The Sins of the Fathers

Chapter Seventeen

Interview Room One

The Rosen Foundation Bunker

The Rosen Estate

Sanibel Island

Florida

"Lady Forbes...before we begin...may I say how happy I am that your release is being arranged...it must be such a weight off your mind?" Pan Deacon said once Mena had settled herself in her usual seat, carefully arranging the folds of her sky-blue silk gown neatly around her, looking immaculate as always.

"It is...thank you, Mr Deacon." She replied, smiling demurely.

"And I am not going to take up much more of your time...as you know Lady Forbes, recent developments have changed the scope of our investigation and you have already given us the testimony we need on our new priorities. But I did want to take this opportunity...as it may be the last time I get to speak to you...to just check a few random things? Hopefully, we will not need to touch on anything that might distress you?"

"You are very thoughtful, Sir...and I will help you in any way I can?"

"Good...can we start with what your husband told you about the pandemic? I know that our superiors are not specifically pursuing that line of enquiry, after Mr Symonds confessed to his mistakes, but it would be remiss of me not to get your recollections on tape?" Deacon said, going against his orders for once. He was not sure why. He was cynical enough to know that he was wasting his time, because politics had replaced the need for evidence and the powers that be had moved on. But he liked evidence, and he had Mena right there.

"Alistair liked to talk to me...to boast...and to show off...and the pandemic was fresh in everyone's mind, of course?" Mena replied easily, much more confident and open on safer ground, he thought. "I was married off in twenty-thirty, Sir...and Alistair was ingratiating himself with Mr Symonds at the time, because he wanted a political role. But he also told me what a bas...bad man Mr Symonds was...except he thought it was funny?"

"Thought what was funny?"

"That the same man had caused the pandemic...and used it to provoke the revolution...my husband was very proud of his part in that...but he thought that Mr Symonds was a genius for selling the vaccine to everyone, for the way he waited until they were really desperate and then played hard ball. He said that without that money, the renaissance would never have been possible?"

"Why do you think Andrew Symonds was a bad man, Lady Forbes?"

"Because of all the terrible things he had done...kidnapping his three illegitimate daughters and turning them into Daughters of Eve...arranging the suicide of his first wife...releasing the virus...Mr Palmer knows all these things?" Mena insisted, looking up at Deacon for the first time that morning.

"He released the virus by mistake, though?"

"No one ever told me that it was a mistake, Sir? Alistair said that Mr Symonds created the Covid virus and he thought Mr Symonds was a genius...he said something about using the wet markets in Wuhan to spread the disease all around the world...Alistair said it took a genius to create such an adaptable virus and develop the vaccine all at the same time?"

"Sorry? Excuse me, Lady Forbes...I think I misunderstood you there...the Covid virus was released...by mistake...in December twenty-nineteen...the Hycanil vaccine wasn't released until twenty-twenty-four...I think it might have been tested in twenty-twenty-three, I suppose they tested it, but the release was definitely twenty-twenty-four?" Deacon insisted, confused by her comments.

"I thought that Sir...my grandparents died in twenty-twenty-two...but Alistair just laughed at me? He said I ought to ask myself why no one in Meadvale ever caught the virus...or how they stopped doctors and nurses dying in the hospitals?" Mena said, sticking to her guns but wondering why Palmer had not told Deacon about the vaccine. She had never spoken about the delayed release of Hycanil with Palmer, because he was focussed on linking Symonds to Wuhan and the wet markets, which she could prove because her husband had told her all about it. But they had not talked about Hycanil at all. She had got the impression that Gideon Palmer considered her evidence about Covid to be anecdotal, as she had only heard Alistair talking about it, and then years after the pandemic, because she did not arrive in England until twenty-thirty. He was much more interested in the abuse she had suffered at the hands of Ralph Winstanley and the details of life inside the Order. And they had not had much time to chat, before Mr Deacon arrived, because she was still recovering after her escape and was finding it upsetting to talk. "I remember it clearly, Sir...my husband said that the vaccine was available in twenty-twenty-one...he was very clear about that...very clear?"