Zero Days, page 29
Schoenberg sipped his tea, running a thumb and forefinger over his short moustache, the faintest of smiles. ‘What we are planning is the biggest exposé since Edward Snowden revealed to the world the extent of NSA snooping.’
‘Snowden leaked stolen NSA files. What exactly are we after here?’ Drayton asked.
‘We’re not stealing anything,’ said Vika.
‘Snowden’s passé, my friend,’ said Norgaard, pausing, sipping his beer, licking his lips as he placed the can back on the table.
Then Bret said, ‘My friend, we’ll be live streaming to the World.’
‘Well,’ said Schoenberg. ‘Let the performance begin.’
*****
Drayton had a thing about plans. They rarely worked. Not for him. From his experience, the more carefully something was laid out, the more likely it would get screwed up. And it was his balls that would end up tied around the highest cupola in Kiev, as Bret had so eloquently put it.
So it was no great surprise that the following day he almost fell over Dmitry, as the Russian exited through a hotel door surrounded by a group of shaven-headed men doing a bad impersonation of extras from a second-rate mafia movie. Drayton was on his way in through the same door and had nowhere to hide. Dmitry seemed to look straight at him or possibly through him, a look that was cold and indifferent.
It seemed inconceivable that Dmitry had not seen him, but the Russian never broke his stride or his conversation, climbing with the extras into a black van with tinted windows, which accelerated quickly away from the hotel and through the square below.
The hotel was a solid Stalinist relic overlooking Independence Square. Service with a snarl, the austere lobby a major thoroughfare for pimps, hookers, hoodlums and just about every other variety of Kiev low-life, which Vika said made it ideal as a base for her and Drayton, since nobody else in their right mind would stay there.
Well, whatever mind Dmitry was in, he’d been there.
Drayton found Vika in the square below talking to a group of older women wearing headscarves and standing beside a makeshift shrine made from bricks, tyres and flowers. Several photographs of young men were propped against the tyres. Two of them looked little more than boys. Vika said the youngest was seventeen and had been killed in sniper fire during the protests.
The entire square had become a memorial to the Maidan uprising, the 2014 revolution that kicked out the president, a Russian place-man whose family had plundered the country. More than one hundred people died around the square, which was now lined with simple shrines of photos, flowers and candles. Billboards carried the almost medieval images of burning barricades, slingshots hurtling rocks at the advancing riot police. Others had copies of Facebook posts that supposedly triggered the revolution – the Facebook revolution, they’d called it. The days before social media was tamed and then co-opted by thugs, dictators and marketing consultants, and a promised enabler of democracy became its biggest threat.
Drayton watched the women refreshing flowers on the shrine, he was startled by a hand on his shoulder and turned to find himself looking into the cold, sunken eyes of an unshaven man, unsteady on his feet and grasping a hand full of braided wrist bands in yellow and blue, the national colours of Ukraine. Drayton gave him several small denomination notes and took one of the wristbands.
‘He’s messed-up,’ Vika said. ‘A veteran of the war in the east. You find them all over the city.’
‘I need to talk to you,’ Drayton said, leading her away from the shrine, and telling her about Dmitry.
If she was surprised she didn’t show it. ‘If he didn’t notice you, that’s good. And even if he did, it just means he knows you’re already here. He still needs to do business with you.’
‘We should tell Schoenberg. Tell the others.’
She looked at her watch. ‘Let me deal with that. The messages will be going out soon. I see no reason to change our plans.’
Drayton retreated to the hotel’s lobby bar, where he sat on a fading leather sofa that once-upon-a-time had springs. He ordered a beer, and watched the grotesque theatrics of the lobby, all the time keeping one eye on the door, not in the least bit sharing Vika’s breezy indifference to the presence of Dmitry. He looked at his watch. In just under two hours, at midday, messages would go out in his name to Wang, Cullen, Strykov, Dmitry and Bell, giving each a time and place to meet him. And then the performance would begin. When he’d left the Chernobyl radar, Schoenberg had called him the catalyst, the lead player. From where he sat, Drayton felt like bait, and now the biggest and nastiest predator of the lot knew where to find him.
