The African Diamond Trilogy Box Set

by Christopher Lowery

  His face blanched and he pushed Shen away. ‘Nothing will go wrong. I’ll make quite sure of it.’

  ‘Good. It’s been a pleasure.’ He climbed out of the car and went back into the elevator. This time he went straight up to the executive floor. Han Wang Tāng was still sitting with the chairman, and Shen said, ‘I’ve just talked to Tom Connor in Dubai. He asked me to tell you they will be honoured to mark the deployment with two minutes silence tomorrow. It will be seven in the morning local time and everyone will be there to show their respects.’

  ‘Thank you, Shen Fu Liáng. You are a truly devoted colleague,’ Han replied, shaking him by the hand.

  Dubai, United Arab Emirates

  ‘Shen just confirmed the upload’s scheduled for eleven o’clock tomorrow, Shanghai time. Is that what you were told?’ Elodie Delacroix was talking on WhatsApp on her other phone.

  She listened for a moment. ‘Good, then we know it’s definite. When will you deploy the trigger? Sunday, as we thought? I’d better get moving then, I don’t want to be stuck here by myself when the chaos starts. They’ll catch on pretty soon what’s happening at XPC, and they’ll be looking for scapegoats. I’ll book a flight for tomorrow and text you the details. You’ll come to meet me at the airport, right? Fantastique, I can’t wait to see you, it’s been too long. I’ll dream about you tonight chéri, see you tomorrow.’

  Elodie booked herself a first-class seat on a two o’clock Emirates flight, arriving in Moscow at six-thirty in the evening. She texted the flight number then went to run a bath. She poured in a double amount of her most expensive bath lotion and lay back, a glass of champagne in her hand, celebrating her masterful handling of the situation. By the time she was dressed and ready to go out, the bottle was empty.

  Delmas, Mpumalanga, South Africa

  Rod’s finger ends were bitten to the quick. He looked at the others in despair. ‘OK, I’ve tried all the tricks I know to break in and every connected word I can think of as a key: Lee-Win, XPC, Shen, Elodie, Sharif, ACRE, Trigger, Mark VII and dozens more. I even tried the cell number, and nothing works. I’m going to have to try to use brute force.’

  ‘That could take forever, and the chance of cracking it is hundreds of millions to one. Has no one got a better idea?’ Abby was feeling the pressure. Leo had come down looking for solutions, and so far they were having no success.

  ‘How long will it take to set up?’ Leo had never attempted a decryption by bombardment before.

  ‘Maybe an hour to write the parameters. You can help me with them, suggest related fields and logical connections, that kind of thing. It opens up millions of potential keywords. Then my programme just starts sending them to the key field until it takes a liking to one and “Hey presto, open sesame”.’

  Coetzee said, ‘OK, get started. Leo and I need to call General Chillicott to update him and see if he’s got any news from his side.’

  They left Rod and Julia and went into Coetzee’s office. He asked, ‘Have you seen the papers this morning?’

  ‘Haven’t had time. What’s the latest bad news?’

  He pointed at a front-page article from the previous day’s London Times: ‘NATO meeting convened as Russian military movements subject of concern at EU Conference’.

  ‘Troops and ships moving into strategic places around Eastern Europe,’ he commented. ‘Could be Vladimir just flexing his muscles, or maybe something more serious.’

  ‘Dad, we’ve got enough on our plate without worrying about Soviet plans to take over the world.’

  Coetzee shrugged and looked at Leo, making as if to slap himself on the cheek. ‘Sorry, Abby. We’ll call Chillicott and hear what he has to say.’

  After going through the security call-back process, the general’s voice boomed out of the speakerphone. ‘Gentlemen, got any good news for me? I sure could use some.’

  Leo explained about the folder they’d received from Ed. ‘It’s encrypted in Chinese and we’re trying to hack into it.’

  ‘Everything falls into place,’ Chillicott said. ‘Lee-Win sets up Dubai, they hire Scotty then Leo, and you guys perfect that great encryption system. Shen sends the upload package to Shanghai and we believe they’ll deploy a corrupted version in the form of a cyber-attack. And there’s nothing we can do about it yet, because the package you sent up there is kosher and we’ve got no definite proof of anything bad happening at XPC. The whole thing’s a perfect set-up. Have you made any progress on the source of funds for the Lee-Win buyout?’

