“Nice to meet you,” said Dillon.
“And you, dude, ignore Franky, she’s a weird bitch. It’s nice to have some new faces round here, we’re stuck down there,” he said pointing a finger down at the ground, “and we rarely get to meet any new blood to tell us what’s going on in the real world and liven up our evenings…”
“Karp!” snapped Ezra frowning.
“Sorry!” he replied. “They don’t know?”
“Not yet. I am saving it,” said Ezra. He smiled warmly over the flames at Tatiana and Dillon; the heady scent of Jasmine was everywhere. “Our struggle — it is the struggle to keep the security services from becoming what they aim to fight against and destroy. Within any large firm or government department there is always an element of corruption; it comes from a myriad of different sources. You can never really be sure from where. We are here to try and stop that; we have been specifically vetted at the highest level; our integrity is unquestionable.” Ezra laughed at that. “Inspiring isn’t it? They’ve collected a group of reprobates who were brought together for a very special purpose. To ensure that the good are protected and the bad perish. To ensure the security services remain on the straight and narrow. We work external to the security service policy. We remain hidden on Santorini, away from prying eyes, courtesy of the Greek Government, connected to the outside world via the Internet, spy satellites, every public camera in every major city. We are the hidden camera behind the grille and we are many and it spreads much further than this little gathering you see here… I am merely a small fish in a huge pond swimming with much larger fish.” Ezra held his arms wide and chuckled. When he spoke again, his voice was low, eyes glinting in the fire light.
“Intelligence agencies operate as cells so that no one person can, if placed in a compromising situation, ever divulge information of any worth about the organisation as a whole. But that system is breaking down as the world-wide information highway becomes more vulnerable to malicious attacks from hackers, and unfriendly foreign organisations. There has been a spate of these attacks against large financial organisations and the British Security Service itself. And they were powerful.”
There was silence. The flames danced and crackled. Ezra stared into the fire, deep in thought, the cloak of melancholy wrapping itself around him.
“I never thought for one moment, that it could so easily, and with such menace, access some of the world’s most secure mainframes. With the Scorpion network all but obliterated, we sent out thewarning signals to London and Washington. But they sat on them too long, and did too little, too late. As a result it has put the financial stability of the western world at risk, and there are wider implications. Strange events have been happening all over the world. A brand new malicious programme that can enter any computer that is connected to the Internet. In the blink of an eye, the entire contents of a hardrive can either be stolen or erased, or both. There is not even the smallest trace of evidence that it was ever there. You may have seen on the news how banks all over the world were robbed simultaneously — electronically… All sorts of shit, being blamed on software bugs and human error — but this is not the case. We have linked virtually all of these incidents, chasing them back to their source, but the paths are not clear. However, there is one thing that we are sure about — all these world events, all these monumental fuck-ups — are not fuck-ups, they are a trial of some sort, an initiation — and they all come from the same source.”
“Chimera,” whispered Karp.
“Correct.”
“Which means they are testing the final scripts and that the programme is complete and almost ready to go fully operational.”
“Yes — but it is not complete.” Ezra nodded. “Chimera is merely showing off.”
“Showing off — Chimera?” Dillon said softly.
“Chimera is the most powerful programme ever written. It has the ability to change its own scripts, so as to remain unseen. Basically, it enters the hardrive and simply becomes invisible, and becauseit works so phenomenally quickly, exits before any human can spot anything wrong. Chimera will push its own boundaries, just to see how far it can go. But they must have loaded it into the mother of all mother processors, for it to be able to do what it has already done… When they unleash it for real, it will happen quickly, and with devastating results. Everything will happen at once, and this programme can do it.”
“So why haven’t they done it yet?”
“There’s a couple of reasons,” said Ezra smoothly. “One, is that we know about Ramus. And MI6, along with the S.A.S., are out looking for him as we speak. Two, the Chimera Programme isn’t quite finished — it’s working, and it’s running at around ninety-five percent but it isn’t quite complete. A premature move on his part would prove fool hardy and could even mean failure, if his plan is too succeed, he will need to be one-hundred percent certain. And finally, we have the blue-prints, which means that we understand what it is and how it works. And we know how to stop it.”
Dillon looked from Tatiana to Ezra. “You have the blue-prints for the Chimera Programme? How the hell did you get them?”
Tatiana smiled bitterly. “It took a lot of time and effort, Dillon.”
Dillon shook his head, rubbing at his tired eyes as Tatiana moved over to Ezra and placed her hand on his shoulder. “Are you okay, uncle?”
Ezra looked up at his niece, and smiled weakly. “Yes, but soon you must leave this place. One of our spy satellites has intercepted much chatter regarding both you and me. We estimate that they are sending Assassins, and that they will be here by the morning. It would seem that they want back what they think is rightly theirs.”
“We are not leaving, Ezra.”
“If it’s okay with you, we’ll fight with you, Ezra.” Dillon growled. “You say that there are Assassins on the way? Well, they drove me out of my home and they’ve chased us both across Europe. But I’m damned if I’m running any more from these murdering scum — we may be few, but we can make a difference. Shouldn’t we be doing something now?”
“I have many good people working on this thing — we can do no more than we are already doing,” Ezra said softly. “ But the doingis for later. Now is for relaxing, and for having a drink or three, and then — then we will prepare. We have no choice. We must stay and defend this facility and most importantly our work. It would take at least one week to evacuate the hardware we have down there, and to what end, there is nowhere to run and we would all, most likely, be dead. And anyway, our research cannot be moved at the drop of a hat. We must stay and defend ourselves against these infidels…” Ezra rubbed his tired eyes, and then stared at Dillon. “You say you are ready to fight with us, Mr Dillon… but I am troubled. Would you really?”
“What?”
“Would you really be ready to meet your maker?”
“Well, if not,” growled Dillon, “then I’ll see you in hell.”
Dillon awoke with a start as the shrill sound of the alarm-clock invaded his semi-consciousness. His eyes opened slowly and he could just make out the stemmed glass of deep red liquid that he had enjoyed so thoroughly the night before. Images of flames crossed his mind; good food cooked on the open fire; good wine consumed in copious quantities; humorous bantering between the small group. The flushed cheeks of Franky…
He groaned with the pounding in both his temples, and as he sat up, realised that Ezra was standing in the doorway to his bedroom staring at him. “Yes?”
“Get yourself up and then go and wake Tatiana. We meet outside in five minutes.”