Chapter 39: Tut, tut!

10:12, 8 September

Jamie considered his options. Sinky was commanding the teenagers who were securing the Trident missiles at the Faslane base and Stuart was still in Liverpool. He decided that the best option in the short term was to take the trip to GCHQ himself. There was a heck of a lot of things to set in motion, many more people to deal with and being able to employ mobile phones would make things much easier. He calculated that it would be a worthwhile investment of his time, despite all of the other demands.

He rounded up some of the old assault squad and a few of the techies who were around the Dreghorn barracks for the trip. He judged that he had enough fuel in the helicopter to get them to RAF Lyneham, an air force base in Wiltshire, which was the closest he could find to Cheltenham.

The flight south allowed Jamie to pass over Liverpool and he looked down to see if he could spot the APCs that Stuart was using. He circled the city centre for a few minutes, but couldn't pick them out and he knew fuel was at a premium so he had to move on.

Jamie brought the Lynx over the village of Lyneham and looked for the air force base. He found it at the top of a hill, its three runways forming a stylised 'A' as they crossed each other below him. He dropped lower, looking at two giant Hercules transport planes that sat at the end of one of the runways. He spotted a fuel bowser and brought the helicopter round so he could land close by.

The armed squad and the techies took the opportunity to stretch their legs as Jamie shut the Lynx down before refuelling it. He realised that Lyneham had to be the base for the RAF's long haul transporters, as he couldn't see anything that would support a fighter squadron.

The refuelling took just over half an hour and then Jamie called for all of the teenagers to get back on board the Lynx. Lifting off, he headed south and west towards Gloucestershire, where Cheltenham was.

Jamie wasn't aware that the Government Communications Headquarters complex was known as the 'doughnut' owing to its shape. The building was a perfect circle with gardens and a large artificial pool in the centre. He circled the complex, looking for any signs of trouble. Nothing seemed to be moving and nothing looked out of place. Surrounding the building were car parking areas, broken up by blocks with grass and trees and Jamie decided it was okay to set the Lynx down where there was space.

The building was huge and he recognised it would be difficult to find the part that housed the monitoring stations. Jamie was surprised at the absence of what he had expected - there was no massive array of aerials or satellite dishes. He wondered how the electronic 'listening' was done and how it was fed to the site.

A thought occurred to him and he led the entire team up to the main doors of the complex and entered. He made his way over to the reception desk and walked round to the 'business' side of it. A quick rummage turned up a schematic of the building with all of the various sections clearly marked. Jamie smiled at his good guess. He had hoped that the receptionists would have something like this to help them identify who to speak to when visitors arrived.

A quick scan of the schematic identified where the monitoring stations were situated, on the third floor towards the northeast quadrant of the 'doughnut. Jamie led them in that direction. The building was an odd mix of open plan and cellular offices, with no apparent rhyme nor reason to it all.

The schematic was a big help and ten minutes or so later they were in a large room filled with monitors and workstations. The first thing that caught Jamie's eye was the remnants of army style ration packs. Walking over, he picked up one of the packs and took in the distinctive US markings.

"Well I guess that confirms what I've suspected all along, our American cousins have definitely been here," he said.

"Looks like some of the 'puters are still on," said one of the techies.

Jamie looked and saw that two of the monitors were displaying the windows screen saver. When he hit the space bar on the keyboard that seemed to correspond to one of the screens, the screen changed to display a small dialogue box.

This computer is being used by n003628 and is locked. To unlock the computer press CTTL+ALT+DEL and enter your password.

"Shit, I didn't think about system security. What do we do now?" Jamie asked the techies.

"Well, if the Americans managed to get in, then I'm damn sure we can manage it as well. These government systems are programmed to lock themselves after there has been no activity for a few minutes. I think I can get round it. Let me work on this thing for a bit."