He picked up his cell phone, which had been returned by Schoenberg, and began to compose an email to Tun Zaw. The Burmese kid was smart and keen, he’d already showed that, but what he was now asking might be too much. But at the same time, it might just save Drayton’s balls from the cupola. He pressed ‘send’, drained the rest of his beer and then headed to a metro station beneath the square.
His destination was Arsenalna, just one stop away, near the bank of the Dnieper River. He’d once seen a documentary about the station, named after a nearby weapons factory. It was the deepest in the world, and that’s how it felt at the bottom of seemingly endless escalators. It had been built to double up as a bomb shelter, to survive a nuclear war. The walls of the platform were lined with advertisements for computers and cell phones, the tools for the next conflict.
Drayton followed a path close to the river, leading to a vast hillside statue made of stainless steel. The Motherland Monument was built by the Soviets. It held a sword in one hand, in the other a shield carved with hammer and sickle, the state emblem of the Soviet Union.
Drayton looked for inscriptions.
The wall in front of the statue contained plaques to the various ‘hero cities’ of the Soviet Union. Alongside that, an outdoor exhibition of weapons. There were information boards, but none were ideal. He climbed a nearby hill to a giant bowl containing an eternal flame, which turned out to be not so eternal. A man standing nearby told him it was only lit on special occasions, after opposition groups occupied the bowl and used the flame for frying eggs in protest against the Soviet symbolism. Drayton walked around it. It was called the Bowl of Fire of Glory, and an inscription circled its rim. He noted down the words, and then sat on the grass close by, working his phone, another message to Myanmar.
He heard distant church bells. Midday. The messages to Wang, Cullen, Strykov, Dmitry and Bell were now on their way. He had just enough time to return to the centre of the city for the first of his meetings, the start of the performance, feeling rather less anxious than he had an hour or so earlier.
*****
Act One. Starring Chuck Drayton and Wang Yang. And hopefully nobody else. Setting: the coffee shop in the ornate lobby of the Chinese-owned Dnieper Palace Hotel. Schoenberg hadn’t exactly described the meeting in those terms, but that’s how it felt to Drayton as he took a seat, his back to the lobby, as Bret had instructed. In the ceiling above his left shoulder, a security camera watched from its dark bulbous-shaped housing, squeezed between a sparkling chandelier and several fire sprinklers.
He glanced behind him. At the camera, then the lobby, empty except for a bored-looking doorman in dark uniform and white gloves, who was watching a large tourist boat manoeuvre awkwardly beside the river bank across the busy road. Drayton was ten minutes early. He picked up a magazine from a white carved chest, on which also sat a large pot of orchids. Were they obstructing the view? He didn’t want to leave anything to chance, so moved them slightly, feeling stupid and self-conscious as he did so. He sipped a coffee, then removed his cell phone from the top pocket of his jacket. He replaced it, upside down, making sure the microphone was unobstructed.
Then he waited.
Wang was five minutes late. Winnie-the-Pooh bounded to the table, sitting opposite Drayton, face to the lobby as Bret intended. He refused a coffee and came straight to the point.
‘How much do you want Drayton?’
Drayton stuck to his prepared script, telling Wang the zero day was more powerful than anything yet found, that it would give China a cyber edge, for spying, for developing weapons. That it was valuable. But Wang interrupted him, impatient.
‘I know what it is and what it can do. I asked you how much you wanted.’
Wang’s tone surprised Drayton. It was unlike the Wang of the Berlin Group conference room, where he’d played the role of wooden apparatchik, full of empty clichés, as if he was addressing the central committee of the party. All with a poor grasp of English. But the Wang sitting in front of him now was polished and fluent.
‘Ten million dollars in Bitcoin, to this wallet,’ Drayton said, handing Wang a card with the digital address of the wallet. ‘Once the money is in the wallet, you will receive a key to a digital vault that contains the code book.’
Wang stood and began to walk back to the lobby. Then he turned, and as if as an afterthought, he said, ‘There’s another key, Mr Drayton. To unlock a certain cryptocurrency exchange.’
