Sun of the Sleepless (62 page)

The rustle of Jolene's clothing suddenly broke the stagnant tension between Jackson and Dale and she started to speak with an air of impatience.

'Recriminations are all very well, but can we get down to what is going on right here and now?'

Jackson turned to look at her and grinned widely.

'Of course, sorry, you know how I sometimes get distracted.'

He coughed to clear his throat, relaxing slightly as he edged back closer to the window, quickly glancing outside before returning his attention to his literally captive audience.

'As I was saying, I received word that my communication with Faber had been traced, a simple text message warning me as we were travelling down in convoy. Of course, I knew the game was up and it was just a matter of time before we had to have this little chat so I decided to prepare my exit. I requested my own
special transport
and the team that had been following you all along has come to my rescue. They have just arrived in the courtyard so I expect that they'll be knocking on our door any minute now. I would guess that we have to hurry though, as my messages will no doubt have been intercepted although I probably have a little time before
your
friends arrive.'

'So you just intend to walk out with your head held high?' jibed Dale.

'Well, I don't intend to run if I can help it!' chortled Jackson.

Jolene gasped incredulously.

'You're an impudent son of a bitch when all is said and done! Whatever you're doing, just get it over and done with!'

'Yeah,' Dale gruffly urged. 'Tell us all about your
exposé
,' he intoned with a heavy hint of sarcasm.

Jackson pouted his bottom lip and thought for a moment.

'Alright, to start with, do you remember when I said that anybody mentioned in the archive documents would almost certainly be dead by now? Well that wasn't exactly true. Paula Krom unknowingly hinted at the truth when she spoke of Hanna leaving Berlin with her Vril Society Sisterhood girls. I read the report detailing your visit so I know that you are aware that Hanna mentioned one particular girl being chosen to stay behind with Maria Orsitsch.'

'I remember,' Dale blurted, 'her name was Adrianna.'

'Just so,' Jackson smiled, 'she was twelve years old in 1945. She will be seventy-eight this year.'

'What has that got to do with anything?' Jolene demanded petulantly.

'Just a bit of background really, I thought that you'd like to know how we ended up in this position. She has been the Queen of the Order of the Sun of the Sleepless - our Sigulah - since she escaped Berlin all those years ago. Maria's purpose in staying behind was to go through the anointing rituals, readying Adrianna so that she could officially replace her. She knew that her time was coming to an end and that she had failed in her great mission to retrieve the technology that we had seeded for the Nazis.

'She decided to stand-down - abdicate essentially - and entrusted the safety of our new Queen to Gudrun and Heike, the Cipher of Minerva and the Cipher of Artemis, the Senators of the Holy Orders of Cherubim and Thrones. The Cipher of Aphrodite - the Senator for our Holy Order of Seraphim - had already departed to create a safe haven for us elsewhere. It was wisdom and strength that Adrianna needed to see her safely out of harms way and beauty had secured the location where our Order would recover to rise again and continue our Great Work.'

'- and all of this is your great work I suppose?' Dale offered with a heavy scowl.

'Exactly so!' Jackson exclaimed. 'Now, in the early days when she was still quite young, Adrianna was purely a figurehead, kind of like a constitutional monarch. Any decisions that had to be made were actually guided by the wise counsel of the Powers, the Senators and the Cardinals if you recall from the structure list you saw earlier; the accumulated knowledge of advisers with years of service to our Order under their belts. A young Queen was chosen to break from the failure that our plan had become.'

What had started as an ear-splitting crack echoed up from the main hall of the castle, bouncing off the stone walls and up the grand staircase until a barely audible pop was heard within the locked room. Dale and Jolene quickly exchanged glances as they realised that it was the sound of gunfire from the ground floor.

'Not to worry,' Jackson assured them, 'that is probably my escorts asking Stanley and Oliver whether they can come in. Now, back to what I was saying. Over time, Adrianna grew into a very clever and resourceful Queen and she rebuilt our Order to be bigger than we had ever been before. Our Brothers and Sisters and assorted banyan informants walked the corridors of power from the so-called democracies of the West to the autocracies of the furthest reaches of the East and within a couple of decades we had regained our intellectual property from the USSR. We once again had the vortex technology within our grasp.'

Another volley of sharp cracks showed that the exchange of fire was getting closer but Jackson seemed to ignore it.

'Of course, even with the research that the USSR and the Nazis before them had funded on our behalf, it wasn't necessarily so easy to build the technology into a fully operational weapon on the scale that we needed and we have spent the better part of half a century waiting for technology to develop and for us to generate the finance necessary to complete our journey. It has been a long and difficult task without the power of a state behind us, but we eventually managed it and our real work can now begin in earnest - the very point of developing the vortex technology in the first place.'

It was clear that a serious assault on the building was under way and shots were echoing around the castle. It appeared that Stanley and Oliver were on the defensive, the battle getting closer as they obviously fell back and the enunciation of each shot becoming much clearer and a lot louder.

Jackson cocked an ear to the steady salvoes but did not waver from his story, acting as if nothing untoward was happening.

'You must understand that we're going to give a voice of admonishment back to the world that nobody can ignore, a voice that surpasses the secular authority of governments and states. The voice of New Age terrorism you may call it, but it is backed by a power that must surely be considered as divine and we will wield it to ensure that the  inhabitants of our global village will no longer be ignored. No longer will partisan politics demean and undermine what we know to be right and wrong in a civilised society. No longer will we accept the situation where oppressive autocratic regimes are propped up by Western powers just to maintain the status quo.

