Son of Perdition (Chronicles of Brothers) (20 page)

A stout red-faced woman with grey braided hair looked at Nick out of beady twinkling eyes.

‘Why, Master Nicholas!’

She wiped her hands on her apron, then flung her plump arms around his waist in delight.

Nick put his finger to her thin lips. ‘I’m not meant to be here. Our little secret.’

Beatrice giggled and nodded vigorously.

‘I bake Christmas bread for you.’ She shuffled over to the oven and took out the plaited breads.

‘Beatrice, is Pierre still here?’

‘He and I are the last to go. As usual.’

‘The main gate?’

‘Our men left at one. Special forces took over the shift.’ Beatrice scowled.

‘Good, the car’s already cleared through the gate. Pierre has the keys. Tell him to close the roof and keep his head down. Once he’s past the gate, tell him to park in the old dock shelter. Our little secret from Guber. Do you understand?’

Beatrice nodded.

‘What’s going on tonight, Beatrice?’

‘Classifed function. The usual procedure. Private caterers – Guber’s private army – his battalions in charge. So different from your father.’ She pursed her lips.

Nick looked out of the window, searching uneasily for signs of the European Secret Service.

‘I need an envelope,’ he said. Beatrice walked over to an old mahogany dresser and, unlocking a drawer, removed a linen envelope with the Mont St Michel crest on the back.

Nick nervously took out the photograph of De Vere and De Molay from his satchel and pushed it hurriedly into the envelope.

‘Paper.’

Beatrice passed him another compliments slip and Nick wrote in a hurried scrawl:

Dear Jules,

Dad was onto something. Something big that they killed him for. They gave me AIDS deliberately. I think they know I’m onto them. A group of elite powerbrokers. I’m doing some investigating of my own. In the event that I don’t make it out of here – you must get this to Jason. He’s the only one I trust.

The sound of footsteps drew closer.

‘Master Nick. Quickly.’

Nick continued in a hurried scrawl.

Tell Lily I’ll always be sorry. Be my leading light, Jules.

Always, Nicky

PS I’m not sure if Adrian’s – ’

Beatrice rushed to the door. Nick sealed the envelope, turned it over and scrawled Julia’s name and Chelsea address.

Beatrice sighed with relief. ‘It’s all right. It was Jaques, the groom.’

‘What time does the post van pick up?’

‘Pick up from the main house was at 10 a.m. The staff mailbag is picked up at 2.35 p.m. from the stables, Master Nick.’

Beatrice looked up at the kitchen grandfather clock. ‘In ten minutes. It’s not checked.’

Nick placed the letter in Beatrice’s hand and closed her plump, work-worn fingers over it. He looked into her eyes, addressing her as if she was a child.

‘Beatrice, this is very important. Put this in the mailbag before you go through the main gate. You
must
post it before you leave. I need you to do this for my father.’

Beatrice nodded earnestly. ‘I promise, Master Nick.’

Nick planted a big kiss on Beatrice’s jowled cheeks.

‘Is the East Wing suite vacant?’

She nodded. ‘No one’s staying there tonight.’

Nick pulled out a small plastic container and shook out two white pills, slinging them back in his throat. He leaned his head on the large oak kitchen table in paroxysms of deliberate and faked coughing. He had felt perfectly well since his encounter at the Monastery in Alexandria, fighting fit in fact, but he was sure he would be forgiven for his present deliberate melodrama. It was essential to his plan.

‘Beatrice . . . ’ He grasped her hand. ‘You know I’ve been sick.’

She nodded vigorously.

‘I’m in no state to go through all Guber’s laborious security measures.’

Beatrice looked at him earnestly. ‘Master Nick, what can I do?’

Nick looked up, between his hacking coughs.

‘Get me to the East Wing. Our little secret. Guber mustn’t know I’m here.’

Beatrice scowled. ‘Stuck-up Guber.’ She glowered.

‘You’re absolutely sure it’s vacant, Beatrice?’ Nick persisted. ‘I thought there were heads of state flying in?’

‘Some high-flown royal prince arrived around midnight last night. A presidential order was issued. No one is to occupy the main house while he’s in residence apart from Master Adrian. All visitors leave immediately after dinner. The fancy prince is in the West Wing. Guber’s thugs are crawling all over it.’

