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Back A Shadow Intelligence Save as PDF
Chapters (58)
  1. Cover
  2. Also by Oliver Harris
  3. ONE
  4. TWO
  5. THREE
  6. FOUR
  7. FIVE
  8. SIX
  9. SEVEN
  10. EIGHT
  11. NINE
  12. TEN
  13. ELEVEN
  14. TWELVE
  15. THIRTEEN
  16. FOURTEEN
  17. FIFTEEN
  18. SIXTEEN
  19. SEVENTEEN
  20. EIGHTEEN
  21. NINETEEN
  22. TWENTY
  23. TWENTY-ONE
  24. TWENTY-TWO
  25. TWENTY-THREE
  26. TWENTY-FOUR
  27. TWENTY-FIVE
  28. TWENTY-SIX
  29. TWENTY-SEVEN
  30. TWENTY-EIGHT
  31. TWENTY-NINE
  32. THIRTY
  33. THIRTY-ONE
  34. THIRTY-TWO
  35. THIRTY-THREE
  36. THIRTY-FOUR
  37. THIRTY-FIVE
  38. THIRTY-SIX
  39. THIRTY-SEVEN
  40. THIRTY-EIGHT
  41. THIRTY-NINE
  42. FORTY
  43. FORTY-ONE
  44. FORTY-TWO
  45. FORTY-THREE
  46. FORTY-FOUR
  47. FORTY-FIVE
  48. FORTY-SIX
  49. FORTY-SEVEN
  50. FORTY-EIGHT
  51. FORTY-NINE
  52. FIFTY
  53. FIFTY-ONE
  54. FIFTY-TWO
  55. FIFTY-THREE
  56. FIFTY-FOUR
  57. FIFTY-FIVE
  58. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My hands looked tanned in the English light. My lips were cracked. I stared at the screen of my new phone. When you charge up a phone, you entertain the fantasy that a life will return. I’d always brace myself for the personal business but forget to brace myself for its dwindling pressure. When you expend your energy maintaining another person’s identity your own becomes neglected. In the last seven weeks I’d missed two birthdays, one wedding, several job offers. There was an invitation to lunch from an investor friend who owed me for some timely information; no message from the woman I wanted to hear from. At least, that’s what I thought at first.

Emails likewise: irrelevant things or those I was too late for. I checked the junk folder in case that was where my life had been diverted, saw something strange.

It was an email from a TutaNota address with a string of letters and numbers for a name. TutaNota was a German-based encrypted webmail service. This was a procedure I used for agents. Subject line: Lottery Win.

The message had been sent twenty-two hours ago. I scanned the email for malware then opened it. The email contained two lines:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY.

CLAIM YOUR PRIZE.

‘Happy birthday’ meant danger: I was in danger, or the agent in question was in danger, and I needed to initiate exfiltration procedures; i.e. time to get out of town. ‘Claim your prize’ meant that a file had been uploaded to a message board hidden deep within the dark side of the internet.

When you’ve refined systems that work in the field, it’s good to stick with them. But you make sure each agent has a unique signature, procedural details that identify them so you know who’s contacting you in the absence of formal identification. I’d used this particular code with an agent in Turkey codenamed MESCALINE – Khasan Idrisov, a young man I had been fond of, with his pale eyes and thin beard; the frayed handkerchiefs with which he’d mop his brow. His decapitation was still up on YouTube last time I checked.

So the message was a surprise.

I looked around Caffe Nero, sipped my coffee, read the message again.

There was no way anyone should have known the code words, let alone my personal email address as well. Now I looked through my missed calls more closely. Around the time of the email there were three attempts from a foreign landline. 8.12 p.m. last night, 8.14 p.m., then 8.21 a.m. The prefix was 87 172. A check online confirmed it was a landline in Astana, Kazakhstan.