The Earls' Legacy
Chapter Two
Colonel Sir Thomas Riddle, DSO, , KG, was not a man who indulged in excess. Despite his immense wealth, his breakfast had consisted of a bowl of porridge, which he was now following with toast and marmalade. All these products, be it noted, were supermarket 'own brands'. Unlike many far less wealthy people, he lived no better than he could have done under Norsefires' ration regime.
"So, Tom," his wife asked him, "what's the plan for today?"
His cold grey eyes warmed as he looked at her. "There's a good deal to do before we can start work at the Sanctuary." He said. "So I'll be working from home today. Please ask Josephine not to come into the study."
"I'll let her know." She replied. "Shall I bring your lunch to you, or will you emerge?"
"Oh, if you're going to be here, Bella, I shall, of course, emerge!" He told her. "What are you up to, my dear?"
"Got a League meeting this morning, then I'll be doing letters and emails all afternoon." Bella revealed.
"How is the League going?" Ridle wanted to know.
"It's slow work." Bella allowed. "I mean, a lot of the usual suspects turned up right away, then left when they realised I was going to allow non-whites, non-Christians and even Lesbians in. But it's about getting the young women engaged. We hardly have anyone under forty at the moment. Most of the younger women admire Evey Hammond too much."
"Understandable." Riddle noted. "As a person, the Prime Minister is very much to be admired. Her strength, courage, resilience and adherence to her principles are praiseworthy. Unfortunately, she fails to realise that her virtues were the result of growing up under the system she so despised."
"Her parents were taken away and murdered." Bella reminded him. "More than enough to raise a little resentment, darling!"
"I don't disagree, my love." He answered. "Thuggery of the kind practiced by Creedy and his underlings is neither necessary nor, in the long term, sustainable. We shall do things differently! Legitimate and disciplined dissent is no more a threat to proper government than diversity. Both can be usefully assimilated."
He rose to his feet, a tall man, slender and wiry, with a thin, handsome and unlined face dominated by piercing grey eyes, dark hair speckled with silver and cropped short. He went round the table to her as she also stood up. She too was tall and dark-haired, but full-figured with delicate, sensual features and rich brown eyes. They embraced and she kissed his cheek.
"Don't work too hard!" She admonished him.
XXXXX
"I suppose you'd call it anarchy." Samara was saying to the Commando. "There's no central Asari government of any kind. Each community is made up of Matrons, their daughters, the more academic or less adventurous Maidens - who do a lot of the heavy lifting – and as many Matriarchs as are needed and wanted. Every adult has a voice, though of course the Matrons carry more weight than the Maidens, but the Matriarchs, after due consultation, make the decisions. Of course, the Matriarchs all across the Asari Culture keep in touch. Quite generally, what works for one Asari community will work for another of a similar size and composition."
"That seems sound." The Commando replied. "What about the men?"
She stared at him for a moment, then shook her head and laughed. "Of course! You wouldn't know!" She exclaimed. "We're a monogender species, Rusty, there aren't any male Asari! We can reproduce parthenogenetically, but that just produces clones, and it's frowned upon except in emergencies. We do have a kind of limited telempathy -we can share thoughts and feelings when in physical contact. The longer and more intimate the contact, the more intense the sharing and the more pleasurable the experience. Daughters conceived in such circumstances will have characteristics of both parents.
"Remarkable." He said. "But it occurs to me that…"
"That we could mate and produce children with other species?" She asked. "Yes, we can, if the relationship is close enough. The children are Asari, of course, but still carry traits from the other parent."
"Any intelligent species, I take it?" He said.
"Almost any." Samara allowed. "Most of the races in the Shi'ar and Kree Empires. Except the Menoptera, who are social insects, only Queens and Drones have any individual intelligence and they are too strongly dependent on species-specific pheromones to develop any kind of intimacy with others. Then there are the Geth, who are an Artificial Intelligence; millions of networked programmes living in servers or operating robotic platforms of different types, and the Daleks, who are mutant cyborgs and completely asexual."
"Fascinating." The Commando commented. "This is the place!"
There had been a reasonably-sized archway, but it had collapsed and the passage beyond was choked with rubble. Samara looked around her.
"The maps we studied before we left show this 'Underground' to have been an extensive mass-transit system." She remarked. "Yet it is long abandoned. Why is that?"
