Ryan, Chris - Zero 22

‘What are the deepfakes?’

‘Video footage of the President’s political rivals meeting with known terror suspects. He has form, right? Smearing his rivals, any means necessary. But this takes it to the next level. The meetings are fakes. They take totally innocent footage of totally innocent meetings between the President’s rivals and ordinary folk, and they map the faces of terror suspects on to the images. It’s completely convincing. You wouldn’t know the difference. Even the top tech guys analysing the footage wouldn’t be able to tell it’s a deepfake. So, the Oval Office makes this footage public and the narrative writes itself. The liberals and left-wingers are hopelessly compromised, they’ll say. There’s an existential threat to the United States, they’ll say. It requires a change in the constitution to give the President a firm hand, they’ll say. You ever seen one of those goddamn rallies of his? Well I have, and trust me, he whips those people up. They get this idea in their head, they’ll never let it go. It’ll happen.’

‘I don’t get where the Russians come in,’ Danny said.

‘They made the deepfakes.’ It was Bethany who spoke, not the General. She was still looking straight ahead and her voice was emotionless. ‘When I was working at MI6, we knew about it. They’ve been on to the potential of deepfake technology for a long time now. It’s a natural extension of the way the Kremlin thinks. Fake news, electoral interference, social-media manipulation. We thought they were developing the technology for blackmail purposes. We were wrong.’

‘But why the Russians? Why would they be doing this?’

‘Isn’t it obvious? The President is their puppet. They can’t believe their luck. They’re pulling the strings of the man in the Oval Office. They want him in there as long as possible.’

‘Right,’ said the General. ‘And if I know the President – which I do, unfortunately – he’ll be quite certain this is all his great idea, and completely oblivious to the fact that he’s been totally played. And I guess I don’t need to tell you what a threat it is to global security to have a Russian stooge in the White House?’

‘No,’ Danny said. He was thinking of poisonings on the streets of the UK. He was thinking of the horrors he’d seen in Syria. He was thinking of the Wagner Group, and Turgenev. ‘You don’t have to tell me that.’

They were doing a steady thirty miles per hour along a northbound dual carriageway. The lights of Amman glowed all around them. The traffic was fluid and the dual carriageway well lit. He checked his mirrors, making a mental note of the cars surrounding them. Then he said, ‘The fragment of conversation between you and Poliakov that ended up with MI6 . . .’

‘Doctored to fit their narrative,’ the General said. ‘Look, I don’t know what MI6 and Hereford have been told, but the fact they sent you two to assassinate me means they’re playing you Brits as if they were the goddamn New York Philharmonic.’

‘It means they know you’re on to them.’

‘Not necessarily. He’s got other reasons to want me out of the way.’

‘What reasons?’

‘You think a coup like this happens by itself? Who does every tinpot dictator in every banana republic need on side before they make a power grab?’

And immediately it became clear. ‘The army,’ Danny said.

‘Right. And you know what? In the US military, the President is pretty popular. Talks the talk, finds the funding, and he’s developing a taste for battle. But he’s got one big pain in the ass.’

‘You?’

‘Me. Without my support, it’s hard for him to keep the military on side. He’d like to get rid of me, but I’m a tough guy to fire, even for him. He’d face a revolt from the joint chiefs for a start. I’ve been expecting some dirty tricks to oust me so he can install one of his own in my place. I was on the lookout for it. I didn’t expect this.’

‘And by making the British complicit in your assassination, it keeps us quiet if we ever find out what’s really going on.’

‘Like I said, New York Philharmonic. And if you fail to finish the job, the Wagner Group are on site to finish it for you, as you say. Thanks for dealing with those guys, by the way.’

I haven’t finished dealing with them, Danny wanted to say, but didn’t. Instead, he responded to the General’s acknowledgement with a curt ‘You’re welcome.’ He slowed down as they approached a large roundabout. Danny circled it three times, maintaining his vigilance of the vehicles around him, checking for trails. He saw none. He left the roundabout and accelerated back up to thirty. ‘So the fourth of July attacks happen and you go on CNN to say the President was behind them,’ he said. ‘You’ll get laughed out of town.’

‘Sure. Unless I have evidence.’

‘Do you?’

‘I have the footage. Before and after. The raw material and the deepfake. Look at it side by side, nobody’s going to be in any doubt about what’s going on.’

‘So you do what? Let the attacks happen? Let the President release the deepfakes and then out him?’ He couldn’t hide the distaste in his voice. ‘More collateral?’

‘No,’ the General said. ‘Military targets are one thing. Civilian targets, that’s a whole other can of worms.’

‘So what’s your tactic?’

‘A pre-emptive strike. I release the footage in advance. Use whatever weight my name and authority carry to accuse the President of planning a coup.’

‘But nobody’s going to believe you,’ Danny said. ‘The President will deny it. Straight out. It’ll give him an excuse to remove you from office. You’ll be totally discredited.’

‘Discredited? I’ll be more than discredited. I’ll be a laughing stock. Paranoid. A fantasist. It’ll be the end of my career. But it’ll stop him doing it, right? Guy can hardly deny the whole thing and then go through with it. And deep down, the man’s a coward. Trust me. I’ve sat in a room with him. Looked him in the eye. He’s a draft dodger. Spends his life blaming other people for his own mistakes. If he knows someone’s on to him, perhaps he’ll think twice before trying something like this again.’

They drove in silence for a minute.

‘I don’t believe you,’ Bethany said.

‘Well, sweetheart, I guess I’ll have to learn to live with it. I believe your guy here has his orders to extract me from Amman, so I suggest we—’

‘Why wait?’ Bethany interrupted him. ‘If you know the President’s been trying to oust you, why haven’t you released the footage already, while you’re still in office?’

‘Isn’t that obvious?’

‘Not to me.’

‘The peace conference,’ Danny said.

‘It’s a big deal,’ the General said. ‘The Turks and the Kurds keep knocking chunks out of each other, it destabilises the whole region.’

‘It’s destabilised anyway,’ Danny said.

‘Right. So any chance we have of calming tensions goes to the dogs if these peace talks fail. Like it or not, I can bring the warring factions to the table. I know the decision makers. I can appeal to their better natures. End of the day, peace doesn’t happen through military action. It happens round the table. It happens with handshakes, not mortars. You just need to get the right guys in the room. Better or worse, I’m one of those guys.’ The General looked out of the side window. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I was one of those guys. I guess they’re on their own now.’

There was silence as they drove on.

‘It’s what the Russians want,’ Danny said.

‘Huh?’ the General replied. His thoughts had obviously been elsewhere.

‘The Russians have been supporting the Syrian regime. The Syrians want the Kurds out of the way. So destabilising the peace process by taking you out – it’s what the Russians want.’