Chapter 28
London, England
From the top of the Shard, Keir Marchand had an eagle-eye view of the Tower of London—and most of the city, for that matter, as it woke to a new day.
The seventy-two-story pyramidal skyscraper climbed more than three hundred meters, piercing the low clouds.
It was the tallest building in the United Kingdom.
Due to its prominence, along with its convenient location within the financial hub of the city, Keir’s company—NeuVentis Pharma—had leased the entire sixtieth floor.
Keir stared below at the bustle of vehicles that had locked down the Tower grounds. Lights flashed and blinked all around the fortress. Roads had been barricaded. Interrogations continued, while teams still painstakingly searched every corner of the Tower for any hidden assailants.
As of now, the belief was that the interlopers had sought to subdue the Constable of the Tower, all in an attempt to gain access to the Crown Jewels.
Of course, the Confrérie’s contacts both within MI5 and the Metropolitan Police had bolstered this misconception.
And with no survivors of the assault, it would be hard to claim otherwise.
Ultimately, all the commotion below was just noise.
Useless bluster.
The Confrérie’s true targets had escaped the ambush.
Keir glanced across the conference room to where Cardinal Tissot clustered with four of the Brotherhood, those who were within his inner circle.
Even after this failure, the man continued to remain cagey, refusing to reveal his source inside the Gardiens.
If anything, this fiasco only served to make Tissot more guarded.
The man needed to keep this knowledge under wraps to prevent himself from being booted aside.
Which he deserved.
The cardinal had orchestrated the botched ambush within the Tower grounds. Still, Keir knew Tissot was not solely at fault. Some of the blame fell on the shoulders of Saanvi Burman, who had manipulated her resources within the policing forces to cordon off all exits from the fortress.
Both had failed.
As of now, two questions remained:
How did the bastards slip our noose?
And where did they go?
All of the Confrérie assets were engaged to figure out those answers.
As Keir waited—frustrated with the book having been so close at hand—he wondered for the thousandth time what miracles were hidden in the pages of Saint-Germain’s book. Still, one remained tantamount in his mind’s eye, a treasure beyond all others:
The key to immortality.
Such a discovery held the promise to catapult NeuVentis into the stratosphere, transform it into a trillion-dollar business.
And better yet . . .
With the key in hand, I will live to see it happen.
Before he could ponder this further, Burman called over, her voice ringing with triumph. “We’ve found them!”
Keir clenched a fist.
At last . . .
He swung away from the window and crossed to the room’s conference table, a custom Hermès masterpiece in wood and leather. Burman stood amid her own team, where laptops had been lined up, drawing intelligence from hundreds of sources.
“Where are they?” Keir demanded, pushing next to Burman.
She leaned over a screen that showed an overhead view of the Tower at night. “It took much effort to gain this footage, though it’s a few hours old. It came from a MINERVA military satellite, one equipped with high-resolution ISR—Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance.”
Keir could not hide his disappointment, which turned his words bitter. “So, this is from last night? Not a current feed?”
“That’s correct,” Burman admitted. “Still, it shows how the others escaped, the route they took.”
Keir bit back an angry retort. While this was progress, it didn’t answer the fundamental question of their targets’ location now.
“Show me,” he said.
Burman zoomed the image down onto a drawbridge near the Tower’s eastern corner.
She allowed the footage to run, which remained poorly lit and frosted over by thick fog.
“The MINVERVA satellite was designed for daytime reconnaissance, so this was the best that could be managed. But it proved good enough.”
As Keir watched, a large white van burst across the bridge and slammed into the vehicles blocking the way. Commotion ensued, but he failed to see anything unusual.
“What is this?” he asked. “Were the students inside the van?”
“No. The crash was meant as a distraction.” Burman rewound the footage and froze on an image. She tapped the other end of the drawbridge, which was shrouded in mist. “Look right there.”
Keir had to lean in close to spot a thin break in the fog. A cluster of figures were caught in midleap, dropping into the dark moat below.
“That’s them,” Burman insisted. “That’s how they slipped away.”
“But where did they go?”
“We caught them in glimpses, fleeing around the Tower and climbing out again to reach the A100. We’re still compiling CCTV feeds to continue to track them. Still, it may take another hour or so.”
Keir nodded, though it took all his strength to bend the steel that had hardened in his neck. Another hour or so? After all this time, there was no telling how far the others had gotten.
“We can’t lose them . . .” he muttered.
“We’ll do our best. London is one of the most surveilled cities in the world. But the foggy night will make this challenging.”
“Just find them.”
He stalked away. Rather than returning to the window, he circled the table to close upon Tissot and his group, three of whom had cell phones pressed to their ears, speaking different languages.
Keir ignored them and confronted the cardinal. “Has there been any further word from your mole? Any hint where the students might have fled to?”
Tissot clutched the large pectoral cross that hung at his chest, as if ready to ward off Keir.
“Not as of yet, I’m afraid. They’ve gone silent, likely fearing discovery after last night.
By now, the Gardiens must know someone betrayed them.
The group will be wary. If I press our contact too hard, it’ll risk exposure.
And right now, the mole remains our best chance of regaining the book’s trail. ”
“Yet, you still won’t tell us who that is?”
Cardinal lifted his open palms. “I’ve sworn an oath of secrecy. Which was necessary to gain their trust. Any approach by another will burn that bridge forever.”
Keir had to fight against throttling this faux-pious bastard. Over the years, Keir had gathered intel on Tissot—as he had with many high-ranking members of the Confrérie. And no doubt those others had the same on him. It was a form of mutually assured destruction.
In his case, one couldn’t build a multi-billion-dollar enterprise without breaking rules.
NeuVentis operated a dozen black labs in countries known for lax oversight.
He felt no remorse for the many deaths and disabilities that had resulted from the company’s illicit human trials.
It was a practical necessity if one wanted to beat a drug to market, and his efforts ultimately served the greater good.
Like how NeuVentis’s latest chemotherapy drug would undoubtedly save countless lives.
So what did it matter if a few eggs were broken to achieve this goal?
In the end, the net gain would be a positive one—which was the crux of the Brotherhood’s new adherence to longtermism, where hard choices made today were judged against the greater good to humanity’s future.
Still, even Keir had his limits when it came to breaking rules.
He turned from the cardinal and paced away in disgust. He knew what his investigators had turned up on Tissot. The vile photographs. The videotapes. The autopsy results of a young Swiss boy from a mountain parish where Tissot had once served before gaining his crimson robes.
Keir had considered using this material to coerce Tissot into revealing the mole, but he decided against it. He recognized Tissot was correct in one regard:
We dare not spook his mole.
That resource remained the best hope of finding where the book had gone.
Burman called Keir back to her group. With a grim expression, she reported on what she had learned from reviewing all available CCTV footage.
“We tracked the group to the Waterloo station, but we lost them there. With the crush of passengers at that hour, they hid themselves well. And with trains leaving every few minutes, there’s no telling where they went.”
Keir closed his eyes. “Then how do we find them?”
Burman looked across the room toward Tissot.
Of course . . .
Keir shook his head and bit down a curse.
Still, Burman offered an additional possibility. “After a decade in MI5, I’ve learned to place my trust in one certainty. It’s proven true countless times.”
“Which is what?”
She turned to the windows overlooking the city. “No matter how careful . . . someone always makes a mistake.”