Notes
Soundtrack suggestions:
Guillaume and Maisie at the beginning:
- La nouvelle table ronde — Alexandre Astier, Kaamelott : Premier Volet. (Up to 01:12)
Guillaume and Wu in the lounge:
- A Golden Crown — Ramin Djawadi, Game of Thrones: Season 1.
-o-
A little less than an hour later, Guillaume went down to the ground floor, passed in the northern wing and found the Lockwoods' private dining room. The table had been set by the servants, but he saw no one in the room, no one except Maisie, who was sitting by one of the windows, reading a book.
"Mr. Vuillier, are you dining with us?" she asked him.
"Your grandfather and Elijah invited me. What are you reading?"
He looked at the title on the cover.
"Alice in Wonderland," he read.
"Yes. I've read it before but I really like this story. Alice is one of my favorite fictional characters. Do you have any?"
"Yes, of course."
"Who are they?"
"My favourite fictional characters are King Arthur and Obi-Wan Kenobi. That said, the first is a legendary character and not totally fictitious but that's a detail..."
"What do you like about King Arthur?"
"What I like about him… It's his unifying side. He brings together people from various backgrounds around a common quest."
"His knights... Do you think he sometimes argued with them?"
He laughed softly.
"Oh surely. They were human after all."
Elijah entered the room in his turn.
"Here you are," he said, seeing Guillaume. "It will be ready soon. In addition to you, Maisie and her grandfather, Iris and me, there will be a sixth person at this dinner."
"Who? Mr Lambert? Mr Singer?"
"No. But given your profession, I think he's someone you'd like to meet."
Another person, shorter than Elijah and even Guillaume, then entered and the WDMC director slightly widened his eyes in surprise when he recognized a key figure from InGen, a man who had lived through the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World incidents, a man who, thirty-three years earlier, had succeeded in bringing dinosaurs back to life… and who had recently started creating monsters from scratch."
"I don't think I need to say anything else," the manager of the Lockwood Foundation added.
"Professor Wu," Guillaume said, staring at the newcomer, lingering his gaze on the dark circles under his eyes. "I didn't expect to meet you here."
"Mr Vuillier. Eli told me you were coming."
As they exchanged a courteous but not exactly warm handshake, Guillaume said:
"I tried to meet you but each time, your assistant told me that you were unavailable."
"I've had a lot of work lately. I came here to rest," the geneticist replied.
Benjamin Lockwood arrived in his turn, his chair pushed by Iris.
"I see that you are already getting acquainted. Henry is an old friend."
Guillaume went to greet the master of the house and chat a little with him, then they took their places around the table. Iris pushed Benjamin's chair to one end and went to sit on his right, directly across from Maisie. On the same side of the table as the young girl, were Elijah and Wu. As for Guillaume, he took his place next to Iris and opposite of the foundation's manager. Servants then brought the dishes and drinks and dinner began.
"Eli told me you went hiking today," Benjamin said to Guillaume.
"Yes. I went to Prairie Creek National Park."
"I went there a few days ago," Wu told him.
"Which trail did you take?" The WDMC director asked.
"Oh, I don't remember the name," the geneticist replied hesitantly. "The longest if I recall."
"The one which is ten miles long? How long was your hike?"
"About five hours."
"Five hours?" Guillaume repeated, his eyes widening in astonishment. "My word, you put your skates on."
"Mr Vuillier. About the places you saw today, don't you think they look prehistoric?" Benjamin asked him.
"I think so too."
"On Isla Sorna, there are forests which exactly look like those here. If you read a bit about the natural history of Isla Nublar and the Five Deaths, I think you're aware that Sorna's coniferous forests are very recent."
"I read that in the nineteenth century, a local industrialist went there, taking redwood seeds and young plants with him. He planted them in areas of the island with a cool microclimate, on the heights and part of the eastern coast. He did business with Costa Rican coffee and banana growers as well as the Germans from the mining colony of Georgburg. People from Saxony if I recall."
"I see you've done your homework," Wu commented.
"My great-grandfather knew this man well," Benjamin told the Frenchman. "When he announced his intention to plant redwoods off the coast of Costa Rica, people thought he was crazy. If they knew... Too bad he never got to see his redwoods grow, as the First World War brought Georgburg to its knees, which impacted heavily his forestry business. Georgburg ended up being some kind of proto-Fordlândia."
