‘Of course,’ replied Hapsley, ‘though with us making a move like this, I suspect we’re going to have to have another chat soon about moving Athena to a new location – though I admit that’ll depend on how this all goes.’
‘That’s right,’ agreed Angus.
‘Okay I’ll do all that right away and ring you back.’ Said Perry and both put their ‘phones down.
Shortly after that, with Perry putting the final safeguards on the package of the President’s files, Professor Hapsley rang back.
‘All done,’ he said to Angus. ‘The last two months files, documents, notes, emails and telephone conversations all copied to the new website, we’ve just called it “Athena Services” and I’ve given it the password ‘meanstoanend’, all right?’
‘Good,’ said Angus, ‘On a separate laptop can you get through to me here on Skype and then leave that open – that would leave the big screen here free for something else I need it for.’
There was a pause while the Skype link was set up and Angus could see Perry and the professor standing there in the Lab.
‘That’s looking good, I expect to be using it later this evening,’ said Angus, ‘or earlier if I can entice Mr Komarov here before that. So it looks as though we’re already. I’ll now contact my father in law, whose been waiting for me – he should be able to get us quick access to the President. I’ll keep you informed as things develop.’
Angus rang Mikhail Vassilov.
‘Mikhail, we’re on,’ said Angus as soon as they were connected. ‘There’s only one further complication to what we’ve been discussing. That man Komarov’s still got Kim and as his operative who’s actually guarding her is either an SVR or an FSB agent, chances are that the President will already know about all of this.’
‘Damn it, that man Komarov’s a real pain,’ said Vassilov, ‘I met Kim many times on my visits to the bank on the Isle of Man, she’s a lovely girl and if her life is at risk from Komarov, you’re right, I wouldn’t trust him an inch. But don’t be surprised if the President thinks it’s you that’s the nutter. I’ve been thinking of the best approach to this whole matter and I’m going to take a new direction to win his confidence. By the time I’ve finished telling him why he needs to ring you he’ll will think it’s you who’s the one who’s nuts. Another thing, don’t be surprised if he does all of this through one of his close circle, he never likes doing any of his dirty work personally.’
‘I’m really grateful, Mikhail,’ said Angus, ‘and, just so you know, I don’t care what the President thinks of me.’
Mikhail rang off to make his call to the President.
When Mikhail Vassilov’s name was given as calling to speak on a personal matter to the President, he was put through to one of the Kremlin’s most senior security man, General Andrei Yolkov of the FSB. As a personal friend of both Mikhail and the President, he was the ideal person to assuage the President’s permanent paranoia about all callers.
‘Mikhail, nice to hear from you,’ he said as Vassilov was put through to him, ‘we don’t see enough of you at our receptions – we must put that right soon. I hear you have a delicate matter of which you wish to warn the President. He’s entertaining someone at the moment – if you get my meaning – but as you said this was of the utmost urgency and it’s you ringing, I thought I should take the call.’
‘I’m grateful Andrei, though this is also extremely embarrassing for me,’ said Vassilov, ‘and it’s partly because I’m so worried for my daughter Tatiana that I have decided I cannot remain silent.’
‘That sounds very melodramatic, Mikhail,’ said Yolkov, ‘tell me more,’
‘My Tatiana’s husband has a team which has developed a new super cyber weapon,’ said Vassilov, ‘it’s called Athena and it’s the same weapon that Igor Komarov has been boasting about stealing for the President.’
‘Yes, Komarov’s been boasting that he has finally almost got this weapon,’ said Yolkov, ‘in fact he’s been boasting about it for so long now, the President’s getting sick of him. But you say he’s now actually got it and it was your son-in-law he stole it from?’
‘Yes, that’s right, but that’s not why I’m ringing,’ went on Vassilov. ‘My son in law is called Angus Macrae and he has gone literally berserk as a result of this theft. He thinks that the President ordered Komarov to steal it and has done something dreadful in revenge – I mean, it’s potentially disastrous for the President.’
