“Yes, they are. Imagine if they’d shared with the class. Here’s yet another new programming language, but I’ve never seen anything like it. I can’t make heads or tails.”
Adam said, “That one I’ve seen. It’s based on the Voynich. They used it to build a completely new system that would allow them to infiltrate every computer that houses MATRIX.”
Gray whistled. “You know how dangerous that is? MATRIX is also on the servers at NORAD. And many other sites I wouldn’t want to allow control of to a couple of whack jobs who’ve built a new world no one can understand. They can highjack anything, everything, at any time. Very dangerous.”
“Radu is dead, Roman’s in the wind, and we’re responsible for figuring out what he might be up to. So instead of worrying, let’s keep pushing.”
Gray grinned. “Oh, how soon they grow up. I remember the days not long past when you would get yourself lost in the minutiae for fun.”
“Yeah, well, you guys made me a white hat for real, so now I have no choice but to be serious about it.” He went silent for a moment. “This scares me, Gray. I’ve never seen anything like it, and I’ve seen a lot. If they’ve shared any of this with their people at Radulav Industries, and there are people out there capable of hacking these systems, we have no control anymore. I mean, we have to put out an advisory that all government computers cease using MATRIX at once, do you agree?”
Gray nodded. “Yes, we do. It’s a good lesson. We’ve never truly had control, my lad. We never have, and we never will. Wait, what’s this?”
He pulled a folder onto the screen, double-clicked it. A series of schematic drawings appeared, layering one on the other. “This is exactly what I didn’t want to find.”
“What is it?”
“The blueprints of Thames House, River House, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, and Parliament, according to the labels. Detailed, thorough, and current. You better get Nicholas on the phone.”
“Dialing him now. What do you think it means?”
Gray said, “Here’s a lesson for you—always anticipate the worst.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR
MI6 Safe House
Farm Street
Mayfair, London
On their drive to Mayfair, Mike chowed down on a bag of bacon-flavored crisps, well, really, chips, they’d gotten out of a gas station a block from MI5. She had a banana ready to wash it down. Nicholas drank coffee and ate a bag of vinegar-and-salt.
Mike upended the bag into her mouth to catch the last of the crumbs, then crumpled it and started peeling her banana. “Why can’t we have these in the U.S.? It’s not fair, Nicholas, really it’s not. I mean the chips, not the banana. I’ve never seen so many flavors, but seriously, these crisps—chips—are incredible. Wish I’d grabbed two bags.”
“I’ll get you a whole case for Christmas, how’s that sound?”
“Perfect.” She scooted across the seat and put her head on his shoulder. “Please tell me we’re going to catch Ardelean today. I don’t know if I’m up for any more bombs or fires or guns.”
“I have a good feeling about this meeting with Temora. Maybe he’ll know how to get him or where he is.”
Nicholas parked a block away, in front of a dark Jesuit church, and they went in on foot. The town house was a four-story tan brick with large-paned windows and wrought-iron Juliet balconies. The street was charming. Mike could only imagine how festive it would look at the holidays. Did Brits, she wondered, decorate for Christmas as elaborately as Americans?
She said, “Seriously nice place for a safe house.” Nicholas nodded.
“Hide in plain sight. Always better.”
They knocked, and the door opened. A stranger waved them inside. When the door shut behind them, Mike smelled chlorine, curry, and wood smoke. She saw a huge circular stairwell in front of them, very modern decor—minimalist and sleek.
Harry was waiting for them by the stairs. Father and son hugged each other, hard, then stepped back. They were men of few words, Mike knew, so she wasn’t surprised when Nicholas went right to business.
“Where is Temora?”
“In the basement. This house is equipped for four prisoners at once, or a team of operatives. Right now, there’s only Temora. There’s a pool, a gym, a server farm, and a bomb shelter, too. MI6 does it up right.”
“I’d like to speak to Temora alone.”
Harry started to protest, and Mike shook her head, but Nicholas held up a hand.
