Black List (5 page)

All he knew for sure was that Sinclair’s car had come off the road and there was no sign of his body. They could have killed him, but then they would never know how much he’d managed to uncover. It would surely have made more sense to capture him and keep him alive for questioning.

Given the horror stories of torture and interrogation he’d heard over the years, Alex couldn’t rightly say whether that was preferable to death, but the mere possibility that his friend might still be alive kindled a spark of hope within him. And already he was beginning to see a possible way out.

They could interrogate him forever, but Sinclair couldn’t give them what they wanted; he’d made sure of that when he mailed the memory stick to Alex. The information they needed so badly was sitting now in the pocket of his jeans. He alone possessed the secrets that could mean the difference between life and death.

He wondered, would they be willing to trade Sinclair for it? More to the point, could Alex actually broker such a trade and expect to get away with it?

A warning message on screen told him he only had ten minutes of his allotted time left before his session expired. That was enough to jolt him out of his chaotic thoughts.

Before he went any further, he needed to know what was on that memory stick. This was all for nothing if it didn’t contain anything of value.

Retrieving the stick from his pocket, he removed the little plastic cap protecting the pin connector. ‘All right, you little bastard,’ he said quietly. ‘Let’s see what you’re all about.’

With that, he inserted the memory stick into his terminal’s USB port and waited while the machine processed its contents.

It was mid afternoon in Virginia, and technical specialist Lewis Santiago was halfway through what had so far been a busy shift at the Information Operations Centre. As part of the highly secretive organisation responsible for maintaining the integrity of the CIA’s computer network, he rarely found himself with time to kill.

Today alone he had processed four requests for elevated user privileges, two potential security threats and one panicked intern who had lost her access card.

Not exactly the stuff of legend, he thought with a wry smile. In fact, anyone fond of conspiracy thrillers would have been quite disappointed by the reality of the place that served as the nerve centre of the CIA’s cyber security division. There were no massive wall-mounted television screens crowded with information, no rows of supercomputers covered with flashing lights, no sinister-looking men in suits surveying the operation from overhead offices.

In reality, the place was a fairly normal-looking workspace within the CIA’s vast headquarters building. Three rows of eight desks partially walled off for privacy, a collection of smaller offices and meeting rooms along one wall, and a kitchen area in one corner with really bad instant coffee. This could have been any generic office space anywhere on earth.

The only difference was in the work they did here.

He sighed and took a sip of tea, allowing himself a few moments of quiet before moving on to his next task. The cheap coffee in here made him jittery and agitated, and those were two things that didn’t go well with a desk job like this.

He was just about to open a new work request to begin an audit of inactive user identities when suddenly an alert box popped up on his screen. Santiago paused, taken aback by the warning.

Such alerts only flashed up if a major system alert had been triggered. Quickly scanning the details of the warning, his eyes opened wider at the realisation of what he was seeing.

The D stood for Disavowed, meaning that the user ID in question had been removed from the Agency’s system, while the number that followed referred to the level of urgency. In this case, level 1 represented the highest possible level of severity. So high that even he wasn’t permitted to view the user’s former identity.

Never in his six years on the job had Santiago encountered a level 1 breach.

Straight away he hit the Assistance Required button – better known as the panic button – next to his computer terminal. This would place a priority call through to his supervisor asking him to come to his desk immediately.

As the automated system went to work, Santiago turned his attention back to the warning message, bringing up a trace program to track down the source of the breach.

Whatever Alex had been expecting to find hidden away within the memory stick, this certainly wasn’t it. Rather than reports of classified missions, blueprints for some top-secret new jet fighter or photographs of the president murdering his secretary, what he instead found himself staring at was page after page of computer code.

Clearly he was looking at some kind of program in its most elemental form. But for what?

He had no idea as to its purpose, and he certainly wasn’t going to discover it in the few minutes remaining on his online session here. To have any hope of understanding it, he would need time to pick apart the code, trawl through it and run it in a controlled environment.

None of which he was able to do here.

‘What the hell have you given me, Arran?’ he asked, staring at the screen.

It took all of thirty seconds for Brad Yorke, the senior officer in the room, to reach Santiago’s terminal.

‘What have you got?’ he asked, his tone caught somewhere between concern and irritation at having to abandon his own work and hightail it over here. The fact that he was a good thirty pounds overweight probably hadn’t helped his mood.