"Have you or Professor Wu seen Georgburg?" William asked.
"We visited it briefly while Site B was under construction," the geneticist replied. "The town was in ruins and the jungle had already reclaimed it quite a bit. I'm afraid that little remains today."
"In our library, we have a book about the Five Death's past," Benjamin added. "Eli can show it to you after dinner. When he first came here, he read it eagerly."
"Did you know that the Nazis had sent men into the Five Deaths, and that there were skirmishes between them and American troops there?" The manager of the foundation asked Guillaume.
"Yes, the Germans won those skirmishes, but it was a Pyrrhic victory and they ended up cut off from the world afterwards, as the Third Reich was then in full collapse," the WDMC director replied. "The isolation and the resulting madness defeated the surviving soldiers… Only one managed to reach the mainland. The Grey Guards found a small bunker on Isla Pena about fifteen years ago and still use it today as a lookout..."
"To say that we thought the Nazi presence in the archipelago was just a story made up by some smartass," Wu laughed.
"There are even wild rumours about a hidden submarine somewhere in the archipelago," Guillaume added.
"The Unbesiegbar, the Invincible in English. Officially it was sunk in the Atlantic but unofficially it apparently rounded Cape Horn and skirted the entire west coast of South America until reaching the Five Deaths," Eli said. "But it's just a legend..."
"A ghost vessel story, a bit like the Flying Dutchman ...," the geneticist concluded. "It might be better if it's just a legend. Imagine that it really exists, that the Grey Guards find it and that they discover that it's still armed..."
"Have you ever been to the Five Deaths, Mr Vuillier?" Benjamin inquired.
"Not yet, but if all goes well, I will go there in December, as part of the annual CCCDLF's annual visit."
"How can you go there carefree?" Wu asked. "The Fall showed that the Grey Guards were not men but lawless brutes who would raid and kill without mercy if they weren't hold ona a leash."
"The Grey Guard is the enemy of no one except those who seek to harm them or the Archipelago," Guillaume said firmly.
"If you had been with me during the Fall, and if you had have seen them murdering InGen employees in cold blood, you would say different things," Wu retorted.
"I'm aware of the insurgency and the crimes committed on each side. I don't know if you know this, but the officers involved in the insurgency were arrested a few months after the Fall and are currently serving a sentence in a Costa Rican prison."
"Ah… I didn't know that," the geneticist said, surprised by the news. "I'm glad to hear that. They got what they deserved."
"Please don't talk about politics in her presence," Iris told them, referring to Maisie.
"You didn't know that?" Guillaume asked the geneticist with surprise. "Yet they talked about it on the news for a while."
"As I said earlier, I've been pretty busy since the Fall..."
"Without indiscretions, what is your current work about? It must be very interesting..."
"Unfortunately, I can't tell you anything right now. Professional secret."
"I see…"
"Let's talk about lighter topics," Benjamin interjected, as the passive-aggressive exchange between the WDMC director and the geneticist started to bother him.
Out of respect for him, they complied and the master of the house then asked his granddaughter about her day. While she told him about her search of Joseph the raccoon, her meeting with Guillaume and her discovery of belladonna near the InGen camp, the WDMC director could not help thinking that Henry Wu must really have been cut off from the world for not having heard of the incarceration of some of those who threatened and chased him during the Long Night in Isla Nublar.
After dinner, the Lockwoods took leave of the three men and retired to their rooms. While the servants were clearing the table and doing the dishes, Eli invited Guillaume and Henry to follow him to the expansive lounge in the southern wing, the one with the large grandfather clock.
There they discussed various topics over a glass of brandy. Elijah told Guillaume more about the manor's history after he asked him about the structures north of the house. He told him that Benjamin Lockwood's grandfather had built a factory in order to have another source of income and that decades later the shop had closed and Benjamin had turned it into a gymnasium for his daughter. But since Charlotte's death, the place had been abandoned. Elijah then related an even more astonishing fact. During World War II, Benjamin's father and the army had built a bunker under the manor, in order to have a base for the local resistance in the event of a Japanese invasion of the west coast.
