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The Fox: by Frederick Forsyth.
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The story opens with a British style raid in small hours in a suburb, conducted quietly to the surprise of American pair in their midst, so much so no neighbours see or hear anything. Then the author jumps to the four airplanes crashing in one day in 2001, giving the reader a start wondering whether the quiet suburban house in England had some planner. No, the author races through the aftermath with succinctly packed information about security, electronic storing of information, and hackers, before returning to the English suburb of Luton.
Delightful beginning, with a hacking at the most serious database in U.S. without a trace. They call in the British and he discovers its sourace is in a suburb in Britain. Turns out it's one of the teenage sons of a respectable middle-class family.
And just when one thinks, oh, it's not like his other racy works, adrenaline pumping heart racing stories that go all over Europe with meticulously researched details, this is a delightful story about a child savant hacker in a quiet English suburb, well, you know Frederick Forsyth - he jumps to Archangel and gives the reader a skipped heartbeat, or a few.
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"‘This family, where are they now?’ he asked.
"‘This family, where are they now?’ he asked.
"‘At Latimer.’
"He was familiar with the small and picturesque village on the border of Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire. Just outside the village limits is an old manor, taken over by the government during the Second World War as a lodgement for captured senior German officers. They had lived in genteel surroundings and chatted among themselves out of sheer boredom. Every word had been recorded and the information had proved very useful. After 1945 the manor was retained and operated as a safe house for Eastern Bloc defectors of importance and as such was run by MI5. In that world the word ‘Latimer’ was enough."
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The conversation revolves around the possible hacker, and his need of a psychiatric examination by a professional. It does remind one of a film, Mercury Rising, where Bruce Willis protected an autistic savant little boy from a federal U.S. security machinery where Alec Baldwin was key to hunting the boy down. Wonder if this book came before, or do these things keep happening. The publication dates of the book are 2018 - 2020 for different editions, but the author doesn't plagiarise, and certainly not from Hollywood. So did he write the film and have a contract whereby he could publish his own book a couple of decades later? It probably wouldn't be exactly the same - after all, this one does take off well past the millennium - but then again, Jerome K Jerome wrote about what theatre does to the author's work, and Hollywood has been known to be worse if anything in that respect, going by what's written or said on film and television on the topic. (Yes, most filmmakers of Hindi film industry are worse, too, but let's not stray that far.)
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The boy had Asperger's syndrome, but Adrian was able to get him to converse on the relevant topic. Lucas explained that he'd helped by making it clear there were flaws.
The boy had Asperger's syndrome, but Adrian was able to get him to converse on the relevant topic. Lucas explained that he'd helped by making it clear there were flaws.
Adrian called the PM who agreed to send him to confer with POTUS at White House, for which he was given unobtrusive transport through and back.
" ... The POTUS sat ahead of him, facing the door, glowering behind the Resolute desk, the ornate carved-oak bureau cut from the timbers of the British warship HMS Resolute and presented by Queen Victoria to another president over a hundred years ago. Close to his right hand was a red button, not to summon a nuclear war but a succession of Diet Cokes."
Adrian heard the POTUS and pointed out that it was merely broken glass - the boy hadn't damaged or stolen anything. He had a suggestion.
"‘Would it work?’ asked the POTUS.
"‘Like so much in life, Mr President, we’ll never know if we don’t try.’
"‘You mentioned two purposes to your visit,’ said the Defense Secretary. ‘What was the second?’
"‘To try and cut a deal. I think we have all read The Art of the Deal.’
"He was referring to the President’s own book about the realities of business. The POTUS beamed. He could not get too much praise for what he regarded as his masterpiece.
"‘What deal?’ he asked.
"‘If we are allowed to go ahead with this’ – Sir Adrian gestured at his sheet of paper – ‘we will put him on the payroll. He signs the Official Secrets Act. We keep him in a sealed environment. Supervise his activities. And if it works, if there is an intel harvest, you share the product. All of it.’
"The Secretary of Defense interjected. ‘Mr President, we have not a shred of proof that this could ever work.’
"There was a deep silence. Then the big blond head rose and turned to the Attorney General.
"‘John, I’m going to go with it. Deep-six the extradition request. Not necessarily for ever. But we’ll give this a try.’"
Adrian returned and called his PM.
"It was nearly midnight and she was about to turn in, her bedside alarm set for 5 a.m. But she was sufficiently awake to give him the permissions he needed.
"And far away, close to Archangel, the sea ice was beginning to splinter."
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"In the aftermath of that visit to Washington things went well. From the press point of view, the story died because it had never existed, leaving those on the inside to continue repairing the damage at Fort Meade, installing a newer and better defensive system, while consideration in Britain was given to what the future held for the deeply troubled boy now known as the Fox.
"In Washington, the US kept her word and the request for extradition was quietly dropped, which made no ripples on the water because it had never been announced. But there was one downside.
"Working inside the Justice Department was a Russian agent, a low-level sleeper. It was a woman, one hundred per cent American but prepared to betray her country, like the long-imprisoned Aldrich Ames, for money.
"She noted the rescinding of the request to the British government for the extradition of a British youth for data-hacking and wrote a short report for her employers. She gave it no priority, but systems are systems and greed is greed. So she passed it on to her handler inside the Russian embassy, who passed it back to Moscow and thus to the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation, the SVR. There it was simply filed.
"Sir Adrian had his second conference with Mrs Graham, who was much relieved that there would be no long war in the courts with the USA and agreed with the latter part of his idea. This would involve Sir Adrian moving from Dorset to London at least for the duration. He was allocated a small grace-and-favour flat not far from Admiralty Arch and a workaday saloon car with a driver on twenty-four-hour call."
" ... Until his retirement as Deputy Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, he had continued to keep an eagle eye on the sprawling land east of Poland, Hungary and Slovakia.
"He knew the KGB had been split up under Gorbachev but did not fool himself it had ceased to exist. The Second Chief Directorate, the internal secret police, had become the FSB, but his career opponent had been the First Chief Directorate, targeted at the West. This had become the SVR, still based at Yasenevo, south-west of Moscow city, and he knew who now ran it."
