Stealth Associates Pt. 02

Just then Nell enters the bar. She's wearing tight jeans with a designer slash across one knee and a white cheesecloth top.

The overall effect is stunning. Compared to the wannabe celeb, Nell is effortlessly beautiful. The footballer looks up and gives her the benefit of a lecherous stare. His girlfriend follows the direction of his gaze and then slaps his arm.

I wave and attract her attention. Nell sees me and her face lights up. She heads over to my table. I stand to greet her and she kisses me on the cheek. It takes me a little by surprise, and after a moment I give her a chaste little peck on the cheek.

"Can I get you a drink?" I ask.

"White wine, something crisp?" She spots the chalkboard with the wine list, glances at it and her face lights up, "ooh, they've got Peake Ranch chardonnay," she exclaims with delight, "oh, and hello big boy."

This last remark leaves me confused.

"Do you mean me or the wine?"

"You of course, y' silly goose."

"Oh right," I nod like it all makes sense, "I'll go and get your drink."

+++

19 - The Look

As Nell gets back from the bar the sound jukebox kicks in with The Look Of Love by Dusty Springfield. Nell puts the carafe of wine on our table, then dances a couple of steps before sitting next to me and smiling self-consciously.

" saw this on the jukebox and just couldn't resist playing it. Don't y'all just love Dusty?" she asks.

"This is one of mum's favourites," I admit.

Nell turns to face me, she stares into my eyes and nervously chews her lip. "Steve, y'all know I'm really into you, don't you?"

"Yeah, and I like you a lot too," I reply. "I mean, you had picked up on my subtle clues? All the texts and long phone calls."

"Yeah shug, I picked up on 'em," She smiles. "Well I gotta tell you something and it might affect how you feel about me."

"OK," I say cautiously.

She takes a deep breath, holds it for a long second and then blurts out; "I'm an intersex trans-woman."

I sit silently for a long moment, contemplating what she'd just told me. I tilt my head on one side side and appraise her before reaching out and taking her hands in mine.

"I have a genital malformation, a fused labia and clitoris forming a penis. At first mom and dad thought I might be a boy, and I guess I was kind of a tomboy. But when I hit puberty I developed these," she breaks one hand free of my grasp and gestures to her breasts, "and it became clear that I'm a girl."

"And the problem is...?"

"What do you mean?" Nell looks confused.

"Well you said that you were a trans-woman, and you made it sound like it's a problem."

"I kinda like to be up front with the guys I date. I've had bad experiences when I spring being trans on guys as a surprise."

"Nope, nice try, but it isn't going to work," I grin and shake my head, "you're not going to get rid of me that easily."

Nell responds by squeezing my hands and smiling a bit more broadly. She pouts and for a moment I think that she's going to kiss me.

"How come you're so cool about this?" She gives me a suspicious side glance, "you're not gay or bi are you?"

"Nope," I shake my head, "not bi, not even bi-curious."

"So..." for a moment I think she's going to press things.

I take action and press my lips to hers. Nell yields and we're kissing, our tongues fencing. When I break for air I tell her how I feel.

"Ever since I first bumped into you at university I knew that you were very, very special," I tell her. "It's not my first time as far as this romance thing's concerned, but I've never met a girl like you before. I want to be with you, I want to make you smile, and more than anything else I want to make you feel cherished, adored even. I don't know how you feel about me, but if it's anything like I've just described, then we've got something special."

"Babe, I think you should stop talking and kiss me again."

+++

20 - Monday

Monday morning. The start of the working week is pretty much the same for everyone at Stealth Associates as anywhere else. Nobody is particularly keen to start work, we all procrastinate as best we can. Some of us have other things they could be getting on with. In my case it's a dissertation that won't write itself.

Twenty thousand words on the subject: What are the roles of the Internet in terrorism? Measuring online behaviour of UK terrorist groups. It seemed like such an interesting subject when I started, now all I want to do is get it over and done with.

A slack handful of people cluster round the corner of the Bunker where the kitchen's located. Being British, no one down here can start work until we've had that first cup of tea.

There's one person who stands out from the crowd; Bomber. He's in the kitchen with a large Tupperware tub perched on the worktop. He sees me standing in line with my tea mug and beckons me over.

"So, you had your breakfast yet?" he asks.

