The Passengers(27)
‘Miss Dixon, hush please,’ snapped Jack, glaring at her. ‘You are only making this worse.’
‘Worse? I’ve just watched a man blown to bits because you wouldn’t follow the Hacker’s instructions when you were told to! How could this get any worse?’
‘Let her speak. You’re not in charge of your kangaroo court now, Jack,’ the Hacker continued. ‘What’s on your mind, Libby?’
‘Victor was a war hero and had terminal cancer. What you did to him was completely unjust.’
‘I think the families of those men and women he killed in combat would disagree with you on both the “innocent” and “unjust” parts of your argument.’
‘Is that your best defence?’
‘I don’t have to defend myself, Libby. May I call you Libby? Now we are getting to know one another it feels much less formal than Miss Dixon. Victor died for precisely the reason you have said – because Jack didn’t listen to me.’
‘Even if he had listened, you’d have found an excuse to kill one of them. You just wanted to prove a point.’
‘And what do you think that point is?’
‘That you are in charge.’
‘And did I get that across to you in an effective and suitable manner?’
‘Effective yes. Suitable? You must be kidding.’
‘Will you please stop trying to goad him!’ said Jack.
‘This might be an opportune moment to mention there are many more details about you that I also know, Jack,’ continued the Hacker. ‘Such as your medical records, home address, your credit card numbers, the call girls you hire, passwords, bank statements, mortgage deficits, the emails you’ve sent, the texts you’ve received and even where you invest the cash you don’t want the HM Revenues and Customs to find. When you scratch beneath the surface, it’s interesting to see where some of your investments have been made. And the best part about being the gatekeeper of all this knowledge? I get to impart it to an audience of millions. If you look carefully at the centre screen on the wall, you will note that everything I know about you, I’m now making public.’
On cue, Jack’s private information filled the screen along with links to download it.
‘Take that down!’ shouted Jack at the technicians around him. All scrambled to their keyboards, hitting buttons and trying to input keystrokes and instructions. Libby noted Jack staring wide-eyed back at the screen as the links remained in place. An anxious half-minute passed before he turned his head again. Libby had never seen anyone so close to exploding as Jack.
‘Well?’ he growled. ‘Why is that link still up?’
‘We can’t access it,’ replied one of Jack’s staff. ‘It’s impossible to triangulate.’
‘Then get the police or the National Cyber Crime Unit to do it!’
‘They’re patched in and they are doing everything they can but we can’t find the source.’
‘Jesus Fucking Christ!’ yelled Jack. ‘There must be someone who can help me?’
‘He is in our system,’ a technician replied. ‘It’ll take specialised programmers time to find him and recode it all. We don’t have the training or the security clearance.’
‘You’re all fucking useless!’ he bellowed and hurled his tablet towards them. It clipped one man’s shoulder then spiralled into the wall before landing on the floor, its screen shattering.
‘Someone has quite the temper, don’t they?’ mocked the Hacker. ‘Don’t forget, there are cameras watching your every move.’
Jack turned to look up at the screens and hesitated, as if weighing up the public’s potential perception of him with his need to act out his fury. Reluctantly, he erred on the side of caution.
‘My system tells me that my links have already been downloaded almost fifteen thousand times,’ the Hacker added. ‘Quite incredible the reach we have these days, isn’t it? People as far away as Australia and Hong Kong are now using your credit cards to purchase goods.’
An on-screen counter revealed the number of shares and reposts rising by dozens each second.
‘It’s not too late to make any of this stop,’ Jack said, his tone becoming desperate. ‘Set the remaining Passengers free and just disappear back to where you came from. If you’re that clever, you’ll have covered your tracks so no one will find you.’
‘I’m sorry but we’ve gone too far for that to happen. Besides, isn’t there a little part of you that wants to see what I have planned next? I am sure that Libby is dying to know.’
His sudden attention startled her and she looked up towards Jude’s screen. ‘No, I’m not,’ she replied.
‘I understand. But unfortunately, if you thought witnessing Victor Patterson’s death was difficult, Libby, then I doubt that you are going to like what I’m about to ask you to do next.’
Chapter 20
HEIDI & SAM COLE
What the hell have I done to my wife?
For the last few minutes, Sam’s guilty conscience had been drowning out the multitude of voices coming through his car’s speakers. Suddenly, more than anything else in the world, he needed to hear her.