“No offence taken. Ezra simply asked me to bring your breakfast to you as I was passing your rooms. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have much work to do. Thank you for the coffee, and should you require anything else, please speak to housekeeping.” Spiros said, as he turned and left the room.
“An officer with Interpol, and a computer based surveillance programmer, eh? I wonder just what the hell my illustrious uncle is up to down here on Santorini under the British Government umbrella.”
“Well I’m sure it’s not legal,” said Dillon.
“With Ezra, it never is.”
They dressed and, stepping into the early morning sunshine, saw Ezra sitting on the veranda steps. He turned, smiling up at the couple and said, “Looks like we’ve been lucky.”
Dillon stood, stretching his back. He lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply, “Lucky?”
“Nothing has shown up in signals; we’ve scanned all of the usual channels using the hacked satellite links we have access to. There are reports of you - both, something about a stolen light aircraft, nothing about your heading, and no mention of Santorini. If your enemies - ourenemies - are coming here for us, then they are remaining extremely quiet about.”
Dillon snorted. “Don’t get lazy, Ezra. Just because you can’t see them, doesn’t mean they are not there.”
Ezra frowned, his face hardening. “I know that, sonny boy. And we have been making preparations. The operation is far bigger than you - or anybody - suspects. It would appear that we are safe from discovery, for now. You therefore, can help us.”
“Help you? How?”
Tatiana smiled down at Ezra. “My uncle Ezra, Dillon, is as you know, a hacking genius; he was one of only a handful of hand-picked programmers who worked on the Chimera Programme at the very outset of the project. You hold the computer access codes for a number of secret Government departments.”
Ezra cut-in, “Your assistance could solve a little problem we have with decoding information that could greatly help us...”
“Just what the hell is it that you are doing here?” Asked Dillon. He leaned against the balustrade, looking out over the Santorini landscape, olive trees rustled in the caress of the warm sea breeze.
“What we have here, is a covert listening and monitoring facility that is funded entirely by the British taxpayer,” said Ezra. “In fact, we are the secret police of allsecret government departments, including the Intelligence Services. If you like, the secret within the secret. Why Santorini, I hear you ask. It’s off the radar - off the beaten track - it’s my home and I was retired many years ago on a full pension. We are a mechanism to stop bad things happening.”
“Hmm,” Dillon rubbed at the back of his neck, easing the tension. “When I was a serving officer in army intelligence, I heard there was a secret police,” he gave Tatiana a long sideways glance, “but I didn’t know you were involved.”
“Not many people do. Our cover is, and always has been, that of a simple olive grower. This serves us well with the locals who we employ at picking times, and saves any awkward questions being asked. And, as all of the facility is deep underground our work can be carried out here, unhindered. Ironically, we are the people who are supposed to have all the answers, and yet there are things happening and we’re at a loss to discover the real reasons. The Chimera Programme - is the ultimate military weapon - but something is out of place, a discordant note, and I’m not sure how deep it goes. You want to know what we do here, Dillon? We solve problems. It’s that simple. And then we go hunting.”
“Hunting?”
“Oh yes,” said Ezra, dark eyes gleaming. “We go hunting.”
* * * The sun had long since set, darkness came and with it the time to eat.
Ezra had spent the morning showing Dillon and Tatiana around his private world under the arid landscape of Santorini; the olive groves flourished with the loving care of a small group of village women who came on foot to tend the trees and harvest the olives.
Now they were seated outside, around the back of the villa, where a small fire was burning in a wrought iron fire basket. Dillon sat in a wicker easy chair facing the view of the olive groves. Tatiana beside him. Ezra was sitting across the fire, large chunks of mutton on a skewer before him sizzling fat that smoked and flared over the flames. Also present - some of them meeting Dillon for the first time - were a few other members of Ezra’s team whom he slowly introduced.
“This is Spiros; I think you have already met.”
Although Spiros looked surly, he reached over, and shook Dillon’s hand; his eyes glinted in the firelight.