Touch of The Neverending Story there, with a foreboding, about the sleeping Gmork waking up just as Atreyu is off on his Quest, sending a shiver down the reader's spine.
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Adrian visited Latimer, where they were settling each differently.
Adrian visited Latimer, where they were settling each differently.
"Dr Jeremy Hendricks had visited from the NCSC in Victoria, so that Luke could explain step by step how he had avoided all the firewalls and supposedly impenetrable access codes to infiltrate the NSA database at Fort Meade. He was still there when Sir Adrian arrived, so he was able to explain in layman’s language some of the complexities of the only world in which it seemed the boy could exist and which was a closed galaxy to the vast majority of the human race. Also Professor Simon Baron-Cohen had kindly visited from Cambridge for a four-hour seminar with Luke. He was now back at the university preparing a copious report on both Asperger’s syndrome in general and on how it affected Luke Jennings in particular."
Now, he insisted, they stick to their part of the bargain.
"What none of them knew was that they were crucial ingredients in the contents of the slip of paper that Adrian Weston had slipped to the President of the USA the previous day; the execution of his plan, now endorsed by two heads of government.
"He named it Operation Troy in tribute to Virgil, who in his classic Aeneid had described the ancient Greek deception of the wooden horse. He had in mind to create the greatest deception in the history of the cyber-world. But it all depended on the unusual brain of a diffident British teenager, the like of which had never been seen before."
He searched and found a satisfactory place to relocate Lucas - Chandler's Court in Warwickshire, as the author refers, but the description doesn't fit the location on Google maps. Perhaps the author mixed up two separate places? The parents wanted to separate, and Harold Jennings wished to relocate to N.Y., which Adrian arranged.
"There was a cab waiting in the forecourt of the manor. He left his family in the hallway, went outside and was gone to the airport.
"Sir Adrian, hearing this later that evening, presumed that this was the last he would hear of Harold Jennings. He was wrong."
Why does one get the feeling this is straight out of The Americans, and Harold is going to reconnect with mother Russia, informing them about Lucas, while Sue keeps an eye on the boy?
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"In a small apartment behind Admiralty Arch a phone rang. Sir Adrian picked it up. It was a breathless Dr Hendricks on the line.
"‘For the second time this year, I do not believe what I am seeing,’ he said. ‘He’s done it. It can’t be done, but the boy has done it. We are in. Inside GLONASS-K2. Five satellites. And here is the really weird thing. They have not even noticed the entry.’"
"Heading, as she was, to become the flagship of the Russian Pacific Fleet, the Admiral Nakhimov could easily have skirted the British Isles by keeping to the west of Ireland in deep, clear water and out of sight of land. But the Vozhd had clearly made a deliberate decision to insult the British by driving her straight down the North Sea and through the Strait of Dover, at twenty-two miles wide one of the most overcrowded sea passages in the world."
"At dawn she was opposite Felixstowe in Suffolk and she increased her power to optimum cruise. The Channel was narrowing, with Belgium coming into view to port. The radio waves were alive with the chatter of merchantmen in this traffic jam of a channel as the Russian mastodon broke all the rules.
"Ahead lay the narrowest part – the Strait of Dover – and she tucked close to the Essex and Kentish shore on the Goodwin Sands. Wise mariners avoid the Goodwins like the plague. They are so terribly shallow. But the computers were adamant. The Nakhimov would ease past them with plenty of sea room towards the French shore."
"In the pretty waterside town of Deal, separated from the just-invisible Goodwin Sands by a small lagoon of navigable water where local fishermen take blue mussels and peeler crabs, breakfasting citizens sat at their sea-facing windows, unaware of the hulking monster cruising towards them."
"At low tide, the soft, clinging sands of Goodwin are just visible as the Channel washes over them. At high tide, those sands are ten feet below the surface. The Admiral Nakhimov drew thirty-two feet. At 0900 hours GMT, the nuclear engines of the Admiral Nakhimov drove her 827 feet and 24,300 tons at warp speed on to the Goodwin Sands in front of the eyes of the world."
"As the Nakhimov finally came to a complete halt, command and control were restored to the onboard systems. Everything functioned perfectly. The engines went into full astern mode and the propellers responded, slowing to motionless and then starting to turn in the reverse direction. There are no rocks in the Goodwins, and the sand is soft, but it clings. The front half of the battlecruiser was deeply embedded, and she would not move. After half an hour of vain effort Captain Denisovich closed her down."
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"Forget democracy. It was a pretence and a sham, and the Russian people did not really want it anyway. The three pillars of power were the government with its secret police, mega-money and the criminal underworld. Form an alliance of these three and you could rule Russia for ever. So he did.
"Through the FSB, the renamed secret police, you could have anyone who got in your way arrested, charged, tried and convicted. That sort of power meant you would win any election, rigged if need be; it meant that the media would do and publish what they were told; and it meant that the Duma, the parliament, would pass any law you told it to. Throw in the armed forces, the police and the judiciary, and the country was yours.
"As for cornerstone two, tackling mega-money was easy. The angry ex-secret policeman may have seethed as he watched his country denuded of its natural assets and in its wake the emergence of a network of five hundred multimillionaire oligarchs, but he had no hesitation in joining them. Yevgeni Krilov knew he was in a room with the richest man in Russia, possibly the world. No one did a ruble’s worth of business in Russia without paying a percentage fee to the supreme boss, albeit through a complex network of shell companies and front men.
"And the third factor, the ruthless ‘thieves in law’; this alternative society had existed under the Tsars and had, effectively, run the labour camps, the fearsome Gulag, from within, right across the country. In the era of post-Communism, the Vori v Zakone had spread to establish large and lucrative branches in most cities of the developed world, and especially in New York and London. They were very useful for ‘wet work’, the obedient infliction of violence as and where needed. (The ‘wet’, of course, refers to human blood.)"