  Coetzee explained that a well-placed friend was with Mme Lee-Win in Hong Kong with that objective. ‘We’re expecting some news by tomorrow.’

  ‘I’m crossing my fingers, guys. Let me know what you find out asap.’

  Coetzee said, ‘Can I ask a delicate question, General?’

  ‘Fire away, Marius, and call me Billy. If we’re gonna save the world, let’s at least be on first name terms.’

  ‘Ilona Tymoshenko mentioned something about a possible Moscow connection. Could that explain the military activity around Eastern Europe?’

  There was a long silence, then, ‘I didn’t expect it to be so delicate, Marius. But the short answer is, we hope not.’

  Coetzee looked at his daughter’s shocked expression. ‘Understood, Billy. Now we know what we’re up against. Trust us, if there’s a way to stop it, we’ll find it.’

  Dubai, United Arab Emirates

  ‘Don’t look now, but Elodie just came in.’ It was ten p.m., and Ed and Lynne were in the bar at Club 27. It was starting to liven up on the dance floor, but the bar wasn’t yet crowded.

  ‘I see her. She’s coming over. Shit, this could be embarrassing.’ He stood up. ‘Hi Elodie, having a night out on the tiles?’

  She laughed loudly. ‘When the cat’s away, you know what happens. Hi, Lynne, mind if I ask you to keep me company?’

  ‘Sit down, we wouldn’t want you pining away for Shen all alone in your apartment. How about a glass of champagne?’

  ‘Actually, I’d kill for a very dry martini.’

  Ed went to the bar, and Elodie said, ‘You two seem to be getting along very well. How long are you intending to stay in Dubai?’

  ‘I don’t really know. I like it here, but it’s not a place for a normal life, at least not what I’d call normal.’

  ‘I know what you mean, especially for a liberated woman, very complicated. And Ed? What about him?’

  Lynne weighed her words. ‘I suppose it depends on whether he continues at XPC or not. After everything that happened with Leo, and now they’ve finished the upgrade project, I don’t know what he’s going to do.’

  Ed came back to the table. ‘What who’s going to do? You’re talking about me behind my back?’

  ‘Cheers.’ They clinked glasses and chatted for a while. Elodie had obviously had a few drinks before arriving and was totally at ease in what should have been an awkward situation.

  It’s the elephant in the room, Ed thought. We all know what happened, but no one wants to talk about it, and she doesn’t care whether we know or not, because there’s nothing we can do.

  He bought another round of drinks and whispered to Lynne, ‘Let’s find out about her and Shen.’

  She said, innocently, ‘What about you and Shen? You’ve been here for over two years, right? It’s not exactly Brussels, is it?’

  ‘That’s not my favourite town, I don’t miss it at all. I’ve been to lots of countries and cities and there’s only one place I miss.’ She sipped her drink and didn’t elaborate.

  ‘Where did you guys meet? It’s not obvious, a Chinaman and a Belgian lady. It must have been in some exotic location. Hawaii, Los Angeles, London, New York?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, it’s not exotic at all. Just my favourite place, the one I miss.’

  They waited, but she still didn’t disclose the location. Ed changed the subject. ‘When’s Shen back from Shanghai? I suppose the upload’s scheduled pretty soon.’

  ‘They’re depl
oying it tomorrow morning at eleven o’clock. You XPC guys will be famous.’ She threw back the rest of her martini. ‘We should celebrate that, the champagne’s on me.’

  The waiter came over with a bottle of Laurent Perrier and poured three glasses. ‘Cheers, here’s to Scotty, Leo and Ed, a great team.’ She emptied her glass and poured herself another.

  ‘You forgot Shen and Sharif.’ Lynne sipped her champagne.

  ‘No, I didn’t, I ignored them.’ She laughed uproariously and downed her drink.

  Ed looked at Lynne and shrugged his shoulders. ‘She doesn’t care,’ he mouthed. Leaning over, he filled her glass. ‘We should get a photo, to mark the occasion.’

  ‘Non, non, I don’t want a photo. I hate them.’ Elodie tried to stand up and almost fell over.