The techie pulled a bag from over his shoulder and unzipped it to reveal a laptop. He soon had the laptop up and running, with various leads snaking out to connect it with the base station of the GCHQ computer. Jamie watched as the teenager started using some sophisticated software tools on the laptop and then decided it wasn't helping any, him looking over the boy's shoulder.

He began to walk round the room, looking for anything else of interest. Apart from the used ration packs and the computers that remained on, there was nothing else to suggest who had been here and what they had been up to.

"Okay I'm in!" said the techie.

Jamie rushed over to see what would be revealed on the computer screen.

"What is it?" he asked.

"It looks like a automated monitoring system. Look, there's the number of the mobile phone that originated the last call to be recorded. That number is the reference number for the mast that routed the call and that one is the mast that it 'connected' to. Normally these are set up to record when certain words or phrases are used, but I guess whoever used it last has overridden that. There is so little traffic that they could afford to let the system listen to everything."

"How does it work?" Jamie asked.

"It's using voice recognition software and giving us its best guess as to what's said, but the call has been recorded and we can listen to the actual conversation by clicking on that little icon there," replied the techie.

He moved the cursor with the mouse so it hovered over an icon with an ear represented on it. He pointed to a set of headphones that were connected to the computer's base station.

"Put them on and I'll let you listen to this last message," said the techie.

Jamie sat in the chair in front of the computer screen and pulled the headphones onto his head, settling the foam pads over his ears. He watched the other boy click on the icon and then he heard a conversation.

The conversation ended. Jamie compared what he had heard to what was on the screen and could see that the voice recognition software had captured most of it accurately, but some of it was plain wrong. It sounded as if there was a group of teenagers somewhere trying to avoid the terrorists and get their hands on some weapons so they could defend themselves.

He decided the accents he had heard were Yorkshire accents and that would perhaps put them in the vicinity of Leeds if they were having trouble with a terrorist cell. Of course, there could be more cells than he knew about or they could be widening their searches.

"Can you identify where this call originated? Is there a log of all the intercepts?" Jamie asked.

"I'm sure I can manage that and there's bound to be a log. Let me take a look," the techie said.

The boy swapped places with Jamie and clicked on the reference number for the mast that had routed the call. The screen showed a small box with the reference number and the word 'Catterick'. The reference number for the mast that had 'connected' the call was the same and Jamie guessed that meant the call had only been local. He knew that there was a large army garrison in Catterick and he wondered if that was where these teenagers were looking for weapons.

Jamie turned his attention back to the screen to watch the techie now look for a log. The boy was scrolling up the screen, but there was surprisingly little to see.

"It looks like the log has been deleted," the techie explained.

"Can you get it back?" Jamie asked.

"Maybe, it depends on how they did it. Let me see what I can find," the techie replied.

Jamie watched as the boy called up some other software on his laptop and started some kind of search.

"Got it!" the boy said with excitement. A large file appeared and the techie clicked to open it. A much larger volume of calls were now available and he began to scroll through them.

Something caught Jamie's eye.

"Stop! Scroll back down a little. There, that one!" he said.

Jamie jammed the headphones back onto his head and indicated that the techie should play him the recording.

"Hello?"

"There is no time, this is Bird Song. The Americans are here; they're in the apartment. It is time for 'apocalypse'. Let the others know."

Jamie asked for the boy to play the recording again, it was very short and he wanted to make sure he didn't miss anything.

"Hello?"

"There is no time, this is Bird Song. The Americans are here; they're in the apartment. It is time for 'apocalypse'. Let the others know."

He pulled the headphones off and asked the techie to identify the masts involved in the call.

"The routing is through Notting Hill in London and the connection is through Liverpool," the techie informed him.

Jamie had a bad feeling about this. He recognised the phrase Bird Song. The leader of the terrorists in Glasgow had sent him an e-mail signed Bird Song2 and he had wondered at the time who number one might be.

"Scroll through them and try and find anymore that include Bird Song in them," he ordered the techie.

