The Sixth Day

by Catherine Coulter

  Griffith nodded. “I’ll make sure this is handled discreetly.”

  “We need to head out now. Oh, Griffith? You do good work. Thank you for all your help.”

  Again, DI Griffith bloomed under that smile. “Ah, happy to help, Nicholas, Mike.”

  Mike grinned, but it fell off her face in an instant. She saw a flash of brown—there one moment, gone the next.

  She grabbed his arm. “Nicholas, did you see that?”

  “See what?”

  “Remember the bird you thought was watching us last night? I think I’ve seen another.”

  A small brown feather floated down in front of them.

  “Nicholas, I—”

  “Wait. Listen. Do you hear that?”

  All Mike could hear was the city—moving, breathing, cars flowing along the nearby streets, the murmurs and calls of the crime-scene crew. She shook her head.

  “A high-pitched whir.”

  Mike’s adrenaline spiked. She looked up. “A drone? I can’t see it. Where, where?”

  “There,” Nicholas shouted, pointing to the eastern edge of Marianne’s roof.

  They saw the drone rise gracefully into the sky. Mike ducked behind the crime-scene van, and Nicholas took up point at the hood.

  He pulled his Glock, thankfully returned by Penderley.

  She heard the barrage of bullets, too close, and drew the small Glock 27 from her ankle holster. The drone was darting left, then right, through the sky overhead, firing.

  “It’s shooting at us, Nicholas, get down!”

  People were screaming, running, the cops firing up at it, but it was so fast no one could get a bead on it.

  Nicholas didn’t get down. He stood tall and squeezed three shots. The drone zipped away, then stopped, hovering over the buildings, as if mocking them.

  Nicholas ran after it. Whoever was flying the drone was an expert, and he dodged between buildings as he ran, ducking behind a van, scooting around honking cars, his eyes never leaving the drone. Mike was on his heels, yelling, “Left at the corner, it’s stopped. Wait, now right!”

  They juked and jived, ducking bullets, another two blocks before the drone seemed to be slowing down. Nicholas realized it was running out of juice.

  Mike ran up to his left. “Is the sucker out of battery power?”

  “Yes. Adam said it would only have twenty-five minutes or so. If we can keep up with it, we should see it drop out of the sky. Unless your sharpshooting skeet skills are honed—”

  Mike grinned as she raised her small Glock, aimed at the drone, stopped dead. “Look, there’s a bird, it’s heading right for the drone.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Fire, Mike, bring it down.” But before she could get off the shot, the bird dove at the drone. At the last second, it pulled up. It flared its wings to slow, legs underneath it, talons out, and snatched the drone from the air with its feet. Its wings flapped once, hard, and soared away with the drone held tight.

  Mike pulled up short. “Holy crap, did you see that? That bird saved that frigging drone.”

  Nicholas pulled up beside her, watching the falcon wing away. “The question is, if it was one of ours, why didn’t it destroy the drone. Why did it fly away with it?”

  The bird and the drone were out of sight.

  Mike said, “Because it’s not ours. Bird and machine belong to the same people.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  A typical unmanned aircraft is made of light composite materials to reduce weight and increase maneuverability. This composite material strength allows military drones to cruise at extremely high altitudes. Drones are equipped with different state-of-the-art technology such as infra-red cameras (military UAV), GPS, and laser[s] (military UAV). Drones can be controlled by remote control system or a ground cockpit.

  —Dronezon.com

  MI5 Headquarters, Home Office

  Thames House

  12 Millbank

  Westminster, London

  Nicholas said, as they rode the elevator up, “MI5 is manic. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many agents running around. At least we got an elevator for just the two of us. I can’t wait to get my hands on a keyboard and find out exactly what, and how, this hack was performed. I plan to write a new encryption for our phones that will keep us safe.” He tapped his temple. “Wait—I do believe a possible solution has presented itself to my brain.”

  She poked his arm. “I knew it, modern technology is no match for you. Maybe you should go into business like Ardelean did with Radulov. Make millions off your code. Mama needs a new pair of shoes, or you could buy me a BMW, like yours.”

