Intercept Read online

  Al-Assad would be passing a signal through to Peshawar this evening to inform Shakir Khan that the Chosen Ones had arrived safely according to plan, and everything was in place for the next attack. He believed this would involve the total destruction of an American Judaic school with an estimated twelve hundred people inside it—children, teenagers, parents, and the college faculty.

  “Will everyone know afterwards they had just witnessed the revenge of the Islamists?” asked Ben al-Turabi.

  “Oh yes,” said Faisal al-Assad. “They will understand that very well. We will make absolutely certain that they do.”

  “And can we know where our target is?” asked Ibrahim.

  “Right at this moment, that is a state secret. But maybe I can tell you tomorrow. And then we will have much preparation. Places to go and money to spend. There will be no mistakes.”

  THE FIRST BREAK in either case came shortly before midnight. The forensic reports predictably confirmed the remains of two dead men were in the Penn Station rubble. DNA confirmed one was Michael Harvey, the other Thomas Seaford. Mrs. Harvey and Miss Seaford were at a downtown precinct. There were no complete bodies to identify, but there were scraps of clothing.

  The second part of the report was dynamite, so to speak. The men’s room had been blasted by a hand grenade, an identifiable military hand grenade, produced by the world-famous Swiss arms manufacturer, RUAG, registered in Berne, a huge European-wide organization with an Aerospace Division and some of the biggest small-arms plants in the world.

  RUAG manufactured millions of 9mm bullets for weapons like the German Luger, and it was the world’s specialist in hand grenades. The one that blew the men’s room was quickly identified as RUAG’s classic HG-85, which the Swiss ammunition masters supplied to armies all over the world. In precisely which plant the grenade had been manufactured was neither obvious nor relevant. But the fragments of the outer casing found in the rubble were critical.

  Had the detonation been caused by a regular Improvised Explosive Device (IED) typical of those in Baghdad and Kabul, that would have been one thing. But a hand grenade was entirely different. They were strictly military, unavailable on the black market. Whoever had hurled the grenade had some kind of connection to a national army.

  Captain Ramshawe was awakened in the small hours of the morning, and jumped straight out of bed with excitement. Because that hand grenade changed everything. Because you would need to be a proper terrorist to get your hands on one of those. And that rushed the Chosen Ones right back into an intricate equation.

  Captain Ramshawe’s afterburner kicked in as he headed for his study and looked up the train schedules from Albuquerque to New York. “I just wonder,” he pondered, “if those four bastards traveled across this country by train, and found some reason to knock out those two New Yorkers with a proper terrorist weapon—a goddamned hand grenade.”

  By any standards the link was a long shot, but Jimmy had been obsessed with finding the four men, and he was suspecting anything and everyone who might have a connection to the Middle East. If he’d spotted a three-year-old colt named Desert Sheikh running at Belmont Park, he’d probably have had it arrested.

  Eventually he located the two trains anyone would have used if they had been trying to travel from Albuquerque to New York on the morning after the two murders on New Mexico’s southern border. There was no choice, no other station, no other route.

  The first of them, the Southwestern Chief left at around lunchtime, ran through the night and arrived in Chicago in the middle of the following afternoon at 3 p.m. The next one, the Cardinal left Chicago, a deliberate link, and ran all the way to New York, arriving the following evening just before 10 p.m.

  And right there this fucking Ibrahim Towelhead jumps off the train and blows up the bloody Penn Station shithouse at 9.55 p.m.—the exact right time. Makes no sense.

  Jimmy Ramshawe’s brain was in some kind of a high gear, and he was thinking and muttering in pure Australian, which he always did when he was over-excited. “What have I proved?” he demanded of himself. “Nothing, right? Except that the Chosen Ones could have done it, if they’d ridden the precise two trains I just found. Odds: About a billion to one. Screw it.”

  He closed down the computer, and stood up, resolved to return to bed and cast the problem to the back of his mind until he went to work at 7 a.m. But then he had a new idea. The next major hit on a U.S. target is to be Penn Station, scheduled for a time when most of the workforce and passengers are not there—like the World Trade Center. The Towelheads pick up a stash of hand-grenades from the Mexican army and rush through the border, killing a couple of American guards who got in the way. Their mates pick ’em up in a car, and drive them to the nearest long-distance train terminal—Albuquerque. They board the Southwestern Chief for Chicago and New York.

