The Emperor's Revenge (The Oregon Files) Read online

  Gretchen gave her a puzzled look. “You mean the phone was lashed to something?”

  Juan nodded slowly. “Makes sense. If they were using the camera in a cell phone to observe the interior of the car, they’d have to attach it to the dashboard somehow. It would also allow them to talk to Munier and tell him what to do.”

  “It’s odd he would commit suicide in such a public and gruesome way just because someone ordered him to,” Gretchen said.

  “It gets stranger,” Linda said. “They found some of the same residue melted onto the face of Munier’s watch and on the steering wheel.”

  Juan paced as he imagined how someone might force the bank president to install the virus. Then he stopped and said, “Could his hands have been tied to the steering wheel?”

  “Sure,” Linda said. “But why?”

  “It doesn’t seem possible,” Gretchen said to Juan. “He wouldn’t be able to make a full rotation of the wheel with his hands lashed to it. From the look of the TV feed, he was making violent turns that would have required free hands.”

  “This might sound crazy,” Juan said, “but what if he wasn’t driving? The Tesla is drive-by-wire. It could have been programmed to be remotely driven.”

  Linda snapped her fingers. “Just like the PIG.”

  “Right.”

  “The PIG?” Gretchen asked.

  “We have our own remote-controlled truck,” Linda said. “Powered Investigator Ground. It was damaged in a recent mission, but the remote control system worked beautifully. I’ll go take a closer look at the TV feed from his car chase. If we’re lucky, maybe someone got a high-def video of Munier’s hands on the wheel.”

  “Good idea. We’re heading to the bank president’s office. Apparently, whoever wrote the virus that Munier installed has left a message for us.”

  “Can’t wait to hear that,” Linda said, and she was gone.

  They arrived at Munier’s office to see Eric and Murph excitedly talking with a woman in her twenties, a cute blonde wearing horn-rimmed glasses and her hair in a pixie cut. She was at the computer’s keyboard, and Murph and Eric were hunched over her on either side, pointing at the screen. The three of them chattered in dense computer jargon, little of which Juan understood.

  “Sounds like you two have made a new friend,” he said.

  After Juan and Gretchen identified themselves, Murph and Eric stepped on each other’s words to introduce the seated woman to them.

  “This is Marie Marceau,” Murph said at the same time that Eric blurted out, “She’s the Sûreté’s top computer analyst.”

  “Let’s take it one at a time,” Gretchen said, obviously amused at their infatuation.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Marie said in a silky French accent. “We were stuck . . . I was stuck about how to break in to the computer system. The virus is a very unusual design that has us locked out. But then Chris and Colt had some fantastic ideas about how to approach the problem.”

  “She really just needed a little push in the right direction,” Eric gushed.

  Murph jumped in. “Marie was already on the right track. She would have figured it out soon enough—”

  “Okay, okay,” Juan said with a gesture of surrender. “You all make a great team and were able to get into the system—got it. You said there was a message?”

  “What message?” Rivard said as he burst through the door, breathless, as if he’d run three blocks. “Marie, what is this?”

  “Ah bon, you got my text.”

  “It just said that you had a breakthrough and to come at once. Now I find you telling these consultants information before you tell me?” He eyed Juan and Gretchen with contempt.

  “I haven’t told them anything yet,” Marie said in exasperation. No doubt Rivard was unpopular with his staff. “They arrived only a moment before you did.”

  Rivard was partly mollified and collected himself. “Well, go on. Tell us what you’ve found.”

  “I think my new friends are being generous. I wouldn’t have gotten this far without them. But, together, we were able to override the code that had us completely locked out of the system. When we did, a message popped up on the screen. Here it is. ‘To the winner go the spoils, you computer genius, so congratulations! It’s impressive that there’s someone out there worthy of this message. All other hackers may be inferior to you, but don’t bother trying to crack my code. It’s 4096-bit encryption, so you’d need about a hundred years to break it.’”

  “Is that true?” Rivard demanded.

  “Not at all,” Murph said.

  “Good. Then how long will it take?”

  Murph and Eric looked at each other and shrugged.

  “Maybe ten years,” Eric said.

  Rivard looked like he’d blow an artery. “What?”

  “A hundred years assumes using current technology. But with computer power doubling every eighteen months, we should be able to solve a cryptographic problem like this in ten years.”

  “Maybe even five,” Murph suggested.

  Juan didn’t know if they were being serious or just yanking the imperious Rivard’s chain. “Keep reading,” he said.

  “Don’t think you have that long, either,” Marie continued. “Every day counts and you’ve got ten left. All of the backups and banks connected to Credit Condamine are infected now. Upon reaching the time limit, if our forthcoming demands aren’t met, you’ll see the economy of Europe plunged into a chaos that will make you long for the good old days of the Great Depression.”

  The room quieted at that line.

  “Can they really do that?” Juan asked Gretchen.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. Without being able to see exactly what they’ve done to the software, it may be impossible to tell. But this bank is connected tightly with many other European banks. Perhaps they found some way of corrupting the transfer files.”

