At the rear of the house they came to a very large room, visible through two massive new windows set either side of a door. This must once have been the kitchen, Peggy thought, but now instead of an Aga a bank of computers, each the size of an American-style refrigerator, stood lined up against the back wall. In the middle of the room a pony-tailed man, dressed in a programmer’s uniform of blue jeans and Glastonbury T-shirt, stood at a lectern, writing in a log book. Peggy noticed that he wore paper slippers on his feet.
‘That’s Luke, the data manager,’ Fielding explained. ‘And this is the machine room – MR as we call it. Dust-free, in theory anyway.’
He gestured to Luke to come out and then introduced him to Peggy. The data manager was soft-spoken and looked very young – mid-twenties, she thought, despite a trendy attempt at growing stubble on his chin. Peggy pointed to the machine room. ‘I thought computers that size went out in the nineties.’
‘Most did. But these are super-computers,’ Luke explained. ‘Not everything can be done on a PC, regardless of what Microsoft tells you.’
Fielding laughed and added, ‘Encryption in particular needs an incredible amount of calculating power.’
They said goodbye to Luke and retraced their steps to the front hall. Upstairs, on the first floor, normality returned – Fielding’s office was a former bedroom that had not been refurbished. The curtains were of faded chintz and the carpet was thin with age. He waved Peggy to a chair and they sat down on either side of a large walnut desk that was covered with stacks of paper.
Fielding said, ‘I know you’re from the Security Service and here to discuss our own security. But that’s all I know. Perhaps you could fill me in.’
His voice remained friendly, but now it had a briskness to it that belied the abstracted air he’d shown before. This might be a boffin, thought Peggy, but he had a level-headed, business-like side that explained why he was running the place.
Liz and Peggy had agreed that there was no point in obfuscating; it would merely hinder their investigation. So Peggy explained MI5’s concern that information was being leaked about Clarity, though she didn’t explain how they knew this.
‘Who’s doing it?’ asked Fielding. He looked alarmed.
‘It’s our understanding that the infiltrator is a foreign national. Unless I’ve been misinformed, all of your staff are British, so we don’t think it’s someone actually working here.’
Fielding still looked worried. ‘They say everyone’s a mongrel in this country of ours. Including yours truly,’ he added. ‘My father’s name was Feldman; he left Germany as a child on the last of the Kindertransport. So couldn’t someone have been placed here who wasn’t British, but just pretending to be?’
‘You mean an illegal?’
‘Yes. Weren’t there lots of those during the Cold War, especially in West Germany? I read somewhere that Willie Brandt had an aide who turned out to be East German.’
‘That’s all true,’ said Peggy, rather surprised that Fielding was so quick to take the situation on board, but also pleased that he was clearly concerned. ‘But I don’t think that’s an issue here. Illegals can only get by with a cover story if it isn’t scrutinised too closely. If you say you were born in Auchtermuchty when actually it was Kiev, enhanced vetting will eventually unmask you.’
‘If that’s the case, how is there a security problem here?’’
‘I’m hoping there isn’t one. But we’re worried that someone at the MOD in London has somehow accessed information about Clarity.’
‘It’s not possible.’ Fielding was shaking his head, and he seemed relieved. ‘Let me explain.’
There followed a ten-minute technical overview of the networks and systems used at Brigham Hall. To Peggy’s relief, Fielding managed to speak in ordinary English for most of the time. Aided by an intensive briefing the day before from MI5’s own computer expert, ‘Technical Ted’ Poynter, in his lower-floor den at Thames House, she found she could follow most of what Fielding was saying, though there were lengthy descriptions of ‘botnets’ and ‘attack vectors’ that made her mind reel.
‘Let me just make sure I understand you,’ said Peggy finally. ‘Because of these security provisions you’ve made for communications, it’s technically impossible for anyone to access your system here.’
Fielding hesitated almost imperceptibly, then said, ‘I can’t see how it could be done. The system here was specifically designed for Clarity. It cannot be accessed from outside – not by the Chief of the Defence Staff himself. It’s deliberately sealed off.’
‘But how do your people communicate with the MOD? Not to mention the outside world.’
‘There’s a second distinct MOD network we are part of – we sit as an extra nodule on it, a bit like a new wing on a house. As for the outside world, we have standard internet access, but we insist it takes place on completely different computers, in designated places. That way it can’t affect our security system.’
‘So it’s impossible for anyone to get in from outside?’ Peggy insisted.
‘Well,’ Fielding said with an uncertain laugh, ‘I wouldn’t say impossible. I just don’t myself see how it could be done.’
‘I’ve been told that there isn’t a system in the world that can’t be hacked into, and that your average fourteen-year-old hacker in his bedroom in Slough can get through most of them in no time.’
‘But that’s because they pose a challenge.’
‘And yours doesn’t?’
Fielding gave a mock-groan. ‘I don’t imagine there’s a hacker anywhere who even knows we exist. And if one did get in somehow by accident, I doubt they’d understand anything they found.’
‘But an infiltrator who was a computer scientist might?’
She could see Fielding was resistant to this, but it seemed right to persist. Especially when he sighed and said, ‘All right, you win. Theoretically it might be possible. I don’t know how it could be done, but that’s not a good reason to assume it can’t be done.’
Peggy admired his honesty. He went on, ‘I think if it were happening, the only way to tell would be from the outside.’
‘How do you do that?’
‘We need to look across the entire MOD network, and see if there has been any illegitimate contact between it and our system here. I will scan the internal Brigham Hall logs for any sign, but if someone’s managed to penetrate us – and as I’ve said it’s extremely unlikely – they will almost certainly have made sure there’s no evidence of it at this end.’
He was looking depressed now. Peggy tried to lighten things, saying, ‘I’m not trying to ruin your day.’
He smiled. ‘It’s not the day I’m thinking about – it’s the week, possibly the month. It will take at least that long to make a system-wide check of the MOD network. I’d better go down to London first thing in the morning.’
Chapter 16
The photographs spoke for themselves. Bech leaned forward in his chair in the office on Papiermühlerstrasse, and looked again at the glossy prints on his desk. He shook his head in exasperation. ‘Do we know who the woman is?’
Gollut, the veteran Head of the Surveillance Section, looked sideways at Patrick Foehning from Analytic Research. Foehning was young – barely thirty years old. He had been recruited from a risk assessment consultancy personally by Bech, something that had put a few noses out of joint, for there had been a popular internal candidate for the post. But Foehning had caught on fast, and had won the respect of even his most hostile new colleagues.