Showing posts with label 3c. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 3c. Show all posts

Chapter 41: Departures


Buckingham Slate glanced at his watch and grimaced. "I've stayed later than I expected, gentlemen," he said, "and I must be leaving soon. But I am heartened that you've taken an interest in the case, and I'll be delighted to help you in any way I can. Shall I place another ad to arrange our next meeting?"

"That's a fine idea," said Sherlock Holmes. He scribbled a few words on a scrap of paper and handed it to the Scotland Yard man. "Put this in the Times classifieds to tell me when you want to meet again, then be on the westbound platform of the Great Portland Street tube station at eight o'clock on the evening of your choice. We'll take a ride together and have a chat.

"Nobody will interrupt us on the train, but tonight it might be wise to arrange a discreet departure. Watson, would you mind asking Michael Harrington to join us?"

I did as bidden and a few minutes later the proprietor met us in his office. "I would like our friend to slip away quietly," said Holmes. "Can you help us arrange something?"

"Consider it done," said Harrington. "I'll be back soon."

"I remain concerned for your safety, Bucky," said Holmes after Harrington had left. "You're working against orders here, and cutting across the plans of some very powerful people, unless I am reading all the signs incorrectly. There's no harm in being careful."

"It's clear you trust Mr. Harrington, sir," said Slate.

"He's been a good friend for a long time," replied Holmes. "I met him in school and he was a capable ally even then: bright, keen, and very loyal. He has lent me a hand on many occasions since, always with a smile."

Harrington returned and announced, "I've called a cab to the neighbours' house, sir, and my wife will take you out through the family entrance. Anyone waiting for you in the pub, or in the street, faces a long and lonely evening indeed."

Mrs. Harrington appeared presently and asked, "Are you ready, sir? Let's wait for the cab next door, shall we?"

Slate thanked us all around and gathered up the elements of his disguise. "Keep an eye on the Times, sir," he said to my companion. "We'll meet again, I'm sure."

"Thank you kindly for your hospitality," said Holmes when Slate and Mrs. Harrington had left.

"I'm glad to be of assistance," said Harrington. "Do you and Dr. Watson wish to slip away quietly as well?"

"You're sharp tonight, Harrington," replied my friend. "I suppose we could wait until your wife returns, and then call another cab."

"I was thinking the same," replied Harrington with a grin, and ten minutes later we were on our way back to Baker Street.

"What do you make of all we have learned from Bucky?" I asked.

"It may take a while for all the new information to settle," Holmes replied. "On the whole, it seems to support the notion that we are on the right track. I will be eager to follow up the clues we have been given, and we can look forward to several more meetings with Slate. It's going to be a long, drawn-out process, unless I am very much mistaken."

"It's been a long day," I ventured, "even if we did get a late start."

"You were the one who started late this morning," replied Holmes. "It's been an even longer day for me. But we are making progress, and sometimes progress is more valuable than sleep."

"Speaking of which," I said, "I hope I can fall asleep fairly easily tonight."

"I hope you will sleep soundly," said Holmes. "We have plenty to do tomorrow, and I shall certainly need you at your best."

We arrived at Baker Street and I went through the usual routine of settling in for bed, but then I spent several fitful hours tossing and turning, and thinking about -- or actually seeing -- the naked body decomposing in the padlocked bag, the fine powder on the counter tops, and the door to the flat, locked from the outside.

"How did this all happen?" I wondered, and my thoughts began to spiral in on themselves, until I was wondering how it happened that I was wondering how it had happened, and then I drifted off, into a dream-riddled sleep that was better than none at all, but not by much.

Chapter 42: A Hint About The Motive?

Previous: Departures

National Security Agency Headquarters,
Fort Meade, Maryland
I awoke Tuesday morning to find another note from Holmes.
Watson,

I've been called away on an urgent matter.

If you have time to help with the Williams case, look through my archive for the earliest mentions of Gareth's work history. In particular, try to find the articles Bucky mentioned.

