Cyber Terror (17 page)

Jordan tried to remember Short Circuit’s messages, wondering if there was anything in them that would help him decide what to believe.
When it all kicks off
. That’s what Short
Circuit had said near the end of his last recording. Jordan was not convinced that Eli would come up with something like that. He spoke literally. He’d associate a kick-off only with
football. For the same reason, Jordan also doubted that he’d refer to Captain Lazenby’s credit having finally run out. When Short Circuit talked about Carlton Reed, he said that he
didn’t care for music, yet Eli found it soothing.

No matter how guilty Eli Kennington appeared, there was a chance he wasn’t Short Circuit after all.

Glancing round the circular room, Jordan realized that Eli didn’t have a television. There wasn’t one in his Cambridge house either. “Do you like films and TV?”

Bent over the clutter on the couch, Eli answered without interrupting his hunt, “I don’t understand what they are for.”

So, Jordan asked himself, why did Short Circuit say that films were very helpful in his message following the Quito disaster?

Eli stood upright with a small sharp scalpel in his hand. He smiled and advanced towards Jordan.

“Do you really expect me to just sit here and let you... do what you’re going to do?”

Standing next to him with the blade in his hand, Kennington said, “I know you will.” Then he yawned, drew up a chair and sat down wearily. Surprised by sudden exhaustion, he
muttered, “I am tired.”

“It’s late,” Jordan replied, wondering if he knew what was behind Eli’s unexpected fatigue.

“But I do not get tired.”

“What are you going to do on Sunday?”

Eli looked at the thin sharp blade in his hand. “I am dedicating the whole weekend to exploring your arm and head.”

“Apart from that?”

“When I get interested in something, nothing else matters.” His eyelids drooping, he looked oddly at Jordan and said, “Did you do anything to the drinks?”

“Yes,” Jordan admitted. “I got you to turn your back for a few seconds and switched them round.”

“So I drank yours!”

“Yes.”

“Why did you do that?” Eli asked.

“Because you seemed nervous about who got which drink. You wanted me to have a particular one. I thought it’d be interesting to see what happened if you drank it instead.”

“But...”

“Did you put something in it?”

Eli yawned again and struggled to keep his eyes open. “I take a lot of medication. I am an expert in pills. I have one that makes people very drowsy and it lowers their resistance. That is
what I gave you.”

Jordan smiled. “Sorry, but I didn’t take it. You did. I’m not the one feeling dead beat.”

Eli flopped in the chair.

Jordan seized the opportunity. He grabbed the scalpel and threw it awkwardly across the room with his left arm. When he stood up, Eli didn’t react. He remained sprawled in his seat. His
eyelids had closed.

Jordan leaned close and said, “You haven’t murdered anyone, have you?”

Eli’s eyes flickered open for a moment. “Murdering is not nice. It would not be a good thing to do.”

Jordan delved into his trouser pocket and extracted the key. Squinting, he crossed the room, grabbed Eli’s laptop and made for the front door. There was no challenge from Kennington. He
seemed to be asleep. Jordan unlocked the door and left. Before making his getaway, though, he locked Kennington in his own holiday cottage.

Jordan decided not to take Eli’s car. With little eyesight and only one ungainly arm, he doubted that he could drive safely. Instead, he walked back down the track, towards the main road
and the village that he’d seen earlier.

Well beyond midnight, it was a clear and quiet night, but the cold wind blowing across the fields made Jordan shiver. He seemed to be the only person awake. No ghostly lights moved along the
tarmac that divided the farmland. As he walked, he thought more about Eli Kennington. If he was simply a strange and innocent man, who was guilty? Who was Short Circuit? Jordan’s mind turned
again towards his fellow agent. But he wasn’t convinced. Even though Raven had tried to befriend Eli Kennington, she could not be acting out of sympathy for him because she hadn’t known
about his conviction. She had no reason to target everyone responsible for jailing him. It just didn’t add up.

Maybe someone else involved in the court case was out for vengeance on Eli’s behalf. Jordan didn’t know a lot about trials, but there could have been a solitary juror who thought
Kennington was innocent, but who’d been outvoted. Perhaps one of the officials who had defended Eli was now taking the law into his or her own hands.

