He made a slow, methodical examination of the body. “Any sign of foreign material on the surface or in the wounds?”
“Quite a bit, although nothing that I can not account for in other ways. After all, the contents of his clothing were also crushed. Still, I assume that the professionals will send everything through the labs. Nothing remotely resembling lizard scales or metal filings from a killer robot, if that’s what you mean.”
He sighed. “Listen, Doc. Something killed this man here, on the beach, less than twenty-four hours ago. Every single shred of evidence suggests that it was a great prehistoric sort of beast that suddenly appeared in the meadow, chased Sir Robert down the trail to the beach, then caught and killed him there and vanished. Now, either such a beast exists, which means it should be easy to find considering it roams the existing trails in broad daylight, or someone made it seem as if it exists. If the latter is the case, it would mean that damned near every person on this island had to be in on it or else it involved some high level of technology right out of science fiction. And that kind of technology is just what the folks who come and stay here are in the business of dreaming up. Now, you tell me: which of the three theories would you pursue first? Or do you have another?”
“I do not,” she admitted, “unless you mix in black magic of some sort. If you find the method you will find the murderer, that is true. But if it is someone who can do this sort of thing, what defense will you or any of us have if you get close to it?”
“Because,” he said, “anybody smart enough to do it is also smart enough to realize that if I go, an infinite number of replacements will arrive. My main concern is motive. Why do it in such a flashy way, certain to attract a tremendous amount of attention?” He thought a moment. “Magellan is a privately held corporation chartered in the United States. Sir Robert owned about half the existing shares, and as far as I know he never married. I wonder who gets those shares? They’re almost certainly worth billions.”
The doctor shrugged. “His heirs, I presume, whoever they may be, unless he left it all to some home for stray cats. Whoever they are, I wonder if they even know?” She paused a moment. “You will be here for the funeral?”
“Of course, and beyond that, too. Wouldn’t miss it. After all, I’m going to be here for the formal autopsy.” He looked one last time at the remains. “Closed casket ceremony, I bet. The mortician who could make that even halfway presentable wouldn’t be doing cadavers—he’d be painting the Sistine Chapel at the very least.”
3. THE DAMSEL IS DISTRESSED
The two men stood at the edge of the helipad just down from the Institute and watched the helicopter come in. It was the company’s fanciest model, with all the luxuries and amenities of the very rich and well connected and jet powered, too.
“Well, here she comes.” John Medford Byrne sighed. At fifty-three he was director of the Institute, a post which also placed him on Magellan’s board of directors. He more than coped on his U.S. $157,000 annual salary with all the fringes thrown in. Tall, distinguished, gray-haired and tanned, he looked in his fancy tailored brown business suit like he should be on the cover of Business Week. In truth, he was by all accounts a genius at administration who earned every dime he made and then some, but he was uncomfortable now. At the moment, Magellan was running smoothly as usual, but eventually, when Sir Robert’s will was fully probated, there would have to be a board and stockholders’ meeting at which control would be passed.
“She’s the eight-thousand-pound gorilla, MacDonald,” Byrne added. “Anything she wants she gets, including me dressing up in a suit in this climate. You remember that.”
MacDonald, who was less formally dressed and far more comfortable, having not brought a suit or tie or anything resembling them when pulled to the island, nodded. Byrne had been after him on and off for several days on this. He was a little sour on the whole thing himself. I’m expected to save all their fat corporate asses, he thought, and if I do they might give me a thousand dollars bonus for Christmas, if they remember at all. If not—well, his job, low as it might be, was as vulnerable if not more so than theirs.
The thing that made them all uncomfortable was that not one of them had known that Sir Robert had a daughter or, for that matter, any other immediate living relatives. A long lost brother they might have at least accepted, but Sir Robert was always rather cold in all sexual matters, and those who had known him had considered him sexless or perhaps a self-repressed homosexual. All that anyone really knew about her was that her name was Angelique Montagne, that she was just barely old enough to inherit to the full without a conservator. They also know she was crippled in some way, for the company advance information warned them to provide for a wheelchair and a nurse.
That, and a couple of other things, not the least of which was that Sir Robert had made her sole and unequivocal heir to everything he had, including the controlling interest in Magellan. Lots of attorneys in many nations would be gearing up to contest or otherwise stall that part, but Sir Robert was a great businessman with the best attorneys money could buy. In the end, the will would stand, everyone seemed confident of that, and when it did anyone who contested would be on a particularly nasty enemies list. Nor would she be likely to be simply removed, even for the money at stake. Should she die before making her own arrangements, the will provided for such nasty things that all their jobs would go and it was quite likely that Magellan would be carved up and possibly dissolved.
MacDonald was there at her request, and feeling a bit uncomfortable because of that. His command appearance suggested that, other than burying her father, she had made solving the mystery of his death her only other immediate priority.
The helicopter landed, and several staff members went to it, opened the door, and provided a small set of steps for disembarkation. First off the plane was Derek Meadows, Sir Robert’s private solicitor and, like the dead man, a Canadian. Harold McGraw, Magellan’s chief counsel and an American, had already arrived and was at the Lodge. Next out was an elderly Anglican clergyman whom they took to be Father Dodds, an old and close friend of the dead man who would, by Sir Robert’s written orders, preside over the funeral.
