The Jagged Edge

by AJ Frazer

  “It’s a worm, not a virus.”

  “What the fuck’s the difference?” asked Ray.

  Dominic shrugged. “No idea.” Ray was right, as if the technicalities mattered a damn.

  The two men sat in silence for a moment before Ray snapped out of his thoughts. “What’s the plan? How are they going to stop him? Must be something they can do, right?”

  “Unclear.”

  “What the hell do you mean ‘unclear’? Either they have a plan or they don’t!”

  “Put it this way. Ms. Hale, the agent who tried to threaten me when I first met Sagen, did not fill me with confidence. I had her and two cyber-geeks land a bloody great helicopter on my back lawn twenty minutes after I spoke to her on the phone. Following a lengthy discussion, nothing she said gave me the impression they have this situation remotely under control.”

  “Goddamn it. What are they doing all day? They must be working with Langley and probably the Israelis to track him down. Not to mention half of Europe’s security branches.”

  “Again, unclear. The only thing that was crystal clear was that she looked spooked.”

  “A spook who’s spooked—that’s definite cause for concern.” Ray sat with his mouth slightly open and his eyes squinting. The cogs were grinding, neurons and synapses firing. “Well, then we have to tell people. We have to warn them.”

  “That’s not our call, Ray, and you know it.”

  “It is when the government have no idea what to do. It becomes our duty!”

  “No, Ray. To announce that would be a grave mistake. Think of the panic. Think of the suffering caused if suddenly the world thought the banks were about to be shut down or water switched off and power supplies cut. Imagine the chaos. If Sagen’s motivation was to create mayhem, then he’d have succeeded without even lifting a finger.”

  Ray nodded gently. “Perhaps that is his plan. Perhaps that’s why Zhen told you?”

  “I thought that too until I met with Hale. Her reaction confirmed that this is no hoax.”

  “Right.”

  “We must keep this quiet for now.”

  “All right. But we can’t sit around doing nothing!”

  “You haven’t considered why Zhen told me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She told me because she wants to stop Sagen and she thinks I might be able to convince him not to do it. That’s MI6’s plan too. Me.”

  “How?”

  “Zhen’s working on a plan to get me to wherever he’s holed up so that I can try to reason with him. Apparently, he respects me and will listen.”

  “Well that’s almost as shocking as this Biblical thing.” Ray’s ability to make light of the most dire situation was one reason he and Dominic had been close friends for so long. Ray took to heart Winston Churchill’s view that war is a game that is played with a smile. If you can’t smile, grin. If you can’t grin, keep out of the way till you can. “So how are you going to get to him?”

  A thought occurred to Dominic. “We have to hold off publishing the article I wrote. He may be waiting for that to be published before launching Biblical.”

  “You think he’s that much of a narcissist?”

  “Perhaps, yes. I mean, why now? Why did he contact me now and want the article done? I think he’s using it to paint the picture of himself that he wants portrayed before he commits the world to total mayhem.”

  “There is a certain crazy-person logic to it,” agreed Ray. “One last chance to write the history books before he hits the restart button.”

  Dominic turned to his phone and pressed the speed-dial button for Jagged Edge’s editor-in-chief. “Ed, you need to pull the article on Sagen,” he said.

  “What? But it’s a bloody cracker! Why the hesitation?”

  “Can’t explain. But that article cannot be published anywhere. Am I clear? Under no circumstance can it be published.”

  There was a pause on the line. “Christ. OK, sure, Dom, of course.”

  “And have all your international bureaus delete the file from their hard drives, then delete their trash folders, then delete the email attachment and delete their mail trash folders. We simply cannot risk it going out anywhere. I’m serious, Ed, it needs to disappear from everywhere except a secure copy on your hard drive. No one else can have a copy of it.”

  “I’ll get on it right away.”

  “Good.” Dominic hung up the phone. “Ray, let’s get Desmond up here. I want our IT security beefed up and I want him to do a network search for that article and delete anything he finds. As much as I trust Ed, we can’t rely on the affiliates and international offices to do as instructed.”