Jamie considered what the call might mean. It appeared as if the Americans had attacked the terrorists in London. He had little doubt that the use of the word 'apocalypse' was a code word and that it was the use of that that had sparked the change in tactics in Liverpool. There was no sign that the cell in Liverpool had contacted any other cells though. The call had told them to 'let the others know', but it didn't look as if that had happened. He knew Stuart's intervention in Liverpool meant that it was never going to happen either.

"I think the survivors in the other English cities have just dodged a bullet," he thought to himself.

Just then a flashing icon in the computer's system tray caught his eye.

"What's that?" he asked, pointing to the icon.

The techie hovered the cursor over the icon and then turned to look at Jamie.

"The system is relaying its information to somewhere else. There's an IP address here, but I've got no easy way of identifying where that is. If you give me half an hour or so I can probably trace it for you," the techie said.

"There's no need for that, I've got a good idea where it's going. Can I send a message?" Jamie asked.

"Sure, just type your message and then click on that button there," the techie replied.

Jamie typed in Tut, tut! What have you been doing? and then clicked on the button the techie had indicated.

"Cut the relay off and make sure it's really off," Jamie ordered.

The techie right clicked on the icon in the system tray and highlighted 'close' before clicking again. Jamie watched as he hit CTRL+ALT+DEL to bring up the Windows Task Manager pane. Sure enough, the relay could be seen as a process in the window and the status showed it was still running. The techie highlighted the process and clicked on the button that said 'End Task'. The system closed the process down and this time it was really closed.

"The bastards knew! They knew what the terrorists were going to do. That mobile call makes it pretty damn clear what was about to happen. We know the Americans had information that told them the terrorists were talking to each other. They must have pinpointed the leader and gone in to take him out and that sparked a message to start slaughtering the survivors.

"The bastards knew what was coming and they didn't warn us. How could they fuckin' do that? Is there a way of copying that log across to my laptop?" Jamie asked the techie.

He received a nod in response.

"Do it!" Jamie ordered.

10:37 (EST), 8 September

The duty analyst at NSA Headquarters in Fort Meade sat upright in his chair as the latest 'take' from GCHQ scrolled onto his screen. He called for his section supervisor, his excited voice communicating the urgency. His supervisor ran up and looked down at his screen. He took in the words:

Tut, tut! What have you been doing?

"Shit, the links been cut," the analyst said.

"Get it back!" the supervisor ordered.

The analyst began moving his mouse and clicking on various buttons.

"Negative sir, someone must have access to the source computer. We've been cut off permanently," the analyst said.

"You mean there's someone inside GCHQ?" the supervisor asked.

"Has to be sir," the analyst replied.

"What about the logs? Would they have access to the logs?" the supervisor asked with concern.

"Not if our guys deleted them and used our government standard package to shred the files," the analyst responded.

That statement didn't worry the supervisor too much, as he was aware of the content of all of the 'take' from Cheltenham. He turned and made his way back to his own workstation. Lifting the phone, he punched in a number.

"Who led the team that was at GCHQ?" he asked the person on the other end of the phone.

The supervisor listened and then cut the connection before stabbing another set of numbers on the phone's keypad.

"This is section supervisor Murray. Are you Collins?"

"That's me," said Collins on the other end of the line.

"When you left GCHQ what did you do with the log file?" Murray asked.

"I deleted it of course," Collins responded.

"Did you shred it?" Murray enquired.

"There wasn't time for that, we were ordered to get out in a hurry," Collins replied.

Murray could understand what Collins was saying. Shredding took quite a bit longer to do as it involved overwriting a file at least three times so that it was completely unrecoverable. Having gone public about the raid on London and parading the terrorist leader, the supervisor didn't think there was anything in the log that could cause embarrassment. He closed the conversation with Collins down and prepared a report to go upstairs as soon as possible. The fact that they were no longer getting electronic intelligence relayed from the UK was an important item to pass on.