“Definitely not a good idea, sir. Whoever fired those shots could still be in there.”
The Sergeant cursed under his breath. Firearms! He spoke into his radio, asking the estimated time of arrival of the firearms unit. A moment later a BMW pulled-up and three SO19 officers climbed out of the Armed Response Vehicle. All three officers were heavily armed, carrying; Glock 17, 9mm automatics, Benelli M3 Super 90 12-guage shotguns, and Heckler & Koch MP5 sub-machine pistols.
“You are positive it was gunshots you heard?” The Sergeant asked the man, as the SO19 officers strode towards them.
“Oh yes. We all heard them. No mistaking, Sergeant.”
The SO19 lead officer stepped forward towards the heavy oak door, knarled and stained with the passing of time. He reached, turning the rusting iron handle. The other two officers had gone around to the back door and were mirroring his actions.
The Sergeant stood back looking on with the small crowd. A shiver ran through his body as a cold wind caressed him.
The lead SO19 officer knew; could feel that death was waiting for him inside the chapel. And then with a great act of courage, he stepped through the portal alone, his MP5 sub-machine gun clasped firmly in black gloved hands.
* * * The Priest stood, hands in pockets, staring down at the dead Assassin. He had been tossed across the chapel; his head split open, like a melon, against unforgiving stone, tearing flesh and destroying bone. Blood seeping onto the aged flagstones, creating an interesting congealed crimson pool around the twisted broken corpse sprawled at the foot of the alter. The Assassin’s unique custom-made, mini submachine pistol lay, black and evil, against the floor of the chapel. The stench of cordite hung heavy in the cool air, gun smoke drifting from the barrel. The Priest nudged the weapon with the toe of his shoe. Then, stepping carefully forward with a word or two of annoyance, he reached down and grabbed hold of the limp body. The head rolled slack, but incredibly, there was a groan of immense pain and the right eye that was still intact, opened. The Assassin’s mouth moved wordlessly for a second or two and the Priest lifted the paralysed but miraculously living man up into a sitting position.
“Are you trying to repent for your heinous act of violence, my son?” He asked quietly.
“I... misjudged...” The Assassin’s left eye hung by a thread, its socket disintegrated on impact. The dull right eye screamed hatred, and anger, and frustration. “I will not make the same mistake again.”
“I fear you will not, my son.” said the priest as kindly as he could. He suddenly slapped the Assassin hard across his face, and a grimaced sound of pain came forth with spittle and blood, erupting from the man’s mouth. “Who sent you? And how did you know I was Ferran & Cardini?”
The Assassin’s lips formed a firm line.
He remained silent - he was not going to speak.
“Come on, do yourself a favour and tell me. I can make that pain go away.”
“I will tell you nothing, Priest.” The voice was hoarse, laced with agony; the Priest sighed again, and holding the body upright with one hand he reached down and pulled out a custom-made flick-knife. The gleaming titanium handle had been made for the Priest’s grip only, a sharp click, and the shining narrow six-inch blade appeared instantly. The razor sharp edge had been case-hardened to the highest standard
- it was an evil weapon with only one obvious function: to kill.
“Are you absolutely sure, my son? Are you sure that you cannot share this information about these evil-doers for whom you work, with me? If not, then the Lord will deal with you through me, and as his loyal servant I must do his bidding to the best of my ability.” The slender blade of the knife glinted in the last remnants of light filtering through the stained glass window.
“Fuck you.”
The Priest raised the knife. Light gleamed from the blade; reflecting in the eye of the Assassin.
“Has God shown you the light yet, my son?”
The Assassin remained resolutely silent; instead he stared up with hatred.
“Then I must show you the error of your ways.”
The blade came down and around with precision and practiced skill - a single swift cut to the throat. The Assassin gurgled one last time, blood sprayed in a long arc across one of the white-washed walls; and the priest cleaned his blade on the Assassin’s clothing before allowing the dead body to topple and lie at his feet.
The Priest looked up, eyes narrowing. A figure moved into the chapel, cautiously; the priest retracted the blade and quietly replaced the flick-knife back into its hiding place. He smiled when he saw the black-clad figure of the SO19 senior officer moving towards him, HK MP5 steady in his gloved hands.
“Ah, the troops have arrived, just in time to save me.”
The armed police officer removed his gas-mask and slung the MP5 over his shoulder. He stared down at the dead body, then up at the priest. “You killed him, Priest?”
“God works in mysterious ways, my son,” said the Priest, with a kindly smile. “He was punished for his evil desecration of God’s holy place of worship.” The Priest gestured to the many bullet holes in the plaster and wood, across the stone, and the tiny holes in the stained glass window where fading light crept in.
“He certainly does. Shall I call in a clean-up team?” The stench of death and cordite was stinging his nostrils. The chapel - a place of love and worship - had become a charnel house.
“Best left to our people to deal with it,” said the Priest calmly, and strode out into the fresh air.
* * * The Kirill Government Research Establishment - Scottish Highlands. Steel and non-reflective glass interlocked within the very granite of this inhospitable part of the world, a massive complex that was not visible on the surface or from the air - but went ten levels below. A feat of engineering, and the Government’s best kept secret.