  ‘Come on, be a sport.’ He called the waiter and gave him his mobile, sat between the two women, holding Elodie upright in her seat. ‘We can call it “Scouser between Belgian and Welsh Roses”. Right, here’s to a great team.’ They all lifted their glasses.

  Ed took his phone and looked at the photos. The waiter had taken five shots and there were two with excellent likenesses of the Belgian woman in full face. ‘I’ll send them to your mobile now. What’s your number?’

  It was midnight when they poured Elodie into a cab, then they rode to Ed’s flat on the Harley. He texted Leo, Chillicott and Tom Connor, Upload expected this morning at eleven Shanghai time. He cropped Elodie’s image from one of the photos and enlarged it to give a clear full view of her, then sent it to the general.

  Chillicott forwarded it to the UK, to be seen by Hugh Middleton when he arrived at his office in the morning.

  Delmas, Mpumalanga, South Africa

  Rod’s brute force bombardment programme had been running for six hours, with no success. Abby called time, and they left it to hammer away at the key field until they came back to the lab the next morning. It wasn’t looking good.

  FORTY-NINE

  Dubai, United Arab Emirates

  Friday, 16 July 2017

  Tom Connor hadn’t slept at all, and was at XPC at six forty-five, waiting nervously for Ed. They went down to the lab, and at seven on the dot a message came up on the main system computer screen: ‘New software is available from Lee-Win’. It was accompanied by the usual certification, description of the upgrades and payment details.

  ‘OK?’ Ed looked at Tom and he nodded. The package took several minutes to download, then he immediately ran Leo’s mini-network to test the ACRE encrypted transmission.

  Sharif came into the lab. ‘What’s happening? Have we got the new software?’ he asked excitedly.

  ‘We have, and it’s exactly what we wrote and running flawlessly. You, Scotty and Leo should be proud, it’s beyond fabulous, a terrific job.’

  Sharif looked a little mollified. ‘Thanks, and obviously you were right. They’re going to send out the other code later. We’ve probably got a couple of days.’

  Ed checked the time. ‘We’ll call Leo later to see if he’s made any progress, it’s only five-thirty in the morning there. I’m going down to talk to Daniel now, see if he can help with the hub problem.’

  ‘Let’s hope to God you can find a way in.’ Tom went to his office. He felt helpless and stupid, and he didn’t want to think about the consequences if they didn’t find a way to stop the next upload. In any case, he thought, I’m finished here whatever happens, and maybe XPC is. Better get ready to move on.

  Delmas, Mpumalanga, South Africa

  It was six-thirty a.m., two and a half hours after the Shanghai deployment, when Coetzee joined Leo and the others in the lab. Rod’s bombardment programme had been throwing millions of keywords at Sharif’s folder for fifteen hours and it was still encrypted.

  They saw the message from Lee-Win on Leo’s laptop screen and downloaded the software. It worked perfectly on the mini-network, as it would in the millions of businesses around the world that received it.

  While Abby was examining every detail of the download file, trying to find a way to reverse engineer into the hub, Leo showed Coetzee a two-word text he’d received in the night from Billy Chillicott: Try Tsunami. Neither understood the connection, but he said to Rod, ‘Switch off your programme. Try putting in Tsunami.’

  Rod looked sceptical as he typed the word in, then, ‘I don’t believe it. Where the hell did that come from?’ The folder had opened, and inside was a text file with a Russian name: ‘Код выключения’. He clicked on the file and it revealed several lines of computer code written in English.

  ‘It came direct from General Billy Chillicott, at US Homeland Security.’ Leo ignored their querulous looks. ‘You’re the expert on A2, Julia. What do you think?’

  ‘That’s it. That’s the A2 function. It basically says, “When cell S470C887,999 changes mode, shut down ACRE transmission until mode change.”’

  Abby looked up from her laptop. ‘The translation of that Russian script is Shutdown Code.’

  ‘And it does what it says on the box, but where Russia fits in this conundrum is still a mystery to me. OK, all we have to work out now is how to change that instruction and get it deployed to all the existing processors out there via the Lee-Win hub.’

  ‘Sounds easy, Leo, except for two small problems. You can’t change the properties of a physical cell, and we still don’t know that address.’ Abby had given up searching, there was no ID on the Lee-Win download.

  ‘And we’ve got maybe two days to do it,’ said Coetzee.

