The Immortality Plot

The Immortality Plot - chapter 18

The sleek black Mercedes S-Type cruised noiselessly along Sunrise Expressway. It was 5am. Dawn was just breaking over the ocean, spreading in like fire from the horizon and casting a web of yellow and gold gauze over Long Island.

It was Claude Rattin’s favorite time of day. He could travel without being noticed. He could watch the birth of a new morning and not be observed doing it. He liked secrets and he liked to be secretive and to live life between the shadows, unseen and unnoticed, wielding immense power but with ghost-like invisibility.

His life could have been so much different. The tax inspector’s son from Trevon in Bohemia had not been destined for great things. For one matter, his exceptional height and bony, skeletal frame had resulted in merciless teasing and bullying at his village school, until he discovered a talent for secretive torture and subterfuge, double-dealing his way into the confidences of others before planting evidence of wrongdoings and ensuring they were caught red-handed proclaiming their innocence.

Standing out from the crowd was destined to outcast him from local life but young Rattin was determined to make something of himself. The old region of Bohemia was now part of the Czech Republic and, for anyone with an ounce of talent and a brain to match, all roads led to Prague.

It was here, whilst working as a janitor at the university, that he came into contact with the man who would change his life forever. Herman Letski, then known as Professor Bedrich Novak, had noticed him and always had a kind word, unlike the others. The professor saw to it that Rattin was given promotion to laboratory technician where he more than proved his worth. But he was destined to play a pivotal role in the life of the man who was to become Herman Letski. Behind the scenes he watched impotently as the head of department and his close colleagues systematically ruined Bedrich Novak. Novak was widely regarded as being a genius and his fall from grace was understood by staff and students alike to have been orchestrated deliberately.

Unable to bear it any longer when Novak was sacked ignominiously from his position, Rattin made an offer that Novak accepted without question and, in later years, would reward substantially. With Novak otherwise engaged with witnesses, Rattin quietly and efficiently cut the throat of the head of department as he was walking home late at night to his apartment in an alley off Anenska, close to the Charles Bridge.

No arrest was ever made for his murder.

From that moment on, Claude Rattin became Bedrich Novak’s devoted servant and henchman as the academic changed his name to Herman Letski and set out for the United States to become a millionaire. In the event, Letski was now a billionaire while Rattin had settled for a mere million.

Letski had a profound grasp of human nature and understood perfectly well Rattin’s penchant for young, nubile women. Ordinarily, these women would not have given Rattin a second glance but the combination of money, power and control had meant that he had sampled more than his fair share of soft, succulent flesh.

Now, as the head of the offshore shell company Lifeforce International, he travelled the world, enjoyed houses in London, Palm Beach and Jamaica and organized Letski’s operation – or most of it. Letski made sure that no one knew the full extent of his various enterprises. He hired world-class clinics as and when he needed them; used a network of assassins and spread his wealth around the world behind a web of companies and offshore accounts. Rattin organized the logistics of the business and was on his way now to Letski’s Long Island estate at Lilly Pond Road, East Hampton, where he lived alone except for the services of occasional staff who came and went and were changed regularly.

Claude Rattin was a realist. He knew that the existing business structure would not remain in place forever. In fact, he confidently expected the next project to be the final one. There had been speculative media comment and police activity that he was sure would come to nothing. Nevertheless, quitting while at the top of your game had always been Letski’s philosophy and Rattin agreed. He had more than enough money to keep him in luxury for the rest of his life and it was probably better to bail out before any mistakes got made.