Betrayed: (A Financial and Conspiracies Thriller – Book 1 in the Legacy Thriller Series)

by William Wield

  He, Zaytsev and Tulloch saw Flaxman and Bookie off in Calistra, left the quay and walked back to the Derby Arms. Here they tacked themselves on behind a group of tourists who, judging from their eager chatter were bound for the castle. The group, with the three of them close behind, wound their way up the steep road till they reached the castles main gates. The road swung on to the right, past the gates, leading on round the island. The group halted and gathered together into a huddle to sort out their entrance fees between them. Geordie took his two and led them towards the small trestle table which had been set up under the massive arch of the ancient gateway. Here, where tickets were to be sold for entrance to the castle or for the gardens and grounds, Geordie quickly got out his wallet and bought tickets for his two ‘guests’, Zaytsev and Tulloch.

  ‘Best to have tickets in case you’re asked for them,’ he said. ‘I’ll explain this to Angus later on and he’ll give me my money back’. The other two smiled. After what they had in mind, they rather doubted that.

  Over lunch, the unsuspecting Geordie had boasted about the high-powered team of scientists who worked on something secret up in the south-east tower - so secret, indeed that the only access to the tower was now from the first floor gallery. Initially, Zaytsev allowed Geordie to take them where he wished and, eventually, he took them up to the gallery at the top of the wide, sweeping main staircase. It was at this point that Zaytsev suddenly produced his Yaragin automatic pistol from inside his bulky leather jacket and pointed it with a firm prod into Geordie’s ribs.

  At first Geordie thought this must be some kind of joke and let out a brief giggle. When Zaytsev prodded him a second time hard enough to almost wind him, Geordie turned pale and his face changed to an expression of one about to burst into tears.

  ‘Take us to the south-east tower and the computer laboratory’ said Zaytsev.

  By now Tulloch had also produced a gun and he led on as directed by Geordie who had been told to whisper directions to him. They went along one of the corridors running off the gallery and, three quarters of the way along, entered a doorway which, in turn led to a landing with narrow stairs at the end of it.

  Ahead of them they could see one of Boreyev’s men guarding the entrance to the tower. As they approached, the guard recognised Geordie, smiled and held up his hand to turn him and his tourists back. Zaytsev steeped smartly forward as they neared the guard, and raised the gun he had being prodding Geordie with, pointing it directly at the guard’s forehead and no more than a foot from it.

  ‘Not a move,’ he whispered in harsh, heavily accented English.

  Tulloch then went round behind the guard, cuffed him with plastic ties and gagged him with a strip of cloth. He then smashed him with a vicious blow to the back of his head. The guard crumpled to the ground and Geordie let out another whimper of misery. They dragged the guard to the side of the corridor and prodding Geordie again, all three went through the door and began to mount the tower stairs. They climbed for three floors, till they reached the top and a by now tearful, Geordie pointed to a door and they gathered close together outside it.

  On a nod from Zaytsev they burst into the Lab. The whole team were there, and looked back at the intruding three with a mixture of puzzlement and shock. They continued to watch, somehow transfixed, as Tulloch quietly shut the door behind him. Geordie was then roughly pushed over to join the other and in fluent English, Zaytsev began his instructions.

  ‘As they always say in the films,’ he said, looking round the Craithe team, ‘don’t give any trouble and no one will get hurt.’ He looked at each of them, one by one, a cold stare of one who cares only for his own wishes.

  ‘Who is head man, here?’ he asked, looking straight at the Professor.

  The team’s defence strategy for a break-in such as this had been practiced even though it was deemed to be an almost impossible eventuality, any intruder was to be allowed to download what he or she thought was the Athena software. With all its valuable equipment and the possibility of knocking out a machine with even more valuable software on it, intruders were not to be challenged here in the Lab.

  The fake software that each member of the team had been trained to download in circumstances such as these, also contained the Craithe standard self- defence package. This would ensure that when it was taken away and plugged into any other machine it would immediately attack and render that machine useless. Thus, in the same damage limitation strategy, and especially to avoid injury to any team member, attackers were to be allowed to leave the Lab either with the laptop holding Athena on it or a memory stick.