"‘It was not an accident or a technical malfunction. It was sabotage. That is very clear. Whoever did it – and my suspicions lie with our enemies in the UK – has inflicted a truly massive humiliation on our country. The entire planet is staring at our ship marooned on an English sandbank. There must be retribution. I am placing it in your hands.
"‘Your orders are three: Discover who it was. Trace that person or persons. Eliminate them. You may go.’
"Krilov had his orders. As the biggest tugs in the Russian navy and the maritime world were being assigned or chartered to proceed to the English Channel, he drove back to Yasenevo to begin a manhunt."
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Krilov contacted the sleeper, English name Burke.
Krilov contacted the sleeper, English name Burke.
"In separate cars, from the separate small hotels in which they were lodging, the three agents slipped into Luton two days later. In short – their instructions were: move fast."
They did. A looked cruised past house and saw the board for sale. B contacted the real estate agent and visited, and found a golf club in a cupboard under the stairs. C found the golf club that Harold was member of, chatted up a friend of his and stole his phone.
"When Agent C reported to Dmitri Volkov, he was able to be very helpful. If the hacker was the boy, he and his mother had definitely disappeared from Luton. But if anyone would know where they were, it would be the father. He was in New York, but the agent now had his mobile-phone number.
"The SVR has another chain of agents in New York City and, with modern tracing technology, a mobile-phone number is as good as an address. The colony of Russian gangsters in New York was duly contacted."
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Police patrolman found dead body of Harold Jennings in a dumpster and called detectives. They took him and examined and determined it was heart failure due to beating and terror. His watch, ring, money and wallet were missing, but tags on clothes said Jermyn street, London. He saw this was no ordinary mugging.
"When he had the pictures Detective Devlin ran them to three state agencies: Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known simply as ICE; the omnipresent Department of Homeland Security; and, of course, the Bureau, the FBI. It took a day, and it was facial-recognition technology that clinched it. In the Brownsville precinct house to which Detective Devlin was attached, it suddenly rained FBI. The dead man was a new arrival as a resident and was under the protection of the Bureau. This was going to be embarrassing. But not for Detective Devlin. It went way upstairs to the FBI offices in New York.
"Their records showed that Mr Harold Jennings had been granted permission to move to and settle in New York City and that the necessary and copious paperwork had been fast-tracked by the Bureau as a favour to the British Prime Minister, via Scotland Yard. The Yard had to be informed, with apologies."
Adrian informed Sue and sons, and she shed tears; she asked about body being brought back for burial, and for the gold Rolex watch she'd given him with inscription. He talked with the FBI detective in charge, who put out a BOLO for the watch.
"Sir Adrian was troubled by the New York incident. It was too coincidental. If Moscow had made a connection between the disaster of the Admiral Nakhimov and the United Kingdom, they had done so incredibly fast – that was worrying. He called the FBI in New York and asked to speak with the detective who had been assigned to the case.
"With the Bureau’s help, he had a long talk with Detective Devlin in Brooklyn, who was as helpful as he could be, which was not much. And there, for a week, the trail died."
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The day Harold Jennings was identified, tugs helped the Admiral Nakhimov back out of Goodwin sands.
"For ten days, the Admiral Nakhimov had been a tourist attraction. Enterprising owners of launches up and down the Kent coast had run trips out into that patch of safe water between the Goodwins and the shore known as the Downs. Visitors took millions of photos, usually of themselves standing, beaming, with the battlecruiser in the background."
The day Harold Jennings was identified, tugs helped the Admiral Nakhimov back out of Goodwin sands.
"For ten days, the Admiral Nakhimov had been a tourist attraction. Enterprising owners of launches up and down the Kent coast had run trips out into that patch of safe water between the Goodwins and the shore known as the Downs. Visitors took millions of photos, usually of themselves standing, beaming, with the battlecruiser in the background."
" ... She needed a hull examination. Once under way again, she turned north, back towards Sevmash, in perfect working order. For the Kent locals, the spectacle was over. That was not the view of the Kremlin.
"As so often with police inquiries, the break, when it came, was a fluke. A mugger was arrested and he was wearing an inscribed gold Rolex watch. And he was Russian."
He'd been roped in at the last moment, but after everything had gone well with the kidnapping, the man died with second punch, and their question about his son's whereabouts remained unanswered, he told them.
Adrian was relieved for the moment.
"More to the point was a nagging worry. How had the Russians ever heard the name Jennings or found the right Harold Jennings in a New York apartment 3,500 miles away? Somewhere – he had no idea where – there had been a leak.
"It was self-evident that Moscow would not take the global humiliation of her grounded battlecruiser as just a bit of bad luck. Even without traditional Russian paranoia, they would work out that their computers had been penetrated. Back-engineering on board the Nakhimov and in the Murmansk database would have proved there had been a hack, and a very successful one, so clever that it had gone unnoticed until too late. That would entail a massive inquiry. And Sir Adrian had a pretty clear suspicion as to whom it had been entrusted.
"That is one of the things about the aces of the intelligence world. Like chess players, they study one another. Outwitting rather than outshooting is the ideal. Shooting is for men in camouflage uniforms. Checkmate is more satisfying. Sir Adrian had worn the camo in the Paras and the dark suit in the Firm."
"It is reported that during the desert campaign in North Africa in the Second World War the British general Bernard Montgomery had spent hours in his caravan staring at a picture of his opponent, the German Erwin Rommel. He was trying to work out what his enemy would do next. Sir Adrian had kept a file on Yevgeni Krilov. It too contained a portrait. He went back to his ex-colleagues at Vauxhall Cross and was allowed, for old times’ sake, to sit in a closed room and study the Krilov file."
"Yevgeni Krilov took a large magnifying glass and studied the image at the centre of the aerial map. It showed a walled, forested estate known as Chandler’s Court."
"The British had discovered a secret weapon and they were prepared to use it with a ruthlessness he intended to match. It was not a piece of machinery. It was a human brain possessed by an autistic youth that could do the impossible. Like the cyber-scientists of Fort Meade, the Russians at Murmansk had presumed that the complexity of the firewall around the Murmansk database was impenetrable, and they had been proved wrong."