I'll be back as soon as possible.

SH
I spent the next few hours thumbing through the file of newspaper clippings pertaining to the case which Holmes had assembled without my knowledge, before he even had a client. I had read, or at least glanced at, the same articles less than a week earlier, in preparation for our visit from William Hughes. But now, having met Hughes and some of the other people mentioned in the clippings, the gruesome reality hit me even harder than it had done the first time.

Fortunately I was on a mission, rather than a sightseeing journey, and I knew enough not to dwell on my own feelings. Clearly there was much more at stake, and I tried to emulate my friend's cold, logical approach to the problem at hand. Nevertheless, I found it more difficult to control my emotions than to find the clippings I sought.

The Mirror of August 27 contained a piece by Jon Clements called "Security chiefs mourn loss of ‘genius’ spy Gareth Williams," which began as follows:
The full extent of murdered spy Gareth Williams’ role in the world of espionage slowly began to emerge last night.

He was rated as one of the best code-breakers in the business – an elite agent who fought in secret to thwart al-Qaeda terror attacks at home and abroad.

And the 31-year-old maths genius’s unique skills were also recognised by spy chiefs across the Atlantic.

Despite a dislike of flying, he regularly travelled from London to Baltimore to meet US National Security Agency officials at their Fort Meade HQ – dubbed the Puzzle Palace.
Later in the piece, Clements provided some very specific information:
Britain now relies heavily on the NSA to help monitor phone calls, emails, texts and other communications of UK terror suspects.

When MI5 discovered the plot in 2006 by British Muslims to bomb transatlantic jets, GCHQ called in the NSA to help – and Williams worked closely alongside them.

Spy satellites tracked and secretly copied emails from mastermind Rashid Rauf in Pakistan to the two ringleaders in Walthamstow, East London. The messages were vital to the 2008 convictions of Abdullah Ahmed Ali, Assad Sarwar and Tanvir Hussain.
This appeared to be the piece Bucky had mentioned. But what did it mean?

Was it a hint about the motive behind this apparently senseless murder? Was Gareth Williams killed because he cracked the terrorists' coded emails?

I found several other articles, all published at or around the same time, which said more or less the same thing. And I found many others, published later, which said very different things. If Slate was correct, these later pieces would be the "barrage of disinformation" he described.

And -- again, if Slate was correct -- the piece by Jon Clements in the August 27th edition of the Mirror must have contained the grain of truth the barrage was intended to bury.

But why? If Gareth Williams had foiled a planned attack by terrorists, why would anyone want to keep that a secret?

Perhaps, I thought, someone with ties to the investigation and access to the press was determined to have Gareth portrayed as a pervert. And perhaps this information, if it became common knowledge, would interfere with his plans. But what was the point of it all? The more I thought about it, the less sense it seemed to make.

Luckily, my instructions from Holmes had been very clear. I was only supposed to find the articles Slate had mentioned. I wasn't supposed to understand them.

I found myself hoping that Holmes would return soon, and that what I had found would make more sense to him than it did to me.

Chapter 43: Reading And Thinking


I kept reading through the archive.
Holmes didn't return immediately and I kept reading through the archive. I wasn't looking for anything in particular, but I didn't have any pressing commitments, and having conquered my emotions, for the moment at least, I thought I might as well do something useful if I could.

I found an interesting piece from Wales, published on September 7, containing a statement I had overlooked the first time I'd read it. But now my interest was piqued and I was paying closer attention.

According to Darren Devine,
... despite police referring to an “unexplained death”, Home Office forensic pathologist Dr Brian Rodgers said the circumstances suggest it was “clearly a homicide”.

Dr Rodgers, who has worked on high-profile murder investigations in North Wales, said aside from cases where someone has died of injuries such as stab or gunshot wounds, establishing a cause of death was more complex in a decomposing corpse.

