Free The Cloud Collector by Brian Freemantle Page A

against Dodson’s retribution, she thought.
    *   *   *
    Just after four in the morning Jack Irvine translated sufficiently to give them a partial message. It was predicated on colloquial Gilaki—one of the predominant Iranian languages—but further disguised by Dari dialect phrases and terms. He didn’t initially wake the snoozing Singleton for help, wanting to decipher the entire encryption himself, but he admitted defeat just before dawn. Once awake, Singleton took a while to recognize the rhythm, needing the reference manuals more than the younger man, but refreshed by his rest he made quicker progress. It was Irvine, though, who guessed at a further Dari encryption as the words began to formulate.
    â€˜Now all we’ve got to do is work out what it means,’ agreed Singleton, looking down at the translated message:
    Fourth first in the war and first to the brothers.

 
    8
    Sally Hanning was as confused as MI5’s head of operations but hid it better than Jeremy Dodson, who throughout the breakfast encounter limited himself to yes or no responses whenever possible and minimal mutterings when it wasn’t. To Monkton’s final instruction—that anything, no matter how seemingly insignificant, be immediately taken to Sally—the man only just managed a head jerk, refusing verbally to acknowledge his messenger-boy function.
    Sally was irritated, too. She was officially the Sellafield case officer—which justified her receiving everything, although not that Dodson be the courier—and regulations required that if at all practicable, case officers should be present at the conclusion of an operation. Here it would have been both easy and practicable, incurring no physical risk whatsoever, for her to remain at some safe control point. She also didn’t like being used as the pawn in whatever humiliation Monkton was inflicting upon the head of his operational division. Dodson clearly featured to some degree in the failure to respond earlier and deserved reprimand or censure, but today’s episode was childish, pulling wings off a fly to stop its annoying buzz. It was positively distracting, determined Sally, as she settled back into her unexpectedly returned office. She stored the unneeded overnight bag by her single filing cabinet, pulling out a lower drawer to accommodate the blotter, filing trays, and her favourite photograph of her dead parents from her desk to create space to arrange the printouts of the betting tips recovered from Roger Bennett’s computer. Lastly, determined against any distraction, she turned off her computer and cell phone and told the switchboard she didn’t want any interrupting external calls. Twenty-six printouts were in the computer’s standard 12-point, Times New Roman font. Additionally, overnight a second set of printouts had been greatly enhanced at MI5’s north London forensic laboratory. Neither location nor date for any of the horse or dog-track meetings had appeared on the slips, which seemed to have been scanned onto an e-mail from a selection of newspapers and tipster magazines. Obfuscation, Sally reminded herself: nothing intended to be understood as it was actually represented. What message or messages could be hidden among horse-racing and dog-track meetings? A lot. Each slip selection held variations of three to four animal names, which usually extended beyond a single word. The longest was five: sixteen horse races, ten dog-track events. All printed in English, so presumably all English meetings. No, not necessarily: animals ran under their English names at foreign events. Sally separated the horse selections from the dog recommendations and tried to make out something—anything—significant by merging or combining words or minimal phrases. She gave up on the fifth horse race. It would need a computer—and more days than they might have left—to cross-compile every possible