Son of Perdition (Chronicles of Brothers) (33 page)

Chapter Thirty-six

Nightmare Hall

1981
Northern Gate, The Asylum, Marazion, Cornwall, England

The rain lashed down onto the antique Rolls-Royce Phantom as it purred past the towering iron gates of the Asylum. It turned into a narrow cobblestoned lane, its headlights illuminating the forbidding walls of the Gothic mansion positioned against a vast disused copper mine.

A blinding flash of lightning crashed through the heavens as the Rolls drew to a halt under the gaze of the monstrous stone griffins perched on the turrets on either side of the northern entrance.

Two clean-shaven bodyguards in full military uniform alighted. The first opened the passenger door, the second stood to attention.

Two feet in a pair of black, Tanino Crisci, limited edition patent shoes set down on the gravel, followed by a silver cane held in a gloved hand. The tall robed figure walked up the short pathway to the entrance, his features hidden by the circular brim of his cappello Romano hat.

He paused to look out past the griffins into the black Cornish skies that loomed above him as a myriad of strange spherical objects flashed in the sky overhead at lightning speed, then disappeared.

Lorcan De Molay smiled in approval. He smoothed his black Jesuit robes and adjusted the large crucifix that hung around his neck.

This was the abode of his Dark Slaves of the Race of Men, who ran more than a thousand of the Brotherhood’s underground cities, and the abode of the Fallen. He nodded to his bodyguard, who knocked loudly on the wooden door.

Slowly the façade slid open, revealing a one-foot-thick steel door that opened in turn. De Molay walked into the yawning vestibule, where ten soldiers in full battledress stood at attention.

De Molay nodded to the Serbian officer. ‘Colonel Vaclav.’

Vaclav saluted, trembling visibly.

De Molay removed his hat. He nodded to a tall, flat-faced Russian. ‘General Vlad.’

An ear-splitting siren sounded. Vlad saluted nervously as two thick steel doors slid open on the far side of the vestibule. De Molay removed his black leather gloves as Moloch and seven more of the Fallen lumbered towards him.

Moloch towered over the terrified Vlad, leering, his long black stringy hair masking his contorted craggy features. He grasped Vlad’s throat with one monstrous hand and held him two feet off the ground Until De Molay raised his hand. Scowling, Moloch instantly dropped the suffocating Russian to the floor.

‘You spoil my sport, Master,’ Moloch growled, his voice a mixture of dark discords.

‘You will have your sport later. Where is the Halfling?’ De Molay demanded.

‘The Halfling awaits you, My Lord,’ Moloch growled.

A thick-featured Germanic woman, dressed in a black siren suit, appeared behind him.

‘Your communication inferred that the nuclear transfer has been successful, Frau Mahling – is that so?’ De Molay asked tersely.

Frau Mahling saluted, staring up at him in terror.

‘
Jawohl
, Your Reverence. Professor MacKenzie has been successful.’

De Molay nodded and Mahling led the way down the huge corridor, then turned sharp right to where a posse of black-suited soldiers stood guarding the entrance to an underground tunnel.

They saluted De Molay as one as he rounded the corner. The party boarded a large silver railcar and strapped themselves in. The railcar powered ahead at Mach 2, passing the lights of hundreds of other railcars as it sped through the tunnel beneath the surface of Cornwall and under the Atlantic to its final destination of Reykjavik, Iceland.

Ninety minutes later the railcar stopped outside a steel gate which opened into a cavernous city.

Mahling led the way past NATO military guards and into a metal lift. As the operator powered up, hundreds of crystals emitted a purple-bluish light and the lift car plunged downwards at high speed past four levels. It stopped abruptly at level six.

Lorcan De Molay and Frau Mahling exited from the lift and walked through a second energy field. Armed Nephilim – genetic hybrids, part human and part angelic – covered their faces from him as he passed. He stopped before a huge pulsing screen that read LEVEL SIX – GENETIC HALLS, HUMAN – NOT HUMAN in English, Icelandic and in a language of angelic symbols.

De Molay marched through the NOT HUMAN entrance, through another steel gate and into the lobby of level six.

A thousand bloodcurdling screams of insanity echoed through the maze of winding corridors.

‘Nightmare Hall,’ De Molay murmured. ‘The Twins have excelled themselves, don’t you think, Frau Mahling?’

The corridors of Nightmare Hall were lined with hundreds of barred cells occupied by mutant inmates. As De Molay strode past, multi-limbed humans and seven-feet-tall humanoid creatures shrieked in terror. They passed a large cell occupied by children with severed limbs and strange staring blue eyes.