She bustled over to the corner of the kitchen and picked up a key card with a gold Mont St Michel seal embossed on it.

‘But the East Wing’s deserted till the weekend,’ she declared.

She pushed a wisp of grey hair out of her eyes.

‘At 3 p.m., all staff security clearances are declassified.’

Beatrice punched in the key card through the security scanner. It emitted a green light.

‘I need the surveillance system dismantled in the East Wing,’ Nick said. ‘Guber mustn’t know I’m there.’

‘I can’t do that.’ Beatrice raised her face to Nick’s. ‘I don’t know how.’

‘But I do.’ They both turned to find Pierre standing watching them from the scullery door.

Pierre had known Nick from the time he was a sweet-faced three-year-old, and had loved him always. Pierre took the key card from Beatrice, passed it back through the scanner and punched in the number 666. A purple light appeared directly above the green.

‘Today’s privacy code,’ Pierre said softly. ‘Surveillance cameras have been disabled throughout the East Wing. You’re invisible to the Core unless there’s a power shortage.’ He handed the key card to Nick.

‘Then you’re on your own.’ He made the sign of the cross. ‘May God protect you, Nicholas De Vere.’

* * *

Nick, all signs of pallor and sickness now vanished, opened the shutters and stared out of the East Wing attic windows. From his vantage point he had a bird’s-eye view from the stable to the main gate. He looked down to the kitchen block as Beatrice walked out of the scullery door, over to the stables’ entrance and placed the letter in the Mont St Michel staff mailbag. She climbed on her bicycle and cycled towards the main gate. A few minutes later the red Aston Martin, its roof closed, sped down the winding Abbey lane.

Nick watched as Pierre cleared the main gate and roared off towards the dock.

He paced the room back and forth, then walked back over to the window as a nondescript French post van drew up to the stable gates.

A uniformed officer placed the mailbag in the back of the van, which then meandered back up the drive and out through the main gate. Nick sighed in relief.

The photograph was safely on its way to Julia in England.

He walked down the spiral staircase, through the master bathrooms with their custom water-lounger baths, through the sumptuous master bedroom to the drawing room and checked that the East Wing suite doors were fully secured.

And then he waited.

Somehow he knew he was in danger. Grave danger.

Tonight he would find out why.

Chapter Twenty-one

Loose Ends

Between Jordan and Saudi Arabia

Jotapa sat on the plush leather sofa in the lounge of the Royal Household’s Gulfstream jet, staring straight ahead. The only sign of her unease was her constant checking of her watch. She looked over to Jibril who was playing games on the plane’s media centre.

He looked up at her. In the face of his banishment he was calm. Just as her father would have been. Jotapa’s eyes flashed with anger. Jibril shook his head, then put his finger to his lips. She sighed.

‘Faisal.’ She thought of her elder brother with loathing.

She knew her father had done his utmost to be even-handed in his affection for his offspring, but Faisal’s character deficiencies were not easily overlooked.

In his twenties, much to her father’s dismay, Faisal had run wild for months at a time with the younger Saudi princes. Her father had received constant reports of the clubbing, the orgies, the drugs. Just as Nick’s father had.

But, unlike Nick, Faisal was cunning and ruthless. And dim. And in time, the noble elderly King came to despise his oldest son. Jotapa was born when Faisal was eleven, then, seven years later, Jibril came along. The eighteen-year-old Faisal had loathed the calm and sunny infant, the jewel of the King of Jordan’s latter years.

She studied Jibril as he concentrated on the game. He was so like their father. A clean, angular face, thick black straight hair and clear, piercing brown eyes. He was only sixteen, but he had wisdom beyond his years. And far beyond that of his older brother.

‘Your Highness,’ a steward leant over ‘we are preparing for descent.’

Jotapa looked out of the Gulfstream’s window. Thousands of feet below, the sprawling runways of the King Fahd International Airport became visible through the early-morning haze.

Jotapa looked back once more at Jibril, still engrossed in his game, then down at her jeans – a banned item in the Royal Household of Saudi Arabia. She closed her eyes, trying to shut out the dreadful foreboding that the twenty-first century and all that was safe and familiar was about to be wrenched away from her forever.