"People stopped using it during the pandemic." The Commando said. "Before the first lockdown, it was the most-used method of getting around London. But between the fact that only a few people – key workers and the like – were travelling very much, and the doctors telling people that enclosed spaces were bad for spreading the virus, people stopped using it. It got too expensive to keep it running, so they shut it down. Norsefire never re-opened it because there were too many places in it for people to hide away from surveillance. Now, of course, it would cost billions to put into safe working order again, and when the London Councils held a referendum, most people didn't want it opened. But it would also cost billions to fill in or safely demolish all the stations and tunnels, so it's still here"
He pointed to three places on the wall around the collapsed arch. "Blast points." He said. "Whoever did this knew what he was doing! Maximum effect for minimum explosive. But that does mean that most of the tunnel beyond it will still be intact."
He stared at the rubble for a few seconds, then nodded.
"Blocked for about four metres, clear beyond that." He said.
"How can you tell that?" Samar wondered.
The Commando shrugged. "My builders saw fit to equip me with Ground Penetrating Radar as well as standard radar, sonar, ultrasound and the ability to 'see' in infra-red and ultra-violet. It's so I can detect landmines and assorted booby-traps.
"But now we've got some digging to do!"
Samara laughed. "Stand back, Rusty! I'll take this bit!"
She raised her Power Ring and green light flowed out of it, shaping itself into a large drill, which immediately began to spin, chewing easily through the rubble.
"Done!" She said a few minutes later. "I made the drill hot so it fused the tunnel walls. They won't collapse on us!"
"Impressive!" The Commando allowed. "I might even come through this with my uniform intact!"
The tunnel opened out into a wider area. It might once have been used to store tools and equipment, but now it was empty. Empty except for the scattered bones on the floor, with a dozen human skulls among them.
"It's funny." The Commando remarked. "You somehow expect to find all the skeletons lying neatly where they fell, don't you? You forget that the rats will have had their way with the bodies."
"Rats wouldn't have taken the clothes and guns." Samara pointed out.
"Noted." The Commando replied. "I wonder….There are stories – urban myths – about people who live down here. Tube-rats, the tabloids call them. There are a great many subterranean structures and networks under London, most of them disused and forgotten. The stories go that the lowest of the low crept into them and still manage to survive here."
"Cheeky flats!" The voice was rough. "Come to our flowery and talk naff about us. What do we do, yobs?"
There were five or six of them. Dirty, unkempt but healthy and apparently well-fed, dressed in an assortment of old but serviceable clothing. All had some kind of weapon but only the one at the front had a firearm. An assault rifle which the Commando guessed had been pillaged from this very room.
"My apologies." The Commando said. "I heard you scuffling about, but took you for rats."
"A reasonable mistake." Samara told him. "Considering the smell."
"We ought to sod!" One of the gang said. "Don't need a barney, Gaffer. These flats look like rough trade to me."
"Gercha!" The leader said. "One tobor and a butch with a blue eek and you sip yourself! You can sod if you want, but you don't get to share!
"Tell you what, dilly blue dona, you leave your tobor with us and you can sod. Our Omi can flog him for scrap, lots of dinari in scrap. Ain't got enough dakka to take him, but plenty for you!"
"Quite apart from the fact that Rusty isn't mine to give," Samara replied. "I can promise you that however much 'dakka' you have, it won't be anything like enough!"
His answer was direct. He opened fire. The bullets made small flashes in the force-field that surrounded Samara, then dropped harmlessly to the ground at her feet.
While the gang were staring, almost hypnotised, at this impossibility, the Commando moved. Moved far faster than his bulk would seem to allow. He was on them in a second, crushing the leaders' skull with a single punch, caving anothers' chest in in the same way, catching up a third and slamming him into a wall hard enough to break his spine. The other two dropped their weapons and fled.
"Now I'm impressed!" Samara said. "I hardly expected you to be so quick! Or indeed so ruthless!"
"I was designed for combat." The Commando reminded her. "But I am an AI, and make my own decisions on how much force to apply. In this instance, the law, which I generally respect, couldn't be said to apply. How does one arrest, try and sentence a person who, legally speaking, doesn't exist? Strategically speaking, a show of power – 'shock and awe', as the phrase goes – was indicated. By the time those two reach their base, I will have doubled in size and you will have become a glowing demigod. We will not be pursued, and these Tube-Rats will be more circumspect about preying on outsiders in future."
"For someone who isn't human, you understand them very well." She remarked.
"No I don't." He told her. "I can't answer for other intelligent species, but humans are a continual conundrum. I thought I'd got a handle on them after three months on the team; but they're still surprising and confounding me three years later!"
"Duly noted." Samara said. "I shall in future expect the unexpected!