“Trust me. This guy is a hacker. If we all go in together, he’ll talk in circles just to piss the two of you off. I’ll go in alone, hacker to hacker, see if I can get the real story from him.”
Harry said, “Understand he’s angry, Nicholas. Don’t trust anything he says—don’t take it at face value. From all I’ve found in Barstow’s files, he plays games. We haven’t yet figured out what he wants.”
“Understood.”
Harry walked them to the back of the house, where the glorious center stairwell gave way to a set of metal stairs with rails that reminded Mike of a submarine. They went down carefully and through a door into a metal hallway, where the claustrophobic sense of being underwater continued. The basement was unlike the upper floors—it was utilitarian, cement walls, and reddish lantern lights.
The interior of the prison was cool and felt empty. The cells were quiet. Nicholas had no idea who had been kept behind the thick steel doors, nor did he want to know. He’d left this world behind years ago, and it made his skin crawl to have to work his way back in, even for a short time.
Harry stopped in front of a steel door on the right of the hallway.
“We’re right here if you need us. The mic is on in his cell. We’ll be in the central room at the end of the hall, just there. Call out if there’s trouble.”
“Thanks. I’ll be fine.” Nicholas stepped through the thick gray door. He wasn’t a fan of tight spaces and was relieved to see the basement prison was roomier than he’d expected.
A guard waited silently halfway down the hall. When Nicholas nodded, the guard opened another thick door, and Nicholas slipped inside, ignoring the crawling sensation of being locked inside a steel cage.
The man sitting on the bench was thin, pale, and his head hung low. His long lank hair hung around his face. He raised his head, and Nicholas saw the fierce, burning intelligence in his eyes.
Temora wasn’t more than twenty-five. He was studying Nicholas closely. Nicholas didn’t move, didn’t speak. Finally Temora said, “You’re Nicholas Drummond.” He sat back, crossed his arms, and said with a sneer, “So the big man’s come to gloat.”
“If you know my name, then you know me better than that. How did you end up here? Held by Security Services? Tried to go to the dark side, did you?”
“I did no such thing, and those bastards upstairs know it. I’m innocent.”
Nicholas sat down across from him. “Come now, Caleb, a private messaging system built expressly for ISIS operatives says differently. If you’d warned our government about the latest attacks, perhaps they’d believe you weren’t working for the other side.”
Temora shook his head, his long hair swinging back and forth. He muttered a curse, then said, “Do you have any idea how hard it is to serve two masters?”
“No. Because I’ve never thought there were two masters to serve, only one. Our government.”
Temora looked away, licked his cracked lips.
“Water?”
After a moment, Temora gave a tiny nod. Nicholas looked up at the camera in a silent demand. A minute later, there was a knock at the door, and a bottle of water was handed in. Nicholas cracked the top and gave the bottle to Temora, who drank it down in a few gulps.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Care to tell me why the bloody hell you’re here, Drummond?”
“I’d like to talk about an old friend of yours. Roman Ardelean.”
Nicholas could have sworn Temora sneered.
“I figured.”
“I need to know how to stop him, Caleb. He’s killed four important people here in England, not to mention a couple of dozen innocent people across Europe. He’s planning something. An attack of some kind. We need to know what it is.”
“I haven’t talked to that egomaniac in years. I have nothing for you.”
“You know him better than we do. You worked for him, earned his trust—he respected you. Barstow forced you to hack into his company’s computer systems. You’re our best chance at stopping him right now, before he burns down the city. You help us, and I’ll get you out of here.”
“Talk to his freak of a brother. He knows him better than I do.”
“His brother is dead.”
Temora’s eyes narrowed. “You say Radu Ardelean is dead?”
“Yes.”
“Did you kill him?”
“In a way, I suppose. I was part of a raid on Ardelean’s house to save a woman he’d kidnapped, a twin like himself, who could read and speak Voynichese. Unfortunately, there were complications. He bled to death.”
