Stealth, p.9
Stealth, page 9
‘Get what you wanted?’ asked Mitkin.
‘I did,’ said Yulian, grinning like a boy clutching an apple stolen from an orchard. ‘It won’t be anything like as developed as the real Gemini, but I could have blown the whole thing if I’d been greedy and tried to steal more. Still, what I did get will give us most of the basic Gemini functions.’
Though what Yulian had just told him wasn’t exactly what he had expected to hear, ‘most of the basic Gemini functions’ sounded good enough to Mitkin. As always, the proof that this was the case would be critical, and Mitkin was glad that the next phase was to provide just that – by trying out Yulian’s new quasi-Gemini on a real target.
14
Kings Lynn, North Norfolk
The taller of the two men held up his hand for quiet. Both, their heads and faces hidden by black balaclavas, were crouched, listening. They could hear the voices of their pursuers in the distance, shouting instructions to each other – mostly about where to look next. The voices faded, and the noise of running footsteps receded away into silence.
The taller man turned and found his face but inches from his companion’s, whose eyes were wide, unblinking through the slit in the helmet, his panic seeming to freeze them.
‘No one said nuffing about armed security,’ he whispered, still not blinking.
‘Maybe we’ve been set up,’ said the other. ‘One thing’s for certain, mate. The money for the job ain’t worth being shot at – we need to get the hell out of here. Follow me, I think I know a different way out.’
He peered around the corner of the corridor; seeing no one, he ran across it, and immediately turned down a short cul de sac towards an emergency fire exit at the end. The other followed him, also running quietly. The first, now sure he’d come the right way, gave his mate a thumbs-up. Both then pushed hard on the jammed exit door. Finally, it gave, and opened with a jarring noise. With some difficulty, the leader got out onto the lawn and paused, looking left and right along the building. He could see no one, so he ran, half-crouching, towards some low bushes some twenty-five feet from the door. Peering ahead from his new vantage point, he checked again.
Still no one in sight.
He beckoned to his mate. As soon as they were together again, huddled behind the scant cover, he put his hand up to his mouth.
‘I know where we are,’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘The holes I cut in the mesh fence are just to the right of the large post over there. It looks all clear to me. We don’t need to run now; I think we’ve lost them.’ His companion looked past him. Sure enough, there was just a short bit of open ground between them and the holes.
‘Once we’re through, we’ll be into the woods in no time and back to the car. Are you ready?’
The shorter man pulled off his balaclava; he looked younger than his twenty-four years. He nodded and wiped his hand across his dry mouth. ‘Ready,’ he whispered.
‘Okay. On the count of three, run over there behind me.’ The leader paused for a moment and then said, much louder, ‘One, two, three,’ and stepped out. Still stooping slightly, they hurried towards the fence.
They had covered less than half the distance when two shots rang out in quick succession. Both of the young men crumpled mid-stride, dead before they hit the ground. They had never stood a chance.
It took Detective Inspector Jack Howard more than an hour to get the first lot of statements from everyone at the power grid sub-station; the more information they gathered from each successive interviewee, the less sense it made.
The two young terrorists – as they were immediately branded – had clearly been here to cause the power failure. They had on them a map and detailed plans of the sub-station. They had cut their way into the station and gained access to the computer room where the ultimate controls for the electrical supply were situated. It had not taken long to find a small but specialised USB memory stick – inserted into one of the computer mainframes. This small device was immediately blamed for the hour-long cut in electricity supplies. Yet one of the power company’s own computer people checked it out further and said that it still didn’t explain what was preventing the computers from restarting; even later extensive diagnostics checks failed to explain why the computers were dead.
Yet more tests and further detective work showed that the two young men had been shot from the direction in which they were heading, both hit smack in the middle of their foreheads by a marksman outside the grounds.
‘Who the hell would kill them as they were leaving?’ said DI Howard, as much to himself as to the sergeant standing next to him. ‘It’s almost as though the people that sent them in to do the job didn’t want them to make it out again. Damn it, the shots came from right by their own car.’
Their discussion was cut short by the sub-station’s manager, Jim Forbes. ‘We had a call earlier from some people who said they could fix the mainframe computer, the one which our own chap can’t get restarted. And now there’s a couple of blokes arrived; they say they’re from the company that telephoned. Can I bring them in? I need to fix the bloody computer as quickly as possible; it’s getting dark and already we’ve had hundreds of irate calls about the power cut. And people have their evening meals and their bloody telly to watch and…’
‘Yes, let them in,’ said Howard. ‘Forensics have finished, and anyway I think we’ve got everything we can from here. We can do background checks on these two repair people later. Who cares as long as they can get the job done, and the lights, TVs and cookers can go back on?’
Forbes went back out to where the two men were standing by their van.
‘What company did you say you were from?’ Forbes asked one of the repairmen.
‘PowerPlus,’ said one. ‘As my boss said when he rang, we had a similar power failure in the next county. When he heard of your blackout, he thought he’d give a ring and offer some help.’
‘Okay. Thanks. Can you just get on with it as quickly as possible?’ said Forbes. ‘Just get the bloody thing up and running again.’
