The God Complex: A Thriller (25 page)

To the casual observer, the Route d’Hermance was no different from any other road that led out of Geneva, though it housed some of the more impressive properties bordering Lake Geneva. None of that made it particularly special. It was only once you reached Anieres that the Route d’Hermance became one of the world’s more unique roads. There was nothing special about the road itself. What made it special was its level of privacy, even though it was not a private road; it was in fact a public highway that ran through a small village— one that had a diversion in place for those who did not belong. It had managed to be excluded from the intrusiveness of the Google Street View project, a. lone, two-mile stretch of road, unavailable to be viewed online at street level, unlike every other road in the vicinity.

Anieres was home to the Noble family, or as the locals had renamed it
, Noble Village. Although security was not overtly visible, it was everywhere. If any driver strayed beyond the diversion, a checkpoint awaited their arrival, staffed entirely by former Swiss soldiers, most recently from the ARD 10 Special Forces detachment. Antoine Noble referred to them as his own Swiss Guard. With motion sensors, cameras and even a lake barrier to prevent unwanted visitors, Anieres was in effect one of the most secure places on the planet.

With over
five hundred Nobles living within its confines, they represented half of the world’s most powerful family. Anieres was home to the highest concentration of wealth in the world. Although the actual figure was almost incalculable due to the complexity of the family’s finances, conservative estimates started at ten trillion dollars, around 5% of the world’s wealth, and escalated quickly. The more radical estimates were closer to 75%. The majority hovered between the forty to fifty percent, approaching $100 trillion dollars. Whatever the case, it made for an exceptionally powerful and influential group of people, with whom the Swiss government preferred not to interfere. Anieres was almost a state within a state, not dissimilar to the other area guarded by the Swiss Guard.

Antoine stood out on the sun deck, enjoying the last rays of sunshine, watching the builders erect a
n impressive marquee on his pristine lawn. They were only days from his son’s twenty-first birthday, a very special age for the family and none more so than for Alex, heir to the head of the family. The entire Noble family would gather to celebrate his coming of age and to celebrate his future leadership. For Alex, that leadership would be very different than any before him. The Noble family was in its final throes of power. Its reign on the planet was coming to an end. Their role in history was secure. Alex would be head of the family but the family itself would soon take a back seat, its wealth and influence in the new world would be irrelevant.

The role they had been born into, each and every
one of them, was coming to its conclusion and would no doubt be rewarded, but the unknown awaited. He couldn’t worry about that yet. First and foremost they had to begin the work that would pave the way for the future. The window of opportunity seemed huge, almost eighty years, but every second and every minute was going to count.

A
pproaching sixty himself, Antoine would not be around to see the conclusion of his lifelong work, the centuries of preparation by his family. Unlike his father, cruelly taken from them in a boating accident some twenty years earlier, he would see the new world, or at least the beginning of it. Alex and the generations to come would build the new world, a very different world from the one currently inhabiting planet Earth, a world where the Nobles were no richer, no poorer, no more powerful, no more special than any other of their neighbors.

Antoine
heard the voices behind him. The doors to his library lay open behind him. His council was arriving, being shown into the inner sanctum. Up until that evening, the meetings had been weekly. Three years earlier, they were monthly. Before then, they were bi-annual. As of that evening, they were about to become daily and as they neared the eve of convergence, more than likely every four hours. There was much to discuss, much to plan, and much to still decide. Although the final decision would be his, his council was made up of family members who he trusted his life with and more importantly, that of a future population.

The noise of gravel crunching
on the driveway at the side of the house caught his attention, just as he was about to greet his guests. None would have driven. They all lived in the village. Alex, his son, was the only person due to arrive from outside Anieres. A student at Harvard, it had been months since Alex had been home.

“Good evening,” he said to his guest
s through the doorway. “I’ll be with you shortly.”

Antoine rushed
out to welcome his son as he stepped out of his small sports car.

“Alex, so great to see you
, my son!” he said, embracing him almost before he had made it out of the car.

The passenger door opened, catching Antoine by surprise. Alex beamed proudly at his father.

“Dad,” he said, waiting for the young woman in the car to get out. “This is Lee, the woman I’m going to marry!”

To his credit, Antoine didn’t blink
. He walked around and welcomed his son’s girlfriend with open arms, not even flinching when the bump stopped him hugging her too closely. She was undoubtedly a beautiful young woman, only heightened by her pregnant glow.

“It would seem double congratulations are in order
.” He stood back and looked at the young woman.

Alex joined them.
“I knew you’d love her,” he said.

“Of course
, but I’m afraid business calls just now. We’ll have dinner together and we can catch up on all your news,” he said, looking at the baby bump. “I think your mom has it planned for eight o’clock.”

“Sounds good, do you know where she is?”

“Last seen making sure your room was all set for you. I take it she knows?” said Antoine, hiding his anger.

“God no, it
’s all a big surprise!”

Antoine relaxed
a little. Had his wife, Chantal, kept the secret of his son’s girlfriend and the pregnancy from him, he’d have been furious.

“Anyway, I’m sorry
, I really must go,” said Antoine, peeling away. He walked back to his library a far unhappier man than when he had left it. He spotted Conrad through the doorway and waved for him to join him on the terrace.

“I thought your people kept an eye on Alex while he was at
university?” he snapped when his cousin joined him.

“They do, he’s guarded night and day, although he’d never know it.”

“And they never mentioned the little Chinese woman he’s been fucking?!” he fumed.

“He’s a fit
, handsome, young man, he’s had his fair share of action,” smiled Conrad. “I didn’t realize you had a particular issue with the Chinese though.”

“I have no particular issue with any of them, as long as he doesn’t get them fucking pregnant with Noble seed!”

