thirty-seven

The silence became leaden as they digested the news. If this was true it changed everything. If there was no Michael Hardman, what would happen to Beth? Would she be returned unharmed, of no further use to the kidnappers? Or would the focus fall on Nancy?

Ruth felt sickened at the possibilities. She forced herself to concentrate on the next steps. Her head was buzzing with questions, but only one kept powering its way to the surface, demanding to be answered. She didn’t expect a response, but she had to try.

“If we assume these men were not aid workers,” she said slowly, wondering how to broach a ticklish subject, “and the fact that they were armed and fighting supports that supposition, then they must have been Special Forces.”

“We don’t know that,” Aston was quick to point out. But he didn’t sound convinced. “There have been several instances of fighters of European appearance joining the insurgents. This man could be one of them.”

“True. But if we assume for a moment that they were members of Coalition Forces, it might answer a lot of questions for us.”

“How?” One eyebrow lifted. If he was ahead of her, he was hiding it well.

“If Michael Hardman is the dead European … was he one of ours?”

There was a long silence during which Aston blinked without comment. Eventually he said, “There’s been no indication so far that he was ever in the military or the intelligence field, has there?”

“He might have been a sub-contractor,” said Vaslik. “The US uses them; I’m guessing the UK does, too.”

“It’s possible,” Ruth agreed, when Aston said nothing. “Think about it. There’s been something odd about this whole set up from the start. Hardman’s away a lot and keeps his family on the move from house to house; he’s often out of touch, and phone numbers and at least one address are either fake or dead. He took out a Safeguard contract, when according to his wife they’re always strapped for cash; he’s supposed to be a low-level aid volunteer but doesn’t seem to last more than a few days in any one place before he disappears; and he has no back story that we can find, save a bank account he keeps secret. To do all that he has to have money somewhere … or access to resources.”

“It doesn’t mean he was working for the security industry or the military.”

“Can we ask?” Vaslik suggested.

“No.”

“Why not?” Ruth led with her jaw. This was going to go round in endless circles if they didn’t pile on the pressure and get some answers. “If he is part of the military or the security forces, and his family’s at risk, surely whoever’s running him would want to know.”

More silence while Aston digested the idea. Ruth didn’t push further. He wasn’t slow, but he was cautious. He would know that poking a finger into the dangerous world of spies, special operations and undercover warfare was a risky business. And companies like Cruxys and others in the field relied on keeping good relations with their secretive counterparts.

“I’ll ask,” he agreed. “Sir Philip might know.” Sir Philip Coleclough, Cruxys’s chairman, was known to have close connections with the Intelligence and military community in the UK and overseas, and was even rumoured to have been an intelligence operative during the seventies. It would explain how the company never seemed to have problems recruiting good personnel with the right backgrounds.

“And fingerprint verification of the bodies,” Vaslik suggested, “would be useful.”

“Already on the way.” Aston made notes on a pad. “Can you get some prints from the house?”

Ruth nodded. “There’s bound to be something. I’m surprised we don’t have them on file.” It was meant as a dig, but Aston took it seriously.

“We do, normally. It’s not acceptable to civil liberty lobbies, but if any clients do turn up dead, it helps to ID them.” He gave a cool smile. “Some refuse, some prevaricate. Hardman must have done one or both, we don’t know.” He shrugged. “It happens; we can’t exactly drag clients kicking and screaming into the building and take their prints by force, neither can we compel them to volunteer details they would rather keep secret. Anything else?”

Nobody could think of anything. As they stood up, there was a knock at the door. It was a painfully thin young man in his twenties, wearing heavy glasses, a crisp white shirt and pressed slacks. He looked like a young banking executive, but they knew he couldn’t be.

“Sorry to intrude,” he said, his accent American. “You asked for this as soon as we got anything.” He handed Aston a sheet of paper.

“Thank you.” Aston signalled him to stay and made introductions. “James here has joined us from places I’m not permitted to mention, but he has admirable skills in IT and all things electronic. He’s been conducting some equipment tests for us.” While Ruth and Vaslik nodded and sat down again, James took a seat alongside Aston, who excused himself and scanned the sheet of paper. When he’d finished, he dropped it on the table with a deep sigh and looked at the technician. “I think you’d better be the one to explain this; it’s beyond my capabilities.”

