Chapter twelve
Professor Anderson stared at the retreating figure of Duvalier and refocused on the closed door after it was slammed shut. He wondered again how he had allowed the situation to develop like this, how the same thread of his rich tapestry led him to be standing on the verge of scientific greatness and to the deaths of his fellow trustees.
He spun on his chair to gaze out of the window and to the overcast winter skies. There would be snow for Christmas.
It reminded him of that fateful day all those years ago. A different Saul in a different world. His twenty-fifth birthday when the grey envelope had landed on his desk in the university research lab. He was tired after a night's work, the latest research project taking up so much of his time. He wasn't expecting a birthday card. His family long since dead and his work colleagues not the sort to waste money or effort on a trivial show of faux affection. So he opened it up before starting on writing the research notes up from the night before.
The envelope contained an embossed invitation to an inheritance meeting at a city law firm, date and address on the reverse. Saul checked the spelling of the invite, then the envelope address. It was addressed to him. But there was obviously a clerical error. He had no living family and no possible way he was in line for any inheritance.
He arrived at the law offices and met Duvalier for the first time. His strange accent, a French-Caribbean mix, was thicker all those years back, not watered down as he sounded today. His easy smile and firm handshake placed Saul at ease and the meeting was short but informative. Saul had inherited a trusteeship on the board of the Valentine Trust. His father, having died shortly after World War Two, was a hereditary trustee on a secretive trust that looked after an enormous wealth. Duvalier had sketched out the benefits of being a trustee, the freedom and the generous income, and Saul had quit his research position with the university that afternoon.
Forty years later he was in the difficult position of plotting to kill off his fellow trustees and take all the trust funds for his own needs. With the guiding help of Duvalier, their trusted lawyer, he planned to remove any objections from the board and pass a resolution to invest all funds into his research. The developments into the area of expertise, namely tracking DNA back through the ages of man. The potential for knowledge and science was astounding and extraordinary - and not a little unsettling.
He needed Duvalier for his little Trust coup. Duvalier had contacts and knowledge and an extraordinary insight into personality. He also had a small army of people to do his bidding. More like a cult, Anderson mused, as they came from many walks of life, but obeyed Duvalier with a mindless devotion that he found unnerving and comforting in equal measure. Most of them were pretending to be animal rights protestors at the front gates. Keeping up appearances at the laboratory and ensuring real protestors didn't get too close and inquisitive.
The timing for investment of the Trust fund was critical. Events that had taken years to prepare were rapidly approaching fruition and the excitement could barely be restrained from his hand as he clicked through the prototype software on his computer.
World Two was a software application that recreated the world in all its glorious history and geography. Using graphical representations of people, the program duplicated every living person of this world within its silicon world.
Each computer person had an icon floating above its head. Like a computer game, only this gave access to the most intimate of information. Every individual's genome code.
Anderson glanced at the notice board and saw a pie chart on the wall. He snapped from his daydreaming and realised he had to request a chart of the policewoman and take it to Duvalier.
That would have to stop. Duvalier was treating him like one of those thugs he has chasing after him. Once the funds were liquidated from the trust and the purchases were being made, he would have a quiet word with Duvalier. Demand a little more respect.
Anderson left his offices and walked through the warren of corridors that was his laboratory. He passed familiar doors that were now unknown to him. Doors where he had once entered but had not done so in years. He had seen members of Duvalier's people close the doors behind them, with a respect bordering on reverence, and he had once asked about the nature of the experiments that still may have continued behind the closed doors. He had been politely dissuaded from asking such questions. Anderson suspected it was gathering further information about junk DNA, a subject which Duvalier had insisted be on the research agenda, but which he did not see much value in. Indeed, Anderson had left them to it, happy to continue his own research station into the book of life. Such flights of fancy regarding junk DNA were beneath him.
He assumed the mantle of responsibility and had carried on with his own work.
He passed the makeshift sleeping quarters of Duvalier's followers. Some of them filed past him, returning from protestor duties at the front gate. The immediate threat of the policewoman had passed and so they retreated to the warmth of their bunks.
'Hey, pencilneck,' a voice called out. 'Come here.'
Anderson turned to another room where a number of the followers were relaxing. He recognised them from the few meetings that he had attended. Finn, a grotesquely scarred ex-soldier who was Duvalier's right hand man and issued the orders to the rest of the rabble. Karen, an enchantingly beautiful woman, who dressed in a kaftan and went barefoot around the grounds, sat in a lotus position on a mat in the corner. Mullen, an enormous craggy-faced man, sketched at a pad, the slim pencil held deftly between his thick fingers.
Duncan, a slim man with a curtain of hair that often draped across his face as he talked, looked up at Saul with a sarcastic grin. He folded a napkin over and over in his hands, fashioning a feathered dart like an origami artist.
'Can I help you?' Anderson asked, affronted by the comment but prepared to take back the initiative.
'Oh, hey, sorry professor,' Duncan said as he finished one paper feathered arrow, a perfect replica of a pub dart, and continued to make another, 'Didn't mean to cause offence. Come in and say hello.'
'I really can't stop,' Anderson said. 'I have a report to request for Mr Duvalier.'
'Ah,' Duncan said, combing his hair back with his fingers. 'Mr. Duvalier is it now. Not 'Papa Doc' like the rest of us call him.'
'Tell me, Prof,' Mullen looked up from his drawing. 'I don't see you out on the gate in the freezing cold. Why's that then?'
Before Anderson could reply, a musical tune warbled in the room and Finn snapped open a phone. He listened and nodded to the other end. Everyone else in the room was silent.
Duncan tossed his paper darts into a nearby table. The darts plunged an inch into the wood, quivering for a moment as they did so.
