you?’
‘My name is Travis Warden. You may have heard of me, or you may not. It depends how closely you read the financial pages.’
‘They’re not really my thing,’ she admitted.
‘That’s true for most people. Which is why the histrionics aimed at the financial world over the past few years are ironic at best, and hypocritical at worst. Anyone taking the time and effort to analyse the data that was freely available would have seen that the boom before the economic crash was unsustainable. But –’ he shrugged – ‘nobody wants to believe that the good times will ever stop rolling, so they fail to plan for the inevitable.’ He gave his passengers a meaningful look. ‘Well, almost nobody.’
‘You did make plans,’ said Eddie.
‘We did. By “we”, I mean the Group. It’s our business to plan for the future. Not just for the next year, or the next electoral cycle. We plan for decades ahead, generations.’
‘That seems a bit presumptuous,’ Nina said.
‘Only those who prepare for the future deserve a hand in shaping it.’
‘So the Group is a collection of merchant bankers?’ she asked. Eddie couldn’t suppress a smirk. ‘What?’
‘That’s Cockney rhyming slang,’ he told her. ‘For wan—’
‘Yes, thank you for that, honey.’
A small tic under Warden’s right eye betrayed his impatience. ‘Some of the Group’s members are bankers, yes. But I’m more of . . . an investor, you could say. An investor in the future. I put capital where it’s needed to ensure that the Group’s long-term goals happen. Not just here in the United States, but all over the world. The Group is an international organisation with one ultimate goal: global order.’
‘So you’re like the Bilderberg group?’
A dismissive snort. ‘The Bilderberg members just talk. We act.’ The limo paused at the airport’s outer gate for the barrier to be raised, then turned on to a road and headed for the distant lights of Washington. ‘We want to end human conflict.’
‘That’s kind of a grand plan,’ said Nina, deliberately challenging. ‘Everyone from Alexander the Great through Genghis Khan up to Hitler has had their own ideas on how to do it. And they’ve all failed. What makes yours any different?’
His answer shocked her. ‘You, Dr Wilde. You make our plan different. You make it possible.’
‘This is all coming back to those bloody statues, isn’t it?’ Eddie rumbled.
Warden ignored him, fixing his stern blue eyes on Nina. ‘Competition over resources is the cause of most conflict in the world. Specifically, energy resources. Wars are fought, lives destroyed, tyrants propped up just so that we can literally burn a mineral sludge – and the system of global politics and economics has become so warped by this fact that it’s now dependent on it. Governments can’t imagine things being any other way . . . but just as the recent economic crash was bound to happen, a total collapse is inevitable if things continue as they are.’
‘I know we have booms and busts,’ said Nina, ‘but a complete collapse? Really?’
Warden’s tone became more lecturing. ‘All the economic models that shape the world are based on the conceit that growth can be – must be – infinite. A child could point out the flaw in that idea, since we live in a finite world, but just as nobody wanted to believe that the debt bubble would burst while they were living the high life on the back of it, so no one wants to play the role of Cassandra now.’
‘Not even the Group? You seem to have a lot of influence, to put it mildly.’
‘We do, but not even we’re powerful enough to overturn the system. Until now, the most we’ve been able to do is guide it.’
‘Until now,’ Nina echoed. ‘By which you mean, you’ve got me.’
‘You make it sound as though you’re my prisoner,’ Warden said. The downturned corners of his mouth strained slightly upwards, which seemed to be as close as he ever came to an actual smile. ‘If you want to get out of the limo, just say so.’
‘We want to get out of the limo,’ Eddie immediately responded.
The tic returned. ‘After you’ve heard what I have to say.’
‘Thought there’d be a catch.’
The elderly man looked back at Nina. ‘The Group has been planning for this eventuality for a long time. But sometimes wild cards – Wilde cards, even, if you’ll excuse the pun – mean that major changes can happen very quickly. Earth energy is one of those cards, and you, Dr Wilde, are the one who holds