Andy Mcdermott - Temple of the Gods

The nine men began their rapid descent towards the hotel.

Warden brought Nina to a set of wooden doors. A sign beside them read Alpin Gesellschaftsraum : the Alpine Lounge. ‘Here we are,’ he told her.

He pushed open the doors theatrically and stepped through. Nina followed him into what was surely the Blauspeer’s centre-piece, a huge Gothic room with a high vaulted ceiling criss-crossed by thick beams of dark timber, tall windows looking out over the valley. The view was currently obscured by snow, but Nina’s eyes were on the room’s occupants rather than the scenery outside.

Bright spotlights on the lowest beams shone down to illuminate a large circular table at the room’s centre. Around it sat fourteen people, twelve of them men, all at least middle-aged and the oldest well into his eighties.

The Group. The secretive organisation pulling the strings of governments all over the world. A meeting of nearly unimaginable power and wealth… yet unknown to almost everybody whose lives it affected.

There were two unoccupied seats. Warden went to one, gesturing at the other beside it. ‘We’d be honoured if you’d join us for dinner, Dr Wilde,’ he said. ‘Please, sit down.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, taking in the calculating gazes regarding her as she sat and put the case on the table. There were no place settings, but she saw several large cloth-draped catering trolleys near an open dumbwaiter; presumably the Group’s members had business to discuss before they ate.

She was not just involved in that business. She was that business.

Nina tried to will away the knot in her stomach as Warden took his seat and made introductions. The oldest, Rudolf Meerkrieger, German media magnate controlling newspapers and broadcasting stations in over thirty countries. Anisim Gorchakov, the oligarch with his hand on the taps of the vast Russian natural gas reserves that fed the homes and industries of Europe and beyond. Sheik Fawwaz al-Faisal, head of a Middle Eastern consortium that decided the region’s supply — and hence the price — of oil on a daily basis. The rotund Bull brothers, Frederick and William, American identical twins distinguishable only by the colours of their ties who had made their colossal joint fortune in hedge funds by speculating on commodities like fuel and food, driving up prices and cashing in on shortages. Victoria Brannigan, Australian heiress to a mining and refining empire that produced the raw materials on which the world’s manufacturers depended, and the Dutch Caspar Van der Zee, in charge of the shipping fleet that carried those materials to where they were needed and the finished products made from them back to consumers.

And the others, different but the same, the invisible hand controlling the market revealed in plain sight. The men and women whose word could appoint or topple leaders, turn famine into glut and back again, all in service of their hunger for profit — and urge to control.

‘So, I finally get to meet you all,’ said Nina once the round of greetings was concluded. ‘Well, not all. Mr Takashi couldn’t make it, obviously.’

‘No, unfortunately,’ said Warden. ‘A shame — he was the one who convinced us of the potential value of earth energy. If it can be harnessed, of course — but with your help, that will now be possible.’ He indicated the case. ‘One of the reasons we chose this hotel for our meeting is that this mountain is a natural earth energy confluence point. When you put the statues together, it should produce the same effect as it did in Tokyo, and allow you to pinpoint the location of the meteorite.’

Nina saw that not a single member of the Group showed any regret over Takashi’s death. To them, it was a mere inconvenience — nothing to become emotional about. ‘Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves,’ she said dismissively.

That produced emotion: muted shock, constrained outrage at the minor yet unmistakable challenge. They had assumed she was there to become a willing part of their plan; resistance was evidently not on the agenda. ‘Is there a problem, Dr Wilde?’ asked Meerkrieger, his aged voice creaking like tree bark.

‘I have a few questions I’d like answered first.’

‘Of course,’ said Warden smoothly. ‘We want you to be completely comfortable with your role. What would you like to know?’

‘More about the meteorite, the Atlantean sky stone, first of all. You think it’s composed of a naturally superconducting material, yes?’

Warden nodded. ‘That’s right. We don’t know how big it is, but hopefully it’ll allow the extraction of enough of the metal to supply multiple earth energy collection stations.’

‘But there’s more to it, isn’t there? The connection I felt to it when I put the three statues together in Japan suggests that the stone has some intimate link with life on earth, as if it’s somehow integral to its creation.’

No words were spoken by her audience, but Nina immediately sensed a change in attitude from the watching billionaires. Eyes fractionally narrowed, forehead furrows deepened almost imperceptibly. Caution, concern, even outright suspicion that she knew more than she was supposed to. ‘Don’t you think?’ she added, trying to prompt a response.

‘That’s our theory, yes,’ Warden eventually said. ‘The basic building blocks of life were seeded by comets soon after the planet’s creation, but the sky stone brought something more… complex. We don’t know where it came from — Mars, maybe Venus before it overheated, some other planet that doesn’t even exist any more. It doesn’t matter. What does is the end result. Through whatever chain of events, life began on earth after that meteorite fell, perhaps even jump-started by earth energy. It’s part of our world — and it’s part of us.’

‘Mm-hmm.’ Nina nodded. ‘But your interest in that side of things is purely scientific, right? Your primary goal is harnessing earth energy.’

‘That’s right,’ said one of the Bull brothers. ‘What else could it be?’

‘Are you suggesting we’ve got another interest?’ the other asked in an accusatory tone.

‘Maybe you can tell me. You see, I had a private chat with one of the Group’s members before coming here.’ Her words immediately set the cat amongst the pigeons, paranoid glances shooting back and forth. She enjoyed their discomfort before clarifying, ‘A former member, I should say.’

‘Glas,’ Warden hissed.

‘Yeah.’

‘Where did you talk to him?’ Brannigan demanded sharply.

‘On his submarine.’

That produced mutterings around the circular table. Gorchakov banged a fist. ‘I knew it! It was the only way he could have disappeared completely. I told you to have the American navy find it!’ he said to Warden.

The Group’s chairman held up his hands in an attempt to restore order. ‘The oceans are rather large, Anisim,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t exactly ask President Cole to divert half his carrier groups on your hunch, could I?’ As the consternation settled, he turned back to Nina. ‘So, you spoke to Glas. What did he tell you?’

‘Well, once we got past the initial awkwardness about the whole him-trying-to-kill-me issue, he was very talkative. He told me why he’d been trying to kill me.’

‘So that you couldn’t help us,’ said Warden. ‘I told you, he was desperate to maintain the profits of his energy business.’

‘That’s strange, because these two guys here —’ she indicated Gorchakov and al-Faisal — ‘should be in the same boat, but they don’t seem at all worried. No, what Glas told me was that there’s more to your plan than just gaining a monopoly on earth energy. There’s something else you want a monopoly on, isn’t there?’