"Serpentine"
March 24th 2008 11.00hrs Following the successful implementation of the SIA Secure Internal Network, rollout to Michael and Joshua, Saf headed back to the Baha Bar for a briefing with Rebecca. When she was quizzed about the name, by Gray, she had written down the acronym SIN as the name made her smile, she had replied everything in life should have a name. The meeting with Rebecca was brief and straight to the point, she was to do the installations for MI9 and SVR next, she was handed a sheaf of airline tickets and a schedule, fly tonight to London and she had a day and a half before she was to fly on to Moscow. Her contact at Thames House in London was Andrea Temple, and in Moscow it would be Grigory Krivenko. “You will arrive at 11.15hrs tomorrow at London Heathrow. Officially your visit is to thank your old tutor Dr Maples, at the University of London, you expect to be in London for two days, before flying off to Moscow to help Mischa Alexandreyevich assess some human bones dug up from an uncatalogued site.” Saf sat and listened intently, with her dealings so far, the SIA did not give you huge amounts of information, just the basics so you could build your cover around it, though they never repeated it either, agents were expected to have a good memory as well. Rebecca handed over a wallet containing supporting documentation in the name of Katrin Burnell, a technical consultant for C-Moore Computer Associates, and a well worn British Passport. It was obvious that the resources of the SIA were superb, she could not feel anything wrong at all with the passport, and yet she knew it was brand new. “A car will drop you at the airport, Gray has all the details and I would like you to report in when you have done each installation.” Rebecca smiled, and Saf knew she was being dismissed. Outside, she checked her watch, she had over 5 hours to kill before she needed to check in for tonight’s flight and she could run a systems check one last time. Heading down to the computer suite, she ran through the procedure in her mind to clear any thoughts of the upcoming task. Simon was on duty in the console room, and she greeted him warmly “How’s it going?” he just grunted his reply, but by the tone she knew it was positive. He returned his gaze to the manual in his lap and she punched in the code for the inner sanctum and took a seat at one of the monitors. Gray’s voice over the intercom was an unwelcome interruption, “Sara you have 30 mins left,” Saf had no idea of where the time had gone, but she stared at the latest version of the subroutine she had been working on and logged out. Simon was still immersed in the manual and she couldn’t help giving him a hint, to the problem she had set him, “try looking on page 993” as she passed. All she got from him was a glare, but he started flipping the pages over. Gray was outside and walked with her to the elevators, “Have a safe trip,” the unspoken words ‘and come back soon’ were almost audible. She smiled brightly at him, “I’ll bring you back a souvenir” and pressed the button before he could reply, leaving him standing facing closed doors. March 25th 2008 11.00hrs The flight had arrived early, and as she was only carrying hand luggage she was out and through customs in double quick time. Standing on the bus rank outside the airport on a cold chilly morning, she remembered why she disliked England so much. She took her seat on the bus, and watched the world outside pass by, en-route to the tube station, where she would catch a train to London centre. 11.30hrs The city hadn’t changed, still the same old turmoil and bustle, though people were rougher than previously, and there were still beggars imploring the travellers for money. Saf stopped at one vagrant who had caught her eye, and handed some small change apologising for how little she was able to give. The smell that emanated from him was appalling and she dropped the change into his cup he held out and backed away. “Bless you” he shouted after her as she walked briskly out onto the embankment. Once outside in the fresh air, she walked more slowly, the sun was now creeping out from behind a large grey cloud and showed a promise of spring and warmer weather returning. Thames House was a tall large building of glass and concrete, no doubt bomb and bullet proof, but visible from quite a distance. The official occupants were MI5, however it apparently housed the small offices and staff of MI9; a branch of the secret services dealing purely with counter-terrorism. Saf walked towards the main doors as though it were nothing out of the ordinary, and stepped through the revolving doors and into the marble floored reception suite. Facing her was a heavy wooden counter, she walked over and stood by it for a few moments and then one of the security staff manning it walked over “Morning Miss, who are you meeting?”, his manner was pleasant but officious. In response Saf chewed loudly on her gum, blowing bubbles, before replying “Got to see a Ms Temple” she drawled. His manner changed drastically as he pushed a book under her nose and pointed to a blank line, “Sign here, and then wait there for someone to take you up.” He then ignored her and moved away to a telephone and dialled a number. Saf sat on the seat he had indicated, and eventually a tall slim woman in a navy suit approached her from a side door, “Please if you would follow me,” she spoke softly before moving away, Saf retained her impersonation of a bored messenger carrying confidential documents