  “I’ll get onto it,” said Ray, standing. “Then what? We wait for Sagen to realize that it’s not published then call you to find out why?”

  “That’s about the sum of it, yes.”

  “So, this and the mysterious Zhen Daiyu are the best we got.”

  “I’m all ears if you’ve got another idea,” Dominic shot back.

  To which Ray had nothing to say.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The sound of a ticking clock counting down is infinitely worse than seeing the clock hands move around the sixty-point circle. Knowing that time was running out, but not knowing how much time was left, gave Dominic brief moments of anxiety and flashes of panic.

  Ray had immediately summonsed Desmond Ore, Jagged Edge’s chief technology officer to the cavernous boardroom off Dominic’s office. “So we’re covered?” asked Dominic, looking at Desmond.

  Desmond was sweating, literally and figuratively. Dominic was sitting next to him on the same side of the vast boardroom table and could see that he was uncomfortable with the grilling that had been going on for hours. He was a short, round man of Jamaican descent, with a clean-shaven head. He was perennially cheery and bright, but not today. Not here in the boardroom under what must have felt to him like an interrogation.

  Desmond looked to Dominic. “Jagged Edge maintains the highest protocols of cyber security in any media company—”

  “That’s not what he asked, Desmond!” Ray was sitting across the other side of the table fidgeting with frustration.

  “Yes, but I am trying to—”

  “Desmond, it’s OK if we’re not a hundred percent secure right now,” Dominic said. “We just need to know how vulnerable we are.”

  “Jagged Edge has a very secure system. However, it’s not impenetrable. Nothing is. But we can handle any hacker who attempts to corrupt our systems.” Desmond sounded more confident as he spoke.

  “What about state-backed hacking? What about AI hacking?” fired Ray.

  “AI hacking is still a fantasy and only the US government has anything close to that kind of technology,” Desmond said. “And why would they want to hack Jagged Edge?”

  “We’re just being prudent,” said Dominic. “We’ve all seen the way Russia manipulates the US political system with fake news. We want to ensure Jagged Edge has the very best security protocols to prevent any kind of cyber attack. Put it this way, Desmond, you have an open checkbook to get whatever you need to make our IT infrastructure absolutely rock solid. Impenetrable. Understand?”

  Desmond looked suspiciously at Ray and Dominic. “What are you not telling me?”

  Ray glanced at Dominic.

  “Desmond, we simply need to ensure that Jagged Edge is untouchable,” said Dominic. “For our institutional investor confidence—you know what they can be like nowadays, with regulatory and compliance legals.” He knew full well that Desmond had no idea what institutional investors were like.

  “Of course. Right. Well, I’ll draft up a security overhaul plan that will make us, as you say, impenetrable. But I warn you now, we’re talking millions of pounds and it will be far more than a media organization such as Jagged Edge needs.” Desmond stood to leave.

  “Thank you, Desmond,” said Ray.

  “Yes, thank you,” echoed Dominic.

  Dominic and Ray sat in sile
nce while Desmond walked around the huge table, exited, and closed the door.

  “I don’t know why we’re bothering,” said Dominic, as much to himself as to Ray.

  “We have to do what we can to secure ourselves and minimize the fucking damage that this psychopath is about to unleash.”

  Dominic sat forward, put his hands on the wooden table, and looked across at Ray. “You don’t get it. If what they say is true, Sagen will shut down the internet, not the individual sites, the entire worldwide web.”

  Ray threw himself back in the black leather chair and huffed. “Do you really think he has the balls to pull a stunt like that?”

  “Yes. I do.”

  Ray nodded. “So, any word from this Zhen woman?”

  “Nothing. Maybe she changed her mind or can’t convince Sagen to meet me again. Sagen might have discovered her deceit and has her locked up or worse.” Dominic was trying not to let his imagination run away with him, but he wouldn’t put it past Sagen.

  “What I don’t understand is why some well-resourced government agency hasn’t been able to wipe this fucker out before now.”