‘We finish the work begun by our medical hero, Josef Mengele – the Angel of Death, Your Reverence,’ Mahling whispered in awe.

She inserted a pass key in a scanner, then waited while the doors clicked open. She headed straight for a second set of doors at the far end of the research laboratory marked ‘PSYCHOSURGERY – RESTRICTED ENTRY ONLY’ guarded by nine-foot Nephilim.

The doors opened to reveal a small laboratory. On the glass door panels was written ‘GENETICS DEPARTMENT’ in large black letters.

Frau Mahling bowed and turned on her heels, leaving De Molay alone with an elderly man who was huddled intently over state-of-the-art cloning equipment.

De Molay surveyed Professor Hamish MacKenzie with mild distaste. MacKenzie’s baggy old cardigan was wrongly buttoned and his worn trousers were sagging at the knees. There were day-old egg stains on his shirt.

‘Has our “special undertaking” been successful’?

MacKenzie ran veined fingers through his sparse white hair; a strange exhilaration lighting his watery blue eyes.

‘Successful beyond all imagining, Your Reverence,’ he murmured. ‘Precisely one hundred and twenty days ago, I inserted the genome of alien matter into an unfertilized egg whose genes I had removed.’

De Molay’s gaze moved from the unkempt MacKenzie to the state-of-the-art laboratory filled with centrifuges, thermocyclers, molecular phosphor-imagers, cloning cylinders, hybridization chambers and plating devices.

MacKenzie walked to an unmarked door where a small machine instantly emitted a purple laser directly into his iris. The door opened.

De Molay followed MacKenzie through a smaller laboratory that opened into a glass-domed chamber some twenty feet high.

As De Molay entered, the laboratory plunged into darkness. The only light came from the solitary glass incubating chamber, covered by a muslin cloth.

MacKenzie removed the cover to reveal a prototype artificial womb.

The four-month-old foetus was suspended in a translucent fluid-filled sac, its heart visibly pumping, sleeping as soundly as if in its mother’s womb.

‘The fertilized egg is now growing and developing with only the donor’s nuclear genetic code’ MacKenzie said, his eyes gleaming. ‘It is of alien matter and yet . . . ’

‘And yet it develops as a human,’ De Molay murmured. He took a step nearer to the incubator. The foetus’s heart began to beat more rapidly.

MacKenzie stared at the foetus, confused. The monitor’s readings were escalating out of control. Trembling, he checked them. The foetus’s heart was now pounding at 300 beats per minute.

De Molay placed his hand on the glass dome and MacKenzie watched in horror as the heartbeat rose to 340, 360 . . . 400 . . . A bright purple light pulsed from the foetus’s chest cavity. MacKenzie was flung to the floor, temporarily blinded. He pressed his hands to his ears, screaming from the excruciating pain that coursed through every cell of his body.

De Molay caressed the glass dome and the foetus’s eyes opened. De Molay stared, mesmerized, into the creature’s violet gaze.

‘My only begotten son . . . ’ De Molay murmured. Then abruptly removed his hand.

* * *

2017
Gables Retirement Home, Isle of Arran, Scotland

MacKenzie stopped writing. He shuddered, then leant back in his bathchair, fighting nausea. He took a deep breath and picked up his pen.

* * *

1981
The Laboratory, Reykjavik, Iceland

Instantly the lights and electrical apparatus switched back on. The foetus’s heartbeat slowed to 80 beats per minute.

MacKenzie, paralyzed with terror, stared up at the Jesuit priest.

‘As per our agreement, you will receive fifteen million dollars,’ De Molay said. ‘One third transferred to your account on the clone’s birth, the next instalment when he turns eighteen. In the event of your death by natural or any other causes, on his fortieth birthday the final instalment will be transferred to your scientific foundation – the Aveline Institute.’

* * *

2025
The De Vere Mansion, Belgrave Square, London

There was that name again. Aveline.

Jason took a sip of whisky and turned the page.

* * *

1981
The Laboratory, Reykjavik, Iceland

MacKenzie rose to his feet, trembling visibly.

He looked at De Molay who was still staring at the clone.

‘Forty million dollars,’ MacKenzie said. His voice was very soft. ‘I have deposited copies of every piece of correspondence relating to our agreements and my procedures with lawyers in London.’

He glanced at the foetus, then back to De Molay.

‘I recorded every conversation anyone in your organization has conducted with me months before my work here began. Every cloning blueprint has been scanned and transferred to my outside sources.’

He stood staring at De Molay. ‘I remain convinced that you and your minions will go to extreme lengths to ensure the secrecy of this project.’ He hesitated.