And the dreadful foreboding that Jotapa, Princess of the Royal Household of Jordan,was about to cease to exist.

* * *

Adrian and the British Foreign Secretary relaxed in the orangery under the balmy winter sun. Two butlers cleared the lunch crockery, while a third poured Earl Grey tea into porcelain cups monogrammed with Adrian’s initials. Guber and Chastenay were in deep conversation outside the orangery entrance.

‘So I still can’t persuade you to reconsider becoming a member of the Eurozone?’ Adrian said in his easy, disarming tone.

‘You know our stance on it, Adrian,’ the Foreign Secretary replied. ‘Nothing’s changed since you left office. The people would lynch us if we surrendered the pound. The Lisbon Treaty pushed it as far as we dare.’ He smiled. ‘Sorry, Adrian. Your London Pact lies gathering dust in some Downing Street archive.’

‘Some day, George,’ Adrian said.

‘I’m betting it’s not in
my
lifetime.’ The Foreign Secretary leant back in his chair and sipped his tea.

His aide stepped forward and whispered surreptitiously in his ear. Nodding to the aide, the minister said, ‘An urgent phone call – the Prime Minister.’

Adrian smiled graciously. ‘Chastenay, show Mr Hayes to the secure area.’

The Foreign Secretary hastily left the room, his aide in tow, following Chastenay to a row of glass booths outside the orangery.

Adrian pressed a button on a writing desk. ‘Guber.’

He took the envelope from his inside pocket and placed it on the bureau.

Guber appeared at his side almost instantly.

Adrian spoke without turning. ‘A minor hitch.’

He gestured at the envelope.

Guber opened it, staring mystified at the blank compliments slip. He frowned, turned it over.The photograph was gone.

‘When did my brother leave?’

Guber pressed the intercom line to the main gate.

‘When did the Dauphin leave the building?’

‘The Dauphin’s Aston Martin left through the front gate forty minutes ago, sir.’

‘A problem, Mr President?’ Guber waited.

‘My brother had in his possession a photograph,’ Adrian said, quietly. ‘Supposedly from our father, James De Vere.’

He looked up at Guber.

‘A photograph of my grandfather with our current house guests.’

He let the words sink in.

‘And this . . . ’

Guber scanned the execution document and turned pale.

‘James De Vere sent it to St Cartier. Apparently your hoodlums left their tracks uncovered.’

‘I’ll deal with it.’

‘You’d better.’ Adrian raised his hand and Guber clutched his throat, struggling for air.

Adrian watched him dispassionately for a moment, then walked over to the orchids in the orangery and nonchalantly picked up a hand mister. He began spraying the orchids as Guber started to choke violently.

At last, Adrian laid the mister back down, then walked over to Guber and laid a hand on the man’s shoulder. Instantly Guber caught his breath.

‘It will never happen again, Your Excellency.’

‘Good,’ Adrian said softly. ‘Then we understand each other.’

The Foreign Secretary returned onto the terrace followed by two waiters bearing fresh tea.

‘Let me know when my brother arrives in London.’ Adrian smiled genially to Guber and gestured to the Foreign Secretary to sit. ‘And tidy up any loose ends in Egypt. I have it on good account that our professor friend winters in Cairo.’

‘Yes, Mr President,’ Guber replied, and walked briskly out of the orangery.

The two waiters removed the used crockery, reset the table and poured the freshly brewed tea into clean teacups.

‘Earl Grey? Glad to see you’re still supporting English exports, Mr President,’ the Foreign Secretary quipped.

Adrian smiled faintly and stirred his tea. Lost, deep in thought.

Aveline, the name of Hamish MacKenzie’s biogenetics foundation, had been scrawled by James De Vere on the back of the photograph.

Nick had requested De Vere Asset Management’s financials.

He knew about the International Security Fund.

Nicholas De Vere was becoming quite the private investigator.

Just
what
did his little brother think he was up to?

* * *

Nick gazed out of the vast Gothic drawing-room windows onto the floodlit helipad far below.

The noise of the gunship’s engines as it hovered above the mansion was almost as deafening as the violent Atlantic storm now raging overhead. He watched as the huge black helicopter landed. The fourth so far that evening.

