The Sins of the Fathers

Part One - Chapter One

Part One

The Beginning of the End

March 2064

The Rosen House

Sanibel Island

Florida

Panos Deacon let the awkward silence fester, as he took in his surroundings, and considered his subject, for the first time. She was middle-aged, fifty-two, according to her file, but looked much younger. Her makeup was subtle and her big eyes were like deep pools of darkness as she looked up, expecting him to take the initiative. Lady Philomena Forbes was wearing one of those British style gowns, floor length, full skirted with the folds of cloth shaped somehow so that they billowed around her, on the sofa she more or less filled on her own, covered from neck to toe in sumptuous dark red velvet, with a white cotton house bonnet covering her head completely, so that he could not see so much as a lock of her hair. He did not know that much about popular fashion in his own culture, let alone others, but he knew just enough about the British to know that Mena's choice of material was meaningful, and emotive. Someone was sending him a message. He was just not sure who or what he was supposed to make of it, but the British famously lived behind the velvet curtain, according to media parlance, just as the Soviets had once hidden from the world behind the iron curtain, and he wondered if that was supposed to have some significance.

"Panos is a Greek name?" Lady Forbes commented, blinking first, and so he smiled, sitting back in his armchair, plotting his next move. She sounded a little anxious, not that he blamed her for that, since he felt much the same. "I was told that you were Australian, Sir?"

"Yeah...immigrant stock...my mother came with her parents when she was a kid, my dad is a second-generation Brit...his parents emigrated in the nineteen-seventies?" He explained easily, not at all ashamed of his humble roots, even in such exalted company. Mena got her formal title from her late, reviled husband, Alistair Forbes, the infamous former President of the equally tarnished Christian Republic of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, but she was also the granddaughter of a Duke and the daughter of a former Foreign Secretary. He got his name from a woman who cooked the best moussaka in Melbourne. "Mum wanted me to have something Greek about me, so I am Panos to her, and Pan to my friends and colleagues. How about you? Philomena is a pretty unusual name?"

"Named after the patron saint of infants, babies and youth...the wonder worker...my father just liked the sound of it...I think...and my mother...who was French...was a Catholic...but they both called me Mena?" She replied, looking down, not meeting his gaze. Her gown was truly incredible. He had obviously seen photographs of women dressed in a similar style, but he had never seen one in the flesh before, not that he could see much flesh, apart from her hands and her face, whenever she looked up. Her waist was also impossibly slim. She looked like Scarlet O'Hara in Gone with the Wind, he thought, remembering his mother watching her favourite movie when he was a boy at home in Melbourne. "May I call you Pan? If you do not think it impolite?"

"If I can call you Mena?" He grinned as she looked up again, but her serene expression did not change. She did not really seem that nervous, just rather apprehensive, and that surprised Deacon, in the circumstances. She had seemed anxious before they started to chat, but that seemed to be gone. "How are you finding life in the land of the free, Mena?"

"I am hardly free, Pan...but my hosts are being very kind to me...and I am in a better place for my sins, praise be?" She sighed, her small hands resting lightly in her lap, pinning down her skirts like a paperweight.

"You feel that you have sinned, Mena?" He asked, starting to probe. Deacon was there to question her, after all, but he wanted to build some sort of rapport before he got into the more difficult stuff. He wanted to take his time to get to know her. Not that he had much time. He was already being pushed for results and he had only just arrived, but he had a process, and he would go as slow as possible.