France
The Loire Valley
It was well after midnight when the long, dark-blue Mercedes limo turned off the main highway and wound its way up a twisting road beneath the dark silhouette of overlapping trees. Seated in the back, a short man with heavy black eyebrows peered through tinted glass at the enormous French chateau that loomed in the darkness ahead.
In front of the chateau’s imposing entrance, a pair of iron lamps emitted tiny pools of faint yellow light, making it difficult to see the man in a dark suit standing in the shadows off to the side. His eyes narrowed at the limo’s approach, his only movement a slight jerk on a leash, a signal to the massive dog at his side to wait.
Rounding the final turn in the road, the limo’s headlights painted the front of the building before it crunched to a stop on the gravel driveway. Immediately, the man in the shadows sprang from his place of concealment and rushed to open the rear door.
“Good evening, sir.”
Without speaking, the visitor stepped out. He paused long enough to look up at the immense stone structure, all the while focusing his attention on a faint light streaming from a window above. An invisible force called out to him from inside, dulling his ability to focus on the business at hand. Breathing in deeply, he regained his composure long enough to pass beneath a pair of medieval gargoyles and mount the aged stairway before entering the chateau. Once inside, his body coursed with excitement as his eyes darted about in nervous anticipation, for he had waited untold years for an invitation to his master’s house.
“I trust your trip from Rome was comfortable, Father Emilio.”
Emilio spun to see a tall man in a dark suit standing behind him. “Yes, thank you … but don’t call me Father … that title no longer applies to me. Is he here?”
“Of course, sir. Please, this way.”
The tall man led Emilio across an empty foyer and up a wide, stone staircase designed in the shape of a double helix. It was a brilliant piece of medieval architecture conceived so that those ascending would never meet those descending from the floors above. They turned and walked under a carved stone arch and down a long hallway until they came to a paneled section of the wall. Looking back at Emilio, the man pushed a concealed button and the paneling slid to the side, revealing a hidden alcove containing a small elevator.
After a short ride to the next level, they stepped from the elevator onto the tightly guarded third floor of the chateau. Pausing briefly, Emilio thought he heard the low snarl of a dog coming from the far end of the darkened hallway. He hesitated before the tall man motioned him forward to a pair of nondescript, black steel doors that opened into a small room.
Peering inside, the defrocked priest beheld a scene that seemed out of place in a five-hundred-year-old French chateau. He was looking into a locker room. Green-tiled walls surrounded a space filled with rows of lockers fronted by long metal benches, and at the opposite end of the room, Emilio noticed a stainless steel door with a tiny window at eye level.
“Take off your clothes,” the tall man said.
“What!”
“I said take off your clothes. You can put them into one of the lockers there. Also, remove your ring and any other jewelry.”
“But why?” Emilio stuttered.
“You’re about to enter a Level 4 biohazard area. Nothing goes in and nothing comes out except for your body.”
Emilio hesitated as the man began to disrobe.
“Either take off your clothes or leave the area. Your choice, Father.”
Emilio glared back at the now smiling man as he began removing his shirt. “I told you not to call me that.”
After both men had finished undressing, they opened the stainless steel door and walked stark naked into a room bathed in the purplish glow of ultraviolet light. After waiting for a red light to flash above a second stainless steel door, they passed into another room that held a toilet and white metal cabinets stocked with blue surgical scrub suits, gloves, socks, and rolls of tape.
“This might be a good time to empty your bladder,” the man said. “You won’t be able to go to the bathroom once you’re in the suit.”
Emilio nodded his head in resignation and relieved himself before pulling on a pair of cotton scrubs with long sleeves. The man then instructed him on how to make a seal by wrapping tape around the bottom of his pants to his socks and around his sleeves to his gloves. When finished, they passed through yet another door into a bare concrete room, where Emilio saw what looked to him like blue space suits hanging from a rack suspended from the ceiling. A sudden hiss from the air-filtering baffles opening and closing above their heads made him jump.
Trying to keep from smiling at the former priest’s obvious discomfort, the man grabbed one of the thick, one-piece plastic suits off the rack and handed it to Emilio.
“These are biohazard suits. This one should fit you.”
Sitting on a bench, Emilio followed the man’s lead and slipped his feet through the chest opening and down through the legs of the suit into the boots. He then slid his arms into the sleeves and pushed his head up into the hood with the clear faceplate before zipping up a wide zipper that ran diagonally across the chest.
Grabbing one of the yellow air hoses that dangled from the ceiling, the man attached one end to a fitting on Emilio’s suit. Once again, Emilio jumped when the suit inflated with a roar of pressurized air designed to keep the suit under positive pressure. This constant outward flow of air would theoretically protect the person inside from any lethal organisms that might be floating around inside the lab from entering the suit if it developed a tear.