‘It’s a D1 access alert, sir,’ Santiago reported, pausing only long enough to glance up at his supervisor. ‘Happened less than a minute ago. We’re running a trace right now.’

That was enough to cut through whatever reservations Yorke might have had. ‘Show me the user ID,’ he said, leaning in closer to view the monitor.

‘The ID’s locked down.’ Turning around, Santiago brought up the ID, which displayed as nothing more than an 8-digit code number. ‘This is all I’ve got.’

Straight away Yorke’s eyes went wide.

‘Shit.’ Straightening up, he raised his voice to address the rest of the room. ‘All right, everyone, I want you to drop whatever you’re doing and listen up. We’ve got a high-level disavowed ID that’s just gone active. Santiago’s running a trace right now, and I want him backed up to the fullest extent. All other tasks are to be placed on hold until further notice. From now until I say otherwise, finding whoever’s trying to use this ID is the first, last and only priority for everyone in this room. Get on it.’

As the tempo of work in the room increased, Yorke turned his attention back to Santiago. ‘How are you doing, son?’

‘Trace program’s active,’ the young man said, too absorbed in his work to look away from the screen now. ‘It’s coming from an unmasked IP address. United Kingdom, south of England...’ He paused as a dialogue box popped up, informing him the trace had completed. ‘Yes. Looks like it’s coming from an internet cafe in central London.’

‘Can you get me the identity of the user?’

Santiago shook his head. ‘There are eight sub-terminals on that network. Could be any one of them.’

Yorke thought about that for a moment. ‘Okay, contact British security services and have them vector local police units to the scene. Tell them to lock down the entire cafe if they have to.’

Santiago stared at him in shock. ‘Sir?’

‘Just get on it. If they give you any shit, tell them it’s on our authority,’ Yorke said over his shoulder, as he fished a cell phone from his pocket and quickly dialled a number. It was answered with typical brisk efficiency.

‘This is section leader Brad Yorke in network security,’ he began. ‘Put me through to Deputy Director Cain’s office immediately.’

So absorbed was he in the mysterious computer program, Alex almost jumped with fright at the sound of a voice from behind.

‘Oi, mate.’

Reaching down, Alex yanked the memory stick out of the port and spun around to find himself looking up at a fleshy middle-aged face that he’d never seen before. The man, whoever he was, was wearing a heavy leather jacket spotted with raindrops from outside, his buzz-cut greying hair sticking up like the bristles of a paintbrush. He was looking down at Alex with a mixture of curiosity and faint suspicion, particularly in light of his sudden removal of the memory stick.

‘Not interrupting somethin’, am I?’ he asked, speaking in a thick cockney accent that even Alex had to strain to understand. ‘You havin’ a butchers at the ladies, eh?’

Alex blinked, struggling to bring his mind up to speed with this bizarre turn of events. ‘No, nothing like that. I was just looking at… Sorry, what can I do for you?’

‘You can take this off me hands.’ With that, he reached into his pocket and held out a cell phone to Alex. It was a cheap prepaid burner; the kind of thing available everywhere from supermarkets to convenience stores for £20 or less. ‘Consider it a gift.’

Alex frowned. ‘From who? You?’

The man’s broad mouth split into a nicotine-stained grin. ‘No offence, my young friend, but you ain’t exactly my type. Know what I mean? Some bird outside asked me to give you this.’

‘A woman?’ Alex repeated. ‘Who was she?’

‘Secret admirer, maybe? I dunno, mate. And to be honest, I couldn’t give a monkey’s toss. But she paid me a tenner for the privilege, so here’s your phone.’ He nodded to the session timer at the top right of Alex’s computer monitor, which had by now counted down to zero. ‘Looks like you’re out of time.’

Saying nothing more, he turned away and ambled back out of the cafe, returning to his normal life as if nothing had happened. Within a couple of days he’d have forgotten the encounter even took place.

For Alex however, it was about to change his life forever.

The room was a hive of activity now as technicians and analysts hurried from terminal to terminal, shouting instructions and requests for more information across the office. Their voices mingled with the click of computer keys and the bleep of phones as work was hastily rerouted to other areas, tasks reprioritized and attention focussed on their new mission. They were in crisis mode now, all of the formidable resources that this room commanded being brought to bear against a single objective.

Yorke surveyed the organized chaos around him, his pulse racing as he pondered whether or not it would be enough to get the job done. As senior department head, their hunt for the mysterious perpetrator trying to use a disavowed Agency identity was his responsibility. Failure would likely have dire consequences for his career.