The American nodded and squinted at the other two. “We’ve been conducting some field tests into new equipment co-developed by MIT—the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—our National Security Agency and your own Electronics Security Group within GCHQ in Cheltenham.” GCHQ was the British Government Communications Headquarters based in Gloucestershire, responsible for British signals intelligence and communications. “Not to go into technical detail, but the equipment is called Siege 2. It monitors telephony signals and works at isolating and identifying individual cell phones.”

“What happened to Siege 1?” Ruth asked. She wasn’t sure where this was going, only that it was taking up valuable time.

“It failed. They immediately began work on Siege 2.”

“To what purpose?”

“Like a lot of other technological developments, it was an idea that came out of 9/11. The FBI were concerned that in hostage situations, or where suspects were concealed among innocent people in a particular location, like an office building or school, it was crucial to identify all users of cell phones in that location. Siege works at isolating each signal, tracing it to source—the provider or subscriber—and, ultimately, pinning down any unidentified users. The aim is to reduce the available targets dramatically and allow law enforcement to move in and … and neutralise the ones they can’t identify.” He looked uncomfortable at the final words, as if designing the technology was fine, but admitting to its ultimate purpose was something he preferred not to think about.

Aston said, “By ‘unidentified’ users, does that include pay-as-you-go phones?”

“Some, yes. The majority of extremist and criminal users rely on stolen, cloned, throwaways or pay-as-you-go cells. It’s still at early stages yet, but the speed with which Siege 2 can narrow the list is increasing all the time.” He thumbed the bridge of his glasses. “We conducted a test on this building a week ago and achieved an 88 percent ID rate within the first hour. That’s pretty awesome.” He smiled like the proud parent of a gifted child. “We’re currently looking at other buildings in the area to see who we can spy on.”

“Really?” Aston looked intrigued. “Will that include our neighbours in Grosvenor Square?” He meant the US Embassy.

Ellworthy lost the smile. “Uh … … no, sir, I don’t think so. Unless you order it, of course. It might take some time to set that up, though.” He sounded absolutely serious.

Aston gave a thin smile and shook his head. “Let’s put that on hold, shall we?” He waved a hand for him to continue.

“Right. Well, the Hardman kidnap provided us with an ideal test situation. Because we couldn’t rely on getting tracking equipment inside the house unobserved, we set up a Siege 2 monitoring unit nearby.”

“You what?” Ruth stared at him. Ellworthy blinked and looked at Aston for support.

“It’s OK—they had my approval.” He looked directly at Ruth. “They didn’t compromise your position in any way; we wanted to keep it to ourselves in case anybody listening in caught wind of it.”

Ruth subsided, but still felt nettled at not being told. She glanced at Vaslik. His expression was blank, and she wondered what Aston would have done if the American had stumbled on their little “unit” while on one of his walks and gone in all guns blazing.

“Go on,” she said. “But keep it non-technical; I have a headache.”

Ellworthy nodded. “Sure. As I said, we placed a monitoring unit nearby, focussed on the Hardman property to detect and source-track any incoming and outgoing calls.”

“Source-track?”

“See where they came from. Or went to. There was some interference from other devices, which we expected, but we managed to screen them out.”

“Devices?” This from Vaslik.

“Listening devices. I believe you found some in the building. There are others.”

“How many?”

“We detected three. Cute technology, too, going by the signals.” He glanced at Ruth before continuing. “Siege also picked up signals indicating a cell phone user sending and receiving text messages. They were of short duration and spaced out, suggesting receiving and responding in turn.”

“From a house nearby? The buildings aren’t that far apart.”

“I know. But Siege was able to pin it down to within ten feet.”

“Somebody in the garden, then?”

Ellworthy looked at her as if she’d insulted him. He thumbed his glasses again with a vicious jab. “No, ma’am.”

They all waited for the punch line.

“The signals were coming from inside the house. The northeast quadrant.”