‘That will be an additional ten million, Mr Wang.’
‘We will be in touch. Good day, Mr Drayton.’
Drayton watched Wang’s short legs powering his rotund body across the lobby, two tall body guards falling into formation behind him as they headed to the lifts. The way Wang had mentioned the crypto exchange had been casual, almost calculatingly so, yet Drayton suspected that to certain people in Beijing, that key, a key to a Pandora’s box of dodgy party transactions, mattered as much as the zero day.
Drayton sat in the coffee shop for another five minutes until a coach pulled up in front of the hotel, tourists returning from visiting Kiev’s churches. As they spilled through the hotel’s revolving doors, he left his seat, pushing through the crowd and out of the hotel. He walked briskly down an underpass to the riverside and then into the dingy departure hall for river ferries. He stood near the door, watching the area in front of the hall. Only when he was sure he wasn’t being followed, did he leave and quickly hail a taxi to take him to the next act.
*****
Act Two, starring Drayton and Igor Strykov. Schoenberg’s choice of location for the meeting with the Russian showed to Drayton that the German did have a sense of humour, though he doubted Strykov would see the funny side. They were to meet in the shadow of what used to be a statue of Lenin. Now all that was left of it was a graffiti-covered plinth topped with Ukrainian flags where the great man had once stood. Facing it and spray-painted in yellow on a nearby wall was the face of a smirking cat. Drayton sat on a bench to one side of the plinth, his every move followed by the security camera of a nearby bank. He checked the position of the cell phone in his pocket and then looked up the narrow tree-lined path beyond the plinth, sitting sharply upright as several figures in dark overalls began to move towards him. It was difficult to see clearly because the bright sun was behind them. But he was sure they were armed and making no attempt to conceal their weapons, which they waved around almost casually. They stopped at a bench the other side of the plinth, and then they began to paint; their weapons were paintbrushes and tins of sticky emulsion.
‘I hope you realise Drayton that you won’t leave this city alive.’
It was Strykov, standing behind him.
Like Wang before him, he had taken on a new persona. Gone was the mischievous, wheezing laugh, the image of almost bumbling bonhomie that had earned him his nickname. This Strykov was blunt and threatening.
‘If Dmitry doesn’t get you then my people probably will. As soon as you sent that message you signed your own death warrant,’ he said.
‘I don’t think so,’ said Drayton.
‘No? And what makes you think I’m interested in your proposition?’
‘Because you wouldn’t be here if you weren’t, Igor. And I’m guessing you’re a little pissed because Dmitry, who’s been so useful to Russia in the past, isn’t playing with you any more. Such terrible ingratitude, after helping take care of Thomas, too. I’m also guessing that you know the power of what I’m selling, the key to unlock the most powerful zero day that has yet been found.’
Drayton, speaking loudly and clearly, as Bret had instructed, then told Strykov the price and how he was to pay.
The Russian didn’t answer. He looked at the plinth on which Lenin once stood. ‘Ukraine is not a country. It never has been. We could end this charade in days if we chose. The clowns that run this so-called country underestimate Moscow at their peril. And so do you, Drayton.’
He began to walk away, Drayton calling after him. ‘And Strykov, the deadline for payment is the end of tomorrow. There may be other interested parties, as I’m sure you can appreciate.’
The Russian kept walking without looking back, crossing the road in front of the bank. The security camera watched as he climbed into the back seat of a waiting Mercedes and was driven away.
Drayton quickly crossed the road and into a hotel beside the bank. He crossed the lobby and followed a long corridor leading to a bar and restaurant at the back. He left through a rear entrance and climbed into the back of a waiting car, driven by a man in a baseball hat and sunglasses. He ducked to the floor as the car pulled away. It dropped him five minutes later at the entrance of a metro station.
‘Good luck,’ said Norgaard from the driver’s seat.
Drayton took a series of random trains before emerging not far from where he’d started, and a short walk from the golden cupolas of Saint Sophia’s Cathedral. Ready for Act Three.
