Chimera Code (Jake Dillon Adventure Thriller Series) (15 page)

“Are you trying to repent for your heinous act of violence, my
son?” He asked quietly.
“I... misjudged...” The Assassin’s left eye hung by a thread, its
socket disintegrated on impact. The dull right eye screamed hatred,
and anger, and frustration. “I will not make the same mistake again.”
“I fear you will not, my son.” said the priest as kindly as he could.
He suddenly slapped the Assassin hard across his face, and a grimaced
sound of pain came forth with spittle and blood, erupting from the
man’s mouth. “Who sent you? And how did you know I was Ferran
& Cardini?”
The Assassin’s lips formed a firm line.
He remained silent - he was not going to speak.
“Come on, do yourself a favour and tell me. I can make that pain
go away.”
“I will tell you nothing, Priest.” The voice was hoarse, laced with
agony; the Priest sighed again, and holding the body upright with one
hand he reached down and pulled out a custom-made flick-knife. The
gleaming titanium handle had been made for the Priest’s grip only, a
sharp click, and the shining narrow six-inch blade appeared instantly.
The razor sharp edge had been case-hardened to the highest standard
- it was an evil weapon with only one obvious function: to kill.
“Are you absolutely sure, my son? Are you sure that you cannot
share this information about these evil-doers for whom you work,
with me? If not, then the Lord will deal with you through me, and as
his loyal servant I must do his bidding to the best of my ability.” The
slender blade of the knife glinted in the last remnants of light filtering
through the stained glass window.
“Fuck you.”
The Priest raised the knife. Light gleamed from the blade;
reflecting in the eye of the Assassin.
“Has God shown you the light yet, my son?”
The Assassin remained resolutely silent; instead he stared up
with hatred.
“Then I must show you the error of your ways.”
The blade came down and around with precision and practiced
skill - a single swift cut to the throat. The Assassin gurgled one last
time, blood sprayed in a long arc across one of the white-washed
walls; and the priest cleaned his blade on the Assassin’s clothing before
allowing the dead body to topple and lie at his feet.
The Priest looked up, eyes narrowing. A figure moved into the
chapel, cautiously; the priest retracted the blade and quietly replaced
the flick-knife back into its hiding place. He smiled when he saw the
black-clad figure of the SO19 senior officer moving towards him, HK
MP5 steady in his gloved hands.
“Ah, the troops have arrived, just in time to save me.”
The armed police officer removed his gas-mask and slung the
MP5 over his shoulder. He stared down at the dead body, then up at
the priest. “You killed him, Priest?”
“God works in mysterious ways, my son,” said the Priest, with a
kindly smile. “He was punished for his evil desecration of God’s holy
place of worship.” The Priest gestured to the many bullet holes in the
plaster and wood, across the stone, and the tiny holes in the stained
glass window where fading light crept in.
“He certainly does. Shall I call in a clean-up team?” The stench
of death and cordite was stinging his nostrils. The chapel - a place of
love and worship - had become a charnel house.
“Best left to our people to deal with it,” said the Priest calmly,
and strode out into the fresh air.

The Kirill Government Research Establishment - Scottish
Highlands. Steel and non-reflective glass interlocked within the very
granite of this inhospitable part of the world, a massive complex that
was not visible on the surface or from the air - but went ten levels
below.
A feat of engineering, and the Government’s best kept secret.

Claudia Dax reclined back in the leather chair, and gazed out
over the rugged mountain terrain on the monitor before her from
within the depths of the underground complex; she watched the wind
spin and whip the powder snow into a spiral of eddies, shifting and
dancing, twisting as if possessed by demons. The Scottish Highlands.
How Claudia loved and loathed this desolate region of Scotland; how
it lived, a land of such diverse personalities, of such contrasts; a place
of life and death; a place of beauty and a place of great ugliness,
hardship and fear.

The Scottish Highlands - a
vast
rugged landscape of nature’s
hostility. A huge landscape of jagged rock, smashed into mercy by
nature and her cold wet climate.

If Claudia tried, if she closed her eyes and
really
tried, she could
imagine that she was somewhere tropical, smell the sun-tan cream, the
surf breaking over the exotic coral reef. It had been too long since she
had enjoyed the sea; far too long.

Claudia was considered the best in her field: she had passed her
GCSEs at the age of ten; A-levels at the age of twelve. She had then
been one of the youngest students to ever be accepted by Oxford
University at the age of fourteen - by which time she had already
achieved a degree with honours in computing through The Open
University distance learning tutorials. By the time she arrived at
Oxford, she was well on her way to graduating in advanced computer
science and artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence was just that -
artificial. Scripted routines that were
scripted…

Claudia Dax had pioneered a new school of thought: the
concept of self-learn, self-teach, self-programme. The ability for
the programme to
learn and actually adapt by altering its own core code
. To
possess
real
intelligence, instead of a being told by way of pre-written
directional script.