"After two days of cogitation Yevgeni Krilov decided he would use the bikers, an elite team drawn from the Night Wolves, all well travelled and all English-speaking."
Because, unlike the Novichok affair, this couldn't be proved as to who hired the assassins.
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Adrian trusted his intuition, and asked PM to avail additional security for Luke; he got DSF.
"Sir Adrian made a point of being there to meet them, and that also provided an opportunity to assess them. He liked what he saw. No one needed to tell him that the men of the Special Forces are called ‘special’ for a reason. Broadly speaking, they have a very high IQ level and multiple skill sets. Extreme physical fitness and mastery of a wide range of weaponry go without saying. Within the four-man units that form the basic components of the Regiment there is usually a linguist or two, a paramedic-level first-aider, an engineer/mechanic and an armourer."
"Two days were spent converting the immediate surrounds of the manor to the way Captain Williams wanted it. Bushes and shrubs were uprooted to create unbroken lawn around the walls of the building on all sides. This gave a fifty-yard-deep field of fire, should it be needed. In a thin strip of woodland nearest to the open grass, body-heat sensors were hung in the trees. They switched off in daylight but at night lights would glow on the console in the command room under the eaves. The brightness of the lights indicates the size of the heat source. The men watched, listened and waited, taking shifts through the days and nights. Of what went on in the computer centre, they had no idea. It was the principle of ‘need to know’."
Russians arrived and reconnoitred Chandler's Court. Adrian was informed immediately, and asked for orders. No prisoners, he communicated.
" ... Adrian was seething. The fact that his enemy, Krilov, knew about Chandler’s Court could mean only one thing – there had to be a second mole."
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"They returned; the Night Wolves came back the following night, and they were armed to the teeth. They thought they were taking on an undefended target. Their mission was to invade an old if sprawling house and eliminate a sleeping teenager in one of the bedrooms. Anyone else on that floor would also have to be taken down."
" ... They did not know that inside the manor red lights were flashing angrily on a console. And they did not know that thirteen sets of night-vision goggles were staring at them. And most of all, they did not know about the night-vision rifle sights. Worse, they had never heard of Loughgall."
They were shot dead silently, and removed to a mortuary. Their vehicle was discovered, disposed off, and traced. The man who'd hired it did not exist.
"At Yasenevo, Yevgeni Krilov waited in vain for news. In two days he would realize that his killers were not coming home. But he still had his ace. He would try again. He had to. The Vozhd would insist."
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Adrian knew there had to be a second mole, and since Chandler's Court was only known by name to the very few who were there when it was once mentioned, it was one in that meeting. He thought, and knew it had to be for money, not ideology. He asked around, and heard about a transaction made through a bank in Vaduz. He flew to meet the director by appointment, and was eventually left for a few minutes with a file.
Adrian knew there had to be a second mole, and since Chandler's Court was only known by name to the very few who were there when it was once mentioned, it was one in that meeting. He thought, and knew it had to be for money, not ideology. He asked around, and heard about a transaction made through a bank in Vaduz. He flew to meet the director by appointment, and was eventually left for a few minutes with a file.
On the way back he realised what was wrong with the cctv photograph - it was the wrong tie. They'd changed the head on the real photograph, but he'd known the actual man when he rowed for Eton, and the cricket tie was wrong. Both are summer sports, and no one can do both seriously, not enough to be on the team. The director had meanwhile called someone as soon as he'd left.
Adrian proceeded to plan next - his adversary would expect Luke to be moved, so stay put, but feint, and he chose a bunch of diverse locations for the diversion with different security.
"The four pairs of unexpected house guests arrived at the residences of their hosts within twenty-four hours and were made welcome. The four residences were a manor, a grange and two farms.
"All the houses were large and sprawling, set deep in the countryside, where a wandering stranger, let alone a foreigner on a scouting mission, would be noticeable. The soldiers installed themselves in their quarters, patrolled the surrounding territory and selected their watching points. In each case they chose an elevated eyrie to give a good overview of the grounds of the residence. Then, turn and turnabout, they mounted guard.
"Sir Adrian then picked four of those who had attended the crucial National Security Council meeting. ... "
"He wrote to each a very personal private letter with the envelope so marked that it would not be opened except by the hands of the man named on the front. After perusal it would be seen by not more than one other, a confidential private or filing secretary trusted with classified correspondence.
"He explained that there had been an incident at Chandler’s Court and he felt it wise to move the young cyber-hacker at the heart of Operation Troy to a new location. He then revealed the new location, but each one was different. For clarity, Weston identified them to himself as A, B, C and D."
The call came from the CO of the regiment at Credenhill, stationed at Persimmon Grange. Someone using field glasses to observe the house. He wanted instructions about disposal. Adrian told him to do nothing - he'd find them gone quick. Then he went to see the Home Secretary to ask who would have seen the letter. It was his secretary, Robert Thompson. Adrian went to his home across the river to see him. He lived alone, with a young daughter in school. She wasn't around.
"‘Why did you do it? Didn’t we pay you enough?’
"In reply Thompson slumped into an armchair and put his face in his hands.
"‘Jessica,’ he said."
"‘They have her,’ sobbed the man in the chair. ‘Snatched her on her way home from school. A voice on the phone. Threatening they would gang-rape her, strangle her … unless …’"
"He left the house in Battersea and walked home, back across the Thames to Whitehall and Admiralty Arch. He had spent a lifetime trying to avoid anger. It clouded judgement, defeated logic, obscured clarity. When things went wrong an intelligent man needed all three. But he was angry now.
"He had lost agents and grieved comrades who would never come home. He had been in hard, merciless places, but there were still rules. Children were out of bounds. Now Moscow had again decided to abandon all rules, as with the attack on long-retired Colonel Skripal."
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There was an accident.
" ... The unfortunate who had been driving far too fast was identified as Robert Thompson, a civil servant resident in London, where he also worked.
"Without the quiet influence that was brought to bear, the incident might not have hit the media, but it made the papers the following evening and the day after that. In fact it achieved more coverage on radio, TV and the papers than it might normally have merited. Such quiet influence is an aspect of British official life of which, like the iceberg, very little is ever observed."
