REVELATION: Book One of THE RECARN CHRONICLES (11 page)

Maurice wasn’t prepared to
see his daughter suffer, or much worse, die. He was just as certain
that he didn’t want his wife to suffer the loss of another child.
Borrowing the money was a non-starter. He could see only one
alternative… but he couldn’t tell Karen.

Nathan Smith was tired. He
wasn’t tired of life, but he was tired of this body. His knees
creaked and clicked whenever he stood up. His fingers were visibly
stiffening as arthritis took its steady toll and he hadn’t had a
full night’s uninterrupted sleep for several years. Nathan usually
chose to die in his eighties, unless he became afflicted with a
debilitating illness, when he would bring forward the date of his
death. He fully expected to extend this to ninety years, maybe even
one hundred years in the near future. That is, unless his research
projects were successful

He was looking forward to the
day when souls could be directed to specific new bodies. It was a
real nuisance leaving this to chance. Several of his previous lives
had started in less than perfect circumstances but he had always
managed to find his way back to The Order. The most difficult
journey had been when he had been born and abandoned in the middle
of a field in India, an unwanted girl. Fortunately another young
woman had found him and taken pity upon him. A British cavalry
officer had subsequently fallen in love with her, had accepted her
adopted daughter, and taken them both back to England with him. If
this officer hadn’t been so strong of character and able to
overcome the social distain with which 19
^th
century London society looked upon him, Nathan’s
ability to control The Order may have broken
irrevocably.

He went downstairs to the
basement of the house, to a room that was always kept locked. Only
he had the key to this room. The lock was a little stiff but not
too difficult for him to unlock. The room was full of his favourite
moments from this most recent life; mostly souvenirs from distant
travels. He walked over to a reclining couch, lay down and
spoke.

“I’d like to see highlights
of my trip to India.”

The room had a domed ceiling
which was actually a giant extremely high definition LED screen. It
burst into life and began showing Nathan’s visit to the Taj Mahal.
Holidays were far easier to record now, you just needed a pair of
special glasses and the whole holiday experience could be recorded.
They looked like regular sunglasses to the casual bystander but one
of the arms contained 16,000 terabytes of memory and the other
contained a high quality sound recording system. You could playback
directly through the glasses but most people preferred to download
their experiences directly to their home entertainment systems via
Wi-Fi. Some people liked to record their entire lives in this way
and had drawers full of memory cards. They used to say that when
you die your life flashes past your eyes. That was now known to be
untrue, but this technology provided the next best
thing.

Self-termination had
advanced in leaps and bounds. Nathan thought back to the days when
only the more primitive methods were available. He’d lost count of
the number of times he’d hanged himself. He had slit his wrists
once but, to be honest, he didn’t like the mess that it made. He
didn’t know how Thomas had found the willpower to walk in front of
that lorry in 1965, when he’d been ten-year-old Simon, Nathan much
preferred the modern method; by lethal injection. Needles were a
thing of the past, so there would be absolutely no pain whatsoever.
The soon-to-be-departed can administer the dose themselves, or a
member of medical staff can do so.

Most people, whether rich or
poor, normally went to Self-Termination
Centres
, or STCs as they were known, when they had had enough of
this life. People used these facilities for many reasons; maybe
they were physically or mentally ill and could no longer cope with
life or maybe they had had a good life and just felt that it was
time to go. Quit whilst you’re ahead. Some would self-terminate
because their lives didn’t match up to their expectations and were
in a hurry to start their next life, not considering that they
could potentially be rushing towards a new life that was much worse
than the one they were about to leave behind. Perhaps the saddest
cases were those whose children were in financial difficulties and
the parents chose to die so that their offspring could claim their
inheritances earlier than expected.

After about ten minutes of
watching his memories unfurl in front of his eyes, Nathan reached
down to a cushioned pad located on the right-hand side of the
recliner. He placed his hand upon the pad and applied a little
pressure. The pad registered his finger prints and took a tiny DNA
sample. When the machine was satisfied that the person that it was
about to terminate was indeed Nathan, he felt light pressure on the
back of his neck. This was the machine injecting just the correct
amount of deadly chemicals to kill him.

Exactly five minutes later,
the head of Nathan’s personal security team received an automated
message from the machine. Nathan had trusted this team with his
life, and was now trusting them with his death. It was done. Nathan
was gone.

There was to be no funeral,
no memorial service. Everybody knew that Nathan would be coming
back. They didn’t know exactly when, and they certainly had no idea
who he would be, but they were in no doubt that he would return to
lead The Order. The team knew exactly what it had to do. Two
members placed Nathan’s body upon a trolley and his corpse was
wheeled into the adjoining room containing a furnace that had been
pre-heated to over one thousand degrees Centigrade. Nathan was
placed inside the cremation chamber, and the door to the oven
closed.

The team had been fully
briefed as to the identity of his temporary replacement and were
fully aware of their responsibilities should the incumbent refuse
to relinquish his position upon the return of the now incinerated
Pindar. The members of this elite group had passed the task down
from father to son – and more recently to daughter as well – for
centuries. Their unswerving loyalty was exceedingly well rewarded
and their discretion was beyond refute.

In the Great Chamber, as
soon as Nathan Smith’s death had been confirmed, Thomas was sworn
in as Pindar.

The Pindarship was in good
hands. Thomas McCann knew exactly what was expected of him and he
would perform his duties to the letter and to the best of his
ability. Nathan Smith would return in around twenty years’ time to
find that The Order had been left in good hands…or so he
thought.