  “There’s one final part,” Marie said, and kept reading.

  “Go ahead and comb through the code looking for this time bomb, if you dare, but eventually you’ll have to cough up the dough to us. Heaven help you if you don’t. One more major bank will suffer a catastrophic system failure in five days as a signal that we’re not lying. We’ll be in touch.”

  “We’re obviously dealing with at least one highly skilled hacker here,” Murph said. “This is top-of-the-line work. And we likely won’t be able to dig down farther without some kind of access key.”

  “For all we know,” Eric said, “digging farther may even activate the time bomb that they’re talking about.”

  Rivard didn’t seem worried by the threat. “You all are fools. Don’t you see? Munier planted this.”

  “What do you mean?” Gretchen asked.

  “He knew that we would bring in analysts to check out the system, once he reported the break-in, and the guards were found dead, wherever he dumped them. This message was intended to throw the suspicion off him.”

  “A bank president didn’t create this virus himself. It’s possible that the hacker had his own agenda and wrote this message without Munier’s knowledge.”

  “There’s another possibility,” Juan said. “We think Munier might have been coerced into planting the virus, that he was framed to make it look like he was trying to cover up an embezzlement scheme.”

  “That’s absurd,” Rivard said. “If someone went to the trouble of framing Munier, why would they give themselves away by planting a message?”

  That was actually a good question, and Juan thought there were several possible answers.

  “The hackers might have thought we wouldn’t crack their code so quickly. Or they wanted us to read it so we’d think Munier was a willing accomplice.”

  Rivard gave him a skeptical look. “‘They’?”

  “The message refers to ‘our demands.’ We have to assume la
rger forces are behind this.”

  “I think we should take the threat seriously,” Gretchen said.

  Rivard took a breath and wiped his brow. “And we will. We take all threats seriously. Thank you for your help in uncovering this message. But we need to concentrate our resources on investigating the most likely possibilities first. If you want to focus your investigation in a different direction, by all means go ahead.”

  Gretchen began to object but was rebuffed.

  As a cringing Marie looked at them apologetically, Rivard kept talking. “I will not send us on a course that makes the Sûreté Publique look ridiculous and causes an unwarranted economic panic. I will let Interpol decide if they want to issue a warning to the banking community based on this flimsy evidence, but that warning will not be coming from us. If, and when, we find more data to support your theory, I will gladly take that path. Until then, leave us to do our work. I spoke to the commissioner on the way over and he agrees. I will inform you of our findings as they become available.”

  Juan knew a firm dismissal when he heard it. They would have to continue their part of the investigation on their own. But if Rivard was wrong and the threat in the message was real, they had only ten days to prevent the world from suffering a disastrous financial meltdown.

  TWELVE

  WEST OF GIBRALTAR

  Lars Dijkstra punched the END button on his phone in frustration.

  “Still no answer,” he said. He seethed as he watched the Spanish countryside pass beneath them on their way into the British territory of Gibraltar. Their Gulfstream was on its final approach.

  Lars’s brother, Oskar, had his head buried in his laptop. “Satellite shows a storm front in the vicinity of the Narwhal. That’s probably why we’re not able to reach the captain.”

  “But we haven’t heard from him in hours.” He poured himself a glass of akvavit.

  “Relax. You worry too much.”

  Lars downed half the glass. “Why do you think I’m drinking?” He fidgeted in his seat as he stared at the phone, willing it to ring. Oskar had always been the calm half of the duo heading up the Dijkstra shipping and manufacturing empire, the operational genius to Lars’s abilities as a dealmaker and strategic thinker.

  “I don’t like this sudden change of plans. I want to know how long Captain Peters thinks it will take him to get from Malta to Algeciras, once he picks up the cargo.” The reason for their last-minute flight to Gibraltar was to make preparations for the Narwhal’s arrival at Algeciras, the large Spanish container port across Gibraltar Bay from the British territory.

  “According to the ship’s specifications and engine rating, he should be able to make the trip from Malta in three and a half days.”

  “Three and a half days?”

  Oskar shrugged. “Time wasn’t a factor when we thought the Narwhal would be returning to Rotterdam.”

  “We should have picked a faster ship,” Lars muttered.

  “Well, it’s too late now,” Oskar said. “We’re committed.”

  “You’re sure we can’t ship the column by air?”

  “The container is loaded and ready at the docks. If we take the column out to put it on an airplane, we risk exposure where we can’t control the situation. Better to get the cargo to Algeciras, where we can examine it in our own facility.”

  “And our man in Malta is fully briefed?”

  Oskar nodded. “He knows the Narwhal is coming. The container is scheduled to be loaded the night before the auction.”

  “Does he know what the container holds?”

  “No. Nobody but you and I know the significance of what’s in it.”

  “Once we have time to study the column and discover the meaning of its inscriptions, we will be that much closer to finding the treasure. Then we will own Maxim Antonovich.” He swallowed the rest of the akvavit and poured another. “What about the diary? Do we have any idea who’s bidding against us for it?”

