The Script of Evil

27 The Contract

Nico is curious. "Professor, you have never told anyone what happened to your wife, your son and his wife and you have never reported them somewhere as missing?"

Professor Johan frowns and you can see the words hurt when he answers: "I lost all of them in India in a wild car chase in an effort to get away. Only Martie and I survived and I ran away with her. Luckily I ducked into the right ashram where believers hid us for two years because the web of the organization was everywhere. There I got direct tuition from a swami and studied classical Sanskrit and built up a rich knowledge of the Vedic culture. Eventually, we were smuggled out of India by the ISKCON movement. I was disguised as a swami and Martie as a baby of an ISKCON woman in the group that eventually travelled to South Africa.

"You must realize, my wife and I, as well as my daughter in law, were orphans so they were my only family. We were a very close-knit family. Do you now understand why Martie is my all and everything in life? She is the only family I have left. She is the reason why I went under the radar at that time back in South Africa and remained silent and changed my occupation. She is the reason I am here with you in the hope you can help us, if it is true that those devils are after me again."

"So, everything was fine with the holiday and you did not suspect foul play."

"We were treated like kings. We toured India with a special tour group. The guide taught us so much about the different cultures and lifestyles of the people. We stayed in five-star hotels. And then we went back to the city where we had landed and from where we should depart the next day. It was the day of the interview. A chauffeur picked us up in a luxurious limousine and guess who surprised me and sat at the back with us on our way to the interview?"

"I wouldn't know, professor."

"Elize Ezkariot!"

"Your former colleague who had reported you and landed you in hot water?"

"Precisely!"

"It must have been a weird situation."

"On the contrary, she humbly apologized because we had been such good friends. She wanted to compensate me for she knew I wouldn't easily get a new position as a researcher; in any case, not a position that would pay well. When the organization offered her a research position to do the same experiments we had done for the German company and promised to pay her twelve times her salary, she thought of me and wanted to compensate me for what she had done to me."

"After she had been with the organization for a few months and had been very happy and had surety, she told them about me. She literally bubbled with excitement about the ground-breaking research they were doing. I would work together with a number of scientists that are years ahead in research. I asked her about my trouble with the medical council. She assured me that it was not a problem because the reason they were so far ahead, was because their research was highly secret and they didn't let the world's rules and regulations hamper their work.

"I wanted to know what they were researching precisely and what the organization's mission was. She explained that I had to get well acquainted with the research before I would fully understand because what they were doing was quite revolutionary. She could assure me that my future colleagues were all people of great character and principled and were working like one big family and fully believed in the work they were doing."

"What happened next?"

"We stopped in front of a giant, round building or rather a wall with no windows that stretched for blocks. We entered via a security opening and inside we saw the place was built like a fort. It was only the high wall that isolated the town inside from the rest of the city with homes all around at the inside of the wall. In the centre were streets with shops, sports centres and everything you would find in a proper city. The place fascinated us immensely. It was an isolated town in the middle of the city.