"During the reception, someone told me that Hammond, Atherton and Lockwood built a laboratory in the basement, where the first experiments with ancient DNA were carried out. Was this laboratory built in that bunker?"
"Who was this guest?" Wu asked.
"I don't remember," the WDMC director lied, aware that the mention of a conversation with Jeff Rossiter would risk arousing suspicion from the two other men, or at least Wu's.
The geneticist nodded weakly and Elijah spoke up.
"To answer your question, yes, Benjamin set up this first laboratory in the bunker. But before you ask to see it, know that it hasn't been used since the eighties and its equipment has been sent elsewhere. All that remains are dusty rooms as dark as a dungeon. The entire bunker was closed off for safety reasons."
"A pity..." Guillaume said, shaking his head a little disappointed. "When I checked your website, I saw that you also have a large conference room in the basement. You don't plan to host the auction there?"
"No. Work is being carried out down there and it won't be finished before the fall. I think the buyers will be fine in the marquee. It's summer and the latter is nice here, so it's better if we make the most of it. Don't you agree?"
"But I do."
A few minutes later, Guillaume broached the subject of the book about the Five Deaths history which Benjamin had mentioned during dinner.
"I'll get it," Eli said, getting up.
The WDMC director and the geneticist watched him walk away and disappear in the hallway.
"Professor. Do you know Professor Yvette Strahovski and Doctors Milo Sheen and Darcy Karpyshyn?" Guillaume asked after a moment of silence.
"Where did you see those names?"
"While surfing the net, I came across an article about their tragic end. And since they worked at Stanford University, I thought you might have known them."
"That's the case. Yvette… Professor Strahovski was already part of Norman Atherton's team when I joined it at the end of my studies. I even had her as a teacher. She remained a good friend until her death. On the other hand, I only knew Sheen and Karpyshyn as students, but I know that Yvette had taken them under her wing."
"What was their specialty?" Was it animal genetics like you?"
"No. After Hammond hired me, Yvette became passionate about human genetics, and I suspect Sheen and Karpyhsyn did as well when they finished their studies. If you read about Yvette, I think you know that she participated in the human genome project."
"Did InGen seek to hire them?"
"Yvette had turned down the offer made to her, and although I remember that Sheen's and Karpyshyn's files had been passed around in the human resources department, they didn't get a chance to work for InGen."
"In the article I read, it was written that they had been murdered. Did you know if they had any enemies?"
"Not to my knowledge. I think their killer was nothing more than a maniac who preyed on the occupants of the first house in his path. Why this question?"
"During the summer of 2011, four other geneticists died in tragic conditions: Adam Wibberley, Darren Logan and two other veterans of the Human Genome Project, Ted Morrison and Jerry Bulloch. Did you know them?"
"Nope. Where are you coming from?"
"I don't know about you, but I don't think this series of deaths over such a short period of time is a coincidence."
"Do you think a serial killer is behind all these deaths? Who would he be? Some kind of anti-science activist or religious fanatic who targeted specialists in human genetics?"
"Personally, I don't think their killer was a religious fanatic or an anti-science activist like you said. The question I'm about to ask you may seem indiscreet, but have you ever been attacked because of the Indominus rex and the fall of Jurassic World?"
"Those who tried were overpowered by the bodyguards InGen assigned to me."
"And on social networks?"
"I have accounts but I haven't checked them for a long time."
"Your research takes up all your time," Guillaume guessed.
Wu shifted in his seat and looked at him seriously.
"What are you doing, Mr Vuillier? Are you nostalgic from the time when you were a police officer and you are now improvising yourself as an investigator? I was told that you worked at Interpol before."
"It's not an interrogation, don't worry. I'm just a curious man asking questions."
"If you say so," Wu muttered, unconvinced.
Elijah then returned with the book and sat gain in his chair.
Wu massaged his forehead and then stood up.
"Excuse me gentlemen but I'm tired. I'm going back to my room," he announced, leaving a glass in which there was still some brandy. "Good night."
"Good night," the other two men replied.
They stayed in the lounge a little longer to discuss the book, but as soon as they had covered the subject and finished their drinks, they took them back to the kitchen and soon went back up to their respective rooms too.