He paused and looked unblinking at Komarov with his cold, pale blue eyes.
‘I understand you completely and we’ll do just that,’ replied Komarov.
‘I have my own sources of information, as you probably know,’ continued the President, ‘and far be it for me to tell you how you do your job, I do, nevertheless have a suggestion which you may find helpful in your search.’
‘I’d be most grateful.’
‘What I’m now going to tell you I was told in confidence. I’m afraid I cannot give you the source and I know none of the details. I therefore cannot answer any questions on it. You’ll just have to take it as an anonymous lead, is that all right with you?’
Komarov just nodded agreement.
‘I understand that at the launch of Athena in a couple of weeks’ time and that you propose to attack a bank in the hopes that they use Athena to defend it,’ continued the President. ‘I understand that you hope to be able to trace its location of the Athena team as that happens. Am I correct in my facts there?’
‘You are indeed,’ replied Komarov and though he longed to know how the President had come by such information and was horrified by the amount of detail he had, he dared not ask him how he knew all of this.
‘Here’s my suggestion,’ he went on. ‘The British government always call what they call a Cobra meeting when threatened by anything they consider serious. Without a doubt they’ll consider it desperately serious when you tell them that there’s to be an attack on one of their banks and so equally without a doubt they’ll call a Cobra meeting. One person certain to attend such a meeting is their Chancellor of the Exchequer. For this meeting, it would be only reasonable for him to want to have the very latest update on Athena for that meeting would it not? I mean, after all, it’s their first line of defense of banks and the Chancellor will want to reassure himself that Athena is up to the job, will he not?’
‘Of course, of course,’ replied Komarov feeling more and more ill at ease with each passing moment for he now guessed there would be a distasteful punch-line at some point.
‘I have been informed that a certain Miss Giacomina Falcone works right inside number eleven Downing Street, the Chancellor’s London head-quarters; she works there for one of his chief aides, a Mr. Cape. I wonder if Miss Falcone could ask for the Athena update to be sent to Downing Street and perhaps intercept it?’
‘Of course that could be arranged, I’ll look into it right away.’ If he was right about the President after all these years some of them as his close friend, the snide punch-line should come just about now. And it did.
‘Quite how someone in my position, with the Economy and our involvements on the troubled international war scenes on my mind should have to concern myself with the minutiae such as Miss Falcone leaves me almost in despair. Where has all the Russian talent gone that could be doing this work instead of myself? I’m not referring to you my dear Igor, but no doubt you get my drift.’
‘I do indeed, but then your grasp of detail and your prodigious memory have been a hallmark right back to the days when we were in the KGB together in in St Petersburg.’
This overt flattery was a risky ploy as was the reminder of their closeness once, and the moment he had said it he wondered if he had gone too far.
‘Yes, good old days, eh?’ said the president. ‘Anyway see if an approach to Miss Falcone might work; perhaps you could do it through your Mafia chum Silayev – I forgot to mention, she’s of that brotherhood as well.’
Oh Christ, thought Komarov, is there nothing this bloody little despot doesn’t know?
‘I much appreciate your helpful suggestions,’ he muttered, ‘we’ll act upon it right away and I shall keep you informed of progress if you wish.’
‘I do wish,’ he said, his tone suddenly sharper. ‘And the sooner I get this bloody Athena off my back the better.’
Shortly after this uncomfortable session, Komarov was able to slip away and return to his office feeling much like a dog in disgrace. Still whoever it was who had suggested this new approach to unmasking Athena had caught the President’s attention – and in all honesty had caught Komarov’s too.
He rang Silayev as soon as he got back to the office. He told him, almost verbatim, what the President had said.
‘So don’t do anything about it till we’ve spoken about this Giacomina Falcone further. But check her out through your Mafiosi connections, her employment status, the lot. Get back to me as soon as you have built a sufficiently good picture of her. We can then decide on our best approach.’
‘Sure Igor, sounds interesting.’
Shortly after that Silayev rang Guido Favero in London, a branch of the brotherhood he had been in business with on a number of occasions in connection with money laundering. Once the usual pleasantries were out of the way, he said he was keen to reach Giacomina Falcone and understood that he knew her. It was a good guess.
‘Sure I know her, her mother’s a cousin of ours.’
‘I understand that she works in Downing Street for the Chancellor of the Exchequer. But I wouldn’t want to disturb her at her place of work. Do you have her home telephone number?’
As soon as he had the number he thanked Favero and muttered something about doing some more business with him one day soon. It was not till after seven that evening that he was able to reach her at home and the introductions and explanations took some time. After a while Mina – as she had informed Silayev was the name most called her – wanted to repeat the request back to make sure she had understood it properly.