He suggested Mr Williams may have been poisoned or strangled with a necktie as a pathologist would have problems establishing this on a decomposing body.
Holmes and I agreed that it was clearly a homicide. But was it possible that Gareth Williams was strangled with a necktie? I considered the idea for the first time.

Darren Devine continued:
Dr Rodgers said: “The difficulty with any body that’s decomposing is that some of the subtle signs of certain modes of death can be very difficult to ascertain – like asphyxia with a ligature.”

Dr Rodgers, 57, who works part-time at Ysbyty Glan Clwyd in Bodelwyddan, Denbighshire, added: “What you have to remember is that from the process of decomposition chemicals are produced in the body which can affect the analysis of various poisons, so you’d get false positive and negative results.

“I don’t know anything about the case other than what I’ve read in the papers and has been on the news, but I suspect he’s either been poisoned or strangled in some way.”
I had not seen any mention of Dr. Rodgers in any other clippings, and I was impressed by what he had said. Holmes and I had talked about poison in general terms, and at the time I had thought a virus more likely. But now, especially considering what I had just read, I was starting to change my mind.

Dr. Rodgers had explained very clearly how and why testing for poisons on a decomposing body could, and likely would, yield false results. It occurred to me that perhaps his statement was too clear and forthright to be carried by the popular press, which was more interested in the reports of nothing at all coming from the police toxicology labs.

But as to the cause of death, I found myself leaning toward poison and suffocation rather than strangulation. What better way to cover up a poisoning, I thought, than to speed up the body's decomposition?

I wondered whether the powder found on the counter tops could have been, as Slate suggested, the residue of a cleaning product, and whether that cleaning product itself could have been used to accelerate the breakdown of the victim's tissue?

It occurred to me that perhaps Gareth Williams had been poisoned with a short-lived drug, which would incapacitate him long enough for his attackers to strip him, stuff him into the bag and lock it, and place it in his bathtub -- but which his body would begin to metabolize even as he suffocated inside. If he were on his back, as Holmes had theorized, and struggling for even a short time, that would account for the bruises on his elbows.

His body heat would have been trapped inside the bag, and if he were conscious enough to struggle, or even to panic, he would have begun to perspire very rapidly. All his pores would have been open, and if an accelerant -- Slate's hypothetical cleaning product, perhaps -- had been added to the bag, or spread over his naked body, his flesh would have begun to break down even as he breathed his last.

It was horrible to contemplate, but if this were the case, then the chemical reactions that must have taken place in the bag between the time of death and the discovery of the body would have made it extremely unlikely that either the drug, or the cleaning product, would ever be detected.

Lacking any first-hand knowledge of the body or the scene, I knew it would be impossible to draw any reliable inferences. And yet, it seemed to me, every link in the chain I had assembled was quite plausible, perhaps even probable.

Was I getting anywhere? That would be for Holmes to decide. In the meantime, I thought, the more information I could compile for him, the better our position would be when he returned.

So I kept reading, and thinking.

Chapter 44: A 'Safe' Story


A Britten-Norman Islander.
Gareth Williams reportedly helped to outfit aircraft
such as this with eavesdropping equipment.
My eye lit on a long piece by Patrick Sawer and Gordon Thomas which was published in the Telegraph of September 11.

Under the headline "Concern grows over foreign involvement in spy's death," the authors explained why
Concern is growing within the intelligence community that the MI6 spy found dead in his London flat may have been the victim of a professional hit by a foreign power.
One of the reasons was clearly stated:
Some officials are starting to believe the way the killing was carried out – leaving few, if any, immediate clues as to the cause of death – could point to a professionally-carried-out assassination.
The other reason was unstated but clearly implied: if it was a professionally-carried-out assassination then it must have been done by a foreign power because ... well ... because ... um ... oh, never mind.

This style of "logic" was by no means unique to the Telegraph. It permeated all the press coverage, without any exception that I could find.

