had to apologise to very many disappointed customers.
The adverts were placed on one of these days – January 25th, April 25th, July 25th, October 25th – so they would be easy to track. The method of passing messages was very simple. Richard could write anything he wanted to make the advert look genuine. The messages hidden there were decoded using serial numbers that were part of the advert itself. Therefore, so long as he had all the letters of the alphabet somewhere in the wording, he could send any message just by “pointing” at the letters using his serial numbers. It was that simple in principle. The serial numbers printed on the advert had to be transformed using a mapping algorithm, but it was still a simple technique. It would be easy for an expert to decode. But why would anyone ever suspect these adverts were not genuine? They would surely never come to the attention of any decoding expert.
Starting on July the previous year, he had put adverts in on every possible day. The more often he placed the adverts, the more paranoid he was that he would expose himself. Nevertheless, he was really convinced he was in the right place at the right time by now, and he was surprised no one had reacted yet. His messages had become ever more urgent. His last message read: “Still at VirtuBank. Opportunities with access to main servers at several major financial customers.” His full contact details were there as usual.
He had checked his coding and decoding again and again, wondering if he had made a mistake, so convinced was he that he should have been contacted this time. There was no mistake. He had posted that last message to the paper three months ago but had still been ignored. He had expected an immediate response.
Every time this had happened, he had gone through the same feelings. Elation in placing his advert. Anticipation while waiting for a reply. Disappointment that, yet again, nothing had happened. Each time the disappointment was more numbing, the possibility of ever doing anything more remote.
This time he had been so disappointed that he had not bothered to repeat his message on 25th October, 2013. Yet that was the time when they finally reacted.
18. Risk Analysis
Richard remembered, sometime in the mid-eighties, walking up and down the rows of gravestones looking for his father’s headstone one sunny day in the hills near Milngavie. His dad had died suddenly, of a heart attack. Richard was on holiday in France when it happened. No one had managed to contact him, and the funeral had to go ahead without him. He flew up from London as soon as he could and found the stone where he laid flowers a few years previously. Now both his parents’ names were inscribed.
There was something funny about how death always seemed to take you by surprise. Death was inevitable, but every time it happened it was shocking.
His father had been the last living link to Uncle Bobby, the first real socialist he’d ever heard of.
They were all socialists, of a sort, of course, everyone on that side of the family. Family, friends, neighbours. Almost everyone in and around Glasgow was. The industrialised Central Belt of Scotland, blackened and scarred by heavy industry, had fought back to produce people who wanted to create a cleaner, brighter future – Keir Hardie, Manny Shinwell, Uncle Bobby.
They had all hoped that socialism would be the answer, apart from his dad that is, but their efforts had been absorbed by democracy or deflected by the establishment or blocked by the law. Actually, Richard never knew if his father was a socialist or not. Richard assumed he wasn’t, somehow. He seemed very sceptical of socialism. He was also ambitious. He had got a better job and taken the family down south for a few years until they returned to Glasgow after Richard’s maternal grandmother died.
Stories of Uncle Bobby – in fact his Great Uncle Bobby – were legendary in the family. But Uncle Bobby, for all his good intentions, had ended up dying in prison. An unknown failure.
Richard didn’t want to fail. He wanted to avenge the memory out of principle.
Over the next two days he went through the software instructions again and again. He had to be sure this was for real and could be done. He wondered why he had been so slow to realise Mitchell was telling him to wake up. His failure to react must have made Mitchell uncertain of his intentions, which would explain why he had not gone straight on to give him the operational instructions. Unless he had done that too, and those instructions had been waiting in his drawer ever since Helsinki. That might explain why, this time, he had not disguised the word “Zima” in any way that made the message ambiguous.
Richard felt such a fool for not reacting immediately – when Mitchell might have helped or given him more information. Now, whatever he had to do, he would have to do by himself, totally alone.
For some reason he couldn’t control his doubts. He didn’t like the idea of doing this with no help and no clear instructions. Furthermore, such a lot had changed since this whole idea started, back in the seventies. Technology, politics, everything. Would this operation still be relevant? Was deploying this piece of software his only task? What would it achieve? Would it be something destructive enough? Would it be worth the risk?
19. An Unexpected Visitor
The doorbell rang. It was a loud shrill ring that made Richard jump. Not now! Why would the bell ring now? In three years of staying at the apartment in Glentworth Street, he had never heard the doorbell ring. He had never had a visitor. Why on earth was someone ringing the doorbell right now, at the very moment Operation Zima was initiated?
He hesitated, wondering if he should answer or not. The memory stick, the instructions spread out all over his desk, his home computer, switched on and still showing the PDF of the Chennai team’s covering letter. It was all evidence and all incriminating. With trembling hands, he grappled to clear it all away.
The doorbell insisted on ringing. The fact it kept ringing was all the more suspicious and worrying. Had he been set up? Were the police already there to question him? Or, if not the police, who?
He felt his heart thumping. His mind was racing. What really happened to Mitchell? He didn’t seem to be the suicide type. Perhaps he was pushed under the train? This person ringing the bell…?
For Christ’s sake, get a grip!
It took him a minute or two, but everything was tidied away at last. The bell was still ringing every now and then, but Richard still didn’t want to answer. He wanted to get away from the flat, but there wasn’t a practical exit apart from the front door. He could sneak out the kitchen window onto the emergency exit. He considered that for a moment. What if he just didn’t answer?
The damned bell shrieked at him again. Finally he gave up. He decided it would be better to see who it was. Anyone that persistent would keep trying, and it would better to meet them at the front door rather than clambering down the fire exit. He pressed the intercom. “Who is it?”
“Zima.”
The reply startled Richard. This was not on! No one knew; no one should know!
“Mister Zima? I don’t know you. You have the wrong apartment.”
“No, Mr Slater, I am not Mr Zima. I am Mr Weber. I need to talk to you about Zima.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Please, Mr Slater, I do not wish to intrude. Meet me in five minutes in the café on the corner of Melcome Street and Baker Street.”
Richard felt a wave of relief and gratitude sweep over him. At least the stranger was not trying to get into the flat.
“OK.