  Dominic walked around the table toward the door. “I can’t answer that, Ray, and I doubt the people running those organizations can either, for that matter. Now, I’m going to meet Julian McBeth at his office to work some things out.”

  Ray stood to leave as well and Dominic held the door open for him. “I trust you are taking precautions in terms of your family and finances?” asked Dominic.

  “I wanted to check with you to see what your plan was,” said Ray.

  “In times of uncertainty go back to basics. Gold and cash are the only things worth a damn. Although, even they may not be particularly valuable if this thing turns out to be true.”

  Ray grunted. “That’s what I figured. Pretty straightforward in theory, just complicated by time. I’m seeing my lawyer tomorrow to get it sorted.”

  “We’re all on borrowed time.”

  Ray nodded.

  “Just remember, no one is to know why you’re doing it.”

  “Yes, of course, Dom.”

  “Give no reason to your lawyer for your actions but, if you must, then just lie. The public cannot get a whiff of this.”

  “I get it. Not a word.”

  “Good. I’ll let you know if I hear from Zhen or Sagen.”

  Dominic took his car to his lawyer’s offices on the other side of Covent Garden. The journey took over forty minutes in the gridlocked traffic. Aggressive road tolls had done little to ease the severe congestion of a city that was simply never designed to handle the amount of vehicle traffic it produced.

  Driving past the high-street fashion shops and trendy bars, Dominic considered the millions of people oblivious to what could happen at any point. He was seriously questioning why he, the owner of a major news empire, wasn’t telling the public about the impending danger they faced. In the constant battle for consumer attention, a story like this would guarantee monstrous audiences. He knew their page views would spike, time on site would increase, subscriptions would jump, all the digital metrics of success would be plumped up, dressed up, and shoved down the throats of eager advertisers desperate to connect with increasingly difficult-to-reach consumers.

  But there are some stories that simply cannot be told. The public would find no good in being made aware of the situation and it would only lead to chaos. He was often aggressive in business, but he was not without a social conscience.

  Alex pulled up to the curb in front of McBeth, Bates and Associates’ old stone building. Dominic stepped effortlessly out of the car and buttoned his gray suit jacket. He jogged lightly up the six steps to the heavy glass door that led into the marble foyer of the offices. Being a high-net-worth customer, he was immediately met by a tall, impeccably dressed woman in a dark-navy suit jacket and skirt with a provocatively tight fit. He followed her up the grand marble staircase. With an exaggerated walk, she could have easily passed as a catwalk model. Perhaps she was. Ordinarily Dominic would have enjoyed walking behind her, but today was not ordinary.

  After climbing the marble stairs that curved around the foyer area they came to the first-floor landing and Julian’s office, which looked out on the street above the main entrance.

  “Dominic, please take a seat,” said Julian, gesturing to the couches near an enormous fireplace. “Now, from your phone call, it sounds like you want to make some rather significant changes.”

  “Yes, that’s right.” Dominic unbuttoned his jacket on the way to an old leather Chesterfield.

  Julian joined him on the opposite couch. “So what did you have in mind?”

  “Liquidate everything and put it into cash and gold. As much as you can. Immediately. Time is of the essence and I want it started now. You don’t stop until it is all done. Everything,” said Dominic dispassionately.

  Julian’s mouth had dropped open slightly. “Everything? Dominic, are you completely mad? There is no way to do something like this quickly and get remotely near the full worth of your portfolio.”

  “I don’t care about full worth, Julian. Do it and do it now.”

  “But, Dominic, you know we can’t simply unwind everything that quickly. You will take an insane hit on the value of all your assets, your stocks, your investments. I mean, what about your properties? Surely you don’t mean your estates?”

  “Everything. Except my house in Surrey and, of course, the house in Hampstead.”

  “Good God, Dominic! Why?”

  “I don’t want any of it anymore. I want it all gone as quickly as possible. Now, can you help me?”

  Julian sat momentarily dumbfounded. “Well … yes … of course. I can have a plan prepared and executed for you.” His look of shock morphed into concern and worry. “But what’s going on, Dom? Is everything OK?”

