‘A drink?’ Jacobs offered next, trying to keep the conversation genial.
Lowell shook his head. ‘No thank you. This is hardly what you would call a social visit.’
Jacobs’ eyes narrowed, and for an instant Lowell was rocked by the intensity of the man’s gaze.
‘Well, in that case,’ Jacobs said with a hint of underlying menace, ‘you’d better tell me what the hell it is you want.’
Adams entered the house through the guest-room window. As he had suspected, the house wasn’t continuously alarmed; people going in and out of rooms would make such a procedure unnecessarily troublesome. And so the security measures were focused largely upon detecting threats before they ever got to the house, and less so on the entry and exit points of the house itself, especially on the upper floors.
The house dated from 1815, and although some major modifications had been made in order to improve security, it was still an old house and was relatively easy to break into if you knew how. After all, with twelve armed security guards on-site, who in their right mind was ever going to break into the house in the first place?
Adams recognized the infrared strip light running across the inside of the window frame. After disabling the lock, a simple hand-held mirror slipped between the light beam as he made his entry was sufficient to stop the alarm going off.
Once inside, he went immediately to the far wall and pulled open a cupboard. He found himself staring down the laundry chute, still in operation and exactly where Adams had expected to find it.
Perfect, Adams thought, even as he started to climb inside.
As he neared the bottom of the chute, he slowed his descent until he was moving in complete silence, ears straining for any sound. Confident that the basement laundry room was empty, Adams allowed himself to drop out of the chute and into the huge laundry bin at the bottom. He peered out over the top to confirm the absence of security guards. He didn’t know what was going on upstairs but the presence of government officials meant that there were now yet more people in the house to find him, and he would have to be even more careful.
From his position in the bin, Adams confirmed the location of the CCTV cameras and planned his route to avoid them. Then he was on the move once again, moving swiftly across the room to a door on the far side. He pulled it open the instant he was there, slipped quickly through it, and closed it again behind him no more than three seconds after leaving the protection of the laundry bin.
The new room was not a room at all really but a large cupboard, filled with shelves containing various cleaning chemicals, spare sheets and other bedlinen. And according to the building’s blueprints, the cupboard was located directly underneath the ground-floor study of Stephen Jacobs.
8
‘I want to talk about the deaths of Ryan Yordale, Frank Croaker, Yves Desault, Vitor Dzerzewski, Patek Guillaume, Stephanie Ortmeyer, Gustav Schliesser, Helen Holmes, Anthony DeSilva, Jacek Ostrawski and Nicolas St Vincent,’ Lowell said, his tone grave.
Jacobs sighed inwardly. So Lowell really did have something after all; it just wasn’t the most important thing he could have found, and Jacobs actually found himself relaxing slightly.
‘What do you mean?’ he said at length.
‘What do I mean?’ Lowell said, stifling a laugh. ‘I mean these eleven deaths — mysterious deaths — all occurred to people who had recently attended a Bilderberg Group meeting.’
‘And?’ Jacobs asked, sure that Lowell must have more to go on than that.
‘And, they are deaths that have all occurred on your watch as chairman of the group.’
It was Jacobs’ turn to laugh. ‘Eleven people die after meetings at which I presided? Harvey, I have been chairman of the group for twelve years, and with an average attendance of one hundred and twenty, that is — what? — between fourteen and fifteen hundred people. Eleven people is—’
‘Zero point seven six per cent,’ Lowell interrupted. ‘Or a death rate of seven point six per thousand, but as they all died within twenty-two days of the meetings, this equates to a death rate of one hundred and twenty-six point one per thousand per year, which is twelve times higher than the national average. How do you explain that?’
‘I’m not sure I have to, do I?’ Jacobs asked mildly.
Lowell’s nostrils flared. ‘Do you know the death rate for people attending Bilderberg meetings before you took over? It was lower than the national average, which is what you would expect given the wealth of the attendees and their easier access to advanced medical facilities. So what we have is a twentyfold increase in the death rate of attendees since you took over, a rate that has been pretty much steady for the twelve years you have been in charge.’
‘I’m still waiting for the part where you tell me what you’re doing here,’ Jacobs said offhandedly.
Lowell slammed his fist down on the table. ‘Dammit, you know exactly what I’m talking about! You’re running the Bilderberg Group like a recruitment centre, we all know that. Those little private meetings, we all know you’re interviewing for something. And maybe some people you choose, when they realize what it is you’re offering, they just hold their hands up and say, “Hell, no!” And then what do you do?’ Lowell slammed his fist down on the table again. ‘Kill them!’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Just like that!’
Jacobs was silent for a time, then started chuckling to himself. ‘I’m still waiting for the evidence you possess, besides some dubious statistical anomalies. Croaker died of a heart attack, Schliesser was hit by a car, Ostrawski had a brain aneurism, the list goes on, all certified by doctors, nothing untoward ever suggested or implied. Suspicious? I’ll give you that. Solid, as in court-of-law solid?’ He smiled again. ‘I don’t think so.’
Lowell sat back in his chair and smiled his own wide, wicked smile. ‘Stephen, I think you have me all wrong,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to arrest you.’
Jacobs’ eyes narrowed, suspecting what the man really wanted. ‘What do you want, Harvey?’ he asked quietly.
‘I want in,’ Lowell said with confidence. ‘Whatever your little scheme is, I want a part of it. And if you don’t let me in, I’ll do my best to bring it all crashing down around you.’
What the hell? In the cupboard below the study, Adams had positioned himself on the uppermost shelf, his ear to the ceiling, senses strained to the maximum as the conversation filtered down through the old house’s woodwork.
The Director of the Secret Service, Harvey Lowell, was asking to be brought into Jacobs’ inner circle, become part of the project.
Was he serious? Adams couldn’t believe it. Was there nothing people like this would stop at when it came to increasing their power, wealth and status? Adams sighed; of course there wasn’t, he knew that about as well as he knew anything.
He listened harder; if Lowell was asking to be let in, and Jacobs capitulated, then he might just be able to learn what the hell this thing was all about.
‘What makes you think I’m going to tell you anything?’ Jacobs said, as he sipped thoughtfully at his brandy glass. ‘Maybe you’re just fishing, hoping I’m going to incriminate myself.’
‘Maybe I am,’ Lowell said evenly. ‘But then it would just be my word against yours, wouldn’t it? You can have me swept for a wire if you want.’
Jacobs looked at his glass for several moments, then pressed the intercom on his desk.
‘Yes, sir?’ Jones’ voice came through, loud and clear.
‘Wesley, get Eldridge in here,’ Jacobs ordered.