“No hard feelings.” Dillon said softly.
“No problem, everything’s cool, dude.”
“This is Franky; our resident computer hacker and presently attempting a spot of breaking and entering into Kirill’s mainframe located in the Scottish Highlands. She learned her craft at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Canada.”
Franky smiled a wide beautiful smile; of French Canadian descent, she wore her sun-kissed hair in a shoulder length pony-tail, a silken mane, her lips were a deep red, shining in the glow of the flames.
She reached over to shake Dillon’s and Tatiana’s hands; Dillon’s gaze met the intelligent bright eyes of the woman and he had to avert his gaze for fear of gawping blatantly at her beauty.
When she spoke, her words were a soft purr, a luxurious sound, the husky French accent of a predatory female. “I have heard many things about you, Mr Dillon. Ezra speaks with - shall we say, passion
- about your colourful career.”
“I am sure he does.”
“Are you everything he says you are?”
Dillon was captivated by that beautiful gaze and magical French accent. He realised that their hands were still touching, her skin warm against his; the fingers stroking his hand with ever so gentle pressure.
“I really couldn’t say.”
“Oh, come now, don’t go all British and modest on me, Mr Dillon.” Franky broke the handshake, and turned, winked at Ezra, then back to Dillon. “He says that although you’re a murderous bastard, you really are extremely talented.”
The men laughed; Tatiana glared, first at Franky, then at the side of Dillon’s head.
“And this is Karp; another professional hacker. At one time he was wanted by the F.B.I. Interpol - MI6 - and the KGB, no less. That is, until he was able to teach them a few things about protecting their supposedly secure mainframes from hacker attacks; bought his freedom and all of their respect.”
“Hi, man,” said Karp, grinning. He was a wiry young man of Northern European origin, his head was completely shaven tight to the scalp; his round face seemed to be one huge grin. He shook Dillon’s hand enthusiastically.
“Nice to meet you,” said Dillon.
“And you, dude, ignore Franky, she’s a weird bitch. It’s nice to have some new faces round here, we’re stuck down there,” he said pointing a finger down at the ground, “and we rarely get to meet any new blood to tell us what’s going on in the real world and liven up our evenings...”
“Karp!” snapped Ezra frowning.
“Sorry!” he replied. “They don’t know?”
“Not yet. I am saving it,” said Ezra. He smiled warmly over the flames at Tatiana and Dillon; the heady scent of Jasmine was everywhere. “Our struggle - it is the struggle to keep the security services from becoming what they aim to fight against and destroy. Within any large firm or government department there is always an element of corruption; it comes from a myriad of different sources. You can never really be sure from where. We are here to try and stop that; we have been specifically vetted at the highest level; our integrity is unquestionable.” Ezra laughed at that. “Inspiring isn’t it? They’ve collected a group of reprobates who were brought together for a very special purpose. To ensure that the good are protected and the bad perish. To ensure the security services remain on the straight and narrow. We work external to the security service policy. We rema
in hidden on Santorini, away from prying eyes, courtesy of the Greek Government, connected to the outside world via the Internet, spy satellites, every public camera in every major city. We are the hidden camera behind the grille and we are many and it spreads much further than this little gathering you see here... I am merely a small fish in a huge pond swimming with much larger fish.” Ezra held his arms wide and chuckled. When he spoke again, his voice was low, eyes glinting in the fire light.
“Intelligence agencies operate as cells so that no one person can, if placed in a compromising situation, ever divulge information of any worth about the organisation as a whole. But that system is breaking down as the world-wide information highway becomes more vulnerable to malicious attacks from hackers, and unfriendly foreign organisations. There has been a spate of these attacks against large financial organisations and the British Security Service itself. And they were powerful.”
There was silence. The flames danced and crackled. Ezra stared into the fire, deep in thought, the cloak of melancholy wrapping itself around him.