“Well, it’s a bloody miracle he made it this long. It’s taken serious cash to keep that man alive. His hemophilia was off-the-charts bizarre, nothing in modern medicine touched it. Imagine not being able to close off a vein, unheard of. I thought it really wasn’t hemophilia at all. Something else—”
“How about something in not-so-modern medicine?”
“You mean Roman’s ridiculous idea that the Voynich held the key to curing all of Radu’s ailments? Yes, I know all about their attempts to find the missing quires.
“If Roman and Radu could truly read the Voynich, then they must be the only two on the face of the world. I couldn’t read it, and I can read any code.”
“It’s not a code, it’s a language. Only certain twins can read it.”
“Yeah, yeah, so you said. Do you know I even saw the original manuscript? Barstow had it stolen from Yale. Ah, I see you didn’t know that. Here’s another freebie. The original Voynich is at his house, in his safe. He bragged about it.”
“Thank you. Whatever else the Ardeleans believed, they trusted the instructions in the manuscript to cure Radu, that and the right blood.”
“I don’t suppose you know they also used it as the basis for their encryption, believing they were only ones who knew the language and so no one could ever crack their systems?”
“I do, actually. Tell me, you can’t read the Voynich, yet you cracked their systems?”
“I had a leg up. Being on the inside of the company was a help for Barstow’s mission, wasn’t it? They may have been crazy, but Radu and Roman knew how to design bulletproof code.”
“How’d you get in, then? If it’s bulletproof?”
“Drummond, you of all people know all code is designed with a back door. I simply opened the one I’d left behind and walked in. Made their lives a living hell for a bit.”
“Does Ardelean know you went into ISIS as an operative?”
“Of course, he always could find just about anything he wanted to know. But he couldn’t catch me.” He shrugged. “Sure, I helped them out for a while, but I didn’t like it, too strict for me, the violence too senseless. I’m an anarchist, not a zealot.”
“How did you manage to send me the video of you and Barstow? And why?”
“Barstow had planted a camera in here—look over your shoulder.” Nicholas looked up, saw the red eye beaming down on them. The exact view in the video. “When I agreed to screw around with Ardelean’s code, Barstow gave me a computer. Piece of cake to send out a video, telling all. It was time to out the old bastard.”
“It helped, thank you.” Nicholas said nothing else, waited, waited, and Temora started up again.
“Look, I have no idea what Roman’s planning. I can’t help you.”
“I think you can, Caleb. You said it yourself. He has a bone to pick with you. The moment he finds out you’re involved, he’s going to come for you, and he’s going to make you wish you’d died in one of those coded hellholes you crawled out of. He is bent on vengeance against everyone he feels is responsible for ruining him and killing his brother. He has the tools to accomplish this, too.”
“Yes, he does. His software resides on ninety percent of the computers in the free world. A few keystrokes and he could shut it all down: power grids, air traffic control systems, satellites. Without phones and power, money or food, the world would descend into chaos. He could close the doors of the grocery stores and open the doors of the prisons. He is omnipotent.”
“So he controls the computers. What else does he have?”
“What else does he need?”
With a brief glance at the camera and a raised eyebrow, Nicholas said, “He has a weaponized drone army.”
Temora started to laugh, shaking his head. “Amazing, absolutely amazing, but I’m not surprised, not really. Roman has this strange patriotic streak in him, wants to wipe out terrorism, arm poorer countries. So he did it. I wonder why Barstow never told me.”
Nicholas shook his head. “I’m asking you nicely to tell me what you think Roman’s going to do next. He’s already killed Barstow. Is he going to run? Hide? Or attack?”
Temora’s eyes lit up. “He killed Barstow? Good for him. I wish I could have killed the old monster, but I couldn’t.” Temora paused, then said, “I’d say Barstow was pretty close to being crazy, crazy evil. You want to know what’s sad? The old bugger believed all the lies he spewed.”
“Where is Ardelean, Caleb? What does he plan to do for revenge?”