‘Disastrous for the President? Did I hear that right?’ asked Yolkov.
’Yes, that’s right,’ said Vassilov, ‘So before anything happens as a result of my son-in-law’s actions, I’m begging you to tell the President that it was me who brought this shocking act of revenge to your attention before it can do any harm. I need to try and protect my daughter Tatiana, and despite our differences in the past, I wouldn’t want anything to happen to the President either.’
‘I understand perfectly, Mikhail,’ said Yolkov. ‘I’m sure that the President will bear that in mind. But, why don’t you tell me what this appalling act of revenge is, and maybe then we can see what we can do about it.’
Vassilov then carefully spelled out the details of the website that had been set up and that it now contained the President’s most private and probably also incriminating secrets – all the dealings of his most inner circle. He gave Yolkov the Website address and password so that he could check it out for himself. He added that a boastful Angus had given him the access information so that he could see that he was telling the truth.’
‘My God, Mikhail,’ said Yolkov, ‘this is dynamite. I’ll try and deal with it myself – even before it gets to the President. I’m most grateful for your loyalty to the Mother Russia and to the President, even if it may doom your son in law. Let’s just keep this to ourselves for now whilst I ring your son-in-law and deal with him.’
‘I suggest you humour him to start with,’ said Vassilov, ‘that way he may tell you all this himself.’
‘I’ll do that, Mikhail,’ said Yolkov, ‘and, again, thank you for telling me all this – am so glad that we should be able to fix it before the President gets involved.’
The moment the call from General Yolkov came in to the Newby Centre, Angus breathed a sigh of relief – the ploy had worked and he instantly felt more confident that Kim could now be delivered unharmed.
As soon as they were connected, Angus smiled to himself as the General began to pour verbal honey down the line.
‘Mr Macrae, on such a wonderful day as your wedding,’ said Yolkov, ‘and all those hundreds of people, you could not possibly be expected to remember me, but I had kindly been invited by Mikhail and, I must say what a great event it was.’
‘You’re right, I don’t remember, General,’ replied Angus
‘Anyway, I’ve had a look at your Website, “Athena Services”,’ continued Yolkov and Angus tried to picture him at the other end of the line – was he relaxed as he sounded, or had this ploy got him sitting on a sharp knife’s edge?
‘I have to say that this Athena of yours seems to be all that Komarov said it was, quite a feat to lift the President’s personal files – steal them to be more precise.’
‘And?’ said Angus.
‘And I have to compliment you on a degree of bravery in carrying out such a … such an act of vandalism.’
‘And?’ repeated Angus.
‘I was wondering why you would risk so much to do this, the penalties being potentially so enormous.’
‘Oh, I’ve only borrowed your President’s files for an hour or two,’ said Angus, ‘after he – or even you – have done what I am about to ask of you. If you do just one simple thing for me, I will give the President’s IT people another password which will enable them to delete the entire contents of the website themselves.’
There was a silence for several seconds and Angus was sure that he heard Yolkov whispering to someone near him.
‘Angus, if I may call you that,’ said Yolkov after c
learing his throat a couple of times, ‘this is just plain and simple blackmail, but blackmail of one of the most powerful men on the Planet. Before commenting further, I just need to hear from you what it is you want us to do. For I have to tell you we need destroy the website’s contents as soon as possible – before we have a truly dangerous situation on our hands.’
‘There have already been deaths involved in the theft by Komarov of property of mine called Athena,’ said Angus. ‘He also has my Personal Assistant Miss Kim Bradley taken as a hostage. I expect Komarov to be here at this place I’m ringing you from at around seven o’clock GMT with my PA in his custody. I will give you the ability to destroy the website and guarantee that no one else gets to see any of its contents on just two conditions.’
‘And those conditions are?’ asked Yolkov.
