Here in the flat, he and Cowdray each had their own bedroom, but shared the large low-eaved sitting-cum-dining room, and the adjoining makeshift kitchen. Fielding was working this evening on his laptop at the dining-room table; across the room, on a small pine side table, Cowdray’s laptop was also open, powered up, ready and waiting.
Waiting for what? Fielding wondered. He was certain Cowdray had no involvement in leaking information about the work going on at Brigham Hall. His had been a personal failing, not a conscious betrayal of his country, though God knows what was going to happen to him when all this was over. Fielding felt upset about the whole business, still stunned that such a close friend and colleague had let down the side so badly. At least Cowdray was cooperating fully now, though Fielding had been strictly limited in what he could tell him about the… what precisely? Operation? Wasn’t that what these intelligence people called it? Yes, though intelligence had been the last thing Hugo Cowdray had shown.
It was just as he was feeling lowest about the situation that a red light blinked and flickered in the corner of his screen. He stood up at once, and went over to Cowdray’s machine. Conventional anti-virus programs traditionally worked behind the scenes, but the detection program he’d installed on Cowdray’s machine was not an off-the-shelf item. He watched as the screen cleared and a pop-up window appeared in the centre. External Invasion it declared, and then began to list the sectors under attack, every five seconds pausing to write the cached information to disk. Whatever was out there, Fielding realised, it was moving through Cowdray’s machine at extraordinary speed, jumping seemingly at random through his FAT files and directories, but covering so much ground that it would soon have canvassed the entire local permanent storage of the machine – all 500 gigabytes.
And then suddenly it was gone, and the pop-up window closed and the screensaver – a colour photograph from the Colorado Rockies that Cowdray had snapped during a summer holiday there – reappeared. Fielding realised his heart was beating like a metronome on speed.
He took a deep breath and pulled up a chair, then went to work on Cowdray’s machine. The tool he used was called, ironically in the circumstances, The Mole, since it burrowed like the little velvet mammal deep beneath the surface of the transactions between Cowdray’s laptop and the unknown intruder, working back along the trace left by the foreign URL, moving in nano-seconds to isolate the particular machine that had been busy snooping here. It sped unimpeded into the generic network of the MOD, then effectively turned down a side lane, emerging into the collective LAN of the unit – how could he fail to recognise the tag? – run by Cowdray himself back in less stressful times when he had been just a boffin, if a senior one, at the MOD’s HQ.
But there it stopped. No specific URLs came up on screen, nor any of the bespoke identifiers used by the MOD. Damn, it hadn’t got back to machine level; the intruder had been even cleverer than Fielding had feared. There was nothing of value now for it to steal, but what Fielding didn’t know was what it might have managed to extract before today’s invasion.
He picked up the phone and rang Peggy Kinsolving.
Chapter 35
Cathy Treglown opened the door cautiously. She was relieved to find only René standing on her doorstep. He was wearing a blue denim jacket and rough peasant trousers. He smiled at her, sweeping a wave of brown hair off his forehead, and reflexively she smiled back.
Then she remembered her father’s warning phone call. These are not your friends, he’d insisted, and for once part of her agreed. After all, her last meeting with René had been pretty unpleasant. When he had asked her for money for the commune, she had hesitated, and he had immediately grown angry. He didn’t seem to realise that though she remained committed to the cause, she had other things – in particular her little boy – to spend her money on.
But now as he came in he exuded charm and bonhomie, handing her a bottle of Cahors red he had brought with him from France. Cathy led the way into the sitting room and René sat down on the sofa while she went into the kitchen and put the kettle on. Through the window she could see Teddy pretending to drive the toy truck her father had brought him on his last visit. He did spoil the boy, she thought crossly, then her mood lightened at the sight of her son enjoying himself. Her plan had been to send Teddy round to play with his friend Richard this afternoon, since she didn’t want him around when the French were visiting, but she’d forgotten to arrange it in time. So it was a relief that Antoine hadn’t accompanied René; it must mean they were no longer angry with her.
When the kettle boiled she filled the two waiting mugs and carried them into the sitting room where she gave one to René. She sat down in the armchair while he sniffed the steaming mug suspiciously. ‘It’s tea,’ she said, and he shrugged, as if he expected nothing better from the English.
They chatted for a while about the commune, with René answering her questions about the many friends she’d left behind. She missed the old farm near Cahors, and the camaraderie there’d been among the commune’s members, at least when she first went there. René seemed happy to answer her questions and give her news about the place. He told her that the vegetable garden she had started was thriving, but that they’d had to replace the bird feeder she’d put up when it had fallen apart in a recent storm.
She was beginning to think that Edward had been wrong about René. Her old French comrade was being the soul of affability, but then, he had always been a charmer. Half the girls in the commune had slept with him at one time or another; not just because he was their de facto leader, but because he had charisma – the charisma that had made him leader. He wasn’t a big man, he wasn’t handsome, and sometimes he talked too much (she remembered the dreary political lectures he’d insisted on giving), but there was an appealing intensity about him which, coupled with the charm he could turn on when he wanted to, could sway even the most sceptical.
‘You know, Cathy,’ he said, ‘you are much missed at the commune. You could come back any time.’
‘Thank you. But you see—’ she began to explain.
René waved one hand dismissively, and suddenly his relaxed mood seemed to have changed. ‘But that’s not what I’m here for. I told you last time, we’re feeling the pinch a bit. And we have plans – the G20 is meeting next month in Avignon. We aim to be there.’ He spoke as if he were planning a holiday. ‘But plans only get you so far if you don’t have the money to carry them out.’
‘What sort of plans need money?’ she asked. ‘We’ve been at G20 protests often enough in the past. They didn’t cost anything.’
‘And they had no impact whatsoever. We need to escalate our protest.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The bankers and the politicians are happy to use force to keep us down, so we’re more than justified in using violence ourselves. But taking up arms is expensive.’
‘Arms? You mean you want to buy guns?’ she asked, trying to sound comradely, though inwardly she was shocked. This was not something they had ever envisaged at the commune when she was there. Surely the others would also be appalled. Had things changed so much since she had left France? Maybe it was even worse than she feared. ‘Or is it explosives you mean? Are you planning to blow something up?’ Her voice quavered slightly, but she couldn’t help herself. This was truly frightening.
René just looked at her, unwilling to answer. Then he said, ‘Never mind the exact objectives. The point is, you can help us realise them.’ His expression was half-seductive, half-intimidating.