Son of Perdition (Chronicles of Brothers) by Wendy Alec

Author:Wendy Alec [Alec, Wendy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Warboys Publishing (Ireland) Limited
Published: 2011-07-20T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty

Mont St Michel

Western Coast of Normandy

Nick rounded a bend in the road and the bell tower of Mont St Michel became visible, the golden statue of Archangel Michael on the spire towering 560 feet above the English Channel. Soaring above the Normandy wheat fields, the fortress abbey rose like a Gothic apparition through the fading morning mists.

Nick stared transfixed at the towering mass of granite 3,000 feet in circumference The new European Superstate had appropriated the island from UNESCO for the sole use of the European President. And Adrian now divided his time equally between his palaces in Normandy, Rome and, recently, Babylon.

It was low tide. The mile-long embankment of the early 2000s had been bulldozed and replaced with a shorter one and an 800-yard low bridge. And the dam at the mouth of the Couesnon had recently been replaced by a hydraulic dam double its size, a feat of hydrological engineering with a price tag of 164 million euros. Nick shook his head in wonder. But it had stopped the island from literally sinking into the sand.

The Aston Martin crossed the new dual-lane causeway and slowed down in front of a huge black iron gate with the Mont St Michel crest scrolled in gold at its top.

Nick looked up at the six remote cameras positioned above the gate. He turned to the iris scanner that automatically lowered to his eye level on the left-hand side of the car. He looked directly into the lens.

Six seconds later the gates opened electronically and he drove slowly past the newly erected gatehouse with its polycarbonate-layered bulletproof windows.

He was well aware that in the ten seconds he waited outside the gate, every detail of both his private and public life had been transmitted to ‘The Core’ – the President of the European Union’s secret operations base, a sprawling underground city beneath the Atlantic below Mont St Michel, where the notorious Kurt Guber, Adrian’s autocratic director of security operations, reigned supreme.

Nick drove through the old medieval village on cobbled winding roads reconstructed in accordance with Guber’s exacting security procedures. The village housed over two hundred of Adrian’s presidential staff including the head of the European Security Agency and his top economic and legal advisers. The medieval façade was precisely that – a façade. Surveillance cameras and sensors spied from every rooftop, window and doorway. Unending teams of military police and guard dogs patrolled the perimeters of the double chain-link fence.

Nick finally drew to a halt outside the stables. He slammed the car door and threw the keys to a slightly built man in chauffeur’s livery who caught them neatly.

‘Be a pal, Pierre,’ Nick said, ‘Park her for me, will you?’

When James De Vere had been alive, Pierre had been James’s manservant, second only in his affections to Maxim.

Pierre bowed slightly.

‘Of course, sir,’ he said, smiling with affection. ‘So good to see you, Master Nicholas.’

He opened the Aston Martin door, sat down and adjusted the seat.

‘How is Beatrice?’ Nick asked.

‘Stubborn as ever.’ Pierre grimaced, though his eyes twinkled.

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