Kirill had snapped Claudia up after the publication of her second
paper. And now, aged twenty-six, Claudia was an incredibly wealthy
young woman living a life of dreams in a secret location within the vast
wilderness of the Scottish Highlands. Although, incredibly wealthy,
it was nothing as vulgar as finance and money and
material possession
that kept her at Kirill’s establishment - despite the desolation of the
land: it was to do with her exceptionally competitive nature and her
aspirations for the future. She could have chosen to work anywhere
she wished: Berlin, the Bahamas, Washington - all had a particular
lure for her sought-after programming genius. But Kirill was based
in Scotland. And Kirill was at the very centre of all the important
computing breakthroughs that were happening.

Otherwise, her rise to the pinnacle of her chosen field would
have been for nothing.
She was sitting at the terminal, linked to seven servers and
harnessing the processing power and speed of one hundred subprocessors. Her fingers blurred across the keyboard and then she
paused, adjusting the settings of various programs and sub-routines
that were running in the background. She was the creator of her
current project - spotted the glitch even before the security scripts
reported it; she adjusted the code and sat back as figures flickered
across the screen. LED lights randomly flashed at her.
Claudia Dax rubbed her weary eyes, ran fingers through her
auburn hair. She suddenly realised that she was incredibly hungry - and
incredibly tired, although she accepted these were small discomforts
in comparison to what had recently gone down at Scorpion HQ in
London.
Scorpion HQ - vaporised.
She shivered, and closed down the external view on one of her
monitors.
Claudia gazed through the tinted glass at the offices below
her; most of the terminals were empty, she glanced up at the clock,
surprised to see it was 8.30 p.m.
“Bloody hell,” she said wearily. She had been working since 8 a.m.
without a break, her concentration complete, and her focus intense
and uninterruptible. Now her body and brain cried out for sustenance
and she sighed to herself, climbing to her feet and stretching her
perfectly formed athletic body. Her muscles ached and screamed for
an intense gym workout.
Instead, she realised what she actually needed was a long cold
beer. Very cold and very long.
She took the lift up to her private quarters - all the programmers
employed at the highest level of security clearance were given the
most luxurious living quarters two floors below ground level of
the complex. This was one of the benefits, one of the perks, one
of the
expectations
of working for Kirill’s prestigious team. They were
offered the best salaries, the most exotic holiday packages, numerous
opportunities to work worldwide and the opportunity to work on the
most exciting cutting edge projects with the most powerful computing
hardware ever created.
And Claudia Dax was, quite literally, at the very top of the pile.
She stepped through the door into her apartment, stripped off
her clothing and revelled in the feeling of the air-con on her skin. She
walked barefoot and naked across the Italian Marble floor to the wetroom, as she stepped under the shower head, warm jets automatically
started and she lightly soaped her tanned skin. She massaged shampoo
into her dark auburn hair, washed it free and then stepping out,
towelled herself dry.
Still naked, she crossed to the American fridge-freezer and pulled
free a bottle of ice-cold beer. She flipped the cap, and took a long, well
earned drink. Then she set about preparing a light salad... what with
the recent worry and speculation surrounding the Scorpion network
and the total destruction of its London Headquarters, satisfying her
hunger had not been high on her list of priorities until just now.
She revelled in the uncomplicated task of preparing the salad;
she enjoyed the simplicity of slicing the cucumber, the crunch of the
lettuce as the blade cut through its heart, and the reward of arranging
everything neatly on the plate after the brain draining mathematical
calculations of an average day working on the Chimera Programme.
Claudia Dax was on her third beer when the comm. buzzed.
Picking up the wireless handset she hit the answer button.
“Yes, what do you want?”
“Sorry, Claudia. We have a problem with the Chimera
Programme.”
“What is the problem, this time?”
“The programme’s chameleon mode has caught a cold. In turn,
the self diagnostic script is showing signs of erratic behaviour.”
“Damn. I’ll be there in five.”
The emotionless voice at the other end of the comm added:
“You don’t have five minutes, Miss Dax. Get down here now,
that’s what you get paid such an exorbitant salary for. And, I would
remind you that Professor Kirill is expecting Chimera to be glitch free
in under seventy-six hours.”
“Yeah, yeah, I understand and you don’t need to fucking remind
me of the countdown. I’ll be down in five minutes.”
She killed the comm. connection.
“Shit...” she muttered, forking a large amount of salad into
her mouth and taking one more swig of beer. She tossed the empty
bottle into the bin where it clashed against the other empties. She
disappeared back into the bedroom, brain turning over possible
reasons that could have caused such a catastrophic problem to occur...
and all the time at the back of Claudia’s mind was the nagging doubt
about Scorpion, and what happened to their HQ - and about Ferran
& Cardini International...
She did not see the flashing blue curser on her screen.

