Page 78 of The Devil's Ransom

“Can’t you fly there?”

“No airports. The closest one is right here in Split, where the Rock Star bird is sitting right now. People fly into Split and then take the ferry.”

“Looks like you’re driving. I’ll send you the information. Get on it.”

“So I’m not going to get a meal and a beer by the pool after a shoot-out and saving Blaisdell Consulting from compromise? Story of my life.”

“You get this guy and I’ll buy the beer.”

I said, “Will do.” I disconnected and found that Jennifer had changed back into her operational clothes, her bag by the door, having known where this was headed.

She said, “Saddle up?”

I sighed and said, “Yep. Get the team ready to move. I want to leave in twenty minutes.”

She pulled out her phone and I leaned back in the chair, saying, “One of these days, I’m going to get to use the hotel pool.”

Chapter45

Dylan Hobbes sat on a bench in the entranceway of the West Wing, his “visitor/escort required” badge around his neck, feeling the sweat start to pour out from under his arms and the back of his neck, an uncontrollable stream he hated but could not control.

He was horrible at this game, and always had been, even with his time in the Tailored Access Organization of the NSA. Certain men did the actual reconnaissance pretending to be telephone repairmen or something else, but that wasn’t him. He was the technical component, and knew that anyone who looked at him pretending to be something he wasn’t would suspect him and his anxiety immediately. But he knew he had to put on a performance here. Pretend the news he was about to learn was a complete surprise.

Alexander Palmer approached and said, “Sorry to call you back in, but you’re the only expertise that’s been read on to this specific problem set. Follow me.”

He started walking, Hobbes behind him saying, “What is it? Is it Dark Star again? So soon? I thought you stopped them?”

Palmer turned around as he walked, saying, “So did we, but we have an issue. Let’s wait until we get inside the Oval.”

Hobbes nodded and Palmer did a little bit of a double take, saying, “You okay? You don’t look that great.”

Hobbes mopped his brow and said, “Yes, yes, I’m fine. I just sweat a lot.”

“Okay, no issues.” He opened the door to the Oval Office and announced Hobbes’s arrival. Hobbes entered and found the same four people around the table from the meeting the day before. The president, the secretary of defense, the director of the CIA, and the man he knew as George Wolffe.

He hesitated, not sure what to do, and President Hannister said, “Come grab a seat. I’m sure this call comes as a bit of a shock.”

He said, “Yes, sir, it did. As I understood it, you’d found the cell who’d hacked your computers and had solved the ransomware problem. I’m sorry I was little help.”

Yesterday, before his Trojan horse had triggered, he’d had one final meeting with those whom he called the “Secret Squirrels.” He still didn’t know what the men George Wolffe represented did, but after TAO, he knew it was something beyond the scope of top secret. To his delight, he’d found out the man who worked his code had been killed, and the other was no threat. He’d left, knowing his attack on Auriga would work, mainly because there was nobody to stop it now.

Well, almost nobody. There was still Branko, but Hobbes was pretty sure he was in the wind and on the run.

President Hannister said, “I hope you kept working on the encryption scheme, because we have another problem. You do that, right? As a part of your business?”

“Yes, sir, of course. My company has a database of over two dozen different ransomware codes, most just variations of Fancy Bear or some other encryption attack, but we haven’t gotten anywhere with the Dark Star code. It’s something new. What’s going on? I thought the cell was destroyed.”

President Hannister said, “So did we.” He went through the Auriga launch and the current problems, ending with, “They’re telling us we have about sixty hours. That’s it.”

Hobbes hoped his shocked face was suitably authentic. “This just happened? After the cell was taken down?”

“Yes. We’re still trying to figure out how, after we took out the primary cell.”

Hobbes realized now was the time to plant the seed. The destruction he wanted was designed to galvanize the nation against a common foe, and a simple bunch of criminals wouldn’t suffice. He said, “Are you sure it’s the same Dark Star and not someone stealing their name to deflect? After all, they’ve publicly said they wouldn’t ever attack something involving life support, like a hospital or power plant, and this is most definitely a life support risk.”

“No, we’re not sure. We do know that the key we used for our systems did not work, which leans into your theory. That’s why you’re here. We want you to take a look at this new code like you did for the last one.”

Hobbes, of course, did not say the code was running on his computer in his laboratory right this minute, or that he’d made sure that Pushka had changed the key precisely to prevent them from overriding the system from their other operation. He’d been tracking the attack since it had initiated, and he could turn it off in less time than this meeting took.

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