  ‘We got this far in three days, we just need another break. I’ll text Billy that it worked and it’s in Russian. It might help him to help us.’

  Dubai, United Arab Emirates

  ‘It’s every bit as good as we expected, well done Daniel.’

  ‘I didn’t have much to do with it. This XPC team did a great job, despite all the challenges they had. I still can’t figure out what happened with Scotty and then Leo. A strange coincidence, but it’s all worked out in the end. You’re all set to go back to Hai-Sat.’ Oberhart was speaking to his father Max, in Zurich, when Ed came into his office.

  ‘I’ll have to go now, talk to you later.’ He put the phone down. ‘Hi Ed, how’s everything?’

  ‘What do you think of the download?’ Ed had come down hoping to find a route to identify the Lee-Win hub address.

  ‘It’s fabulous. I’ve been running it back and forwards, up and down, and it’s as solid as a rock. Scotty, Leo and you guys did a marvellous job, well done.’

  ‘Did Shen give you a copy of the package he sent to Shanghai?’ Ed asked casually.

  ‘He didn’t have to. I’ve already got everything from the teams. All the testing and the final versions, Shen copied it all onto his laptop to send. And now I’ve got the downloads, I don’t need anything else.’

  ‘So you’ve got the hub coordinates?’

  ‘No, I’ve never needed them. Shen handles all the communications with Shanghai. He’s their board member, it’s his prerogative. What’s this about?’

  Ed hesitated. He still wasn’t sure about Oberhart, and Lynne had a perceptive woman’s instincts about people. But he seems sincere, and he might be the only guy with the answer. What the hell. He decided to tell him the whole story, and show him the video and the effect of the A2 attack on Leo’s network. ‘There’s something you should know about, Daniel, something to do with Shen,’ he said.

  Shanghai, People’s Republic of China

  ‘Thank you for your visit, Shen, and please remember to thank every member of the Dubai team for their remarkable work. As promised, we will be awarding a special bonus pool to reward them. Our finance director will be in touch with you and Tom Connor to arrange the payments.’ Chairman Bohai Cheong and MD Han Wang Tāng bowed then waved as Shen Fu Liáng climbed into the company limousine and was driven off to Pudong International Airport.

  The driver dropped him off at Terminal 2 for the Emirates flight back to Dubai. Then Shen took the shuttle bus to Termi
nal 1 in comfortable time for his one o’clock China Eastern flight to Moscow. A few hours of sleep on the ten-hour journey meant he’d arrive in good shape to finish the last item on his agenda. He accepted a glass of champagne from the cabin attendant, laid back in his seat and closed his eyes. Shen was pleased with his work. It had taken almost five years, but it was almost finished.

  London, England

  ‘Good morning, Ilona. How are you this morning?’

  ‘Just fine, thank you, and I’ve got good news. The new Lee-Win software has been deployed from Shanghai.’

  ‘So they finally managed to send it out, and with what consequences?’

  ‘According to our IT manager, it works absolutely perfectly. No glitches or viruses.’

  ‘So, the diabolical plan, if there is such a plan, must be to send out the virus later.’

  ‘I suppose so. In any event, we don’t have time to talk about that now.’ She looked at her watch. ‘You’re a little late, you know you have an appointment at ten-thirty?’

  ‘My taxi was involved in a traffic accident, a minor event, although I found it rather unpleasant.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘The driver of the car directly in front of us lost control and veered onto the crowded pavement.’

  ‘How frightening. Was anyone hurt?’

  ‘Fortunately not, but for a moment I imagined I was witnessing a car terrorist attack. There have been so many of them in recent months.’

  ‘You must learn to control your fertile imagination. It’s not always productive I’m afraid.’

  He sat at the other side of her desk. ‘You know I don’t drive, don’t you?’

  She nodded, wondering where he was going with this line of thought.

  ‘There are two reasons for that. The first is simply that I have a fear of travelling, and I can’t bear the thought of setting off somewhere with myself in charge of the journey.’ He ignored her astonished expression. ‘The second is that I’ve always considered that a motorised vehicle is a lethal weapon, and that anyone in control of one is a potential murderer. I’m mortified that these recent lethal attacks have proved me right, and I fear that it will become the weapon of choice in the hands of these deranged terrorist assassins.’