  The Professor stepped slowly forward, bowed his head once in a kind of token surrender, ‘I’m the senior person here,’ he said, ‘I presume you want a copies of the software suite we call Athena?’

  ‘We do, but not just copies, we want you to destroy the original and all other copies, leaving us with the only copy,’ said Tulloch.

  ‘Under the circumstances, I’d be happy to comply,’ said the Professor, ‘but one master copy is in a bank vault in London, and some bits of different functions of our work are spread around several of these machines,’ and he gave a sweep of his arm, indicating a whole array of laptops, desktops and a large mainframe.

  ‘But we do have a concentrated copy of everything we’ve invented, on this laptop here,’ he said picking up a small, neat machine as though ready to hand it over.’

  ‘You think me a fool, do you?’ said Zaytsev. ‘I take Athena away on a laptop and no sooner am I safe distance away and you connect and wipe the hard drive of everything – or worse you lock me out of it somehow. No, I have memory stick. I take Athena on that.’

  ‘I’m afraid Athena and other programmes that go with it some thirty Gigabytes – a lot of software − so do you have an external drive of that capacity, one with a usb connection?’ said the Professor.

  ‘I do,’ said Zaytsev and handed the professor a neat external drive with a short usb lead on it. ‘There’s ample space on that so just get downloading Athena onto it - and be warned I’ll be testing it when you’ve finished, so tricks, understood?’

  The professor moved to the laptop he had indicated a moment before, plugged in the external drive Tulloch had passed to him, and began the download. What he was actually downloading was, a technical masterpiece of deceit – designed specifically for an eventuality such as this. On the laptops screen, a download box showed hundreds of differently named files from the Athena suite being transferred to Tulloch’s external drive. In reality, what was being transferred was a huge amount of indecipherable rubbish, with just hundreds of file names but no actual file content. The total size of the files being downloaded also showed, falsely, to be rapidly mounting – not unlike the milometer on a motor car. Zaytsev had stepped forward and was now watching this download monitor closely, the mounting number of files the sheer volume of data, all clicking up at relentless speed. After a minute or so of this close scrutiny, he looked back at Tulloch and nodded confidently - he even let him see a glimpse of a smile.

  When, after a suitably lengthy span of time to give the impression of such a large amount of software had been transferred to the external drive, the download monitor indicated that the job was complete, Zaytsev stepped forward to the laptop, pressed some keys for his hard drive to be ejected from it. He then immediately took the hard drive over to a different laptop nearby, plugged it in and keyed in for an internet connection. As soon as he had the connection, he typed in a website address and instantly on the fast fibre optic line, a website in Russian Cyrillic writing appeared on the screen.

  ‘Just checking you have not just given me rubbish,’ he said turning to look at the professor. On the Russian website there was a lot of flickering and the Professor knew that it would be trying to read and verify what had been downloaded onto the stick. Whether or not the team’s false download would be spotted, would depend how good this website’s electronic scrutiny programme was.

  He watched, his breath shallow
and faster than usual. The small red light on the website flickered away as it continued to read what was on the hard drive. It soon became clear to the Professor that their elaborate deceit was working and the Russian interrogation programme had been fooled into thinking that the rubbish-filled files contained the real Athena programme. In due course, a box popped up on the screen indicating that the process was complete and the data downloaded onto Zaytsev’s memory stick appeared genuine.

  The professor was relieved and wondered why an organisation such as the SVR did not have technology sophisticated enough to have detected their false programming. What he did not know was that, in Moscow, Komarov’s waiting computer operative was so childlike in his excitement and eagerness at getting the long-awaited Athena software, that he had merely used his own laptop in the office to analyse the contents of the Zaytsev hard drive. The analytical programme he used was comparatively low-tech and had been unable to detect the deceit. The Professor had guessed right, had some proper SVR analytical software been used, it might well have brought up very different answer, a very uncomfortable one for the Craithe team.

