The Romulus Equation Read online

  Quaint wiped sweat from his brow. The heat in the tunnel was unbearable – or was it just the company? ‘The truth? From you? All right, I’ll play along. Educate me.’

  ‘With pleasure,’ Renard said, and he meant it. ‘You never really knew what happened to your parents, did you? How they really died, I mean?’

  ‘They were travelling home late one night and became lost in dense fog. Their carriage left the track and it careered off a ravine.’ Quaint linked his hands behind his back calmly. He wanted to see how much Renard really did know, or if it was just another one of his tricks. ‘Sorry to ruin your surprise, but I’ve heard this tale before.’

  ‘Maybe not all of it though, hmm? Did you ever consider that? As a boy, watching them bury your parents, did it ever occur to you that perhaps you had only been told what you needed to hear?’ taunted Renard.

  Quaint couldn’t take it any more. His rage was bottled up inside him and it wanted to get out. He lashed out with his fist, but Renard took a step back, smashing his metal hand into Quaint’s right shoulder. It was like being hit with a sledgehammer and the conjuror’s arm went limp instantly, flopping down to his side. His shoulder was dislocated and he screamed in agony – much as he hated giving Renard the satisfaction.

  ‘I told you, Cornelius, I didn’t come here to fight,’ said the Frenchman, as he pulled a revolver from his pocket and aimed it at Quaint’s head. ‘But one little misstep like that again and to hell with my mistress’s order!

  After all this time, now you’re ready for the truth. The only thing is, I’m not so sure the truth is ready for you. Almost fifty years is an awfully long time to keep a secret.’

  ‘Why?’ wheezed Quaint, collapsing against the tunnel wall. ‘Why did the Hades Consortium want them dead?’

  ‘Why?’ Renard said. ‘Ah! Now, that is an interesting tale, and if you really are hell-bent on learning the answer you’ll just have to come with me.’

  ‘You must think me a fool!’ yelled Quaint. ‘You’d shoot me in the back the moment it was turned!’

  ‘Lady Sirona’s revelation will do you far more damage than any wound that I could inflict, trust me,’ insisted Renard. ‘Very soon your past will lay unravelled at your feet, Cornelius, and I will be right there. Your death will be exquisite.’

  Chapter XXXII

  The Tender Instinct

  Prometheus awoke with a start. His eyes drifted around the darkness within the prison chamber, uncertain of his surroundings. He had been unconscious when (several) Hades Consortium red-clad guards had taken him to this place. He was sitting with his back flat against the stone wall, the long hair at the back of his head sodden with sweat and the coldness made him itch. As he reached to scratch it, he realised that his wrist was restrained. The cold iron on his flesh brought him closer to consciousness. With heavy eyes he looked at his predicament and did not like what he saw. Feeling a constriction against his windpipe, he twisted his neck, finding the metal collar fastened around his throat. He tensed the chains at his wrists, half-heartedly at first, not expecting the rivets attached to the wall to give easily, which was fortunate as they did not.

  ‘Bienvenue en arrière, Aiden,’ said a familiar voice to his right, and the strongman turned to see Destine looking back at him. Her face was drawn and Prometheus felt an instinct to reach out for her.

  ‘How long was I out for?’ he asked her.

  ‘Not long. An hour at the most,’ Destine replied. ‘Are you all right, mon ami?’

  ‘Not really. You?’

  ‘I admit that I have been better,’ Destine said.

  ‘This sort of puts a dampener on us rescuing Cornelius, eh? We arrived too late.’

  ‘Actually, it appears we arrived too soon,’ replied Destine.

  ‘And now we’re the ones that need rescuing.’

  ‘Oui? it appears so,’ said Destine. ‘It seems that Cornelius’s quest has not brought him to this godforsaken place yet.’

  ‘How can you tell?’

  ‘Listen,’ Destine said.

  Prometheus scowled. ‘I don’t hear anything, Madame.’

  ‘Exactement, mon cher. If Cornelius were here, all hell would be let loose by now.’

  ‘But he’s on his way. He’ll come for us, Destine. You know he will.’

  Destine placated the strongman with a smile. ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Your premonitions said so! That’s the reason why we came all this way! You said that you’d foreseen a lot of strife for Cornelius once he gets to this place, and so far I’m willing to agree with you. That woman… you said she’s bad news, but how come? I mean, she’s just an old witch, right?’