‘Your organization’s name is mentioned, as is the head of MI6, Piers Aspinall, along with seven others. I think the few remaining nobler elements of the British and US governments will find the incriminating evidence precisely what they’ve been hoping for, and will connect it with Los Alamos.’

The scientist smiled. ‘You see, Your Reverence, I am many things – a coward, perhaps . . . ’ He looked into De Molay’s pale gaze. ‘ . . . but not a fool. In the event of my untimely death or disappearance, this information will be communicated to every opponent of your shadow government in the Western and Eastern hemispheres. Your operation will be permanently jeopardized.’

‘You have no idea who you are dealing with,’ De Molay said evenly.

MacKenzie brought out a large handkerchief and wiped his brow.

‘I have no next of kin to blackmail me into submission. My life is dedicated only to science.’

De Molay studied MacKenzie intently.

Finally he spoke. ‘Forty million . . . ’ He paused. ‘You are no fool, professor.’

‘And you . . . ’ MacKenzie stared straight into De Molay’s eyes, ‘ . . . are no priest.’

MacKenzie turned back to the foetus. When he looked up a moment later, De Molay had vanished.

* * *

2025
The De Vere Mansion, Belgrave Square, London

Jason stubbed his half-smoked cigarette out in an ashtray. He turned the page.

I am ashamed now, so many years later, of my greed. But I was a most ambitious man. And the money set my foundation up for my lifetime. And the next.

Thirty seconds after I successfully delivered the clone I was escorted by security agents to Stansted Airport in London. I was flown back by an unmarked jet to Area 51.

The next day, a mysterious fire broke out in the laboratory in Iceland and years of research documents were destroyed. All my staff suffocated in the fire.

Eight days later, the first ten million was transferred to my account.

Jason reached for the papers with the bank account numbers. There it was in black and white. A transfer of ten million dollars on 29 December 1981. He shrugged. He still didn’t get it. What did this have to do with anything? Especially with his father?

Unknown to the whole world, at 2 p.m. on 21 December 1981 the world’s first nuclear genetic clone was succesfully delivered.

I retired from my intelligence work two months later and relocated to Scotland where I set up my research quarters in Edinburgh.

Chapter Thirty-seven

A Death in the Family

St Bernadette’s Hospital, Hyde Park Corner

Adrian looked at his phone. It was Jason. Adrian turned to the nurse.

‘Give me two minutes. No disturbances.’

The nurse nodded. ‘Yes, of course, sir.’

‘Jason, Mother’s fast asleep,’ he said, ‘There’s no need to come over. You get some sleep. I’ll stay with her till Rosemary returns. I’ll call you if anything changes.’

Adrian clicked off his phone. Lilian’s eyes flicked open.

‘The Rothschild connection has been most advantageous, Mother.’ Adrian smiled at Lilian. ‘Especially with the Israelis. But when all’s said and done, the Accord has been signed and sealed for three years.’

He paced the hospital room.

‘James knew too much. He was about to talk. I had no option – I had to kill him. As for Melissa,’ Adrian shrugged, ‘she and her father were becoming a liability.’

Lilian struggled to reach her mask.

‘And Nick? I liked Nick. He was innocuous enough. His death wasn’t in the plan.’

She tore the mask off with all her remaining strength.

‘You . . . ’ Ashen-faced, she stared at Adrian. Her hands trembled violently. ‘They got to you. They promised to leave you alone.’

‘Mother,’ Adrian smiled, ‘I
am
they.’

Lilian stared up at Adrian, her eyes wide with horror and rage.

He walked round to the oxygen flow meter. ‘But you see, Lilian . . . ’ His fingers moved casually over the tubes to Lilian’s breathing cannula ‘you’ve been getting too clever. And you
are
in the plan. You signed your own death warrant. The information you so cleverly tracked down at the Medical Library in Wimpole Street is just
far
too incriminating to let you stay alive.’

Lilian tried desperately to lift herself up.

‘Jason.’ She looked beseechingly at Adrian.

‘Oh, Jason’s your firstborn, all right. A real chip off the old block. Your second son was strangled at birth and the babies exchanged by order of the Grand Druid Council. The execution papers were signed by Julius De Vere. And now, Mother, your meddling has sealed Jason’s fate.’

Lilian closed her eyes. A single tear fell down her cheek.

Adrian smiled. ‘You want to plead for your eldest son’s life?’

A male nurse entered quietly and Lilian reached out her hand towards him.

‘Help me, please,’ she sobbed.

