Sara looked around her.
All the other secretarial staff were focused on their terminals, their features studies in concentration.
She had been assigned to update a map of a certain section of the wilderness of Afghanistan. From the satellite view she had been given, it resembled a lunar surface, but on the ground, reconnaissance reports indicated there were camouflaged encampments dotted around the countryside. She was tasked with updating the map with the new intel.
All around her, programmers followed similar tasks, updating intelligence reports with new data that required human sensitivities. Each of them wore Plantronics phone headsets, through which they communicated with a central bank of analysts in a room on the other side of the facility.
Her plan was to spend a few days learning about the sprawling facility, testing its defences and finalizing her plan, not least exploring the viability of her escape route. There was a limit to what could be learned over the web, the missing pieces required on-site reconnaissance. But first, she needed to blend in; her anonymity was essential to her ability to gather the rest of what she needed.
Sally Shaw, the supervisor of her pod, sat at a desk on a raised dais, keeping a watch over the floor. The subject of much talk during coffee breaks, her short bob hairstyle and brusque manner placed her in the indeterminate space between a masculine woman and an effeminate man.
As Sara was typing, a tingling ran up and down her spine, faint and indeterminate, like the deadened alert a spider receives when a fly lands on a frozen web. The drugs flowing through her system dulled her senses, creating ice floes in her bloodstream, slowing down the rhythms of life around her. But whatever had just happened was enough of a threat to send a jolt of electricity through her system. Some part of her, buried deep in the frost, shook itself awake.
Sara responded immediately, peeling off her headset and walking quickly past the rows of terminals to the side door, even as the front doors of the main entrance pushed open and a man strode quickly to Shaw’s desk, his eyes searching the rows of heads at monitors. He lowered his head and whispered something in Shaw’s ear. By the time Shaw pointed to Sara’s empty chair, Sara had already swiped the side door with her key card and was stepping out of the room.
She looked quickly around her, trying to keep her breathing regular. They had discovered her. She must have been caught by some invisible tripwire.
Whatever protocols existed at GCHQ for containing a threat through infiltration were underway now. The facility would go into lockdown. They may not have her true identity, but they had her face, and the black orbs that studded the ceiling throughout the building would sweep the floor space for her.
There was no longer any choice. She had to move now or be caught.
That morning she had checked the large framed map of the facility that hung on the wall in the reception area for non-analyst staff. The room she was looking for was on the analyst side of the facility. She needed to get to the other side.
The challenge was that the entire building was quarantined into separate areas, with each district divided by plate-glass electronic turnstiles that responded to colour-coded swipe cards. Sara’s card – with a green vertical swipe – provided access to her non-analyst section only. The other part of GCHQ was as good as hermetically sealed from her. This was the access issue she expected she would solve over the first few days, but it now came crashing forwards, a problem that needed to be solved immediately or she would be lost.
Outside in the corridor, staff mixed with uniformed security, who patrolled the corridors, their Glock pistols strapped to their belts. She noticed that the badges that hung from the belts of the security officers were the only ones without a colour. Each of the badges dangling around the necks or from the belts of the other employees had different-colour stripes on them: some green, some red, others purple, beige or black.
It was impossible to know how many different checkpoints there were between her and her destination, and which badges would provide access to them. All she could be sure of was that using her own badge, assuming it was still active, would announce her whereabouts as effectively as a flare shot into a cloudless night sky.
It took her less than a few seconds to formulate a plan. She needed to follow the group of people flowing forwards towards the first set of gates. Once there, she could get a sense of whether there could be a way to bypass the system. She was so fixed on the other people that she didn’t notice the tall, bearded security officer until she had crashed right into the back of him.
‘Sorry, my fault,’ said Sara, her hands held up in apology, ‘I wasn’t looking where I was going.’
Without taking his eyes off her, the officer felt for his gun, an instinctive reflex, before softening his features and nodding.
‘No problem, ma’am.’
After he turned and continued walking, Sara looked down into the palm of her hand, where the pure white security clearance card nestled.
She swiped the card and walked along the curved walkway, past recessed rooms where analysts sat facing monitors that flashed in the dark like fluorescent aquaria.
Sara was within one hundred feet of her destination. She could see its green door ahead of her.
Frank Levy’s job was to guard the guardians. While GCHQ’s powerful gaze was directed outwards, a small team within the facility looked inwards, painstakingly checking security and vetting each employee and visitor.
Levy, an affable father of four, led the team. His pride in his job was equalled only by his record; there had been no major security breaches in the five years he had been there. Sleep-deprived at home and at work, he existed on a diet of sugar and caffeine. Right now, his knee bounced frenetically under the table as he opened a can of diet Coke, his second of the hour. A suspected mole was MIA from her desk and the entire facility was sealing itself off in sections, damming employees into districts while guards sifted through them and Levy’s eyes-in-the-sky scanned each face.
As he coordinated the actions of his staff, he noticed a light flashing on a security console. A data anomaly had appeared. He touched the screen in front of him and called up the details.
GCHQ monitored its own physical security in a similar manner to the way it gathered information on outside threats: through human and computer intelligence. The human kind patrolled the corridors and monitored the CCTV cameras embedded in the ceilings. The computer intelligence had many facets, from the employee reviews his number two, John Harker, undertook to the mapping of anomalies in security card use across the facility.
Levy twisted in his chair and looked over to Dan Rush, a young trainee in his first month on the job.
‘Security guard just gained access to Section 3. First time he’s ever been there. What do we do?’
Every opportunity was a teaching moment. Rush paused for a second before reciting the answer from memory.
‘If he’s been here one month, then the deviation from the norm isn’t much, but if it’s one year, then it’s unusual.’
Levy gave him a nod.
‘Good. Look him up.’
Rush rattled on the keyboard, then cast his eye across the security file of the guard which had appeared.
‘He’s been here three years.’
‘And that’s the first sweep he’s done of Section 3? Pull up the ceiling cameras for that section right after access.’
Levy pushed his rolling Aeron chair to Rush’s console, where a pop-up window appeared in the monitor, showing an aerial view of the main circular corridor.
‘Access the personnel file of the guard. His name is Bob Cape,’ said Levy.
Rush nodded, directed his cursor over a file with employee data and found the sub-file on the security guards. He pulled up a photograph of a heavy-set man with a large bushy red beard.
Levy turned from the picture of Cape back to the aerial view, and looked closer at the figure who had just used Cape’s card. They couldn’t see the face, but the rest was clearly visible.
‘That doesn’t look like Bob Cape,’ said Levy drily, reaching for the phone.
Sara approached the final set of glass turnstiles. Small lines of people snaked back from the three glass partitions, and she joined the nearest line. When her turn came, she swiped the card.
Nothing.
She wiped the card on her sleeve and tried again.
The gates remained closed.
She tried it once more, this time triggering a red light on the machine.
The card had been deactivated.
She stepped out of the line. In front of her, across the other side of the turnstile, she could see four security men coming around the corner. And at the end of the corridor behind her, a door opened, and two security men exited and began walking towards her. They were thirty yards behind her, closing in.
Sara let instinct drive her and pushed her body against the person in front, a tall woman with bright-red lipstick and heavy-frame glasses, driving them both through the turnstile at the same time. The woman twisted around in protest, yelping in dismay as she was carried through to the other side.
‘Sorry, in a rush,’ said Sara, passing her and making for the green door.
The security guards were ten yards away and stopping all women walking in their direction, checking ID cards.
Sara pushed through the green door and stepped inside.