  ‘I wish it were that simple, Aiden,’ was the Frenchwoman’s response.

  ‘So who is she exactly?’

  ‘I do not know. Not any more. In fact… why do we not ask her?’

  Prometheus’s permanent scowl subsided as he saw Lady Sirona enter the prison chamber, her wheelchair pushed by a burly Hades Consortium guard dressed from head to toe in a crimson robe.

  ‘How long are you going to keep us chained up?’ demanded Prometheus.

  ‘You are guests of the Hades Consortium for the time being,’ said Sirona, her voice brittle and clipped. ‘At least until your Cornelius arrives anyway, which should be very soon if my errand boy does his job.’ Taking her eyes from the strongman, Sirona glared at Destine. ‘Nothing to say, Madame? I must admit, it’s ever so touching to know that you were prepared to follow Cornelius into the fire. Once a mother hen, always a mother hen.’

  ‘You know nothing of motherhood… Elizabeth.’

  Sirona slammed her fists onto the arms of the wheelchair. ‘Elizabeth Quaint died a long time ago! You should know… you were at the funeral.’

  Destine’s body became limp with exhaustion. ‘How could you? How could you perpetuate this deceit for so long… knowing the harm that it will cause?’

  ‘Elizabeth was merely a veil to hide behind,’ continued Sirona. ‘And surely you can identify with that. It is not only I that has perpetuated a lie. What about you? Surely your clairvoyance told you that I did not die when poor old Augustus was forcibly shuffled off this mortal coil? Finding me alive after almost half a century… imagine what it will do to my dear Cornelius. But imagine what it will do to him when he finds out that you have always known.’

  ‘Curse you!’ spat Destine.

  ‘What’s all this nonsense?’ interrupted Prometheus, feeling like an eavesdropper all of a sudden. ‘Destine, she’s not… is she? I mean… she can’t be! I thought Cornelius’s mother was dead.’

  ‘She is,’ replied Destine. ‘For all intents and purposes.’

  Prometheus strained against the iron collar that bound him to the wall. ‘He’s mourned you his whole life, woman… and it was just lies? And this Remus bloke… you’re in league with him too, I suppose?’

  ‘In league is a little inaccurate,’ said Sirona. ‘Technically, he works for me.’

  ‘After what he did to Augustus?’ asked Destine.

  ‘Especially after what he did to Augustus… after all, I ordered him to do it.’

  Destine’s eyes flooded with tears. ‘Why, Elizabeth? Cornelius was just a child! I saw what your death did to him with my own eyes, because I was the one that had to pick up the pieces! He thought he had lost you… but it is better that you had died than he learn what you have become.’

  ‘Oh? And what exactly have I become, Destine?’ Sirona slapped the guard’s wrist, urging him to push her closer to the cell’s bars. ‘Hmm? I sit on the inner stratum of the Hades Consortium! We wield more power than any government in the world. We are the world! I have sent hundreds of men to their deaths, so do you really think I care one jot for breaking his heart?’

  ‘You forget. I can sense your emotions, Elizabeth… even though you may try to conceal them. I can sense what is within you… what is killing you.’

  ‘You know nothing!’ snapped Sirona.

  ‘Oh, but I do,’ Destine r
eplied, seeing the corners of the older woman’s lips tighten. ‘I know that your ability to heal others has been slowly eating you alive for years. I know that only now, as you stand at death’s door, do you wish to make peace.’

  ‘I do not seek to make peace, Destine – I seek to make war!’ roared Sirona. ‘Yet Cornelius is almost as slippery as Augustus and twice as hard to kill, it seems. My membership in the inner stratum grants me unique privileges, and I have kept watch on my son over the years. The older that he got, the more like Augustus he became. Confident and courageous, resourceful, even heroic to a fault. I knew that as long as Augustus’s blood flowed within his veins he was going to be trouble for me, and sure enough, he started poking his nose into our business.

