Brute Force (17 page)

'Not a problem any more, old son. Do you have yours handy?'

I handed it over.

Brendan waved at Lynn. 'And does your friend have a shot of himself looking like—' he glanced down at a scrappy bit of A4 – 'like Mr Adrian William Letts?'

He took the selection of Woolies' photo-booth pictures from Lynn and gave them the once-over. 'And so he does, thank you. Now, Exhibit A.' He beamed at my passport as if he had just taken hold of yet another new grandchild. 'Supposedly the very pinnacle of travel documentation, brought out after 9/11 to satisfy the US State Department's demands. But in its unseemly haste to dance to their tune, the Passport Agency failed to introduce adequate security measures.'

He might have been the world's oldest man, and the most minging, but he was both an artist and craftsman. Even his language and his facial expressions changed once he got into full flow. 'They say there's a secure microchip in here. But weak encryption, plus lack of basic radio shielding, has produced a chip that can be read by electronic eavesdroppers.'

He grinned. 'Some of my ill-intentioned ilk struggled, but it took me just two weeks to figure out how to clone it. The authorities didn't exactly make it hard for me. They posted the standards for e-passports on several websites – including the International Civil Aviation Organization, the United Nations body that developed the standard.'

He opened the passport. 'Inside, as you see, is a laminated page containing the holder's picture, passport number, name, nationality, sex, signature, date and place of birth, and the document's issue and expiry date. Nothing special so far.

'But at the bottom of the page are two lines of printed numbers and letters, which can be read by a computer when the passport is swiped at the MRZ – the Machine Readable Zone – at the immigration desk.'

He flipped it over. 'The RFID, the Radio Frequency Identification microchip, is right here, surrounded by a coil of copper-coloured wire.'

He shook his head in disbelief. 'Governments claim the new biometric chips can only be read over a distance of two centimetres, but I'm reliably informed those in British passports can be read from over a metre away. I don't know anyone who's done that yet, but we've contacted chips at thirty centimetres. That's twelve inches in old money.

'Me and Leena have a day out at Heathrow now and again with the reader in her handbag. You can buy one off the internet for two hundred quid. It takes around four seconds to suck out the information and Bob's your uncle. So there's no more need to chat up strange men in bars . . .'

Brendan giggled away to himself as he handed back my passport and cracked open another packet of his beloved HobNobs. Lynn suddenly looked more animated than he had done all day. 'What's in the chip that's so worthwhile getting at?'

'Ah, there are three important files. One contains an electronic copy of the printed information on the passport's photo page. The second holds the electronic image of the holder. The third is a security device which checks that the previous two files haven't been accessed and altered.

'The government says the biometric chips are protected by what they call an advanced digital encryption technique. In other words, without the MRZ key code it is impossible to steal the passport holder's details if you do not have their travel document.

'They're talking bollocks, of course.' He laughed so hard that flecks of HobNob flew out of his mouth to join the rest of the shit on the carpet. 'The first big flaw is that someone like me can try to access the chip as many times as he likes until he cracks the MRZ code, unlike, say, putting a pin number into an ATM machine, where the security system refuses access after three wrong attempts.

'The second flaw is that there are easily identifiable recurring patterns in the MRZ key codes. Bizarrely, the ICAO suggested that the key needed to access the data on the chips should be comprised of the passport number, the holder's date of birth and the expiry date, in that order. That's about as secure as living in a bank vault but leaving the key under the mat.

'I got myself a helper, a young computer whiz-kid, and he developed a brute-force program that repeatedly tries different combinations of data to discover a password. The old programs could take months, but not any more. Those Indian fellers are smart, aren't they? Once Leena has sucked out six or seven passports from the tube I can crack the MRZ in a couple of days, four at the most.'

He chuckled away to himself. 'Brute force, now that's the way to crack a nut, eh, Nick?'

'Every time, Brendan.'

He got back into work mode. 'But remember, information cannot be added to a cloned chip, so anyone using it to make a counterfeit passport will have to use a picture that bears a reasonable resemblance to the previous owner. Sure, there are facial recognition systems in the chip – precise measurements of key points on your face and head – but they are not yet in operation. In any case, the technology throws up between 20 and 25 per cent false negatives or false positives. It won't be reliable for years to come.'

He beamed at Lynn. 'Adrian's got the same hairstyle as your good self.'

He got back to his waffle. 'So it's down to the Mark 1 human eyeball at airports and such like. People have great difficulty matching faces to pictures, even trained immigration officials. That's why photographs have never been introduced on credit cards. As long as your friend here bears a fair resemblance to the person on the chip – or grows a beard – he'll get through a border post. Or your money back.' He laughed again, but we didn't get hit by Hob Nob shrapnel this time. 'The beauty of it is that nobody knows that their passport is being cloned. Nobody's reported their passport stolen. After all, they still have it.'

He stood up and held out a hand. 'So that'll be half now and the rest tomorrow morning . . .'

I peeled off the dollars. 'Jesus, Brendan. Money for old rope.'

He allowed himself another giggle. 'I know, son, I know. I only wish I was thirty years younger; I'd have such fun with all this new technology. I've just got into cloning those Oyster cards everyone seems to be using – piece of piss! You fellers want a couple?'

'No, we're OK, mate. Off tomorrow, remember?'

He pocketed the down payment and started rummaging about in his desk drawer. 'It gets better. You know the ID card scheme your Gordon Brown is so keen on? It'll use the same technology. So I'll have access to around fifty pieces of information about you: your name, age, all your addresses, your national insurance number and biometric details; everything a feller could possibly need.'

