‘I hereby state categorically that, despite the involvement of US citizens, the mission was not sanctioned by myself or the US government. Indeed, I promise that we had no prior knowledge that such an attack would be carried out, or was even being planned.
‘I would like answers as much as the next person, and offer all the assistance I can to our allies across the Atlantic. I am all too aware of the recent escalation of events between Russia and China and wish for us to avoid such a confrontation ourselves. On behalf of the American people, I therefore offer my apologies for the apparent involvement of our citizens in the affair.
‘I am sure we will manage to salvage relationships, and I promise to do everything within my power to help.
‘Thank you for your time, and rest assured we will keep you posted on our progress. God bless you all.’
As the reporter took over once more, Cole finally switched off the ignition and exited the car. He needed to learn more, but couldn’t do it sitting in a stolen car in the middle of a busy parking lot.
Cole didn’t think that President Abrams herself would have been involved. He knew her to a certain extent, having served as part of her protective detail back when she was a Senator on her way up, and he was in DEVGRU. She had been visiting Iraq on a fact-finding mission for the Senate Intelligence Committee, and as she was regarded as a high-level target, she had been assigned a four-man contingent from SEAL Team Six for her time in-country.
It was a good job too, as there had been an attempt — albeit amateurish — on her life, with a two-man attack on her armoured 4 × 4 on the last day of her visit. The two other SEALs in the back-up car didn’t even have time to react before Cole’s partner had braked, put the car into reverse and pulled a J-turn on the dusty road, whilst Cole leant out of the window and put two bullets in each man’s head.
The Senator had been frightened but impressed, putting Cole and his partner forward for the Bronze Star. She had even spoken at his funeral years later, just before she was starting to get touted as a possible future presidential nominee. Cole had never known whether the speech she gave had been genuine, or just calculated to look good for the troops.
The time he had spent with her in Iraq had given Cole a good impression of her however, and so in spite of his cynicism, he liked to think she was genuine. She had been extremely incisive and intelligent, Cole remembered, never asking the usual inane questions asked by most politicians. She seemed to have a better handle on the situation there than most, and was a definite realist. He had even started to like her, as behind the ruthless efficiency there was the genuine warmth of a true human being. He had been glad when she had been picked as nominee for her party, and been even happier when she had won. He knew what a battle it had been for her to be taken seriously, as sexism was still rife throughout not only the government, but the country as a whole. The fact that her victory had been a landslide indicated that she was indeed a very special woman.
Cole therefore thought that what President Abrams had said in her statement was probably true, although he was realistic enough to know that it could also be total bullshit. At the very least though, elements of the US government had helped orchestrate the attack — Abrams had admitted that much — and such paramilitary operations were the sole preserve of the CIA’s Clandestine Service, headed until very recently by William Crozier, the very same man that Hansard had ordered Cole to assassinate.
Finding onward transportation was going to have to wait until he found out just what the hell was going on.
61
Within the hour, Cole was sitting in front of a computer monitor, a strong black coffee steaming in a mug beside him.
He had not gone straight to one of the upmarket cyber cafes that were prevalent in the modern, glass and steel city centre — they were too easy to monitor. Instead, he had asked around before finally being directed to an establishment based in what looked liked somebody’s living room, secreted away down a narrow back alley. It was set up like any other internet café, just a little more utilitarian — work benches and trestle tables for the equipment, coffee coming in thick-handled mugs from the kitchen.
The client base was also decidedly different from that of more conventional establishments. Instead of smart, suited executive-types, the customers here were from the underground German cyber-Goth counter-culture, all leather, tattoos and body piercings. Such an environment meant that security here was good, though. Not foolproof, of course, but good enough for a public access venue. The people who came here wished to live ‘off the grid’, without their actions being monitored too closely by the security services.
The technology was state of the art, and the data security was first-class. Cole knew that the NSA would still be able to access any of it, of course, but they would have to be looking in the first place. All in all though, it was as good a place as Cole could hope to find in such a short space of time.
Ironically, it was the NSA that had trained him to do what he was now doing — hacking into the CIA’s own internal database. The National Security Agency was the foremost electronic communications intelligence organization on the planet, and was where Hansard had sent Cole when he had first joined the Systems Research Group.
Because agents of the SRG had to plan their own missions with minimal official help, it was important that every man and woman was capable of accessing information from a wide range of sources. The NSA had therefore taught Cole everything there was to know about systems security, including how to keep his own communications secure, as well as how to penetrate the security of others.
He had used this training many times over the intervening years, and could be considered to be something of an expert in the field. By piggybacking remotely onto the massive computing power of his home system back in the Caymans, breaking past the firewalls protecting the CIA’s mainframe was still complicated, but accomplished within just twenty minutes of firing up the computer.
The trouble now was the sheer mass of data available to him. He instigated a simple search program and inserted it into the CIA files, and within seconds the search returned items of definite interest.
First of all there was the information that was publicly available, and Cole immediately started downloading it to a pen drive that he had bought from a store on his way to the café.
He then found the classified documents he knew would hold the real information he needed, which mainly seemed to be reports sent between James Dorrell, the Director of Central Intelligence, and Harry Trencher, the head of the CIA’s internal affairs department. It seemed that Dorrell had authorized an investigation into the attack the day after it had happened; it had obviously taken the news media several days to catch up.
From the classified files, it seemed that several months ago a man called Paul Richmond, a newbie at the Special Projects section of the CIA’s Clandestine Service, had been seconded directly to William Crozier.
Crozier had selected Richmond for a special assignment, choosing him due his fluency in both Cantonese and Mandarin. He was sent around the country, liasing with immigration officials and interviewing illegal immigrants that were being held in detention. He had been told to specifically seek out men of Chinese origin, preferably with some prior military training, and test them for physical, mental and psychological aptitudes. He was then to choose the thirty most promising candidates, men who would be willing to perform a ‘service’ for the government, in exchange for citizenship of the United States.