—
Now that Beatrix Dräger and her team were freed from the offices, they assessed the damage that Ivana Semova had done to the grid. As Murph continued to see nothing but red lights on the big board, the shouts that echoed around the room were panicked, some in English, most in Dutch.
“I’m still locked out!”
“I can’t access the breaker subroutines!”
“What did she do?”
Gustaaf Dijkstra watched helplessly as Dräger begged Murph to help them.
“If you have any idea what that woman did to our system, we need to know right now.”
“There’s one possibility outside,” Murph said, hustling to the emergency exit. “I’ll be right back. Keep the door open for me.”
“Where is he?” he asked Eddie, who was still on the line.
“The last I saw, he was near a blue Audi.”
“You sure Semova was trying to kill him?”
“Sure looked that way to me.”
Murph spotted the billionaire, who was still huddled behind the car. “I guess I’ll ask him.”
“Linc’s on his way to give you a hand.”
Murph hung up and ran over to Antonovich, who was holding his left leg. Blood oozed through his fingers and down his pant leg. When he saw Murph, Antonovich spoke at him in rapid-fire Russian.
Murph didn’t speak the language, so he tapped on the same language translation application he’d used at the Albanian Mafia castle. He spoke into the phone as it interpreted his words.
“Mr. Antonovich, my name is Mark Murphy. Speak slowly and clearly.”
Antonovich nodded and said, “They made me do this. I’m innocent.”
“They who?”
“Golov and his daughter.”
“Ivana Semova was his daughter? Was she also a hacker named ShadowFoe?”
Antonovich nodded and winced from the pain as he moved his leg. “They’ve been holding me captive for nearly a year. My whole crew mutinied and took over the Achilles under Golov’s direction. He’s the one behind this attack.”
Linc rushed up and knelt beside them. He rolled up Antonovich’s pant leg to reveal a bullet hole in his calf.
“He says he’s completely innocent,” Murph said as Linc took off his jacket and put pressure on the wound.
“Sounds like a convenient story,” Linc replied.
“Then why did Semova shoot him? And Dräger said he didn’t seem to be directing her inside. If anything, he seemed to be at her mercy.”
“Then he won’t mind helping us, will he?”
“Good point,” Murph said, and turned the translation app back on. “Mr. Antonovich, if you’re telling the truth, then how do we reactivate the continental grid’s circuit breakers?”
Antonovich shook his head. “I don’t know. Ivana had a program on her laptop. It let her lock out access from the Control Hub’s systems. Her program is the only way to control the breakers.”
“Her laptop is destroyed and Ivana is dead. There must be some other way.”