Now two of the ground crew went to the helicopter as a wheelchair appeared at the door, and the two beefy men, aided by those still on board, lifted the chair and its occupant gently to the ground. Next out was a fortyish-looking woman who had to be the nurse, and, by her attire, was also quite obviously a Catholic nun.
MacDonald looked at the girl in the wheelchair and sighed. Why do the paralyzed ones always seem to be extraordinarily beautiful? he wondered.
Angelique was in fact a stunner, with lush reddish-brown hair, big green eyes, and the face and body of a very young Brigit Bardot. She was petite, beautiful, and she was, from all appearances, a quadriplegic.
The totality of her disability, particularly when coupled with her radiant, almost charismatic beauty, shocked both men, and for a moment both just stood there, not moving.
The wheelchair, however, was no ordinary wheelchair, as she proved, spotting the two standing at the edge of the tarmac. It had considerable bulk below and behind and might have weighed a ton. Without any assist from anyone, it started up and glided towards the pair.
As she reached them, both men saw that she was wearing some sort of headpiece plugged into the chair which included a tiny microphone. It resembled the communications gear of a modern telephone operator. The helicopter was completely switched off now, and they heard her say softly, “Arret!” The chair halted immediately. The nurse and Meadows had followed her and now stood behind, although it was Meadows who took the lead.
“Mademoiselle Montagne, let me present Mr. Byrne, the Institute’s director, and Company Investigator MacDonald, who is in charge of our own inquiry into the facts of your father’s death and is a fellow Canadian, I might add.”
She looked at them rather nervously. “How do you do, sirs,” she managed, in a pleasant, French accented soprano.
>
“Welcome to our island,” Byrne managed, trying to sound both fatherly and formal at the same time and coming off mostly stuffy. “Actually, it’s your island now, too, of course. You must be fatigued by your long journey. Would you care to come up to the Lodge right now and get settled in? Weighty matters can wait.’’
“I am feeling fine, Monsieur, and not at all out of sorts. I did little on the journey but sleep and think. I have not as yet had time to get used to all this.”
“Well, we understand that it must have been a shock to learn of your father’s death—” Byrne began, but she cut him off.
“No, no! You do not yet understand, I fear. Until only four days ago I did not know that he even was my father.”
That startled them both once again. It was a day for shocks. MacDonald’s curiosity broke through the ice.
“Um, you mean that you didn’t know Sir Robert at all?”
“Oh, oui, I knew him as ‘Uncle Robert,’ and I knew who he was, but all that I knew, all that my records ever said, was that I was the orphaned child of two people I thought were my parents, and that my father had been killed while serving with Sir Robert in Korea. I was raised mostly in a convent in the Gaspe, with Sir Robert a frequent visitor. I knew he had set up a trust fund for me, and this chair is the product of one of his companies, but that he was actually my real father— mon Dieu!—1 wish I had known!”
Byrne looked even more uncomfortable. “I suggest we still go up to the Lodge and get out of the sun. It’s air conditioned there, and we can have some tea or whatever and talk more comfortably. We have a small tram over there with a wheelchair lift—a few of the Fellows of the Institute also have need of wheelchairs—and we can be up there in no time at all.”
She nodded. “Very well.”
She commanded the chair, he noted, with simple commands in French in a very definite and slightly unnatural tone of voice. It was an amazing device to him, and one that, he knew, would be beyond the financial reach of many others who could use it. She could even make very small adjustments in its steering by uttering sharp nonsense syllables or clicks with her tongue.
The ride up was in silence, taking but four minutes. MacDonald kept his eyes on her throughout, drawing what deductions he could from the little he had. For one thing, it was unlikely that she’d been in this condition for a long time—the body was perfect, the muscle tone looked normal, and there was no sign of atrophy in any of the limbs. She looked as if she could get up out of that chair and dance if she only wanted to. And yet, her manner, her clear acceptance of the condition, and her total command over that state of the art chair system suggested years of therapy and practice. There was also something of the child in the way she looked at everything in wonder and took it all in, yet she had seemed quite confident and generally comfortable in her speech and manner. Her demeanor might mask someone who knew far more than she was telling, or it could be an equal disguise for someone scared to death and unadjusted to any of this. He wanted to know more, and quickly.
When they reached the Lodge, he excused himself and promised that he would be back in just a few minutes, hoping that it didn’t seem either rude or out of place. Byrne gave him a nasty look, but Angelique simply smiled and nodded understandingly.
He went down to the library section, which had a number of terminals plugged directly into SAINT. He was authorized to use the computer under certain restrictions and had the code and password to do so, but he disliked using it for more than routine tasks. By now, five and a half days since Sir Robert’s death, he was more than convinced that it could not have been done without using the computer, and he knew that anything he did, any correspondence, inquiries, or communications he had, would be monitored by not only Ross and his staff but probably by the murderer as well. This, however, was different.
