“This is the worrying thing,” adds Josh. “We know the information these guys have is bogus, because we’re not the bad guys. We can only assume that the terrorists have operatives inside these organizations, controlling what intel is distributed, making it look like we’re the enemy here.”
“Exactly,” I continue. “But thanks to these papers, I think I’ve got the missing links. The only thing we need to find out now, assuming I’m right, is the reasons why, and what the endgame really is.”
I sort through papers, pulling out two files. One is a classified file outlining the proposal for the Cerberus project. The other is a redacted personnel file. I throw them to the center of the table.
“The first shows the initial outline of what Cerberus was to be used for. The White House submitted the proposal to a Senate subcommittee three months after Cunningham took office. It mentions everything GlobaTech eventually did to it — as well as saying the plan was to advertise it to the public as a weapon against terrorism, to be used to safeguard our own nuclear arsenal and state secrets. The subcommittee’s response is also there. It details how they rejected the idea, saying it was too open to corruption, and that the methods intended were a violation of the public’s right to privacy.”
Wallis takes the file and skims through it. Raynor frowns and looks at me.
“Forgive the stupid question,” he says. “But if this satellite still does all of those things, how did they get the Senate to approve it?”
“That’s a perfectly fair question, John,” I say. “And that’s something I’ve not figured out yet.”
I turn to Josh, who’s already produced his laptop and is looking at me, smiling.
“On it, Boss,” he says; before I get chance to ask. He buries himself in the keyboard and starts tapping away.
“So what’s in the personnel file?” asks Clark, who’s been silent so far.
I let out a heavy sigh. “That would be our mystery four-star general from New York,” I say.
Josh looks up from his work, and the tension in the room visibly heightens as people hold their breath. I lean over and open the file, revealing a large color picture of the man I saw in Hussein’s apartment.
“Folks, meet General Thomas Jack Matthews.”
Everyone seems to frown at the anti-climax. Everyone except Wallis, which is what I expected.
“You must mean another General Matthews, right?” he asks.
“Another?” queries Tori. “Who’s the first one?”
Wallis looks at me, and I raise an eyebrow and sigh. “I’m afraid not, Tom. There’s only one, and he’s currently the director of the CIA.”
The heavy silence that descends is palpable. No one knows what to say, or where to look, which brings them to where I’ve been for the last few hours. The man in charge of the Central Intelligence Agency was meeting with a known terrorist, discussing a top-secret government satellite that can control the world’s nuclear arsenal… So many things aren’t right about that, I don’t know where to start.
Josh stands and begins pacing up and down the left side of the room. I find myself doing the same thing opposite. Now every piece of information we have is out in the open, we need to fit them together and try to stop whatever’s really going on here.
I glance over at Josh, who is muttering to himself, working through every theory he comes up with before deciding whether to voice it to the rest of us.
Working at GlobaTech, away from me, I think has been good for him. It’ll have given him a renewed purpose; a fresh challenge to apply himself to — which is exactly what he needed after watching my back for half his life. But looking at him now, I see him step back into his old role so easily, it’s like he never stopped.
“So, we all think Matthews is Ares, right?” he says.
Everyone at the table exchanges the type of look that says not one of them had made it that far as to start thinking that much about it yet.
“Yes,” I reply, having come to the same conclusion myself a couple of hours ago.
“So it’s fairly safe to assume that he’s the one behind the CIA’s attempt to kill you in Colombia, as well as the source of information that the NSA’s been working with…”
“I agree.”
“But why?”
“I don’t know. That’s one of the problems we have — finding out what all this leads to.”
“What’s the other problem?” asks Raynor.
“Stopping them when we’ve got the entire CIA trying to kill us.”
He sighs. “Yeah, that’ll do it…” he mutters.
I look at Clark. “Bob, get on Josh’s laptop — background check on Matthews. Any history of extremist beliefs — anything that could explain why he’d work with a group of people like the Armageddon Initiative and betray his country.”
“On it,” he says, sliding across into Josh’s seat and tapping away on the keyboard.
“Josh, tell me how El-Zurak is going to take control of Cerberus.”
He shrugs. “I don’t see how he can,” he says. “Even if he had some tech out in the mountains, there’s no way he’ll have anything like the level of sophistication needed to hack a government satellite from there.”
I click my fingers, remembering the one piece of information I’ve not told them.
Whoops.
“Oh, shit, yeah… he’s not in Afghanistan. Hussein and El-Zurak are in the U.S. Clara told me.”
“And you believe her?” questions Wallis.
I look over at him and nod. “Yes, I do.”
“So where is he?” asks Josh.
“I don’t know, but I know how to find him.”
“How?”
“Tell me how he’d take control of Cerberus.”
He nods slowly, seeing what I’m getting at. If we know how they’d do it, then there’s a good chance we’ll be able to figure out where they need to be to do it. I imagine there aren’t too many locations where you can find the hardware capable of taking down a satellite.
“They’d need to access the servers first of all,” explains Josh. “They’d need to hack in past the firewalls, and then upload codes to give them control over each function.”
“Let’s assume they won’t be content with just our nukes,” I say. “How easily could they steal other peoples?”
“End of the day, that’s what Cerberus was built for,” he says with a shrug. “I obviously wasn’t involved in designing that particular feature, but there would almost certainly be an interface for doing it.”
“Where do these codes come from? Are they military?”
“Do you mean, can the CIA provide them? No, I don’t think they can.”
“So they have to hack those codes, presumably? Is that easy?”
Josh shakes his head. “It’s virtually impossible. It’s beyond my capabilities, certainly.”
“Do you know anyone who could do it?”
“That would be a very short list… but no, I can’t think of anyone.”
“So, could El-Zurak have someone who could do that?”
“It’s possible, but unlikely.”
“Okay, so that means he already has access to the codes. If he didn’t get them from Matthews, we need to find out how he got them, and fast. With Clara dead, they won’t be hanging around.”
Clark interrupts us by slamming his fist on the desk. “Goddammit!” he yells.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing on General Matthews. The guy’s a Boy Scout. A patriot, through and through. Decorated military career, worked as a consultant for years before being given the position of CIA director by President Cunningham. If I wasn’t involved in this mess, I’d swear blind there’s no way he’d be working against his country with terrorists.”