Frederick Forsyth - The Kill List

“Mr. Dardari? Surely not.”

“No. The Preacher launches his hate campaign out of the Middle East. We have pretty much proof his London-based helper is your client. That is what has brought me across the Atlantic.”

Steve Bamping continued to stare at the eleven dead faces.

“Good God,” he muttered. “So what do you want?”

Firth told him.

“Is this authorized?”

“At the cabinet level,” said Firth. “And, no, I do not have the Home Secretary’s signature on a piece of paper to say so. But if you wish to talk with the director general of MI5, I can give you his direct-line number.”

Bamping shook his head. He had already seen Firth’s personal identification as an officer of 5’s anti-terrorist division.

“Not one word of this gets out,” he said.

“Not from either of us,” said Firth. “Under any circumstances whatsoever.”

The system installed at Pelham Crescent was from the Gold Menu. Every door and every window was fitted with invisible-ray-based alarms linked to the central computer. But the owner himself would enter only by the front door when the system was activated.

The front door appeared normal, with a Bramah lock operable with a key. When the door opened with the alarm system on, a bleeper would begin to sound. It would not alert anyone for thirty seconds. Then it would shut off but trigger a silent alarm at the Daedalus emergency center. They would alert the police and send their own van.

But to confuse any prospective burglar who might wish to chance his luck, the bleeper would sound from a cupboard in one direction, while the computer was in a completely different direction. The householder would have thirty seconds to go to the right cupboard, reveal the computer and punch a six-digit code into the illuminated panel. That gave millions of computations. Only someone knowing the right one could stop the bleeper in less than thirty seconds and prevent activation.

If he made a mistake and the thirty seconds elapsed, there was a phone, and a four-figure call would put him through to the center. He would then have to recite his personal, memorized pin number to cancel the alarm. One wrong number would tell the center he was under duress, and despite the courtesy of the response, the “Armed intruder on premises” procedure would be followed.

There were two further precautions. Invisible rays across reception rooms and stairwells would trigger silent alarms if broken, but their turn-off switch was very small and tucked away behind the computer. Even with a pistol pointed at his head, the threatened householder did not need to deactivate the ray beams.

Finally, a hidden camera behind a pin-sized hole covered the entire hall and was never switched off. From any point in the world, Mr. Dardari could dial a phone number that would stream his own hallway onto his iPhone.

But, as Mr. Bamping later explained to his client with extreme apologies, even high-technology systems occasionally malfunction. When a false alarm was registered while Mr. Dardari was in London but not at home, he had to be summoned and was not pleased. The Daedalus team was apologetic, the Metropolitan Police very courteous. He was mollified, and agreed a technician should put the minor fault right.

He let them in, saw them start in the computer cupboard, became bored and went into the sitting room to mix himself a cocktail.

When the two technicians, both from MI5’s computer specialist office, reported to him, he put down his drink and agreed with lofty amusement to a test run. He went out, then let himself in. The bleeper sounded. He went to the cupboard and silenced it. To make sure, he stood in the hall and dialed his own spy camera. On his screen he saw himself and the two technicians in the middle of his hall. He thanked them and they left. Two days later, he also left, but for a week in Karachi.

The trouble with computer-based systems is that the computer controls everything. If the computer “goes rogue,” it is not only useless, it collaborates with the enemy.

When they came, the MI5 team did not use the hoary device of the gas company truck or the telephone van. Neighbors might know the man next door had gone for a while. They came at two in the morning in dead silence, dark clothes and rubber shoes. Even the streetlights failed for a few minutes. They were through the door in seconds, and not a light went on up and down the crescent.

The leading man quickly deactivated the alarm, reached behind the box and killed the infrared rays. A few more taps on the computer panel and it told the camera to freeze on a shot of the hall entirely empty and the camera obeyed. Mr. Dardari could phone in from the Punjab and he would see an empty hall. In fact, he was still airborne.

There were four this time and they worked fast. Tiny microphones and cameras were installed in the three most important rooms: sitting, dining and study. When they were done, it was still pitch-black outside. A voice in the earpiece of the team leader confirmed that the street was empty, and they left unseen.

The only remaining problem was the Pakistani businessman’s personal computer. It had gone with him. But he was back in six days, and two days after that he went out for a black-tie dinner. The third visit was the shortest of all. The computer was on his desk.

The hard drive was removed and inserted into a drive duplicator known by the technicians as the box. Mr. Dardari’s hard disk went into one side of the box and a blank into the other. It took forty-four minutes for the entire database to be sucked out and “imaged” into the duplicate, then put back without leaving any trace. So much for the past.

A USB stick, or universal serial bus, or memory stick, was inserted and the computer turned on. Then the malware was fed in, instructing the computer to, in future, monitor every keystroke pressed, and the same for every e-mail coming in. This data would then be passed to the Security Service’s own listening computer, which would log every time the Pakistani used his computer. And he would not notice a thing.

The Tracker was happily prepared to concede that the MI5 people were good. He knew that the stolen material would also go to a doughnut-shaped building outside the Gloucestershire town of Cheltenham, home of the Government Communications HQ, the British equivalent of Fort Meade. There cryptographers would study the back file to see if it was in clear or in code. If the latter, the code would have to be broken. Between them, the two bodies of aces should be able to lay the Pakistani’s life bare.

But there was something else he wanted, and his hosts had no objection. It was that both the harvest of past transmissions and all future keystrokes be passed to a young man hunched over his machine in a half-dark attic in Centerville. He had special instructions that needed to go to only Ariel.

The first information was very quick. There was not the slightest doubt Mustafa Dardari was in constant contact with the computer at the canning warehouse in Kismayo, Somalia. He was exchanging information and warnings with the Troll and he was the personal cyberrepresentative of the Preacher.

Meanwhile, the code breakers were seeking to discover exactly what he had said and what the Troll had said to him.

Agent Opal kept watch on the warehouse for a week before his sleep-deprived vigil was rewarded. It was evening when the gate swung open. What emerged was not an empty delivery truck but a pickup truck, old and battered, with a cab and an open back. This is the standard vehicle for both halves of Somalia, north and south. When the back is fitted with half a dozen clan fighters clustered around a machine gun, it is called a technical. The one that passed down the street into which Opal was peering at through his crack was empty, and with just a driver at the wheel.