"Sir Adrian had secured the fullest cooperation of both MI5 and GCHQ at Cheltenham."
Calls to certain numbers, unknown to owners of the phones, were tapped.
"Vinogradov was giving the orders, and they were simple. The operation is over, finished, cancelled. Get a message to your friends. Do not use any means of telecommunication. Drive personally to their location. Get rid of all the evidence – I mean, all of it – leave no trace and return home.
"Clearly, time was of the essence. Once Zogu reached the place his thugs were holding the girl, she would be killed."
Swansea had car details. Adrian called police.
"‘There is an Albanian gangster motoring out of his south London base. Destination unknown.’ He dictated the car details. ‘I have reason to believe that when he reaches his destination a child will be murdered. Can we intercept him?’
"‘Good God, we must.’
"London is ringed by the 117-mile-long M25 orbital motorway. It is constantly cruised by patrol cars but most of all it is surveyed by thousands of HADECS-3 speed-control cameras, centrally linked and computer-obedient. One of them got the Volvo on the southern arc of the motorway, heading for the Dartford tunnel under the Thames."
Various police cars, helicopters and unmarked police vehicles followed the Volvo in relay one taking over as another turned away.
"After two hours’ driving it was plain the Albanian was heading into Wales, specifically north Wales, one of the most sparsely occupied portions of the UK mainland."
"After two hours’ driving it was plain the Albanian was heading into Wales, specifically north Wales, one of the most sparsely occupied portions of the UK mainland."
They followed stealthily until it was obvious where Jessica must be held hostage; two of the soldiers took care of him away from the farmhouse. Then the team tackled the house.
"They saw the girl holding their colleague’s hand as she came tentatively down the stairs, taking them one by one. They looked up at her, and one said: ‘Jesus.’ If there had been any feeling for the men they had killed, it vaporized."
"At Credenhill they delivered Jessica straight to the medical unit. Two female troopers took over, fussing as the girl bathed and shampooed her hair. One of them emerged to tell the commanding officer:
"‘They didn’t touch her, you know. They threatened to, and leered at her every time they brought food. So just in time. She’s a clever girl. Head on her shoulders. She’ll need counselling, but she’ll recover.’"
Robert Thompson was brought by Adrian over to Credenhill and later offered a new life in New Zealand, for security.
"A month later Robert Thompson and Jessica left for that new life by the waters of Cook Strait."
The body used for the accident, Adrian asked around and discovered, had been that of a down and out Benjamin Drake, a soldier. He was given a proper military funeral with parents proud of the son.
"As the final note of the ‘Last Post’ drifted away, at the far end of the cemetery a single figure put away his field glasses. Sir Adrian climbed into his car and was driven back to London. There was a score to settle."
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Luke, meanwhile, accessed another database, under supervision.
Luke, meanwhile, accessed another database, under supervision.
" ... If Sir Adrian had his way and could persuade the Prime Minister, the access codes to the Iranian database would be shared with the state of Israel.
"But perhaps not entirely for free. The vast new natural gas field that had just been discovered off Israel’s western shore might enter into the conversation."
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Funny, do the authors have to follow the non-exising bl8nders of the political pretensions suitable to policies that speak democracy but are far better at dealing with juntas of various countries, whether dressed up in democracy overcoat or otherwise?
Forsyth, with all his intelligence and research visible in every book, surely knows its not Iran that threatens either West or Israel, and is certainly not the first to boast of a nuclear weapon aligned to a faith of couple of dozen or more nations in the UN?
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It gets more asinine.
It gets more asinine.
"Iran has lusted for many years to have an atomic bomb. The idea was first mooted under the Shah, who was deposed in 1979. By then, he had been talked out of it by his friend and protector the USA. Under the ayatollahs, there was no such influence.
"For many years, the technology was not the problem. A Pakistani scientist who had been at the heart of that country’s successful research into, and construction of, atomic bombs traitorously sold the data to Iran. The problem had long been acquiring a sufficiently large stock of weapons-grade uranium."
There was no "that country’s successful research", only a stolen blueprint by a scientist working in West - the guy disowned and treated shamefully, subsequently, while the said "that country" boasts of its missiles as those belonging to the one true religion, and her honest intellectual men and women have publicly acknowledged how pathetic the state of education generally has been in the country at every level, with most research being limited to "the" book.
"The ayatollahs have long decreed that the state of Israel, not endowed with oil fields but technologically extremely advanced, is destined to be wiped from the face of the Earth. ... "
Well, Israel is literally surrounded by countries sympathetic to that view, none more so than "that country" the immediate East neighbour of Iran along the Southern coast. And that neighbour with adjoining beaches along the Southern coast now for some years boasts of missiles whose range leaps well over her own coveted neighbour East along the ocean, which has been most frequently targeted aim of terrorism of the neighbour sandwiched between the two 'I' s. Since China or Burma are extremely unlikely targets of the neighbour of Iran, as Tarek Fatah explains, obviously it's Israel.
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Israel had detected a square huge building in Syria, discovered it was a nuclear reactor and destroyed it in a sortie.
"The destruction of the Cube did not concern Iran directly, but it taught a lesson. When the Iranians began a nuclear-bomb programme, they went deep underground, into a series of bomb-proof caverns. In these they began to purify uranium-235 to create a stock of bomb-grade uranium.
"It is known that there were two purification plants. The smaller, called Natanz, was inside a hollowed-out mountain in the north of the country. The far bigger one was called Fordow, deep under the desert, so far down as to be immune to the most powerful of deep-penetration bombs."
" ... the entire operation was controlled by a master computer, guided by a database so skilfully protected by layer after layer of firewall that only the on-site Iranian operators, armed with the access codes, could enter it. It was these impossible-to-obtain access codes that the teenager sitting beside Dr Hendricks at Chandler’s Court had secured."
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The codes were handed over to Israel embassy in London. The cyclotrons were destroyed, and the men just managed to escape.