As for the police, Sawer and Thomas wrote:
Scotland Yard, which is leading the investigation into his death, said: "We're not at the stage where we can pinpoint how Mr Williams died and all avenues in this investigation remain open. We are keeping an open mind."
This, according to Bucky, would be an expression of the Jackie Sebire school of thought. But Hamish Campbell's view of the case was present as well:
Security service sources suggest that the most likely explanation for Mr Williams's death is still to be found in his private life...
Meanwhile, Scotland Yard continued to hunt for the mysterious 'Mediterranean' couple, and to hope they would suddenly appear on the doorstep. As the Telegraph put it:
Detectives said they were trying to trace a couple Mediterranean appearance, aged between 20 and 30, who visited the house in Pimlico late one night in the weeks before Mr Williams died.

The Yard revealed the couple were the only people who had been seen around the time of his death at the property in Alderney Street not to be accounted for.

Neighbours told police the pair were let in through the communal front door late one evening, in either June or July. It is believed they were visiting Mr Williams and detectives want them to come forward so they can be eliminated from their inquiries.
The wording seemed to substantiate Slate's claim that everyone connected to MI6 who had been in the building would automatically be considered "accounted for," whereas the "Mediterranean couple" alone were not.

The casting of "late one evening, in either June or July" as equivalent to "around the time of his death" struck me as a bit of a stretch and hinted that Bucky may have been right in describing "a barrage of disinformation."

As for the story itself, it seemed unlikely that anyone would let strangers in through a communal door of a "safe house," and it seemed very odd that police would ask these strangers to step forward. But the reason given by the police was positively bizarre: so they could be "eliminated" from the inquiries!

It seemed much more likely, to me at least, that they were being asked to present themselves so they could be framed for murder.

Aside from all these interesting details, the article contained a flurry of information about what Gareth Williams had been doing at work:
The 31-year-old was seconded from GCHQ to work on top-secret systems to defend British banks and transport infrastructure from cyber attack and to eavesdrop on terrorist communications....

It is understood Mr Williams's job at the time of his death was creating computer defences in the City of London....

It can be revealed that Williams had also played an important role in creating signal intelligence equipment, known as sigint, to listen to Taliban communications in Afghanistan.

He had helped in fitting out three Brittan-Norman Islander aircraft with this equipment to be used as airborne-listening stations.

Based at RAF Northolt in West London since 2007 they have flown over selected British cities searching for communications between suspected terrorists.

A key part of the equipment is the wide-band recorders that Mr Williams helped to develop. Each has the capacity to vacuum up continuous mobile phone traffic in a city the size of Bradford.

The "product" is then downloaded to GCHQ where state-of-the-art computers analyse the voices using voice-recognition software.
The rest of the article consisted of background information with which Holmes and I were familiar, combined with speculation meant to tie the murder to a "foreign" motive. For instance:
The 31-year-old was seconded from GCHQ to work on top-secret systems to defend British banks and transport infrastructure from cyber attack and to eavesdrop on terrorist communications.

As a result he may have come to the attention of foreign intelligence agencies....

It is feared that by the time of his death last month Mr Williams's presence in London had become known to foreign spies, despite the fact he was living in a MI6 safe house with an alarm system linking him to nearby MI6 headquarters.

"It would have been part of their brief," said a British intelligence officer....

One theory being examined is that Mr Williams may have had an approach from a rival agency, and either rebuffed it without informing his superiors or initially agreed to co-operate then got cold feet.

If such an approach had been exposed there would have been severe political and diplomatic repercussions, making it expedient for Mr Williams to be killed.
I couldn't quite wrap my mind around the distinction implied here: if Gareth Williams had rebuffed an approach from a foreign intelligence agency without telling his employers about it, then -- according to the Telegraph -- it would have been "expedient for him to be killed" so that nobody would ever find out. On the other hand, if he had told MI6 that he had been approached, then the secret would already be out, and presumably the foreigners would have nothing to gain by killing him, and quite a bit to lose.

But how could this hypothetical rival intelligence agency be sure that he had not reported the hypothetical approach? And wouldn't it be dangerous to kill him, in case he had reported it?

