CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Jarod had found quite a bit about the Jamiesons and MacEarrans from Tory and Michael. He also found out why both men had kept this knowledge hidden. They were afraid for their lives and only his pretense as an investigator and telling them of similar incidents made them open up. The incidents were true, buried in a Centre file, and not even Broots could crack it. Only a Homo Dominant like the Pretender could and that meant that the Centre had forced one of his kind to create the file.
The Jamiesons were descended from a woman who in the Viking period, strangled a slave girl after she had been repeatedly raped by her dead master's friends, a woman known as the Angel of Death. The MacEarrans were descended from the Druids who, unlike the peaceful story put on by the European traditionalists, put their victims in a cage to burn alive or either bludgeoned or otherwise brutally murdered even innocents on their sacred night to see the future by the way he or she died. And for such to escape punishment by either the victim's family, they needed abilities not found in normal man. They needed to commune with the dead or rather with demons.
It was too coincidental to see how Miss Parker's grandmother married a Mr. Jamieson who was descended from the Angel of Death. The Centre was responsible or perhaps the Triumvirate.
Using the laptop, Jarod had searched for information on the now dead Triumvirate. He knew all about apartheid, that it had been alive when the Parkers conducted that South African organization. He found that the Triumvirate was originally rather an Afrikaan whose father and mother were Afrikaans, an Afrikaan whose mother was English, and an Englishman — well, that was the reason they did not call it the Quadrimvirate, if there was such a thing. The Englishman was Mr. Parker who had inherited from his father, Lamech Parker who inherited it from his father who just happened to be taking a trip to South Africa when he happened on a diamond find.
The wealth of the Triumvirate came from diamonds mined by Zulu workers. There was only way that Mutambo could have gotten to the head of the Triumvirate. He had murdered two of the original owners and what he thought was the third head. That started the Triumvirate believing they owned the Centre. Actually, Mr. Parker was partially owner of the Triumvirate, or rather a silent partner. The man standing in his place had been acting on his behalf and he never got a chance to tell before he was murdered.
Unfortunately, when the Centre needed money, it was after Mutambo and several workers, who honored him as a Zulu chief, took over. It was just bad timing. In reality, the Centre and the Triumvirate were equal, but no one could tell Mutambo that.
Of course finding that the Triumvirate never was the boss would please Miss Parker while she ran her hands under Jarod's waist and felt his — at this, his heart started to beat faster.
Stop it, Jarod, control! It must be mating time again.
After closing his eyes, and breathing slowly, Jarod filed the information about the Triumvirate and immediately typed what he knew about Miss Parker's ancestors. He went to Yahoo, searched for Oslo, Norway, but in order to make a map of the village, he had to type in a destination and he did not have a portable printer on him, and none with the proper voltage.
He typed in the name of the nearest village and then typed in the name of its hotel, naturally the same name as the village. It was a lucky guess, but a correct one. . Convinced that there were other villages near Oslo, he proceeded to repeat the procedure, which reminded him of the time they looked for the Deadbeat. He hoped this would be easier.
It was now getting near the time when Miss Parker would arrive and Jarod waited for the short burst of pain, but it never came, instead she and company walked over.
"Did you find out about my grandparents?" she asked.
"The Centre arranged their meeting and probably their marriage." He looked up at her. "Do you find it coincidental that you had the Inner Sense and it was so strong?"
"From my mother."
"And how coincidental was it that your mother met and married your father and how they captured me and then they started to think of a super Pretender?" He paused. "a Pretender with the inner sense."
Miss Parker gasped. "What did my grandparent have?"
"He was descended from a woman whose job it was to see that a slave girl accompanied her Viking chieftain to the afterlife. She strangled her."
"So?"
"She was probably chosen because she had other gifts, perhaps divination, prophecy, a slight telepathy. It would not be a crazy old woman or even a midwife."
"And what if that gift died?"
"I suppose if I were a Viking, and my sister had that gift, I'd have a hard time finding a husband for her unless the groom also had that gift."
She looked over his shoulder. "So that's what you've been doing."
"The maps of certain villages where the Jamiesons came from. This document contains the background of your maternal grandmother and the reason why you were sent after me."
"Look," she said in disgust, "I was sent to retrieve you, take you back to the Centre where you belonged."
"And what would have happened if you happened to get ahead of Sydney and Broots, and you had your gun on me and those handcuffs? Do you suppose we'd just talk?"
"I was given orders."
"—to bring me back to the Centre alive, but they didn't say in what condition."
She put her finger on her chin and tossed her head, making the infants squeal. "Oh and if I happened to get pregnant because I happened to ah overpower you, well that was an easy way to get a Super Pretender as I couldn't be blamed. My pretend father was messing with my mind. At least I knew Raines was evil."