  They head up to the main Penn Station concourse, but one of them is spotted handing out the grenades. A passenger, probably ex-military, shouts and runs toward them.

  Yousaf Cameldung runs for the men’s room. The passenger charges in after him. Yousaf trips him, pulls out the pin, and blows the place up. Towelheads stack away their grenades, and bolt to a waiting car outside Madison Square Garden.

  Jane Ramshawe never even stirred while Jimmy delivered this soliloquy two rooms away. And she was up and making coffee and toast at 6:30, prior to leaving for Georgetown University, where she was completing a course in American history. She was actually reading the final pages of a chapter on the army of General Stonewall Jackson when Jimmy asked her, “Do you think the bomb at Penn Station was an accident?”

  “Probably,” she replied. “There’s no motive. No logic. No gain for anyone. Huge risk, and for what?”

  “How about I tell you it wasn’t a bomb. It was a military hand grenade.”

  “A hand grenade! Where the hell did they get that?”

  “Good question,” said Captain Jimmy.

  IT WAS SHORTLY BEFORE MIDNIGHT in Shakir Khan’s government office in Islamabad. Aside from the security guards, he was the only man in the building. His chauffeur awaited him outside in the courtyard.

  He sat at his desk, checked his watch, and picked up the telephone, a phone that engineers had spent hundreds of hours making as secure as any land line in the world. The new Pakistani system was fully encrypted, and it protected classified government conversations to an incredible degree. It was effectively spy-proof. Well, nearly.

  Right now it was three o’clock in the afternoon in New York. Faisal al-Assad was alone in his study waiting for the phone to ring. His guests were all watching with rapt attention the continuing adventures of The Terminator. The phone rang at two minutes past the hour. Faisal picked it up without a word. From the other end of the line came a voice: “Back to nalseb because King Saul’s boys are top-class one in Abe’s Place. It’s a go for the former caged songbirds but be sure they can see the mountain. Sleepers one, three, and four-zero are awake. Canst proceed?”

  Faisal said: “Affirmative.” And the line went dead.

  The Saudi link man understood every word of the veiled speech that had been transmitted to him. He now knew the target, selected from a short-list of ten different colleges. Right now, he needed to deposit $2 million in small country bank accounts he must open—finance for the high explosive, and their operational headquarters.

  This was a very fine plan, which would most certainly reflect more glory and notoriety on the fighting forces of al-Qaeda than anything else that had been achieved since the Twin Towers. This gigantic strike against the Great Satan might cause the Americans and their cohorts to pull out of Afghanistan altogether, leading that great tribal nation back to where it belonged—in the sacred hands of their holy brothers of the Taliban.

  Al-Assad knew it would probably lead to the death of the four young men in the next room, and by that he was saddened. But Allah loved those who were martyred in His name, and would call them unto Him, across the bridge to the sound of the three trumpets
. There were worse fates, he decided, but that particular one was certainly not in his own immediate itinerary.

  THEY WERE ONLY a couple of hundred miles from the Syrian Desert, these sovereign British lands on the coast of Cyprus. But, just like home in the UK, it was pelting rain tonight, and had been for five hours. The rough, sandy ground outside the JSSU ops room had already become a quagmire. The huge German Shepherd guard dogs were wet and bedraggled. The guards themselves were soaked, and the rain lashed onto the big wooden warning sign that declared trespassers would be shot on sight. “British Sovereign Territory,” the sign proclaimed. But tonight they need not have bothered. It was British alright, chilly, windswept, wet, and miserable. The satellite and radio aerials and masts that jutted from the roofs of the stone building, swayed in the gusting southwester, and the night was as black as a terrorist’s heart.

