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A
“You asked to see me, sir?”
His codename was Control. Only a handful of people knew his real name, and even fewer his background. He was a plump, toad-like man, dressed with the immaculate good taste of the best class of public schoolboy. A well tailored suit, an inch of creamy white cuff, a regimental tie fastened with a brass pin. His hands were fleshy, his glistening nails bearing the unmistakeable signs of a recent manicure. A
“Thank you for coming to see me, Miss Thackeray,” Control said.
“Not a problem, sir.”
She tried to project a feeling of ease, but she did not find that simple to do. The occasion was not suited to that, for one, and the formality of the place bothered her. She had already made more concessions than she was comfortable with making: she had removed her earrings, scrubbed the black nail varnish from her fingers and borrowed a trouser suit and a shirt. And, of course, there was her hair. She had dyed it red over the weekend and she was damned if she was going to spend the night before this meeting changing it to something more … conservative.
There were limits.
“Everything I tell you this morning is beyond top secret — I’m sure that goes without saying?”
“It does”
“Very good. I’ll be as brief as I can be. Six months ago, one of our most valuable agents went AWOL. Have you read the file?”
“Yes — John Milton.”
“Indeed. It is our belief that Mr. Milton suffered a mental breakdown following an unsuccessful operation in France. The decision had been taken to bring him in for observation and treatment but, as one of our agents approached him for that purpose, he opened fire on him. A member of the public was killed and the agent was badly wounded. We suppressed that from the report for obvious reasons.”
“Yes.”
“Following those events, Milton has dropped off the grid. We tracked him north to Liverpool and our working assumption is that he either found work on a boat or stowed away on one. The trail went cold from there and we have seen neither hide nor hair of him since. That is a state of affairs that we ca
“You want me to find him.”
“We do. We’ve been working with your department for some time but, so far, with disappointing results. Your predecessor made no headway and so he has been reassigned and you are replacing him. I understand from your supervisor that you’re the best analyst that GCHQ has to offer.”
“No question.”
“You don’t suffer from false modesty, do you?”
“I don’t see the point in it.”
“You might come to wish you had been more circumspect because now I expect you to meet with more success.” He sipped at his cup of tea; A
“I have the file. Is there anything else I need to know?”
“You should be under no disillusions, here: John Milton has been trained to be totally invisible. His profession for ten years was to be a ghost. He has operated in some of the most inhospitable, dangerous places you can imagine — if he was not as good at this as he is, he would have been captured and killed years ago. He is not married, he has no children, he has no real friends. No ties, not to anyone or anything. It will not be an easy task to find him, but I must re-emphasise: he must be found. This could be the making of your career or” — he paused and spread his hands — “not. Do I make myself clear?”
The implication was very clear.
Find him, or else.
“You do,” she said.
19
It was early the next day when A
Most of the staff were dressed conservatively; the squares on their morning commute might have mistaken them for workers on their way in to the office. Suits and blouses, all very proper. But they would not have mistaken A
She followed the thoroughfare to the junction that, after another five minutes and a flight of stairs, led to the first floor SigInt Ops Centre where she had her desk. It was a busy, open-plan area, staffed by mathematicians, linguists and analysts scouring the internet for intel on terrorism, nuclear proliferation, energy security, military support, serious organised crime and counter-espionage in different regions. Computer engineers and software developers helped make it possible; the Tempora program alone, responsible for fibre-optic interceptors attached to sub-surface internet cabling, siphoned off 10 gigabits of information every second. Twenty-one petabytes a day. The Prism and Boundless Informant programmes added petabytes more. That huge, amorphous mass of data needed to be sorted and arranged. GCHQ’s gaping larders were stuffed full of data to be harvested by their algorithm profiles against a rainy day.
There were hackers, here, too. A small team of them, including A
Most of them had never considered a career in intelligence.
A
They had instructed her to get it.
And, as it turned out, it had been easy.
Thackeray was an anglicised name that she had adopted when she had moved to London. She was born A