  “Not new shoes for you, new boots. I don’t want to take Ardelean’s path—sorry, Mike, not enough excitement in the business world, no knockout arguments with you, no hand-to-hand fights with bad guys. I wonder how long Griffith will take to copy the hard drives?”

  “Okay, new boots, and yeah, I’d give it up, too, for knockdown drag-out arguments with you. Griffith won’t take long, not since she has a crush on you.”

  “Agent Caine, are you jealous?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Come on, focus. I’m still wondering about that falcon yanking the drone out of the air and disappearing with it.”

  “There you go, just like a woman, always changing the subject. You’re definitely jealous. Want to get revved up? Want to fight about it? Those new boots, maybe for Christmas?”

  She laughed, and he couldn’t help himself, he gave her a quick kiss as the elevator doors opened to three interested faces.

  Adam was waiting for them when they arrived on the fifth floor, in Harry Drummond’s outer office. “Hey, it’s good to see you guys. I’m all up and running, and, man, do we have a problem. I need another hour at least, but I’m close to finding the hole. I’m trying to establish a clear and safe channel that we can use to talk to Gray in New York. Oh, by the way, he and Zachery and Lia and Savich are all on board. They know what’s happening and they’ve started taking measures on their end to secure comms. I think there is an errant piece of code in both FBI-N.Y. and FBI-D.C. servers, but I don’t see it’s been activated, yet, which is a nice favor. We can do an end around the software, establish a clear channel, and wait to see if it’s opened.

  “But here, in MI5, it’s activated, and everything’s wide-open. Information that’s supposed to be internal is feeding out through a pipeline to whoever built this hack. I gotta say, it’s pretty cool.” He looked at Mike. “Well, um, no, not cool at all.”

  “Can you secure the British Security Services?”

  “I’m working on it, Nicholas. Once I have the channel between New York and us secured, then I can turn to the MI5 and MI6 systems. This is going to be huge, like Duqu, and Duqu 2.0 that unraveled Kaspersky, though I think this breach of Radulov is going to be even worse.”

  Mike asked, “What’s Duqu? What’s Kaspersky?”

  Adam said, “Sorry, Duqu is the code name in the hacker community for a quiet and powerful threat hack that attacked the NSA, as well as some other organizations last year. Major cyberwarfare. Who needs nukes when you can simply open the door and steal all the secrets without anyone realizing it until years later?”

  “And we’re on the front lines of our own Duqu?”

  “We are. Kaspersky is a Radulov competitor. They had something similar happen last year. And this looks like another big one. Hey, what happened to the defense secretary? Was it another drone attack? More frog poison? I thought I heard there might have been another attack, but I’ve been focused on all of this. Everything okay? Look at this code, Nicholas.”

  Mike touched Adam on the arm. “Adam, you didn’t take a single breath, didn’t have a single comma. How much caffeine have you had today?”

  “I don’t know, about a case of Red Bull and a few pots of coffee.”

  “Well, take a breath.”

  He pulled in a deep breath, shut his eyes, and blew it out, putting his hands together in prayer. “Ohmmmmmm. Happy, Mom?”


  She rubbed her knuckles against his head. “You amaze me.”

  Adam gave her a huge smile. “I’m okay, I promise. I always tank up when I have a big project. Seriously, was there another attack on you guys?”

  His eyes were red and glassy from lack of sleep and too much caffeine, but he looked as excited as she’d ever seen him. The crash would come, she knew. She’d seen Nicholas jazzed up the same way, seen him crash.

  Nicholas raised his head from an examination of the code Adam had handed him. “Yes, but they missed, and then a falcon came out of nowhere and flew off with the drone.”

  “Wicked.”

  Nicholas laughed. “That’s what I thought, too. Adam, you go back to the secure comms issue with Gray, then work on the breach. We have a meeting with Roman Ardelean soon. I’m going to brief my father on what we saw at Alexander’s crime scene. Work fast, okay? If you find something, come get me right away.”

