The Sixth Day (A Brit in the FBI #5)(92)
“No, no, that’s not true.”
“Yes, Nicholas was right. You lied to Ardelean, told him the investors hadn’t paid the final payment. You have that money. Where? In a series of accounts outside of England?”
Barstow wanted to kill this pompous, self-righteous sod, but he couldn’t. He knew he had to convince him to kill Ardelean, or Ardelean would kill him. He knew it. “You have to listen, Harry. Ardelean can ruin all of us, and he will if he believes it will save him. I had no idea when I took him on as a partner that he knows everything. Think of MATRIX. It’s in nearly every computer in the world. Don’t you understand? He has access to our files, our bank accounts, the websites we visit. Anytime he wants to know who MI5 is investigating, he can. Ardelean has an email server set up to blast our personal banking records, offshore accounts, Internet history—he has our secrets. Can’t you wrap your head around this? Did you learn nothing from WikiLeaks? The Internet, that’s the playing field, and the perfect place to hang the threat over our heads. It can never die. Whatever allegations he makes—and he will make them, if you doubt that, you’re a fool—generations will be affected by the secrets he will release. Nothing is sacred in his world, and now, he will use everything he has against us. You must end this tonight, Harry. You understand what I’m saying, don’t you? You must eliminate him. You must kill him and dismantle Radulov.”
“I don’t want him dead. I want him brought to justice.”
Barstow would have grabbed his arm, but his hands were cuffed. “He’s too dangerous—he must die. We’re not going to survive this with him alive.”
“We’ve weathered worse.”
“You’re a blind fool. Roman Ardelean’s a murderer. He’s the enemy, not me.”
The lampposts were a blur outside the darkened glass. The city felt coiled and tense, ready for mayhem.
Harry said, “I do wish you would simply admit what you’ve done, what you set into motion, and for the basest of motives.”
Barstow stared at him, and said, his voice meditative, “I do despise you, Harry, despite everything you are. I suppose I always have. And now you want to be my judge and jury? Why not, he’ll kill me anyway.” Barstow gave him a twisted smile. “You want the truth? I wanted it all, Harry. The money, the drones, the power that came with saving the world from these animals, these terrorists. You know I come from a long line of military strategists. I thought this was simply another game of chess, with bigger stakes. I had all the moves figured out. I didn’t anticipate Ardelean not to be willing to part with the drones until he had the money in hand. I was wrong. So I tried to distract him by submarining his company.”
“You were behind the hack on MATRIX? How is that possible?”
Barstow looked at Harry and said with a sneer, “I’ve always been smarter than you, Harry. I found a former employee who was Ardelean’s trusted protégé, a brilliant young man who hated Ardelean so much he was willing to take him down, both him and his precious Radulov.”
“Where did you find this genius?”
“You remember we lost several young men to ISIS about four years back? One of them was named Caleb Temora.”
“I recall the name.”
“He was a coder with Radulov for a few years, brilliant, absolutely brilliant. We picked him up in a sweep while looking for people who might be defecting home from ISIS. They get there and realize the caliphate isn’t what they thought it would be.
“The moment we got him home, he tried to hack the security at Buckingham Palace. For ISIS? We don’t know. He claims not, claims he was doing it for fun, but we couldn’t take any chances. He wanted to make a deal with me. He told me Ardelean built his computer code using an ancient manuscript. A new computer language, he called it. Not zeros and ones but fours and eights, something like that, based on the call letter of the manuscript.”
Harry stared at him. “You’re talking about the Voynich, aren’t you?”
“Yes. He was able to write us code to brute-force attack Radulov Industries and start a waterfall effect of hacks on all the terminals housing MATRIX. I’d hoped it would keep Ardelean too busy to bother with me.”
“You, the vaunted patriot, cost the world millions of pounds in lost time and ransomware payments.”
Barstow shrugged.
“Does Ardelean know it was you who had someone playing with his code?”
I know what you did. Barstow shook his head. Ardelean couldn’t have meant Temora. There was no way he could have found out Barstow had kept him in a safe house for the past year—just in case he needed him, and he had. “You wish to talk to Temora? He’s all yours. He’ll give you all the details. Oh, here we are, we’re coming up to the theater. Harry, you must kill him. He’s more dangerous than you can possibly imagine. You should—”
There was a brilliant flash of light, and the front of the Range Rover exploded.
Harry felt the burst of white-hot flame, the window give against his shoulder, the cool night air, then he landed on the pavement, rolling as he hit, to protect himself. He rolled into a gutter, the flames hot on his face, sucking out his breath. He covered his head with his arms and waited for another blast, or gunfire. Finally, he crawled to his knees, then stood, wincing at the pain. His arms were scraped, his ribs—were they broken? Even the smallest breath hurt, but he was alive.