The male nurse nodded to Adrian, and Lilian watched in horror as the nurse metamorphosed into a Warlock before her eyes.

As she reached for her rosary, her voice was shaking, barely audible.

‘Michael, the Archangel, defend us in the hour of battle,’ she whispered. ‘Be our safeguard against the wickedness and snares of the devil.’

Lilian stared up at Adrian, unafraid.

‘May God rebuke him we humbly pray, and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host,’ Lilian clasped the rosary tightly to her breast, ‘by the power of God, thrust down to hell Satan . . . ’ She struggled to breathe. ‘ . . . And all the evil spirits who wander through this world seeking the ruin of souls.’

Adrian looked down at her, watching her face turn blue. He stroked her hair. ‘It was good while it lasted.’

‘Lawrence,’ Lilian murmured.

Adrian’s eyes narrowed. He sensed the Presence. He followed her gaze towards the door but there was no one there.

‘I knew you’d come, Lawrence,’ Lilian whispered in elation.

The Warlock retched violently. Adrian snatched the rosary from Lilian’s fingers and nodded to the Warlock, his eyes black with malice.

The Warlock swabbed Lilian’s skin, then held up a hypodermic syringe.

‘The fact that you were Jewish was unavoidable,’ Adrian murmured as the Warlock slowly injected Lilian with one ampoule of concentrated potassium chloride. ‘But this will make up for it.’

Ninety seconds later Lilian De Vere was dead.

The De Vere Mansion, Belgrave Square

Jason walked into the kitchen, letter in hand. He put the letter down on the kitchen table, grabbed a cafetière from above the Aga cooker, then a package of Lilian’s favourite Columbian coffee. While the kettle boiled he idly studied the branding on the coffee pack – mass market from her local grocery store.

He’d never understood it. No matter where she travelled, Lilian swore that nothing matched up to the coffee he now held in his hand.

He measured out two scoops into the cafetière, unaware that at the precise moment, Lilian was being murdered by his younger brother.

He flicked the kettle off, poured the water and pressed the plunger down.

* * *

‘She is far beyond your reach now,’ Jether said.

Adrian leaned against the wall of the toilet in Lilian’s hospital room, sweat pouring from his brow, avoiding Jether’s gaze. He slid to his knees, retching violently.

‘The Nazarene,’ he uttered. ‘You have been with Him.’

He gazed at Jether with loathing, his eyes glowing like burning coals.

‘His presence torments you,’ Jether said.

‘You were too late’ Adrian rasped ‘to save her.’

‘No,’ Jether said. ‘It was her time.’

Adrian’s breathing became easier. ‘Do not think your secluded Portal in Alexandria will remain intact without a fight, Jether the Just,’ he spat. ‘The Monastery of Archangels is a military target. High on the list of the Fallen.’

He raised himself unsteadily to his feet. Recovering rapidly. ‘I will win.’

Lilian’s rosary, still in Adrian’s left hand, began to smoulder. He stared in horror at the sign of the cross branding itself into his left palm.

‘The Nazarene will defeat you on the plains of Megiddo,’ Jether said.

And he vanished before Adrian’s eyes.

The De Vere Mansion, Belgrave Square, London

Jason pulled out a kitchen chair and sat. He took a sip of the coffee.

‘Not bad, Mother,’ he muttered.

Then he picked up Hamish MacKenzie’s letter and continued reading.

* * *

1998
The Aveline Foundation, Edinburgh, Scotland

MacKenzie was sitting at his desk when an orderly entered clutching a postal sack. He emptied it out onto the table and MacKenzie watched as the envelopes and papers fell out onto his desk.

‘Alien-watchers, cult-watchers – they’re calling you a satanist this time, Hamish.’

MacKenzie shook his head and scanned some of the papers.

The orderly leaned over.

‘The old man is here again,’ he said. ‘He’s making a nuisance of himself, Hamish – it’s bad for the Institute.’

MacKenzie took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes wearily.

‘All right, I’ll see him. Rescue me after two minutes.’

The orderly opened the door and ushered a grubby old man inside. The man stood nervously, clutching his plastic bags.

MacKenzie gestured to the chair in front of him. ‘Please sit.’

The old man shook his head. He stared around the room, obviously petrified.

‘I can’t be long. Have to stay on the move. They’re everywhere.’ The man pushed a paper across the desk to MacKenzie. ‘My credentials.’

‘Fellow of the Royal College of Obstetricians,’ MacKenzie read aloud. ‘Member of British Foetal Medicine, Perinatal Medicine.’ He looked at the old man in recognition. ‘Why, you’re Rupert Percival. You were the obstetrician in the St Gabriel’s case.’

