The Cloud Collector (42 page)

‘They could do all of that. And probably more,' agreed Sally wearily.

‘We've got to stop them winning!'

They hadn't won, not yet, but it wasn't worth the argument. ‘I know that, too.'

*   *   *

They didn't speak much on their way back to Owen Place. Irvine said the bourbon smell still beat all the peppermint breath cleansers Graham had chewed, and that the acting director had already been mad at the intelligence committee's acceptance of a formal enquiry into the death of Abu al Hurr, which was a waste of time because the body had already been cremated. He'd made a lot of noise about the loss of the Smartman bot and was going to call another televised conference later in the day. The failure had to be contained at all cost. Sally limited herself to saying Monkton was furious, without going into pointless detail.

Both were too exhausted to think of lovemaking, but Sally remained awake long after Irvine fell into a snuffling sleep, running like a film clip through her head the decoded Vevak transmissions she'd memorized practically word for word, just as she'd memorized the smirking, vanishing face of Ismail al Aswamy. That unquestionably was how he'd been, Sally determined: smirking arrogantly, mocking.… Sally stopped the mental slide show at the word she'd been searching for, fixing its place. That's what Aswamy had been, what all the underlying intentions of the encryptions had been—mockery. Why? What was it that made the man so contemptuously sure that this time he'd properly succeed—even if they'd broken the codes or found the targets? The firewall wasn't enough, even though it had self-destructed. Al Aswamy had posted his own image, said something: she had to know what that word or words were to analyze the derision. What was there she could deduce? They wouldn't abort. That was part—the entire point and purpose—of the contempt. No matter what precautions were taken or protection emplaced, al Aswamy and Vevak were sure they couldn't be stopped. But how could they be so confident! It couldn't be the timing, whenever that might be. Everything was in place, every contingency anticipated, both bases ready to be cordoned off in minutes: impenetrable according to the military briefing. Obviously they'd still be better protected if they had the date and were able to get enough men inside, confronting the onslaught, not catching up from behind. Was the timing in the codes, like the mockery? Or was there something she was still missing, the way she'd missed so much else until now? She didn't know; couldn't think. The date and the derision: she had to know—work out—the date and the reason for the derision. What—or where—was the significance? Date and derision, echoed in her head, like a mantra. Date and derision, date and derision, was Sally's last conscious thought before she finally drifted to sleep.

 

43

And were the first words that came into Sally's mind when she awoke. And stayed there like a taunt as she showered, anxious to get to the embassy to speak to Monkton, knowing she'd need his support. Irvine came into the kitchen as she finished making coffee.

Sally said at once, ‘Al Aswamy won't abort the attacks.'

Irvine stood staring at her for several moments, not speaking. ‘How'd you know?'

Sally sipped her coffee, glad of the rehearsal, but conscious of Irvine's visible bemusement as she talked.

He remained silent again for several moments when she finished, as if expecting her to say more. When she didn't, he said, ‘That's it! Nothing more?'

‘It's how an Arab thinks.'

‘Not these Arabs. They're jihadists first, Arabs second; militarily trained zealots don't attack a target they know is expecting them, not even if they're assured of paradise if they die doing it. You try to argue this at today's assessment, they'll laugh in your face, and it'll be difficult for me not to laugh with them. Think about it from every which way, Sally! None of it makes sense. There's nothing to support it.'

‘I'm leaving ahead of you. I want to speak to Monkton from the embassy.'

‘Do that. I really want you to: for you to be ordered not to do it.'

‘When will we get Meade's preliminary reports on the computers, know what al Aswamy said?'

‘That's not going to convince anyone, darling! We don't know if he said
anything
!'

The
darling
word jarred but didn't block out
date and derision.
‘When?'

‘I'll know when I get to Langley. There should be something today.'

‘I'll come directly there from the embassy.'