" ... Twenty years of unrelenting hard work and expenditure had been wiped out in one catastrophic hour. ... "
"The Iranian disaster did not remain secret for long. The news could not be contained. Men, even scientists, who have been subjected to a traumatic experience, talk. They talk to their colleagues, those present and those who were not there. They tell their families. Word spread. It leaked into that worldwide community of scientists whose life’s work is to study, on behalf of their governments, the progress of others in the same field. What had happened at Fordow was too similar to the computer disaster at Murmansk.
"In the end, the enigma was not solved in Tehran, but in Moscow: Moscow knew who it was and where he was.
"Two days later the Russian ambassador in Tehran sought a private audience with the Supreme Leader. He bore a personal message from the Vozhd. It concerned an isolated manor house in the countryside of England and a teenage hacker who could do the impossible."
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Adrian received a hand delivered invitation, at his home of which address wasn't public knowledge, to meet Avi Hirsch at Israel embassy and called a colleague for validation of the person. Trinity college, good egg, he said.
"‘I am instructed to tell you that my government and my country are very grateful,’ said the Mossad bureau chief. Both knew he was referring to the donation of the access codes to the master computer at Fordow."
"‘I can tell you that, just over a week after the Fordow burn-out, the Russian ambassador had a private meeting with the Ayatollah Khamenei. Any ideas?’"
" ... Iran had suicide bombers, fanatics and professional killers at its disposal. Within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Pasdaran, was the inner kernel, the Al-Quds Brigade, which had killed generally and selectively all over the Middle East. Was Chandler’s Court out of reach? Would the Prime Minister permit another shoot-out on the peaceful green grass of Warwickshire?"
"‘Tell me, Avi, if there were one other highly secret Iranian organization, the contents of whose database your masters would value more than any other, which would it be? VAJA or FEDAT?’"
"Privately, Sir Adrian surmised that, whichever Tel Aviv chose, the other one would probably have been penetrated already by Unit 8200, tapping away at their keys under the Negev Desert outside Beer Sheva. Three days later he had his reply: FEDAT."
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"What the debriefed commandos had to report, eavesdropped by the young listeners of Unit 8200 under Beer Sheva, reached Hossein Taeb within an hour. He in turn reported to the Supreme Leader in his frugal apartment on Pasteur Street. There had been heavy loss of life among the commandos when the infidel Jews woke up and fired back. But they had been too late. The English boy was dead – there had been eyes-on identification by one of the Pasdaran survivors.
"This fiction was maintained in Israel. Jubilation would have leaked sooner or later. For the media based in Eilat, it was a big story – a clash between two rival criminal gangs on a beach outside the town in the middle of the night. Tourists were reassured; the gangsters had all been caught by the police, who had been tipped off and were waiting for them. Like most media stories, it lived and then it died. Tourists have the delightful habit of going home when their holiday is over. No one had even seen a body – they had all vanished before dawn.
"The warmest congratulations were offered to the six actors from the Israeli Film School, especially the lookalike youngster with his blond-dyed locks who had mastered his role as Luke Jennings. And also to the technical department of Spiro Films, who had created the six dummies which, when shot full of bullets, exploded into buckets of very real-looking blood.
"The former were also praised for maintaining their fluent English on the flight from Brize Norton to Ovda airport and to the villa. Even Motti had been convinced.
"There were celebrations in Tehran, which remained convinced that the destroyer of the Fordow centrifuges was at last rotting in the hell of infidels.
"In Moscow the Iranian ambassador asked for a personal reception with the Vozhd. He intimated that he had significant information to impart and that it should be directly to the ears of the master of the Kremlin. When they met it was the Russian who was initially sceptical. His mood turned to congratulations and pleasure when the Iranian diplomat disclosed that, during a putative holiday visit to Israel, the cyber-genius Luke Jennings had been assassinated by a group of Iranian commandos."
Yevgeni Krilov got a personal call from the Russian after the ambassador left. After the call, having accepted the congratulations with pleasure, Krilov opened the file on Adrian Weston.
"Was he back in harness? Everything that had recently gone wrong for Russia and her allies bore the hallmark of the man whose file in front of Krilov was an inch thick. And there was a photo, another shot snatched through a buttonhole camera at a diplomatic reception years earlier. His suspicion hardened into near-certainty. It had been Adrian Weston who had visited Fritsch at the Vaduz Bank – he had been photographed crossing the lobby, and the photo in the file was obviously of the same man. But he had clearly not swallowed the bait. Disaster had followed disaster. Krilov stared at the photo and began to have doubts about the Gulf of Eilat massacre."
" ... In the light of the FEDAT harvest, the yield from the archive raid on Shorabad paled to a fraction of what had been concealed. It caused uproar.
"The US had pulled out of the international treaty abrogating the economic sanctions against Iran. Most of the other parties to the treaty had objected to this. But they had not seen the contents of the FEDAT archive.
"In Jerusalem, a dead-letter drop in a wall behind a coffee shop was closed down, and in Tel Aviv a quiet arrest was made."
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PM discussed North Korea with Adrian over lunch at Chequers. He said North Korea was deluding them because of compliance of West.
"‘In 1938, we had MI6. The Americans had not yet founded the CIA. And the USA was immersed in isolationism. But our agents were active in Nazi Germany. They knew about the first concentration camps – Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald. We discovered what they were, where they were, what went on inside them. We reported back. No one wanted to know.
"‘We reported that Hitler was laying down the keels for warships that a peace-loving Germany would never need. Again, no one in London wanted to know. We discovered that new Messerschmitt fighters were rolling out at two a day. We reported this. Downing Street once again turned its back."
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A North Korean general managed to defect in a dinghy with help of a small fishing crew.
"‘Yes, Prime Minister.’
"‘There has been a development. You recall what we were talking about a couple of weeks ago? Well, it seems a four-star general of North Korea has defected to South Korea. Something to do with Kim’s missile programme.’"
