'No, they won't. Not that fast, I mean. Rene, you keep your eye on them as best you can. They'll have to go way out before they can come back to us, and if I've figured this right, we'll be in the clouds by then.'
Both pilots gave him startled looks. 'How can you possibly know,' Foulois asked slowly, 'the way those things will fly?'
'Because I was expecting this meeting.'
He left the cockpit, two dumbfounded pilots staring at him.
14
Until two years ago this very day, his family, his friends, his country, and much of the industrial, economic, and political world had known him as Konstantin LeBlanc Cordas. Each name represented powerful family ancestry and vast financial holdings in Russia, France, and Spain, with branch offices and holdings in a dozen other countries throughout the world.
Konstantin LeBlanc Cordas was a billionaire many times over. Not in terms of currency or stacked ingots of gold and platinum, of which he also had many, but in the real wealth of the world. He owned shipping lines, factories, mines, railroads, huge agricultural holdings on three continents. His closest friends were the power magnates of their homelands: owners of steel mills and ironworks and vast munitions plants. Chemicals, synthetics, trucks, shipyards; they had it all.
Cordas was blessed with a powerful, keen and inquisitive mind. His thoughts probed like cold lances through problems and challenges. His memory was phenomenal, and he made a voracious daily study of global affairs. He was also blessed, although he had come to regard this
sense of mood as possessed, with a curse that would not let him rest. It was the feeling—no; the absolute certainty
—that it had been ordained he assist the world through torturous times to stave off, hopefully to avoid completely, the Ultimate War that he and his closest associates knew was inevitable. It was wildly ironic: the War To End All Wars that ended in a final gory burst in 1918 had simply created the breeding ground for even greater and deadlier conflicts to come.
These were the men—Cordas and his closed circle— who knew of the terrible massdestruction weapons formulating in the minds of soulless scientists and evil, grasping men coveting the ultimate of all pleasures: power.
The Great War with its submarines, bombers, poison gases, automatic weapons, tanks rumbling like ironclad dinosaurs across the battlefields—all this had been but a portent of what was already boiling in the cauldron of the next war.
It must be stopped now, Cordas had finally concluded two years before. It must be stopped by the only means possible. Overwhelming power exerted along every front: political, military, industrial, economic. The minds of men must be controlled, or they would one day respond to the blaring trumpets and waving banners that had sent millions of them to agony and death, and now promised to repeat that horror.
Cordas and five of his closest friends, five of the most powerful and wealthy people on the planet, agreed with one another. They would sacrifice their families, their friends, their very lives in order to gather unto their control the ultimate power that could manipulate the destiny of their planet.
The preparations were meticulous, exacting, shrouded in the tightest secrecy.
They knew of the most advanced systems of the military, of science and engineering and flight, many of which were yet unknown to the public.
And when they were ready, they knew they must be ruthless. Six people were paid handsome sums to assume the personas of Cordas and his group. They underwent surgical changes to their faces. Their dental makeup was altered to match exactly the six for whom they would become doubles. Their families were sent to distant parts of the world, provided with homes and financial security. When they were safely out of the way, a grand trip was arranged for Konstantin LeBlanc Cordas and his five best friends.
For their doubles. A grand trip, indeed. Cordas Mountain Industries chartered a huge fourengined Dornier Super Wal II flying boat. In two expansive cabins, located fore and aft in the hull, were twentysix people: the industrialists, a few family members, and friends from across Europe. Tremendous publicity was afforded the occasion. The Super Wal would take off from a Swiss lake on a tour from Norwegian fjords southward beyond the Mediterranean to an African safari.
A huge banquet launched the festive event. The most powerful group of industrial leaders in the world entered the Super Wal with family and friends.
Newsmen by the hundreds were on hand to record every moment of the final goodbyes, the famous men and women waving to the newsreel cameras. Fireworks flared over the launching dock and two bands played furiously to be heard above the barking roar of four Bavarian Motor Works engines. The Super Wal taxied to the far end of the lake so that it could take off directly into the wind. Conditions were perfect, with a mild breeze and an open water run of at least four miles. As the flying boat began its final turn the music stopped, so everyone could hear clearly the growing thunder of engines going to full power. Faster and faster it rushed across the lake, a great winged wonder about to grasp lift from the air. Faster, faster; a breathless rush and then—
The explosion began as a searing point of light from the fuel tanks in the wings. In a moment flame lashed outward, and the great quantity of fuel transformed into a searing fireball that covered the tumbling, disintegrating, exploding airliner, its hapless human cargo being incinerated and ground into bloody pulp. The newsreel cameras ground away, recording the horror, capturing the screams and gasps of the onlookers.
Later, the few scattered parts of flesh and bone either floating on the lake waters, or dredged up from the deep bottom, were identified positively as Konstantin LeBlanc Cordas and his select entourage. Funeral services, speeches, sobbing, and statues rushed to completion slowly wound down the aftereffect. But Cordas was satisfied.
Completely. He and his elite group were 'dead.' Six dead; six alive, but the latter unknown to the world except as Cordas planned the slow leakage of information about their names and their control of staggeringly vast resources.
Five men and one woman. The loss of Wilhelmina von Volkman was especially a tragedy to her following. She had sponsored musicians, poets, scientists —young men and women of every walk of life seeking an opportunity to become skilled in their arts and professions. And now she was gone.
Unknown to all, of course, reborn as Marcia Mason.
He stared through the thick plateglass window in the High Tower of the Chateau of Blanchefort, several miles from a second heavilydefended ancient structure, rebuilt within to provide structural strength and add the most modern scientific and technological devices available for world communications. The second great edifice was RennesleChateau, a virtual duplicate, internally, of Blanchefort.
