“Why, yes. Who did you think?” When Jonathan didn’t answer, the man continued. “I do hope the accommodations are to your liking. Some of the members think it’s a bit grand, but I believe we need to sequester ourselves in a discreet environment. We’re physicians, not plumbers. Can’t expect us to meet at Earls Court. But enough about that. How was your flight in? Everything go all right?”
But Jonathan didn’t answer. He was no longer hearing the man’s words. He’d finally gotten sight of his host’s name tag.
It read “Dr. Colin Blackburn.”
10
“I can’t comment on Robert Russell’s work for our firm,” said the self-assured, arrogant man sitting across the desk from Kate Ford. “All of our contractors are employed on the basis of absolute confidentiality. It’s not that we don’t care to help with your investigation, it’s that we can’t. Rules are rules.”
Sixty with a crown of thinning hair, bifocals perched at the tip of a hawkish nose, Ian Cairncross, director of Oxford Analytica, fixed Kate with a bored gaze. The two were seated in his office at 5 Alfred Street. From next door at the Coach and Arms pub, the din of the evening crowd climbed the walls of the cobblestone alley and into the open windows. For ten minutes Kate had listened to a lengthy history of Oxford Analytica.
The firm had been founded thirty years earlier by an American lawyer who had worked as Henry Kissinger’s assistant in the Nixon White House. While completing his doctoral work at Oxford, he’d stumbled on the idea. To his eye, the pool of dons and scholars at Oxford represented an incredible confluence of world-class experts on everything from economics to political science to geography. If he could harness this expertise, he could put it to work answering questions of utmost import to governments and multinational corporations around the world. He wanted the dons to analyze problems ranging from forecasting the future price of oil to guessing who would succeed the next Soviet premier. For all intents and purposes, Oxford Analytica was the world’s first “overt intelligence agency.” And that expertise was available to all comers, provided they agreed to OA’s not insubstantial fees.
“The Met has rules, too,” said Kate. “We’re also forbidden to reveal details concerning cases we are presently investigating. For example, I’d be remiss in telling you that Lord Russell was keeping a loaded pistol in his desk at the time of his murder and that he was unable to make an effort to use it against his assailant. I’d also be remiss in telling you that Russell suffered a very nasty bump on his head before falling off the balcony which might or might not have fractured his skull. And I have no right whatsoever to reveal that whoever was waiting for him when he returned home last night at two-forty in the morning not only managed to get past three doormen and a security guard monitoring cameras that covered every square inch of the building’s public spaces, but also defeated a state-of-the-art alarm system tied in to the best private security firm in London. And the worst part is this: we have no bloody idea how the assailant got out, because Russell’s alarm was still hot when we arrived. I can, however, freely offer my opinions,” said Kate. “Would you care to hear them?”
Ian Cairncross nodded, his eyes a fraction too wide.
Kate went on. “Whoever did kill Mr. Russell was a professional. And I don’t mean a thug from Brixton who’d done this a time or two before, but someone who’d been trained by the very best in the game. And I am not referring to an overt intelligence agency. I’d also posit that if for any reason that person believes that someone else-someone like you, for example-knew anything about what Russell was looking into, he wouldn’t give a fiddler’s fart before killing him, too.”
Kate let her words sink in, noting the sudden funereal pallor of Cairncross’s complexion.
“One more thing,” she added. “In case you do decide to break any of your rules, I am authorized to offer you round-the-clock protection to make sure that you don’t take a wee header off the balcony of your home-provided, that is, that you have one. A balcony, that is. I’m sure the address of your home is well known to everyone concerned.” She cocked her head and smiled. “So if you don’t mind, sir, I will ask one last and final time, what was Robert Russell working on?”
The answer was a whisper. “GSPM.”
Kate sat back in her chair and took out her notebook. “Go ahead.”
“Global Stress Points Matrix,” said Cairncross, with a bit more force. “It’s part of the early warning system we offer to our clients. GSPM is designed to forecast future risks. We’ve assembled a list of twenty core indicators that allow us to predict with a high degree of accuracy the course of events in the focus area.”
“What kinds of things?”
“Who’s going to be the next Japanese prime minister. The long-term rate of inflation in the U.S.A. The number of oil rigs coming online in Saudi Arabia and their effect on the price of oil.”
“I don’t think Lord Russell was killed over incorrectly guessing the price of a barrel of oil,” said Kate.
“No,” said Cairncross. “I dare say he wasn’t. Robert took our GSPM program a step further. Are you familiar with open-source intelligence-gathering?”
Kate vaguely recalled seeing something with a similar title on Russell’s desk, but she had no idea what it was all about. She said as much.
“It’s where everyone’s heading these days,” said Cairncross.
“Who’s everyone?”
Cairncross shot her a look from beneath his brow. “Suffice it to say that corporations aren’t our only clients. There are some in this government, and others, who have shown an interest in our work. It used to be that for information to be deemed valuable, it had to be graded ‘classified’ or higher. If something was commonly known, then it was thought to be worth…” Cairncross paused to search for the right word. “As you so eloquently put it before, ‘a fiddler’s fart.’ But that was all wrong. It turns out that all the information you need to ascertain what your friends and enemies are up to is already out there. The world is drowning in information. It’s a question not of too little, but of too much. The problem is finding it. The Internet has brought us down from six degrees of separation to three at most. Look at the celebrity world. You may not know David Beckham personally, but you know who his best friends are, where he ate dinner last night, how much of a tip he left, and where he’s going to travel the day after tomorrow. In another domain, that would be called actionable intelligence. Can you imagine if we’d known as much about Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin, or even Saddam Hussein? Who needs a Minox spy camera when your cell phone will do just fine? Everyone’s a spy these days. People just don’t know it. And the information is real time. It’s happening now. That’s what Robert was doing. He was setting up a trusted information network, a TIN, of individuals to gather that information.”
“Are you saying that Lord Russell was a spy?”
“I’m saying no such thing. Oxford Analytica is not an intelligence shop per se. Robert was simply creating a methodology to collect accurate, timely information about a variety of subjects of interest to our clients. His forte was establishing these networks of highly placed sources who would speak to him off the record, as it were.”
“TINs?”
“Exactly.”
“And who were these sources?”
“Could be anyone. The deputy defense minister of Brazil. The chief financial officer of a gold-mining conglomerate in South Africa. A Russian general in charge of motor transport in Chechnya. Anyone who might possess real-time information of strategic importance. The point is that with technology the way it is, anyone with access to private information can report it anonymously and immediately.”