Now fully suited, the two men faced the final door. It was also made from stainless steel and had a bright orange biohazard symbol emblazoned across its surface. The man looked at Emilio and spoke loudly to overcome the hiss of air flowing into their suits. “How are you doing, sir?”
Emilio looked through his faceplate and scowled. “I’m fine. Are we almost there?”
“Beyond that door is the Level 4 lab. It’s one of the hottest hot zones in the world. There are things in there that could kill you before your body even hits the floor. Are you sure you’re ready?”
Emilio’s eyes grew wide. “Yes … of course … let’s go.”
“Ok. Don’t touch anything once you’re inside and everything should be fine. You’ll have to unhook from your air supply hose in here and hook up to another one once we’re inside. Remember … always, and I mean always, stay hooked up to your air supply. Follow me.” Both men unhooked from their yellow lifelines before the tall man opened the steel door and disappeared inside.
Emilio inhaled deeply as if he were preparing to immerse himself in a pool of ice cold water. Stepping through the doorway, a bead of sweat ran down his face as he struggled to keep up with the man ahead of him. The room seemed to spin as he worked to slow his breathing. His heart was pounding in his ears-it skipped a beat. Had something entered his suit somehow- something that had already entered his body and was now affecting him? Emilio worked hard to quell the panic he felt rising within him. Black spots began floating before his eyes when suddenly, he remembered to grab the bright yellow air hose hanging from the ceiling and attach it to his suit.
“Emilio … can you hear me? What’s wrong with you?”
Slowly, Emilio’s eyes began to focus on a blue-suited figure standing before him. From behind the faceplate, Emilio could feel Rene’s eyes looking right through him. His master’s eyes! “Yes … yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir. I got a little dizzy for a second.”
Acerbi glared back at him and shrugged. “It’s the suit, Emilio. You’ll get used to it.”
“Yes, sir. I feel much better now.” Another bead of sweat began to trickle down his face. “I got here as soon as I could, sir. Interpol has pictures of my face in every police station in France. I had to take precautions.”
“I know. We’ve been watching you to make sure that you weren’t being followed.” A slight smile crossed Acerbi’s lips when he saw the look of surprise on Emilio’s face. “The world can never know about this lab. I also must take precautions.”
Acerbi turned and motioned for Emilio to follow him over the rubber-coated flooring designed to prevent falling containers from breaking, past rows of waist-high tables full of glass flasks and clear plastic tubing that ran upward and joined with larger, multi-colored tubing overhead. It reminded Emilio of his college chemistry lab, only this one was much, much larger.
They continued on past tall, stainless steel incubators packed with small round Petri dishes full of things Emilio could only wonder about, until they came to a wall of glass that separated a small room from the rest of the lab. It was obvious to him that strict isolation was critical, for the organism that lived behind the glass could never, ever be allowed to come in contact with the air of the outside world. This was the mother pathogen, the queen bee-the one from which all the others had been born, but unlike its children, this one had no fail safe mechanism to cause it to die out after forty-eight hours.
Emilio watched as a technician outside the sealed room maneuvered a mechanical arm, inserting a plastic slide into an electron microscope mounted on a pedestal behind the glass. His eyes grew wide as he felt the sweat begin to flow once more, but this time the sweat was different. This was sweat born of exhilaration, for soon he would be looking at that which he had come to see-the living but mindless result of years of research. His anticipation was overwhelming. It felt almost as if he were drowning, as though he was descending into deep, dark water while watching the light fade above, signaling a final victory of death over life.
He stepped closer and peered down at the slide in the microscope.
“There it is, Emilio,” Acerbi announced with pride. He pointed to a pair of black eyepieces jutting out from the glass enclosure. “Have a look.”
Emilio bent forward and placed the faceplate of his hood against the soft rubber ends of the eyepieces. He squinted until a shape materialized within his field of view. There before him was a microscopic blob of green goo with tendrils of red extending outward.
Emilio took an involuntary step back as he realized he was looking at death incarnate. His breath came in short, shallow gasps. He felt dizzy and unable to concentrate. He grabbed the side of the enclosure to steady himself as the room began to spin wildly. His response to the object was not one he had anticipated.
Acerbi laughed. Aside from receiving some sadistic satisfaction at Emilio’s obvious discomfort, Rene Acerbi had good reason to be happy. After inheriting his family’s fortune at the age of twenty-one, he had become one of the world’s richest and most powerful men. Prone to sudden mood swings, his facial expression changed suddenly as he thought back to the day when his famous Italian father, Eduardo Acerbi, had disappeared without a trace after a meeting with some close associates.
Rene was only seven-years-old on the day he heard his mother sobbing in her room. Peering through the partially open door, he had seen her crying in the arms of his live-in nanny.