Jordan froze. There was a faint rustling noise to his right. Someone or something was moving by the hedge. He could no longer pinpoint sounds, but he realized that the noise was coming from low
down in the verge. He took a breath and moved on. He’d probably disturbed a bird or a rat.

He reached the village after an hour of brisk walking. But it was as quiet as a graveyard. With relief, though, he noticed that the pub was still lit. The main door was shut and refused to open.
He could not even force his way in with his bionic arm. It still hung limply, like a dead weight attached to his shoulder. Instead he knocked on the wooden door panels with his left fist. Getting
no answer, he banged again and again. He refused to give up. After a few minutes, someone arrived on the other side and grumbled, “All right, all right! Do you know what time it is?
We’re closed.” It was a woman’s voice.

“There’s been an accident,” Jordan shouted back. “I’m hurt. I need help.”

There was the sound of a bolt being withdrawn and a key turning, then the big door swung open. The woman was middle-aged, dressed in jeans and a blouse. She looked him up and down.
“What’s happened?”

Jordan pointed to his right arm. “I can’t move it. It’s broken. And my eyes are blurry. I can hardly see.”

“You’d better come in and sit down,” she said, standing to one side.

“Thanks. I just need to make a phone call really. I know someone who’ll get me home.”

She was still suspicious of him, but she said, “All right.”

Even with a damaged sense of smell, Jordan recognized the beery aroma of a pub recently emptied of its customers. He stepped inside unsteadily and asked, “Where am I? What’s this
place called?”

Angel sent an engineer to Cambridge to retrieve Jordan’s stranded Jaguar and his phone. He also sent a taxi to bring Jordan back to Highgate Village.

In the bunker, Jordan reported everything that had happened. He also handed Eli’s laptop to Raven. “Kennington said he could reactivate all my microchips with that. Maybe you can
instead.”

At once, Angel said, “Get on to it, Raven. Top priority.”

“All right,” she replied. “But...”

“What?”

“It’s tricky. I might be out of my depth.”

Angel frowned. “I’ve never heard you say that before. I’ll get our computer technicians in to help. That’ll speed it up.”

“Okay.” Looking at Jordan, Raven added, “Before I check it out, just tell me. Was it Short Circuit you locked up in his own windmill?”

Jordan took a deep breath and then shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

Angel, Raven and Kate all looked astonished. “But he’s a dead cert,” said Raven.

Kate exclaimed, “He was going to pull you apart.”

“Yeah, but that’s just how he is. I don’t think he’d murder anyone.”

“He ran you over,” said Raven.

“Maybe he didn’t mean to. Maybe I was just in the way. I don’t know. But, for some reason, I like him. He wasn’t... complicated. He just said what he meant. And some of
the things he said were the exact opposite of Short Circuit’s messages.”

“We need to know who else was involved in his trial,” Angel decided. “Give me the key to his cottage and I’ll send an agent to interrogate him. Maybe he can remember
– if he’s not Short Circuit himself.”

Raven was so fixed on the laptop that she didn’t notice Jordan coming into the underground computer room. She let out a cry and jumped when he asked, “How’s
it going?”

“You gave me a fright,” she replied. “It’s okay. Not brilliant, but okay. I’ve located a program called ‘UnTrojan’. That’s bound to be what we
want, but I’m not sure how it works. The technicians will be able to help. They’re due any second. I’ll figure it out with them. You can’t rush this. If you press the wrong
button, it might demolish your control systems completely.”

Jordan nodded. “Eli remembered you.”

“Yeah? Well, I tried to engage with him – I tried to be kind – but you can’t. Not with someone who’s only interested in himself and gadgets.” She paused
before adding, “He’s a good candidate for Short Circuit.”

“Maybe, but...”

Raven interrupted. “You’re inexperienced. Angel’s sending a specialist to talk to him. Then we’ll know.” She looked into Jordan’s face and added, “Go
and get some rest. I don’t need you yet. I’ll come and get you when we’re ready to kick-start your bits.”

Jordan sighed. “All right. Thanks. I’m knackered.”

Someone had got him by his arm. He could feel the fingers gripping his left elbow. He could feel the shaking. The movement dragged him back from sleep to wakefulness.
“What...?”

Kate Stelfox was tugging at him and whispering into his ear. “Jordan! What you said got me wondering.”

