Son of Perdition (Chronicles of Brothers) (26 page)

Julia turned to Adrian. She lifted the veil away from her face, revealing bloodshot eyes.

‘Hey, Jules.’ Adrian clasped her hands, gently kissing her on both cheeks.

‘I’m so sorry, Adrian.’ She smiled up at him weakly.

She turned to Jason whose mouth was set in a firm line and her eyes immediately lost all warmth.

‘I’m so sorry about Nicky, Jason.’

Jason gave her a blank look.

The blond surgeon from the funeral came up behind Julia and put his arm around her waist.

‘Adrian, this is Callum,’ she said. ‘Callum Vickers. Callum, this is Adrian De Vere. No introductions needed.’ Callum offered his hand to Adrian who shook it firmly.

‘And this is Jason,’ Julia said, curtly.

Callum held out his hand to Jason who stared at him, then unenthusiastically shook his hand.

‘Very sorry about your brother,’ Callum said, softly.

‘Thanks,’ Jason answered.

‘How’s the media empire doing?’

‘Well enough, thank you.’ Jason turned and narrowed his eyes at Julia. ‘I’m sure that Julia has told you I’m a slave to the industry.’

‘No,’ Callum said, in his calm manner, ‘Julia hasn’t really mentioned you.’

Jason grunted as Levine reappeared with a full whisky glass. ‘Lily said you’re a surgeon.’ He took a swig.

Callum nodded. ‘A consultant surgeon, at St Thomas’s.’

Jason looked over the glass at Julia, a sarcastic smile on his lips. ‘That’ll please Daddy, I’m sure.’

Julia glared at him.

‘You’re drinking,’ she said frostily. ‘Callum, we need to leave.’

The PD on Callum’s waist emitted a loud insistent chirp.

‘So sorry, I’m on call . . . if you’ll excuse me.’ He walked towards the window, talking into an earpiece.

Jason took another slug of his whisky, deliberately staring at Julia. She pulled the black veil back down over her face in annoyance, and walked away from Jason over to Callum at the window.

‘Dad,’ Lily hissed, ‘behave. Can’t you be civil to Mum just this once?’

Jason stared ahead grimly. ‘The short answer is no.’

‘De Vere.’ A low voice broke through into his reverie.

He turned to find a fat pasty-faced man at the bar. He was in his late twenties, wearing a badly fitting black suit that had seen better days, covered by a grubby yellow anorak.

Jason’s eyes narrowed in slow recognition.

Dylan Weaver, Nick’s schoolboy friend from Gordonstoun. Now some top European IT specialist.

Jason held out his hand. Weaver ignored it. He looked around the room, clearly ill at ease, his eyes lingering on Guber.

‘You don’t like me much, do you?’ Jason said.

Weaver stared at Jason impassively. ‘No, I suppose I don’t.’

Weaver glanced furtively around the room, as though looking for someone.

‘Meet me at The Singing Waitress in Shaftesbury Avenue at ten o’clock.’ He picked up a handful of appetizers. ‘Come alone. I’m on the move.’

Jason stared, incredulous, at Weaver stuffing cocktail sausages into the pockets of his anorak.

Weaver walked away from Jason. Then turned back.

‘It’s about Nick.’

* * *

Julia unlocked the door to the quaint cottage, situated in what was formerly known as the Artists’ Colony of the New Chelsea Studios.

She picked up the small pile of letters from the doormat and sifted through them casually, then froze, staring at a cream linen envelope. The writing was familiar. Extremely familiar. She’d know Nick’s writing anywhere.

Trembling, Julia dumped the rest of the post on the hall table, then walked through to the drawing room.

She turned the envelope around, studying the Mont St Michel crest and stared at the postmark on the envelope. She recognized ‘Pontorson’, the name of a small town near Mont St Michel. The postmark was dated the 22nd. The day of Nick’s death.

