The Fitzgerald Institute - Imperium

Prologue

Torrents of water were pouring over the roofs of Cambridge. The curtains had been drawn and the shutters closed in anticipation of the storm. But if an onlooker had glanced out of the window, he would have seen one of the city's notables braving the elements, wrapped in a long, sodden coat. Eight o'clock would soon be ringing. Nothing unusual about that, they would have said.

With his head tucked into his shoulders and the collar of his coat turned up, Benjamin Fitzgerald walked with long strides, not caring about the puddles of water soaking his socks; in the seven decades he'd spent in England, he'd learned to live with wet feet. But his eagerness had nothing to do with the downpour, or even with a potential supper waiting for him at home. It was a far more urgent matter.

He nodded to the old hatter before disappearing into the tiny alley next to the shop. It was a dead end, but the professor lived here.

Benjamin took a large old key from his pocket, the sesame to his home, and as he was running out of time, he didn't linger to relock it from the inside. Climbing the stairs two by two, his arrival was like a storm in the quiet of the house. In the living room, busy at her desk, his assistant gasped.

"Swann, get the files out! You'll warn Miss Schwarzmann too!"

He didn't wait for a reply: the young woman knew what it was all about and was already picking up the phone.

Once in his room, Benjamin grabbed a charcoal pen and a sheet of paper.

Faster, faster.

The images were already fading from his mind.

With his eyes sharp and his eyebrows furrowed, he set to work on his sketches.

A garden began to take shape. A wonderful place, with trees heavy with fruit blushing in the Mediterranean sunshine. Of course, the intoxicating colours were only in his mind. To this garden he added a naked young woman: pale skin, curvaceous form. She looked like a nymph in those Italian Renaissance paintings.

The professor rubbed his chin and closed his eyes: what was that other image again? Ah yes! Quickly, he went back to sketching a picture, this time far less enchanting. From the top of a monumental staircase, two figures were pointing at four kneeling men.

But who were these two women draped in cruelty? Benjamin concentrated harder. Silk. Yes, a silk headband covered the face of one of them and a sword hung from her waist. She was beautiful and haughty. The other woman looked away and seemed to regret having to take the lives of these young men.

The artistic quality of his work did not seem to be enough to delight the professor, on the contrary. His second drawing evoked nothing but gloomy omens. There was no doubt about it: it was Themis presiding over the assembly, and yet this was no trial. It was a death sentence.

He put down his pencil and contemplated his work, his breath short and his mind racing. His coat was dripping to the floor, his hair was streaming down the back of his neck, but the man didn't care. These sketches... A striking contrast, an unalterable outcome. Such had always been the case.

Although his stomach lined with lead weights, he wasn't overly concerned about the fate of these boys; Benjamin couldn't do anything about it anyway. Death picked indiscriminately, impartial rather than cruel, and Benjamin was at peace with it. No, he was only interested in the killer. A woman.

A girl.

The man hurried back to the living room, annoyed at the meanderings of his own intellect: these riddles had a countdown and he knew that his first interpretation had to be the right one.

There, his assistant was waiting for him, tea served and files neatly arranged on a table.

"Does that mean anything to you?

She took hold of the sketches on display. The two of them bent over the drawings and hypotheses were born. A garden. A place? An earthly paradise, a tropical island... no, no, too imprecise. Biblical connotations, certainly. And this woman, this Eve...

"It's a first name."

Swann had solved the riddle. She grabbed an index card from the table.

"Not Eve, but Eden.

She saw her mentor's breathing stop short. You could see the shock on his face. He shook his head imperceptibly and closed his eyes. The professor's unusual silence petrified her. His gaze fell on the file in his hands: a name, a first name, a photo from a school album of a little brown girl with curly hair. The document had been compiled some ten years earlier by one of her predecessors in her own post. The young researcher had spent whole nights memorising similar files, in the event of a day like this.

Time and time again, this file found its way into his hands.

She had never realised the hold this child had over the founder of the Institute.

Benjamin didn't need to consult the file. Of course he didn't. Eden. He'd thought he'd escaped this tragedy, but the girl had become too old. Almost too old.

A disillusioned laugh passed his lips. Benjamin Fitzgerald had every reason to believe in destiny: that thread, stretched from the first breath, impossible to cut, or even to bend. No one could escape it. He knew it, he was its living embodiment. And yet... this time he had believed that this universal law would spare him.

"Did you make the call?"

His hoarse voice broke the oppressive silence.

"Yes, Miss Schwarzmann is taking the first train to London. You will meet her tomorrow morning at Gatwick . I have booked a driver for you."

"Good. Good."

He dropped into an armchair. Swann hardly dared to breathe.

"You can't imagine, Miss Sweetlove, what terrible things are about to happen to this young girl. We're going to have to warn..."

A thought interrupted his sentence, but the young woman needed no more than that to understand him. The militia would meddle in this young girl's affairs. Her role was to use Benjamin's connections to bog down the investigation. Not a second was too soon to get down to work.

For the second time that evening, Benjamin Fitzgerald felt his blood freeze. A third picture, nestling in the back of his mind, had just imposed itself on him and was making his fingers itch.

He felt like screaming.

In this third painting, Eve emerged from the Garden of Delights and grabbed the black-gloved hand of a faceless man. They walked side by side, like old friends. There was nothing frightening about the image; the man had all the makings of a gentleman. But Benjamin knew him; oh, this man was nothing of the sort...

If destiny had not forgotten him, then there was only one solution: to stop him from becoming immutable. Fortunately, on this chess board, no one was better placed than Benjamin Fitzgerald.

Not a pawn.

Not a queen.

He was one of the masters of the game.

Themis, in Roman mythology, is the goddess responsible for enforcing law and order.

Gatwick is one of London's four airports.