The Shadow Conspiracy

by The Shadow Conspiracy (epub)

  ‘Yes, he did,’ said Harker with a smile, already pondering travel plans. ‘It’s a long trip, way off the coast of India. Probably twenty hours’ flight time, with possibly three or four stops. We’ll be better off taking commercial flights rather than the jet.’

  Harker was beaming as Doggie looked up from the new miniature whisky he was trying to open.

  ‘Did you say India?’

  ‘That’s exactly what he said,’ Harker replied, grabbing the bottle from Doggie’s hands, unscrewing the cap and downing the contents in one go.

  ‘And what are you hoping to find, Alex? Surely you don’t believe there’s some alien technology that can prevent an asteroid impact?’

  ‘It’s certainly better than moping around here, watching the clock tick down.’

  Doggie stared at him in disbelief, then he placed both palms over his face and took a long moment to rub at his eyes. ‘Very well, then,’ he said. ‘Count me in.’ The dean then stood up, hands on hips, and looked off into the distance theatrically. ‘Well, gentlemen, it appears the game is afoot.’

  Harker let out a chuckle, but Botha remained unimpressed. ‘Yeah, take it easy, Sherlock.’

  Doggie maintained his pose for a few more seconds. ‘Sorry,’ he said with an embarrassed smile, ‘but I’ve always wanted a chance to say that.’

  Chapter 21

  John Schroder glanced up at the bronze statue of Justitia and then flipped a coin into the water below it, which landed with a splash before sinking to the bottom. The Justice Fountain with its sculpted goddess holding a sword and scales had been watching over the city of Frankfurt for a very long time, in front of the town hall which dominated one side of the square. Crowds of people moved past him, all going about their busy lives. He gave a quick nod to Justitia before heading away towards a row of payphones. There he inserted a few coins, dialled a number and waited for a reply.

  ‘Thank you for calling the psychic hotline,’ a woman’s voice announced in a high-pitched German accent. ‘There is no one to take your call at the moment, but if you would like to leave a message, then one of our talented clairvoyants will call you back.’ The line then fell silent, followed by a beep.

  ‘This is John Schroder and I need to speak with Mr Berger, immediately.’

  He hung up then rested against the side wall. Please make it quick, he thought, and in less than thirty seconds the phone began to ring.

  ‘Hello,’ Schroder replied and the same high-pitched female voice came on the line.

  ‘I’m just putting you through, Mr Schroder.’

  There was a series of clicks and then the familiar voice of Milat Berger who, as usual, sounded like he hadn’t a care in the world. ‘John, it’s a surprise to hear from you so soon. Is there a problem?’

  Schroder cupped his hand around the receiver as a red-haired woman with a nose ring began to use the payphone next to him. ‘I’ve got a problem all right,’ he hissed. ‘The Templars know about me.’

  There was a short pause on the line, and when he next spoke Berger’s pleasant tone had evaporated. ‘How?’

  ‘That idiot Pelosi named me after his love-in with Legrundy. Why didn’t you tell me he was going after her? I could have been of help.’

  ‘Sorry, John, but I never put all my eggs in one basket at any one time. I’m sure you can appreciate that.’

  Schroder gritted his teeth, feeling especially annoyed because this suggested he did not have the other man’s complete confidence. ‘Well, it’s lucky for both of us that I managed to escape before I ended up God knows where. I did have to kill two of the Templars – but no love lost there. Look, I need to meet with you, and the entire Council, as soon as possible.’

  ‘The entire Council! Why on earth would I arrange that?’

  Schroder’s grip on the phone tightened. Berger knew damn well that, with his cover blown, there was only one place for him to go and that was back to the Mithras. ‘I have new information on Alex Harker, and the elders are going to want to hear about it directly, because it’s likely to blow a lid off all your plans.’

  Berger began to chuckle. ‘He’s a slippery one, that professor. We just had a team corner him and Michael Wexler, and yet they still managed to slip past them.’

  This was news to Schroder, who felt his anger rising. ‘Do you plan to continue keeping me in the dark about everything? I thought we had an agreement.’

