The Sentinel (Jack Reacher #25)(76)

‘How’s it looking?’ Reacher handed a pizza and a drink to Sands, and dropped another on the bed next to Rutherford.

‘Good, I think,’ Sands said. ‘Rusty?’

‘What’s that?’ Rutherford said. ‘Oh. Thanks.’

‘How is it looking?’ Reacher said. ‘With the servers. The data. Is it still there?’

‘Oh. Yes. Seems to be. Cerberus is pretty messed up, though. Looks like the ransomware tried to rewrite parts of it. Might take a while to figure out what and how. And why. And how to build some protection into our final product. But I’ve got to say, this is better than I’d dared hope for. End of the day, Cerberus got bent, but it didn’t get broken. And that’s a result, in my book.’

‘That’s good,’ Reacher said. ‘But the records from the archive project. Are they still there? All of them?’

‘The disk is full. Nothing seems corrupted. So I guess so.’

‘Can you find out for sure?’

‘I could, but—’

‘Then do it now, please.’

‘But I need to figure out how Cerberus—’

‘Rusty, this is important. Check now. Please.’

Rutherford sighed then spent a couple of minutes tapping on his keyboard and prodding at his touchpad. ‘OK. Look. I haven’t opened every one of the thousands and thousands of scanned images – basically photographs of documents – but to the best of my belief, the archive records are all intact and undamaged.’

‘In that case I need you to make a copy,’ Reacher said. ‘No. Two copies.’

‘No way. Forget it. I already told you, I’m not letting anyone have a copy of anything. Not until Cerberus is perfected. My future depends on it. Sarah’s too.’

‘I understand. But here’s the thing. When I got back to Mitch’s apartment this morning, I told you the truth about what happened to me. But I didn’t tell you the whole truth.’





TWENTY-THREE





‘What do you guys know about a thing called The Sentinel?’ Reacher said.

‘Zip,’ Rutherford said. ‘Never heard of it.’

‘I’ve heard a little about it,’ Sands said. ‘Mostly gossip. From some people at the Bureau. Word is, about four years ago there was a major brain drain out of cyber crimes. A bunch of the top guns all upped and left, out of the blue. At first people thought one of the big Silicon Valley corporations was on a recruitment rampage. Then there was a theory that some start-up was throwing crazy money around. But finally someone found out the government was behind it. An emergency response. To the Russians having a new weapon that could totally shred our election systems. Everywhere in the country was vulnerable. No results could be trusted. The guys at Quantico did some modelling. They figured the fallout from even one compromised general election could be anything from civil disobedience to full-scale rioting to possible insurrection. Imagine some of these foil-hat militia guys if they had evidence someone stole an election. Some of them have serious firepower and are already a hair’s breadth from using it.’

‘You’re about on the money,’ Reacher said. ‘The Sentinel is the only thing that can stop this weapon. The Russians can’t defeat it. So they’re trying to steal it.’

‘How?’ Rutherford said.

‘They have a spy inside Oak Ridge Laboratory. Where The Sentinel was designed.’

‘Why don’t they arrest him?’

‘Because they only know a spy exists. They don’t know who it is. The Bureau thinks it’s a sleeper. With some kind of connection to this area. Which is where things start cutting close to the bone. A document surfaced in the town archive which could have revealed the spy’s ID.’

‘The archive burned down.’

‘Not a coincidence.’

‘The online archive had the same documents. It got locked by the ransomware attack.’

‘Also not a coincidence.’

‘And my server has some of those documents on it. Because Cerberus protected them.’

‘Which is why you almost got kidnapped. The Russians want those records. To destroy whichever one could incriminate their guy.’

‘How do you know all this, Reacher?’ Sands said.

‘You thought the rendezvous at the old factory was a set-up. It was. Only not in the way you expected. The woman who showed up? She’s an FBI agent. Undercover. She’s infiltrated the Russian cell that’s tasked with recovering the server. She has two jobs. To get a copy of it for the Bureau so they can ID the spy. And to protect Rusty. She lured me there to ask for our help.’

‘And you’re only telling us now?’

Reacher shrugged. ‘There was no point telling you before we had the server. What if it had been destroyed? I’d have revealed the agent’s existence for nothing. And the fewer people who know about her the better.’

‘Fair, I guess,’ Sands said.

‘One other thing,’ Reacher said. ‘Full disclosure. Because I messed up their attempt to grab Rusty on Monday the Russians are bringing in a new guy. From Moscow. To try again. So the bottom line is this. If we want to avoid all the bad things that would follow a compromised election, and if we want to stop this new Russian going after Rusty, we have one option. Give a copy of the server to the Bureau.’