The cognomina codex, p.33
The Cognomina Codex, page 33
Her words seemed to come from far away as they echoed in Evan’s head. “Can you undo the injection to give Samas a second chance?”
Brevicepts shook her head, and her topknot of hair tossed from side to side. “I’m afraid not.”
Evan mustered the strength to stare back at her, hoping for an elaborated answer that might indicate whether the effect of the shot was physically permanent or if she was just unwilling.
“That man sent you to a Tunisian prison, I’m told—a place so vile that you chose to end your life rather than endure it—and now you want to lobby for his release from me?”
“He gave me an opportunity.”
“And a fortune as I understand it—a fortune I am willing to return to you, as I have done for the others of the Cognomina who have joined me. But you must prove yourself to La Mutuelle.”
Galen’s warning shuddered through him as he found the words he needed. “I can prove myself. I just want to save my friends and give them a second chance.”
“You should be focusing on those who remain,” she said, shooting him an icy stare.
“I am. That is precisely why I am here now. I am open, and I want to learn more.” Evan felt his heart hammering in his chest. “I still want to meet the others,” he said truthfully. “I want to bring us together.”
“And this has already started, thanks to you.” Brevicepts kept her paralyzing eyes on him over the rim of her coffee cup. “Your little friends have gone to hide. Are you the one who will bring them in?”
Evan froze with a rage he hoped wasn’t discernible. Stay calm, he said to himself. She’s testing you.
A double chime from the service elevator broke the silence that was settling between them as two men walked through the lobby toward their chairs. The first man was the menacing mystery man from Rafic’s image search of Brevicepts. He wore a tailored gray suit and looked Indian or Pakistani with a mass of hair pulled back into a bun atop an angular face that sprouted a long, well-trimmed black beard. The second man had a long scar running down the left side of his face—Kerr.
The spaniel raced over to the mystery man, who knelt to greet the animal. “Hello, Vasa. Hello, boy.”
“Evan, this is Zao, one of our leaders. Zao and I have been together for a long time,” Brevicepts said, looking fondly at her henchman.
Kerr kept his eyes locked on Evan as he spoke to Zao. “This is the one I told you about.”
Zao buttoned his burgundy suit jacket and extended a strong hand collared by stiff white cuffs and ruby links. “I’ve heard about you. You wrote the notebooks. Lesannées said that you have introduced La Mutuelle to your side,” the elegant man said, admiring Evan’s fresh suit before fixating on the cane, “but she didn’t say you were cool. Nice look.”
Evan lifted the cane to give him a closer look. “I like your suit color.”
“Yes, hate and Armani are my favorite things to wear.”
“I believe you and Mr. Kerr already know each other,” Brevicepts interrupted. “Mr. Kerr is starting his work with Zao. Evan, I want you to apprentice with Elsa.”
Elsa perked up in her seat and looked over at Evan, who kept his eyes locked on Brevicepts.
“Elsa, take him to Milan with you. Zao, take one of the jets and drop them off in Italy on your way to Dubai.” She turned her gaze briefly to Kerr and then landed on Evan. “There will be a lot of eyes on you now. Follow Zao and Elsa and learn from them. They will show you everything you need to know. I will meet you and the rest in Venice.”
zao and kerr exited the stretch mercedes limousine first and walked right onto an elegant blue-and-white jet. Evan memorized the tail number and noted that it did not match the ones he and Poppy had seen before. Evan walked next to Elsa as they approached the stairs to the private jet. “Why do I feel like you are going to leave me on the tarmac again?” Evan quipped.
She slipped her arm around him and pulled him close. “No,” she laughed. “We’re not going to be separated this time.”
Evan and Elsa took two plush leather seats opposite Zao and Kerr. Zao reached into a cabinet for an ornate bottle of cognac and four glasses as the flight attendant closed the door and the engines roared to life.
Kerr drained half his drink in one long motion and set the half-empty glass on the armrest. “So where do we start?”