Claudia Dax loved the small hours.
The early hours of the morning when everything was quiet and
still; when everyone else was sleeping; when the world appeared to be
dead.
Claudia was often wide awake at this time; there were no
distractions, she could think clearly...
And now: 3.30 a.m.
She lay on top of the duvet wearing her light cotton pyjamas,
staring up at the ceiling. She rolled from the bed and stood for a
moment. The air-conditioning whirring quietly in the background
and she sighed, brain awash with binary codes, calculations and
projections for the Chimera Programme. She smiled to herself, and
then wandered, seemingly without purpose or direction, out of her
apartment towards the lift.
Claudia gazed out through the three-sixty degree glass module as
it descended silently. The doors opened.
Claudia Dax listened and with a sense of foreboding stepped,
still in her pyjamas and bare feet, out onto the luxurious carpet, her
whole body tingling with the audacity, the daring of her actions...
to creep around on her own in a top security Government research
establishment at night... naughty, very naughty...
She walked the corridors while virtually all of the other inhabitants
of the complex slept, and after passing several security officers who
merely nodded sedately at her presence, she moved stealthily to the
unguarded air conditioning shaft leading up to ground level and the
natural elements beyond. She raked her auburn hair back with both
hands and slipped the elasticated band in place to make a pony-tail,
stepped towards the ventilation grille, crouched down, and pulled it
gently towards her. The grille came away easily, and as usual she was
completely alone, as she made her way through the maze of tunnels...
She reached the exit at the rear of the ground-level complex.
She produced a key and, without effort, overrode the electronic sentry
software - after all, if her exceptional programming skill could not be
used to her advantage sometimes...
Claudia stepped
outside.
The cold highland night hit her as she took a few steps, revelling
in the feel of the fresh air, the real world, the possible
danger
of being
outside in her pyjamas in the Scottish Highlands. Knowing, that
all around her, heavily armed guards were concealed at their posts.
Part of her wondered if they could see her, and merely ignored her
eccentricity, her need to be outside. Another part of her revelled in
the feeling of breaking the rules. But, only so far... She couldn’t go any
further towards the perimeter or the guards would most certainly spot
her and report the breach back to Kirill: personnel were only allowed
out of the establishment with an armed escort. But she sometimes
had to be completely alone, and to breathe the fresh mountain air,
completely alone.
She gazed up at the star-filled sky for a long while, moonlight
glinted across her slender figure, and she thought how lucky she was
to have a body that many women would die for, and every man in the
department fantasised over.
She patted her flat belly. “Still firm and strong,” she sighed.
She stepped back into the artificial world, sliding the protective
grille back into place and twisting the toggles to the locked position.
She re-instated the security sentry programme and readjusted the log
to how it was before her little jaunt outside. Digits flickered across
the small screen and Claudia checked that she had not trodden in any
debris from outside.
If only they knew, she thought.
A shiver ran up and down her spine; half in delight, half in fear.
Yes; she had been the best programmer and systems analyst - in
her final year at Cambridge, possibly the best ever. But there had been
something else; a chink deep inside her soul that led her to
hack
...
She found it easy, had honed her skills, and refined them to
such a degree, that she had managed to computer rape some of the
largest international computing organisations. She had cracked their
supposedly unbreakable passwords, entered their databases and played
with their files - just for a laugh... She always felt alive and turned-on
by smashing their personnel files. The adrenalin rush she always got
from fucking around with their finances was better than any drug
induced high.
Claudia knew what drove her; knew that she had been born with
a gift. But she hated -
loathed
- authority or anything which said, you
will do it our way, and no other way... Her usual response to this was
very simple... Well, you can all fuck off.
Claudia thought of herself as something of a cyber-freedom
fighter - data protection? Nothing was safe in the twenty-first century.
She wanted to open up the cans-of-worms that lurked beneath global
organisations and governments. Find their dirtiest secrets and make
them public on the Internet. She had the skill and knowledge to do
this. To break the code of their digital locks and keys. She had the
Chimera Programme at her fingertips...
Claudia smiled mischievously to herself.
Well, she had written the Chimera Programme script. Although
no-one would ever know, because Kirill had already taken all of the
credit for it himself. The British taxpayer had funded it, and Scorpion,
under the watchful eye of GCHQ, had been conducting the field trials,
which had looked promising to say the least. Chimera was capable
of infiltrating any network - unseen. It could take control of any