The old man nodded, a bit calmer now. ‘I received my medical degree from Trinity College, Dublin, and did my obstetric internship at Guys. I was highly respected in my field. Look, my time is short. They’ll get to me. They get to everyone eventually.’ He darted a glance out through the window, then back at the door.

‘There was an incident. I was highly sought after – my practice was in Harley Street. I selected my patients from the elite. The prenatal genetic diagnosis for one of the mothers I looked after was oligohydramnios.’

‘Too little amniotic fluid?’

Percival nodded. ‘There was no doubt of the poor foetal growth. A lagging fundal measurement of over three centimetres. Because of the status and wealth of this particular family – he had a top White House job – no measure was spared. DNA samples, weekly ultrasounds and measurements of the baby’s head, thigh bone, abdominal circumferences. In the last six months of pregnancy the amniotic fluid comes from foetal urine, and since lung formation is dependent on breathing in amniotic fluid the lungs of babies with severe dysplasia are very underdeveloped. I set the Caesarean date for 20 December 1981.

‘Certain powers that be did everything they could to take me off her case and replace me with a fellow of the Monash Institute but the mother would have none of it. She insisted that I, and only I, should treat her.

‘I delivered the baby on the set date at St Gabriel’s Nursing Home in Knightsbridge. As expected, the baby had very severe dysplasia and no kidney function at all and as a result was placed immediately in intensive care.

‘I didn’t expect it to be able to survive more than a few hours after birth because of the poor lung function. Well, the following morning I came in at dawn for my routine visit. The baby’s functions were perfect. It was a
completely different baby
.’

‘You’re sure you couldn’t have been mistaken?’ MacKenzie asked him.

‘I am a specialist, MacKenzie. There was no mistake. I sounded the alarm. But all the details in the file had been changed to coincide with the replacement. The nursing staff I’d worked with on the previous shifts were all mysteriously unobtainable and the mother – of course she’d never seen the baby – insisted it was a miracle.

‘The powers that orchestrated this were very wealthy and very, very powerful. Within twenty-four hours, I was made out to be a madman.

‘On reaching my surgery in Harley Street, I found my office ransacked and all files confiscated – by M16, I was told.

‘I was immediately suspended and my name was dragged through the mud by the British press.’

‘Gross misconduct,’ MacKenzie whispered, remembering. ‘They said you had been drunk while operating, that you had a long-standing alcohol problem.’

‘A dry sherry at Christmas was the extent of my drinking. They shut me out and shut me up, MacKenzie. Took my credibility. I lost my family, my career, my
life
. They turned me into this.’

Percival scrabbled in one of his shopping bags.

‘Unknown to them, I had executed two sets of tests, one immediately after the birth, a separate one the following dawn. I had filed those papers immediately with the Redgrave Medical Library in Wimpole Street, under a fictitious case name. They have lain there undisclosed for over seventeen years. They will be your proof.’

* * *

The De Vere Mansion, Belgrave Square, London

Jason put MacKenzie’s letter down and rifled through the file. Scrawled on the back of the last page was ‘The Redgrave Medical Library, 64 Wimpole Street.’

‘Wimpole Street,’ Jason said to himself. ‘So that’s what Mother was looking for.’

* * *

1998
The Aveline Foundation, Edinburgh, Scotland

‘I had taken a sample of the newborn’s DNA early that morning when I came in. I still had a sample of the foetus’s original DNA.’

Percival took a small steel tin from his plastic bag.

‘I’m dying, MacKenzie. I have six weeks left, maximum. They can’t get to me any more. I need an expert in the field. Someone I can entrust this to.’

Opening the steel tin, he placed two laboratory slides on the table before MacKenzie.

‘It’s the DNA of the surrogate. I had never seen genetic make-up like that in my life before.’ Percival’s lip trembled. ‘It was non-human.’

MacKenzie walked over to a large microscope in the adjacent anteroom.

Percival’s hands trembled as he passed the first slide over. ‘This is the DNA belonging to the original baby.’

He gave MacKenzie the second slide. ‘And this is the surrogate’s DNA.’

* * *

2017
Gables Retirement Home, Isle of Arran, Scotland

MacKenzie stared out towards the loch, his eyes distant.

‘That was the first time I ever knew . . . ’

* * *

2025
The De Vere Mansion, Belgrave Square, London

Jason continued reading.

The genetic make-up of Percival’s ‘surrogate’ infant was the
exact
replica of the nuclear genetic clone that I had produced years before in my laboratory. There could be no mistake.