He knows that my daily routine often doesn't include breakfast.

"Nah," I answer.

He shakes his head in mock irritation and opens the tub, showing me the contents though; a home baked apple Danish pastry.

OK, so some people might think that a six foot plus, macho, South London guy baking might seem unusual. They're wrong, and The Great British Bake Off has a lot to answer for. In a positive way that is.

I know that the Danish pastry will taste great. My mouth waters in anticipation. He hands me a paper plate and offers the plastic tub. I reach in and take the last breakfast pastry.

Bomber and I had been spending tea breaks getting to know each other. He's ex-RAF regiment corporal, having served with II Squadron, para-trained and part of the Special Forces Support Group. When he came out of the air force Bomber worked as a private military contractor, protecting western journalists in Iraq. Private military contractor, the politically correct way of saying mercenary. Apparently it paid well though. After a year in Iraq he hit it and quit it, with enough cash to pay off his mortgage.

Just as I'm about to take the first bite out of my apple Danish I spot someone out of the corner of my eye. Viki Yip, and her body language signals that she's searching.

When she sees us making a bee line in our direction.

"Hiya Steve, had a good weekend?" she asks but doesn't bother waiting for an answer before ploughing on, "I just took a call for you from Dirty Harriet."

"Already?" I ask tetchily, "what's she want?"

"She's emailed you some stuff," Viki's far too perky for a Monday, 'can you go through it ahead of the meeting?'

I sigh, put the paper plate down, turn and head for the my desk. As I go I hear Viki speak with her mouth full.

"This apple Danish is great Bomber."

So much for breakfast then.

+++

21 - New Tasking

We're gathered in Colossus as we do first thing every Monday morning. There's a routine, a ritual even. Before we start Dirty Harriet tells us a joke.

"There were two rabbits on a road in Russia during the Stalinist purge of 1937," Dirty Harriet announces. "The first rabbit asks the second, 'where are you going in such a hurry?' The second one says, 'haven't you heard? They're shooting all the camels.' The first rabbit replies, 'but you're not a camel.' The second rabbit says, 'try proving it after you've been shot.'."

We've been debating whether to print off cards with a score between one and nine and holding them up. However Viki kicked it into touch on grounds that it might be harmful to our careers.

In the end we fall back on polite but forced chuckles, and the hope that she doesn't realise we're being ironic. So far so good.

"Enough hilarity," Dirty Harriet said firmly, "it's Monday morning meeting time. What's your current tasking?"

"We're working on NIM reports," Viki says without any enthusiasm.

"National Intelligence Model reports are a vital part of Government counter-terrorism strategy," she glares at all of us, daring us to contradict her. "However, I may have something a little more interesting for you to do."

All of a sudden the four of us are very interested in what she's proposing.

"Now I emailed an intelligence brief to Steven," she smiles at me, it's the sort of expression a hungry shark gives to an unwary surfer. "Would you kindly fill everyone in on the details?"

I tap at my work-issued tablet and the original briefing's projected on the wall. I give everyone a couple of minutes to read before starting on my spiel.

"OK guys, as you can see, GCHQ in Cheltenham has detected a number of hack attacks against MoD contractors working on various aspects of the new Corax Unmanned Combat Aviation Vehicle..."

"What's one of them?" VJ interrupts me.

"A drone bruv," Bomber tells him, "now will you shurrup and let the man do his thing?"

Swann glares across the meeting table at both of them.

"The hacker group is called X Korps, and while the individual hackers seem to be based in the United States the people at GCHQ have reason to believe that the control command and communications cell is based here in the UK," I continue.

"This, as you can see from the briefing document, is due to metadata indicating that the proxy server being used is located somewhere in London."

I pause and look round the table. I'm kind of relieved to see Swann nodding with approval at my progress so far. Pathetic isn't it? I mean, this is a chore I didn't ask for, have had less than ten minutes to prepare for, and yet I get a warm and fuzzy feeling when she smiles and nods at me with satisfaction.

"Our mission is to identify where the server is and get as much intel about whoever's behind it," Viki looks at Dirty Harriet and grins cheekily. "That's right, isn't it?"

"This is something that will make better use of your peculiar skill set," she beams at us. "But first I have a video you may be interested in."

