Scarecrow (17 page)

He found the room quickly, found the old man, Frank Nicholson, lying in his bed asleep.

Without missing a beat, the Zulu drew a machete from under his coat and . . .

The police found his car two hours later, abandoned in the long-term carpark at the airport.

By that time, however, the Zulu was sitting in the first-class section of United Airlines Flight 45 bound for Paris, the white organ-delivery box resting on the seat beside him.

Frank Nicholson was missed at the retirement village. He'd been a popular resident, friendly and outgoing.

The management had liked him too. Since he'd been a doctor in his career days, he'd saved more than one elderly resident who had collapsed on the golf course.

It was funny, though, unlike many others, he'd never really spoken about his glory days.

If asked he would say he'd been a scientist at the US Army Medical Research and Matériel Command at Fort Detrick, ‘just doing some medical tests for the armed forces' before he'd retired the previous year.

And then came that night when the assassin had come and cut off his head.

FORTERESSE DE VALOIS BRITTANY, FRANCE 26 OCTOBER, 1150 HOURS LOCAL TIME (0550 HOURS E.S.T. USA)

He'd always loved anarchy.

Loved the idea of it, the concept of it: the complete and utter loss of control; society without order.

He particularly loved the way people—common people, average people, ordinary people—responded to it.

When soccer stadiums collapsed, they stampeded.

When earthquakes struck, they looted.

During anarchic warfare—Nanjing, My Lai, Stalingrad—they raped and mutilated their fellow human beings.

The teleconference with the other members of the Council wouldn't begin for another ten minutes, which gave Member No. 12 enough time to indulge his passion for anarchy.

His real name was Jonathan Killian.

Jonathan James Killian III, to be precise, and at 37 he was the youngest member of the Council.

Born into wealth—his father had been American, his mother French—he had the supercilious bearing of a man who was accustomed to having everything he desired. He was also possessed of a cold level stare that could give the most combative negotiator pause. It was a powerful gift, one that was accentuated by an unusual facial feature: Jonathan Killian had one blue eye and one brown.

He was worth $32 billion, and by virtue of a labyrinthine network of companies, was the ultimate owner of the Forteresse de Valois.

Killian had always disliked Member No. 5.

While wealthy beyond measure thanks to an inherited Texan oil empire, No. 5 was of low intellect and prone to tantrums. At 58, he was still essentially a spoilt brat. He had also been a continually stubborn opponent of Killian's ideas in Council meetings. He was very irritating.

Right now, however, Member No. 5 stood in a wide stone dungeon on the lowest level of the Forteresse de Valois, deep within the castle's stone mount, accompanied by his four personal assistants.

The dungeon was called the Shark Pit.

Sixteen feet deep with sheer stone walls, it was perfectly circular; and wide too, about 50 yards across. It was also filled with an irregular array of elevated stone stages. One thing about it was clear: once a person was placed inside it, escape was impossible.

In the pit's centre, plunging vertically down into the earth, was a 10-foot-wide ‘sink-hole' that led directly to the ocean.

Right now, the tide was coming in, so the water entering the Pit via the sink-hole was rising fast, spilling out into the wider pit,
filling it
, turning the irregular collection of elevated stages into a series of small stone islands—much to the horror of Member No. 5 and his assistants.

Adding to their fear, two dark shapes could be glimpsed swimming through the alleyways between the islands, just beneath the surface of the water—shapes featuring dorsal fins and bullet-shaped heads.

Two large tiger sharks.

In addition to all this, the Shark Pit came with two other features worth noting.

First, a viewing balcony situated on its southern side. Before the Revolution, the French aristocracy were known to hold gladiatorial contests in their dungeons—usually pitting peasants against peasants, or in the more elaborate dungeons like the one at the Forteresse de Valois, peasants against animals.

The second noteworthy feature of the Shark Pit could be found on the largest of its elevated stone platforms, over by the northern wall. On this stage sat a truly terrifying device: a 12-foot-high guillotine.

Tall and brutal, the guillotine was an addition made by Jonathan Killian himself. At its base was a crude wooden block with slots carved into it—slots for a person's head and hands. A crank handle on the guillotine's side raised its steeply-angled blade. A simple release lever dropped it.

Killian had been inspired by the acts of Japanese soldiers during the sack of the Chinese city of Nanjing in 1937.

During three horrific weeks, the Japanese had subjected the Chinese to unspeakable torture. Over 360,000 people were murdered
by hand
during that time. Horror stories emerged of Japanese soldiers conducting beheading contests; or worse, giving fathers a choice: rape their own daughters or watch them be raped; or telling sons to have sex with their own mothers or die.

Killian was intrigued. Usually, the Chinese men would take the honourable way out and accept death rather than perform such hideous acts.

But some did not.

And that was what had amused Killian. Just how far people would go in pursuit of self-preservation.

And so he'd had the guillotine inserted into the Shark Pit.

It was designed to give those who were placed in the pit a similar choice.

Die a terrifying death at the mercy of the tiger sharks, or die quickly and painlessly by their own hand on the guillotine.