  “You got it. Tell your dad someone’s been taking a look through the files here, okay? It’s a big hole.”

  “I will. Thanks, Adam.”

  They watched him go, then Nicholas knocked on his father’s inner office door. “I want my father to know where we stand on everything before Ardelean arrives.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Nicholas was briefing his father, Mike listening with half an ear, when a cryptic text came to her phone from DI Griffith.

  Confirmation on what you found, coated with E. HDs on their way.

  The drone needle was coated with epibatidine. The victim’s computer hard drives were coming.

  Three in three days confirmed. And Nicholas could have easily been the fourth. Whoever they were dealing with wasn’t messing around. So who was next? Or would they try for Nicholas again?

  Surely, the White House would cancel the president’s trip once they relayed this information to Savich and Zachery.

  She was about to tell Nicholas when Ian appeared in the door.

  “Sir? Mr. Ardelean is here to see you.”

  Harry stood, nodded to both Nicholas and Mike. “We will finish this when you’re through meeting with Ardelean. Ian, please show Mr. Ardelean in.”

  Nicholas looked down and read the text on her mobile from Griffith.

  “Want me to go call her?”

  “No, wait, Mike. This is more important. Stay for this meeting.”

  He watched Roman Ardelean come into the room. His first impression was this man is smart and clever. He looked shrewd, as arrogant as an ancient warrior prince who gave no quarter, who reveled in his own strength, his own power. He was as tall as Nicholas, with dark, wavy hair and a hawk nose. He looked like the Romanian hacker he was, from his Chuck Taylors to his dark, heavy eyebrows. Nicholas hadn’t even seen the man in anything but a black turtleneck and dark jeans—à la Steve Jobs, a personal hero. Did Ardelean believe imitation was the sincerest form of flattery?

  Ardelean was smiling, his hand outstretched, all bonhomie. “Mr. Drummond, what a pleasure.” He shook hands with Harry, then turned to Nicholas and Mike. “Roman Ardelean.”

  “Nicholas Drummond, and this is my partner, Agent Michaela Caine. It’s good to meet you. I’m a fan.”

  A dark brow went up. “You’re a fan of mine? You’re the ones getting all the headlines these days. Saving the American president and vice president, and I heard about that nifty piece of code you pushed into the Air Force One mainframe, Drummond. Rather amazing stuff. Not to mention the work you did helping the Israelis with Stuxnet. Rumor has it the code was of your own design.”

  Nicholas stiffened. How in the world did Ardelean know that? Or was he fishing?

  But Ardelean waved a hand. “I know what you’re thinking, but never fear, your secrets are safe with me. You know what I do. A number of people were quietly contracted on that job. I couldn’t help but notice your signatures in the code. A beautiful piece of work, that. And if you ever need a job—”

  Harry laughed, but Nicholas and Mike merely smiled politely. Then Harry said, “Mr. Ardelean, may I get you anything or shall we begin?”

  “No, no. I’m fine. Let’s begin. I’m sorry to be meeting under these circumstances. I know you have a lot to do today, after the horrific news about Alexander. I rather liked the old codger. I can’t imagine why anyone would want him dead.”

  Mike said, “Did you know Heinrich Hemmler and Chapman Donovan, the other two murder victims?”

  “I knew of them, only. Terry was always a friend to Radulov. Had me in to do security for the Ministry. Something like we’re about to do here. You’re having problems, I take it, with this ransomware attack?”

  Harry said over his shoulder as he closed the door, “You could say that. All of you, please sit down.”

  Mike and Nicholas took a seat on the couch, Ardelean sat opposite.

  Harry pulled up a chair. He looked at them all, steepled his fingers, and waited. “This situation is perturbing and unexpected.” He said nothing more. It was one of his father’s favorite tactics, one he’d used on Nicholas as a boy when he’d committed a sin. Sure enough, he’d always jumped into the silence and confessed.

  Right on cue, Ardelean splayed his hands and started talking. “I know this breach has been a disappointment to you, but I will remind you that MATRIX is still recognized as the best cybersecurity system on the market. It’s Radulov’s flagship, and I’ll stake my life on it.

