebulus?’ the man asked.

  ‘If you don’t know her, what difference does it make?’

  ‘I said, what does she do?’ The voice came colder, harder, the enunciation scarily deliberate. This time there was another movement of the hand, lifting slightly to the horizontal. It made the object in his hand clear to see, even in the poor light.

  A taser? Jesus.

  Rik swallowed and sat back down. Why did his legs feel so tired? What had they done to him? They wanted some kind of information, that was obvious. Checking facts. The training-day memory surfaced again with vivid clarity. He hadn’t given it a thought in years. There had been an assault course, brutal and pointless but survivable, followed by weapons familiarity and a few other things he couldn’t be bothered to recall, all under the relentless gaze of a bunch of stone-faced instructors whose default mode seemed to be contempt for their charges. He’d managed to wipe most of the pseudo-shouty bullshit from his mind since then. It was part of the conditioning and meaningless thereafter.

  But not the taser. One of the instructors had used it on him to see how he’d react, and to demonstrate its effectiveness to the other recruits. He’d expected
a brief jolt like you’d get from an electric cattle fence. Instead the bloody thing had knocked him on his arse. He’d also peed himself. The others in the group had laughed … until it became their turn.

  ‘She’s a researcher.’ When answering questions tell them only what you can afford to and keep it plausible. The training had also included deflecting interrogation. Not that he’d ever expected to have to use it, not after all this time. Not now. He was out of all that.

  ‘In what field?’

  ‘Information. Data.’

  ‘Public domain data?’

  ‘Sure. Trends, outcomes, simulations – market research stuff.’

  ‘So how would you happen to be a friend of hers?’

  ‘Because I used to work in a similar field.’

  ‘So you’re here to do that same work?’

  ‘No. I’m on a vacation.’

  A lengthy pause, then, ‘I don’t believe you.’

  The silence was heavy save for a scrape of fabric on concrete as the figure on the left, the woman, shifted her weight. She stepped forward, bringing herself out of the darkness and said, ‘We know all about you, Ferris. Your background, your … fall from grace, I think you would call it. We also know why and what you were doing that cost you your job.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m in IT, pure, boring and simple.’

  She ignored that. ‘What we would like is for you to tell us what you saw that got you fired.’ She lifted her shoulders. ‘That’s not so hard, is it? After all, what loyalty do you owe them, your bosses in Thames House.’

  Rik let his breath out in a long, slow stream, fighting a rising sense of panic. This wasn’t good. Nobody like these bloody munchkins should know he’d once worked for MI5.

  ‘The problem is, can we persuade you to tell us a few truths?’

  ‘Truths? What kind of truths? You want market research data, get your own. And like I said, I’m on vac—’

  The man stepped forward and pointed the taser at his face, a bare inch or so from his eyes. It made Rik rear back, which was when he realized the chair he was sitting on was bolted to the concrete floor and he had nowhere to go.