The Echelon Vendetta - David Stone

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About David Stone

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The Echelon Vendetta

» David Stone

Penguin
Paperback : 01 Nov 2007

£7.99

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Interview

A Short Conversation … with David Stone, author of The Echelon Vendetta

Is The Echelon Vendetta in any way political?
I hope not. My goal was to tell a memorable story in an original and compelling way. I hold no brief for causes any more. People are far too hell-bound. Man is not perfectible, and the past cannot be cured. Queen Elizabeth said that. The first one, I mean. Great broad, she was. My kind of woman.

Are all your stories based on your own experiences?
If they were I'd be dead now, although I've had my times. But not even I can drink like Micah Dalton. He's kind of like me, only younger, smarter, meaner, better-looking, and he has the liver of a Norse god. I'll tell you, I do love the stories that are in the world. Tom Wolfe was right; the best stories are out there in the streets and towns. A writer is at his best when he allows the world to show itself to him, pays close attention, and then uses all his skill to describe what he saw accurately, with grace; when he can; even with affection, if he still has any left.

The Echelon Vendetta has a rather terrible man at its centre. Is he drawn from real life?
Yes. He is. He's dead now, and the world's a better place.

Is Micah Dalton based on a real person? Other than being taller than you, I mean.
And better looking? Yes, to a degree.

Is he alive?
I sincerely hope he is.

Are you an 'author' or a 'writer'?
Good question. If by 'author' you mean someone who thinks he's grappling with the Big Ideas, the 'Triple S' issues – Steaming with Social Significance – then I'm just a simple writer. I take my work seriously but I see myself as vaguely ridiculous. I set out to write well and I think I'm succeeding. When good writers thrive, I feel quite happy. When bad writers get indecently rich, it depresses the living hell out of me. I do admire talent.

Who's a good writer?
John Sandford. Len Deighton. E. L. Doctorow. Patrick O'Brian. Le Carre in his early years, before he got poisoned by causes. Hemingway, of course. Chandler. KC Constantine.

The Echelon Vendetta is an interesting title. Where does the name come from?
Well, although the CIA 'officially denies' the existence of a technology transfer surveillance program called ECHELON, the existence of such a program by any other name is a strategic certainty; not to maintain a vigilant watch over the transfer of vital industrial and technological processes to the enemies of The West – or to their complacent 'neutral' allies – would be a dereliction of the duties central to any agency charged with national security.

The book is called The Echelon Vendetta because the central narrative thrust of the book arises from an Echelon operation that went horribly wrong, resulting in the deaths of several innocent bystanders. The desire to avenge these deaths became the animating principle of the killer I have created in this book, a killer whose nature and actions are based on a couple of real-life killers I have actually seen at work and who are now thoroughly and deservedly dead.

Your Bio says you did Intelligence work. Can you define 'Intelligence'?
I'll try. There are many kinds of 'intelligence'. SigInt is Signals Intelligence – monitoring enemy communications. Then there's Elint – the kind of stuff the National Security Agency is doing right now.

You mean Electronic Surveillance, that sort of thing? How 'James Bond' has that technology become?
A better analogy would be 'Orwellian'.

We're having a phone conversation right now; what's the likelihood that 'they' are listening to us having this conversation?
That would depend on what we've been talking about, and where we both are, and with whom we've been associating. We're both in countries considered allies of the US, so there is zero chance that someone at Crypto City (the National Security Agency in Annapolis Junction Maryland) is sitting at his desk right now listening to this exchange. Zero. But if you were in Yemen and I was in Idaho and we had already been active in groups with terrorist linkages, and we started to use words such as 'enriched uranium' and 'Port of Chicago' – or the usual terrorist code words for them – such as ‘white meat’ for ‘Australian Tourists’ then the computers at Crypto City would kick out those trigger words and the focus would sharpen immediately. Our conversation – which, since all communication is digital now, would be retrievable as an audio packet - would show up on a screen – with a tag – and the event would be logged for a FISA warrant within 72 hours and yes, then, we would be under surveillance.

Is there any way a person like yourself could detect that kind of surveillance, any measures you might take to neutralize it?
Detect it? No, none at all, unless the surveillance was a 'bug' a hidden mike, or some kind of laser surveillance device, devices which are local and have recognizable electronic or physical 'footprints' that sensitive gear can detect and counter-act. As for 'neutralizing' data-mining surveillance such as the NSA is capable of, you have to take your entire operation back to the Bronze Age. No electronic communication at all, no wire transfers, no banking, no cell phones. You use human couriers, 'trust-based' banking procedures such as the 'hawala' system being used by Al Qaeda, or what is called 'starburst banking' where funds are moved in amounts below the automatic detection trigger of ten thousand dollars. If you have to use phone lines, you speak in riddles. You communicate by hidden cues on Islamic websites. You hide by day and skulk by night, like cockroaches.

That's quite a handicap.
Yes. That's the whole point!

You were describing different kinds of Intelligence?
It's a complex field, so what I'm saying here is pretty basic. I worked a lot in what we called HumInt - information from live humans you are in direct contact with. In HumInt work, you have an opposing force, either formal military, or a criminal organization such as an outlaw biker outfit, sometimes an insurgency. You want to find this Opposing Force, the OpFor, fix it, and kill it. To do that, you need to know where it is, where it's going, what it's carrying, what it's eating, what it's thinking, who supports it and why, what its ideology is and how to defeat that, and most importantly, how to make the area safe for people who don't hate you yet. Boots on the ground. Figure out how to do that, you win. And, to be safe, you plan for what the enemy can do, not what you think they will do.

That's an intriguing distinction. How do you actually do that?
By going out into the field and talking to people. The idea was to gather tactical info and add it to a larger portrait of the OpFor. Then we made as careful an analysis of their short-term and long-range plans as we could, based on the experience and gut instincts of senior men, and we moved on them. In a more military sense, you go out into the AO, talk to locals, gather spent casings after a fire-fight to see if you're colliding with the same fighters time after time -

How would casings tell you that?
You look at the firing pin prints, at the way the shell has been ejected, at the source of the round – it's a large body of knowledge – too complicated to go into here. When you can, you take a live prisoner, see what he can tell you.

Do you mean 'torture'?
There are many ways to persuade a man. Hard usage is only one of them.

Torture is a topic of intense debate here and in the US right now. Can you tell us your position on torture?
Essentially, I'm against it, but not for the reasons you might think. I have no ethical objections to it, and if I had a man under my control who knew, for example, where my kidnapped daughter was being held, I'd feed him feet first into a bark chipper to get that information. But as a supposedly legalized policy? Not a chance. Here's an illustration from the current scene in America; shortly after 9/11, the US Intelligence agencies begged ATT and Verizon and other telecommunications firms to provide technical assistance in the establishment of electronic surveillance systems to be used against KNOWN terrorist cells in Europe and South East Asia. The firms hesitated, because to provide such aid would lay them open to subsequent law suits. So the US Justice Department gave them immunity – called The Garrity Clause – which persuaded them to help in the very real war against terror. Now we fast forward six years, and the Democrats in the US Congress are fighting hard to have any firm that helped in this important fight be open to any and all law suits and to retroactively forfeit its immunity. My point? Listen up, all combat troops! Even if your country tells you it's okay to torture, sooner or later the surrender lobby back home will slither into power again and you WILL be retroactively nailed to a tree.
So, yes, I'm against torture.

Will there be other Micah Dalton books?
I'm writing one right now, called The Orpheus Deception. Whether or not there'll be more after that is up to the reading public.

Will you ever reveal your true identity?
Not a chance. I like being unknown. I like my privacy, my life just as it is.