The Sins of the Fathers

Chapter Two

Marriot Hotel

Sanibel Island

Florida

"You walk the beach every morning? This far down, Professor Palmer?" Deacon asked his guest as he poured coffee for them both, on the wooden decking out back of his hotel, almost on the beach itself.

"It's only a mile and a half...but the sand makes it tougher...on the legs," Gideon Palmer said, indicating his bare feet, rather than his faded denim shorts. Palmer was sixty-nine, but he looked younger, Deacon thought, tanned and lean, not at all like the crusty academic Pan had expected to meet for another of his preliminary chats with the main protagonists. "Three miles a day...or thereabouts...which I think counts as six walked on the boardwalks...and the best shell collection in Florida...I will show you when you come back to the house?"

"Shells?"

"Sea shells...Sanibel is the third best shelling location in the world...behind two Japanese islands, apparently...although I have no idea how they judge the league table? If you walk the waterline and keep your eyes peeled, you will get a sore neck and your first finds...in no time at all!" Palmer explained enthusiastically, full of bonhomie. But he switched it off like a light, as soon as he had his coffee in his hands and decided to get down to business. "But you didn't ask me to stop by to talk about my exercise regimen...or the Sanibel stoop...you wanted an introductory chat before we start butting horns over the evidence, right?"

"Are we going to butt horns, Professor?" Deacon grinned, trying his best to play nice. He knew that Palmer would be suspicious of his brief, because the President was suspicious and Palmer was Fletcher's best friend, and brother-in-law. From what his boss had told him, Sean Fletcher was bending ears and twisting arms to ensure his allegations were taken seriously by the entire security council, apart from the British, obviously. No one actually knew what they were thinking or doing behind that velvet curtain of theirs.

"Probably...if you try to debunk my life's work...or start sweeping things under the UN's proverbial carpet, Mr Deacon?" Palmer replied, succinctly, confirming Panos Deacon's first assumptions. Palmer was playing the genial old professor, but his curriculum vitae told quite another story. Palmer was a player.

"You are a director of the Rosen Foundation, as I understand it...which is a charitable trust lobbying against religious extremism in all its various forms...and a former Harvard history professor...not much to debunk there?" Deacon smiled, trying to find some common ground with Palmer, as he felt he had with Mena Forbes. "Sharon and Jacob Rosen hired you to track the rise of Christian Reformism forty years ago...and you are now the world's leading expert on the subject...outside of Britain...with an archive of information that fills a small server farm somewhere? Right, Professor?"

"I married their daughter...there was no interview process...and there is slightly more than one server farm, whilst I would argue that I know more than any British researcher...simply because they would not be privy to some of the information that we have gathered over the years...from sources they would never be allowed to talk to." Palmer insisted, before turning to stare out to sea, sipping at his coffee. "I can show you the truth, Mr Deacon...and you are really not going to like it very much...or your superiors won't...which is why we will butt horns a few times. You won't believe what you are going to see."

"Call me Pan, please...and I don't think butting horns will bother you too much, Sir?"

"You haven't met the President yet, have you?" Palmer grinned, turning back.

"No?"

"I've been locking horns with Norman for over fifty years, Pan...we met at Oxford back in twenty-thirteen...and I have argued with that ornery bastard almost every day since...not to mention clashing with Jacob, debating with Sharon and losing just about every argument I have ever had with my dear wife...locking horns is what I do? If I am right, I don't back down...and I am right this time, I promise you?"