Sometimes, when he had a group of people in the pit (as he did today), Killian would offer them Faustian bargains: ‘Kill your boss on the guillotine, and I will release the rest of you'; ‘Kill that hysterical screaming woman, and I will release the rest of you.'

Of course, he never released anyone. But the prisoners never knew that, and on many occasions they themselves died with blood on their hands.

The five people in the pit scratched desperately at the walls, the incoming water rising rapidly around them.

One of No. 5's female assistants made it a few feet up the wall—making for a tiny stone handhold there—but she was quickly pulled down by a bigger man who saw the handhold as his chance at life.

Killian watched them from the southern viewing balcony, utterly fascinated.

One of these people is worth $22 billion
, he thought.
The others earn about $65,000 a year in salaries
.
Yet now they are all truly equal.

Anarchy
, he thought.
The great equaliser.

Soon the water level rose five feet above the floor—chest height—and the two tiger sharks now roamed the pit more freely in a rush. At first the people cowered on the stone islands, but soon those islands also went sufficiently under the surface.

Five people. Two sharks.

It wasn't pretty.

The sharks rushed the hapless people—ramming them into the water, taking them under, ripping them open. Blood stained the churning waves.

After a male assistant went under in a froth of spraying blood, No. 5's two female assistants killed themselves on the guillotine.

So, too, No. 5 himself.

In the end, rather than face the sharks, he preferred to cut off his own head.

Then abruptly it was over and the rising water enveloped the guillotine stage, washing it clean of evidence, and the sharks gorged themselves on the headless corpses too, and Jonathan Killian III turned on his heel and headed up to his office for the noon teleconference.

Faces on television screens, arrayed around the walls.

The faces of the other members of the Council, tuning in from around the world.

Killian took his seat.

Five years previously, he had inherited his father's vast shipping and defence-contracting empire—a maze of companies known as the Axon Corporation. Among other things, Axon Corp constructed destroyers and long-range missiles for the US Government.

In each of the first three years after his father's death, Jonathan Killian had increased Axon's annual profits fivefold.

His formal invitation to join the Council had come soon after.

‘Member No. 12,' the Chairman said, addressing Killian. ‘Where is Member No. 5? He is staying with you, is he not?'

Killian smiled. ‘He pulled a muscle in the swimming pool. My personal physician is looking at him now.'

‘Is everything in place?'

‘Yes,' Killian said. ‘The Kormoran ships are in position all around the world, fully armed. DGSE delivered the corpses to America last week and my facility in Norfolk has been liberally stained with their blood—ready for the US inspectors. All systems are in place, merely awaiting the go signal.'

Killian paused. Took the plunge.

‘Of course, Mr Chairman,' he added, ‘as I've said before, it's not too late to initiate the extra step—'

‘Member No. 12,' the Chair said sharply, ‘the course of action has been decided upon and we will
not
deviate from it. I'm sorry, but if you raise this “extra step” matter again, penalties will be imposed.'

Killian bowed his head. ‘As you wish, Mr Chairman.'

A Council penalty was something to be avoided.

Joseph Kennedy had lost two of his famous sons for disobeying a Council directive to cease doing business with Japan in the '50s.

Charles Lindbergh's infant son was kidnapped and killed, while Lindbergh himself had been forced to endure a smear campaign suggesting he admired Adolf Hitler—all because he had defied a Council edict to
keep
doing business with the Nazis in the 1930s.

More recently, there was the impertinent Enron board. And everyone knew what had happened to Enron.

As the teleconference went on, Jonathan Killian remained silent.

On this issue, he felt he knew better than the Council.

The Zimbabwe Experiment—his idea—had more than proved his point. After decades of economic repression at the hands of Europeans, poverty-stricken African majorities no longer cared for the white man's property rights.

And the Hartford Report on global population growth—and Western population
decline
—had only further bolstered his argument.

But now was not the time to argue.

The formal business of the teleconference concluded, and several of the Council members stayed online, chatting among themselves.

Killian just watched them.

One member was saying, ‘Just bought the drilling rights for a flat billion. I said take it or leave it. These stupid African governments just don't have a choice . . .'

The Chairman himself was laughing: ‘. . . I ran into that Mattencourt woman at Spencer's the other night. She certainly is an aggressive little filly. She asked
again
if I would consider her for a seat on the Council. So I said, “What are you worth?” She said, “26 billion.” “And your company?” “170 billion.” So I say, “Well, that's certainly enough. What do you say, you give me a blow job in the men's room right now and you're in.” She stormed off!'

Dinosaurs,
Killian thought.
Old men. Old ideas. You'd expect better from the richest businessmen in the world.

He pressed a button, cutting the signal, and all of the televisions on the walls around him shrank to black.

 

AIRSPACE ABOVE TURKEY 26 OCTOBER, 1400 HOURS LOCAL TIME (0600 HOURS E.S.T. USA)

The MicroDots that had attached themselves to Demon Larkham's IG-88 team told a peculiar tale.

After leaving the Karpalov coalmine, Larkham's team had flown to a British-controlled airfield in Kunduz—a fact which had immediately rung alarm bells in Schofield's head.