for signing and followed her escort along a maze of corridors, all the doors were unmarked and there were no indications that this was anything other than a government administration centre. Her escort stopped outside a door on the second floor and knocked, Saf was shown in and for one moment, thought it was Madeline in front of her, petite, brunette, but when she turned around, it was clear that the resemblance stopped there. “You must be Sara, Rebecca told me you would be arriving today.” Saf acknowledged this statement with a nod, but didn’t speak. Andrea Temple turned to Saf’s escort, “Thank you Lea, that will be all. Please take all calls.” The other woman left quietly closing the door behind her. Saf had not taken her eyes off of Andrea during this time, but once Lea had left she then spoke “I have a laptop to set up for your liaison officer. I have the necessary hardware to install, but also some extra measures for security. When will your person be available?” Andrea stood looking at her for a moment, but Saf held her gaze, and then Andrea gave her a reply by pressing a button on the intercom “Lea, can you find Ophis and ask him to come in,” before turning to Saf and saying, “Rebecca requested that you only deal with the Liaison Officer. You can use my office as long as you need, refreshments are in that room,” she pointed to a small cupboard like room off to the left, and continued, “I have an appointment with Sir Mortimer Reece, I don’t expect to be back until late. If you need anything then Lea will get it for you.” Saf sat silently through this, there was no response expected nor none given. Andrea picked up her briefcase and walked out of the door, it closed quietly behind her and Saf was left alone. She walked over to the window, watching the river flowing out towards the sea, the sun shone down on the ripples in the water making the light dance like water sprites. Suddenly the room felt much colder and the hairs were standing up on the back of her neck, slowly she turned around, knowing before she did so, what or who she would see when she did turn. She had always known when he was near. “I would ask how? Or why? But I don’t suppose you would answer” her voice was cold, deliberate and slow. “Would you listen? Even if I tried? You are still as pig-headed, stubborn and bloody-minded not to mention disinclined to listen as you ever were,” His eyes were the same fiery blue, full of anger. It had been nearly a year since she had last seen him, and then she had been trying to kill him and now by some strange quirk of fate, she was once more working with him. Well hopefully not with him, she prayed, knowing that only her training made her stay her ground instead of running from him. Sean Strathspey, ex-Section, ex-boyfriend, ex-lover. Someone who had lied to her, used her and for all she knew had exploited her weaknesses. Someone she had never expected to see again, never mind be working with the same organisation as the one she was in. Calling on all her inner strength, she pushed her anger away into the back of her mind and coldly replied, “No, I probably wouldn’t. Shall we get on, I have to get a retinal print and take a sample of blood.” She indicated a seat, and turned to open her bag. A hand on her arm stopped her “I know you don’t want to hear it, but just listen to me for once in your life. The tests can wait a while.” She shook her head and tried to turn away, but he was holding her tightly. In the end she stood rigidly still, and said quietly and calmly, “Please Sean, I have a job to do.” Inside she was trembling, she recognised he still had the power to affect her, but she would see a cold day in Hell before she would admit as much to him. He stepped back, and let her go, “You are not going to get away that easily. You and I are not finished…” the unspoken word ‘yet’ hung in the air, almost palpable to them. He sat down in the chair and faced her, calm, solid and very real. Saf had to stop herself going towards him, and striking him, wanting to take the smile off of his face, and inflict the same pain on him, that she felt inside when she saw him. Instead she bent down and rummaged in the bag she had brought, using the time to collect her thoughts and control her temper. Taking his laptop, she installed a chip on the network card and made the connections, installing the software took a while and she could concentrate on the task at hand, although she knew he was staring at her back. Finally she had done what she could, and she had to turn around and start the next phase. Sean had a hint of a smile about his lips, but she ignored it and placed the laptop on the floor and attached a retinal scanner to the USB port. She handed him a pair of darkened glasses, linked to the scanner, and watched as he adjusted them to fit, it was a relief when his gaze was hidden from view. “Please look straight ahead at the wall in front,” she pressed a key and the programme starting mapping the iris in his left eye, when it was done it would do his right eye. When she had built this system, she had been aware that standard iris recognition software could be got around by a digital capture or even the removal of an eye, so she had made her own safeguards. Her code required both iris be scanned and then were merged to form a single image, totally transparent to anyone else. The drawback was the scan took much longer, but the process meant the security was that much greater; another one was getting the subject to stare straight ahead for up to 5 