  ‘Many times I have ordered our operatives to take care of him. I even dispatched your son to Paris in an effort to do away with him, but once again, Cornelius slipped through my net. Even George Dray had trouble killing him in Peru years back. And then later he joined that insipid circus! It seemed to calm his inquisitive soul for a time, and so I called off my dogs, hoping that at long last he would stop lifting up rocks looking for the truth. But then his path crossed your son’s again last November in London and Antoine allowed his emotions to get the better of him. He let his foolish vendetta ruin a perfectly good plot.’

  Destine ground her teeth together. ‘To poison the Thames. Cornelius stopped that, and he stopped what you had planned for the Nile too!’

  ‘And what happened to him after Egypt?’ asked Sirona. ‘He went silent for weeks. Not one of our assets could find a trace of him, and I had hoped that he had finally bitten the dust.’

  ‘He was in China,’ said Destine. ‘It was there that he learned the name of the man who had killed his parents… except now that is no longer accurate, is it?

  ‘Who told him?’ demanded Sirona. ‘Who told him Adolfo’s name?’

  ‘A Chinese warlord by the name of Cho-zen Li.’

  ‘Cho-zen Li?’ gasped Sirona. ‘Dear God… is he still alive after all this time?’

  ‘Not any more, according to Cornelius,’ said Destine. ‘You are familiar with him?’

  Sirona smiled. ‘But of course! He was another one like Augustus. The Hades Consortium tried to induct him many times into our organisation, but he always refused. In fact, he’s partly the reason why Augustus had to die.’

  Destine shook her head, trying to blot out the old woman’s words. ‘You are wrong. Cornelius told me that he was a friend to Augustus.’

  ‘Oh, and that he was… which is precisely why Augustus had to die,’ said Sirona, enjoying this little game. Just as Destine had found solid ground, she took pleasure in shattering it. ‘You might recall that Augustus’s shipping business had flourished by the early 1800s, with sole trading rights for a bevy of ports all over the world from the Orient, the Americas to the South Seas. Cho-zen Li’s contacts were instrumental in the formation of those agreements… and it was that which drew the Hades Consortium’s interest. We had hoped to get Augustus on our side and then use his friendship with Cho-zen Li for our own needs. We knew that if we were to lay solid foundations upon which to build our future aspirations, we would need to take advantage of the new ventures that the developing world had to offer.’

  ‘And so you decided to… what exactly?’ enquired Destine, turning up her nose as if she had just caught whiff of a nasty smell. ‘Use Augustus for his connections?’

  ‘Quite so,’ replied Sirona, curtly. ‘One of our members, Sir George Dray, had come into contact with him, and he knew that Augustus would not bend to our will easily, so he ordered me to help to convince him. Back then I was a young – and if I do say so myself – not unattractive woman, ever the Achilles heel of the Quaint males. It took months of feigning adoration to the bloated bore, but eventually he proposed marriage and I was only too happy to accept. We had hoped that by forming a union, it would make Sir George’s offer to join the Hades Consortium more palatable, yet when the time came, Augustus knocked him back! He refused to join us, fool that he was. From the moment of his rebuke, my façade was shattered, and even the fact that I had born him a son and heir, it made no difference. By refusing Sir George’s offer, he signed his death warrant.’

  ‘And Adolfo Remus was only too eager to do the deed?’ asked Destine. ‘But why pretend to be dead? If you were so adept at lying, why not continue your façade and save Cornelius the anguish of being orphaned at such a young age?’

  ‘You know nothing about how the mechanisms within the Hades Consortium, my dear Destine,’ Sirona replied. ‘We are a conglomerate. We operate for the good of the whole, not the needs of the one. When I was first assigned to get close to Augustus, it was supposed to be so easy. I had an obligation to my employers. It was expected of me. But I was naïve. Augustus was an intoxicating man and my feelings caught me off guard. I was torn between my duty to him, and my duty to the Hades Consortium.’

  ‘So you killed him,’ said Destine.

  ‘That was not the original plan!’ snapped Sirona. ‘But once Augustus discovered the truth about whom and what I represented, he became irrational. He was poking his nose into our affairs, and I could not permit that, because then my masters would have known of my failure. And so I decided to take matters into my own hands.’

  ‘How very brave of you,’ said Destine.

