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Nicholas sat forward. “Father, Ian, sorry it’s so early, but this is critical. Mike found a common time and location on each victim’s calendar, and we spent the night pulling it all together.”
Mike said, “We think it’s more than a theory, sir. Look at this.” The screen filled with a series of letters and numbers.
Mike took another sip of her coffee. “As you can see, these are GPS coordinates. 21.0976° North, 33.7965° East. They correlate to the Nubian Desert in Sudan, south of the Egyptian border. The coordinates show in every victim’s calendar on the same date, seven months ago, December. We looked at the recent history of the area, and there’s been nothing in the news, nothing happening, no attacks, no people. It’s sand.”
Nicholas said, “So we accessed the satellite footage from that day, for those specific coordinates.”
“Do I want to know how?” Harry asked.
“Quite aboveboard, Father, don’t worry. We sent an emergency request to the NSA—Adam has a friend there.” He gave his father a sleepy grin. “We didn’t hack them.”
“I’m glad to hear it. So what did the satellites show?”
Ben forwarded the slides. “This is the area represented by the coordinates the morning of December second. You can see a small village on the dunes. It’s not on any maps we could access, but this is a desert area, things shift and change. Nomads set up shops. Sandstorms blow through. It’s an ever-changing environment. Lidar, short for light detection and r
anging, that allows for measurements below the land’s surface area, doesn’t show any permanent structures, no deep foundations. This was all on the surface, temporary. The satellite itself wasn’t trained on it—it simply flew over that area once a day. We’re lucky it was nearby.
“Now, this is the morning of December third.”
Harry could see the village was no longer standing. There were pieces of it in different places, though, scattered like toothpicks across the reddish sand.
“Storm blew through?”
Nicholas said, “No, sir, we think this was manmade destruction. We think this was a proving ground for a weapons test. We checked with all the services we could and no one had any assets in this area. There’s no knowing exactly what happened between the second and the third of December. But—”
Ben flashed up another slide. “Here we have a shot from two weeks earlier. There’s nothing. Now, watch the progression.”
They watched a village slowly take shape, day by day, rising from the desert sand. The footage was clear, easy to pick out the details.
Ian said slowly, “So someone builds a village only to blow it apart. Who does that?”
Mike said, “Someone who had a show to give.”
Harry sipped at his oolong. “And with what sort of weapons?”
Nicholas flipped closed his laptop. “I’m going to bet it was drones. We know whoever is behind this has an army—from tiny drones that can shoot poisoned needles into people’s necks to large ones that can drop bombs on trains. I think this was the demonstration to the people they wanted to fund the drone army, to get them on board. It might be legitimate, it might be off-book. I don’t know. I would assume the victims were a party to this, though if they were funding it, I don’t know why they’d be murdered. Father, have you heard anything about the victims’ possible involvement in building an army of drones?”
“I haven’t, but we can look deeper, ask around. Perhaps Barstow knows. He stopped by yesterday, seemed like he wanted to talk, but that didn’t happen. I’ll call him after this meeting.”
Mike sat forward. “This isn’t only about drones. Paulina Vittorini had a warehouse of weaponry, enough to arm a small country. Someone’s created their own private army.”
Harry said, “All right, all right, say this is a black-ops program. Who were they planning to attack?”
Nicholas’s phone rang. “A moment, Father. It’s Adam. Adam? You’re on speaker. What’s up?”
“I’ve found another link between the victims. You aren’t going to like it.”
Mike called out, “Come on, Adam, we can take it. I hope.”
“Okay. Not surprisingly, all of the computers use MATRIX. But they all also have an encrypted email system with its own private VPN, housed in a separate portion of their hard drive, where MATRIX can’t access. The four victims were communicating in a completely secret, bespoke private system. It’s built on a new computer language.”
“Ardelean’s, I presume?”
“Yes. It’s not exactly the same, some parts have newer language, but his markers are there, those same numbers as the base code, four-zero-eight. That’s not all—the victims were all talking to the same person. Lord Barstow.”
Harry felt a punch of adrenaline. “Go on, Adam.”
“It looks like they were funding him. Barstow is the one who is behind building this army.”