mins. She watched as the display built, the markers being set at strategic points and finally she ran tests to check it would recognise the original eye against the stored image. Her fingers flew over the keyboard as she sat on the floor immersed in what she was doing and it was only when he spoke that her concentration went to pieces. “I knew you were good, but that is something else.” She didn’t look at him, and her reply was sharp “I’ve had a lot of practice,” even she winced at how sour she sounded. It took her another 20 mins to build the profile and customise the communications to a specific code. Finally she was finished. At some point in time, she had no idea when, Sean had moved to the window and was now in profile. His hair was a little longer, the curls just brushing the neck of his shirt. Shaking her head and wondering just why he had this effect on her, she called over “Ready for stage 2?” he turned and nodded, walking over to the table to where she had put the laptop. She pushed it over so it was in front of him and told him the username and password she had selected, “Wasteland and Scorpion,” his only response was a raised eyebrow. “When you have logged in, you get the standard desktop, innocent and it doesn’t behave any differently to how it did before. Type in Serpent at the control prompt and you will need to focus on the snake in the middle of the screen. A small scanner built into the screen surround will scan both irises, keep your right thumb on the bottom right hand corner of the unit during this process.” She watched as Sean followed her instructions and could help smiling as he yelped when a small pin pricked the pad of his thumb. The screen display now showed a series of small black windows, “Sorry about that,” she murmured, “I was instructed to make security as tight as possible.” Sean said nothing, but just sucked his thumb. She continued with her demonstration, resisting the urge of sympathy that had arisen from his action. “In the top left screen, type the message you want to send,” Sean typed in some plain text and as he did so the window at the top right hand side of the screen just showed garbage characters, total nonsense. The lower portion of the window now read ‘Dear Mother, I am currently visiting Aunt Olivia who sends you her best regards. Can you ask Hilary to send the recipe for Marmalade cake? Olivia has promised to bake it for me.’ Sean smiled when he watched the process unfold, “I was wrong, you are not good, you are a genius. How the hell did you manage that?” She shook her head, “Rebecca wants communications at the highest level, this just acts as a mechanism to ensure that works, by uniquely coding each message to the person sending it. It’s nothing extraordinary really,” That wasn’t the truth, there was a lot more to the code than that, but Rebecca just didn’t want anyone outside of SIA knowing the details. Inside she was happy, this was her first successful installation, if you discounted Michael and Joshua’s and she did, because of the extra work they had required. She leaned over again and continued “To reverse the process, you retrieve the received file and paste it into the lower window and press CTRL/F9. it will decode and show you the window in the top left hand window.” She leaned back against the chair, feeling stiff. “When you want to send, you just click on send and you are presented with a list of other liaison officers, select the one you require and it will automatically make the connections, using wireless technology. So you can be or go anywhere and still send and receive information.” Sean stared at her, until she felt so uncomfortable she moved away, starting to pack her things away in the bag. Speaking to his back “I have to leave tomorrow, I need to know you know how to use it. Type CTRL/ALT+TAB when you need to return to the normal display and go through the sequence again. She moved to stand behind him as he followed her instructions and she was satisfied that he was fully conversant with the programme. “Only you can use this laptop now for comms, anyone else trying to ‘break’ into it will cause the circuits to fail and then all you have is a door wedge. Any problems, notify Rebecca and someone will contact you…” Sean interrupted “Who?” Saf thought about it, “initially it will probably be me, but I can assure you that you won’t have any problems. All the hardware and software is of the highest quality and the programme is well tested, any updates can be sent and installed remotely.” For a moment, she thought he showed his disappointment, but he just shrugged. She looked down at her watch, it was gone 15.00hrs, time to go to the hotel, and get some food. “I will send you a number of files as a comms check, you will need to respond before 11.00hrs tomorrow.” She finished packing her bag and hefted in onto her shoulder in preparation for leaving. Sean’s hand snaked around her shoulders, “Either you are one very cold-hearted bitch, which I don’t believe, or ….” Holding her close, he bent down and kissed her firmly on the lips. Stunned she did nothing for a few seconds, then she fought free. Angrily she hissed “You have no right…” he smiled lazily, “I told you we weren’t finished, and you know it’s the truth, you just won’t admit it.” He picked up the laptop and sauntered out of the room, before she could answer him. She was shaking with rage and it was a full few minutes before she was composed enough to pick her bag up from the floor where she had dropped it and leave. Return