Chimera Code (Jake Dillon Adventure Thriller Series) (22 page)

Dillon and Tatiana had a simple breakfast of fruit, bread and
cheese brought to their room by one of Ezra’s personal assistants,
Spiros, and washed down with strong black coffee. Dillon gestured
for Spiros to stay, and the swarthy young Greek man sat on a chair by
the window. He poured himself a coffee and grinned over at Dillon.

Dillon shrugged and grinning back, said. “You look quite
dangerous yourself.”
Spiros shook his head, long dark hair swaying. “No. Mr Dillon.
I am here because of my expertise with computer based surveillance
programmes. My primary role is to ensure that this facility runs
smoothly.” He smiled broadly, and sipped his coffee. “I’ll let Ezra tell
you about that; he may not want me talking like this.”
“And there was I thinking that you were just the hired help. Tats,
doesn’t he look like the hired help?”
Tats nodded, taking a bite out of the peach she was eating.
“Sorry to stereo-type you, but it’s your whole demeanour. Far
too subservient.”
“Hired help - subservient!” Spiros stood up and added. “I am
no-one’s hired help, and I am a serving field officer with Interpol,
seconded to this facility to act as technical support.”
Dillon held up his hands in mock surrender, “Whoa, hold on
there, Spiros. I was only fooling with you, no offence man.”
“No offence taken. Ezra simply asked me to bring your breakfast
to you as I was passing your rooms. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have
much work to do. Thank you for the coffee, and should you require
anything else, please speak to housekeeping.” Spiros said, as he turned
and left the room.
“An officer with Interpol, and a computer based surveillance
programmer, eh? I wonder just what the hell my illustrious uncle is up
to down here on Santorini under the British Government umbrella.”
“Well I’m sure it’s not legal,” said Dillon.
“With Ezra, it never is.”
They dressed and, stepping into the early morning sunshine, saw
Ezra sitting on the veranda steps. He turned, smiling up at the couple
and said, “Looks like we’ve been lucky.”
Dillon stood, stretching his back. He lit a cigarette and inhaled
deeply, “Lucky?”
“Nothing has shown up in signals; we’ve scanned all of the usual
channels using the hacked satellite links we have access to. There are
reports of you - both, something about a stolen light aircraft, nothing
about your heading, and no mention of Santorini. If your enemies -
our
enemies - are coming here for us, then they are remaining extremely
quiet about.”
Dillon snorted. “Don’t get lazy, Ezra. Just because you can’t see
them, doesn’t mean they are not there.”
Ezra frowned, his face hardening. “I know that, sonny boy. And
we have been making preparations. The operation is far bigger than
you - or anybody - suspects. It would appear that we are safe from
discovery, for now. You therefore, can help
us
.”
“Help you? How?”
Tatiana smiled down at Ezra. “My uncle Ezra, Dillon, is as you
know, a hacking genius; he was one of only a handful of hand-picked
programmers who worked on the Chimera Programme at the very
outset of the project. You hold the computer access codes for a
number of secret Government departments.”
Ezra cut-in, “Your assistance could solve a little problem we
have with decoding information that could greatly help us...”
“Just what the hell is it that you are doing here?” Asked Dillon.
He leaned against the balustrade, looking out over the Santorini
landscape, olive trees rustled in the caress of the warm sea breeze.
“What we have here, is a covert listening and monitoring facility
that is funded entirely by the British taxpayer,” said Ezra. “In fact, we
are the secret police of
all
secret government departments, including
the Intelligence Services. If you like, the secret within the secret. Why
Santorini, I hear you ask. It’s off the radar - off the beaten track - it’s
my home and I was retired many years ago on a full pension. We are a
mechanism to stop
bad
things happening.”
“Hmm,” Dillon rubbed at the back of his neck, easing the
tension. “When I was a serving officer in army intelligence, I heard
there was a secret police,” he gave Tatiana a long sideways glance, “but
I didn’t know you were involved.”
“Not many people do. Our cover is, and always has been, that
of a simple olive grower. This serves us well with the locals who we
employ at picking times, and saves any awkward questions being asked.
And, as all of the facility is deep underground our work can be carried
out here, unhindered. Ironically, we are the people who are supposed
to have all the answers, and yet there are things happening and we’re
at a loss to discover the real reasons. The Chimera Programme - is the
ultimate military weapon - but something is out of place, a discordant
note, and I’m not sure how deep it goes. You want to know what we
do here, Dillon? We solve problems. It’s that simple. And then we go
hunting.”
“Hunting?”
“Oh yes,” said Ezra, dark eyes gleaming. “We go hunting.”

The sun had long since set, darkness came and with it the time
to eat.
Ezra had spent the morning showing Dillon and Tatiana around
his private world under the arid landscape of Santorini; the olive
groves flourished with the loving care of a small group of village
women who came on foot to tend the trees and harvest the olives.
Now they were seated outside, around the back of the villa,
where a small fire was burning in a wrought iron fire basket. Dillon
sat in a wicker easy chair facing the view of the olive groves. Tatiana
beside him. Ezra was sitting across the fire, large chunks of mutton
on a skewer before him sizzling fat that smoked and flared over the
flames. Also present - some of them meeting Dillon for the first
time - were a few other members of Ezra’s team whom he slowly
introduced.
“This is Spiros; I think you have already met.”
Although Spiros looked surly, he reached over, and shook
Dillon’s hand; his eyes glinted in the firelight.
“No hard feelings.” Dillon said softly.
“No problem, everything’s cool, dude.”
“This is Franky; our resident computer hacker and presently
attempting a spot of breaking and entering into Kirill’s mainframe
located in the Scottish Highlands. She learned her craft at the
University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Canada.”
Franky smiled a wide beautiful smile; of French Canadian
descent, she wore her sun-kissed hair in a shoulder length pony-tail,
a silken mane, her lips were a deep red, shining in the glow of the
flames.
She reached over to shake Dillon’s and Tatiana’s hands; Dillon’s
gaze met the intelligent bright eyes of the woman and he had to avert
his gaze for fear of gawping blatantly at her beauty.
When she spoke, her words were a soft purr, a luxurious sound,
the husky French accent of a predatory female. “I have heard many
things about you, Mr Dillon. Ezra speaks with - shall we say, passion
- about your colourful career.”
“I am sure he does.”
“Are you everything he says you are?”
Dillon was captivated by that beautiful gaze and magical French
accent. He realised that their hands were still touching, her skin warm
against his; the fingers stroking his hand with ever so gentle pressure.
“I really couldn’t say.”
“Oh, come now, don’t go all British and modest on me, Mr
Dillon.” Franky broke the handshake, and turned, winked at Ezra,
then back to Dillon. “He says that although you’re a murderous
bastard, you really are extremely
talented.”
The men laughed; Tatiana glared, first at Franky, then at the side
of Dillon’s head.
“And this is Karp; another professional hacker. At one time
he was wanted by the F.B.I. Interpol - MI6 - and the KGB, no less.
That is, until he was able to teach them a few things about protecting
their supposedly secure mainframes from hacker attacks; bought his
freedom and all of their respect.”
“Hi, man,” said Karp, grinning. He was a wiry young man of
Northern European origin, his head was completely shaven tight
to the scalp; his round face seemed to be one huge grin. He shook
Dillon’s hand enthusiastically.
“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
doing
is 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.”