He groaned and opened his still feeble eyes. “What did I say?”

“About Raven,” she said in a loud whisper. “I didn’t think for a minute that she... But I made a few discreet enquiries and looked a few things up.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about where Raven was on the eleventh of February.”

Finally Jordan shook off the numbness of sleep. “That’s when the plane came down in Ecuador.”

Kate nodded. “She was on a skiing holiday in Switzerland.”

Jordan sat up in his bed. “Geography’s not my strong point, but I don’t think Switzerland’s on the way to Ecuador.”

“But I don’t know for sure that she stayed in Switzerland the whole time. She went by train. They’re the only records I could find. She could’ve flown on from
Switzerland.”

After his encounter with Eli Kennington, Jordan suspected that Short Circuit was using the same Trojan technology. Even so, he said, “I suppose a hacker could have crashed it from
anywhere...even Australia.”

“I haven’t finished yet. It’s quite a coincidence she was taking a long weekend when the Edinburgh crash happened. I don’t know about the rest, but a while ago she
arranged to have tomorrow off as well – exactly when Short Circuit’s up to something. Angel says it’s her job to help unlock your enhancements. If she does that this morning, he
won’t cancel her day’s leave. He’s got other computer technicians who can stand in for her.”

Jordan forced a smile. “It’s not exactly proof, is it?”

“Remember when we watched nobody collecting the five million in Kingston Upon Thames? How did Short Circuit know the powers-that-be had coughed up? He – or she – didn’t
make an appearance in the park.” Answering her own question, she continued, “A Unit Red agent would’ve known what was going on.”

“But...”

“What?”

Jordan shook his head. “She can’t be getting revenge for Kennington. She didn’t know he was in prison – if she told me the truth. But why would anyone go for revenge so
long after he’s been let out? It’s too late.”

“Not if sympathy for Eli Kennington isn’t the driving force.”

Jordan hesitated, thinking. There was another option and its cruelty made him shiver. If Raven really was Short Circuit, she could have taken advantage of Eli Kennington’s weakness and
innocence. She could have set him up as a stooge. “All right,” he said to Kate. “She could’ve made it look like Kennington by bumping off his enemies. That way, he’d
take the blame, not her. But why would she do that?”

Kate let out a long breath and then admitted, “I don’t know.”

“I suppose it doesn’t have to be Raven. Anyone who knows him could be trying to dump him in it. As long as they’re red hot with electronics.”

“I guess so.”

“Lying here isn’t going to sort it out,” Jordan said. “I’ll get up. It’ll take me an age. Do you know how hard it is to get a shirt on with only one
hand?”

“Do you want me to...?” She took one look at his frown and grinned. “No, you’d rather take an age than admit you need a woman to dress you.” Walking to the door,
she said, “I’ll leave you to it.”

“I’ll be down in about eight hours.”

Jordan went into the medical room. There, Raven and two technicians were hunched over a single laptop. To the side, Angel and Kate were talking quietly.

“Ah,” Angel said, stepping forward. “Sit down. We’re ready...”

“As ready as we’re ever going to be,” Raven said.

“Relax,” Angel continued. “They’re just going to try turning one system on. Not everything.”

“Is that so only one thing cops it, if it goes wrong?”

Angel paused before answering. “I can’t lie to you, Jordan. There’s a risk. One step at a time is a wise precaution.”

“It’s a fiendishly tricky program, this,” Raven admitted. “But we’re going for your sense of smell first.”

“Because that’s the one I can most easily do without?”

The others looked at each other and then Angel said, “Yes. Let’s do it.”

Jordan realized that he was holding his breath as one of the technicians typed for a few seconds and then hit the
return
key.

Everyone in the room was gazing at Jordan, waiting.

Nothing clicked in his head or anywhere else. Nothing jolted or went dead. After a few seconds, Jordan smiled, sniffed and said, “Someone stepped in something nasty this
morning.”

“Wasn’t me,” Raven replied quickly. “I’ve been working here all night.”

They all checked their shoes. One of the computer specialists said, “It could be me. There’s a tiny stain. I can’t smell it, but it could be dog mess.”

Jordan said, “It got stronger when you lifted your shoe up.”

Angel beamed broadly. “The joys of an acute nose.”