computer and override the system within seconds; hack world data
banks; match the individual identities of every known major league
organised crime criminal and global terrorist alike. Take control and
utilise strategic military and spy satellites to coordinate ground, air and
sea forces anywhere on the planet...
Chimera was the ultimate Artificial Intelligence - but it was more
than that - it was constantly learning - constantly adapting - constantly
changing...
Chimera gave the infected computer the ability to think, to
possess the ability to know what was right, and what was wrong;
feeding every piece of hidden data back to GCHQ. It would be the
ultimate weapon against global terrorism, and the British would be
at the forefront of this awesome new technology. Scorpion could
conquer the ever growing terror of organised crime and drug cartels
raising billions of dollars every year to fund the likes of al Qaeda, of
gun runners and bomb makers, as well as Assassins...
Claudia shivered. She understood that the stakes were high; she
had not really understood or taken on board the implications before
the total wipe-out of Scorpion HQ in London. But now with the
deaths of so many innocent people, she felt chilled to her core.
Claudia knew; this was no longer a game on a screen.
And that it had most likely never been.
Claudia walked back to the lift, and then, decided to drop by
the central processor lab, snoop around, see what the automated
machines were up to at this anti-social hour of the day. The machines
were programmed to run routine operations during the small hours
and so there was little fear of meeting anybody at this lonely time.
After descending to the lowest level, she trod silently through
the carpeted corridors to the central lab. She stopped. She accessed
the first Armourlite glass door and then as this closed, she was left
standing in the airlock awaiting the second door to open - it was then
that she saw her.
A tall figure...
Claudia Dax froze.
The young woman was motionless, standing near the machine
that had the Chimera Programme loaded onto its hardrive.
Claudia stared for a long moment. No movement came from
the woman and Claudia tried to meet her gaze, positive that she had
been seen and yet aware that the woman gave no indication of having
spotted her.
Claudia hadn’t seen her before. Perhaps she was a new security
officer, drafted in from London?
Or was she one of Kirill’s own people? Sent to oversee the last
few vital elements of the programme that would see it complete and
fully operational...
Claudia sank slowly to the carpet and sat, hidden by the solid
lower panels, wondering what she should now do. She crawled over
to the door that had admitted her, and swiped her security pass. The
door slid open silently and she crawled out into and along the corridor,
turned the corner, then got to her feet and, with a smile and sigh of
relief at her unbelievable luck, ran as fast as she could to the lift.
A few minutes later, she was back inside her apartment, pacing
about her living space, a glass of Jack Daniels in her shaking hand,
sipping it slowly and wondering what the tall athletic young woman
had been up to; why had she been there?
Her heart was still pounding as she pondered the strange woman
she had witnessed; black skin-tight cat suit, cut perfectly to every
contour of her slender body, hair blond, cropped. The eyes of the
palest blue. The woman had appeared relaxed yet, threatening… very,
very threatening!
Claudia shivered, and sipped again at her drink.
Who was she?
Must have been drafted in as additional core security staff to
watch over Chimera in the final stages of development. But what
about all of the other security measures, weren’t these good enough?
Weren’t the electrified razor wire fencing, the SAS trained guards, the
bomb-proof concrete walls and armour plated sliding doors - enough
to protect this planet changing programme?
The answer was of course - yes.
Claudia laughed softly, bitterly, to herself, as she stared out over
the mountainous terrain through the wall-mounted fifty inch LCD
flat-screen monitor.
Pondering her very strange and very near encounter, Claudia
took another sip of the amber liquid, enjoying the smooth flavour. A
word crept into the recesses of her mind; a word she had once heard
spoken, when overhearing part of a conversation between Kirill and
Ramus and one other, whom she did not know...
“
Assassin
...”
They had all stopped talking and turned to stare directly at her,
when they had realised that she was working in the computer suite
they had just walked in to. She apologised and had left the room
immediately.
But now; the word seemed to come naturally to the fore-front of
Claudia’s mind, from somewhere deep in the vaults of her remarkable
memory. It seemed to fit into the scheme of personal bodyguards and
enforcers...
Assassin. An Assassin. The Assassins? Was it just one, a dozen or
many? No matter, because it always came down to one thing - killing.
A shiver ran through her body, realising that she had drunk a
little too much, and then downed the rest of the whisky in one gulp.
She decided she would ask her friend and work colleague, Ed
King in the morning. If anyone would know about new security
measures being initiated, he would.
Yes, definitely a good idea; He was Kirill’s assistant chief of
security, and may even know about the Assassins.
Maybe.