‘One, that you order Komarov to immediately hand over to me Miss Bradley unharmed,’ said Angus, ‘and two, that you announce publicly that Komarov is now a persona non-grata with the President, that he is denounced for the outrageous manner in which he stole Athena, and is to hand over the memory stick containing Athena to my PA at the same time as she is released. That’s it. That’s all. Later, you and I can talk about Athena and the President’s understandable desire for it once this mess is out of the way. I also want this to be done over a visible internet link which my people can set up with yours – be that Skype or direct video link. Doing it in this way Komarov, who will be standing next to me, will believe and I hope accept his fate.’
Again there was a pause and this time Angus did hear whispering going on.
‘I’m sure that for the complete destruction of your website,’ said Yolkov, ‘that I can get the President to agree to disown and castigate Komarov and demand the release of your PA with the memory stick and Athena on it. Nice talking to you, Angus, and I hope we can do business over Athena as soon as this mess is out of the way. I’m happy for your people and mine to fix up the video link when we’ve finished talking and I look forward to seeing you again around seven GMT tonight.’
Angus then got Yolkov to arrange for his IT people to set-up the video link between Newby and The Kremlin and he then transferred the call to Perry to do his end of this set-up.
‘Right,’ said Angus, turning to Boreyev and giving him a mock-punch on the shoulder, ‘let’s ring Komarov at the Russian Embassy, and get this thing done.’
Chapter 33
Monday, 28 March afternoon
The Russian Federation Embassy,
Izolda and Kim had no idea where they had been taken after their kidnapping. And although Izolda had taken one of their captor’s mobile telephones after she had killed all but one of them, it did not have an application on it to tell them their location. Soon they came to a small café and Izolda asked the owner where they were. They rang the Russian Federation Embassy in Kensington Palace Gardens, and Izolda spoke to one of the senior members of staff she knew there. They gave little information in case the mobile she had taken from the gunman was bugged or had a trace on it, and persuaded the Embassy to send a car to collect them.
On getting to the Embassy, Izolda immediately rang Komarov on his mobile phone.
‘What a relief to hear from you,’ he said as soon as he heard it was her, ‘I found out from the Heliport that you had landed there safely and had taken a taxi to the Embassy. Then silence, what happened?’
‘I’ll tell you all that when I see you?’ she said, ‘more importantly, I have Athena on an external hard-drive, and I also have Mr Macrae’s Personal Assistant as a hostage. What would you like me to do with them both?’
‘Fantastic,’ shouted Komarov down into his mobile, ‘don’t do a thing with either until I get there, from the Connaught Hotel to the Embassy is but a hop in a taxi – I’ll be there in minutes’.
As soon as Komarov was taken to the room where Izolda and Kim had been waiting for him, he burst into it.
‘Congratulations again,’ he said, ‘the President will be delighted with your great work. Come with me both of you. On my way up here I’ve arranged for the Embassy’s top IT man to take a look at the memory stick, just to confirm that we have the real thing – not that I doubt you for one minute of course,’ he added, smiling broadly.
At this he nodded to the young man who had brought him up to the room and they followed him off to the Embassy’s IT department. On reaching it, the young man introduced the three of them to the head IT man, by the name of Anton Dudko.
Izolda handed over the external hard-drive to Dudko who carefully plugged it into a laptop on one of his worktops. Almost as soon as it was in the laptop, its little in-built light began to flicker at speed, then, with no warning the laptop’s screen went blank and the machine itself went silent as though it had been switched off.
For a moment, Dudko frowned at the machine but then stepped forward and pressed the start button on the rear of the keyboard. Still nothing happened. Just in case the battery had suddenly decided, coincidentally, to die at that very moment, he plugged a mains power lead into the machine and pressed the start button again. Nothing.
‘Strange,’ said Dudko, stating the obvious. He took the external hard-drive out of the dead machine and took it over to a much larger, mainframe computer.
