In the darkness, as the random thoughts and paranoid delusions began to magnify in the commotion of the power outage, Annabella felt a hand at the back of her head and a cloth with the unmistakable smell of chloroform being pressed to her face. As she lost consciousness she felt herself being lifted and carried away.
When she awoke, Anna was lying on a couch. She looked around the opulently appointed room. The lights were low and her head was aching from the chloroform. Her eyes rested upon a hooded figure in a jogging suit. She couldn't see his face, but she could see the cold blue steel of the 9mm pistol in his hand, pointed in her direction and resting on his knee.
"Where am I?" she asked.
"You're safe as long as you keep your seat and listen." He responded in a deep and soothing voice.
"Uh, no problem. Who are you?"
"I'm sorry to have had to collect you the way I did, but I was instructed by my employer to bring you in. I had intended to bring you in earlier, but you were with the policeman and that would have complicated things."
"You were the one, who left the voodoo curse on my door, weren't you?" Anna demanded.
"No. Someone else left that. He was just a messenger. You don't have to worry about him anymore. I took care of him for you. But there will be others." The jogger said, without a trace of excitement. "My employer has instructed me to protect you and that is what I will do."
"But who are you?" Anna asked again.
"I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you and that would defeat the purpose.' He replied matter of factly.
"Well then, who is your "employer?"
"I am." A frail voice from the other side of the room replied.
Anna turned her head to see an impeccably dressed old man entering the room. Though he walked with a cane, she could see remnants of the powerful presence he once commanded.
"My name is Jean Luc, but you can call me John."
Anna's mind raced. "Where... who..."
"I'm going to put part of this together for you and in turn, you're going to help me finish it" he said as he took his seat. "It isn't going to be easy for you to hear, but for the sake of the salvation of humanity, you must hear it." He said, as he lit his cigar.
With a curl of Cuban smoke rising in the air above him, he began. "In France in the 1920s, I was in partnership with the Union Bank, in a deal which was being directed by a young bank officer named Prescott Bush. Prescott liked to have leverage on people he dealt with. He found out that I had met and fell in love with a young American woman and had me followed to a jewelry store where I purchased a gift for her."
The pin and the matching pendant?" Anna asked
"Yes. Prescott knew that the woman I fell in love with was the daughter of a man who was deeply in debt to the bank, in a mortgage on his textile mill. With a twisted sense of humor, he had exact copies made, but with a different inscription. He gave them to the father of another man in the textile business to give to his son, with whom they had arranged a marriage to my beloved Rose. A marriage which would consolidate the textile industry in the southern United States and create enormous profits from the next war, which was inevitable.."
"Prescott Bush had the "Memento mori" pin made? That's where it came from?" Anna begged?
"Yes and the pendant as well. Perhaps now you can see how big this is, and how deep it runs. You know some of what happened in the years afterward. But what you don't know is that Prescott became a managing partner at a large investment banking firm, Brown Brothers and Harriman. In the years following Prescott began to have political ambitions and he began to back track and tried to clean up whatever loose ends he might have left, which could adversely affect the political dynasty he was intent on creating. What he found out was that his sick little joke had spun out of control and it had to be cleansed." He said, as he leaned forward in his chair.
Anna stammered. "Rose and Clyde?"
"Killed by Nazi agents at the direction of the Union Bank, which was then controlled by Brown Brothers and Harriman and made to look like a murder/suicide. But Anna, this is the part where you must be brave." He urged.
"When Anthony discovered the bodies of Rose and Clyde he somehow sensed that he and Sara were in danger. He convinced Sara to run away with him to Memphis Tennessee. In the course of the next few months, protecting and taking care of each other, they fell in love. Sara became pregnant with twins, but there was a problem. The twins were born with horrible primate like birth defects and almost completely insane. In the course of postnatal treatment the doctors discovered two things. First, that they both showed signs of Extra Sensory Perception, though it was unlikely that their brains would ever develop enough to harness that power. And second, that the birth defects were the result of an incestuous relationship. That Anthony and Sara were in fact, half brother and sister. You see Anna, Anthony was my son."
Anna felt faint. Her world was spinning as he continued.
"Stan and Sam were institutionalized by the State of Tennessee and Anthony and Sara, were unable to face each other. Sara changed her name and moved to New York where she met a man named Inigo Montoya"
"OH MY GOD" Anna screamed. "Do you mean to tell me that..."
"Yes Anna" he sighed. " Stan and Sam are your half brothers. And the pin found in Rose's body wasn't my pin which you now have, it was the copy.."
"But how could you know that? Anna asked cynically.
John pulled his hand from his right coat pocket and opened it for her to see. "Because I took it" he replied. "It was the only piece of evidence that pointed to the killer and I had to make sure it didn't end up in the wrong hands. I was determined to avenge her death myself, so to make sure that it wasn't lost or destroyed as a part of the conspiracy, I replaced it with the one that I had promised to give Rose all those years ago. I've kept it all this time. It was the first piece in a puzzle I've been putting together for over 60 years."
Anna couldn't feel her legs. She sat there completely numb.
"I need your help Anna. There are forces in the Bush family which command unspeakable power and they'll stop at nothing to bury the truth."
To be continued...
Posted by captainhoof
at 10:51 AM CDT