Zao savored a sip and swirled his glass. “We start,” he said formally as he straightened his sleeve, “with a bit of background. She told me about your group, the Cognomina. She told me that you”—he stopped as if to measure the words for effect before speaking them—“were a frivolous people. Her words, not mine,” he added defensively. “She said you were unfocused and decadent, that you had lost your way and your purpose.”
“That might be a bit harsh,” Kerr countered before he took another gulp of the dark brandy.
Zao looked over at Kerr’s Embe tattoo. “She said you live your lives without karmic consequence for your hedonistic behaviors. We, on the other hand, believe in a type of karma where we try to improve not only ourselves but the world we leave to our future selves.”
“And to future generations,” Elsa added.
“Yes, she told me all of that,” Kerr responded. “But how does all of this work?”
“La Mutuelle works on a territory model, with each captain, like me or Elsa, controlling one territory. A territory can be a geographic area, like northern Italy for Elsa or the Middle East for me. But a territory can also be an industry or entertainment sector, like Dr. Ling in healthcare or our colleague Mr. Pandaman in Hollywood. What we do,” he said, refilling Kerr’s glass with less brandy, “is identify people in power or people we can bring into positions of power, and then befriend and help those people fulfill their ambition.”
“How do you find them?” Evan asked.
Zao brought his glass up to his prominent nose and drew in the intoxicating vapor. “We look for ambitious people whose goals are aligned with ours or rising stars whose goals can be realigned to ours.”
“Realign?” Kerr challenged. “How does that work?”
“We educate and enlighten them about what is happening to the earth.”
“And if that doesn’t work?” Evan interjected, eager to hear the answer.
“Then it becomes a question of motivation,” the bearded man replied coolly before raising the glass to his dark lips. “We find that person’s weakness and exploit it when necessary to help keep those powerful friends focused on our long-term goals.”
“So it’s blackmail then?” Kerr asked with a subtle excitement in his voice.
“To put it crudely, yes,” Zao said, understanding the need to clarify. “But La Mutuelle is not interested in money, we earn and distribute plenty of money as a side effect of our real goals, which are to improve our living conditions on this planet through influence and long-term policy change. As our leader often says to us, ‘We’re going to be here for a long time, so let’s get this house in order.’ I like that and I think that summarizes what we do. You asked if it is blackmail—I call it leverage over the target. Some of our account management can be, at times”—he studied his delicious amber drink as he searched for the right word—“unsavory.”
“And sometimes those people will need convincing,” Kerr concluded.
Zao looked out the window of the jet and watched as Paris fell into the distance. “They tend to need motivation at times. Our work is making sure they stay motivated to our cause, even when the work might be distasteful to them.”
“And what about the money?” Kerr asked before slurping at the expensive cognac. “She told me we get a payout.”
“Think of it as profit sharing,” Elsa said, crossing her legs.
“Profit of what?” Kerr countered.
“Let me put it into context for you,” Zao began. “The way I understand it, your Cognomina was run very much like a trust. You put or will your assets into it in this life, and then you reclaim those assets in each successive incarnation. For us, we do things a bit differently. We run La Mutuelle as a business—a private business that specializes in insurance. And what is at the core of any insurance business? Mitigating risk and minimizing loss, and what better way to do that than by knowing, through our network of accounts, what is going to happen?”
“Because you are telling them what to do,” Evan interjected.
“Precisely,” answered Zao. “And that information allows us to run one of the most profitable corporations in the world. The ambitious people that we recruit, champion, or exploit are often minor shareholders, but we captains hold the preferred shares that enjoy a higher payout of La Mutuelle profits.”
“So we are shareholders in a company?” Kerr asked, not seeming clear on the concept.
“No, you both are provisional shareholders until she determines that you can adopt our goals and competently run a territory,” Zao said, smiling behind his black beard.
“Does it pay well?” Kerr asked.
“Last year my preferred payout was one hundred and twenty-eight million euros, but I run a large territory.”
“Wow,” Kerr blurted out, nearly spilling his drink. “What do you do with all that money?”
“I purchase things like priceless liquors that once belonged to my friend Napoleon Bonaparte,” Zao answered, taking a carefully measured sip, “and share them with new apprentices.”