  ‘We do, John, but you can’t expect me to tell you everything. Besides, it was a very last-minute incident. Now, why don’t you tell me what information you have, and I will pass it on.’

  ‘No,’ Schroder growled, fed up with being held at arm’s length. ‘I want to come in from the cold, and I want to see the Council in person.’

  A long pause ensued before Berger came back on the line, his voice sounding chipper once more. ‘Very well, you can plead your case directly. I assume you have a new mobile?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘Good, then text the number over to me and I will get back to you with the address and a time. Fortunately we are convening tomorrow night to discuss current events. So hole up somewhere safe in the meantime, and make sure you attend wearing a dinner jacket, as it’s a formal occasion. I’ll see you there.’

  Schroder emitted a small sigh, and his grip on the phone loosened. ‘Thank you, Milat. I’ll see you then.’

  As the line went dead, Schroder hung up the payphone and stood for a while observing the people around him. There was a mother and her child playing pat-a-cake over by the fountain, next to an old man feeding a biscuit to his white Scottish Terrier. On the far side of the square a couple were kissing intently even as group of teenage boys walked past them, wrapping their arms around their own bodies as if pretending to be in the sweet embrace they were witnessing. Just ordinary people going about their lives and wholly unaware that in less than a week the world as they knew it would be over. And in a twist of galactic fate, those few that managed to survive would emerge as simple hunter-gatherers – to begin the cosmic cycle all over again.

  Schroder closed his eyes and listened to the crowds all around him, letting the sensation wash over him like rain during a storm. It is strange, he thought, how all the things that seem important in one’s everyday life – career, family, ego – just melt into unimportance when you realise your life, along with everyone else’s, is coming to a close.

  Chapter 22

  The cooling breeze blowing across Harker’s face was invigorating as he and Doggie bounced about in the back seat of the three-wheeled taxi rickshaw, which buzzed along Vip Road towards the centre of Port Blair. Their driver, a young local boy named Papa, had met them at Veer Savarkar International Airport – or Port Blair Airport, as it was better known to tourists – and after Doggie had propelled himself forward as the group’s negotiator, they had settled on a fare and headed into town. Of course, in most negotiations the usual result was to bargain the price down, whereas Doggie had somehow managed to increase it. A remarkable achievement for a man who was so adept at securing large sums of money from the patrons of Cambridge University.

  Botha was following behind in a second rickshaw, and as they made their way down the busy street, Harker was feeling relieved just to have arrived. The entire journey had taken them over thirty hours, starting with a comfortable flight from Zermatt to Milan, then on to Abu Dhabi for a connecting flight to Kolkata in India, before a final leg to the Andaman Islands and Port Blair. Their red-eye-inducing journey had comprised over six thousand miles, nine plastic-tray meals, six in-flight movies, five trips to the toilet, two blazing rows with airport check-in staff, and one very serious argument between the three of them that had almost ended in blows.

  The quarrel could have been about any number of concerns they each had, the main one being that, apart from following the coordinates inscribed on the coin, they really had no idea where to head upon reaching Port Blair. But instead it had come down to the most insignificant of issues: who would get the last beef Welli
ngton and Yorkshire puddings when the airline ran out. Maybe it had been due to their overall lack of sleep, or the child whose parents could not have cared less that their little treasure kept running up and down the aisle screaming, but in the end a squabble over a stupid meal had been the straw that broke the camel’s back. Harker had resolved it by swapping his own beef Wellington for a dodgy-looking vegetarian meal served with rice, whereupon both Doggie and Botha had shaken hands and made up. It was a ridiculous thing to have happened, but their nerves had been frayed to breaking point.

  Now, as Harker sucked in another breath of fresh air, he was simply relieved that his air-conditioning induced dry throat was starting to pass. ‘We need to take the next right turn,’ he called out to Papa in front, after noting the directions on his smartphone. ‘And then stay on it for a few miles.’

  Papa glanced back and gave an understanding nod before making the turn.

