Fabel started to read from the file: ‘“… the egregore has been a concept in occultism and mystical thinking for more than a century, but the Pharos Project has adopted it in the more contemporary sense from current business and commercial law usage, where corporate bodies are seen to have a single mind or corporate culture, at least in terms of corporate responsibility and liability. Like all destructive cults, the Pharos Project seeks to diminish the sense of the individual and increase the concept of a singular groupmind. To achieve this, members of the Project are subjected to psychological programming over protracted periods as well as having to follow a highly disciplined, hierarchical and structured daily routine. Part of the creation of a sense of corporateness is the exclusive use of English as the principal language of communication, something the Pharos Project has borrowed from large German corporations who conduct all senior management meetings in English, even if all present are native German speakers. Another element of the Pharos Project’s corporation-like culture is the wearing of uniforms by all its adherents. Because of federal restrictions on the use of uniforms by political or quasi-political groups, the Pharos Project has employed the simple device of forcing all members to wear identical business suits: pale grey for the rank and file, dark grey for Consolidators, and black for senior figures in the organisation. This avoids any difficulty with federal regulation and allows an element of anonymity, as the outfits supplied differ in no significant manner from normal business apparel.
…”’
Fabel snapped shut the file. ‘Werner, can you get onto Astrid Bremer and ask her if she can give us a detailed background of the grey fibre she found at Muller-Voigt’s place? She told me that it was particularly unusual because it was entirely synthetic. I’ll bet that the Pharos Project buys its uniforms in bulk from some corporate-wear wholesaler. Anna, I need you to sweet-talk your contact in the State Prosecutor’s office and tell him we need a limited search-and-seizure warrant for a couple of jackets from the Pharos Project for a comparison.’ Fabel checked himself and looked across to Nicola Bruggemann.
‘Go ahead,’ she said without a hint of antagonism. ‘It’s your department.’
‘Thanks,’ said Fabel, then frowned, like someone trying to remember where they had left their car keys. ‘That woman down by the docks — she was wearing a dark grey business suit.’
‘God, Jan,’ said Bruggemann, ‘that’s a bit of a stretch. A business suit is a business suit.’
‘Maybe so. But I’m pretty convinced that she was a Consolidator. It’s all beginning to come together. The Network Killer murders are linked to the Pharos Project. But I can’t for the life of me work out why.’ Fabel picked up his jacket from the back of the chair.
‘Nicola, I’ll leave you to it. I need to go out.’
‘Where are you off to?’
‘I’m going to take a North Sea lighthouse tour.’
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Susanne was still at the Institute for Legal Medicine when Fabel phoned her from his car as he headed out, once more, towards the Altes Land and Stade. This time he avoided the town and headed out along a ribbon of road that ran parallel to the coast but was shielded from it by the ripple of dyke that ran along close to the water’s edge to Fabel’s right. To his left the land was divided up into long narrow fields, pale green, dark green or muted gold; each contained by the type of Knick turf wall Muller-Voigt had talked about. It really did have the look of a patchwork quilt, but one that had been ironed impeccably flat except for the ripple of the waterside dyke at its hem.
It took Fabel another hour or so to reach the Pharos. He actually pulled over to the side of the road and got out to admire it from a distance. The light was beginning to fade and the cloud cover dulled things even more, but even with that Fabel could see that Muller-Voigt had been right: the Pharos was a truly remarkable piece of architecture. There was a lighthouse, about four or five storeys high, against the flank of the new building. The lighthouse was the traditional North Sea German type: not slender but solid, squat and square-edged with a large lantern gallery criss-crossed with iron. It had clearly undergone a major renovation and looked bright, almost as if it had just been built rather than having stood there, resolutely planted in its landscape, for more than a century and a half.
But it was the main building attached to the original lighthouse that really impressed Fabel. It was made up of three sections; modules, almost. The section against whose side the lighthouse was set was a long two-storey block. Clearly the intention had been not to obscure the view of the original lighthouse from either direction. This section extended fifty metres or so towards the water’s edge; then a five-storey block, with the profile of a massive parallelogram — a rhombohedron, Fabel suddenly remembered from school mathematics — took the Pharos to the water and jutted out over it. This section was outlined by a heavy reinforced-concrete beamed frame, but the flanks of the building were all glass. The third section was really an extension of the top floor of the building and projected out over the Elbe, supported by two rows of piles driven into the river bed. From the roof of the suspended level a pale blue needle of laser light, now visible in the twilight, pierced the clouds above. The light of the Pharos.
This, thought Fabel, was more than a building. It was a statement; a dramatic statement of power and wealth. For a supposedly environmental group, it seemed to Fabel to be an aggressive statement of human dominance over Nature. And a statement not without a tone of menace.
He drove further along the narrow coastal road until he reached the end of the drive that led up to the Pharos. It was even more breathtaking close up. The lower-level module was clad in natural materials: pale wood, glass and large blocks of stone. He turned off the road and up the drive. After a short distance, Fabel came to a closed gate. There was a small blockhouse on the other side of the fence and Fabel had to give his horn a blast before anyone came out. It did not surprise Fabel to see that the young man with short cropped blond hair who emerged from the blockhouse was wearing a grey suit, white shirt and dark grey tie. He stood behind the heavy- gauge wire, regarding Fabel impassively but without making any move to open the gate.
Fabel got out of his car. He estimated that the fence that extended on either side was three metres high and heavy-duty enough to keep out any but the most determined intruder.
‘I would like to talk to Herr Wiegand.’ Fabel held up his police ID. The man at the gate remained silent and impassive. ‘Now…’ said Fabel with more emphasis.
‘No one is admitted without an appointment.’ The gatekeeper’s voice was as flat and dull as Fabel had expected. ‘We do not allow anyone access to the Pharos unless it has been arranged in advance.’
‘I don’t need an appointment. I’m the police.’ Fabel noticed that the gateman had a Bluetooth earpiece lodged in his ear.
‘Then you either need an appointment or a warrant.’
‘I don’t think you understand,’ said Fabel wearily. ‘I am here by personal invitation of Herr Wiegand. Your Director General.’
The gatekeeper continued to stare at Fabel; whatever was going through his mind certainly was not breaking the surface.
After what seemed an age, the young man broke his silence. ‘Wait here.’
He walked a few metres away and stood with his back to Fabel, who guessed the guard was communicating with the main building. After a while he came back out and opened the gate.
‘Leave your car here,’ he said. ‘We don’t allow vehicular traffic beyond this point.’
Fabel shrugged, used his remote to lock his car and stepped into the compound. The gateman led the way up to the main entrance to the Pharos where another unsmiling escort was waiting, again wearing an earpiece. Fabel examined the building from up close. It loomed. It was no accident that the Pharos Project used the symbolism and vocabulary of the world of international corporate commerce: this building was all about out-scaling everything human. Just like any multinational business’s headquarters, the Pharos had been built to embody and glorify the corporate and diminish the individual. It was the same trick that medieval cathedral architects had used, where the scale was supposed to represent God, but really was all about the power of the Church, the great multinational corporation of the Middle Ages.
Fabel was taken into a large atrium in which the lighting had been kept low. The reason, Fabel guessed, was the atrium’s centrepiece. A circle of beams, changing hue, shone upwards, illuminating what Fabel perceived as some kind of giant jellyfish, diaphanous and beautiful, with a deep red core and a skirt of transparent tentacles,