  “You’ll be relieved to hear we’ve located the issue internally, and it’s been addressed. I have a press briefing this afternoon to explain how we’ve answered the breach.

  “In the meantime, we’ve pushed a new software update to our servers. I’m happy to put the update into your system myself, so you can be assured everything is safe and working properly again. Collectively, we apologize for any issues you may be having, and we would like the chance to make this right.”

  “All well and good, Mr. Ardelean, and we appreciate your willingness to hurry a patch.” Harry sat forward. “However, I’m sorry to say a simple update won’t do the job. We believe someone has gotten inside your software and is spying on the Home Office. After the incidents of the past few days, we must conclude this is much larger than a ransomware attack. We’ve had three assassinations on our soil, the attempted murder of my son here just today, and now we find out all our servers are infected.” He paused. “As a matter of fact, we are investigating the MATRIX software attack as the link among all these things.”

  Nicholas thought the look that registered on Ardelean’s face was sheer horror. Getting on the wrong side of the Security Services wasn’t a path for success; to have Radulov tied to the assassinations would be his downfall, whether he had anything to do with them or not. That Ardelean planned to go public with this breach was the smart thing to do, and would probably restore confidence.

  Harry continued, “I see we’ve surprised you with this information.”

  Ardelean sat forward, his hands clasped between his knees. “You have. Mr. Drummond, let me assure you there is no way our software could be hacked and used to spy on you. I wrote the code myself. It’s built to protect against that possibility. There’s no way.”

  Nicholas said, “Yet it’s happened. Someone is inside the system and is tracking us. And, quite possibly, was tracking the victims who were assassinated, as well.”

  He didn’t mention Adam was currently reverse-engineering the code to find where the spying was coming from. He wanted to see what Ardelean had to say first.

  “Why would anyone do that? Well, all right, certainly there are nation states who would be very interested in the information in your servers. Everyone knows Russia and North Korea are pushing malicious code into every computer they can. But that’s why you use MATRIX, sir. We take every precaution to make sure none of the components of the software can be tampered with.” He paused. “The assassinations. You honestly think they’re tied together? That something in your servers was stolen and, as a result, these people have been killed?”

 
; He was shaking his head, back and forth. “It is difficult to accept. I will personally start an investigation—another investigation—immediately.”

  Harry said, “That would seem the proper course. You say you addressed the issue of the ransomware in MATRIX, Mr. Ardelean—”

  “Roman, please.”

  “Roman. How, exactly, did you address the breach that led to the ransomware attack? Because clearly someone got inside your code, or else they wouldn’t be able to hold all these computers hostage. And if they can see what’s inside them—”

  “I’ll be honest, Mr. Drummond. The ransomware, we already know that breach was the Russians. We were able to trace the upload to a flat in Kiev, and the hacker was arrested by the Russian authorities. We issued the patch the moment we saw the breach, and trust me, it’s secure as ever now.”

  That’s not right. Why is Ardelean lying? Nicholas said, “If one hacker can get in, so can another.”

  Or the same one. Temora, Temora. “No, no, we’ve locked it all down, pushed out a special update. And I’ve personally offered a bug bounty to my employees to see if any of them can penetrate the new software. And I have some of the best talent in the world on my team.”

  Harry said, “I wish we were as certain as you, Roman. As it stands, the Home Office can’t take any chances. We’re going to have to explore the security of MATRIX and make recommendations on our findings.”

  Roman looked over at Nicholas. “Have you found something else? Something in the code we’ve missed?”

  “No. Not yet.”

  Ardelean breathed out. “Good. That’s good.” He tapped his briefcase. “Now, if you’d allow me a few moments with the servers, I can update the software personally, and I guarantee, nothing will get through after that.”

  Nicholas asked, “Do you need access to the mainframe?”

  Ardelean held up a small thumb drive. “No, I have it all here. I can access the software from any terminal.”

  Harry waved toward his desk, where Ardelean sat down, toggled the mouse on Harry’s computer, then inserted the thumb drive.