15
King’s Lynn, North Norfolk
The two repairmen from PowerPlus got to work immediately. From what appeared to be a brand-new van, they took just two laptops. They explained that these contained their company’s sophisticated computer diagnostics and software repair programmes. Forbes was suspicious but intrigued. His own IT people had spent a considerable amount of time without being able to find out what was wrong and, try as they might, had been unable to restart the computers.
He now watched as one of PowerPlus men plugged a laptop into the dead mainframe whilst the other, with his back turned to Forbes – and his laptop therefore hidden from view – tapped rapidly on his keyboard.
To Forbes’s astonishment, the mainframe sprang back into life in less than five minutes. Not only was this embarrassing for his own people, it seemed to him to be almost like a sting. How could these two have fixed it so quickly when his own people – who were no slouches with technology – had been baffled for several hours?
Though the population around King’s Lynn would soon forget all the inconveniences of the black-out, Forbes felt that he could not let matters rest. His company’s reputation was at stake. He noted the PowerPlus details and was told that an account would be sent to him from their head office in due course. Apart from Forbes’s continuing puzzlement and desire to find out more, matters might have rested there had it not been for the following day’s newspaper. Whilst Forbes was flipping through the main news pages on his way to the sports section, the word “PowerPlus” caught his eye in the business section.
There it was, the heading to an article: “PowerPlus bid approved”. He read on with growing conviction that his sub-station had been involved in some kind of plot, for it told of PowerPlus’s successful bid to get a foothold in the UK power marketplace. Forbes knew well that the UK power market was virtually closed to newcomers. So the more he read of PowerPlus’s successful entry into it, the more suspicious he became.
He read on further. The article went on to explain that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Freddy Briston, had launched a new initiative to encourage more supply companies into the country’s supply provision. The article explained that, having been driven into the measures by months of campaigning about rigged markets, power company near-monopolies and price fixing, the Chancellor had declared that this initiative would increase fair competition and soon reduce power charges to consumers.
Another article, tucked away in different section of the paper, remarked on the how fortuitous it was that PowerPlus had been able to come to the assistance of the national grid in King’s Lynn at the very moment that they had made an application to the Business Secretary for a licence to operate in the UK. The way both articles dealt with this angle finally convinced Forbes that he was right – there was a conspiracy somewhere here. He decided to telephone someone and say his piece. Though he thought this might prove embarrassing to the National Grid, he rang his superiors at head office.
He was encouraged. His story, and his conclusions that there might be a link between the King’s Lynn computer malfunction, the instant repair at the sub-station, and PowerPlus’s bid for a foothold in the UK power marketplace quickly gained traction. This was soon followed up at the National Grid’s senior management level and, although this kind of wild west business approach was unheard of in the world of UK power generation and distribution, both the Fraud Squad and the office of the Chancellor of the Exchequer were briefed on Forbes’s conspiracy theory.
Freddy Briston, anxious that his power initiative should not be tainted by scandal, asked the Fraud Squad to hold off their investigations for a couple of days, as he had a way of getting to the truth even quicker than they were likely to. Some opponents of Briston complained that this was gross interference by the Executive into the process of law, and the Fraud Squad agreed. Briston, furious at being thwarted, telephoned his old friend Angus Macrae.
‘I need someone to check this conspiracy theory out for me,’ said Briston. ‘And as your people are in the forefront of the latest technologies, and your man Wilder is with the leading industrial espionage company, could they get down there and check this out?’
‘Okay, I’ll get Wilder and our people onto it right away,’ said Macrae, and took down the particulars. These included the location, the manager’s name, the timings of the incident and so on. He was just thankful that Wilder was back from Rome and had sent his daughter back to her uncle and aunt in the States, and so could take over from here.
Macrae first contacted the professor at Craithe. He told him the whole story, and said that his going down to King’s Lynn would be a politically astute gesture; the professor agreed to go and to take his genius hacker Perry with him.
‘So long as Tom Wilder’s there as well,’ he added. ‘He can deal with any tricky political aspects, while Perry and I look into these conspiracy theories.’
‘That would be great, Prof,’ replied Macrae. ‘See if you can get to the root of it as fast as possible. I don’t want the government breathing down my neck – even if it’s in the form of an old friend of mine. Oh, and I’ve ordered the helicopter over from Glasgow. It will take the two of you direct from Craithe to King’s Lynn, and I’ll get Tom Wilder to meet you there.’
‘Fine, we’ll have it sorted in no time.’
Macrae telephoned Wilder at IPI and explained the situation.
‘Haven’t the police got a unit that would deal with a suspicious stoppage like this?’ asked Wilder.
‘There’s a potentially embarrassing political angle to this,’ explained Macrae. ‘The Chancellor of the Exchequer knows all about Gemini and is terrified that this might be a complex attack, as none of the people down there could fix it. These mysterious PowerPlus people just turned up. The Chancellor didn’t say why he was worried about this PowerPlus company, but before you go down to King’s Lynn, see if your people at IPI can find out a bit more about them, will you?’
‘I will, and if the budget will stretch, I’d like to take my old IPI colleague Jessie Marker on this assignment.’