+++

22 - Swarmbot

On screen white letters scream: "Dylan FORBES, CEO Vertiflux, Swarmbot Piranha launch event, Haringey Technopark."

Dylan Forbes stands on a stage in an auditorium facing his audience. A huge screen behind Forbes shows images from a tiny drone flying round the auditorium. It locks onto Forbes and hovers a couple of metres in front of him.

Forbes jumps down. The drone follows him. He runs round the auditorium dodging and weaving. Where he goes the drone goes. Having made his point Forbes climbs back on stage followed by the drone.

"I know what you're thinking, there's pilot at the controls, yeah?" He grins and shakes his head, "no pilot. It's all down to our Chimera AI Operating System; the drone's autonomous!"

There's a gasp from the audience.

He holds his right hand out flat, the drone lands on it.

Forbes reaches into his pocket, pulls out a small camera and focusses on the drone. The video is projected behind him. A quadcopter, 'X' shaped in profile, with a propeller at each corner. It sits on four small curved skids, while something the size of a triple A battery points down through the fuselage.

"Just like any drone it has cameras and sensors. It's also got something that no drones in this size range has: three grams of plastic explosive in a shaped charge. This is how it works."

A spotlight illuminates a crash test dummy at the far side of the stage. Forbes throws the drone into the air above the audience. The drone locks onto the dummy and flies straight for it.

The dummy's head rapidly grows in size on the screen. There's a sharp crack. The screen turns to fuzz, and the image on the screen reverts back to HD video. The camera focuses on the dummy's head, there's a small black hole between its eyes.

The screen behind Forbes displays a dusty patch of wasteland. There's a car - a big SUV. The doors are open and two men get out.

"This was a product beta test, conducted by us on behalf of, well, let's just say it was for a client who's a US government agency." Forbes tells his audience. "You'll have to take my word for it when I tell you, these were all bad guys."

The first man is dispatched quickly as he gets out of the car. Another draws a pistol and blasts away missing with every shot. As he reloads the drone takes him out.

The audience whoops, cheers and claps. This is like the launch of a new computer game rather than an AI driven smart weapons system that's just killed two people.

"Now that..." Forbes grin gets wider, "...is something worthy of the term surgical air strike."

The whooping and cheering rises to a crescendo.

"I think that's more than enough of that," Swann stops the video. "The Chimera AI operating system is being incorporated into a range of unmanned smart weapons systems intended for use by the British military. As I'm sure you can appreciate, it would be rather annoying for the men from the ministry if this software fell into unfriendly hands. Fortunately the Russians don't want to steal it, they merely want to have a backdoor so that they can deactivate it whenever they wish. On Friday afternoon the clients will be here for a presentation based on the intelligence you've gleaned. The clock's running, chop chop."

+++

23 - Homework

A glance at the time display in the bottom right hand corner of my monitor tells me it's just turned two in the morning. My computer's quietly working through my thinking playlist, music that seems to help me get stuff done. Radiohead's Man of War, the best Bond theme never to be used, is currently playing quietly. It segues into the Raconteurs Steady As She Goes.

VJ's sent me an email, he's used the TRACERT utility to locate a proxy server's physical address. It's in The Bishop's Avenue in North London. He'd like it very much if I could locate it a little more precisely. Oh, and could I possibly come up with the names of the people running it. He doesn't want much does he?

He follows up with another IP address. This, in turn, leads me to Digital Storm Limited, a company in Shoreditch in the east end of London. That might lead to me putting a name in the frame if I get creative. Yeah, but it has to be backed up with some painstaking grunt work, by which I mean hard core intel analysis.

As an intelligence analyst my job's a lot like doing a jigsaw puzzle, but I can't be certain that all the pieces have been collected or that some don't come from a different puzzle. That's why Stealth headhunted me, I'm supposed to be bright enough to navigate my way through this labyrinth.

The creative bit is this: I'm using the Companies House database to ID directors at Digital Storm. As a result of my search it seems that the IT company has an interesting board of directors. The Managing Director, Boris Sokolov, has Russian nationality although his country of residence is here in the UK.

I do a sweep of social media looking for his name. Facebook shows that he's friends with some dodgy Russian business types, but that could just be an expat thing.