This was the scene Drayton was least looking forward to.
He arrived early at the Cathedral and killed time by walking around the grounds, watching a team of gardeners picking weeds. The more he looked at them, the more he became convinced they were looking at him between each aggressive stab at a weed. Were they really gardeners, or some sort of advance guard for Ric Cullen, set to pounce upon him at any moment, stoving in his head with their trowels?
He climbed the steep stairs of the bell tower, Startling pigeons sheltering behind giant bells, frantic flapping wings echoing around the tower. He was breathless when he reached the top, where a platform ran along the inner edge of the square-shaped tower. The city spread endlessly in front of him, its old heart giving way quickly to sprawling Soviet-era estates of grey housing blocks. All punctuated by golden cupolas, the Dnieper River running through its heart. Behind him, the hollowness of the tower, the ground barely visible below. High on the opposite wall, the familiar bulbous housing of a security camera.
He heard the footsteps before he saw him: Cullen making easy work of the stairs, as if he was out for an afternoon stroll.
He was quickly at Drayton’s side. ‘So let me see your back. Because do you know what? You’ve just painted one big fucking target on it Drayton. I knew you were stupid, but not this stupid. Hand over the code book while you still can.’
He pushed Drayton hard in the chest. ‘How does it feel to betray your country?’
‘I’m not sure. You tell me.’
‘Which means?’
‘Which means, who are you really representing here Cullen? Or is it Christopher Johnson? Isn’t that the name you’re using? Tell me Cullen, you ever heard of a British hacker called Matt Dobberman? Used the handle Razor. He was one of Dmitry’s boys, until he was murdered in Bangkok by one of Dmitry’s thugs.’
‘What the fuck you talking about Drayton?’
‘Dobberman’s cell phone was in your office. In Berlin. Tell me about that Cullen.’
For a moment they stood in silence.
‘Sometimes things can be messy, Drayton. Sometimes we have to compromise to keep America safe. To defend our country. Not that I’d expect you to understand a fucking thing about that.’
‘Messy. Like doing business with a murderer who’s holding the world to ransom.’
Cullen took a step closer, his face just inches from Drayton’s. ‘You really have no idea what you’re dealing with Drayton. No fucking idea. You’re playing a fucking dangerous game.’
‘A dangerous game. Like at the Mountville Memorial Hospital, that sort of dangerous game? My defences didn’t fail at the hospital, did they Cullen? You disabled them. You let the bug in. You deliberately let the fucking bug into the hospital systems, and you killed fifteen people. How does that feel, Cullen?’
Cullen hesitated, taking a step back. ‘The deaths were unfortunate. We needed a live copy of the code. We couldn’t let you destroy it.’
‘And did you get your live copy?’
‘The bug was coded to self-destruct when it reached its target.’
‘They usually are, Cullen. Any adolescent hacker could have told you that.’
Cullen clenched his fists, looking as if he was bracing to strike. ‘I could easily send you toppling over the edge, Drayton, and what a mess you’d make when you hit the bottom. Lying amid all the pigeon shit. Think about that.’ Drayton held firmly to the flimsy handrail, bracing himself. But Cullen just pushed past and bounded down the stairs, never looking back, taking them two at a time, with military precision.
*****
Act Four. Setting: the Kiev opera house. This time featuring Chuck Drayton and Efren Bell, with a supporting role from Vika Shevchenko, wearing a dark wig, long dress and dark glasses, all with such panache that at first Drayton didn’t recognise her.
‘Have you ever been to the opera before?’ she asked.
‘It’s been a while,’ Drayton said, without too much conviction. ‘What’s it about, this Rigatoni?’
‘Rigatoni’s a pasta, Drayton. Tube-shaped, slightly curved and usually with ridges down the length. Rigoletto is a mix of drama, betrayal and tragedy, which I imagine sounds rather familiar. Shall we?’
They entered the opera house through a pair of heavy wooden doors, a poster for the performance on one door, showing a big, slightly hunched man with a bit of a snarl; a warning sign on the other said that the place was monitored by security cameras.