  ‘To disguise my failure I would order Adolfo to kill Augustus… and I would report to my masters of such a terrible accident where I was lucky to escape with my life. Before I knew it, I had concocted such a believable manner of my husband’s demise that I almost believed it myself. That night I looked into Cornelius’s young eyes for the last time and I made up my mind. I could never have told him the truth. Not then. As cold-hearted as you think I am, I was sorry for what I was about to do to my son, but I knew that I could never look at him without seeing his father’s face… and so I opted to give the impression that I had shared Augustus’s fate, and that night in 1808, Elizabeth Quaint died.’

  ‘And Lady Sirona reigned supreme?’ asked Destine. ‘My heart bleeds for you, Elizabeth, it truly does. If you could only have seen what effect your death had on Cornelius… he was alone… frightened and alone. No matter what excuse you give, it can never repair the damage! And now you seek to do yet more?’

  ‘On the contrary, Destine,’ said Sirona, licking her dry lips. ‘As you rightly said, my ability to heal others has taken its toll on my own body… and I am dying. Soon, probably. And so that is why I intend to put things right before I go. You see, your son Antoine has been sent to bring Cornelius here… to my side… and once he arrives, I will make up for all those years of pain and I will heal him.’

  For the first time since their conversation had begun, Sirona’s face reflected another emotion other than malice. Destine could feel it, she could sense it. Despite everything there was true regret in the old woman’s heart; a desire to repair the damage that she had caused.

  ‘I will heal him… body, heart and soul,’ said Sirona. ‘The last act of kindness that I will ever do, I will do for my son. Finally, Cornelius will be purged of all his hatred, all his anger. It was me that shattered his life, and it is only right that I will mend it.’

  ‘Mend it how? Elizabeth, what could you possibly do to mend it?’

  ‘My ability to heal is a wondrous tool, Destine. It acts with intelligence, travelling throughout the body, repairing the areas in most need. I will infuse all my remaining power into Cornelius’s heart and he shall be made whole again.’

  ‘He is already whole!’ shouted Destine. ‘He does not need healing!’

  ‘Once he is healed, Cornelius will feel no hatred for me. He will see things as I see them, his vision will no longer be clouded by your influence. And he will stand by my side and share all that I have. All my power. He will inherit my position within the inner stratum and my son will be an impressive acquisition for the Hades Consortium!’

  Prometheus had heard enough. He yanked at his wrists
, desperate to break free. ‘You’re a bloody madwoman! Cornelius will never join you! He hates everything your lot stands for!’

  ‘In his current mind, perhaps,’ said Sirona, barely registering Prometheus. ‘But once my cleansing is done, he will have every ounce of hatred purged from him. He will be a blank slate, a tablet upon which I shall engrave a new destiny.’

  Destine lowered her head. ‘Elizabeth… I may be your prisoner, but I swear to you, I will do everything within my power to make sure that Cornelius never gets to hear the truth! How you murdered Augustus, how it was all part of one of the Hades Consortium’s twisted devices… how his own mother allowed him believe that she was dead his entire life! By my last breath, Cornelius will never know the truth!’

  ‘Uh… Madame,’ said Prometheus. ‘It might be a bit late for that.’

  Cornelius Quaint stood in the open doorway…

  Chapter XXXIII

  The Unstable Foundation

  ‘Cornelius!’ gasped Madame Destine.

  Renard nudged Quaint into the prison chamber with the barrel of his gun. ‘Sorry we’re late, Lady Sirona. We didn’t miss the confession, did we?’

  ‘How much of that did you hear?’ asked Sirona of her son.

  ‘Enough,’ was the only response that Quaint gave her, as pain of an altogether more personal variety quickly replaced the one in his dislocated shoulder. He could not take his eyes from the frail old woman in the wheelchair. ‘Is it true? All that you said?’

  Sirona nodded. ‘I am your mother, my son… and I am alive!’

  ‘I always… knew the Consortium was involved… but not like this,’ mumbled Quaint, barely coherent. ‘Not like this…’ He could no longer speak. A torrent of emotions and conflicting thoughts and images surged inside his head. His mother was alive. But, no. There must be some mistake. This husk of a woman couldn’t be his mother. His mother was dead. As was his father. But no. No, she couldn’t be. She was right there in front of him. No dream, no ghost. No lie. No, that wasn’t right. It was a lie. Everything that he had been told, everything that he had known ever since he was a boy… it was all a lie.