‘What is the school in Hamburg called?’ asked Liz.
‘The Freitang.’
‘And the name of the head teacher?’
‘Frau Nimitz.’
Liz took a folder of photographs out of her briefcase and selected one. ‘Is this the Head?’
Thomma nodded. ‘Yes. That’s Frau Nimitz.’
‘Tell us about your journey here, Thomma,’ asked Richard Pearson. ‘Did you come by plane?’
‘Oh no. It was like when we came from Syria only this time the boat was better. I don’t know why we came that way. All the boys were asking why we had to travel at night and land on a beach in the dark.’
‘What did the people in charge say?’
‘They said it was cheaper and there was not much money for educating immigrant children. That did not make us feel good.’ He went on to describe the regime at the school, which sounded more like a prison camp than an educational establishment.
‘Tell us about the lessons. What were you being taught?’
‘We were not really taught, sir. Mr Sarnat – he’s the Head – believes you learn by doing. That’s what he likes to say.’
‘I see. Tell me what you were doing then.’
‘We were divided into groups, four of us in each one. I was assigned to Computer Defences.’
‘What did that mean exactly?’ asked Liz.
‘We were developing programs that companies could use to protect themselves against hackers.’
‘Did you try and use the software against attackers?’
‘There aren’t any attackers at present.’
‘Then how did you know the software would work?’
Thomma looked surprised. ‘We didn’t,’ he said innocently. ‘Instead, we tried to get into other sites. That way we could see where their weaknesses were, and find ways to make those sites stronger.’
It was a touchingly naïve assessment of what was going on. To Liz, it was perfectly clear that Thomma and his fellow students were being taught how to hack, not how to prevent it. She said, ‘Did you practise on real companies then?’
‘Not real ones,’ said Thomma. ‘That’s next week.’
‘Oh,’ said Liz casually. ‘What are they?’
‘We are going to test something called jaysee browncow.’
‘What is that?’ asked Liz, puzzled.
‘It’s a meat company and it runs refrigerated lorries. They have a computer program that tells the lorries where to go. If someone hacked the program they could send the lorries somewhere else and steal the meat.’
‘J.C. Brown and Co,’ murmured Pearson. ‘Big meat suppliers.’
Liz pressed on. ‘You said you were divided into groups. What were the other ones working on?’
‘Social media mainly.’
‘Like Facebook?’
‘Yes. One group, I know, was working on updating the profiles of social network users. On Facebook, and Snapchat and Instagram, and Twitter – and many others too.’
‘Really? Did they have permission from the users to do this?’ It sounded very odd.
A smile was struggling to break out on Thomma’s face. Finally he giggled.
‘What’s funny, Thomma?’
‘You asked if the users would mind. But you see, none of these users are real!’
‘Really? How do you know that?’
Thomma explained that when one of the other boys made a mistake with dates, their teacher Mr Gottingen said it didn’t matter; no one was going to complain because no one owned these profiles. Thomma also heard Mr Gottingen talk to Mr Sarnat about their work – he said the ‘Legends’ group was doing very well. Gradually, Thomma said, the other boys had realised they were working on the profiles of people who didn’t exist.
Liz was beginning to understand. Legends were the fake histories or cover stories assigned to Illegals – the spurious ‘facts’ of a CV that transformed a Russian agent into a thirty-four-year-old Norwegian businessman called Erik Nilson, educated in Oslo, married with two children, multilingual with a passion for painting. All the detail needed to bamboozle everyone from immigration authorities to his new neighbours in a Surrey suburb that he was who he said he was, and not the Russian Illegal he actually was. And Thomma’s fellow students were supplying the details for these phony personae.
‘That was one social media group,’ said Thomma. ‘There was another one too. They spent their time looking for real people on social media sites. I’m not sure why.’
‘Who were they looking for?’
‘They didn’t have actual names. They looked for interests and languages. American or English people who spoke Russian or Chinese. People who had travelled there. And people who had worked there.’
‘How did they find them?’
‘LinkedIn,’ said Thomma. ‘That was the best site for finding them.’
Of course it was, thought Liz. It provided a useful first step to finding which young employee in a Western embassy didn’t have a Facebook profile or belong to LinkedIn. That would be equally revealing –a telltale sign that they might be engaged in clandestine work.
From what Thomma had to say, it seemed clear that these teams at Bartholomew Manor were at work on much more than how to protect against hacking. Sixteen pupils working full time could get an awful lot done. But then why had they not been more effectively disguised? If even Miss Girling had had her doubts, surely other people would soon ask questions? It seemed very strange.
Liz looked at Thomma. The boy was clearly tired. It might be better to continue talking to him tomorrow. But there was one further question she wanted to ask.
‘Thomma,’ she said kindly, ‘you’ve told us a lot and been very helpful. We may want to speak to you again, but in the meantime, we’ll sort out somewhere for you to stay tonight. Don’t worry – it will be completely safe. There will be a policeman to protect you.’ The boy looked reassured. ‘But before we stop, just tell me something. Are all the other boys on the IT course from the same school in Hamburg?’
‘Yes.’
‘And the teachers – are they from Hamburg too?’
Thomma shook his head. ‘No.’ Then he hesitated. ‘Well, there is one. He’s a sort of assistant teacher. I knew him in Hamburg – he’s called Aziz. He’s a few years older than me. He went on a course in America and he stayed on there to teach. He must have been very good. I was quite friendly with him at school because he came from Syria too. I was surprised to see him here at Bartholomew Manor.’
‘Have you chatted to him at all? Did he tell you why he was here?’
‘No. He pretended not to know me, probably because I am a student and now he is a teaching assistant. And I was scared to approach him because he’s working for Mr Sarnat.’
Liz flicked through her folder of photographs again and picked one out. It had been sent over weeks ago by the FBI, when they had first investigated the death of the man in Burlington, Vermont. It was a young man, slightly older than Thomma but not unlike him in appearance.
Thomma nodded. ‘Yes. That’s him. Aziz.’
Liz realised the network was now fully connected. Moscow with Blankensee, Blankensee with Suffolk, Suffolk with Vermont and Vermont back to Moscow. They were the nodes of a circular network, but it seemed that only one node, Suffolk, was live.
Thomma looked drained now, and Liz turned to Pearson. ‘Shall we wrap it up for today?’
Pearson nodded. ‘We’re most grateful to you, young man. You did the right thing getting out of that school when you did. The ones running it are not good people. We’re going to look after you now and keep you safe, and after a few days we’ll be talking to you about what you would like to do next. I’ll send in Miss Norton to look after you now while we sort out a nice place for you to stay. I think it must be time for something else to eat. What would you like? There’s a Lebanese in town if you want something that reminds you of home.’