Picking up a silver letter opener, Julia slit the letter open and sat down on her sofa. A photograph fell out onto the hardwood floor. She picked it up and placed it on the side table, then took out Nick’s note. It was written hastily. In a scrawl. But it was definitely
Nick’s
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. Tell Lily I’ll always be sorry. Be my leading light, Jules.

Always, Nicky

PS I’m not sure if Adrian’s – ’

The sentence was unfinished. Julia turned the slip over – there was nothing on the back. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She picked up the photograph.

There were four men. She recognized one of them as Jason’s grandfather, Julius De Vere. Another was Xavier Chessler, his godfather. She turned the photograph around and read the writing.

‘The Robes are Behind the Suits.’ Then a woman’s name – Aveline.

Julia replaced the photo in the envelope, then walked over to the French doors, staring out at the Italianate walled gardens, her thoughts in disarray.

She took out the note once more and studied it.

Then reached for the phone.

* * *

Jason sat in the upmarket bar below the street patio that was the cigar room of the Lanesborough. A waiter hovered discreetly.

‘Lagavulin 1991,’ Jason muttered. The waiter smiled in approval. Jason leaned back in the leather chair, puffing on an expensive cigar and stared up at the tent-top roof. Lily wheeled herself next to him.

‘Okay, all sorted. Gran’s tired. She just left with Uncle Xavier. Alex’ll drop Polly and me in Chelsea, then spend the night at Nick’s apartment.’

‘Why don’t you stay with me?’ he asked.

Lily shook her head.

‘Mum’s expecting me, Dad. Next time.’ She looked around. ‘Where did Uncle Adrian go?’

‘Conference call. Babylon,’ he murmured.

Polly walked towards them, pulling her, long blonde hair back into a ponytail.

‘Hi, sweetheart.’ Jason smiled. Polly stowed her mobile in her bag, then leaned over to Jason and gave him a hug. Jason trusted Polly. She was straightforward. Down to earth. No guile. She’d been a good friend to Lily. The best.

‘Keeping Lily in check, Polly?’ Jason raised his eyebrows.

‘I try.’ Polly smiled back at Jason. ‘She’s a chip off the old block, Mr D.’

Alex caught sight of them and made his way through the cigar smoke.

Jason frowned. ‘Still an item?’ he asked.

‘Alex wants to get engaged when I turn eighteen.’

‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ Jason muttered. ‘God knows I didn’t at that age.’

‘I always know what I’m doing, Mr D.’

‘Is he all right? He looked like hell at the funeral.’

Polly took Jason’s hand. ‘Look, Mr D. I know he’s really mad at you for cutting Nick off. But you’re like the only real Dad he’s ever had. Don’t be too hard on him.’

Jason turned to watch the tall, lean twenty-year-old striding towards them in his black funeral suit, laptop slung over his shoulder, carrying cans of Coke.

‘I’ll try not to beat myself up over it,’ Jason said, wryly.

Alex arrived at their table and Jason watched as he stowed the cans in his satchel, except for one which he opened.

‘Testing for fluoride?’ Jason said sceptically.

Alex glowered at him, then sat down morosely in the chair next to Polly.

Jason puffed on his cigar, then looked up to see Alex still glaring at him.

‘Look, Alex.’ He stubbed out his cigar in the ashtray. ‘Nick’s dead. I should have been there for him. I wasn’t. Are you going to hold it against me the rest of my life?’

‘Maybe.’ Alex scowled at him darkly.

‘Have it your way.’ Jason shrugged.

‘Alex has been investigating something, Mr D,’ Polly said, trying desperately to ease the tension. ‘Something
big
.’

Jason yawned.

Polly nudged Alex.

‘The global elite – Bilderberg, the Feds, World Bank, UN – they’re engineering world economics,’ Alex mumbled. ‘Famine, looting, rioting – Hurricane Katrina back in 2005 – this is nothing compared to what’s coming.’

‘Okay, Alex,’ Jason steeled himself, ‘tell me what’s coming.’