'There are going to be big changes in our world society, although admittedly, it will be slow to start, the Earth turns but once in twenty-four hours. Our first aim is to create a ripple of dissent that shakes the very foundations of the world's states, to give impetus to the movements and peoples who live under the iron fists of tyranny in countries around the globe.'

Dale was getting agitated, aware that the fight was heading to their own door and once Stanley and Oliver were no longer outside to defend them, they would make easy targets.

He tried to remain calm and conversational, eager to drag some time out to figure out what he could do.

'The iron fists of tyranny? That is a bit melodramatic. Such as - ?'

'Oh come on,' gasped Jackson, 'I could name half a dozen North African states that are ruled by fear and subjugation, including some that are considered simply as major tourist resorts. That is the problem with our global society, the maintenance of the status quo by the Western powers even though the domination of the populations within these countries is obvious for all to see.

'We do not intend to prescribe the solutions, but we will bring our power to bear on those that enable these circumstances to continue. We will empower the peoples of the world, to enable all societies to be judged on their humanity rather than their gross domestic product or their adherence to any specific ideologies. Left wing, right wing, it makes no difference to us, we will enforce our will and bring all governments into line, as well as the global corporations that place profit before human benefit.'

Dale had started to edge around the table, hoping that Jolene would understand his intent to move away from where he had been standing, creating a wider field of fire that Jackson would have to cover.

'How can you do that?' he asked, attempting to use his questions to divert attention from his movements. 'Nobody has ever heard of you.'

'Nobody needs to know who we are!' shrugged Jackson. 'We have no desire to humiliate governments, that would achieve nothing. Rioting in the streets is a means to an end not an objective. It isn't helpful to anybody for the very fabric of society to be ripped to shreds. It requires gentle changes precipitated by us and applied by the administrations that have stood by and simply let things happen, too concerned with their own longevity of power to actually lead the people where they need to go. No longer will they stand at the pinnacle of power, they are no longer at the top of the food chain.'

'What about the governments that will not listen? Just like you I could list half a dozen regimes that present a clear and present danger to world society which the Western governments can do nothing about, even though we have tried.'

Jackson smiled at the pointed statement and nodded.

'We will let diplomacy take its course but if we have to engage in direct action then we will. The children will be allowed to play unless they cannot behave, at which point we will apply some discipline.'

A blast from a handgun rang out and the gun fight outside of the room had clearly reached the landing of the floor they were on. Time was running out.

'So you swap a whole host of dictators for one, the Sun of the Sleepless? Who disciplines you? Who admonishes you when you step out of line?'

Jackson shook his head vehemently.

'That is such a cliché! You think we're the only ones doing this? There are groups within governments the world over who are trying to control global politics. Conspiracy theories abound on the subject of the Bilderberg Group, Bohemian Grove, the Illuminati and the One World Government. Our record speaks for itself; we have never chased money purely for the sake of greed and yet espoused it as necessary for economic growth. The human population has lost faith in politics and turned to technology for their redemption but that technology is either in the hands of indolent governments or at the whim of marketing men and speculators, regardless of the benefit to society. A German philosopher once said, "
Verlassen Sie sich nur nicht auf solch trügerische Schmuckstücke
", do you know what that means?'

Dale shook his head but Jolene suddenly took a step forwards and spoke from the other side of the table.

'Do not put your faith in the jewellery of illusion?'

'Just so,' nodded Jackson. 'The modern world is so blinded by the marvel of technology that it forgets to ask whether it is of real benefit. What is the use of synthesising foods to feed the world if it ends up poisoning the people that eat it? What is the use of social networking technology when the effect is to abstract people from real interaction? You think that economic mobility is the best way to measure a contribution to society? The West has lost its way, but everybody just shrugs and heads to the nearest globalised coffee-bar franchise to commiserate, yet at the same time millions are starving and dying across the other side of the world in a fight for survival.'

He shook his head and pursed his lips to contain his outburst, but he could not help himself.

'The de facto plan of the West is to convert the developing countries into nations of consumers. Give them a TV set and pump them full of advertising for new products, new items that they don't need, convince them that they deserve to be part of the productivity machine. Predators are at their most dangerous when they're hungry and there are huge numbers of people starving, both literally and metaphorically. This presents a political problem irrespective of the suffering of humanity.

'So the West is going to sedate them, feed them with the latest cellular phone, the latest laptop computer, endowing them with aspirations for technology that feeds the ego rather than the soul. The voices of dissent that do cry out are silenced with ridicule, the clunking food-pellet mentality of the masses drowning out the cries of despair for humanity itself.'

'I can understand what you're saying,' Dale said with a marked hint of dejection, 'but threats and retribution won't solve the world's problems. People make their own choices, a utopia for some is despised by others. Nobody forces anybody to buy into it, they make their own choices.'

'You think so?' retorted Jackson drily. 'Look at the collapse of the banking system in the West, you think that was the choice of the people? You think that the people don't realise that faceless bankers control their destiny more than the politicians that they elect? You think that the populations of the world are driven only by the lust for power and wealth? The jewellery of illusion Dale, trinkets of deceit!

'We are fighting for freedom, I mean real freedom, not just the absence of oppression but a true delivery of choice and accountability, a freedom from illusion and deceit. Do you believe that the global pharmacy corporations deliver drugs purely because of a social conscience? You think that the food conglomerates are only interested in delivering healthy meals to our tables? It is high time that money is viewed as a verb rather than a noun. It is revered as an object to collect, to hoard, it is used to inspire our youth through music and advertising; money buys beauty and fame without the need to engage in the fabric of society and create something real, something of benefit.