Ли Чайлд - The Sentinel

‘Handbook? What century are you from?’ The guy woke his computer and called up a help screen. ‘Oh. OK. We do have it. No problem. What else?’

‘This arrangement is completely confidential. You don’t mention it to anyone. Not your boss. Not your co-workers. Not the people who clean the rooms. Not your friends. Not your mom or dad. Not even your cat or dog.’

‘I don’t have a cat or a dog. But I get your point. Can do. And just to clarify, you said a week for both rooms? As in seven nights?’

‘Seven nights. A thousand and fifty bucks, if that’s what you’re thinking about.’

‘All right then. We have a deal.’

‘Outstanding. My friend here will take care of the credit card and the forms. I’ll take care of the cash. Half now. Half when we leave. Assuming you’ve kept your mouth shut.’

Reacher and Sands walked out of the office with the keys to rooms eighteen and nineteen. Eighteen was above board. Nineteen was off the books. Invisible to anyone who might come looking for them.

Reacher parked Marty’s car outside room eighteen. Sands reversed the minivan close to the door to room nineteen. They carried the servers inside. Then the suitcases. Then the bolt cutter and the duct tape and the remains of the other supplies Reacher had bought. Four minutes’ exposure. An acceptable risk. Then Reacher took the minivan and dumped it way on the far side of the site. Sands would be able to return it to the rental office at the airport once everything was resolved. But for the time being it was too hot to use. Thomassino had seen it. Budnick had seen it. The random customer at Norm’s Self Storage had seen it. And it had most likely been recorded by half a dozen of Norm’s security cameras.

Reacher picked up three pizzas and three Cokes at the first restaurant he passed and took them back to the motel. He let himself into room eighteen and switched on the light. It was the kind of place that was probably considered luxurious at one time. Now most people would call it adequate. Or economical. There was a pair of queen beds with flowery covers and a scattering of cushions. An armchair. A TV. A fridge. A desk. A bathroom. And a closet. The floors were fake wood. The walls were painted in pale, neutral tones. Finishes selected for durability rather than comfort, Reacher figured. Even the wattage of the lightbulb was designed to save on the electric bills rather than to provide a cosy atmosphere. But none of that bothered him. There was a bed. A place to wash. And access to coffee.

Reacher opened his half of the connecting door and knocked. Sands opened the other side and he stepped through to room nineteen. It was a mirror image of eighteen. Identical, except for the modifications Sands and Rutherford had made. They’d taken the duvet from one of the beds and taped it over the window to prevent any light from spilling out. They’d taped all around the door frame, for the same reason. They’d set up one of the eight original servers on every flat surface they could find. And they’d created a rat’s nest of power cables and thick yellow wires to connect everything together. Except for Rutherford’s laptop. It was on the edge of the stripped bed, tethered to the other equipment with a thick blue wire. Rutherford was sitting in front of it, cross-legged, concentrating so hard on the screen he didn’t notice that Reacher had returned.

‘How’s it looking?’ Reacher handed a pizza and a drink to Sands, and dropped another on the bed next to Rutherford.

‘Good, I think,’ Sands said. ‘Rusty?’

‘What’s that?’ Rutherford said. ‘Oh. Thanks.’

‘How is it looking?’ Reacher said. ‘With the servers. The data. Is it still there?’

‘Oh. Yes. Seems to be. Cerberus is pretty messed up, though. Looks like the ransomware tried to rewrite parts of it. Might take a while to figure out what and how. And why. And how to build some protection into our final product. But I’ve got to say, this is better than I’d dared hope for. End of the day, Cerberus got bent, but it didn’t get broken. And that’s a result, in my book.’

‘That’s good,’ Reacher said. ‘But the records from the archive project. Are they still there? All of them?’

‘The disk is full. Nothing seems corrupted. So I guess so.’

‘Can you find out for sure?’

‘I could, but–’

‘Then do it now, please.’

‘But I need to figure out how Cerberus–’

‘Rusty, this is important. Check now. Please.’

Rutherford sighed then spent a couple of minutes tapping on his keyboard and prodding at his touchpad. ‘OK. Look. I haven’t opened every one of the thousands and thousands of scanned images – basically photographs of documents – but to the best of my belief, the archive records are all intact and undamaged.’

‘In that case I need you to make a copy,’ Reacher said. ‘No. Two copies.’

‘No way. Forget it. I already told you, I’m not letting anyone have a copy of anything. Not until Cerberus is perfected. My future depends on it. Sarah’s too.’

‘I understand. But here’s the thing. When I got back to Mitch’s apartment this morning, I told you the truth about what happened to me. But I didn’t tell you the whole truth.’

‘What do you guys know about a thing called The Sentinel?’ Reacher said.

‘Zip,’ Rutherford said. ‘Never heard of it.’

‘I’ve heard a little about it,’ Sands said. ‘Mostly gossip. From some people at the Bureau. Word is, about four years ago there was a major brain drain out of cyber crimes. A bunch of the top guns all upped and left, out of the blue. At first people thought one of the big Silicon Valley corporations was on a recruitment rampage. Then there was a theory that some start-up was throwing crazy money around. But finally someone found out the government was behind it. An emergency response. To the Russians having a new weapon that could totally shred our election systems. Everywhere in the country was vulnerable. No results could be trusted. The guys at Quantico did some modelling. They figured the fallout from even one compromised general election could be anything from civil disobedience to full-scale rioting to possible insurrection. Imagine some of these foil-hat militia guys if they had evidence someone stole an election. Some of them have serious firepower and are already a hair’s breadth from using it.’

‘You’re about on the money,’ Reacher said. ‘The Sentinel is the only thing that can stop this weapon. The Russians can’t defeat it. So they’re trying to steal it.’

‘How?’ Rutherford said.

‘They have a spy inside Oak Ridge Laboratory. Where The Sentinel was designed.’

‘Why don’t they arrest him?’

‘Because they only know a spy exists. They don’t know who it is. The Bureau thinks it’s a sleeper. With some kind of connection to this area. Which is where things start cutting close to the bone. A document surfaced in the town archive which could have revealed the spy’s ID.’

‘The archive burned down.’

‘Not a coincidence.’

‘The online archive had the same documents. It got locked by the ransomware attack.’

‘Also not a coincidence.’

‘And my server has some of those documents on it. Because Cerberus protected them.’

‘Which is why you almost got kidnapped. The Russians want those records. To destroy whichever one could incriminate their guy.’

‘How do you know all this, Reacher?’ Sands said.

‘You thought the rendezvous at the old factory was a set-up. It was. Only not in the way you expected. The woman who showed up? She’s an FBI agent. Undercover. She’s infiltrated the Russian cell that’s tasked with recovering the server. She has two jobs. To get a copy of it for the Bureau so they can ID the spy. And to protect Rusty. She lured me there to ask for our help.’