Caleb was lost.
The maze of corridors within GCHQ was bewildering.
He checked his watch. He already knew he was late for his Waterman meeting, now just rechecking the extent.
He had arrived at the gates of the sprawling military intelligence complex an hour earlier but hadn’t anticipated the bomb and K-9 vehicle searches or the airport-style X-ray screening inside the central atrium of the main building.
By the time he walked through the secure lobby concourse, sun-drenched courtesy of a vaulted glass ceiling, he was already late.
Behind the reception desk, a huge royal crest was carved into gridded sandstone: lightning emerging from the base of the crown and striking the planet, the letters GCHQ emblazoned across the globe.
The receptionist had given him instructions where to meet Waterman, but that was fifteen minutes earlier. He was about to retrace his steps when a young man, dressed similarly to Caleb, down to the khakis and trainers, still in his early twenties, came around the corner and approached him.
‘Dr Goodspeed? I was sent to find you.’
The young man handed him a thick set of papers.
‘We just need to take care of a formality first. It’s the Official Secrets Act. Signing it will give you clearance.’
‘And if I don’t?’ asked Caleb, looking at the stack.
‘Then this is as far as you go,’ said the young man in a neutral way.
Caleb considered this. Signing the OSA was the last thing he wanted to do. He took the pen and reluctantly put his signature on the paper. The young man took the papers and slipped them into a pack across his shoulder.
‘Thanks. Follow me.’
They passed through another set of security gates and turned left to follow a long corridor. One wall was floor-to-ceiling glass, through which Caleb could see an interior courtyard covered with manicured grass.
‘Do you know much about GCHQ?’ asked the young man, making conversation.
Caleb responded without taking his eyes off the view.
‘You’re the organization responsible for providing signals intelligence to the British army. You intercept emails, calls and social media messages. Twelve billion phone calls, two hundred billion emails and fifty billion social media messages each day. To analyse it all, you’ve created a secret supercomputer in your basement that can break the exaFLOP barrier: a billion billion calculations per second …’
They had stopped in front of a bank of eight lift doors.
‘… which is where we are presumably going today,’ said Caleb, pressing the ‘down’ button.
A lift door opened, and Caleb stepped inside. The young man remained outside, looking thrown.
‘That’s … well … yes …’ he said, the lift doors cutting him off in mid-sentence.
The only evidence of the lift’s movement was the slightest of vibrations. A few seconds later, the opposing door opened into a reception area, with corridors leading in both directions.
Caleb heard heavy footsteps coming, and a few seconds later Waterman walked into view. It had been less than twenty-four hours since they last saw each other, but the towering Yorkshireman already looked older, his eyes sunken and bloodshot.
‘The UK has five categories of warning, known as threat levels, that are used to signal to the public an impending terrorist attack …’ Waterman began without ceremony. ‘This way.’
They walked down a curving corridor, a blue line running down the side of the wall, broken by intermittent arrows pointing in their direction of travel. A line of breadcrumbs, thought Caleb, in case anyone became lost in the maze of identical corridors that made the facility into a labyrinth.
‘… the fifth and final level is referred to as Critical. It means an attack is imminent. When we go to that level, maximum security measures are put into place.’
He stopped in front of a door – Caleb noticed that the blue arrow line ended at the frame – and punched an eight-digit code into the security keypad. The door retracted, sliding into the wall.
‘All cultural, business and transport centres are on the highest security measures. This way.’
They stepped through into a wide hallway. If the areas of GCHQ Caleb had seen so far took their aesthetic from off-the-peg corporate interiors, then this new zone was straight from a hi-tech catalogue. Black walls with recessed lighting stretched out in each direction, absorbing the light so it was impossible to tell how long the passageway was, giving Caleb the momentary feeling that he had stepped through a portal into deep space. The neutral grey carpet had become a metal grille over which they walked. Waterman raised his voice to be heard over the clatter.
Caleb noticed that the temperature had dropped since they had left the lift. As Waterman spoke, his breath was coming out of him in an icy vapour trail. Wherever they were going, it was colder than a meat-locker.
Up ahead, the walkway dead-ended in a metal door.
‘Why are you telling me this?’ asked Caleb.
Waterman turned around and held Caleb in his gaze.
‘I informed the head of GCHQ about the likely suspect in the Ultra attack. We went to Critical this morning.’