  Inside the ops room, lit only by the flickering screens and the backlighting of the keyboards, the cream of Great Britain’s electronic Intelligence interceptors were at work, ready to translate any message, signal, or coded transmission into any one of a hundred languages. They watched and listened for the one careless communiqué that would betray the terrorists, and leave them at the mercy of the security forces of the West.

  Sergeant Shane Collins was on the evening watch, assisted by a Royal Navy Lieutenant, when he picked up a call on INTELSAT: “Back to nalseb because King Saul’s boys are top-class one in Abe’s Place. It’s a go for the former caged songbirds but be sure they can see the mountain. Sleepers one, three and four-zero are awake. Canst proceed?”

  That was definitely Arabic. And then there was a brief delay of maybe nine seconds, and before a distant voice replied: “Affirmative.” Nothing else, and then the line went dead.

  This was routine for an experienced operator like Shane. The message was plainly military because of two words “proceed,” and “affirmative.” The sergeant swung around and called for a supervisor—“Captain, over here, please. Station Five.”

  Army Captain Alec Simon, aged thirty-two, came quickly and asked, “What’s going on?”

  Scribbling quickly, without looking up, Shane Collins replied, “Telephone intercept. Possible government encrypted India or Pakistan, but not very good. Seems military, but not in code. More like veiled speech. Fourteen-second transmission, then a very short reply. I have a rough translation.” He handed his headset to the supervisor and pressed his “listen-again” button.

  Seventeen seconds later, Captain Simon nodded and picked up a telephone, saying quickly, “Satellite COMM two-three-zero-six translate and prepare text for immediate transmission to GCHQ for detailed analysis.”

  Sixty seconds later, more than two thousand miles and two timezones away, a screen lit up in the operations center at GCHQ, a huge brightly lit room, staffed by civilians, night and day, GCHQ was the opposite environment to the stark military ops room in Cyprus. Also it was not pouring with rain outside, and there were no public signs bearing threats to shoot anyone who stepped out of line.

  And yet this place, both historically and practically, represented the very heart of the most sinister aspect of the United Kingdom—the frontline muscle of MI6, the hard-eyed secret police force, which glares at the world’s problems, eavesdrops on the world’s villains, and never drops its guard in its relentless surveillance of rogue states.

  This massive circular building is both the successor and custodian of the secrets of Bletchley Park, the great English manor house in which they cracked Enigma, Hitler’s World War II military codes, evoking the everlasting gratitude of the Allied Commanders.

  The hardware has moved on after sixty-five years, but the ethos endures. GCHQ is still staffed with people whose gods remain those studious mathematicians and cryptologists who silently rendered the Nazi war-codes useless; who pinpointed the Panzer Divisions, identified the armadas of German fighter bombers, and nailed down the routes of the Atlantic U-boat packs.

  In recent years, the staff of GCHQ struck a large gold badge that was presented to each one of the few survivors of the sainted members of Bletchley Park’s old WWII GC and CS (Government Code and Cipher School). The front emblem is a stylized rendering of the great modern surveillance dragnet, the Doughnut building on the outskirts of Cheltenham. The rear of the badge, behind the fastener, cannot of course be seen. It reads, with momentous British understatement, “We Also Served.”

  And now the words of the plainly unbalanced Pakistani fanatic Shakir Khan, followed in the pathways of signals written long ago by Hitler’s generals. And those words stood before the thoughtful gaze of a British cryptologist, a young civilian woman, who called out, “JSSU request detailed analysis on intercept.”

  The supervisor called back, “Put it on my screen, would you?” Moments later, he picked up the phone and said, “Satellite COMM two-three-zero-six from Cyprus. Please establish a line on the frequency and check for code. I’ll hold for the tracker.”

  Seconds passed and the response flashed back, “Frequency line Cyprus to a point beyond the Hindu Kush range, Northeastern Afghanistan. I’m still checking . . . maybe Peshawar . . . no, beyond that. I’m getting somewhere in Islamabad . . . still checking . . . trying to pinpoint.”

  A full minute went by, and then a clear message came through: “That frequency line crosses Syria, Irag, and Iran into Afghanistan. No further information for onward transmission.”

