elevators. If Sean were to appear, a worried smile on his face, she’d be tempted to hug him, but she might just hit him instead. Hard too. He deserved it. Every time one of the elevator doors opened her nerves jangled. And every time it wasn’t Sean, her heart contracted as if an angry hand was squeezing it. She saw a few faces she knew from the reception they’d been to, announcing Sean’s project was going live. None of them gave her a second glance.
Then the buzzer the receptionist had given her, a thick credit-card-shaped thing, was making a noise in her hand.
She stood. A woman she didn’t know was talking to the receptionist.
She was waving at her. Isabel hurried towards her.
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Ryan, your husband isn’t here. We’ve checked.’ Her smile was sweet, like a goodbye kiss.
17
Henry Mowlam closed the document he’d been looking at. He stretched. The files he’d extracted from Sean Ryan’s laptop were of less interest than he’d hoped. The description of what had happened to Sean and Isabel in Jerusalem he’d checked before.
The implications of the facial recognition project he was already aware of. The matter had been discussed at length within his unit and beyond. The project raised lots of red flags. The ability of a bank, and by implication a state’s security, revenue and police departments, to know who had what amounts lodged where throughout the world, gave unprecedented powers of oversight to any who had access to that information.
By matching databases of who was controlling individual bank accounts you could uncover undeclared income, suspicious money flows and match accounts in alternative names for people with multiple passports and identities. High definition security cameras that could identify individuals at half a mile meant opportunities for hiding wealth or ill-gotten gains were disappearing.
Facial recognition data, matched with global bank account statements would give foreign powers access to information on the wealth of individuals, regulators, businessmen and even politicians, as they arrived in that country.
Such data would provide endless opportunities for coercion of the unexplainably rich and the embarrassingly poor.
But they hadn’t reached that point yet. Thankfully. The software was still only being piloted in a few locations at BXH.
What concerned Henry more now was the fact that he didn’t know where Sean Ryan was.
The man in charge of the most sensitive information technology project in the United Kingdom, possibly in the western world, had disappeared into thin air.
He didn’t like it. And it wasn’t his only worry about Sean Ryan. The number of unanswered questions swirling around him and BXH was growing at an alarming rate.
He felt like a theatregoer watching actors pushing hard into the stage curtain while they moved around unseen behind it. There was something going on and he was only glimpsing part of it.
What he knew for sure was that there was a connection between the murder in Soho and Mr Ryan. The connection was looser than it might be, but it was real. The book Sean Ryan had found in Istanbul contained pages sewn in about obscene prayer practices from the early days of Christianity. It listed prayers that required real blood being poured and drunk, fire rituals, the castration of offenders and the murder of heretics and apostates, including cutting patches of skin from victims.
The most gruesome ritual involved murdering four people in twenty-four hours, each in a more sadistic way.
The purpose of that ritual was given in a Latin phrase above the small line-drawn images of how each murder should be carried out.
The phrase was:
Quattuor Invocare Unum
.
It had been translated as
Four to Invoke the One
. Henry shook his head. Whoever the sick bastard was who’d killed that poor girl, at least he hadn’t started the ritual where four people were going to die. He never wanted to see someone being murdered the way it was shown in
Then the buzzer the receptionist had given her, a thick credit-card-shaped thing, was making a noise in her hand.
She stood. A woman she didn’t know was talking to the receptionist.
She was waving at her. Isabel hurried towards her.
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Ryan, your husband isn’t here. We’ve checked.’ Her smile was sweet, like a goodbye kiss.
17
Henry Mowlam closed the document he’d been looking at. He stretched. The files he’d extracted from Sean Ryan’s laptop were of less interest than he’d hoped. The description of what had happened to Sean and Isabel in Jerusalem he’d checked before.
The implications of the facial recognition project he was already aware of. The matter had been discussed at length within his unit and beyond. The project raised lots of red flags. The ability of a bank, and by implication a state’s security, revenue and police departments, to know who had what amounts lodged where throughout the world, gave unprecedented powers of oversight to any who had access to that information.
By matching databases of who was controlling individual bank accounts you could uncover undeclared income, suspicious money flows and match accounts in alternative names for people with multiple passports and identities. High definition security cameras that could identify individuals at half a mile meant opportunities for hiding wealth or ill-gotten gains were disappearing.
Facial recognition data, matched with global bank account statements would give foreign powers access to information on the wealth of individuals, regulators, businessmen and even politicians, as they arrived in that country.
Such data would provide endless opportunities for coercion of the unexplainably rich and the embarrassingly poor.
But they hadn’t reached that point yet. Thankfully. The software was still only being piloted in a few locations at BXH.
What concerned Henry more now was the fact that he didn’t know where Sean Ryan was.
The man in charge of the most sensitive information technology project in the United Kingdom, possibly in the western world, had disappeared into thin air.
He didn’t like it. And it wasn’t his only worry about Sean Ryan. The number of unanswered questions swirling around him and BXH was growing at an alarming rate.
He felt like a theatregoer watching actors pushing hard into the stage curtain while they moved around unseen behind it. There was something going on and he was only glimpsing part of it.
What he knew for sure was that there was a connection between the murder in Soho and Mr Ryan. The connection was looser than it might be, but it was real. The book Sean Ryan had found in Istanbul contained pages sewn in about obscene prayer practices from the early days of Christianity. It listed prayers that required real blood being poured and drunk, fire rituals, the castration of offenders and the murder of heretics and apostates, including cutting patches of skin from victims.
The most gruesome ritual involved murdering four people in twenty-four hours, each in a more sadistic way.
The purpose of that ritual was given in a Latin phrase above the small line-drawn images of how each murder should be carried out.
The phrase was:
Quattuor Invocare Unum
.
It had been translated as
Four to Invoke the One
. Henry shook his head. Whoever the sick bastard was who’d killed that poor girl, at least he hadn’t started the ritual where four people were going to die. He never wanted to see someone being murdered the way it was shown in
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