“Sorry, I swear I don’t know what his end game might be. But whatever it is, it will be big. Huge. Since you people killed his brother, he’s not going to run. He’s going to come after all of you with everything he’s got. It’s always personal to him. Very, very personal.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE
Upstairs, Nicholas put a frozen pizza in the oven while Mike pulled together a quick salad. Then he, Harry, and Mike sat at the table and ate, discussing their next moves.
Nicholas said, “There’s one thing I believe Temora about. Ardelean is going to come after us. He already has twice, no reason he won’t try a third time. If he blames us for his brother’s death, then we’re in twice as much danger. We have to find him.”
Mike swallowed a bit of pizza. “Let me call Adam, see if he’s found anything yet.”
She put her cell on speaker when Adam answered. “Gray and I were about to call you. Sorry, guys, we don’t have good news. The blueprints for several major London landmarks were on Ardelean’s hard drives. Maps, detailed information, insider stuff, things not available to the public. Seems he used his connections to the servers to lift all the information he could possibly want.”
Nicholas asked, “So how many possible targets?”
“There are eight different spots around London that he’s done epic amounts of research on. I’m talking all the major tourist destinations and government buildings. It’s going to take us a while to find out if there’s one he’s favored over another. He still may try to kill you guys off one at a time, or he may focus on a single huge attack. We don’t know yet. He’s up to something, regardless.”
“Get back to it, Adam. Find everything you can and send it our way.”
Nicholas patted his mouth with a napkin, stood up. “Come on, Mike, let’s go talk to Isabella. She might have heard something, seen something to help us figure out what he plans next.”
Harry said, “I’ll keep talking to Temora, see if I can’t sweeten the deal. If he gives me anything, I’ll let you know.”
When the door shut behind them, Nicholas realized the sun was dropping behind the mews. They stood in ready silence on the stoop for a moment, listening—no drones above them.
Nicholas pulled on his leather jacket, and they started down the street, back toward the church.
Mike saw a garden along the way, chestnut and limes lining the sidewalks, the leaves full and deep.
White flowers sprinkled the beds like dropped pieces of cotton. The evening felt calm, and still. There was no one around, only the distant sounds of traffic.
Nicholas glanced at the pink sky. “I didn’t realize it was so late. The car will be waiting on the other side of the church. Let’s cut through to the hospital.”
A man’s deep voice said from the shadows to the left, “And ask that lying bitch why she let my brother die?”
Mike’s hand went immediately to her weapon. Roman Ardelean said very quietly, “Don’t even think about it.” But she didn’t pause and she was fast, her Glock out in instant. Even as she opened her mouth to tell him it was over, he said in that same quiet voice, “Tsk,” followed by a strange word that sounded like Obţine.
Mike felt a flash of air and a sharp sting in her hand. Her Glock clattered to the ground, and the tail of a falcon disappeared into the tree-lined street. She started to duck toward the weapon, but the bird took the corner at speed, turned in her wings, and shot between her and her Glock like a missile.
The voice from the shadows called out, “Stop. Arlington does not approve of weapons. She’s been trained to take down drones, but she sometimes acts on her own where handguns are concerned.” He turned to Nicholas. “Wise of you to stay still, Drummond. I believe she would go for your eyes.”
Nicholas said nothing, stepped quickly to Mike to see her hand was bleeding. He said to Ardelean, “A handkerchief to staunch the bleeding,” and he slowly pulled one from his breast pocket. As he did, his other hand reached the gun under his arm.
“Now, Drummond, do be careful where you put your hands.”
Nicholas didn’t move. “Are you too afraid of us to show yourself? All you have going for you is a killer bird?”
Ardelean stepped from the shadow. He was wearing dark jeans, a black T-shirt, and leather jacket, and on his wrist sat a falcon. He held no weapons, only the bird. Nicholas knew he could pull his Glock and kill the bird in a heartbeat.
The Sixth Day Page 32