  “It’s time for a change, Julian. You know I’m retiring from Jagged Edge permanently soon. I don’t want to deal with all these complicated investments. I just want cash and gold. And when I say cash I mean banknotes. US dollars, preferably. If you can’t get cash quickly then gold—and not bonds, I mean bullion. I want my accounts emptied and the cash and bullion brought to my Surrey estate. Am I clear?”

  “Perfectly,” said Julian, noticeably concerned. “Dom, you can tell me if something is wrong. MI6 were rather insistent with you the other day. Are you in some kind of trouble?” Julian was a shrewd man. He clearly didn’t buy the retirement excuse.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. MI6 aren’t interested in me.” Dominic softened his tone. He needed a change of tack. “I’m making some major changes to my life while I’m still young enough to enjoy it all. That’s all there is to it.”

  Julian stared at Dominic in silence as if unsure what to believe. “All right. I’ll get onto it personally right away. You’ll need to come back here in a week to sign a—”

  “You have two days. Get as much done as you can in two days. I’ll come by the office to sign whatever you need.”

  Julian’s face went puce. “Dominic, please! This is preposterous! You can’t expect to liquidate your portfolio in two days, let alone gather that much cash and bullion together! And it’s the bloody weekend!”

  Dominic leaned forward and stared intently at Julian. “Do what you can. So a few bankers have to work a weekend. They’ll make so much money off this, I’m sure they won’t mind.” He rose from the couch, buttoned his jacket, and headed for the door. “See you Monday then!” he called, as he walked out of the office.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Dominic spent the weekend in a zombie state, bunkered down in his Surrey home. Each day he had delivery vans arriving to stockpile food, water, and all manner of equipment.

  He had enlisted the help of an ex-military consultant who specialized in taking people off the grid and creating completely self-sufficient living environments. Sergeant Matthew Smith was a unique individual, to say the least. He would have been called eccentric if he had been wealthy, but witho
ut the immunity that came with money, he was simply odd. He was a firm believer in imminent Armageddon and an adherent of survivalist culture. How right Smith is, thought Dominic, though he never told the man why he was so urgently in need of such an extensive array of supplies and gear. In fact, Dominic was surprised that Smith was so blasé about the whole operation, as if it was perfectly normal for a grown man to want to barricade himself in his mansion with a few months’ worth of food and supplies, and to want to do it so urgently.

  He had to admit that Smith was damn good at his job. In twenty-four hours the bald, stocky man had assessed the estate’s existing infrastructure and detailed a plan that could be executed and completed in under forty-eight hours—essentially, turning Glenraden into a self-sustaining fortress.

  On the Sunday, Dominic heard a truck rumble slowly down the fine-gravel drive. It was so big it scraped the lower branches of the oak and maple trees flanking the driveway. Dominic stepped out onto the main entrance steps to see what Smith had procured. The truck’s brakes engaged with a hiss, the cab door opened, and the driver jumped down.

  Smith strode out from around the far corner of the mansion. “Jimmy!”

  “Awright, Smithy, you good?” The driver extended his hand.

  “Tip-top. Now, you need to bring this around to the rear of the ‘ouse. I’ve marked the location awready,” said Smith in his heavy West Country accent.

  “Rightio then,” replied the driver cheerily before heading back to the truck.

  “Mr. Elliston! I need this truck round the back!” called out Smith above the sound of the idling diesel engine. “Which means driving over that beautiful lawn of yours. You OK with that?”

  “Sure, whatever you need to do,” replied Dominic. Helicopters, trucks, what the hell next?

  “Awright. Move it out, Jimmy!” Smith walked backward while beckoning the truck to follow.

  Dominic walked back inside to the kitchen where he saw through the window the truck come to a stop at the bottom of the extensive lawn. He made a cup of tea while Jimmy and Smith ran around the truck like ants, scurrying here and there with various boxes and crates. Shortly after, Jimmy operated a hydraulic crane that had been brought in, and lifted the gray shipping container off the back and onto the immaculate lawn.