‘Where are we on British security?’ he called out. ‘Are they moving yet?’

‘They’re scrambling their field teams now, but it’ll take a few minutes to get them moving,’ one of his subordinates reported, covering her phone with one hand so she could speak. ‘Local police have been informed and are converging on the scene. They’ll form a perimeter before security service agents move in.’

All of which would take time to organise, not to mention the fact that it was virtually impossible to lock down even a single block in a densely packed city like London. ‘What about our own field agents?’

It was the turn of a balding, slender East Asian man to respond. ‘No good, sir. Our nearest ground teams are at the US embassy. It’ll take at least twenty minutes for them to be on the scene.’

‘Fuck,’ Yorke said under his breath. ‘Air assets?’

‘The Brits won’t let us fly drones over their airspace. We’re checking with the National Reconnaissance Office to find out if any of our satellites are over the area, but no word yet.’

As if in response to the growing tension in the office, the secure door leading from the corridor outside beeped once as a card was swiped through its electronic reader, then swung open to reveal a man whose appearance briefly halted all conversation.

Most of the technicians working there had only encountered Marcus Cain, the Deputy Director of the CIA, in passing, perhaps seeing him from a distance entering some high-level briefing or leaving the headquarters building flanked by security personnel. He was aloof and enigmatic, almost a mythical force amongst the Agency’s rank and file staff. Most of the people in that room had never so much as spoken to him, never mind had to go about their jobs with him standing over them. The fact he was here now only reinforced the gravity of the situation.

Taking a breath to calm himself, Yorke took a step forward to greet him. ‘Director Cain, it’s an honour to have you here.’

Cain neglected to shake his hand. ‘Cut to the facts. What do we know so far?’ he asked, his voice as crisp and precise as his tailor-made suit.

‘Yes, sir.’ Yorke cleared his throat, trying to hide his embarrassment. ‘Approximately ten minutes ago we picked up an alert that a disavowed Agency ID had just gone active. We’ve traced the source to an internet cafe in central London.’

‘And what are we doing about it?’

‘British security service is vectoring in ground units, plus local police are sealing off the area.’

‘Police?’ Cain fixed him with a sharp look. ‘You mean, beat cops who talk to each other on unencrypted radios? Who just about anyone with a fifty dollar police scanner could overhear?’

Yorke could practically feel himself wilting under the man’s intense gaze. Only now did he see the folly of his actions. ‘I’m… Sir, I…’

‘You’re relieved of duty,’ Cain said, dismissing him with a single, disdainful look. This done, he raised his voice, addressing the room. ‘Everyone listen up. As of now, I’m in charge of this operation. Now, is there anyone in this room who knows what they’re doing?’

Reluctantly Santiago raised his hand. ‘Me, sir. I think I’ve got something.’

Cain was by his side within moments, leaving a stunned Yorke to contemplate what might well have been the end of his career. ‘Talk to me, son.’

‘Just hacked into the cafe’s payment system, sir. According to this, the last guy to log in paid for his session by credit card, right before the alert was triggered. Wasn’t hard to trace him once we had his card details.’ Opening a new window, Santiago brought up a copy of the man’s driving license. ‘Name’s Alex Yates. Used to be a freelance system tester, then he was convicted of computer hacking a few years back. He’s been quiet ever since, according to Scotland Yard.’ He coughed, suddenly very conscious that one of the most powerful men in the Agency was leaning over his workstation. ‘Of course, there’s no guarantee this is our guy. Could just be a coincidence.’

Cain glanced at him, his eyes daunting in their intensity. ‘If I believed in coincidences, I wouldn’t be in this job. Until we know otherwise, we consider young Mr Yates there a high value target. Circulate his details to all workstations and have them get to work. I want to know everything there is to know about him. Politics, education, employment, travel history, the works.’

‘On it, sir,’ Santiago replied.

Cain nodded, apparently satisfied with his performance for now. ‘Find his cell phone number and put a trace on it. And see if you can tie in with any security cameras in the area. London’s the most heavily monitored city in Europe, so let’s use it. I want this locked down.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Santiago resisted the urge to reach up and wipe the sweat from his brow. His head was already spinning at the stream of orders he’d just been issued.

Cain was about to turn away, then thought better of it. ‘Oh, one more thing. Make sure the Brits send in armed response units. Believe me, they’ll need them.’