Any questions fed in on Angelique prior to now had been met with what was called a “corporate block”—a required set of codes that no one on the island knew. Taking a guess that the need for such things was now past, he brought up the general information files and requested her profile. He had been correct. This time it came up, photo and all.
She was twenty-one by only a few weeks, but that was important. Born in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada, to Adriene Montagne. The mother, from a suburb of Quebec City, had died of complications due to the birth less than twelve days after. Given over to the custody of her father, who was listed as a Pierre Montagne of Montreal. Now that was interesting, he thought. Baptized Roman Catholic shortly thereafter in the tiny Gaspe town of Matane on the St. Lawrence River. More interesting. McKenzie had been a lifelong Anglican. After death of father was raised in the Convent de Ste. Jean by special arrangement—with whom it didn’t say, as such things were not only rare these days but nearly impossible. She should have been placed in foster care… unless Daddy wasn’t really dead and was very well connected.
She had been a bright, athletic child who’d taken early to skiing and figure skating and enjoyed summer sailing on the river, which was both wide and rough at that point. In spite of her odd upbringing, she had the freedom of the small town and shared in the town’s social life. She was developing into a major athlete and a beautiful young woman when she was tragically and permanently paralyzed in a ski accident shortly before her fourteenth birthday.
MacDonald frowned. More than seven years ago, yet her body showed no signs of debilitation for that long a period.
For the next three years she’d been in an experimental physical and psychological program in Montreal wholly financed and supported by the Magellan-owned Master Therapeutics, Ltd. When released, she had accepted her disability as permanent and had reconciled it as a sign from God that she become a nun and devote her life to working with the disabled. She had not, however, taken final vows and had put them off a couple of times, but she was still a novice and had finally decided and scheduled final vows for May 11 of this year! Now that was leading somewhere. Sir Robert dies just before this, but in time for the death to at least slow it down if not stop it outright. The order she was about to join had a vow of absolute poverty. She would have been required to divest, and the only way to divest of something this huge would have been to give it to the Roman Catholic Church. That was motive enough for governments, let alone individuals dependent upon the corporation.
He punched up details of her injury and found it a baffler. She had all the classic symptoms of a spinal column severed just at the neckline. She had no sensation at all much below the neck, although she had some limited control of her shoulder muscles—but not her hands. However, while there had been some bruising there, there was no sign any of the best medical tests and even exploratory surgery could find of any injury there at all. For a long time they went under the theory that the illness was psychosomatic, but extensive psychiatric investigation and hypno and drug therapy couldn’t get at it if it was.
He quickly punched up the mysterious Pierre Montagne and was surprised to find that one existed. He had been with Sir Robert in Korea, and he had been employed as an office manager in Quebec City. He had also died in an auto accident when she was but two and a half.
He cleared the screen and closed down, knowing he’d dig more later. Still, he suspected that he already knew what he would find. Sir Robert had had a liaison with the woman, perhaps even loved her. She became pregnant and was almost certainly a good Roman Catholic, so she’d gone through with it, even though she’d probably been warned that she had some condition that made having a child risky and probably fatal. To legitimize the child and make something of her sacrifice he’d married her, probably very late in the pregnancy and in, of course, a Catholic ceremony which would include the pledge that the child be raised Catholic. Sir Robert was a man of the old school to whom giving his word meant quite a bit. Still, he did everything possible to cover it all up, including hauling in Montagne to pose as the child’s father and spiriting her away to a remote community.
Possibly he feared for her
safety, but more likely he had to make the choice between continuing to build and shape his worldwide empire or raising the child and he’d chosen, perhaps wrongly, empire. Such men as Sir Robert were not saints; he’d inherited the first hundred million, it was true, but building it up into a multinational conglomerate worth billions was the job for a tough, hard man of flexible morality— particularly considering some of the nations he’d done work for, and the nature of that work. MacDonald could see Sir Robert’s thinking, although he found it very disagreeable. In his own odd world, with his own rather odd code, Sir Robert the father could not justify surrogates raising his daughter and being responsible for her—nor could he afford to without possibly having a child more loyal to other interests than his within the company. But as her kindly billionaire “uncle” he could excuse spending whatever he wished on her and also easily explain to auditors and questioners why he had such an interest and attachment to this girl. When Montagne, whom he’d trusted and essentially employed from that point to be her father, had died unexpectedly, he was caught in his own prefabricated set-up.
When he went back upstairs and entered the lounge, he found that some of the party, including Angelique, had gone. Ross was there, however, and came over to him. “Some real tragedy, huh?” he noted. “Girl lookin’ like that and inherits billions and can’t enjoy any of it.”
“Sensitive as usual,” MacDonald responded dryly. He looked around. “Where’d everybody go?”
“It finally caught up with her and she was taken to her room—V.I.P. One, ground floor. You know the one. It also connects to Sir Robert’s suite, so if they want to go in and poke around they can. I assume you were down there doing the run-down on her?”
He nodded. “Yeah, although there’s not much even unsealed. I keep feeling that there’s a lot more we don’t know about her, and maybe some she doesn’t know, either. She’s definitely his real daughter, though?’’
The Messiah Choice Page 3