The Cloud Collector by Brian Freemantle Read Free Book Online Page A

time while she waited for the desk assignment. She reminded the operations director that the leads to be immediately followed to the Cologne conduit were in the NSA’s initial communiqué and dictated every relevant detail to trace a passport in Roger Bennett’s name from the incompetently maintained Bradford crime file.
    â€˜This is going to take time,’ said Dodson.
    â€˜Time’s what we haven’t got,’ warned Sally, wondering if she was going to have anything to substantiate the exaggeration of connecting Bennett’s death with a terrorist threat at the end of the GCHQ examination.
    *   *   *
    Independent of each other Irvine and Singleton followed the same algorithm search that had partially defeated Barker, both double-checking their effort after their partial failure. Irvine decreed an assessment session. Marian provided fresh coffee.
    â€˜Let’s start from absolute basics,’ said Irvine. ‘It’s obviously algebraic.’
    â€˜Encrypted by someone or some group who’d know a search for its algorithm would be the first move if it were intercepted,’ agreed Barker.
    Singleton sighed. ‘Do we really have to be that basic! It’s an intelligence-generated encryption, from our equivalent in Iran. So they’ll be good, the best Tehran can find. They’ve been hit, here, but they don’t know how or by whom, except that Anacostia looks gang-related, not an attack by law enforcement: that’s our advantage. They wouldn’t expect our level of expertise. But they’ll still have put a lot of professional effort into protecting their traffic with cutouts and double or treble encryptions. We know from the partial Anacostia interception that they’re going ahead with whatever attack they’re planning. How many English letters can we reasonably get so far from the original Arabic?’
    â€˜Three,’ at once replied Marian, who’d maintained the tentative, insufficient deciphering.
    â€˜But they’re not positives,’ protested Barker. ‘They appear to work in some sections but not in others.’
    â€˜Multi-algorithms,’ declared Irvine. ‘The letter-to-number or symbol transference is limited, changing at intervals, either fixed or irregular.’
    â€˜I agree,’ said Singleton.
    â€˜It’s Facebook, not Twitter,’ Marian pointed out. ‘Even without being able to read it, I’d say from the length that it’s attack instructions.’
    â€˜I haven’t forgotten the urgency,’ said Irvine, recognizing the direction of the discussion.
    â€˜Akram’s not going to be able to contribute at this stage,’ predicted Singleton.
    â€˜You’re right,’ confirmed the tightly bearded man, entering the room after an hour at the random-number generator. ‘I’ve got some numbers for alphabetical substitution, but they fit in some parts but not in others.’
    James Bradley answered his phone on its first ring.
    â€˜We’ve got a problem,’ announced Irvine.
    â€˜Serious?’
    â€˜It could be.’
    *   *   *
    Sally Hanning’s concern deepened far more quickly than either she or Jeremy Dodson anticipated. Forty-five minutes after her short-tempered exchange with MI5 headquarters in London, the GCHQ official she only knew as John returned to her temporarily assigned office to announce that nothing remotely resembling a coded message had been deleted from the hard drive of Roger Bennett’s computer.
    â€˜Which is why it’s been so quick,’ said the man. ‘What has been deleted is inconsequential. Seems to have gambled a bit: dog- and horse-racing tips, stuff like that.’
    â€˜You’ve kept it all?’
    â€˜Of course. We’re running printouts right now, assuming you’d want to go through them.’
    â€˜I do,’ said Sally at once. She was sure she hadn’t