factored in here, though some seemed to love war.
Power and money. The list had plenty of people on it who had both. She decided to pick out the top ten. Who had the most wealth, the most toys? In a hierarchy of Alpha males, that person would have serious clout. Who would benefit the most from war? She could find out. Almost everything that mattered was in the computers somewhere.
It was a scary thing to contemplate, the power of electronic surveillance at her fingertips. The government's fingertips. With that kind of power, it should be no problem to learn everything necessary about the members of Cask and Swords. She began searching, using a program Stephanie had written that made Google and the other search engines look like something out of the Stone Age.
It didn't take long for a pattern to emerge. It should have been easy to find what she wanted, but it wasn't turning out that way. She kept running into conflicting data and broken links. She entered a new search focused on a prominent Cask and Swords member.
Several hundred miles north of Virginia, a string of characters appeared on a monitor screen with the location of the Project computer. The server was programmed to respond with code designed to worm its way into the computer of any curious person looking for a particular kind of information.
In Virginia, Stephanie hurried into Harker's office.
"Director, shut your computer down."
Elizabeth turned it off. "What is it, Steph?"
"Someone just tried to break through our firewall while you were on the system," she said. "I blocked it and sent a trace back. What were you looking at?"
" One of the Cask and Swords members. He hosts an annual retreat for them at his summer home in Maine."
"You were using the program I wrote? Not Google?"
"Yes. I wanted a deeper layer."
"Whoever he is, someone with serious computer savvy is working for him. My program triggered an auto response that tried to send a virus back to you. I quarantined it."
"It's not a standard security response?"
"No way. My program is transparent. I designed it to get through the firewalls at the Pentagon. A normal security program wouldn't respond to it."
"Will they know it was us looking?"
"Yes. To send something back they had to isolate our location, which is almost impossible. I'd like to meet whoever wrote the program."
There was grudging admiration in her voice. Stephanie was a legend in the small world of extreme hackers, where she was known only by her screen name, Wonder Woman. She'd worked for NSA before Elizabeth recruited her.
"This man head s up the richest private investment bank in America," Elizabeth said. "Maybe that explains the security."
"Maybe."
On the list of Cask and Swords members, Elizabeth put an asterisk by the name of Phillip Harrison III.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Selena came into Nick's hotel room with her laptop under her arm. They were sleeping in separate rooms and separate beds. It had nothing to do with being in a Muslim country. Until Nick got a handle on his nightmares, it seemed like a smart move. Neither one of them was happy about it.
"What did you find out?" Nick said.
"What do you know about the Templars?"
"Not a lot. I know they conquered Jerusalem and that they were knights that fought in the crusades."
"The Templars protected the routes to the Holy Land. They invented a banking system as a way to keep pilgrims from being robbed along the way. You gave your money to them and they gave you a piece of paper that was like a credit card. You could use that at Templar stations during your pilgrimage to pay for things. If you were robbed, it was worthless to the robbers. The Order charged interest. It made them wealthy, along with donations of land and money from the nobles and the Church."
"Pretty slick. And here I thought credit cards were a modern development."
"The King of France owed the Templars a lot of money he'd borrowed for his wars. He made a deal with the Pope and accused
Power and money. The list had plenty of people on it who had both. She decided to pick out the top ten. Who had the most wealth, the most toys? In a hierarchy of Alpha males, that person would have serious clout. Who would benefit the most from war? She could find out. Almost everything that mattered was in the computers somewhere.
It was a scary thing to contemplate, the power of electronic surveillance at her fingertips. The government's fingertips. With that kind of power, it should be no problem to learn everything necessary about the members of Cask and Swords. She began searching, using a program Stephanie had written that made Google and the other search engines look like something out of the Stone Age.
It didn't take long for a pattern to emerge. It should have been easy to find what she wanted, but it wasn't turning out that way. She kept running into conflicting data and broken links. She entered a new search focused on a prominent Cask and Swords member.
Several hundred miles north of Virginia, a string of characters appeared on a monitor screen with the location of the Project computer. The server was programmed to respond with code designed to worm its way into the computer of any curious person looking for a particular kind of information.
In Virginia, Stephanie hurried into Harker's office.
"Director, shut your computer down."
Elizabeth turned it off. "What is it, Steph?"
"Someone just tried to break through our firewall while you were on the system," she said. "I blocked it and sent a trace back. What were you looking at?"
" One of the Cask and Swords members. He hosts an annual retreat for them at his summer home in Maine."
"You were using the program I wrote? Not Google?"
"Yes. I wanted a deeper layer."
"Whoever he is, someone with serious computer savvy is working for him. My program triggered an auto response that tried to send a virus back to you. I quarantined it."
"It's not a standard security response?"
"No way. My program is transparent. I designed it to get through the firewalls at the Pentagon. A normal security program wouldn't respond to it."
"Will they know it was us looking?"
"Yes. To send something back they had to isolate our location, which is almost impossible. I'd like to meet whoever wrote the program."
There was grudging admiration in her voice. Stephanie was a legend in the small world of extreme hackers, where she was known only by her screen name, Wonder Woman. She'd worked for NSA before Elizabeth recruited her.
"This man head s up the richest private investment bank in America," Elizabeth said. "Maybe that explains the security."
"Maybe."
On the list of Cask and Swords members, Elizabeth put an asterisk by the name of Phillip Harrison III.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Selena came into Nick's hotel room with her laptop under her arm. They were sleeping in separate rooms and separate beds. It had nothing to do with being in a Muslim country. Until Nick got a handle on his nightmares, it seemed like a smart move. Neither one of them was happy about it.
"What did you find out?" Nick said.
"What do you know about the Templars?"
"Not a lot. I know they conquered Jerusalem and that they were knights that fought in the crusades."
"The Templars protected the routes to the Holy Land. They invented a banking system as a way to keep pilgrims from being robbed along the way. You gave your money to them and they gave you a piece of paper that was like a credit card. You could use that at Templar stations during your pilgrimage to pay for things. If you were robbed, it was worthless to the robbers. The Order charged interest. It made them wealthy, along with donations of land and money from the nobles and the Church."
"Pretty slick. And here I thought credit cards were a modern development."
"The King of France owed the Templars a lot of money he'd borrowed for his wars. He made a deal with the Pope and accused
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