"I think we've found what we were sent to find. Shall we go?"
XXXXX
"Gives me the creeps!" The Cat said feelingly. "Couldn't they put the streetlights on?"
"People didn't want them on." Spitfire told him. "They asked the Council to keep the lights off all around this area so people would know when they were getting close. They're still afraid of getting ill, even though the virus around here is long dead.
"But you're right, it doesn't feel right for a place in London to be so dark and quiet, even at this time in the morning!"
They approached the towering wall. Fifteen feet of concrete, topped with razor wire.
"Here we are, Ground Zero." Spitfire said. "It's still hard to believe that Creedy targeted kids!"
"He was thinking the way Norsefire had been telling people Islamic terrorists think." The Cat said. "So when it happened, people believed it. Enough people to put Norsefire in absolute power for years."
"Bastards!" The Cat observed.
"No argument, there." Jenny replied. "C'mon, Will, let's get this over with!"
She stepped back into the middle of the road, took a run-up and bounded up the wall parkour-style, before pushing off and somersaulting over the wire. The Cat fired a line-slinger whose grapnel wrapped around the top of an unlit lamp-post, allowing the automatic winch to pull him up. From there he made a spectacular leap into the branches of a tree growing close to the inside of the wall. He clambered quickly down to join Spitfire.
"New toy?" She asked.
"Bruce made it for me." The Cat said. "Well, Bruce probably had the idea. Tony would have actually built it."
"Oh." she said. "Finch said they buried them in the playing field."
"Makes sense." The Cat said. "Whole place is pretty much overgrown, but the field would still be the clearest."
They made their way through towering trees and dense undergrowth. The concrete slabs and tarmac had long ago surrendered to the encroaching vegetation, and could barely be found, much less used. The school buildings loomed up at one point. Ivy and other climbing plants festooned much of them, and while the main building still stood, some of the extensions and out-buildings had crumbled and fallen.
"I've seen that before." Jenny said. "Why do the newer buildings not outlast the older ones?"
The Cat snorted. "The original building is Victorian. They built things with the idea that they should stand for centuries. The additions are probably post-War, designed to last maybe thirty years at the most!"
The spot wasn't actually hard to find. The grave-robbers had beaten a path through the waist-high grass that had not yet grown back, and had not bothered to refill the pit they had dug.
"How did they know where it was?" The Cat wondered.
"We know they were doing magic, and it was working." Jenny pointed out. "There are lots of ways of finding things by magic. Especially if you have something that belonged to the person you're looking for. We both know there's a black market for souvenirs – especially personal items – that belonged to Sutler or Creedy. You get a pen, a watch, a pair of glasses or a tie-pin and you can enchant them to find their owners, even when they're dead."
"You've been reading up!" The Cat remarked. "I suppose I'd better start."
"Be a good idea." Spitfire agreed. "As soon as you've learned to read!"
Will shook his head dolefully. "It's what happens when you spend school-nights fighting crime instead of doing homework! C'mon, let's get back to base! My stomach thinks my throat's been cut!"
XXXXX
"Right!" Mike Moran, alias Union Jack, looked around the table. "The Earl had two computers – a desktop and a laptop. The desktop was for business, the laptop for pleasure. Given the kind of pleasure involved, the information on the laptop has been passed to the Met. We can expect a few scandals to erupt shortly. But our interest lies in the business list. If I'm right, only one name comes up on both?"
"Correct." Said the Commando. "That of Anthony Lilliman. But the Earls' business with him appears to begin and end with them both being shareholders in several companies. It appears that they did not correspond regarding matters political.
"The main interest in the business files concerns one company and one individual.
"The company is Ridgeworth Logistics. This is a company based in the Midlands who, as their name implies, deal with all kinds of transportation. Not general freight, as such, but the pick-up and delivery of goods and items required to complete jobs and projects. Building materials, electronic equipment, machinery and parts, samples and prototypes. It is also suspected, but not proven, that the company transports illegal drugs, stolen goods, smuggled goods, wanted persons and the remains of unwanted persons. The current owner of the company, William Ridgeworth, is a man whose father, Derek, is currently in prison for a number of offences including murder. Derek Ridgeworth was a prominent figure in organised crime prior to his downfall. William, who is thought by some to have engineered his fathers' arrest in exchange for immunity, closed down and sold off the network of pubs and clubs through which his father operated and set up his own company. It seems, however, that the apple has not fallen far from the tree!