Claudia Dax reclined back in the leather chair, and gazed out over the rugged mountain terrain on the monitor before her from within the depths of the underground complex; she watched the wind spin and whip the powder snow into a spiral of eddies, shifting and dancing, twisting as if possessed by demons. The Scottish Highlands. How Claudia loved and loathed this desolate region of Scotland; how it lived, a land of such diverse personalities, of such contrasts; a place of life and death; a place of beauty and a place of great ugliness, hardship and fear.
The Scottish Highlands - a vastrugged landscape of nature’s hostility. A huge landscape of jagged rock, smashed into mercy by nature and her cold wet climate.
If Claudia tried, if she closed her eyes and reallytried, she could imagine that she was somewhere tropical, smell the sun-tan cream, the surf breaking over the exotic coral reef. It had been too long since she had enjoyed the sea; far too long.
Claudia was considered the best in her field: she had passed her GCSEs at the age of ten; A-levels at the age of twelve. She had then been one of the youngest students to ever be accepted by Oxford University at the age of fourteen - by which time she had already achieved a degree with honours in computing through The Open University distance learning tutorials. By the time she arrived at Oxford, she was well on her way to graduating in advanced computer science and artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence was just that - artificial. Scripted routines that were scripted…
Claudia Dax had pioneered a new school of thought: the concept of self-learn, self-teach, self-programme. The ability for the programme to learn and actually adapt by altering its own core code. To possess realintelligence, instead of a being told by way of pre-written directional script.
Kirill had snapped Claudia up after the publication of her second paper. And now, aged twenty-six, Claudia was an incredibly wealthy young woman living a life of dreams in a secret location within the vast wilderness of the Scottish Highlands. Although, incredibly wealthy, it was nothing as vulgar as finance and money and material possession that kept her at Kirill’s establishment - despite the desolation of the land: it was to do with her exceptionally competitive n
ature and her aspirations for the future. She could have chosen to work anywhere she wished: Berlin, the Bahamas, Washington - all had a particular lure for her sought-after programming genius. But Kirill was based in Scotland. And Kirill was at the very centre of all the important computing breakthroughs that were happening.
Claudia Dax had to be at the centre of that importance. Otherwise, her rise to the pinnacle of her chosen field would have been for nothing.
She was sitting at the terminal, linked to seven servers and harnessing the processing power and speed of one hundred subprocessors. Her fingers blurred across the keyboard and then she paused, adjusting the settings of various programs and sub-routines that were running in the background. She was the creator of her current project - spotted the glitch even before the security scripts reported it; she adjusted the code and sat back as figures flickered across the screen. LED lights randomly flashed at her.
Claudia Dax rubbed her weary eyes, ran fingers through her auburn hair. She suddenly realised that she was incredibly hungry - and incredibly tired, although she accepted these were small discomforts in comparison to what had recently gone down at Scorpion HQ in London.
Scorpion HQ - vaporised.
She shivered, and closed down the external view on one of her monitors.
Claudia gazed through the tinted glass at the offices below her; most of the terminals were empty, she glanced up at the clock, surprised to see it was 8.30 p.m.
“Bloody hell,” she said wearily. She had been working since 8 a.m. without a break, her concentration complete, and her focus intense and uninterruptible. Now her body and brain cried out for sustenance and she sighed to herself, climbing to her feet and stretching her perfectly formed athletic body. Her muscles ached and screamed for an intense gym workout.
Instead, she realised what she actually needed was a long cold beer. Very cold and very long.
She took the lift up to her private quarters - all the programmers employed at the highest level of security clearance were given the most luxurious living quarters two floors below ground level of the complex. This was one of the benefits, one of the perks, one of the expectations of working for Kirill’s prestigious team. They were offered the best salaries, the most exotic holiday packages, numerous opportunities to work worldwide and the opportunity to work on the most exciting cutting edge projects with the most powerful computing hardware ever created.
And Claudia Dax was, quite literally, at the very top of the pile.
She stepped through the door into her apartment, stripped off her clothing and revelled in the feeling of the air-con on her skin. She walked barefoot and naked across the Italian Marble floor to the wetroom, as she stepped under the shower head, warm jets automatically started and she lightly soaped her tanned skin. She massaged shampoo into her dark auburn hair, washed it free and then stepping out, towelled herself dry.
Still naked, she crossed to the American fridge-freezer and pulled free a bottle of ice-cold beer. She flipped the cap, and took a long, well earned drink. Then she set about preparing a light salad... what with the recent worry and speculation surrounding the Scorpion network and the total destruction of its London Headquarters, satisfying her hunger had not been high on her list of priorities until just now.
She revelled in the uncomplicated task of preparing the salad; she enjoyed the simplicity of slicing the cucumber, the crunch of the lettuce as the blade cut through its heart, and the reward of arranging everything neatly on the plate after the brain draining mathematical calculations of an average day working on the Chimera Programme.
Claudia Dax was on her third beer when the comm. buzzed.
Picking up the wireless handset she hit the answer button.