  ‘Well gentlemen,’ said Zaytsev taking the external drive out of the laptop, ‘the download checked out all right with my boss’s website checking system. So it would appear that we have got what we came for. You say this is the only full version of Athena here in this lab and that there is only one other in a bank somewhere?’

  ‘Yes, that’s correct,’ said the Professor. He was betting that, in the middle of a robbery, these two would hardly take the time to check the other machines.

  Having satisfied himself that he had the real Athena, Zaytsev began to fire his automatic pistol at the laptop he had just taken Athena from, but distracted in this activity, the Professor stepped quickly forward, pressed an alarm button under the table and moved swiftly to put himself between Zaytsev and the other computers and laptops. Immediately an alarm siren went off and a red light began to flash in the ceiling and over the Lab doorway.

  The shock of this had an instant effect on Zaytsev. He stopped shooting up the laptop, and looked, horrified over to Tulloch. He then gestured with the gun for the Professor to join the others.

  ‘The key to this room, now,’ he shouted and held out his hand towards the Professor, who fetched the key out of his pocket and handed it over.

  With that, Zayrzev and Tulloch backed out of the room and the team could hear them lock the door immediately after that.

  * * * * *

  Down in the restaurant, three of Boreyev’s men were alerted as soon as the little red light in the ceiling came on. With the general opinion that their presence here on the island was largely one of reassurance, they had been treating their job in a more relaxed manner than if they had been on duty in some trouble-spot. They had been having a late lunch and intent on their food, had heard nothing in the corridor outside earlier on – when Zaytsev, Tulloch and Geordie had slipped past on their way to the Lab.

  Now they rose quickly, ran to the door peered left and right along the corridor and ran out and down till they reached a storeroom door they had left ajar earlier. The storeroom had no windows and was dark as a tomb. Both quickly entered, took out special dart-firing pistols from leg pouches, closed the door but for a slither of light from the corridor and waited. Within a minute Zaytsev and Tulloch appeared through the doorway along the corridor and walking briskly towards the storeroom, looking forward and back alternately, guns held low but ready for use.

  As soon as the two of them had passed, the Boreyev’s men silently swung the storeroom door open, stepped out into the corridor and fired their silenced dart-pistols at the backs of the necks of Zaytsev and Tulloch. Two tiny darts struck almost simultaneously and within no more than a second both of the thieves had dropped unconscious to the landing floor. Boreyev’s men rushed forward and cuffed them both where they lay.

  The two of them were dragged back along the landing, into the restaurant and then quickly tied to chairs. One of Boreyev’s men ran upstairs and told the Professor that the two thieves had been captured. As they knew that Angus was out in the boat with Tatiana, the Laird was also quickly informed what had happened and he too came to the restaurant. Boreyev himself arrived and soon as all had gathered before the two thieves, he administered an injection to each of them. Slowly both came back into consciousness as the dart antidote took effect. Their first shock was to find themselves confronted by Boreyev who immediately began questioning Zaytsev in Russian, his harsh put-on voice close to Zaytsev’s ear.

  ‘Your mission is over and it has failed,’ he said, ‘would you like me to tell you what happens to people who perpetrate this kind of commercial espionage in Russia?’

  ‘Won’t do you any good threatening me,’ said Zaytsev in a relaxed manner, leaning back in his tilted chair, and with an arrogant smirk on his face, ‘you’ll have to release us soon – you’ll find out why quite soon.’

  Boreyev did not move his head at all, giving no sense of a reaction to this completely unexpected remark but, out of Zaytsev’s line of sight, his eyes swung up to meet those of the Laird who, standing behind Zaytsev, showed his shock at this news. Continuing as though nothing had happened, Boreyev put his face even nearer Zaytsev’s.

  ‘Bluffing will get you nowhere,’ he said but he was immediately interrupted by Zaytsev.‘No bluff. Why don’t you ask your man Geordie what he told my colleagues at lunchtime?’

  ‘Your colleagues?’ repeated Boreyev, glancing back up to the Laird. The other just shrugged his shoulders, not understanding either.