He had already recognized several dignitaries: princes of three European states, the queen of a fourth. The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. He studied the other figures exiting from the gunship. Crown Prince Assad of Syria, followed by the head of Russia’s FSB.

Nick frowned. He recognized the chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank followed by the head of the International Monetary Fund. Strange.

He gazed up to where three more gunships were hovering over the stormy black Atlantic.

Nick poured himself a mineral water.

Adrian had lied to him. But why?

* * *

Jotapa stepped out of the first black limousine in a convoy of eighteen. She stared down at her feet. The streets of heaven were paved with gold, but the streets of the Royal Palace of Mansoor were paved with solid Italian marble. She watched as Jibril exited. They were instantly surrounded by a dozen swarthy armed men wearing ghutrahs and black uniforms – Mansoor’s brutal private army.

Jotapa stared up at the high-walled mile-long compound of monolithic Versailles-like buildings surrounded by hundreds of palm trees. She braced herself, then smoothed down the black abaya that she had been required to change into upon her arrival at the royal terminal, the attire demanded by Crown Prince Mansoor for all his four hundred wives.

Jotapa and Jibril followed the uniformed soldiers up the marble walkway beneath swaying palms, past magnificent pools and through a massive forty-foot gilt door into the foyer of the palace.

A soldier gestured her forward into the foyer with his machine gun. Jotapa stared up at the forty-foot ceilings of painted glass in an Art Deco frame. They walked past gilt marble pillars, beneath crystal chandeliers and swathes of gold leaf. Twenty-first-century Islamic, she noted, staring up at the framed Koranic verses about the glory of God.

They marched down unending corridors, past Mansoor’s harem of hundreds of women, and continued until they reached a smaller section of palaces, then stopped outside a vast silver-gilt door. The soldier gestured to Jotapa to remove her jewellery. Slowly, she took off her bracelets and plain gold ring, then emptied the contents of her bag into a glass chamber. A second soldier pushed Jibril roughly towards the door. Jibril’s eyes flashed. Jotapa stared, a dark fury rising in her heart.

They passed through a scanner. Jotapa turned to retrieve her phone.

‘No,’ a swarthy-looking soldier said. ‘No phone.’

Jotapa glowered at him. ‘My phone,’ she said coldly.

He smiled a slow nasty smile and reached out his big hand, caressing Jotapa’s neck. She stared up at him, her eyes filled with loathing.

‘No phone, Princess.’

Jibril moved forward just as two more soldiers grasped him. One held him while the second slammed a fist into his solar plexus. He crumpled to the floor.

There was the sharp sound of a single clap. The soldier released Jotapa’s neck instantly.

She turned to see a tall, thick-set figure looking down at them from the marble balustrades. He smiled slowly.

‘Hadid,’ the stranger spoke in soft seductive tones, ‘give the Princess her phone.’

With trembling hands, Hadid took the silver mobile from the glass chamber. Jotapa snatched it from him, then tucked it out of sight, deep in one of the abaya’s pockets.

She watched as the tall stranger came towards her. She recognized him from the previous year’s
Al-Hayat
newspaper photographs of his public disgrace. It was Mansoor. His dark features were coarse. He had a full beard and a thin hawk-like nose. His beady eyes were cruel. He walked like a panther towards her.

‘My Princess.’ He turned to Hadid and with one vicious blow knocked him down. His head smashed violently against the marble floor.

Mansoor spat, then smiled at Jotapa. He reached out his huge palm and caressed her long dark hair. She flinched violently away.

Mansoor’s eyes hardened.

‘Bring me the boy,’ he ordered. The soldiers pulled Jibril up from the floor and shoved him toward Mansoor.

‘A piece of important information, Your Highness.’ Mansoor grabbed Jibril in a vice-like grip. ‘In the event of your non-cooperation – I am not averse to games with boys.’

‘No wonder your father loathed you,’ Jotapa hissed.

Mansoor looked at her with contempt, then reached his hand out to Jibril, sucked his fingers, then caressed Jibril’s face.

‘You take me,’ Jotapa snarled, ‘but don’t you ever . . . ’ her entire body trembled with seething rage ‘ . . . 
ever
touch Jibril.’

Casually, Mansoor dealt a savage blow to her face. Blood seeped from her mouth. Mansoor disappeared down the hall.