“Pregnant!”

Antoine nodded
, not wanting to repeat the words. Mixing the Noble bloodline outside of the family was forbidden. Mixing the ruling family’s bloodline was beyond comprehension. The Nobles married Nobles, preferably second cousins and beyond. However, their genes were so pure, having maintained the tradition throughout their family’s history, even closer unions wouldn’t cause problems. No Noble had ever contracted cancer that they were aware of, nor had any died of anything other than natural causes or accidentally. The average life expectancy remained in the mid-nineties and excluding pre-Nineteenth Century Nobles, it was now touching three figures. The Nobles protected their bloodline as closely as their wealth, if not more so.

“I’ll take care of it,” said Conrad.

Antoine shook his head. “No, Bea will have something to sort it a little more subtly. Then you take care of it, a young girl suicidal after loss of her child.”

Conrad nodded
. “Perfect. I’ll talk to Bea after the meeting.”

With the
family lineage once again protected, they joined the meeting. Antoine took his seat at the head of the table surrounded by his closest family. His sister Anya sat to his left, while Bea’s face smiled at the room from a screen at the back of the room. The rest of the seats were filled with Nobles, and only one sat empty, as was the screen behind it.

“Are we waiting for Bertie?” asked Caleb,
head of Atlas Noble’s gargantuan transport division and Antoine’s second cousin.

“Bertie is no longer on the council
,” said Antoine.

To
those who hadn’t been aware of Bertie’s nefarious plans, his exclusion was the equivalent of the penny dropping.

“He didn’t!” exclaimed Blake Noble, the oldest and wisest member of the council. He had been Anya’s predecessor within the archives and knew more
about Noble family history than any other living Noble. Despite being on the wrong side of a hundred-years-old, his brain was as good as it always had been.

Antoine didn’t wish to discuss it, and looked
at Conrad who nodded on his behalf.

“Twelve minutes,” whispered Blake under his breath.

“Pardon?” said Antoine.

“Hmm, not here
, after,” Blake mumbled.

Antoine couldn’t get through the meeting quick
ly enough. Anya’s success in creating the fuel was applauded, as was Bea’s experiment in Papua New Guinea. Population control became a major discussion. The balance between food production and consumption was key. Production over eighty years would not keep up with consumption, even with birth controls that were already in place. The fuel success added even more to the discussion. Whichever way they looked at it, a major reduction in the population was required and although they had proved that race by race control was possible, sometimes entire areas would need to be cleared. Hungry and desperate people were unpredictable and unpredictability led to a loss of control. Control was something that, throughout history, the Nobles were masters of. Another experiment was required, only this one was to leave no survivors.

Arriving at the airport had been timed precisely. A call ahead to the crew had the plane ready for an instant departure. It also confirmed that the aircraft was, as far as the crew was aware, perfectly safe. Cash instructed the taxi driver to drop them at the door where the plane sat in the VIP section of the airport terminal. Three minutes after they had arrived, they were in the air.

Cash’s first
task was to check the Hotmail account. His draft to Travis was no longer bold, so he knew Travis had read it. A fresh draft awaited him. Cash opened it. Travis had met with President Mitchell in private, informed him of Cash’s update and the ‘good’ news that they were on to something. The President had told Travis to pass on his thanks and best wishes and insisted that if there was anything they needed, anything, the President was only a phone call away. Both had agreed that they should continue to operate outside official lines. It was a worrying indictment when even the President felt the need to keep the operation a secret, and no small indication of how powerful an enemy they faced.

Cash relayed the first part of the message to
both Sophie and Rigs; he left the latter part for Rigs only.

“We’re coming up on the location
,” Sophie said, interrupting Cash’s whispered conversation with Rigs. The pilot began to descend to just over a thousand feet above the ground below them.

“I’ve seen these before,” said Cash looking down
at the famous Nazca lines, two hundred miles south of Cusco.

“I would have hoped so
, but you probably had no idea about the size and scale of them.”

Cash looked out across the
vast area below them, able to see for miles all around. “Nope, certainly very impressive.” He looked beyond the perfectly straight lines and to the shapes. “There’s a huge monkey, a bird, a spider…”

“And only visible from up here
. We’re flying at the perfect height to see them, one thousand feet!”

“When were they made?” asked
Cash.

“
Over 1,500 years ago and long before then probably…”

“If my father’s research is correct,” concluded Cash.

Sophie asked the pilot to continue to the next point.

“I thought there was
only one detour?”

“It’s part of the same detour
, twenty miles away,” which, by the time she had explained, they had covered the distance.

Cash looked down on another selection of straight line
, although these looked more like old runways on top of flattened mountain tops. “Let me guess, same era?”

Sophie nodded
. “The Palpa Lines,” she said, calling through to the pilot. “Okay, we’re done!”

“No measurements?”

“No, I’ve got all the detail in the research. I just wanted to see the scale and give you an idea what we may be dealing with, or more importantly
who
!”

“Who do you think we’re dealing with?” asked Cash.

“Your father believed it, I can only go with what he has uncovered,” she said.

“And on what you have seen yourself,” added Cash.

“From what we’ve seen ourselves and your father’s work, I’m becoming convinced there was an advanced race of people that once inhabited the Earth. They would have understood astronomy in a far more complex way than we have the ability to even comprehend.”

“Aliens?”
Cash asked.

“Many people believe they were. Your father was unconvinced but that’s where the measurements come in.”

“So what do they tell you?”

“Nothing yet, it’s going to take a lot of work before they tell me anything and even then we may need more.”

“How many more?”

Sophie spun the laptop around
, reminding Cash how many dots were on the maps.

“They’re not all like where we’ve been though?” asked Cash.

“Not all, some are even more amazing.”