"There was no point in telling even the PM how many hours he had spent with the best brains on North Korea that the Royal United Services Institute could furnish. He had listened to hours of briefings before settling on General Li Song-Rhee. Even then, it had been a long shot that the mastermind of the missile programme would even receive the phoney email, let alone believe it. Still, as they say, nothing ventured …
"It was Luke Jennings who, once again bewilderingly, had secured the access codes to the North Korean mobile-phone database. They were very obscure and heavily guarded and, when it came to cyberspace, the North Koreans were no beginners. Indeed, they were brilliant, constantly attacking the West with malware, Trojan horses and every trick in the book. But they were not an eighteen-year-old with Asperger’s syndrome."
"It was a North Korean defector, sequestered in a safe house under guard, who had composed the message. In 2013, Kim had ordered the arrest and execution of his uncle and mentor Jang Song Thaek, possibly the most powerful man in the state after himself, on trumped-up charges of treason. The mandarin was torn apart by heavy machine-gun fire. The message to General Li, anonymous but evidently from a friend inside the elite, warned him that this fate was planned and pending for him too.
"No, there was no need as yet to tell the PM all this, mused Weston as he sipped his arabica. Need to know, and all that. The Americans would take Li, of course. He would be crazy to stay in South Korea. A safe house close to the CIA at McLean would be safer and just as comfortable. Hours and hours of careful debriefing in the Korean language."
"It was on the second day that he revealed two things the West truly did not know. ... "
"His second revelation was that the inadequacy of Hwasong-15 was not the end of the line for the Korean nuclear programme. Deep beneath a secret mountain, unspotted by the outside world, was another cavern. Here, even as he spoke, its mighty successor, Hwasong-20, was being prepared. It would certainly carry their heaviest thermonuclear warhead to any destination on the surface of the world. All it lacked were the multi-stage engines, and these were due to be working and available at any time."
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Adrian met a specialist, professor Martin Dixon.
Adrian met a specialist, professor Martin Dixon.
"‘The North Korean regime’s appetite for nuclear weapons and missiles to carry them began over fifty years ago with the founding father, Kim Il-sung,’ he said. ‘After 1945, as a defeated Japan withdrew from the Korean peninsula, it was Joseph Stalin who personally selected the first Kim to create the communist state of North Korea and invade the South. Three years later, the Korean stalemate led to the permanent division of the peninsula.
"‘By the time Kim Il-sung died in 1994, he had created the world’s first communist dynasty and was able to hand over to his son, Kim Jong-il. He had also established a code of absolute worship of him and his family among a people propagandized, brainwashed and trained like puppets to adore him and never, ever, question his near-divinity. To do that he had sealed North Korea from all external influences, creating today’s hermit state."
" ... ‘The Koreans, North and South, are extremely intelligent people. The North cracked technical problem after problem, refining enough uranium-235 and then plutonium to create their own atomic and now thermonuclear weapons to have today reserves of both. Every penny of foreign exchange resources went on that quest.
"‘But it became plain that having an atomic bomb serves no purpose if you can only detonate it under your own backside. To be truly threatening, and thus to be kowtowed to, you have to be able to deliver and detonate it many miles away. They imported rocket technology at first and built a range of missiles they called Musudan. These could carry modest-sized bombs in their warheads, but only across limited distances.
"‘In the West, we watched them test the atom-bomb programme over and over again, always underground, until they had blasted huge holes all over the country. In parallel, the missile programme progressed from the Musudans to a new type of missile – much bigger payload, much longer range. As you know, these are called Hwasong.’"
"‘The USA could snuff out him and his regime by a first-strike onslaught, and so could his vast neighbour and patron, China. But both fear he would detonate enough thermonuclear devices to devastate the entire peninsula and much of north-eastern China. So … the constant indulgences, the elevation to world-class statesman."
Adrian went to Chandler's Court; he had access codes next morning.
"But Weston was worried about one thing more than any other. There would have to be an end to the clandestine unit at Chandler’s Court. As Alexander the Great wept when there were no more worlds to conquer, there would come a day when there were no more puzzles to crack – or at least not at government command.
"To crooks, Luke Jennings would be priceless – he could break into banks. But that must never happen. He could not be signed up to work in an office block with a hundred other colleagues – he was too fragile. Jeremy Hendricks might wish to remain his mentor, his professional adoptive father, but Operation Troy would end. What then for Luke? Weston was still consumed with worry on that score when he arrived back at Admiralty Arch."
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"... There was no thermonuclear warhead yet and the high-tensile steel doors to the sky were still in place.
"... There was no thermonuclear warhead yet and the high-tensile steel doors to the sky were still in place.
"But all complex systems have to be tested. It was during the testing that something went awry. In theory, there was nothing that could go wrong. Switching circuits on and off, ensuring that connections will not fail at the moment of need – these should not be hazardous.
"The blast tore the holy mountain apart. It made the deliberate explosions at Punggye-ri, so eagerly watched by the media and American observers, look like celebratory fireworks."
Meanwhile Adrian met an unusual protester who needed funding, and selected Stepanovich, a resident of Belgravia who was rich due to Russian platinum. Luke gave codes to his secret phone, which led to accessing his account at Panama. Adrian cleared it out.
" ... the departed fortune did not belong to Mr Stepanovich. He had been sheltering it for the Vory v Zakone. It was the Russian underworld’s cocaine money, and they have a reputation for being very sceptical of excuses when their wealth goes missing. Mr Stepanovich saved his life by repaying them, but the racehorses had to go."
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A meeting at Chequers discussed a matter between high level officials, ministers and experts.
"A team of Dutch scientists, after years of study, had concluded that there was no viable doubt that the Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 shot down over Ukraine in July 2014, with the loss of 283 passengers and 15 crew, had been downed quite deliberately by a Russian missile crew operating a Buk missile out of Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine.
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A meeting at Chequers discussed a matter between high level officials, ministers and experts.
"A team of Dutch scientists, after years of study, had concluded that there was no viable doubt that the Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 shot down over Ukraine in July 2014, with the loss of 283 passengers and 15 crew, had been downed quite deliberately by a Russian missile crew operating a Buk missile out of Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine.
