Druids, he thought. In his time as a field officer in England he'd taken the time to read books and learn about the culture of the English, played the tourist, even traveled to Stonehenge and other places, in the hope of understanding the people better. Ultimately, though, he found that history was history, and though highly interesting, no more logical there than in the Soviet Union-where history had mainly been lies concocted to fit the ideological pattern of Marxism-Leninism.
Druids had been pagans, their culture based on the gods supposed to live in trees and rocks, and to which human lives had been sacrificed. That had doubtless been a measure exercised by the druid priesthood to maintain their control over the peasants… and the nobility, too, in fact, as all religions tended to do. In return for offering some hope and certainty for the greatest mysteries of life - what happened after death, why the rain fell when it did, how the world had come to be-they extracted their price of earthly power, which was to tell everyone how to live. It had probably been a way for people of intellectual gifts but ignoble birth to achieve the power associated with the nobility. But it had always been about power - earthly power. And like the members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the druid priesthood had probably believed that which they said and that which they enforced because-they had to believe it. It had been the source of their power, and you had to believe in that.
But these people here weren't primitives, were they? They were mainly scientists, some of them world leaders in their fields. Horizon Corporation was a collection of geniuses, wasn't it? How else had Brightling accumulated so much money?
Popov frowned as he piled his plates back on the tray, then walked off to deposit them on the collection table. This was oddly like the KGB cafeteria at Number 2 Dzerzhinsky Square. Good food and anonymity. Finished, he made his way back to his room, still in the dark as to what the hell had taken place in his life over the past months. Druids? How could people of science be like that? Vegans? How could people of good sense not want to eat meat? What was so special about the gray-brown antelopes that lived on the margins of the property? And that man, he was the director of security here, and therefore he was supposedly a man with the highest personal trust. A fucking vegetarian in a land that produced beef in quantities the rest of the world could only dream about.
What the hell was that shot for? Popov wondered again as he flipped on the television. "Booster"? Against what? Why had he been examined at all? The deeper he went, the more information he found, the more perplexing the puzzle became.
But whatever this was all about, it had to be commensurate in scope to the investment Brightling and his company had made-and that was vast! And whatever it was about, it didn't shrink at causing the death of people unknown and clearly unimportant to John Brightling. But what possible pattern did all of that fit?
Popov admitted yet again that he still didn't have a clue. Had he reported on this adventure to his KGB superiors, they would have thought him slightly mad, but they would have ordered him to pursue the case further until he had some sort of conclusion to present, and because he was KGB-trained, he could no more stop pursuing the facts to their conclusion than he could stop breathing.
At least the first-class seats were comfortable, Chavez told himself. The flight would be a long one-about as long as a flight could be, since the destination was 10,500 miles away, and the whole planet was only 24,000 miles around. British Airways Flight 9 would be leaving at 10:15 P.m., go eleven and three quarters hours to Bangkok, lay over for an hour and a half, then another eight hours and fifty minutes to Sydney, by which time, Ding thought, he'd be about ready to pull out his pistol and shoot the flight crew. All this, plus not having his wife and son handy, just because the fucking Aussies wanted him to hold their hand during the track meet. He'd arrive at 5:20 A.M. two days from now due to the vagaries of the equator and the International Dateline, with his body clock probably more scrambled than the eggs he had for breakfast. But there was nothing he could do about it, and at least BA had stopped smoking on their flights-those people who did smoke would probably be going totally nuts, but that wasn't his problem. He had four books and six magazines to pass the time, plus a private TV screen for movies, and decided that he had to make the best of it. The flight attendants closed the doors, the engines started, and the captain came on the intercom to welcome them aboard their home for the next day - or two days, depending on how you looked at it.
"Was that a good idea?" Brightling asked.
