Harry asked, “And it will fix things for how long?”
“It should last indefinitely, though there will be more to come.” Ardelean laughed and ran a hand through his hair. “I thought the update I put in was the permanent fix, until now. Mr. Pearce, I am dead serious. If you ever decide you want a job, please don’t hesitate to call. I’ll pay you triple what you’re making now.”
Adam grinned. “You hear that, Nicholas? I want a raise.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Once Mike was sure Ardelean was out of hearing, she said, “The minute the three of you landed your starship on computer-land, you lost me, so I went ahead and put all the data on these drone assassinations into ViCAP, to see if there is anything similar in our jurisdiction.”
Harry shut the door and said as he turned back to them, “You weren’t alone, Michaela. I too got lost in, what did you call it? Computer-land. Well, that went well. At least we can be assured the systems are safe now, and we can start communicating properly again. I hate cloak-and-dagger stuff, gives me a headache. How long will it take to hear from your ViCAP?”
Nicholas said, “Not long. I was glad to see Ardelean take responsibility, though I’m convinced he lied about a Russian hacker—when in doubt, blame someone who isn’t there I guess was his thinking.” He gestured toward his father’s desk. “May I? I’d like to see the details of the patch he installed.”
“Certainly. Be my guest. What are you looking for?”
He glanced at Adam. “You want to tell him?”
Adam nodded. “I told Nicholas right before the meeting there was something strange about MATRIX. When I was looking at the tracking code, it felt wrong, like it was written in the same language as Radulov’s software.”
“So,” Nicholas said, “I’m assuming Ardelean has someone on the inside determined to bring him down. Disgruntled, former, who knows. Regardless, I have a tracker in the system that will look at the patch he provided, to be sure it’s totally clean. No sense reinfecting all the terminals if the code’s not perfect.”
Harry waved to his computer. “Take a look.”
Nicholas inserted a thumb drive into his father’s terminal, booted up. Adam came to stand behind him. The program launched, and the two men watched the screen.
Nicholas said, “This patch is complex. I’ve never seen anything like it. Wait, how can this be possible? The numbers four-zero-eight keep cropping up. Is it the hack, Adam?”
Adam tapped a few keys, and the numbers showed very clearly now, repeating over and over inside the zeroes and ones.
Nicholas sat back. “We know Roman Ardelean’s a genius, and that’s why his software is normally impenetrable. It’s not based on normal code, but something new, and I’ll bet majorly proprietary. This new protocol would be worth billions on the dark web, given what it can do.”
Harry said, “And someone in Ardelean’s company knows about this?”
Adam nodded. “They have to know some of it, definitely. But the bigger problem is, the code still allows for keystroke analysis, which technically means Radulov software can still spy on any computer using it.”
Mike asked, “Doesn’t Ardelean have to know? He just installed the patch himself.”
Nicholas looked thoughtful. “It’s possible, I suppose, that he doesn’t know. He certainly seemed shocked. And angry.” He leaned back in his dad’s chair. As he did, his knee clipped the underside of the computer keyboard drawer. The wood slid out and bashed him in the thigh.
“Bloody—what’s this?” He broke off. He saw a tiny black dot on his pants leg.
Adam said, “What’s—” But Nicholas sliced a hand across his throat, then grabbed a notepad and wrote a single word.
BUG!
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Once your bird tames down some, you can try putting it on a screen or pole perch unhooded for brief periods. Don’t leave it unsupervised during this time. Give it a chance to regain the perch on its own before intervening. Most figure it out fairly quick.
—American Falconry Magazine
The moment Roman was out of London proper, he rang Radu, his first words, “FBI agent Drummond obviously wasn’t killed by the drone. I just spent the better part of an hour with the bastard. What happened, Radu?”
“I sent the second drone after Drummond, as you wanted, but the drone ran out of battery early. I don’t know what happened.”
Roman felt the rage begin to pound in his head, louder and louder. He thumbed a microdose, calmed. “Our drones eliminated Donovan, Hemmler, and Alexander. But not Drummond, and this was your second try. Why are these people so hard to kill?”
Roman could see Radu shrugging. “They know about the drones, they are on the lookout since the attack on them yesterday. I didn’t want another Aire Drone to get into their hands, so I had Lauderdale intercept.”
“Well done. Is it possible Lauderdale was seen?”
“The FBI agents gave chase when the drone left the scene. As I said, its battery was running low, so it was slow enough to follow, which was why I sent in Lauderdale.”
Roman heard Radu draw a deep breath, then he spit it out. “Yes, I’m afraid they saw the capture. They saw Lauderdale fly away with the drone. Both are safe here now.”
Roman was calmer now, the pounding in his head lessened. “Good. They don’t know anything more than they did. Now, have you heard of a young American hacker, Adam Pearce?”
“No. Why?”
“I saw him in action today, along with Drummond. They know about the break in the code that allows us to spy on government agencies.”
“What are we going to do? How long do you think it will take them to trace the source of the code back to me and not that stupid Russian hacker you made up?”
Roman was quiet, his brain examining all the problems he was facing.
Radu said, after a moment, “What if they discover your drone army, the plan with Barstow? Roman, I’m frightened. Tell me what to do.”
He was his brother’s keeper. He felt calm flow over him, through him. “Radu, the most important thing is to take the lost pages of the Voynich and the woman so you can be cured. All the rest of it? Do not worry about it. I will take care of it.” But all he could think about was the quire, page 74, the woman who was Romanian. And he asked, “Dr. Marin, what do you know of her?”
Radu told him what he already knew, then added, “She did have a twin, who died at the age of four. No cause of death given.”
“Ah, so it makes some sense why she can read the Voynich.”
“Yes, it does.”
He felt victory close, within his reach. His heart sped up. A search of a lifetime, if only— He slipped another microdose in his mouth. He needed to think, needed the calm it brought him. The drug hit his system, and a low, warm hum started through him. He took a deep breath, then another. He rang off and immediately called Raphael in Scotland. “You will begin work immediately on a new patch.” He dictated a statement to be released to the press, then another longer blog post to the Radulov website, explaining each step of the situation and the remedies they were providing.
Raphael took the notes silently, then asked, “Should we open a bug bounty to the outside community, sir? Offer five thousand pounds?”
“And have every hacker in the free world attacking our software? No. But you can say we’re hiring new software engineers to specifically work on this issue.”
“I’ll get HR on it, sir. I will say, we’ve been receiving a great deal of external activity, mostly routing through the United States and Britain. The U.K. and U.S. governments are probably looking at us, trying to see if we’re secure.”
“They’d be idiots not to. Add a note to the press release that we are cooperating fully with the U.S. and U.K. investigations into our breach, and rest assured the software is safe to use once the update is installed, blah, blah blah.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now, you handled our other little issue, yes?”