Uprising. Scott G. Mariani

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       Chapter Eighteen

       Villa Oriana, forty miles from Florence

       1.50 p.m. local time

      The butler in the crisp white jacket emerged into the sun carrying the tray with the chilled lemon vodka, prepared exactly the way his employer liked it. He climbed the steps to the balustraded terrace and set the drink down on the marble-topped table at the man’s side.

      Jeremy Lonsdale ignored him, didn’t even glance at the drink until the butler had disappeared back inside the villa. Only then, he reached for the glass and winced as the iced vodka burned away the aftertaste of the lobster he’d eaten for lunch.

      He closed his eyes, leaned back in his chair and felt the sun on his face. Soaking into him, its glow burning orange through his closed eyelids. Even in early November, it was still easily warm enough to have breakfast and lunch outside. That was one of the things Lonsdale loved most about his Tuscan bachelor hideaway. The gloom and drizzle of that piteous little island called Britain depressed him. He had no affection for the place and certainly no allegiance. He was just one of the ones lucky enough to ride the wave and enrich themselves before the remains of the dying empire imploded into the Third World country it was waiting to become. Whenever he could, he’d jump on his private jet and come out here to soak up the sun. There’d come a day when he wouldn’t return. That had always been his plan.

      Lonsdale had been a multi-millionaire for twenty-seven years, which at forty-nine was well over half his life. He could have retired a long time ago, if it hadn’t been for his love of his political career. He was passionate about that whole world of lies and deceit. He loved the way he looked in the public eye when he took up some worthless cause to champion the innocent victims of…whatever. He loved the flash of the cameras and the simper of the media as he kissed babies in Manchester or Liverpool, while the arms companies that earned him millions a year in investments were churning out products to kill other people’s babies in some faraway country nobody gave a shit about, as long as they were kept sated with their television and sport and beer and infantile gadgets. It was all a big game. To win, you just needed the right attitude.

      And he’d always thought he was the master of the game, until that day in February. That day had changed everything.

      Lonsdale had snatched a week out of his schedule to take a skiing holiday in Lichtenstein. On the third night, as he lounged in the bar of his luxury hotel with a martini cocktail and some nameless floozy at his elbow, he’d spotted the tall figure across the crowded room. Men of wealth and taste were ten a penny in Lonsdale’s world, but this one was different. A man so effortlessly self-possessed, radiating an air of such supreme indifference that he made Lonsdale feel like a schoolboy. He seemed to draw the most beautiful women to him with mesmeric, almost uncanny ease and then dismissed them as though they were nothing. Here was a man who understood power, lived and breathed it. Was he a prince? Unable to recall his face from the society pages, Lonsdale had been desperate to talk to him, but the chance had escaped him when some paunchy dullard of an oil billionaire had appeared to pin him down in gratingly boring conversation. By the time he’d been able to wriggle away from the guy, the fascinating man had disappeared along with his female entourage.

      All the next day on the ski slopes, Lonsdale had looked out for him – but no sign, nor the next night.

      Finally, on the last evening of the holiday, Lonsdale caught sight of the man again. And this time, nothing was going to stop him from going up and introducing himself.

      The man’s name was Gabriel Stone. They’d talked until late in the night and, when Stone had invited Lonsdale to be his guest at his mountain home in Romania, Lonsdale had been straight on the phone the next morning to advise his staff in London that he’d been struck down by a virus and wouldn’t be back in the country for another week.

      Two days later, Stone’s helicopter had flown in to land at his home, with Jeremy Lonsdale on board, flanked by the two burly bodyguards his host had provided for his security. Snowy mountains stretched as far as the eye could see. The chopper banked over the towers and ramparts of the old castle, and Lonsdale had been blown away by the power and majesty of the place.

      For the rest of the day, he’d been attended to by a tall, bald and cadaverously gaunt man who introduced himself as Seymour Finch, personal assistant to Mr Stone. Lonsdale found Finch’s presence uncomfortable. There was something strange and unsettling about him.

      It was only after dark that Lonsdale’s host appeared, apologising that his business affairs tended to occupy his entire day. The two men had dined together in the great hall, drunk fine cognac and smoked cigars. Stone had been not only a charming and affable host, but a man of culture and intellect. Lonsdale had never met anyone able to quote so extensively from classical literature, the Bible, the Greek philosophers. He knew history as though he’d virtually lived it.

      That night, Lonsdale had been woken in his luxurious bedroom by the sound of strange music. He climbed out of bed, opened his door. The music seemed to be drifting up from somewhere below. He pulled on a satin robe and followed the sound, treading quietly through the castle’s cold, dark halls and passageways. The music was like none he’d ever heard before and it seemed to lure him, as though it had some hypnotic quality that whispered in СКАЧАТЬ