"Ridgeworths' company has undertaken several contracts for the Earl and members of his circle. Most importantly, they include three deliveries of 'experimental materials' directly to the Earls' estate, and the collection of a consignment of 'chemical salts' from that address shortly before the Earls' demise.
"Be it noted that William Ridgeworth is still listed as a Confidential Informant by the Metropolitan Police Organised Crime Unit. Until and unless this status is lifted, any move against him would be in violation of our Standing Orders."
"Standing Orders?" Samara asked.
"The Excalibur Team have full means and immunity." Mike told her. "But only when acting against those actually committing a crime or act of terrorism, actively planning one, or evading arrest after one. We're meant to be loud, noisy and above all, seen!
"The nature of the team makes covert operations difficult, anyway. There are other organisations who take care of that. I'll talk to the Brigadier.
"What else?"
"An ongoing correspondence with a specific individual, which I asked Samara to look into. Samara?"
Samara tapped on the table in front of her, then keyed in a command. An image appeared in front of everyone in the glass surface of the table. A photograph of a man and a woman, arm-in-arm. Both tall, both dark, he slender with grey eyes, she curvaceous with brown ones.
"The man in this photograph is Colonel Sir Thomas Riddle, the woman is his wife, Isabella Riddle, nee Black.
"Sir Thomas' family are landed gentry. His father was also called Thomas, his mother was a Merope Gaunt, also from landed gentry. The marriage was a relatively late one for the time, and resulted in only one child. Thomas the younger was born in 1932, making him seventy years of age now."
"If this photo is current, he looks very well-preserved!" Jenny remarked.
"'Tis not to be wondered at." Gawain told her. "If these Gaunts be the same family I knew, then they hold kinship with House Peverell, who are descended from the Fae Druid Salazar, Master of Serpents, who wed a mortal noblewoman and took her family name. At least ten of the descendants of House Peverell wed Fae in later years, including he whose daughter married Marius Gaunt. Marius himself had a Fae father."
"That was a long, long time ago!" Mike pointed out.
"Even so, Fae blood is Fae blood." Gawain said. "It holds strong over generations and may show itself in those far removed from their full-blood Fae ancestors."
"Might be worth checking genealogical data." Mike said. "Carry on, Samara."
"Yes, well, young Thomas passed Common Entrance in 1943 and attended Rugby School. In 1950 he obtained a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge, taking the Mathematical Tripos and graduating in 1954 with a Master of Mathematics degree. From there, he joined the Army, and after studying at Sandhurst was commissioned as a Lieutenant in the 15th Infantry. He saw action in Malaya and Indonesia, Aden and Northern Ireland. He was awarded the DSO in 1968 for action in Aden and in 1981 was promoted to Colonel. He retired from the Army in 1991 and went into business in the City, where he quickly assembled a massive and profitable portfolio, eventually obtaining Directorships in several companies. By the time Norsefire came to power in 1995, he was one of the wealthiest people in the UK. He was courted by Sutler and his people, and though he endorsed some of their ideas and actions, he didn't discuss others. He never became a party member.
"However, his correspondence with the Earl is revealing. He is unhappy with the current government, though he personally admires Evey Hammond. He seems to admire the ancient Spartan civilisation, arguing that strict, even harsh, discipline and simplicity of life improves both people and society.
"But the most important thing is how the Earl responds to him. He's careful, deferential, almost eager to please. In correspondence with others, he notes that Riddle isn't 'one of us', but that his wealth and influence are too great to risk losing his support.
"Reading between the lines, I get the impression that the Earls' influence on his group was diminishing as Riddles' rose. It seems likely that at the time of the Earls' death, Riddle was already the de facto leader of the group."
"OK." Mike said. "So we've gone as far as we can go! I'll get onto the Brigadier to follow these leads up.
"In the meantime, people, it's back to business as usual!"
XXXXX
Four bloody months! Quiller thought. This had better be worth it! Quiller was a ferret, always had been. Put him down the hole and leave him to it, and he'd eventually come up with what you wanted. Working for Callan, it had usually been about removing somebody – either killing them himself or setting them up for one of the Sections' other assassins. Working for Behan was a bit more varied. The Menace was more likely to want information, files, videos, items, that kind of thing. He also didn't like messes, so that meant being more careful. Quiller had been getting bored with the Section, this was more challenging.
This Ridgeworth Logistics job, for instance. All on the up-and-up on the outside. Quiller had got a job as a courier easy enough, his cover was an experienced driver called Bob Styles with a solid CV, divorced, two kids he didn't get to see, but had to pay for. But he'd not been there three weeks when he got called in to his managers' office. The manager, Dave, was at his desk, but there, sitting in a corner, was the Boss himself, Bill Ridgeworth.