"They both messed with your minds. Telling you were a prisoner like me. Well a prisoner does not get their own gun, live in their own house, gets an unlimited expense account. What's the most favored prisoner or slave besides me?"
"Ted, oh Alex and Damon."
"I have my doubts about Damon and Alex's dead. They wouldn't have you near a female Pretender. Lisa and Carla were okay because they were still young, but if you saw a female Pretender around your age, you'd realize you were free to come and go as you please. Oh, Raines would have killed you if you didn't bring me back, but you would have had a chance, you had a weapon."
"I kept you alive chasing you."
He shrugged. "Oh and you believed that? I wanted not only to be united with my family, but to be a father and the only way I could have gotten them was what happened or something similar."
She shuddered, thinking of the other alternatives, her dark fantasies made real, the captive of the Amazon queen — that story she read in a sweeper's magazine, written in explicit detail. All those Hail Maries and having to give my allowance to the Orphanage for a whole month! I would have rather taken a beating. But she was the Chairman's daughter, no beatings, no marks on her skin, no shut in a room, no grounding. No one would dare lend a hand against her unless he or she wanted to die.
Jarod interrupted her thoughts. "Anyway, we have to find out about the Jamiesons as well as my family's history."
"Oh, and why you, Jarod?"
"It's obvious. I have AB negative blood, very rare, a combination of European and Asian background. If I had A positive, B positive, A negative, B negative, or even AB positive blood, they wouldn't have looked so closely. The Centre believed it was my blood type that made me a Pretender, not my gene."
Miss Parker knew this already, and started thinking aloud, "A Pretender woman around my age."
"And you would have made friends with her, and rescued her. I doubt it, Miss Parker. Now you would, but then she'd still remain a prisoner. The other Pretenders, the ones not captured, escaped because they had ordinary blood. Edward was a fluke. He probably did something ah …"
She smiled. "Pretendish?"
"Pretendish to get him caught."
"Excuse me Miss Parker."
She turned to see Major Charles. "I was looking at the brochure and if we get in now, we can see the exhibits."
"Well, I don't need a tour guide," Lambourni said, "anyone here all for going to the Old Library, hurry up." He looked very impatiently at the group who were undecided between him and Major Charles. In fact, he gave up the idea that perhaps they should do what he wanted.
"What's in the Old Library?" asked Jeremiah.
"The Book of Kells. It's an old Irish Gospel book. Very expensive and has ornate decorations."
"I presume you mean Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? How did they make it?"
"By hand."
The boy shrugged. "They could have used a printing press."
"You should pay attention to your education, Jeremiah," said his oldest brother with a slight sneer, "Coming Major?"
"I guess your son took over," said Major Charles, "we'll see you in a bit."
"Okay. We'll catch up with you. Oh and watch the kids, especially Jeremiah. He's a born instigator." She waved them off. Gem followed, entranced by seeing the famous College. "I wonder where Rachel is." She looked at her watch.
"I thought she was coming as well. I guess she took the kids out for something to eat," said Jarod.
"Yes, if they cook Jewish here," said Miss Parker. "She said she had to see the police inspector here, something about a case."
"You're not telling me something," said Jarod, "first you start talking to me as if you were still under the control of the Centre, and then you worry that Rachel, who is an FBI profiler and probably taking a working holiday, is not here. What is it?"
"Sydney's dying. Now I said it." She shut up after that, looking cautiously at Jarod expecting to hear the "No!" but nothing came out of Jarod's mouth. He didn't even change his expression. For the first time, she realized how different Homo Sapiens were from the Homo Dominant or the Pretenders. Death did not terrify them and they showed no sympathy to the deaths of others.
"Did you call Nicholas?"
"Of course, I called Nicholas! Aren't you going to say anything?"
"How long has he got?"
"The doctors think he'll last a day. He might want to talk to you."
"It's too late, Miss Parker. I can't change to a child, even though the Medicals might have the means to do that. That psychiatrist used that Virtual reality machine to get me to experience what others had. It worked, but it's not the same thing and I can't go back in time."
"We can't go to the hospital now. The nurses are making him comfortable and the doctor told me it would be best to come in the morning, about seven or eight. So, we'll look through the exhibits, take some pictures. And if Rachel's busy trying to help the Dublin police …"
"If I see some terrorists carrying a suspicious box about the size of a coffin with an LED indicator on the side with the numbers counting down and I hear a faint ticking, I'll call her and let her know."
She smiled, imagining swarthy men with black hair and beards, and wearing T-shirts in Arabic proclaiming, "Allah is Supreme and Mohammed is his Prophet. Die all Infidels!"