  ‘We should get there in twenty minutes,’ Harker said loudly over the whirring of the engine, but Doggie seemed far more interested in the road ahead and the number of pedestrians crossing it.

  ‘I’ve not yet seen one traffic light,’ the dean said cheerfully. ‘Can you imagine that in the UK? There would be pile-ups every minute of the day!’

  ‘The people here clearly just have good road sense,’ Harker replied, as a small red scooter with nearly flat tyres whizzed past them carrying three teenagers. ‘Maybe not all of them, but there’s a freedom about it all, and I bet you don’t get nearly as much road rage.’

  Doggie was already nodding. ‘It’s a beautiful place – bit undeveloped, but beautiful. I just hope we get to find what we’re looking for.’

  He was right about the island’s beauty. The white sand beaches they had seen while flying in radiated purity, and the waters shimmered in a wonderful green-blue colour that put the English Channel to shame. The built-up areas looked a bit run-down by Western standards, with most buildings in dire need of a fresh coat of paint, but out in the rural areas the view was transformed. Lush vegetation lined the coastline, and from the beaches other islands in the archipelago could be seen, giving it the feel of a desert island paradise. And this was the reason tourists made such an effort to get here, keen to discover somewhere off the beaten track that European package holiday-makers would never experience.

  During their long flight over Harker had been developing serious feelings of apprehension and anxiety, and it wasn’t just their in-flight meals that had been responsible. The idea of ancient aliens, not to mention magic-like technology that could prevent an impending cataclysm caused by a meteor strike, stirred up ideas that tore at his insides like butterflies, only with steel claws. This was not territory he felt at all comfortable with, and it seemed part of what one could only describe as conspiracy culture. But still he couldn’t simply dismiss the being they had found in Legrundy’s charge. It was such a strange-looking creature and those elliptical eyes were the most haunting feature of all, but not because they appeared in ancient Egyptian culture or matched images of the fabled Sumerian gods called the Annunaki. It was that they looked so… well, alien, and unlike anything of Earth’s human history. Of course, Neanderthals, Cro-Magnon and all the other species of the Homo sapiens archaeological record were distinct from modern humans, but that strange fellow was truly bizarre. And, more importantly, where could such a group of creatures hide and thrive – and to what ends? Was it in fact just one of many extraterrestrials who travelled back and forth from some distant planet, like unearthly anthropologists, documenting and intervening in human history and thus shaping our very existence? Determining our history by means of manipulation, whether good or bad?

  As the rickshaw taxi headed ever further from the bustle of Port Blair, Harker began to feel a renewed sense of purpose. It was possible this whole endeavour could lead nowhere further than disappointment, but as the palm trees grew denser and the traffic faded away, he began wondering what they would find when they got to the location on the western shore that the coordinates pointed to.

  Twenty minutes later they were walking on Wandoor Beach on the western shoreline of Andaman, which turned out to be even more utopian than it had looked from the air, and the expanse of blue ocean that lay beyond was heavenly. One could not think of a better place to be shipwrecked in the days of eighteenth-century buccaneers, which seemed at complete odds with the reality of the penal colony the British Empire had established here. The history of these islands was long, but as Harker now wandered across the sand with his jacket folded across one arm, it was not the historical aspects of the place he was preoccupied with.

  ‘There’s nothing here,’ Botha called out from the edge of the trees, where he was taking refuge from the heat. ‘Nothing here but beach and ocean.’

  Doggie had also taken up a temporary position in the shade of a palm tree, and was busy fanning himself with a copy of Air Weekly which he had appropriated on the flight over.

  ‘Xavier’s right, Alex. There’s nothing here but sea and sand. Are you sure you’ve got the correct coordinates?’

  Harker had already checked the coordinates on his phone map multiple times, and there could be no doubt that their location was dead on target. Either whatever had been here eleven thousand years ago was long gone, or his theory about those numbers on the coin was mistaken.