"Sit down, Bob." Dave told him. "Right, now look, when we hire a courier, we let him do milk runs with stuff that's not so valuable at first. It's sort of like probation. But we do a deep dive into your background at the same time."
Quiller started to fidget, because that's what Bob would have done.
"Calm down, mate." Dave said. "You're not in any kind of bother! I'll be straight with you, we found out that you're not Robert Styles, but actually Robert Emsworth. Robert Emsworth, former Fingerman.
"Now that could get you into a lot of trouble, couldn't it? There's a warrant out on you , like there is on every ex-Fingerman they haven't caught yet. But that also means that we're in trouble because we've known this for a week and never told the Nose. We're supposed to report it straight away, but we didn't."
Quiller hung his head and muttered. "Only did what they told me to do!"
"'Course you did, son!" This was Ridgeworth, leaning forward. "But that won't matter to them, will it? Saint Evey's got it in for your old lot, and whatever you did or didn't do you'll get ten years just for having been a Fingerman.
"But me and Dave, we don't give a fuck. I'm telling you right now, Bob, that you've got a job here whatever happens. You keep your head down and work properly, and you'll be fine, we'll say nothing!"
Quiller gave a massive sigh of relief. "Thanks!" He said, meaning it.
Ridgeworth nodded, then asked. "How's things with your ex?"
"All right." Quiller said shortly.
Ridgeworth laughed. "Yeah, right!" He said. "Don't forget, Bob, we pay your wages! We've already got the letter from Child Support. A third of your take-home, right off the top, before you even see it. Do you get to see your kids, Bob?"
"No, I bloody don't!" It was time to sound angry now. "When it hit the fan, she was all OK about changing names and everything. But then she found out that I wasn't going to be earning a Fingermans' salary anymore. That we'd have to sell the nice house and fancy car and live more ordinary-like. So she gave me the boot! Told the judge I'd been a Norsefire Party member and she didn't want me near the kids! Doesn't mind having my money near them, though! The new boyfriend earns twice what I do, but she's still ripping me off!"
"That's a bastard, mate!" Ridgeworth sympathised. "Now look, I don't want you in trouble, but I think you're a bloke who can keep his mouth shut and not ask any silly questions. So, what if I were to ask you to do some special runs for me? Off the books, cash in hand. Favours for friends, basically. Would you want to think about that?"
Quiller looked up. "How much?" He asked.
"Not a fortune." Ridgeworth said. "Maybe fifty quid a run at first. But if you do it right, and don't get nosey or greedy, well, we can see about giving you more important stuff."
Quiller shook his head. "An extra fifty in me 'and now and again would be nice enough." He said. "I ain't greedy!"
Ridgeworth laughed again. "We'll see, Bob, we'll see!"
That had been the start. Late-night runs with plain packages to different addresses, followed by fifty or seventy pounds in a plain envelope, tucked in the tray where he collected the paperwork for his official jobs. Once, maybe twice, a week.
Then one night, he was jumped. Between the car and the house. Two men in ski-masks, one with a knife. By the time the intended recipient had come running out with a baseball bat, Quiller had put both of them down. From then on the 'special jobs' became more frequent and better paid. Quiller also started being asked to accompany Mr Ridgeworth to 'meetings' with some very hard-faced customers. He also finally learned the location where Mr Ridgeworth kept his private files.
Which was why he was here, at four in the morning, studying the lock on the file-room door. Electronic locks are deemed by many to be ultimately secure. But any lock must have a locksmith, and equally, if he is to do his job, any locksmith must have a key which will open his locks. In the case of electronic locks, every manufacturer has and keeps 'access all areas' keycards and override codes. It had simply been a matter of Quiller informing his field director, Ferris, of the make and model. Card and code were promptly forthcoming.
Quiller worked fast. At least there was no hacking to be done. The private files were hand-typed on a 1970s' electric typewriter and stored in old-fashioned cabinets. "Let's see the Nose hack these!" Ridgeworth had told him. "Half the little nerds don't even know what alphabetical order is!" Quiller did. He also had a smartphone that carried a far better camera than any of the old microfilm jobs had ever been. He knew which files to look for and was done and out in five minutes.
Too soon, as it happened. A security guard emerged from the gents right in front of him. Saw him straight away. Nowhere to run or hide, and the man had a gun. Quiller never carried a gun. They were heavy and noisy and no good in a tight space.
The guard squinted at him. "Mr Styles? You're here a bit late, or early! What's up?"