  “There’s no way to know,” Oskar replied, “but the price will be exorbitant.”

  The column inside the shipping container was only half of the puzzle they were trying to solve. The other half was called Napoleon’s Diary—actually, a Greek copy of Homer’s Odyssey that Napoleon had kept with him until his death on St. Helena. Napoleon had made margin notes in the book and it was those notes that held the secret they were after. The diary was one of the star attractions of the auction because it had been considered a myth until the contents of the collection were revealed. Some speculated that a British guard or one of the doctors had stolen it as a souvenir when Napoleon died.

  There was no doubt about its authenticity. Independent experts confirmed that the margin notes were in Napoleon’s handwriting.

  The auction was being held at the Maltese Oceanic Museum, which was acting as the representative for the anonymous collector offering the biggest trove of Napoleonic artifacts that had ever come up for sale. The auction would commence in four days, and, on the night before, a gala showing was to take place where potential bidders could inspect the items up close. It was expected to attract some of the wealthiest people in the world who wanted this one chance to see the pieces before they disappeared into the hands of other private collectors.

  The Jaffa Column, as it was known, had been stored outside the warehouse where all the other artifacts were being held. The stone relic dated to Roman times, with edicts chiseled in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and had vanished during Napoleon’s invasion of Syria. Many speculated that it had been destroyed in the war and considered it lost until it suddenly reappeared in the collection. Made of white granite and weighing over thirty tons, it had been deemed too hard to sell because of its size, so it had been donated to the museum. Lars and Oskar had hired a team to pick up the column, in a nondescript container, under the pretense of transporting it to the museum. Instead, they detoured the container to the dock. Since the column wasn’t going to be studied by the museum staff until after the auction, it wouldn’t be missed until that time. By then, it would already be loaded onto the Narwhal and headed for Algeciras.

  Because of its notoriety, Napoleon’s Diary was much more closely guarded, so buying it was their only recourse. Once they finished in Algeciras, Lars and Oskar would attend the gala in Malta to make sure the diary was what they expected and then a representative would do the bidding for them the next day. They had no intention of letting anyone else buy the diary.

  “We have to win that auction,” Lars said. “What do you think the top bid will be?”

  Oskar paused to think. “The auction house put a range of five hundred thousand to a million euros, but I think we have to be prepared to go over two million to get it.”

  Lars took another swallow of his akvavit and leaned his head back. “We’re sinking a lot of money into this venture. And you should be more worried about our necks than you seem to be.”

  “I have seven men on our security force waiting for us when we arrive.”

  “Good. Because if certain people found out what we’re looking for, they’d kill us in an instant.”

  “The reward is worth the risk,” Oskar said, though there was a hint of doubt in his voice.

  “I hope you’re right,” Lars said, and finished his drink.

  The pilot announced over the intercom that they were ten minutes from landing.

  —

  Come on, David!” the coach yelled. “You can kick the ball better than that.”

  David Kincaid, whose father had recently been transferred with his family to Gibraltar, knew he wasn’t making a good impression on his new teammates. David liked to blame his lack of focus on the distraction of having the secondary school football field abutting not only the bustling Gibraltar marina but also the runway for the territory’s international airport. But he knew putting his poor play on the blast of the jet engines and sounding of yacht horns was merely a
n excuse.

  He moved to the back of the line to wait his turn for the next shot at the goal, determined to prove his worth and make striker on the team. He focused on the sky and imagined himself kicking the winning score.

  Almost immediately, his concentration was broken by yet another plane coming in for a landing. All of his teammates were so used to the din that they paid it no attention. This was a small jet, one of those private planes that celebrities and rich people used. But there was something different about it.

  One of its wings was glowing red. It grew brighter by the second, like an electric burner on a stove heating up.

  To no one in particular, David said, “Hey, does that—” He stopped speaking when he saw what happened next.

  The plane was a quarter mile from the end of the runway when its right wing burst into flames. Fire streamed from fuel gushing out of the tank. The plane yawed to its right, no longer aimed at the runway, and began to tumble out of control.

  It was headed straight for them.

  “Run!” David yelled, and pointed at the onrushing plane.

  Curses and screams were drowned out as the jet’s twin engines were boosted to full throttle in a vain attempt by the pilot to regain altitude.

  In a panic, David dashed toward the marina, running out onto the short dock and jumping into the water, as the plane passed overhead and exploded in a fireball, raining flaming debris all over the field where they had just been practicing. Fragments of white-hot metal fell into the water around David.

  He surfaced to see blazing wreckage strewn across the football pitch. Certainly no one aboard could have survived such a horrific crash.

  David swirled around in the water to see if any of his teammates had gotten the same idea. But he must have been the only one to seek refuge in the harbor. He couldn’t spot anyone else.

  The only movement he could see was the smooth motion of an unusual-looking yacht cruising out of the harbor.