  ‘We gave it a shot, Alex,’ Botha yelled, while Harker continued to stare at his phone as if it was about to magically reveal something. ‘Why don’t we head back to Port Blair and find a hotel to crash in,’ Botha continued, glancing over at Papa and the other driver, who were patiently waiting back on the road. ‘I don’t think I can take another thirty hours of travelling without at least one good night’s sleep. Besides, maybe it’s time we all contacted our families.’

  His friends’ voices seemed nothing more than background noise to Harker as he pulled out the gold coin again and began tracing those numbers with his fingers. It was a desperate attempt, but he truly felt as if he’d overlooked something. It was like a stick constantly poking him, like an unconscious note he had made without even realising it. And as he scrutinised each cuneiform number in turn, it suddenly hit him.

  ‘He got it wrong,’ Harker muttered to himself and then he yelled it out. ‘He got it wrong!’

  ‘Who got what wrong?’ Botha shouted back, then hurried across the sand towards him. He was followed by Doggie, holding Air Weekly over his head as protection from the sun.

  ‘We screwed up the numbers. That’s not a five and a two,’ Harker said excitedly, ‘it’s a one and a three. The coordinates are about twenty miles that way,’ he added, pointing towards the blue of the ocean.

  Botha looked remarkably unimpressed and his eyelids were beginning to droop. ‘OK, so instead of being on a beach, it’s in the Bay of Bengal. What a revelation.’

  Doggie was also looking doubtful, but Harker grinned from ear to ear. ‘No, gentlemen. It’s a place that hasn’t been touched by outsiders for maybe as long as sixty thousand years. A place where the very few who dared to enter it have ended up dead. It’s therefore perfect, just perfect.’

  Botha and Doggie glanced at each other uncertainly as Harker stared out across the ocean.

  ‘Alex, if you’re thinking of Skull Island from the King Kong movies, then you’re in for a big disappointment,’ Botha said. ‘Because that was only a film, you know. Just fiction.’

  Harker was still looking extremely excited as he slapped both hands on Botha’s shoulders. ‘I know it is, but I bet you money that Skull Island was based on this place… Xavier, we’ll need a boat – a fast one.’ Harker was now looking mightily proud of himself. ‘Can you hire one?’

  Without hesitation Botha offered a nod. ‘OK, when – and to where?’

  ‘We’ll go tonight once it gets dark, and as to the where…’ Harker turned his gaze back to the ocean. ‘Let’s just say that tonight we’re going back in time.’

  Chapter 23

  There was an uncomfortable chill i
n the air as the silver Mercedes limousine slowly made its way up the narrow, looping road to Neuschwanstein Castle, and each of the flaming torches lining it flickered as the car passed by. The castle was considered one of the most beautiful buildings in the world, perched high in the Bavarian Alps above the small tourist town of Hohenschwangau, less than a mile away, and offering views of numerous lakes in the green plateau below. Built in the late nineteenth century at the behest of the Bavarian King Ludwig II on a site chosen especially for its idyllic views extending for miles around, this turreted mountain retreat rose upwards like a beacon of fairy tale perfection, with a forest of towering trees surrounding its white-brick base. Even Walt Disney was supposed to have taken inspiration from it when building his world-famous Magic Kingdom, and in modern times the castle had seen over sixty million tourists passing through its gates since opening to the public.

  On this particular evening though, there was no sign of inquisitive sightseers with their cameras at the ready, and as the Mercedes approached the main entrance, a woman wearing a black tuxedo waved it to a halt. She took note of the registration number, checked her list, then signalled it onwards through an arch leading into the main courtyard. With a squeak the limousine’s tyres made a sharp turn and came to a stop, as a man dressed in red livery embellished with gold braid strode over to the passenger door and opened it with a genteel bow.

  John Schroder descended from the vehicle and glanced carefully around the inner courtyard as the servant gently closed the door behind him.

  ‘Mr Schroder,’ the man began politely, in English but with a thick German accent. ‘Welcome to Neuschwanstein. If you would be so good as to follow me, they are already gathering in the Throne Room.’

  Schroder merely smiled and followed his chaperone towards a large oak door at the top of a flight of stone steps.