Alex took a long slug from his Coke can. ‘Martial law, that’s what. That’s how it’s all going to start. The military policing our streets, curfews, they’ll just pick you up and put you in prison.’

Alex was picking up steam.

‘If people only knew the truth.’

Jason rolled his eyes. ‘It’s not the
truth
, Alex. People already
know
the truth. I’m the media. That’s my job – to
inform
people of the truth. Don’t you think if there were any accuracy in anything you’re saying that at least one out of ten thousand of our correspondents would have got hold of this?’ He groaned in exasperation.

‘When everything’s already in chaos,’ Alex continued, ‘they’ll stage a false-flag operation. A secret operation when government forces pretend to be an enemy while attacking their own people.’

Jason caught sight of Adrian winding his way through the tables towards them.

‘I know what false flag means, Alex,’ he said, icily.

‘You know your problem, Uncle Jason – you’re a puppet of the New World Order.’

Lily rolled her eyes in despair.

Jason sighed and his expression softened. ‘Look, Alex, no matter how much you investigate a shadow government, nothing’s going to bring your mother back.’

He picked up the glass, savouring the intense, peaty bouquet of the thirty-year-old single malt whisky.

‘Produced on the island of Islay, Lily.’ He sipped it slowly. ‘Queen of the Hebrides.’

‘Did I hear ‘false flag’, Alex?’ Adrian said, grinning.

Jason signalled to the waiter who opened a mahogany box of the hotel’s finest cigars and presented it to Adrian.

‘In the 1960s, the Joint Chiefs of Staff signed off on a plan code-named Operation Northwoods,’ Adrian said, sitting down in between Alex and Jason. ‘A scheme involving the switching of planes and committing a wave of violent terrorist acts on American soil – in Washington DC and Miami – then blaming it on the Cubans to justify an invasion of Cuba.’

Adrian hesitated, his fingers skimming over the cigars. ‘Northwoods never happened. Kennedy refused to implement the Pentagon plans.’

Adrian paused for effect and placed a cigar in his mouth. The waiter lit it and Adrian began to draw on it.

‘ . . . But he
could
have.’

Alex glared at Jason in triumph. Jason glared back.

Alex pulled out his laptop and set it on the glasstop table in front of Adrian. His fingers flew over the keys.

‘Take the case of a false-flag bioterror attack. Avian flu. Millions of deaths occur. People are so demoralized they cry out to the shadow government to save them.’ Alex paused dramatically. ‘Then it starts – the real introduction of martial law. A One World currency. Bodies piling up, mandatory vaccinations.’ Alex’s voice rose in intensity. ‘Look at the past. By 2009, thirty-two states had passed laws that make resisting inoculation once it’s ordered by the governor a felony; unlimited quarantine mandated for any who resist.’

Adrian took a long draw of the cigar, then said, ‘Vaccinations contain the RFID chip. People are frantic – they willingly accept it.’ Adrian looked around at the table. ‘They become the legitimate trackable property of this “New World Order”. All by their own volition.’

Lily stared at Adrian, appalled.

‘You can’t be saying the government is in the know. Surely
you’re
not in the know. Uncle Adrian?’

Adrian smiled.

‘Alex’s premise is that governments are merely pawns and their strings are being pulled covertly by a shadow government. Bankers. Oil barons. The military-industrialist complex. According to this premise, the dissenters – whoever refuses vaccination – are rounded up by military police into FEMA concentration camps as threats to the health of the community. Quarantined.’

Adrian looked around the table, his expression grave. ‘It’s completely plausible. With millions of people dead, martial law declared, complete control of the news media, no one will care.’

‘Exactly!’ Alex said. ‘By 2008, there were over six hundred FEMA concentration camps in the USA. Multiple sources confirm rumours of prisoner boxcars from China – forty-foot cargo containers, with shackles and a modern guillotine at the head of each one. No windows. Guillotines in Georgia. In Texas. Unsubstantiated rumours that they were ordered under a secret contract through a Congressman in the pay of the elite who met with officials in China.’