Sally detoured to Watergate for a change of clothes, using the delay to rethink her approach to the MI5 Director-General. She hadn't expected Irvine's outright rejection, though he'd tried to couch it, an oversight she shouldn't have allowed. She hadn't properly gauged how it would sound, lacking any supporting facts or evidence, because she was back thinking the way she always thought—automatically thought—which made logical sense to her but hardly ever to anyone else.

Sally changed a phrase or two of her original argument but basically it remained the same, and Sally was aware from the pitch of Monkton's voice, though it had reverted to its customary monotone, that he wasn't accepting her insistences any more readily than Irvine.

‘I don't know why Ismail al Aswamy believes he can carry it out!' admitted Sally, answering Monkton's repeated question. ‘But I'm convinced he's going to: that the attack's still on.'

‘Are you suggesting something nuclear, the final proof, despite all the denials and permitted weapons inspections, that they've got the capability?'

‘I'm not ruling it out nor ruling it in,' said Sally, inwardly cringing at the vacuity of what she was saying. ‘At most I'm arguing against a premature withdrawal of everything that's in place at Waddington and Creech. If I'm out-argued about Creech, please keep Waddington on standby.'

‘For how long?'

‘Until it happens and we can put up some sort of resistance—save lives!'

‘You're asking a lot.'

‘To achieve a lot.'

She'd half expected Nigel Fellowes to be lurking outside the communications room, which seemed to have become his habit, and was glad that he wasn't there as she left. It had started to sleet heavily as she hurried across the parking lot, and with Fellowes in mind she remembered his initial warning of winter's arrival when October turned into November.

Her cell phone sounded as she reached her rental car. Irvine said, ‘Graham in an hour: something we didn't expect. And the conference linkup is at three. What did Monkton say?'

‘That he'd think about it. But he didn't forbid it. What about the computers and flash drives?'

‘Nothing.'

*   *   *

‘The son of a bitch is denying any knowledge or involvement, of course,' said Conrad Graham. ‘I'll push it as far as I can, make sure every goddamned person on the Senate intelligence committee hears what he tried to do. Bowyer will survive until the next president'—Graham snapped his fingers—‘then good-bye, Frederick fucking Bowyer. And until then the leash will be short enough to strangle him.'

‘I never doubted Harry Packer for a moment,' admitted Irvine.

‘You didn't have cause to,' Sally pointed out. ‘It was he who wouldn't co-operate with the FBI and instead blew the whistle to NSA security.'

‘He put himself in the position to be compromised … blackmailed,' said Irvine. ‘He'll be out.'

‘Bradley won't.' Graham smiled in anticipation. ‘He should be, sure. But I'm going to keep that little cocksucker in his little coop, and I'm going to refuse a resignation or any application for premature retirement, and I'm going to have monitored every single move he makes, up to and including every time he takes a leak.'

‘Do you think it could have been Bradley—or someone in the FBI—who put that surveillance on us?'

Graham shrugged. ‘Could be. Who knows? You think you're still being tailed?'

‘No, as a matter of fact I don't.' Sally hadn't bothered to check that morning or for two or three days, or nights, prior to that. She hadn't thought about Nigel Fellowes's warning of being targeted, either.

‘Now let's hear about this cockamamy attack theory of yours,' demanded Graham.

*   *   *

The preliminary damage assessment arrived from the National Security Agency an hour before the televised conference linkup. It was separated into two sections. In the first, the potential harm of Smartman's sideways intrusion into the Creech commanding officer's computer was described as an incalculable disaster. Intelligence information held on the desktop included the identity of all civilian suppliers and contractors to the base, making them potential terrorist targets; forward-planning proposals against Al Qaeda and jihadist training camps in Mali, Yemen, and Somalia; allied-country over-flight co-operation; and intended drone and pilot capability at both Creech and Waddington over the following six months. The contact list had the restricted e-mail addresses—some containing the unlisted or security-restricted telephone numbers—of top-echelon officers at the Pentagon and the British Ministry of Defence. The second, much smaller section was devoted specifically to the failed Fort Meade attempt to isolate the Smartman botnet. The cutout laptop would have been the self-destruct trigger for the desktop, but the forensic examiners believed its destruction programme had a reverse function if the desktop were swept first, which had been the case. Destruction had been absolute, in both machines, leaving no electronic fingerprints. It had taken maximum volume enhancement to obtain audibility from the indistinct sounds from Ismail al Aswamy's receding image. Even then the sound was difficult to distinguish. It sounded like the repetition of a single English word: the most likely was
conquest,
but that was not definitive.