‘As far as a Gemini-related investigation is concerned there’s no such thing as a budget,’ replied Macrae. ‘We need to do whatever it takes to establish that there’s no connection between this King’s Lynn incident and Gemini.’
‘Just so long as you understand that the two of us may have to stay on up there if there’s a hint of a Gemini-like attack – you know, nose around a bit,’ said Wilder.
‘Yes, It’s fishy. Who goes to King’s Lynn unless they have to – or are passing through on their way to the coast? So, do whatever you need to do and get back to me the moment you have anything – I’d like to get Freddy Briston’s interest in this incident and in Gemini shut down as quickly as possible. The last thing we need government calls to take over Gemini in the name of National Security.’ He spat out the phrase as though it were some kind of conspiracy itself.
Wilder and Jessie Marker met up at King’s Cross. They took a train north to King’s Lynn, a trip of an hour and a half or so. On the way, Wilder checked and found that the professor and Perry were there already.
The four of them met up at the sub-station and were greeted by Forbes. He now seemed embarrassed that his conspiracy theory had evoked such a wide response. While Perry and the professor got to work on the sub-station’s computers, Jessie Marker rang IPI to check on investigations into PowerPlus’s background and ownership.
The professor explained to Forbes what he and Perry were doing as they ran diagnostics on the mainframe. It did not take them long to establish that a quantum computer had been used and, to his horror, he found a Gemini-like footprint hidden away inside some of the computer’s activity logs.
It was at this point that the truth bore in on the professor. He got up from where he’d been kneeling to pick up a USB stick which had fallen out of the mainframe. He went back over to a desk near the mainframe and sat down at it. He put his head into his hands and the others looked on in astonishment as he sat here for a few moments before letting out a loud moan.
‘Are you all right, Prof?’ asked Wilder. ‘Had a funny turn?’
‘Oh Tom, what have I done?’ He ran his hands through his thinning white hair. Perry, Jessie and Forbes looked on anxiously, Forbes worried in case the professor was having a heart attack or a stroke.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Wider.
The professor let it all pour out. His long telephone conversation with his former protégé, Yulian, his allowing Yulian to copy some files across from Gemini to his machine in Cambridge.
‘And were you distracted at any point while you were supposed to be monitoring what Yulian was doing?’ asked Wilder. ‘At any time during which his computer was linked up to the Craithe machines?’
The professor let out a long sigh.
‘Oh God, yes,’ he replied, shaking his head. ‘Now that you mention it, there was another call. It seemed it was a wrong number or a mobile on a bad connection.’ He stopped for a moment as he gave this more thought. ‘Christ, what a fool I’ve been. Now Gemini is out in the open. We must track and destroy it. In the wrong hands, it could be…’
‘Did your young friend Yulian happen to mention who he was being employed by?’ interrupted Wilder.
‘No, when he said he was back in Cambridge again, I never really thought about it; I assumed he meant the University itself. How stupid of me, I never even asked. God, how careless can you get?’
‘Don’t make yourself ill with this, Prof,’ said Wilder, laying a hand on his shoulder. ‘We’ll get it sorted. What’s done is done; don’t beat yourself up about it.’ The professor looked back up at him, a look of despair on his pale, drawn face. ‘Look. With the best will in the world, we were never going to keep Gemini entirely to ourselves for ever, were we?’ said Wilder, smiling down at the Prof. ‘I’ll bet that they’ll only have a shell of the real thing in the little time they had while they were distracting you.’
‘Well, that’s certainly true,’ said the Prof, brightening a bit. ‘Though they’ve managed to use whatever they’ve got to shut this sub-station down. We must find them or…’
‘That’s enough, Prof,’ said Wilder, in a mock-stern tone. ‘Now you’re distracting me. Give me a minute to think about this.’
Shortly afterwards, he got out his mobile and rang Katya at Zorin’s place.
‘Hi Katya,’ he said. ‘How are you?’
The others could hear her excitedly talking at the other end.
‘Did Polichev ever pass on my message to him about what I overheard while I was hiding behind the curtain in Zorin’s office?’
‘No,’ said Wilder. ‘What was that about?’
Katya breathlessly told him all about the Russian President’s letter to Zorin, and the plans he had then discussed with Mitkin. The others watched as Wilder’s face lost some of its colour and he began to frown and shake his head. Eventually he thanked Katya for her help and told her that he’d be back in touch shortly.
‘They’re not wasting any time,’ said Wilder as he put his mobile down. ‘They’re on the move.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked the Prof.
‘Katya’s just told me a whole lot of stuff that was supposed to have been passed on to me by Rodchenko’s number two Pavel Polichev. I can see why he didn’t. Zorin and his righthand man Alexis Mitkin have moved.’
The others clearly didn’t get the full significance of this news.
‘They’ve gone, packed, taken big bags with them,’ said Wilder. ‘Unfortunately, Katya doesn’t know where they’ve gone to. She got back from lunch and shopping and the housekeeper told her she was welcome to stay as long as she wished but that Zorin and Mitkin had been called away on urgent business.’