However, it also reveals that he's a business partner in a company called the Kaminski Group. Google Translate converts chastnaya voyennaya kompaniya into English as private military company. The Russian abbreviation is ChVK The Kaminski Group, it seems, is registered in the British Virgin Islands. The main reason for this, other than dodging a tax bullet, is that ChVKs aren't actually legal in Russia.

The Kaminski Group's own website is useful, particularly the about page. The group takes its name from Bronislav Kaminski, a Russian anti-communist who formed a brigade as part of the Waffen-SS during World War Two. The Group's CEO, Alexi Makarov, has his own brief Wikipedia entry, probably written by himself.

The online Wiki bio claims that Makarov was born in 1970 in in the Siberian city of Asbest, Sverdlovsk Oblast of Russia back in the USSR. He joined Russian military intelligence in 1992 and served in the GRU's Second Spetsnaz Brigade, seeing action in the First Chechen War.

None of this, however, took me any closer to getting a line on Sokolov and his IT company. Time to refocus on that.

+++

24 -CRIMINT

Stealth Associates has access to CRIMINT, a database which stores intelligence on suspected criminals and terrorists from reports filed by every police and criminal intelligence service in the country. Actually, the NIM reports I've filed probably ended up here.

I enter Sokolov's details and am rewarded by two reports from the National Crime Agency's Intelligence Directorate. Both relate to chatter claiming that the Russian was involved in denial of service attacks using ransomeware. You know, the sort of software that locks you out of your computer and won't let you back in unless you phone a number and pay ransom by credit card, or more likely now, Bitcoin.

More to the point, there are rumours that he has a place near Hampstead Heath along with his place in the East End, which fits in with the possibility of the The Bishop's Avenue being the base for his server farm. But Billionaire's Row? That's a high rent area for a dodgy IT company to have a server farm.

The White Stripes Seven Nation Army's next up on the playlist but I fast forward to Franz Ferdinand's Take Me Out. The White Stripes song's permanently spoilt for me by hordes of people singing 'oh Jeremy Corbin'. Life's too short to bring politics into rock music.

I stand and stretch then shuffle over to the fridge for a can of Coke. The cold fizzy caffeine gives me a buzz but I know it's temporary. Just so long as I stay conscious long enough to finish this off.

OK, so next up is to take a look at the server sighted in The Bishop's Avenue. I know a bit about Billionaire's Row, but my background knowledge is mostly furnished by reports I've read in the Guardian online. What I do know is that about a third of the buildings there are standing empty and several huge houses have fallen into ruin. And all this is going down while we face a housing crisis. You've got to love the one percent.

I log on to Google Earth and I'm not entirely surprised to find that the server seems to be located in one of the derelict McMansions. So what's that mean? Does Sokolov own the place or is his server taking up squatter's rights? More likely one of his rich Russian expat mates owns the property, via an offshore company, and allows Sokolov to use it on a nod and a wink.

But how do I find out who owns the property? Using the Land Registry's the best option, so I Google the website and and enter the address.

The result is intriguing. The property is owned by Ashton Management Limited, an offshore company registered in the British Virgin Islands. The Pandora Papers proved that the British Overseas Territory's popular with wealthy tax dodgers. The problem is there's no way of establishing who owns Ashton Management. It's interesting that the company that owns the house where the server's located and the Kaminski Group are incorporated in the same place, but that might just be a coincidence.

I download the documents onto a thumb drive, shut my computer and crawl into bed.

+++

25 - Presentation

It's last thing on Friday afternoon. Everyone else has mentally clocked off for the weekend. So of course this is the time management set for Syndicate Three to make it's presentation. And the gang's all here, hanging in the kitchen before heading to Colossus to deliver our presentation.

"You still seeing that hipster bloke Viki?" VJ asks.

"Nah, he dumped me," she responds, "he caught me cheating on him."

"You what!" Bomber's taken by surprise by Viki's brazen admission. "Who with?"

"A Big Mac," she replies. "Well, I was forced to, Jones is a vegan."

"Who the hell gives their kid a surname for a first name? That's just bloody ridiculous," I snort grumpily then something occurs to me, "was he that guy with the stupid moustache you had in tow last time we all met for a drink?"

"Yeah," Viki nods.

"You're well shot of him then," Bomber tells her, "in my experience people who work that hard trying to seem interesting are overcompensating for being more boring than the colour beige."