“I never thought for one moment, that it could so easily, and with such menace, access some of the world’s most secure mainframes. With the Scorpion network all but obliterated, we sent out thewarning signals to London and Washington. But they sat on them too long, and did too little, too late. As a result it has put the financial stability of the western world at risk, and there are wider implications. Strange events have been happening all over the world. A brand new malicious programme that can enter any computer that is connected to the Internet. In the blink of an eye, the entire contents of a hardrive can either be stolen or erased, or both. There is not even the smallest trace of evidence that it was ever there. You may have seen on the news how banks all over the world were robbed simultaneously - electronically... All sorts of shit, being blamed on software bugs and human error - but this is not the case. We have linked virtually all of these incidents, chasing them back to their source, but the paths are not clear. However, there is one thing that we are sure about - all these world events, all these monumental fuck-ups - are not fuck-ups, they are a trial of some sort, an initiation - and they all come from the same source.”
“Chimera,” whispered Karp.
“Correct.”
“Which means they are testing the final scripts and that the programme is complete and almost ready to go fully operational.”
“Yes - but it is not complete.” Ezra nodded. “Chimera is merely showing off.”
“Showing off - Chimera?” Dillon said softly.
“Chimera is the most powerful programme ever written. It has the ability to change its own scripts, so as to remain unseen. Basically, it enters the hardrive and simply becomes invisible, and becauseit works so phenomenally quickly, exits before any human can spot anything wrong. Chimera will push its own boundaries, just to see how far it can go. But they must have loaded it into the mother of all mother processors, for it to be able to do what it has already done... When they unleash it for real, it will happen quickly, and with devastating results. Everything will happen at once, and this programme can do it.”
“So why haven’t they done it yet?”
“There’s a couple of reasons,” said Ezra smoothly. “One, is that we know about Ramus. And MI6, along with the S.A.S., are out looking for him as we speak. Two, the Chimera Programme isn’t quite finished - it’s working, and it’s running at around ninety-five percent but it isn’t quite complete. A premature move on his part would prove fool hardy and could even mean failure, if his plan is too succeed, he will need to be one-hundred percent certain. And finally, we have the blue-prints, which means that we understand what it is and how it works. And we know how to stop it.”
Dillon looked from Tatiana to Ezra. “You have the blue-prints for the Chimera Programme? How the hell did you get them?”
Tatiana smiled bitterly. “It took a lot of time and effort, Dillon.”
Dillon shook his head, rubbing at his tired eyes as Tatiana moved over to Ezra and placed her hand on his shoulder. “Are you okay, uncle?”
Ezra looked up at his niece, and smiled weakly. “Yes, but soon you must leave this place. One of our spy satellites has intercepted much chatter regarding both you and me. We estimate that they are sending Assassins, and that they will be here by the morning. It would seem that they want back what they think is rightly theirs.”
“We are not leaving, Ezra.”
“If it’s okay with you, we’ll fight with you, Ezra.” Dillon growled. “You say that there are Assassins on the way? Well, they drove me out of my home and they’ve chased us both across Europe. But I’m damned if I’m running any more from these murdering scum - we may be few, but we can make a difference. Shouldn’t we be doing something now?”
“I have many good people working on this thing - we can do no more than we are already doing,” Ezra said softly. “ But the doingis for later. Now is for relaxing, and for having a drink or three, and then - then we will prepare. We have no choice. We must stay and defend this facility and most importantly our work. It would take at least one week to evacuate the hardware we have down there, and to what end, there is nowhere to run and we would all, most likely, be dead. And anyway, our research cannot be moved at the drop of a hat. We must stay and defend ourselves against these infidels...” Ezra rubbed his tired eyes, and then stared at Dillon. “You say you are ready to fight with us, Mr Dillon... but I am troubled. Would you really?”
“What?”
“Would you really be ready to meet your maker?”
“Well, if not,” growled Dillon, “then I’ll see you in hell.”