“I’m sure Mr. Acerbi will turn up soon, Mrs. Acerbi. It’s only been a few days, and, well, you know how inconsiderate some men can be.”
“Not Eduardo! It’s not like him. He always calls if he’s running late … he’s just vanished! All of his things are still here. All of his clothes, his favorite gold watch, his Ferrari … us … me and little Rene. Everything he loves is right here in this house. He must be dead or unconscious in a hospital somewhere.”
“We’ve checked every hospital in Europe, Mrs. Acerbi. He’s not in any of them.”
“Maybe he’s got amnesia or something. He could be wandering around, all alone and not knowing who he is or where to go.” Deep sobs shook her body as she collapsed back into the arms of the nanny.
“He’s a very famous man,” the nanny replied. “If anyone spots him, I’m sure they will recognize him. His picture is on the front page of every newspaper in the world.”
Not knowing what to do, little Rene had backed away from the door. At the time he didn’t understand his mother’s grief, for he was still too young, but somehow the scene seemed familiar to him. Only the week before, he had also seen his father in tears and in the arms of the nanny.
And so the search for Acerbi had gone on … lasting for weeks that stretched into months, until finally, all hope began to vanish. The newspapers and magazines of the day had called it one of the strangest disappearance cases on record. It was a total mystery. One of the world’s wealthiest men-a handsome husband and loving father who doted on his family-suddenly and inexplicably gone. He had vanished into thin air without a trace.
Some blamed it on the Mafia and waited for a ransom note that never arrived, while others believed he had been murdered by assassins hired by a Latin American dictator he had crossed. But whatever the cause, it soon became apparent to everyone that Eduardo Acerbi was never going to return from wherever he had gone.
Rene’s mother remarried shortly after her husband’s disappearance, but within a year she and her new husband were also dead. They had been killed in a freak automobile accident when the car they were riding in inexplicably veered off the side of a mountain road and tumbled down a rocky cliff. In her will, Rene’s mother had bequeathed everything to her only son on the advice of those close to her, especially the nanny, who over the past year had taken on a stronger role in raising little Rene.
The child now stood to inherit the entire sum of his family’s wealth and power on the day of his twenty-first birthday. Until then, as specified in the will, the control of the family fortune would rest in the hands of the nanny, who had been named as Rene’s legal guardian. It was the nanny who now took on the role of mother, and it was she who told Rene of his famous father and how much Eduardo had loved his only son. She grew to be powerful and fiercely protective of her young charge, until the day when Rene turned twenty-one and the nanny suddenly left, returning to the village of her youth.
Though he looked much younger, Rene was now forty-seven years old. It had been twenty-six years since the nanny, a woman who had been like a mother to him, had been replaced by a multitude of advisors-men who had known Rene’s father well and had looked out after his interests. Still unmarried, Rene Acerbi shied away from close social contact with others as he took his place at the head of a worldwide business organization that included the sons of other powerful leaders in the business world. Together, this new generation had inherited from their ancestors the shadowy vestige of an ambitious design, an intricate plan that would one day attempt to alter the face of humanity forever. Rene and his friends had all sworn sacred oaths to one another that they would continue down the path that had been set for them hundreds of years before by wise men and women who were now gone or fading away, but would never be forgotten.
Emilio was still staring at the pathogen and clutching the side of the enclosure when Acerbi spoke again. “I had the same reaction when I first saw it, Emilio. If we would have used that instead of the test organism on New York, the world would be a lot less crowded right now.”
“Yes, sir,” Emilio said breathlessly. “The test was a huge success. Our man did a perfect job of spreading it into the subway, although sadly, he never lived to report back to us.”
Acerbi’s dark eyes narrowed behind the faceplate of his suit. “He was never meant to.”
Acerbi turned and walked over to a laptop computer lying on a nearby counter. He laid his gloved finger on the plastic-covered touchpad, signaling the screen to emit a bluish glow that reflected off the faceplate of his biohazard suit. There before him were the pages from an ancient book filled with the words of a long-dead language. He smiled with the memory of how he had outwitted those who had destroyed the book the year before. The book itself was nothing more than ashes now, but Acerbi had secretly downloaded its contents so that its words would spread like seeds on the wind and inflame the hearts and minds of those waiting for its message, a message that was already beginning to be felt throughout the world.
Turning away from the counter, Acerbi looked above his head at a wide-screen TV linked to a camera located on the roof of the chateau. From inside the lab, he was able to look out over manicured grounds still cloaked in darkness. Soon his eyes adjusted to the darkened picture, and as he watched, he could see the pale outline of yellow light on the horizon announcing the coming of the sun. He smiled, for a new day was about to dawn, and soon there would be no place on earth where the sun was not dawning on a new empire-an empire ruled by Rene Acerbi.