room with a high vaulted ceiling crisscrossed by thick beams of dark timber, tall windows looking out over the valley. The view was currently obscured by snow, but Nina’s eyes were on the room’s occupants rather than the scenery outside.
Bright spotlights on the lowest beams shone down to illuminate a large circular table at the room’s center. Around it sat fourteen people, twelve of them men, all at least middle-aged and the oldest well into his eighties.
The Group. The secretive organization pulling the strings of governments all over the world. A meeting of nearly unimaginable power and wealth … yet unknown to almost everybody whose lives it affected.
There were two unoccupied seats. Warden went to one, gesturing at the other beside it. “We’d be honored if you’d join us for dinner, Dr. Wilde,” he said. “Please, sit down.”
“Thank you,” she said, taking in the calculating gazes regarding her as she sat and put the case on the table. There were no place settings, but she saw several large cloth-draped catering trolleys near an open dumbwaiter; presumably the Group’s members had business to discuss before they ate.
She was not just involved in that business. She was that business.
Nina tried to will away the knot in her stomach as Warden took his seat and made introductions. The oldest, Rudolf Meerkrieger, a German media magnate controlling newspapers and broadcasting stations in over thirty countries. Anisim Gorchakov, the oligarch with his hand on the taps of the vast Russian natural gas reserves that fed the homes and industries of Europe and beyond. Sheik Fawwaz al-Faisal, head of a Middle Eastern consortium that decided the region’s supply—and hence the price—of oil on a daily basis. The rotund Bull brothers, Frederick and William, American identical twins distinguishable only by the colors of their ties, who had made their colossal joint fortune in hedge funds by speculating on commodities such as fuel and food, driving up prices and cashing in on shortages. Victoria Brannigan, Australian heiress to a mining and refining empire that produced the raw materials on which the world’s manufacturers depended, and the Dutch Caspar Van der Zee, in charge of the shipping fleet that carried those materials to where they were needed and the finished products made from them back to consumers.
And the others, different but the same, the invisible hand controlling the market revealed in plain sight. The men and women whose word could appoint or topple leaders, turn famine into glut and back again, all in service of their hunger for profit—and urge to control.
“So, I finally get to meet you all,” said Nina once the round of greetings was concluded. “Well, not all. Mr. Takashi couldn’t make it, obviously.”
“No, unfortunately,” said Warden. “A shame—he was the one who convinced us of the potential value of earth energy. If it can be harnessed, of course—but with your help, that will now be possible.” He indicated the case. “One of the reasons we chose this hotel for our meeting is that this mountain is a natural earth energy confluence point. When you put the statues together, it should produce the same effect as it did in Tokyo, and allow you to pinpoint the location of the meteorite.”
Nina saw that not a single member of the Group showed any regret over Takashi’s death. To them, it was a mere inconvenience—nothing to become emotional about. “Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” she said dismissively.
That produced emotion: muted shock, constrained outrage at the minor yet unmistakable challenge. They had assumed she was there to become a willing part of their plan; resistance was evidently not on the agenda. “Is there a problem, Dr. Wilde?” asked Meerkrieger, his aged voice creaking like tree bark.
“I have a few questions I’d like answered first.”
“Of course,” said Warden smoothly. “We want you to be completely comfortable with your role. What would you like to know?”
“More about the meteorite, the Atlantean sky stone, first of all. You think it’s composed of a naturally superconducting material, yes?”
Warden nodded. “That’s right. We don’t know how big it is, but hopefully it’ll allow the extraction of enough of the metal to supply multiple earth energy collection stations.”
“But there’s more to it, isn’t there? The connection I felt to it when I put the three statues together in Japan suggests that the stone has some intimate link with life on earth, as if it’s somehow integral to its creation.”
No words were spoken by her audience, but Nina immediately sensed a change in attitude from