My mind was swimming. If Slate was right, and if intelligence officials were upset that a few details of Gareth Williams' work history got into the press in the days after his body was discovered, it seemed strange that this piece, published two weeks later, should be so full of such details.

Perhaps, for some reason, the story being presented here was deemed "safe" for the public. But why?

Why was it all right for people to read that Gareth Williams had helped to create airborne listening stations that flew over British cities, but not that he had deciphered intercepted emails between terrorists planning to blow commercial airliners out of the sky?

Chapter 45: Dylan Parry

Previous: A 'Safe' Story

Dylan Parry
I asked myself what Holmes would do in my position, and the answer came readily enough. So I took out my pipe, filled it with shag tobacco, and sat down to some serious thinking. But, aside from filling the flat with smoke, I had made no progress by the time my friend returned.

"I'm sorry to have left you so suddenly," he said, "especially for a false alarm."

"What sort of false alarm takes most of the day?" I asked somewhat churlishly, and Holmes chuckled.

"It started out as a false alarm," said he, "but it turned out to be very productive."

"How did that happen?" I inquired.

"It was Mycroft who summoned me this morning," explained Holmes. "He thought he was in the midst of a crisis. But by the time I arrived at his office, the entire matter had been resolved. You may read about it someday, if the Foreign Minister decides to write his memoirs.

"And you know my brother," Holmes continued. "He simply couldn't bring himself to send me back here without offering to compensate me for my trouble."

"What compensation did you request this time?" I asked.

"Since he is so well-connected in government circles," replied my friend, "I asked for his help in locating Dylan Parry, the former friend of Gareth Williams for whom I was looking last week. It didn't take Mycroft long to find him, and I've spent part of the afternoon in conversation with Mr. Parry himself.

"He's a very religious man, Watson," Holmes went on. "As you know, I have no such leanings myself, and I'm sure I would disagree with him about a good many things. But his sincerity is beyond doubt. I have no reason to suspect anything he told me."

"And what did he tell you?" I asked.

"He told a mixed tale," replied the detective. "He described Gareth as witty but socially awkward, brilliant but naive."

"He knew Gareth as a teenager, did he not?" I asked.

"Indeed," replied Holmes. "They rode the train together when Gareth was attending Bangor University part-time. Meanwhile, of course, he was completing his secondary school studies in Bodedern."

"So Gareth was caught between two worlds," I said. "He was 'a child among adults,' as his mother put it. It's no wonder he was socially awkward."

"No, not at all," answered Holmes. "And it's no wonder he seemed naive. Children often do, when they suddenly find themselves in the midst of grownups."

"What else did he say?" I inquired.

"I jotted down a few of his most germane remarks," replied Holmes.

He handed me a sheet of paper bearing these words:
"Gareth was the last person I would have believed would be involved in the murkier elements of life."

"He really was about as far from a James Bond figure as it's possible to imagine."

"Gareth was introverted and socially awkward. He wasn't dashing or cavalier or a charmer, although he was extremely nice in a quiet way."

"It would have been very hard to imagine Gareth in a relationship or attracted to the vain things of life."

"There has been a lot of speculation about his sexuality, but he was so introverted as to be asexual."

"Gareth seemed precocious yet naive about the harsher realities of life."

"He wasn't able to form relationships because he was so obsessed with his maths studies."

"He found it difficult to engage with people on a normal level."

"He was so naive, he was someone people could easily take advantage of."

"Gareth was one of the kindest and most decent people I have ever met."

"I wouldn't have thought he was a very good judge of character."

"He was very naive about people."

"It was clear he was going to go far, but we all assumed he would end up in academia."

"Finding out he became a spy was a shock."

"It’s possible he got to know someone who wasn't very safe."

"He was so innocent."
"What do you think?" asked my friend when I had finished reading.

"I think you've found another piece of the puzzle," I replied. "I just wish I knew how all these pieces fit together."

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