  Boreyev quickly turned to one of his men. ‘Quick as you can go up to the Lab ask them which is Geordie and bring him back down here as fast as you can. Go.’

  His man ran out of the room and, after what seemed ages, returned with the quivering Geordie. Without further ado, he was positioned so that he could not see the arrogant Zaytsev’s face and would therefore be less intimidated by him.

  ‘What did you tell these people at lunchtime, Geordie?’ asked Boreyev.

  ‘All I did was tell Mr Angus’s friend, Mr Flaxman, that he and Mrs Macrae were going mackerel fishing…’ his voice tailed off as he realised just now how he had been deceived by Flaxman’s tale of being Angus’s old university friend. ‘Oh God, what have I done?’ he wailed.

  ‘Start at the beginning, but as quickly as you can,’ said the Laird.

  Geordie, stuttered and mumbled his way through the sorry tale; the call from his cousin Hamish, these old friends of Mr Angus’s wanting to give him a nice surprise not having seen them since University – right up to his fixing of the can of fuel so that the Calistra could catch up with their marooned little boat.’

  ‘The Laird and Boreyev exchanged looks and the Laird came over to Boreyev, exchanged a couple of words which no one else could hear.

  ‘The rest of you stay here and keep guard on the two prisoners,’ said the Laird out loud and he and Boreyev hurried out of the room. From the restaurant, they took the stairs at the end of a short corridor, climbed to the top of the stairs and opened the door which gave access to the roof of the tower. Unlocking it, they then came out onto the flat, lead-covered roof at the far end of which stood what looked like a small shed, and they hurried over to it.

  The Laird undid a heavy duty clasp on the corner of the shed and then showed Boreyev that its south and east walls folded back on themselves, concertina-style, to expose a large object covered with a tarpaulin sheet tied with thin rope at its base. On undoing the rope and pulling off the tarpaulin, a large mounted telescope was revealed, similar but superior to the coin-operated ones sometimes found at notable tourist viewpoints.

  The Laird quickly adjusted the eyepiece and swivelled it round to look back east. ‘Yes, there we are,’ he said and then beckoned Boreyev to have a look for himself.

  Almost filling the whole field of view, there was a small touring motor-boat and such was the powerful magnification of the telescope that the boat’s name, Calistra, could
easily be read with three figures also easily discernible in the wheelhouse.

  ‘That’s the boat Geordie spoke of,’ said the Laird, ‘we need to get back down and see if we can trick the Russian into telling us more.’ Both had another look and the Laird also focussed the view on the Corryvreckan beyond it.

  After several sharp April squalls and some strong winds accompanying them, the seas around the whirlpool itself where a mass of white-topped waves, and even at this distance he could see that some of the standing waves were larger than Calistra herself. Knowing that his Louisa would not be repaired till late tonight, he quickly came to a decision on what to do now. He turned to Boreyev,

  ‘What you don’t know is that not long ago there was a kidnap and ransom incident on the west coast and the way it was mishandled by the police and their hostage negotiators resulted in the death of the young person kidnapped. I am not going to risk that with my son and our lovely Tatiana. So here’s what we’re going to do. First I’ll ring the Oban police and tell them about the threatened theft of the Athena software. I shall tell them that I’m happy to keep the prisoners who tried to do this here until the weekend is over – and as an ex-magistrate, they’ll probably be happy with that.’

  Boreyev nodded agreement.

  ‘But I’m not going to mention the kidnapping – we’ll handle that ourselves. This will mean that we have to kind of lie to the police – a lie of omission. It means that you’ll have to back me up when I say that we discovered the kidnapping much later – are you happy with that.’

  ‘Of course I am,’ replied Boreyev, ‘but how we can fix this if Angus and Tatiana are prisoners on that boat?’

  ‘There’s no way the Calistra will get through the Corryvreckan tonight,’ said the Laird, ‘and tomorrow at first light we’ll have the Louisa back in operation,’

  ‘You have an idea how that will be possible to use her in a rescue?’