Robert Ludlum's (TM) The Bourne Initiative (Jason Bourne series)(75)
“Okay. We’ve already experienced a handful of distributed denial-of-service attacks. They’ve brought the Internet to its knees, like a power grid outage. Malware infects and then directs a huge number of DVRs, security cameras, Internet-connected cars and cameras—anything and everything that is an Internet-of-everything device—to create a worldwide botnet, a cyber-creature with one mind, which sends massive amounts of queries to any number of websites, crashing them.”
“Right. But this one is as different from the botnets we’ve seen as VR is from the old Asteroids video game. It will slice right through the correctives like a knife through warm butter.”
“What’s the target?”
“You know your old friend, Bourne. He wasn’t a political animal, not at all. In fact, he hated the Sovereign and all he stood for. No, this malware is meant to crash the sites of the world’s biggest banks.”
“Money,” Bourne breathed.
“Yes, money. Of course money. Transferred out while the sites are frozen through a program piggybacked onto the malware.”
It sounded right. Just like Boris. And yet, he had the sense there was something MacQuerrie wasn’t telling him, or, more likely, didn’t know. That also would be like Boris. “And you know this how?”
MacQuerrie tried to laugh, but another gout of blood was all he could bring up. Through lips stained red, he said, “Your pal Boris and I were partners.”
With a deep-felt groan, he turned on his side. His face was deathly pale. His extremities seemed already devoid of blood. “Beautiful plan, Bourne, magnificent.” He hawked up more blood, and something else that was black and viscid. “Problem is…someone hijacked the program, shortly after Boris was killed.”
“Who?”
MacQuerrie shook his head once, then grew very still.
“General, who hijacked the malware program?”
“There’s a third partner, a friend of Boris’s.” He gasped. “I never met him.”
“Who?” Bourne leaned closer. “Who is he?”
“I went on Boris’s word.”
“General…”
MacQuerrie’s eyes seemed to be dissolving in water; they had lost almost all the luster of the living. “His name is Dima.” He gasped again, and fingers of one hand curled, as if grasping for something unseen. “Dima Vladimirovich Orlov.”
Bourne glanced briefly at Mala. “I don’t know of him. Do you?”
After a moment, she nodded, her face pale and waxen.
“Problem is…” MacQuerrie gave an animal grunt that brought Bourne’s attention back to him. “The trouble is that Dima Orlov is free to use the program to attack anything he wants. Get me, Bourne? Any fucking thing. And there’s something else…”
“General…”
But MacQuerrie was done, and, in any event, the Angelmaker said, “Here they come.” She shot Bourne a glance. “I don’t know what you’re thinking, but we’re never making it out of here.”
28
I’m not hungry,” Morgana said when she met Fran?oise for dinner. “This evening I’d rather walk.”
The storm that had gripped Kalmar earlier had spent itself inland, leaving the sky clear and the air cool and refreshed. It was, in fact, the perfect evening for a long walk. Also, a long talk, which was Morgana’s purpose in skipping dinner. She was far too nervous to sit still, let alone to eat a meal. There was a lump in her throat no amount of self-calming could clear. Her biggest worry was how her friend would take the news that she had been taken in, as Morgana herself had been, by the falsely named Larry London. She knew Fran?oise well enough to understand that she prided herself in her friends—they were, to a person, immaculately curated, trusted, and prized.
For a time, they strolled along the waterfront, until Morgana’s nose was so filled with the stench of fish she felt her gorge rising. Everyone she passed looked strange, slightly off-kilter, vaguely sinister, even the two boys who snickered, seemed to eye her with evil intent as they kicked a soccer ball around. Shadows appeared to leap out at her from the narrow spaces between buildings. Doorways looked smashed down, windows crooked. The noises of the city, usually soft and gentle compared to D.C. or New York, threatened to overwhelm her.
As she turned them inland, Fran?oise broke the silence between them. “You look troubled. Is anything the matter? Is it the usual? Are you missing home again?”
“No, it’s not the usual, though I am missing home, more than ever.” Morgana replied so slowly it seemed every word was being pulled out of her.
Fran?oise took her hand. “Then what is it?” She halted them, so they could face each other. “Come on, you know you can tell me anything, right?”
“Right,” Morgana said, though without much conviction.
Fran?oise smiled. “So come on, then. Let’s hear it. I mean, how bad can it be?”
“Maybe you shouldn’t ask that,” Morgana said with a brittle laugh that ended abruptly. She stared into her friend’s eyes. “I’ve found out something about Larry.”
“What? He’s fucking around, yes? While he should be working. It’s okay, Larry’s kind of ADHD, he’s on and off everything all the time. It doesn’t mean—”