The NSA also included two successful interceptions over the previous twenty-four hours. The transliteration of one from Kermani read,
A promise is a cloud; fulfillment is rain.
Anis's post was decoded as
Better a thousand enemies outside the tent than one within.

*   *   *

Once again Sally divided her attention, listening to—and analyzing—the exchanges between England and the Nevada air base, but at the same time assessing what she'd speed-read from NSA, seeking anything to support her insistence that Creech and Waddington remain on high alert. But she couldn't find it. She thought Anis's thousand-enemies post could refer to the Smartman hacking—further derision of the hacker still serving on the base—but Sally accepted that suggestion would be overwhelmed by the Creech commander's assurance to Irvine's previous day's prompt from John Poulter that every serviceman's background had thoroughly been cleared. And there was nothing she could utilize from the minimal NSA report on the two infected machines.

‘I have already notified the Pentagon of the gravity of the loss,' the Creech commander was telling London. ‘And having now learned the seriousness, I imagine you'd like to terminate this discussion to do the same with your Defence Ministry.'

David Monkton took the question. ‘We haven't discussed the armed forces disposition at both bases.'

No immediate response came from either base. One finally came from an undesignated wing commander at Waddington. ‘What's to discuss? It wasn't ever going to be a physical attack. They've achieved a victory that's going to take us months, years, to recover from, and we've wasted hundreds of thousands on a pointless military exercise that we've got today to start standing down.'

‘Don't!' declared Sally, hoping the strength of her voice would disguise the plea. ‘They have achieved a victory. But they haven't stopped. There will be an attack. And if the military is stood down, their second, public victory will be the destruction of both bases from which their most feared and hated weapon, drones, are deployed.'

‘How do you know this!' demanded the American base commander.

Sally breathed in deeply. ‘It's my assessment, my judgment, from monitoring from an Arab mind-set every decrypted terrorist message since this jihad began.'

‘Assessment!' echoed the wing commander disbelievingly, looking to those on either side to share his bemusement. ‘I was told you were a brilliant intelligence officer, but now I learn you're really a witch: someone who reads the runes.'

‘My officer was responsible for preventing what would have potentially resulted in serious nuclear contamination over a considerable area of England. And was the first to realize—and prove—that we were confronting a full-scale jihad,' said Monkton defensively. ‘She has a unique ability to interpret and anticipate and should be listened to, not mocked. If the decision is to stand down Creech, I will recommend my government maintain a substantial force at Waddington.'

‘I am trying to prevent another incalculable disaster,' said Sally, hearing the despair in her own voice.

‘Lady,' said the American, unmoved by Monkton's intrusion, ‘we've all had a hell of a time; now we're suffering the strain. It's over now.' He scrambled through the printouts. ‘Here's what the guy told us himself: conquest. That's what this was, his conquest. He won. We lost.'

‘No!' said Sally in abrupt realization, close to sniggering. ‘That's not it, not it at all. And I know when it's going to happen.'

‘What the hell are you talking about now!' demanded the man.

‘I'm talking about 1979. November fourth, 1979, when Iranian students took over your embassy in Tehran and for 444 humiliating days held Americans hostages. Which Iran called the conquest of the American spy den.'

‘That's exactly what they called it,' said Irvine, although more in confusion than confirmation.