James Long - Sixth Column

‘MidEast.’

‘Israel. The friendly eye.’

‘What are you doing on this desk?’

‘This desk, we’re the wild cards,’ said Pacman, and he pushed his baseball cap back on his head. ‘Here’s the way it is. Normally we just strip the data, right? Strip all that raw data right outta the sky. Sieve it for anything with the right buzzwords, then we bird it back home. That’s where the clever guys get to listen to it. That works if they know who and what they want to listen to. Other times, maybe they have a suspicion, yeah? Maybe they have half an idea but no hard facts. So then they hand it to us and we go snooping, just dipping in and out. The world is my oyster and I’m telling you it’s one hell of a big, juicy oyster.’

He punched buttons. Scrolling numbers filled the screen. ‘Every international call going out right now.’ He punched more buttons. ‘You tell me a town, I got it. Tell me a company, a street, a house, I got it. Mobiles too, no problem.’

‘Every call?’

‘Anywhere this side of the world.’

‘You mean like national calls too? Inside the country?’

Pacman just looked at him. ‘How long you been here, kid? Five minutes here should be long enough to learn there are some questions you don’t ask.’

Menendez had that streetwise look that said he’d been a cheeky kid. ‘So, like if I was gonna take a stroll around the neighbourhood, I wouldn’t kinda happen to fall over any telecoms microwave towers close by or anything like that?’

Pacman was deadpan, or maybe mock deadpan. Even he wasn’t sure he knew which he was trying to be. ‘Towers? Yeah, sure. There’s one five miles away. Coincidence.’

‘Yeah. Weird – huh?’ There was a short silence. ‘Hey, Pacman?’

He knew what was coming. It was the question they always asked. ‘Yeah?’

‘All that stuff they give you. Like, about the people here? Is that all straight up?’

‘Listen, Al, you got your wife over here?’

‘Not yet awhile. She’s coming in a few weeks.’

‘Well, boy, you just keep your horny little dick locked away out of trouble. It’s no joke. What does it say? “No fraternization with foreign nationals.” You meet them out there, it’s a friendly hi howya doing, end of story.’

‘I seen that poster on the way in, the intruder one?’

‘“Beware Intruders. If you see these women hit the panic button”, that stuff?’

‘Yeah. One of those women looks kinda neat.’

Pacman just shook his head.

Menendez sighed. ‘Bum posting, huh?’

‘Hey, come on. It’s a plum. You just think – could have been Alaska.’ Then Pacman thought about the bleak, tiny houses staggered across the compound out there behind the wire in cramped blocks of four. Damp, cold, small rooms. He thought about the wind that howled down off the hills blowing over the barbecues and the kids’ slides. He thought about the rain that never seemed to stop, so that the short grass between the curves of houses was a bright green sponge. He thought about the boredom of the families on the base, the growing complaints of his wife that they never went anywhere and that there was nowhere to go. National Security Agency Field Station N82 was the pits. He hadn’t imagined England being like this.

‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘bum posting.’

There was a muted beep from the screen and a message box flashed. One of his watch list numbers was up.

‘OK,’ he said, ‘listen in on this,’ and he tossed Menendez the second pair of cans. It was brief and disappointing, a plummy English voice calling some garage to get his transmission fixed.

‘So what’s that all about?’

‘Piggyback. British security asked us to tape that number. We kind of like to know why so we listen out when it comes up. Load of crap so far.’

Menendez looked genuinely puzzled. ‘Why don’t they do it themselves?’

‘Hey, hold on there, buddy. You had the talk yet?’

‘Shoulda been this morning. Got cancelled. Rescheduled tomorrow.’

Pacman laughed. ‘Now I got it. Why don’t I give it you straight then you just might understand all the crap they hand out later.’

Menendez laughed. ‘Sounds good to me.’

Pacman took a look round and lowered his voice. ‘British security, people here say MI5. Ivy-league accents and nicely pressed shirts. We got this place with them, GCHQ Cheltenham?’ He put the stress on the ‘ham’.

‘Right.’

‘OK now, Cheltenham does a lotta the same things we do here, only not so well. But , if the Brits want to listen in on all those miles of tapes they record, then they got the same problem we got back home. They gotta get a warrant from their government, answer all kinds of questions. Very sensitive. So there’s an easy way.’

‘They ask us?’

‘You got it. Cuts both ways. Law says we want to listen in on a US citizen from US turf, we can’t do it. From here, no problem, or we can always ask the Brits if we need really clean hands. So it’s live and let live. They leave us alone.’

‘While we listen in on them from right here. Neat.’

‘That sort you out?’

‘Yeah. One thing. This place. Ramsgill Stray. That’s the code-name, right? Like Comfy Cobalt?’

Pacman grinned widely. ‘Shit, no. That’s the kinda dumb name they use round here. This is NSA Field Station N82, Ramsgill Stray, Blubberhouses Moor. I mean, Blubberhouses? Like you’d never sell a condo development with a name like that. Comfy Cobalt, that’s Edzell up in Scotland.’

‘Scotland’s like a separate country?’

Pacman thought. ‘Yeah, sort of.’ He really ought to take the time to find out one day.

‘Gotta go,’ said Menendez. ‘Appreciate the help.’

‘Come by at noon. I’m expecting a real fun call ’bout then.’

Left to himself, he went back to thinking about the bill for the Buick and whether Lanie would back him if he stopped Billy’s allowance. Then the pace of work speeded up and midday came quickly. He heard footsteps coming up behind him and began to turn to welcome Menendez back but the screen beeped. The call was two minutes early and it caught him halfway through changing parameters. He flipped the spare cans sideways for the man and scrambled to save the work on the screen before cutting in to the call.

Yeah. The familiar voice. ‘Get this,’ he hissed, ‘it’s the Prince,’ then he gave it his full concentration.

‘…after the weekend,’ said the voice in his cans. ‘Can’t wait, old girl. Just got to get shot of this bloody boring thing of Mummy’s. Tickets booked, I think the fellow said he’s put them under Dixon. I’ll tell you…’

Pacman was distracted by Menendez’s arm, which came into the corner of his field of vision, putting a Styrofoam cup of coffee down on the desk next to the keyboard.

‘No, no,’ he said, ‘didn’t they tell you? No drinks by the consoles. Spill it, you’re dead. A million bucks of damage. Only in the…’

He turned and stopped in his tracks. The face he was looking into wasn’t Mexican. The cans were clamped to the ears of a woman of maybe thirty, dressed in a faded cotton jacket, woollen leggings and muddy walking boots. She had a broad grin on her face as she looked at him.

The poster. He yanked the cord, tore the headset from her, turning to the squawk box as he did so to punch out security’s number.

‘Intruder!’ he yelled so that heads turned right down the row of desks, his heart pumping faster, ‘intruder alert. Help me, someone.’

There were fresh faces to meet on Monday morning. Johnny got a warm, welcome from Sam at the front desk and went up to the open-plan area of the office to find a positive gaggle of people there. It was a relief to see evidence of activity. In the old place, life had been structured and that had suited him. People had told you what to do, a bit like being in the services. It wasn’t that he had no initiative, it was just that whenever he was forced to exercise it, he would suddenly find the range of options rather terrifying and, as often as not, would settle on a course of action that everyone else would find somehow inappropriate.