  Back in Cyprus Captain Simon was waiting. He knew the information would be coming, because he had always believed there was an especially strong frequency between his own ops room and Pakistan, probably something to do with the fact that they almost shared a link along the thirty-fourth parallel.

  The GCHQ supervisor turned back to the young operator who first fielded Captain Simon’s signal. “So far,” he said, “we know for certain that someone in Islamabad around midnight placed this call to an unknown destination. Request a second frequency line, will you? Alert stations Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Get a fix where the lines bisect. Thank you, Lindy.”

  One minute later, the operator was back on the link to Cyprus, and she reported to Captain Simon, “Sir, they’re certain it’s not coded. And we agree it’s military. We just got a fix on that ‘Affirmative’ reply, but it was too brief for a second frequency line.

  “Right now we’re definite North America East Coast. But the rest is vague . . . somewhere between Washington and Maine. We transmitted to U.S. National Security Agency, Maryland. Still searching.”

  “Will I hold or will you come back? . . .”

  “Just a moment, sir. We’re getting something. U.S. authorities pinpointing a government building in Islamabad, protected system. No number, but the call came from somewhere inside the Pakistani main administrative building, called Pak Secretariat.”

  “Thank you,” replied Captain Simon. “Any more on the U.S. end of the call?”

  “Not much. But NSA trackers are nearly certain it’s New York rather than Boston or Washington. Still trying. We’ll come back.”

  At this point the full translation jumped onto the captain’s screen, with broad suggestions.

  “First line may refer to Jewish special forces, or even Mossad. Top-class one euphemism for ‘very important.’ Abe’s Place unknown. Could be anywhere. Caged songbirds possible Pakistani ex-inmates of Guantanamo Bay. There are many. The mountain indicates some address. Sleepers could be reference to al-Qaeda sleeper cells, bin Laden’s favorite subject. See references. ‘Canst proceed’ obviously military shorthand.”

  It wasn’t much, but it was a start. GCHQ confirmed they had sent the signal through to the U.S. National Surveillance Office, the NSA, and the CIA. There was a cryptic note from the NSA requesting both Cheltenham and Cyprus to update Fort Meade throughout the night at the first sign of a crack in the signal.

  Nailing down that phone call to a major government building in Islamabad was critical because Pakistan is a powder-keg of hidden nuclear weapons, which Taliban and al-Qaeda dissidents cov
et with all of their hearts.

  A national military, of the power and efficiency of Pakistan’s, should have been more than a match for a turbaned rabble trying to cause some kind of a world war in the Middle East. But it was not. And it kept proving it.

  Alex Simon stared out of the door of the Cyprus surveillance bunker. In his mind he held his usual visions of evil jihadist cutthroats, in their mountains, in their caves, handling their high-explosives, and now, apparently, hunkered down in clandestine government offices. It occurred to him that killers like these would ultimately be stopped by the thoughtful space-age detectives in England’s damp, green Cotswold Hills; men and women whose predecessors had located much darker forces and far greater villains than any of these modern Holy Warriors.

  8

  CAPTAIN JAMES RAMSHAWE had an uncanny feeling he was breaking one of Admiral Morgan’s cardinal rules: Kid, never waste your time chasing goddamned shadows.

  Before him was his ever-present, lined legal pad upon which he recorded his thoughts, theories, facts, and strategies. Right now the page that stared up at him resembled the ramblings of a madman.

  He had tried to assemble all the clues and evidence that had surfaced since those four terrorists had been freed. And he had to admit the trail had more or less gone cold.

  They’d gone to England and somehow gotten out. They’d also gone to Andalucia in Spain, and also gotten out. They’d most definitely shown up in Mexico, and may have killed two border guards while re-entering the United States. This Penn Station bullshit in New York was a total red herring without yielding one scrap of evidence.

  And now there was this quasi-Mata Hari signal from Islamabad to some contact who might have lived in Manhattan, droning on about King Saul and God knows what else. Okay, there may have been something in it, but that was someone else’s task, not his. Call in the bloody cryptologists, he muttered, but don’t bother me till there’s something tangible. In his heart he knew that Admiral Morgan would have laughed at him if he’d sought advice on this one.