Foreign Influence_ A Thriller - Brad Thor [104]
A cordon had been established and the news crews, as well as onlookers, were kept a safe distance away.
With Ashford’s approval, Harvath had decided that the BBC should be allowed the “scoop.”
When the time was right, the BBC news team on site was tipped off about some strange activity only a block from their location. Hot for a story, the reporter ran for it with her cameraman in tow. They arrived just in time to see teams of heavily equipped, black-clad, balaclava-wearing anti-terrorism police piling into four gas company vans. The cameraman was able to capture all of it.
Rushing back to their own van, they uploaded the footage to the BBC, who broke into their morning news programming for a “strange development” in the East London gas leak story. Within seconds of the footage being received, the BBC’s helicopter was diverted to East London and the completely predictable speculation began. Was the gas leak terrorism? Was it a cover for an anti-terrorism raid? Why was the British government keeping its people in the dark? Don’t the people have a right to know? Should the prime minister resign? They played right into Harvath’s plan. Moments later, the other networks had picked up on the story.
Anyone watching TV now knew that there was a lot more happening in East London than a gas leak. Anti-terrorism units were not normally sent in to handle utility problems. Harvath was hoping that whoever controlled the cell at the Darul Uloom Mosque was watching TV as well.
The architecture of any human network, whether it was created for gathering intelligence or committing acts of terror, was pretty easy to understand. As you climbed the food chain, each layer was designed to protect the operative positioned above it. Those layers were people, and they were known as “cutouts.”
At the ground level was the cell itself. The number of people in that cell was dependent upon their specific assignment and the overall goal of the network.
The cell had a leader whose job it was to make sure that the cell operated efficiently and to communicate up the food chain. The next rung on the ladder was the controller. He or she might control only that one cell or he or she might control many cells, but that person’s primary job was to act as a go-between and protect the identity of the regional controller.
The regional controller could be limited to controlling all of the network’s activity in a particular region, in a particular country, or even a group of countries. The regional controller then reported to a figure known as “tight control.”
“Tight control” was in charge of the entire network worldwide. Despite site 243 being a Chinese project, Harvath doubted that any of the controllers were Chinese. Most likely, they were all Muslim men who totally believed they were operating within a true Islamic terror network. That was the brilliance of the operation.
Whoever “tight control” was, Harvath was confident he didn’t live anywhere near China. He very likely operated similarly to bin Laden prior to 9/11, as the guest of a country sympathetic to the Islamist agenda. Pulling his strings would have been achieved through coded communications. For all intents and purposes, the man could very well have believed he was working directly for the al-Qaeda hierarchy, even though he’d probably never met any of its members face-to-face.
It was the perfect turnkey operation. Why go through the trouble of building your own Muslim network when you could hijack one from the Chinese? What Harvath couldn’t figure out, though, was why they had done it. Why unleash the carnage? What was the point?
To figure that out, they were going to need to get to “tight control”; and to get to him, they were going to need to work their way up the food chain one bite at a time.
They all agreed that the terrorist who had received the text was most likely the cell leader and the sender of the message had been the cell controller.