"Intercepted radio chit-chat had confirmed those responsible were not Ukrainian rebels and knew perfectly well that their target was a civilian airliner. Most of the passengers were Dutch."
PM asked Adrian to report and he brought out a matter concerning LPG pipelines out of Russia via Turkey. He wrote to her, heard from her and went to Chandler's Court to proceed telling Luke about Krasnodar.
"When the faraway compressor exploded, no one heard a thing. But at the deepest point of the Black Sea, where K15 happened to be situated, the water is 7,200 feet deep and the ambient pressure more than any machine can stand.
"Through the fissures the seawater flooded in – saline, corrosive, powered by the insane strength of its own pressure. It forced itself down the pipeline, mile after mile, until every seal at either end had been closed."
Kremlin, having received the two reports, threw a fit.
"The Iranians had failed. Somewhere, that British cyber-genius was alive. The teenager who, in cyberspace, could do the impossible had not died in a villa outside Eilat. He sent for his spy chief, the head of the SVR."
"‘You failed,’ he said. ‘Your Night Wolves failed in England, and the Pasdaran failed at Eilat.’"
Krilov knew it was Adrian Weston and that he had no clue why his deception about Thompson hadn't worked, nor had kidnapping of the daughter. He asked what his boss wanted. Finish off the boy, he was told.
He thought of a sniper, Misha, known only by that name and not seen by many.
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Adrian sat and thought. His instinct hadn't been wrong. He knew Krilov would be ordered to kill Luke. They knew Chandler's Court. It was time to move him. He looked, and recalled a colleague of yore with a remote, large castle at Inverness. He met the colleague, and the castle was rented. It'd take a week for it to get ready for Luke. Meanwhile Adrian had another job for him.
Krilov called spetsnaz for Misha; he was explained his assignment, and shown photographs.
"Every sniper in Russia is steeped in the history of the great aces over the years and most especially that of Vassili Zaitsev. He had been trained from childhood by his father to bring down marauding wolves and became skilled in hiding in snowdrifts. In snow-blanketed Stalingrad through the winter of 1942 he slotted over 300 German soldiers, notably the German ace Major Erwin König."
Misha had better choices of weapons. His equipment was transported by diplomatic bag with lead lining to Russian embassy in London. He arrived with a Polish passport and was established in Staines. A scout looking for his spot at Chandler's Court noticed the van and followed it, and they got lucky. They knew where Jennings were moved to.
" ... However, tourists from the south visited the Highlands and the sleeper he was using as his scout would have to join them. The man was authorized immediately to purchase a camper van sufficient for two. That at least would avoid sudden hotel bookings in a landscape where strangers might be noticed.
"Two days later, the Rezident of the SVR had the package containing the sniper rifle delivered to Misha. The scout had introduced himself at the Staines rented flat and both scout and sniper set off for Inverness."
They drove on the roads through the Craigleven estate.
"Misha knew already where he would have to establish his invisible sniper nest: on the face of the mountain opposite the lawns and the bedroom windows three floors above them. Sooner or later, a gangling blond boy would appear at one of the windows … and die. Or he would join others on the lawns to take a coffee in the sun … and die."
"Misha ordered his fellow Russian to drive on, round the curves and out of sight of the castle. In a lay-by he stepped out of the camper van with his equipment and literally disappeared into the forest across the valley."
"He began to move silently through the forest towards the face of the mountain he knew overlooked the ravine facing the south wing of Castle Craigleven."
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"Captain Harry Williams of the Special Air Service Regiment was not a sniper, but he had been in combat and well trained on the Regiment’s preferred long-shot rifle, the Accuracy International AX50 with its Schmidt and Bender scope."
His team had been reduced to three, Adrian unaware that the move was noticed. Williams drove to Ainslie, village closest to Craigleven, went to the pub, joined a loner at the bar and ordered a fine Islay single malt each for both. The local guy was older, ex soldier and assessed Williams as the protection for the civilians who were guests of the laird.
"‘There’s another stranger just moved into the forest,’ he said conversationally. The soldier stiffened.
"‘A camper? Tourist? Birdwatcher?’
"Mackie slowly shook his head.
"In seconds Harry Williams was out of the bar, speaking into his mobile phone. The man at the other end was his sergeant.
"‘I want everyone away from the windows,’ he ordered. ‘All curtains drawn. All sides. I’ll be back shortly. We’re all on alert.’"
Mackie was the gamekeeper at the estate and knew the forest. It was a twig cut at slant, where it shouldn't except someone using for camouflage, that had told him. Williams enlisted him by asking his help in protecting the people. Mackie was up at dawn in forest next and a roe gave away the location of someone who shouldn't have been there.
Mackie spotted Misha helped by a squirrel, went away and called Williams giving him location of Misha. Williams saw him, and Misha died before he knew he was seen.
Luke meanwhile had got into the missile program of Pyongyang.
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Adrian thought, called Williams and issued instructions. A week later the British foreign secretary received the Russian ambassador standing, informed him they'd caught a Russian assassin who'd chosen to defect to U.S., and showed him the very undeniably Russian equipment of Misha. The ambassador could say nothing, except report to Kremlin. They sent men to bring Krilov.
Adrian thought, called Williams and issued instructions. A week later the British foreign secretary received the Russian ambassador standing, informed him they'd caught a Russian assassin who'd chosen to defect to U.S., and showed him the very undeniably Russian equipment of Misha. The ambassador could say nothing, except report to Kremlin. They sent men to bring Krilov.
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Luke slipped and fell while on a gentle hike with the guys, and was taken by helicopter to facilities, thence by plane to Edinburgh. The operation saved him in all but one respects, his uncanny ability to enter any firewall and procure access codes. Mrs Jennings and Williams decided to marry as the setup at Craigleven was dismantled, and she bought a house near his work from proceeds of the Luton home.
Adrian was given the last codes accessed by Luke. He passed them on before retiring.
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May 09, 2020 - 2020.
November 07, 2020 - November , 2020.
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May 09, 2020 - 2020.
November 07, 2020 - November , 2020.
Penguin
Random House
UK
Corgi Books
ISBN: 9781473560130
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