Maurice Boone was an
accountant. In fact he was a very good accountant. He used to make
a reasonable living but the salary crash of the previous decade had
hit him hard, just as it had hit everybody hard. The only people
who were not affected detrimentally were the already privately
rich, government officials, and employees of The Order, who were
naturally looked after. As it was, the Boone family had been
surviving well until now. There hadn’t been much money left for
little luxuries or even to put aside as savings, but they had
always been able to pay their bills. But crises such as Caitlin’s
illness couldn’t be budgeted for. Health insurance would have
solved the problem but the couple couldn’t afford that. Premiums
had gone through the roof and, although the family had had private
health insurance before the salary reduction, they had been forced
to let it lapse in order to pay for day-to-day expenses such as
electricity, clothing and food.

Just after the salary crash,
Maurice had been lucky enough to be offered some private work by a
man simply known as ‘the Businessman’. Nobody knew what exactly the
Businessman did or how he made his money. All that was known was
that he was obscenely rich. Rumours were rife that he was perhaps a
drugs dealer, or that he was some kind of gangster, maybe even a
modern day Al Capone. Surely he had to be some kind of criminal; if
not, then why did nobody seem to know his name? Why did he need an
alias? Everybody was convinced that the Businessman’s dealings were
shady, an opinion that was difficult for Maurice not to ignore. If
he wasn’t operating outside the law why did he need to maintain a
veil of anonymity? Maurice’s work for the Businessman required
creative accounting to ‘lose’ a large sum of money. Maurice hadn’t
told his wife about his work for the Businessman – as far as she
knew, Maurice could have been doing private work for anybody - but
by doing this work he had earned good money and the eternal
gratitude of the man. It had helped for a while but sudden influxes
of unexpected income, by their very nature don’t last forever.
Bills are paid, some essentials are bought, and it’s soon back to
square one. Although Maurice never met the Businessman face to face
(very few had) he had been told that should he ever need help he
should contact him. If the Businessman was in a position to help,
he would. Being owed a favour by the Businessman was a good
position to be in.

Of course the Businessman
could have lent Maurice the amount of money that he needed for
Caitlin’s treatment – or even made a gift of it (it would have been
a mere drop in the ocean to him) - but he didn’t want to set a
precedent. It was, however, well within his power to help him in
another way.

The only solution that
Maurice could see was to steal the money from somebody who wouldn’t
even feel the effects of its loss. He didn’t see how he could get
such a large amount of money legally. He had felt very
uncomfortable doing the work for the Businessman previously, not
being sure which side of the judicial fence he had been standing,
but he didn’t see any alternative. Not if he wanted to save the
life of his daughter.

He went over to the fridge,
took out a chilled bottle of Fosters Ice lager, flipped off the
cap, took a sip of the beer and sat back down at the kitchen table.
Michelle was at netball practice and Karen was at the gym. Karen
wouldn’t have approved of him drinking straight from the bottle but
what she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her and he allowed himself this
small act of rebellion when she wasn’t around.

The task at hand was to
decide upon a suitable target and then work out how to execute the
robbery. Of course he’d seen lots of robberies in the movies but
he’d never done anything like this before and would need expert
help; help that wouldn’t come cheap. Maybe the Businessman would be
able to give him a few names of people who could help him; he must
have some shady contacts.

But, before that, having
decided to steal the money, he had to think about how much he
should steal as it would affect the choice of victim. Obviously he
needed to steal more than just the sum required for Caitlin’s
treatment; he couldn’t do the job on his own and his accomplices –
whoever they were – wouldn’t help him out of the goodness of their
hearts. They would need to be paid, and they wouldn’t come cheap.
He had no doubt of that. Plus, there was the question of Caitlin’s
aftercare. He tried to think of who he could target. Many very
wealthy people lived in the city but they would also keep their
money in the bank. However, a bank robbery was out of the question.
It would be too public and far too dangerous. Many banks now were
protected by sensors connected to automatic pulse guns. They were
supposed to be set to ‘stun’ but there had been instances, whether
by accident or design, when bank-robbers had been killed. The
technology, although very good, was obviously not infallible;
getting killed wouldn’t help Caitlin at all. He needed to think of
something else.

“I’ve got it!”

Maurice gripped the edge of
the table and uttered the name, Christian Parks.

Christian Parks was a
professional footballer who played for a mid-table Premier League
club, Arsenal FC. He also had a pathological distrust of banks.
Whilst everybody else was totally on board with online banking and
electronic transfers, Christian couldn’t bring himself to leave his
money in the bank. He had no choice but to receive his salary
through interbank transfer but, as soon as the money was in his
account, it would be withdrawn in cash and taken to his house, and
kept there until it could be transported to a secure location. He
had several luxurious properties and moved his money between each
location at irregular intervals, each time in a heavily armed
convoy. To add to the security of these transfers there would be
nine other convoys dispatched simultaneously, so anyone wishing to
rob such a convoy would have to attack all ten to be sure of
success. This, of course, would be very expensive both in manpower
and resources and there were easier ways to get hold of money – for
professional criminals at least. Taking the money en route was a
non-starter; Maurice had to steal Christian’s salary whilst it was
sitting in his home, waiting for transfer.

Christian Parks wasn’t even
a regular first team player but he still earned one million pounds
per week. The salary was paid monthly, so there would be four
million pounds in cash for twenty-four hours at least, plenty
enough to pay Caitlin’s medical bills. That would leave three
million pounds to be shared between the accomplices. And there had
to be others involved; that was a non-negotiable certainty. Maurice
wouldn’t even get past the gate on his own.