‘So probably the Thursday before the long Easter weekend,’ she started, ‘the UK is going to get a threat of a cyber-attack on a bank in the City of London. This will prompt a call for a Cobra meeting to be convened. As soon as I hear that the Chancellor has been asked to attend, I am to contact Angus Macrae at the Towneley Vassilov Bank on the Isle of Man and ask his people to send the Chancellor an update of the Athena project; I’m to emphasize that the update has to be in Number Eleven in good time for the Cobra meeting. When the Athena update arrives into Downing Street I am to obtain a copy of it and email it to you in Moscow. And for all this I will receive the sum of ten thousand pounds wired into the account which I am to give you now. Have I got that right?’
‘Perfectly so,’ replied Silayev, ‘and if anything at all crops up to worry you about any of this, I want you to ring me or send me an email. That understood too?’
‘Yes, that’s fine Mr. Silayev, I look forward to doing that for you and to doing more business with you in the future as well.’
‘My name’s Anton, and I’m sure we shall have that opportunity in the future as well.
* * * * *
Once the excitement of the Crimean incident had faded from everyone’s mind, Angus and Kim stayed on a Craithe to await the launch of Athena on the Good Friday – they were well able to run the bank on the Isle of Man from Craithe and the bank’s General Manager told Angus to concentrate on Athena and he would ring in the unlikely event that something cropped up which he could not handle.
Angus rose from his chair, picked up his cup of coffee and walked over to the window, a tall Georgian design, cut through the six foot walls of the castle not long after it was assumed that the clan wars of the previous eight or nine centuries were finally at an end.
He looked down past the three terraces that swept from the foot of the castle walls, down to the tops of the cliffs. It would have been over this very ground that invaders of the castle would have come – charging up the incline only to find it impossible to gain access to the castle and after a few week’s siege, retire with nothing achieved. No one had ever breached the castle but what would they have achieved if they had succeeded? They would maybe have gained power over the lands directly controlled by the castle but not much else.
But how different it would be these days. If perhaps the Russian president’s people were to succeed in seizing a copy of Athena, it could affect millions. Yet, like so many thing
s in life, those vey millions who could be directly affected if such a disaster occurred were completely unaware of the struggles going on in the background to keep it safe.
He thought too of the totally disproportionate power that computers and the internet now had over the world. Even recently rockets, drones, sophisticated smart-bombs, even troops on the ground could not necessarily subdue a nation. But if the Russians – unlike the West – had no qualms about using Athena to inflict the misery of cutting electricity supplies to major cities, for example, how long would a western government hold off entering talks – even suing for peace?
He sighed. There was little doubt that because of its frightening potential, there would be many who would continue to try and find and steal the Craithe team’s unique invention. They had made a good start keeping the location here a secret though that was not something that would continue for long. Getting Borislav Boreyev here with a team of security professionals was his next priority and after Easter Tom Traynor would be here with his unusual contribution to make.
If it were not all so serious, it would be quite exciting, for one thing was for sure, the intrigues of the past few days would simply get worse – as usually happens when unsavory people or bullies don’t get what they want.
Author’s Note
Naturally, I hope that you have enjoyed this brief tale. For though few have any reason to stop and think of how our lives have become so dependent on computers and have other things to worry more about than life without them, I hope that it has also given you a moment’s thought about what would happen if Athena did exist and the wrong kind of person got a hold of it.
This short book is intended of course to entertain you for the hours it has taken you to read it but I hope you may be tempted by it to find out more in my other two books which follow on from here. These tell more of the lengths the Russians and the mafia will go to get Athena for the enormous power and wealth it could bring them.
‘Betrayed’, the second book in the series tells what happens when a mole deep within the heart of Government leaks the location of Athena and of the mayhem that ensues as soon as those looking for it know where to come and get it. And ‘End Game’, the third in the series, tells what happens when one of Russia’s richest oligarch’s manages to clone enough of Athena to be capable of shutting down an enemy’s power supplies.
He uses it secretly to close down a power grid in rural England and then immediately comes to its rescue – all to just to appear the saving hero and thereby be given a foothold in the UK power marketplace for one of his companies. When this devious plan is seen through and thwarted by the Craithe team, he takes to revenge – using his weapon to make a killing on the financial markets by fomenting war between Russia and the West.
The end game is like a game of chess between Russia and the West but with him in the middle moving the pieces. But the real question is this – can he be stopped before world war three becomes a real possibility?
To find out more about these books, why not visit my website williamwield.com.
And one last request, if I may. If you enjoyed this book, perhaps you would be generous with a few minutes of your time by posting a review on Smashwords and other e-book retailers – many thanks to you if you do.
The President's Fixer: (A Financial and Conspiracies Thriller – a prequel to the Legacy Thriller Series) Page 10