* * * Dillon awoke with a start as the shrill sound of the alarm-clock invaded his semi-consciousness. His eyes opened slowly and he could just make out the stemmed glass of deep red liquid that he had enjoyed so thoroughly the night before. Images of flames crossed his mind; good food cooked on the open fire; good wine consumed in copious quantities; humorous bantering between the small group. The flushed cheeks of Franky...
He groaned with the pounding in both his temples, and as he sat up, realised that Ezra was standing in the doorway to his bedroom staring at him.
“Yes?” “Get yourself up and then go and wake Tatiana. We meet outside in five minutes.”
“Have you got any painkillers?”
“I have,” said Ezra cheerfully. “Come on, move yourself. It’s almost dawn, and we have much to do and little time to do it in. We have unwelcome visitors coming.”
The sun was just rising, a weak grey pre-dawn light gently caressing the horizon. Tatiana followed Dillon, whinging about the lack of sleep they’d had and touching the healing wound to her shoulder. “Ezra’s painkillers are working, but not quick enough.”
“They’ve cleared my head. That shoulder of yours still throbbing?”
Tatiana gave a wan smile. “I’ll survive, I’m sure.”
She moved across the veranda, linked arms with her uncle. “Do you remember when we used to go sailing on days like these?”
“I do, and I wish those days were with us again.” Ezra’s voice was filled with fond memories, tainted with sadness of a world gone terribly wrong...
“Me too,” smiled Tatiana. “You make me feel like I’m back there again.”
“If only.” said Ezra softly, glancing over at Dillon who was leaning over against the balustrade and smoking a cigarette. “Hey, Dillon, come on. I have something to show you.”
“Does that something involve a bed?”
“No. But it does have something to do with the Assassins.”
Ezra led them down the steps of the white-walled villa: a clever disguise, an effective cover for what it concealed. He led themthrough the olive grove, and then out the other side over arid scrubland and a random stand of olive trees until they came to a rusting iron hatchway concealed by small rocks and dirt, and fallen leaves and branches.
“This facility has always had a ‘Top Secret - Highly Classified’ status. A
nd as you both know, the villa and olive groves are merely a cover for what lurks below.” Ezra said standing directly over the rusting iron cover. “While I am impressed with your skills in running me to ground, you really, really have no idea what you are dealing with... You really do not understand what it is you are fuckingwith here...”
He spun the rusted iron wheel, which moved with surprising ease. There was a hiss as the iron hatch was released. Ezra heaved up the hatch to reveal a shallow flight of steps made of stainless steel. Ezra removed a key from a chain around his neck; he went down the steps to a control panel; inserted the key into a slot and turned it. Returning to the others, saying, “Step back.”
Dillon and Tatiana did as they were instructed.
There came a distant sound of a mechanical mechanism grinding into life, followed by a hiss as the ground opened up and the steps turned into a riveted stainless steel ramp, flanked by metallic walls and leading down to another part of the facility.
From the darkness below the lights running down the middle of the ramp-way shone like diamonds. There came the sound of diesel generators and the gentle humming of the air-conditioning units.
“Come.” Ezra stepped forward and onto the ramp. Dillon and Tatiana followed him down the ramp into the darkness of Ezra’s secret world - below the hot ground of Santorini.
Dillon stood eyes gazing at the array of hi-tech weaponry stored in rows of metal racks down both sides of the spacious armoury.
“Hell, Ezra.” he said.” I didn’t realise you had such... resources.”
Ezra smiled wanly.
“If only it were enough.”
“Enough? Ezra, you’ve got enough weaponry here to start a small war.”
“That may be. But they are sending many Assassins this time.”
“How many, exactly?”
Ezra’s dark-eyed stare met Dillon’s. “The blue-prints... They want them bad, Dillon.”
“How many?”
“At least twenty,” said Ezra softly. And these will have been selected from their elite forces...
Chimera Code (Jake Dillon Adventure Thriller Series) Page 24
