She arrived to find a response from Steve Wicker at GCHQ, supplying the dump of ICR records from the Shoreditch startup office she’d requested. Internet Connection Records were often maddeningly vague, being only a list of top-level URLs visited, and she didn’t expect Bowman to have used the office connection much anyway. But it was a start, and when Ciaran and Monica arrived, she asked for their help to scan through them.
They’d barely begun when Giles stepped into the CTA unit to address the situation and explain the plan. “Everyone seems to be moving in the same direction with regard to method,” he said, “so our joint assumption is that Bowman plans to make a radiological dispersal device using the smuggled material, and deliver it using a small domestic drone of some kind. Where we all differ is on target, motive, and solution.”
“Just shoot anything that looks like a drone within a mile of the airfield,” said Monica. “How is that hard?”
“It’s hard precisely because domestic drones are so small they’re practically invisible to radar, and to the naked eye once they’re airborne above two hundred and fifty metres,” said Ciaran. “You’d need a thousand people watching ten thousand cameras to cover every possible angle.”
“You’re also assuming the airfield is the target,” said Bridge.
“But where else?” asked Giles.
“I don’t know. I’m still trying to understand why he bothered to infiltrate Exphoria in the first place. GCHQ has sent us the SignalAir ICRs I requested, so maybe we’ll find something in there.”
“Or maybe he only used the office connection for porn, and all his real comms were done over the cell network,” said Monica. “This guy’s supposed to be a technical whizzkid, right?”
Bridge shrugged. “It’s the current assumption, yeah. I know it’s a long shot, but it has to be worth trying. There’s something off about all this, and I can’t put my finger on it.”
“Then you have approximately four hours to get your finger in gear, so to speak, before that demo takes place in Lincolnshire,” said Giles as he left. “Keep me informed.”
“I can’t believe they’re going ahead with the demo,” said Ciaran. “Do they think we make this shit up for the craic?”
Bridge shook her head. “Worse. They assume we’re stupid, and have it wrong.”
“No offence, Bridge, but maybe we do,” said Monica.
“Honestly, I kind of hope so. But I doubt it.”
76
The drone rushed toward them over the airfield, buzzing like an angry wasp.
Air Vice-Marshal Sir Terence Cavendish was pleased to note there were no theatrics this time. He’d had a quiet word with the drone controllers (much as he appreciated their skill with the technology, he refused to call them pilots) after the previous demonstration, and made it clear that spooking the crowd was both unacceptable and unnecessary. Everyone watching had seen regular drone flights a hundred times before, and knew what they were capable of with a skilled human controller. What they wanted to see from Exphoria was how it flew without that human control.
The project had faced its share of obstacles. He wasn’t directly involved at the funding stage, but he’d seen from afar the difficulty of convincing some of his colleagues that the project was achievable. Having to co-finance it with the French, of all people, was testament enough to that. Then there had been the arguments over where the main project headquarters should be. Sir Terence argued for England, of course. Somewhere like this very airfield in rural Lincolnshire would have been perfect. But the French were putting up a significant amount of money, and had a lot of computer programmers ready to go. What finally won Sir Terence over had been the argument that nobody would think to look for a next-generation military software project in French wine country.
But somebody had. The final hurdle, a bloody mole of all things, sent by…well, they’d originally said Russia, which had surprised Sir Terence not one jot, but yesterday Devon Chisholme had said they now thought it was the Chinese, possibly a lone actor, perhaps intending to sell to the highest bidder. Thought, possibly, perhaps; typical hedging from the Service, never willing to commit. But Sir Terence had committed, to this project and this launch date, and nipped any suggestion of delay in the bud. The mole had been identified and eliminated, as had his handler, and they’d even recovered some of the leaked data, which to his eye didn’t look like much at all anyway. The only loose end was a computer chap here in England, who they said might have access to radioactive material. But Sir Terence had served in Hong Kong before the handover, and knew a thing or two about Beijing. For one thing, if this computer nerd spy had any sense he’d be lying low in Bucharest or Minsk, to avoid paying the price of losing his mole. Or perhaps the Chinese had already extracted him, and he was on his way to a Nanjing jail cell. As for the possibility of an RDD, that was outside his purview. But a state action of that magnitude, by China or anyone else, would focus on civilian population in an urban environment, not ministers and grandees in a field in the middle of nowhere. What would be the point of that?
Finally, of course, this was all supposition. The man might just be a freelancer, after all. In which case he was undoubtedly long gone, with a new identity in another country, working to concoct a new hare-brained scheme the Services could worry about anew.
All told, there was no reason to suspect the demonstration was in jeopardy, and Sir Terence had firmly insisted it go ahead. Security had been increased further, and everyone was on high alert, but that would suffice. Only a suicidal fool would try to infiltrate this location.
Today’s demonstration was more complex than the last, designed to show off the Exphoria system’s capabilities to its fullest now that phase one of