He pulled out a signature tablet, the type used in US stores to check signatures electronically.

'Now, Mr Letts. If you would just sign your name . . .'

48

Where to spend the night? I wouldn't put Brendan on the spot by asking if he had a spare room. Besides, I wanted us to have a reasonable chance of surviving the night. Nor could we use a hotel, or even a B&B. If we'd been spotted in the area, the Firm would have the police checking every spare bed within a one-mile radius. We had a lot of walking to do through residential streets, away from the cameras' gaze, until it was time to find somewhere to hide.

The Black Cat shopping centre down the road – well, I called it that anyway – was perfect. I'd hung about there for about nine hours once while the Irishman sorted out a few documents for me. It wouldn't be the most comfortable night Lynn had ever spent away from home, but at least it meant we'd drop off the face of the earth until Brendan had done his stuff.

We could evade surveillance only for so long. If it was the Firm after us, they'd have covered all the motorways and transport hubs. Those cameras would be in overdrive.

We walked for two hours or so and landed up in Honour Oak Park. We sat on a bench like two perverts and froze. At least the rain was holding off, and by about 4.30 it was getting dark. Soon I could see the stars and clouds of my own breath. It was going to be another sub-zero night.

'Time to go.'

We made our way back to Catford. The evening commute was in full swing, which was good for us. I got Lynn his first ever doner kebab and chips and he definitely didn't like it.

'Better get them down you; it's the only shop without a camera.'

I'd bought two each.

'They're horrible when they're cold. The grease . . .'

We sat on a bench the other side of the shopping centre, opposite a big black plastic cat draped over the welcome sign.

Lynn picked at his kebabs, then pushed them to one side, so I got them down my neck while he turned his attention to the chips and stewed tea.

Ten minutes later we headed outside. The car park was lit, but the recycling skips that supermarkets provide to make us all feel like we're saving the planet were in deep shadow. One of them was for clothes. I leant in and pulled them out by the armload.

'Insulation. You need more between you and the ground than you do on top.'

It was so dark here I could hardly see his face, even though real life continued not more than 100 metres away. Traffic ground its way along the street and people ran for buses.

The wind had picked up and we arranged the clothes as best we could to provide some sort of mattress. I kept my arms tight against my sides and pulled up my collar to conserve as much warmth as I could. If I had to move my head I'd turn my whole body. I didn't want the slightest breath of wind down my neck.

Lynn started shivering. He hadn't spent half his life being cold, wet and hungry like I had.

I gave him a nudge. 'Duff – was he really a source?'

'Yes.' Lynn sat up. 'We turned him in the early eighties. He was arrested by the French coming back from a Hezbollah training camp with a false passport. Duff was an idealist, but he was also a realist. He was staring down the barrel of a very long prison sentence. We could spring him. All he had to do was accept a golden handshake and give us the occasional little bit of information. Nothing major. Nothing life-threatening. Just gossip, really.'

Once he had taken that first step, there would have been no way back. The handlers would have started off slow, but the die was cast. He would have taken money from the British government. They'd have made it impossible for him to get out without a PIRA bullet in his head.

'Early eighties? So he was working for you at the time of the Tripoli job? I thought I'd never had so much int on a job – now I know why.'

'He'd got a bit stroppy by then, so we upped the ante. We said we'd kill his younger brother. Well, someone like you would.'

After that, Lynn said, Liam Duff became quite an asset. He had the ear of hard-bitten players who wouldn't have trusted their own grannies but seemed to take a shine to him.

'Why break cover after all this time? Missed you after your retirement, did he?'

Lynn wasn't going to bite. 'When I left the service, he was still in prison for his part in the Bahiti but was released early as part of the Good Friday Agreement. From what I've heard, the peace process unhinged him. He never forgave Isham and the others for what he saw as selling out. A bit ironic, considering what he'd been up to all those years and the fact it got him early release.'

'Who killed him?'

'That's the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.' He half shivered, half shrugged. 'Until you turned up, I'd have said the answer was obvious. Now I'm not so sure. PIRA insist it wasn't them, and we're supposed to believe them these days. There are plenty who think British security forces are still trying to undermine the peace accord . . .'

49

I lay in my pile of discarded clothes; they smelled like stale margarine. What a dickhead Duff was. Why expose yourself if you don't have to? Money and vanity are more dangerous than a box-cutter. Maybe he'd thought he had immunity in the aftermath of the Good Friday Agreement. Even a couple of years ago, he would have been found in a plastic bag on the Armagh border, leaking badly.

'You know anything more about how he was killed?'

'He got some close attention from an electric drill, and then he was shot.'

PIRA got the Black and Deckers out for at least fifty people it claimed were informers during the Troubles. Duff's disclosure came after they'd formally declared that they were abandoning violence. But maybe in his case they'd been prepared to make an exception.

Northern Ireland might be on the brink of a new era of peace, but someone had clearly decided that Duff wasn't going to live to see it. If he'd left Ireland he might still be alive: plenty of informers and double agents had been spirited away to start new lives abroad. By staying in Ireland, Duff had signed his own death warrant. He'd been living in a remote area of western Ireland, in a run-down cottage with no electricity or running water. But even in Donegal there is nowhere that anyone can completely hide themselves away, as I had very quickly found out.

I nodded. 'Plenty of people have that MO.'

'I really did think it might have been you. That maybe you still worked for the Firm – or perhaps had a few scores to settle of your own . . .'