Abrams cleared her throat before speaking. ‘The Office of the Director of National Intelligence here in Washington has disseminated a full report this morning, detailing all that is presently known. All of you have a copy.’ She took a sip of water from the glass on the table in front of her, seeming to consider matters for a few short moments. ‘In essence, what we have is a group of people who happen to be from a specific Chinese ethnic group, utilising weapons and equipment known to be used by China and her allies. It certainly points a finger in the direction of the People’s Republic, but the evidence is circumstantial at best. Han Chinese are the largest ethnic group in China, and are also found all over the globe. And the weapons are available anywhere, from Afghanistan to America, to Europe itself. Thus far, we have no direct link between the PRC and the attackers. We’re working hard to identify the suspects and trace their movements prior to the attack, as well as tracing the origin of their equipment. But this sort of work takes time, as we all know.’
‘We do not have time!’ Danko bellowed. ‘We need to act, and act now!’ Once more, the giant fist slammed into the table.
Behind Abrams in the electronic communications room in the basement of White House West Wing, unseen by the projected images of the other participants of the conference call, Hansard smiled.
His report was getting exactly the reaction he had planned.
10
Just half an hour later, Cole was in his study, facing a wall of books that lined the solid mahogany shelves stretched from one side of the room to the other.
After receiving his telephone call, a recorded had voice simply announced ‘Please call your answer phone to retrieve your messages.’ The call forced Cole to immediately switch mindset. Although it was Christmas Day, dinner would just have to wait. He was being given a mission.
The recorded message had told him that he had an encrypted cipher to pick up, and the only time that ever happened was when his services were being called upon by his controller.
And so, instead of sitting down to Christmas dinner with his family, Cole found himself reaching for Volume IV of Churchill’s ‘The Second World War’ on the shelf directly in front of him. As he tilted the book off the shelf, a soft mechanical whirr emanated across the room as a section of the huge, solid bookcase retreated back into the wall before sliding away smoothly behind the rest. As the narrow stairway which wound its way down to the hidden basement was revealed, Cole found it hard to suppress a grin. It was terribly clichéd, he knew, but he loved it anyway. A lifetime of military training and secret intelligence work had still not jaded the excitement; inside, he was still the little boy reading his comic books and James Bond novels, dreaming of one day living that same peculiar lifestyle. It was an enthusiasm that had seen him through mission after mission, and that had allowed him to survive situations that would certainly have broken other men. He loved spending time with his family, of course; but only when the secret calls came did he once again realize that he needed the mission.
As he quickly descended the stairs, the bookcase slid shut behind him. At the bottom of the stairwell was a rather more stringent security measure than the cantilevered book — a ten-inch thick reinforced steel door. ‘Cole,’ he said as he approached it, the voice recognition software responding to his unique vocal pattern and sending an electronic message to the control panel to the side of the door, which popped open immediately. He entered an eight-digit code into the keypad, using each finger of both hands, one for each digit. The computer system accepted the code, whilst simultaneously checking Cole’s fingerprints against its files. Were Cole to be compromised, for anybody to gain access to the hidden room they would need both of Cole’s hands and to know in which order each finger pressed each key; all elements were needed for validation. A retina scan onto Cole’s moving eyeball completed the checks. Overcautious perhaps, but Cole knew better than most the inherent dangers of his profession.
The team from the technical branch of the NSA that had installed Cole’s basement had been subjected to drug-based memory erasure after they had completed the work. Upon their return to the workrooms at Fort Meade, Maryland, they couldn’t even remember where they had been for the previous month.
For the hidden room was a room of secrets.
11
Cole seated himself at the cipher station in the small, armoured, underground room and started the process of retrieving his message. There were quicker methods, of course, but the old-fashioned cipher was still the most secure. They had proved themselves throughout history time and again, from the famous Enigma machine used by the Germans in World War II, to the incredible complexity of the NH67 ‘Swordfish’, used by both the American NSA and the British GCHQ. This was a modified example of just that system, which was now in its eighteenth generation. The original was nigh-on unbreakable, and the new NH67 was perhaps the most secure form of communication in the world; not totally secure, as anything made by man can be broken by man; but it was near as damn it.
After the normal, tortuous wait, the message finally came through, in plain text after the painstaking decoding:
START PREPARATIONS FOR MISSION TYPE 1 STOP FULL DETAILS TO BE PROVIDED BY C STOP C IS ENROUTE TO YOUR LOCATION NOW STOP MAKE NECESSARY ARRANGEMENTS TO RECEIVE HIM IN PRIVATE STOP SEND DETAILS BACK VIA THIS CHANNEL ONLY STOP END OF TRANSMISSION
Cole read, then re-read the message. ‘C’ was his immediate controller, the agent handler who gave Cole his missions. It was previously accepted that after Cole’s relocation, he would have no further physical contact with his controller. And now he was coming directly to the Caymans?
Cole turned the idea over in his mind. It was highly irregular, and Cole felt no comfort in knowing the task that the man was travelling half way across the world to discuss with him. For ‘Mission Type 1’ was the coded designation for an assassination.
12
On board his private Gulfstream Jet, cruising at the speed of sound 38,000 feet above the Atlantic, Charles Hansard struck a match and put it to the bowl of his wooden pipe. A genuine Meerschaum, it had been a gift from the Commandant General of Austria’s Gendarmerieensatz-kommando counter-terrorist team, better known as the ‘Cobra’ force.
He had the cabin all to himself. Nicholas Stern, his trusted personal aide and bodyguard, was also acting as pilot on this particular trip
The teletype suddenly came to life next to him, catching his attention as it printed out a message from his private on-board cipher. It was, indeed, truly private; nobody else knew he had it.
He used it to contact his secret team of operators when he needed to call upon their services.
Before his appointment as Director of National Intelligence, Hansard had worked for over thirty years for the Defence Intelligence Agency, making his way up to Director.
Before he had gained the Directorship, he had been the Head of Department X, the Defence Counterintelligence and HUMINT Centre, responsible for the physical sharp end of the intelligence business. Since the early 90s he had run special projects groups such as the Intelligence Support Activity and Grey Fox, until accusations from the press over alleged government-sponsored assassinations caused him to take a brief sabbatical.