his jaw dropped when Stewart asked if we had recognised that it was possible that the ForceNet development could be restricted and classified in the national interest. He had refused to clarify what he meant and left.
CHAPTER 9
Life for me had become further complicated with the arrival of my brother at my house one evening. Now, as I sat there at the back of the coffee shop drinking a second coffee I recalled that evening.
Adrian is 10 years my junior and is at Cambridge where he is studying Mathematics. As brothers go we are very different. We both share the interest in Mathematics but whereas I am competent and managed a good degree, he is much cleverer and is probably going to be recognised as a brilliant mathematician one day. Whereas I am reasonably conventional and joined the commercial world when I graduated, he has stayed on to do a PhD at Cambridge and is something of a nerd with limited social skills and a passion for playing with computers. We are not particularly close but as my younger brother I had always looked after him following the de ath of our parents when I was seventeen. These days he didn't really need much looking after except for the occasional 'loan' to supplement his student finances. When I ’d opened the door to him that evening that was what I expected he had come for.
“Hi Adrian, this is a surprise, good to see you. Come on in.”
“Thanks, sorry I didn't call first.”
“No matter, good to see you; get your coat off and come on through to the lounge. Do want a beer?”
I ’d retrieved beers for us both from the kitchen and we ’d both sat down in front of the log fire that was glowing in the old fireplace. It was a cold night and as I had not brought any work home I had planned to sit in front of the fire and watch a movie. “Well, how are you?” I ’d asked, “how is the thesis going, are you nearly there? I don't expect I will fully understand it but I would love to read it when you are finished.”
“It's going well,” he ’d responded. “I am working with a team in the area of quantum physics and I am focused on probability problems. We have been making some good progress and hopefully I will have enough for my thesis in about six months time. It's a really fascinating subject and I have been offered a job working with this team when I have finished the PhD.”
“That sounds like good news. Have you eaten, I was just going to knock together a pasta, easy for me to increase the quantity for you?”
“That would be great,” he said as he ’d followed me through to the kitchen, where I ’d put water on the stove to cook the pasta and began grating the Parmesan, and chopping the tomatoes and smoked bacon. “You have a really nice place here.”
“Well it is nice to have it all finished and not be coming home to a builders mess every night.”
“I can imagine.”
Fifteen minutes later we ’d sat down again in front of the fire with a bowl of pasta and a glass of Brolio, my favourite Chianti.
“This is good, I see you have not lost your culinary skills,” said Adrian, “worth the journey just for the food!”
I ’d smiled, “talking of journeys, I assume you will stay tonight? The spare bedroom is ready and waiting.”
“Yes, OK thanks.”
We had cleared the empty food bowls in to the kitchen and the dishwasher and sat down again with a second glass of wine.
“Well,” I ’d said after a few minutes of silence, “what's new?”
“Nothing much apart from the job. My girlfriend has moved over to Pill.”
“Ah! Is that why I am seeing you, you are on the way to Pill? Is there still a ferry running across the river at Pill? I can remember using it with Mum and Dad when we were kids.”
“Yes, I remember, not sure if it's still there.”
The silence had been loud and as I ’d looked at him he hesitated.
“Look Martin, I am not sure I should really have come here. I have a problem and need some help but hesitate to get you in to trouble as well.”
“Pleased to help. How can you get me in to trouble? Not b roken the law have you? A criminal on the run,” I‘d said jokingly.
“Not exactly,” he ’d responded; at which I ’d stopped joking and sat still and upright looking at him. Now I looked more closely he looked tired and tense.
“You haven't been hacking again, have you? You promised after the last time that you would stay away from that in future.”
“About six months ago I got involved with a group of people on line and a few of us locals met at the pub, the Bull if you remember it?”
“Yes I do.”
“Well, we all got on well, and some of them knew some of the other guys on line in the group personally and all seemed to have similar outlooks on life. We all despise the current hypocrisy of politicians and to cut a long story short we formed a small group calling ourselves The Truth Brigade. The informal aim of the group was to highlight evidence of political lies and hypocrisy, usually in the form of documents and then release it to press or news bl ogs. Relatively harmless really, we had no real agenda and it was all rather ad hoc. We conferenced on line and those of us who were locals began to meet regularly at the pub. We outed some items to the press but nothing too serious.”
“I assume you hacked private computer systems to get these documents? Strictly illegal and if caught you could get a prison sentence.” I ’d said somewhat pretentiously as big brothers tend to do.
“I know, but as I said none of it was too serious,…. But it became so.”
“One of the group found a strange site whose origin was unclear. Several of the group had worked on it periodically over a few weeks. Don't ask me why, but for some reason it was intriguing. It was innocent looking on the surface but there was just something about it that got us to keep going back to it. Then finally I got past a password barrier and the site had opened up in to a mass of data files. After a while a clear warning that I was in a secure US government site had come up on screen but I'm afraid I ignored it and proceeded to explore the site. The site had not seemed of much interest, lists of military personnel and histories etc. with pages of meaningless numbers and dates and eventually, when I was about to pack up, I stumbled on a file of videos.”
“The file was called Raven and there were what looked like transcripts accompanied by video records of prisoner interrogations. Some were quite innocuous but a few were showing the most extreme physical torture techniques. There had been little or no extra security on these files despite the nature of the contents, almost as if the files had been located there in error. I was downloading one of the files, for reasons I will explain in a minute, when up came a warning that I had been detected and a message flashed across the screen that what I had done was a breach of the law and of national security and that it would be in my best interests to surrender to police now before they arrest me. It was obviously an automated response but it unnerved me and I disconnected immediately. In the meantime the file down load had completed.
“I have the file here with me on disc. It is a record of several sessions, of one prisoner, presumably over a number of days. Can I play it to you?”
“Do I really want or need to see this?” I ’d said looking straight at him.
“Well, that is why I hesitated to talk to you, but I had no one else to discuss it with outside the group. They are great guys but I am not sure I would trust them with involvement in this; I can only discuss it with someone I trust. I admit that it might not be a good idea for you to see it but unless you do you will not know what I am talking about.”
“It is not the torture that is the cause of the problem. That is abhorrent and repulsive. The problem is that I think I recognise one of the officers conducting the interrogations, and if I am right it could be political dynamite. Are you going to look at it?”
I ’d hesitated, “OK,” I ’d nodded, and he slotted the disc in to my DVD player and pressed play.
The video showed a room with dirty white plaster walls in the centre of which sat a man apparently strapped