'Well,' Anderson stammered, 'I don't think that would be appropriate. I mean, I own the laboratory. Why would I protest my own experiments?'
'Only pullin' your leg, Prof.' Mullen returned his attention to his drawing. 'You're the important one here, we all know that.'
'Okay, knock it off you lot.' Finn stood up and holstered the pistol he had been cleaning. 'Its fine, Professor, these jokers are getting a little tetchy before the big event.' The man smiled as he approached Anderson. The criss-cross of scars made his face resemble a discarded paper bag stretched over his skull. 'I'll accompany you to see Dominique and then Mr Duvalier. Let's take a walk.'
Anderson felt relieved as the room quietened and he was escorted out by Finn. The followers resumed their activities after the brief entertainment.
The two men walked down the corridor in silence, passing doors sealed off with yellow tape and red signs. Anderson looked quizzically at the doors, unable to remember when that had been done, or whether he had been consulted.
'Here we are, Professor.' Finn knocked twice on a laboratory door and entered without notice. Anderson followed him into the dark room, lit only by the glare of computer terminals and pin lights to one side. A map of the universe stretched along the length of the wall. Zodiac figures
were picked out on the map, helping to illuminate the room in faint glowing lines.
'Er, Dominique?' Anderson called out.
A spiky-haired woman appeared bleary-eyed from behind a monitor. The glow of the computer bleached her already pale features. 'What?' she snapped.
'Sorry to disturb you, but I have a profile request for you. I have the details here.' Anderson handed over a notebook with Amanda Morgan's profile description from World Two. Date, time, location of her birth and a colour coded chart of her dominant DNA strands.
Dominique glanced at Finn, who nodded imperceptibly. 'Fine,' she said. 'I'll crunch the numbers and have her astrology reading ready in a few hours.'
'Umm,' Anderson said. 'I have to take it to Duvalier. He was kind of expecting it straight away.'
Dominique stared incredulously at the Professor. 'Ok, I'll do it now. Just shut up and don't touch anything.'
Finn sat at a nearby terminal whilst Anderson hovered behind Dominique, watching her nimble fingers tap away at the computer. Symbols and sigils popped up on the screen as her fingers blurred. She tutted to herself, banging on a combination of keys, then continued casting the horoscope for the policewoman.
Twenty minutes later Dominique printed out a three-page report which contained graphs, a bar chart and a lengthy horoscope detailing the most likely prediction for DC Amanda Morgan for the next two days. She glanced at it briefly then handed it to Anderson.
'Thank you,' Anderson said. He started to read the report in the gloom, until he felt the weighty stare from Finn. He smiled nervously and folded it away. Finn rose smoothly from the chair and opened the door. They both walked down the corridors heading toward Duvalier's chambers.
The double doors to Duvalier's rooms were ajar, a sweet smell emanating from the chambers within. Finn knocked on the doors and waited.
'Come,' Duvalier said.
Finn entered the rooms first, bowing his head slightly as he did so. Anderson followed, clutching the report in his hand.
Duvalier stood up from the wide desk where he had been writing in a large book. His pen was fashioned from a cockerel feather that left dark pools of ink soaking into the pages.
Duvalier held out his hand and Anderson handed him the report. He smiled at the Professor and returned to an easy chair. He angled a table lamp to illuminate the pages and read the report carefully.
Anderson edged closer, eager to know the results of the horoscope, but Duvalier was motionless as he read the report, flicking the pages over, his eyes sliding from side to side.
Eventually Duvalier let out a soft sigh. 'We have a problem,' he said, creasing the horoscope in two. 'It seems that our capable bloodhound of a copper will be crossing the assassin's path two or three times.'
'Oh? Are you sure?' Anderson said. The two men ignored him.
'What do you want me to do?' Finn asked.
'We are absurdly close to the endgame. We cannot afford our assets being frozen by the Financial Crimes Unit if there was any reason to investigate the Trust. So we will have to deal with matters ourselves.'
Duvalier stood and paced the room. 'The feng shui assassin has outlived his usefulness.'
'Do you want me to muster the Tonton Macoute?' Finn said.
'Yes. Choose a couple to deal with the assassin. Prepare for a quick strike on each of the remaining trustees. Accidental death would be preferable, but if that cannot be done, then violent with much circumstantial evidence. Let us have a few days to work. I'll need a little time for the program to process once the rituals begin.'
'And the policewoman?' Finn asked. Anderson fidgeted nervously beside him, the careful plan was unravelling and he felt control was slipping through his fingers.
'Are you suggesting that we murder the woman detective?' Anderson interrupted the two men.
Duvalier stared at Anderson, and he suddenly felt what it must be like to be examined under a microscope, Duvalier's eyes dissecting him like a pinned fruit fly.
'My dear Professor,' Duvalier patted Anderson on the shoulder, leading the man to the door. 'We must do everything needed to protect our interests. Surely you understand that. Do not worry, we will take care of everything. As we have done so far.'
Anderson felt the balance of power shift beneath him. If he had truly had any power in the first place. 'Ok. Ok. You are quite correct. I shall return to my studies, prepare for the investments.'
'You do that.' Duvalier's tombstone teeth flashed a smile as he ushered the Professor from the room and closed the door, leaving Anderson standing in the corridor.
Duvalier strode back into the room. 'That man is becoming a liability.'
Finn shrugged. 'Anderson is the easiest problem we have.' He made a quick twisting movement with his two hands. An invisible cockerel's head twisted, broken and removed.
'Ah no,' Duvalier shook his head. 'I wish to make a sacrifice for the success of the project. And the Professor will make a fine lamb, seeped in the blood of innocents as he is.'