‘This should be Okay’ he said, as he plugged the memory stick into one of the machines ports. Almost instantly the same thing happened – except that it was rather more dramatic. The little memory stick immediately began to flash its in-built light as before, but soon after that, rather spectacularly, all the monitors being run off this bigger machine suddenly closed down simultaneously. In just a couple of seconds, all systems were dead and a secretary came in from the room next door demanding to know what had happened to her screen.
Reverentially this time, Dudko took the memory stick out of the dead machine, shaking his head slowly from side to side.
‘Where did you get this?’ he said to Izolda.
‘Why do you ask?’ she replied somewhat fatuously.
‘Because it has an extremely sophisticated self-defence mechanism built into it,’ replied Dudko, ‘one that’s even going deny me the opportunity to see what is on it.’
‘Have you seen this kind of thing before?’ asked Komarov’
‘Only once read about something like this in the UK, as it so happens,’ said Dudko, ‘but I’m sorry to have to tell you that I’ll need a bit more time to do some more work on this and be sure I’ve got it right can you give me a couple of hours?’
‘A couple of hours,’ echoed Komarov, then he paused, ‘Okay, we’ve waited this long and don’t want to damage what’s on there. Let me know as soon as you’re finished with it.’
In around an hour and three quarters, Dudko contacted Komarov and with Izolda and Kim, he hurried back to the IT department. He explained that his first guess had been right. The memory stick could only be opened by a computer it recognised or one that identified itself as belonging to the same family.
‘That’s why I asked where you got it,’ said Dudko, ‘because it looks to me that the only place it will open is if it’s plugged into a machine which is in the same family as the people who gave it to you. Sorry but that’s all I can suggest.’
‘What’s this ‘family’ thing you talk about, said Komarov, ‘I don’t fully understand?
‘If the people you got this download from get themselves a new machine, ‘said Dudko, ‘they add a small programme which brings it into the ‘family’ as all the other machines owned by them. In this case all the machines owned by Athena carry this ‘family’ recognition programme. So, you plug your hard drive into any of their family of machines and you’ll have no problem with it.’
‘Bastards’, said Komarov and stormed out of the room.
Once Komarov had recovered from his outburst, he began to plan. As soon as he felt he had it all worked out he set about tracking down Angus and eventually reached him at the Newby Centre.
‘I must say that I’m disappointed t
hat you let my people leave Craithe Castle with what is effectively a useless external hard-drive’ he said as soon as they were connected.
‘Just before we get embroiled in all of that,’ said Angus, ‘I trust that you have my PA Kim with you and that she has been properly looked after,’
‘Very well, if you wish to discuss that first,’ said Komarov, ‘may I say that I hope that you value her highly as in passing her back to you, I have some things I want in return.’
‘Some things?’
‘Yes, for example I would like you to transfer my thirty million Euros to my bank in Moscow,’ said Komarov, ‘and, almost needless to say, but I’ll need to have proof of that transfer before we discuss anything else at all.’
‘I can do that quite easily,’ said Angus, ‘and the other things you said you wanted in return for my PA?’
‘As I said at the beginning of our conversation,’ said Komarov, ‘I’ve been told that the external hard-drive will not work on anything but one of your ‘family’ of computers.’
‘Yes, that’s right, your people worked that out obviously,’ replied Angus, ‘and there’s a very good reason for that. As you will know by now, Athena is so powerful that it could be disastrous for the world if it found its way into the wrong hands. So our computers automatically add a defensive programme onto Athena if it’s copied at all. If the copy is going onto another of our own machines, it will be recognised and will not go into defensive mode, but if it’s stolen then the defence mechanism will prevent it being used – quite simple really, helps protect the world from terrorism.’
‘If you want your PA back alive and well,’ said Komarov, ‘I need to get a copy of Athena which I can take away with me and actually use?’
Betrayed: (A Financial and Conspiracies Thriller – Book 1 in the Legacy Thriller Series) Page 26