Quiller advanced casually, hands out and spread to show they were empty.
"Nothing's up, mate." He said. "Mr Ridgeworth just wanted me to check something for him."
"Couldn't it have waited till the morning?" The guard asked. But it didn't matter because Quiller was close enough now, going in high because the man was wearing body armour. A hard strike to the throat, crushing the trachea. The man blacked out almost at once, died in seconds. Quiller caught him up in a firemans' carry and took him down the stairs. No cameras to worry about because Ridgeworth didn't want anybody seeing what went on up here. He put the guard down at the first landing, with this throat over the catwalk rail to make it look like he fell. Shit happens.
Bob Styles' letter, explaining that he'd been recognised and had to disappear, had been left in Daves' in-tray last night. Quiller let himself out of the building onto the fire escape used by 'special customers' to enter the depot without being seen by cameras or anyone else, left by the side gate and called Ferris. Five minutes later he was picked up by a very ordinary car and was gone.
XXXXX
Sir Thomas Riddle stood on the edge of a cliff. Thirty feet below him, the sea crashed angrily into the jagged rocks that lay at the bottom. A fierce offshore wind was blowing. Riddle opened the flask he was carrying and scattered the contents into the air. The wind caught the fine, blue-grey powder up, pushing it out to sea in an expanding, thinning cloud.
"Requiescat in pace, Peter Creedy." Riddle murmured. "England prevails!"
He turned and began the walk back to Sanctuary, his home for the last three months. Tomorrow, he would return to London. He was looking forward to seeing Bella again, nightly video calls provided only an echo of the synergy they produced when together, and that rare energy was something they both missed. But it was important that the work in London continued. The League for Empowered Womanhood and the Campaign for the Restoration of Real Values were both safe in Bellas' hands, but he couldn't let her do all the work for too long, it would be unfair.
Fairness was a principle of Riddles'. It was unfair that some lived easy lives without challenge or responsibility, while others struggled merely to survive. His father had taught him that.
"We're well-off young Tom," he'd say, "but that doesn't give us the right to live easy and go soft! If you're going to do any good in the world, you need to be strong!"
So Riddles' childhood had been austere. A thin mattress and a single blanket all year round. Daily exercise, not just sport, but hard physical work as well. Intense and unsparing study. Frugal but healthy meals. Then Public School; unheated dormitories, cold showers, overdone mutton and cabbage boiled to mush. Compulsory sports, yet more study and frequent corporal punishment.
Things had improved when he went up to Trinity. The discipline imposed on him all his life had become self-discipline, so that he was well able to work effectively, play cricket and rugby and manage his adequate but not over-generous allowance. There were, as his father hinted with a twinkle in his eye, other things to find out as well, and young Tom also learned how to handle both drink and women.
After all this, Sandhurst and Army life came naturally to him, as did leadership and strategy. A stranger to fear and used to overcoming both pain and discomfort, he proved more than capable in combat. As an officer he drove his men hard, while ensuring they had all they needed and doing his utmost to prevent unnecessary casualties. His rise to Colonel was inevitable, as was the enviable reputation of the regiment he commanded.
Having done all he could do in the military, Riddle went into business. As in everything else he did, he calculated every move and never allowed himself to indulge. By shrewd investment and careful management, he grew his considerable family fortune into the millions, and indeed billions, while still living as simply and austerely as he always had. In the process, he encountered Isabella Black. As intelligent as she was lovely, with a will of steel and a determination to make her own way in the world rather than rely on her familys' wealth and influence. The two had so much in common that their marriage surprised nobody.
The only regret either of them had was the fate of their son, James. James had seen in Norsefire the chance to finally teach the world he lessons his parents had taught him. Unlike his parents, he failed to see the corruption at the heart of the party. He had eagerly joined Creedys' paramilitaries and had not been seen or heard of since the night Norsefire fell. Until now.
Riddles' interrogation of the revived Peter Creedy had revealed a great deal that would be useful when the time came. But Creedy had also mentioned, in passing, that James Riddle had been with him that Fifth of November, and had been killed by Codename V. That news had hit the Riddles hard, but both of them placed the blame on Norsefire and its corrupt regime, rather than the revolutionary himself.
"If we had had our way," Isabella had said, "Codename V would have been a leader in our society, not a rebel against it."
So in memory of his son and in honour of his parents, Thomas Riddle would soon lead his country and people into Renewal! A new age was dawning, new powers manifesting. Change was coming and Riddle meant to guide that change in the right direction.