“Yes, what do you want?”
“Sorry, Claudia. We have a problem with the Chimera Programme.”
“What is the problem, this time?”
“The programme’s chameleon mode has caught a cold. In turn, the self diagnostic script is showing signs of erratic behaviour.”
“Damn. I’ll be there in five.”
The emotionless voice at the other end of the comm added:
“You don’t have five minutes, Miss Dax. Get down here now, that’s what you get paid such an exorbitant salary for. And, I would remind you that Professor Kirill is expecting Chimera to be glitch free in under seventy-six hours.”
“Yeah, yeah, I understand and you don’t need to fucking remind me of the countdown. I’ll be down in five minutes.”
She killed the comm. connection.
“Shit...” she muttered, forking a large amount of salad into her mouth and taking one more swig of beer. She tossed the empty bottle into the bin where it clashed against the other empties. She disappeared back into the bedroom, brain turning over possible reasons that could have caused such a catastrophic problem to occur... and all the time at the back of Claudia’s mind was the nagging doubt about Scorpion, and what happened to their HQ - and about Ferran & Cardini International...
She did not see the flashing blue curser on her screen.
* * * Claudia Dax loved the small hours.
The early hours of the morning when everything was quiet and still; when everyone else was sleeping; when the world appeared to be dead.
Claudia was often wide awake at this time; there were no distractions, she could think clearly...
And now: 3.30 a.m.
She lay on top of the duvet wearing her light cotton pyjamas, staring up at the ceiling. She rolled from the bed and stood for a moment. The air-conditioning whirring quietly in the background and she sighed, brain awash with binary codes, calculations and projections for the Chimera Programme. She smiled to herself, and then wandered, seemingly without purpose or direction, out of her apartment towards the lift.
Claudia gazed out through the three-sixty degree glass module as it descended silently. The doors opened.
Claudia Dax listened and with a sense of foreboding stepped, still in her pyjamas and bare feet, out onto the luxurious carpet, her whole body tingling with the audacity, the daring of her actions... to creep around on her own in a top security Government research establishment at night... naughty, very naughty...
She walked the corridors while virtually all of the other inhabitants of the complex slept, and after passing several security officers who merely nodded sedately at her presence, she moved stealthily to the unguarded air conditioning shaft leading up to ground level and the natural elements beyond. She raked her auburn hair back with both hands and slipped the elasticated band in place to make a pony-tail, stepped towards the ventilation grille, crouched down, and pulled it gently towards her. The grille came away easily, and as usual she was completely alone, as she made her way through the maze of tunnels...
She reached the exit at the rear of the ground-level complex. She produced a key and, without effort, overrode the electronic sentry software - after all, if her exceptional programming skill could not be used to her advantage sometimes...
Claudia stepped outside.
The cold highland night hit her as she took a few steps, revelling in the feel of the fresh air, the real world, the possible dangerof being outside in her pyjamas in the Scottish Highlands. Knowing, that all around her, heavily armed guards were concealed at their posts. Part of her wondered if they could see her, and merely ignored her eccentricity, her need to be outside. Another part of her revelled in the feeling of breaking the rules. But, only so far... She couldn’t go any further towards the perimeter or the guards would most certainly spot her and report the breach back to Kirill: personnel were only allowed out of the establishment with an armed escort. But she sometimes had to be completely alone, and to breathe the fresh mountain air, completely alone.
She gazed up at the star-filled sky for a long while, moonlight glinted across her slender figure, and she thought how lucky she was to have a body that many women would die for, and every man in the department fantasised over.
She patted her flat belly. “
Still firm and strong,” she sighed.
She stepped back into the artificial world, sliding the protective grille back into place and twisting the toggles to the locked position. She re-instated the security sentry programme and readjusted the log to how it was before her little jaunt outside. Digits flickered across the small screen and Claudia checked that she had not trodden in any debris from outside.
If only they knew, she thought.
A shiver ran up and down her spine; half in delight, half in fear.
Yes; she had been the best programmer and systems analyst - in her final year at Cambridge, possibly the best ever. But there had been something else; a chink deep inside her soul that led her to hack...
She found it easy, had honed her skills, and refined them to such a degree, that she had managed to computer rape some of the largest international computing organisations. She had cracked their supposedly unbreakable passwords, entered their databases and played with their files - just for a laugh... She always felt alive and turned-on by smashing their personnel files. The adrenalin rush she always got from fucking around with their finances was better than any drug induced high.
Claudia knew what drove her; knew that she had been born with a gift. But she hated - loathed- authority or anything which said, you will do it our way, and no other way... Her usual response to this was very simple... Well, you can all fuck off.
Claudia thought of herself as something of a cyber-freedom fighter - data protection? Nothing was safe in the twenty-first century. She wanted to open up the cans-of-worms that lurked beneath global organisations and governments. Find their dirtiest secrets and make them public on the Internet. She had the skill and knowledge to do this. To break the code of their digital locks and keys. She had the Chimera Programme at her fingertips...
Claudia smiled mischievously to herself.
Chimera Code (Jake Dillon Adventure Thriller Series) Page 16