The Secret Mantra by David Michie

Author:David Michie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fiction metaphysical visionary
Publisher: Conch Books
Published: 2020-07-24T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

Alice clicked on the message from Jordan. He had successfully hacked into Stan Sutton’s ‘impenetrable’ IT system and retrieved her research files. They were in a zipped document which took time to download. As the separate files came up on her phone, she became totally focused. Then frustrated with the time it took to open each one, every file containing huge volumes of data. She was trying to navigate through complex tables on a tiny screen.

‘I’ll give you a few minutes,’ I said, as she flicked her finger across the screen. So engrossed in what she was doing, I don’t know that she even heard me.

I got up and took a walk through the restaurant, which was located within an old castle, and went outside. It was a large, grey stone building fortified with ramparts and a parapet. To the one side was the busy road on which we’d arrived. To the other, a short wall gave onto lush green fields. Walking to the wall, I shoved my hands in my pockets, taking in the scenery as I thought about that morning’s call from the abbot, and what he had asked me to do.

His insistence I contact Dalberg again and take orders from him went against all my instincts. I’d had doubts about Dalberg from even before we’d met. I remembered standing in the gallery of his home in Thamel, taking in the spectacular thangkas, the transcendent music, and suddenly becoming aware that I was being watched. How Dalberg had professed to not having the connections he self-evidently did. What had happened the very next morning in Patan, when I’d gone to visit Rakesh Sharma and things had gone badly wrong. Dalberg had seemed implicated in it all.

George Forbes’ revelations that Dalberg had been in the SAS just went to prove he was a man with unknown networks he could call into play at any time.

But the other thing, first suggested by George and confirmed by what I’d heard subsequently, was something I couldn’t ignore. If the contents of the terma, and Alice’s work, posed a threat to Big Pharma, then what if they were the forces we were up against? A global cartel of big businesses, present in every country and overwhelmingly powerful?

My phone buzzed. Reaching into my pocket I found a message from George Forbes. ‘Following up, just thought you’d like to see this—one of the few photos of Pascal Lascelles.’

I clicked on the image, waiting for it to appear. I knew that Lascelles was an intensely private man, which was probably why I had no idea what he looked like. After a few moments, up came an image on the screen. Lascelles had a formal demeanor—a broad forehead, steel-rimmed spectacles, and grey hair receding at the front that was brushed back from his face. Clean-shaven, he was dressed in a suit. Just a regular-looking European man, albeit one with an air of privilege.

It was the person he was with that made the image more interesting. He

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