Cyberstrike by James Barrington (best memoirs of all time TXT) 📕

route. The second assumption was that if the target was DC itself, the terrorists might try to throw the authorities off the scent by flying to a different destination and then travelling on to Washington by train or car, hence the huge catchment area for the collection of data.

‘I figured this was probably a total waste of time and resources,’ Simpson admitted, ‘but then I noticed something that seemed a bit odd. Not in the current data set, but in one of the historical blocks going back almost three years. Unless you’re travelling with somebody you never know who’s going to be on an aircraft with you, obviously, and unless you’re talking about a popular route with several stops you’re unlikely to find the same people on a number of successive flights. I’m quite good at making connections and seeing links that aren’t obvious, and I noticed something that didn’t really make sense. Or perhaps did make sense, but only in one particular context.

‘Just under three years ago, a passenger with an obviously Arabic name and holding a passport issued in Iraq – a genuine passport, as far as I could tell, as it had been scanned at various airports – flew into Baltimore. Nothing unusual about that, obviously. Also on the flight were two Chinese males travelling on PRC passports. Again, so what? The anomaly was that when the analysts in the Bureau backtracked the Arab’s routes over the last few years they didn’t make a lot of sense. He’d hopped all round Europe and the Middle East, and even made three flights to Saint Petersburg. ‘But what I found interesting was that the one place where he’d stayed for the longest periods of time was Beijing. I also backtracked further. I went back eight years in fact, and I found that the first flight he’d ever made using that passport was from Riyadh to Beijing, but not direct: he made a few stops in Europe first. Again, perhaps a little unusual but not suspicious.

‘The real anomaly was that when he flew out of China the last time, three years ago, the same two Chinese males who were on his flight into Baltimore were on the same aircraft. And they were also on all the connecting flights he took in Europe.’

Simpson checked that Morgan was still paying attention, which he was.

‘I marked the Arab down as a person of interest to the Fibbies, but he seemed to drop off the radar almost as soon as he landed here. I didn’t make a big thing of it because I couldn’t find out what he was up to and he was just another name on a very long list. He’s popped up a few more times, flying into or out of America, but what he does while he’s here we don’t know. And the two Chinese males also effectively vanished from sight soon after they arrived. They don’t appear to have credit cards or driving licences or any other documentation we could use to track them and nobody seems to know where they are or what they’re doing.

‘Now, I didn’t want to look like a paranoid idiot because I was worried about where a couple of Chinese nationals had got to, so I bypassed the FBI and contacted my boss in the Met. I asked him to try to run a check on them through Five and Six, just in case either of them had ever popped up on their radars. I don’t know the source of the data, but Six came back with the information that both men were – and as a matter of fact the man my boss spoke to at Six believes they still are – serving officers in the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. And before they climbed onto the aircraft in Beijing to leave the country they were based at Tonggang Road in Pudong on the east side of Shanghai. Does any of that mean anything to you?’

Morgan nodded. ‘Definitely. If they were PLA at Pudong that means they were almost certainly serving in Unit 61398. Some people call that the Comment Crew or Byzantine Candor or Threat Group 8223, but whatever name you use, it’s one of the most persistent and dangerous cyberattack and hacking units in the PLA. And that does raise an obvious question.’

‘Exactly,’ Simpson replied. ‘Cyber isn’t my thing, but I do know that to launch a cyberattack you don’t have to be located in the target country. In fact, it’s much better if you’re somewhere else, somewhere a long way away. So why would they have flown all the way to America?’

Morgan nodded. ‘The only reason that makes any sense, assuming that they didn’t just pop over to do an extended driving tour of the United States, paying cash for absolutely everything, which seems pretty unlikely, is that they’re here to do something that requires their physical presence. And I can tell you that I have no idea what that could possibly be, but I certainly don’t like the sound of it.’

Chapter 28

Tysons, Virginia, United States of America

It was both the first meeting of all four of them and also the last, because the deadline was almost upon them. Previously Sadir had just met them on a one-to-one basis so he could explain what he wanted and expected them to do, or they’d communicated using burner phones.

They were meeting on the outside terrace of a popular coffee shop – Sadir knew the value of crowds and the importance of meeting in busy places – on the edge of a shopping mall not far from Greensboro Station in Tysons. The four men sitting around the circular table were casually dressed in jeans and open-necked shirts and appeared unremarkable, except perhaps for their similar dark hair, beards and tanned complexions. But most people probably wouldn’t have given them a second glance: they looked just like four people taking a break from work and enjoying some coffee together in the sunshine.

In fact, the