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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 th
ere 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.
He looked at the mangled SUV, an inferno against the dark sky, and he couldn’t see either the driver or Barstow inside.
He became aware of the growing chaos around him, people screaming, shouting for police, some running away, some pulling out their phones and recording videos. One man with a small dog on a leash stared dumbly at Harry, who realized he must look like a war victim.
His mind struggled to catch up. Drone, it must have been a drone, and it dropped a bomb on the car, like the train attack. Only this time the drone did it on the front of the car, blowing off the doors and windows. Harry, not wearing his seat belt, was thrown from the wreckage by the blast. He learned soon enough that Barstow and the driver had not been so lucky.
Harry saw blood running down his arm and pulled out a handkerchief to tie around the gash. He managed to get away from the flames and pressed against the building, scanning the skies as he reached for his phone. He heard the faint noise above him, looked up to see a red eye in the sky. The drone was searching the scene. It zoomed over, back and forth, seeking, but Harry was hidden in the shadows.
Bloody hell, where was his phone? It wasn’t in his pocket. He realized he wasn’t wearing his jacket anymore, either, it must have gotten caught in the car. He was also missing a shoe.
He leaned his head back against the building, hiding from the drone, listened to sirens wailing as they grew nearer and nearer and the noise from so many people as they watched the car burn. He heard the faint hum of the drone, flying away now, its pilot satisfied it had done its job.
Fury filled him.
This was war.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
The Old Garden
Twickenham
Richmond upon Thames, London
Isabella fell asleep humming. When she awoke, her mind was clear, and she realized she was exhausted. Then it came back. Ardelean had drugged her, and he’d drained some of her blood.