“What territories do you think we’ll get?” asked Kerr.
“That depends on ability and aptitude,” answered Zao with a sidelong glance at his apprentice.
Elsa reached over and put her hand on Evan’s forearm. “Because you come from Bulgaria, I think she will give you the Balkans. Your territory would be next to mine,” she said, letting her tanned hand linger on him.
“How unsavory does the work get?” Evan asked.
“It’s a fair question,” Zao replied. “Sometimes it gets downright distasteful. I once sailed with our leader from Sicily to Venice with a plague-sickened crew just so we could reduce the overpopulation of our hometowns. That was quite unsavory.”
“She told me about that,” Evan replied. “Don’t you worry about being viewed as villains?”
“Sometimes the methods may look extreme to the uninitiated,” Zao conceded. “But we’re the victims in this ongoing crime, not the villains.”
“We have a different perspective,” Elsa chimed in, trying to soften the tone.
“You know that she always has a pet,” Zao asked Elsa in a bid to change the conversation. “Did she tell you why she likes spaniels?”
“I know she always names them Vasa, but I don’t know why,” Elsa added.
“Vasa was the family name of a Polish king with the unfortunate name of Sigismund, who our leader loved and influenced during his long reign. Today in La Mutuelle, we would call him an asset, which a territory owner like me would manage. Back then, at the turn of the seventeenth century, he was just part of an up-and-coming royal family that we wanted to infiltrate and use to our ends. I remember it was one of those damned red-headed Sforza women from Milan who liked the spaniels. She saw them in the court of the Bourbons and thought they looked regal so she purchased a breeding pair and brought them back to dreary Poland. As a boy, young Sigismund fell in the love with the dogs and kept them his whole life.53 Lesannées shared his love for the breed and keeps them to this day in his honor.”
“I never knew that,” Elsa said.
“She keeps naming them Vasa as a reminder of the success of her time with her regal lover.”
“What success was that?” Kerr asked.
“She nurtured and grew an ambition in the Sigismund that started several decades-long wars, cemented a religious schism, and reduced Poland from a dominant power in central Europe to a wreck by orchestrating military misadventures that cost the country half its population.”54 Zao sniffed the antique brandy again. “And I think she really loved the king. They were a pair to be sure, like two dark stars in a tight orbit around each other.”
“Is what you do—what we do,” Evan corrected, “evil?”
Zao looked up from his glass, his sharp face brightening at the question. “Is it evil?” he mused. “I think evil, as you mean it in the context of what we do, is a relative term that deserves a full hearing with a jury of all the aggrieved parties potentially affected by any act deemed evil. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Evan felt the moral ground underneath him shift under the ambiguity of Zao’s question, but thought there might be important information here. “Yes, I suppose so.”
“Excellent,” Zao said, leaning forward in his leather seat. “Australia and China are roughly the same size geographically, but Australia has just over twenty million people. There are that many people living just in Shanghai right now. Australia is an Eden, a standard for what we desire, while China is an overcrowded environmental disaster.”
“So what are we to do—influence them to kill over a billion of their citizens?” Evan asked.
“You’re looking at it from the wrong point of view. You are quite right that over a billion people live in China today, if you can call that living. But how many people will live there over the next thousand years? Thirty-five, forty generations would be something like forty to fifty billion new people, right? Shouldn’t they get a vote on what their inherited world should be? Some might say to deny them a voice in their future is evil.”
Zao leaned forward in the leather seat. “Evan, do you doubt that this future majority would desire a different future for themselves than what is being planned for them? We’re the only voice they will ever have in our present day. That is the same approving voice we hear from today’s Venetians and Milanese for our unsavory work nearly four centuries ago. We work on a longer timeline for a leveraged future benefit that we can enjoy alongside those anticipated approvers of our present labors. It takes a genius to work on this problem on a global scale with centuries for your timeline. And that is what we have in Lesannées,” he said, raising his glass in a toast that Elsa joined, followed by Kerr and Evan.
“You ask me if it is evil,” Zao repeated with closed eyes after finishing another precious sip. “Sure it is. It can be as evil, as hateful, and as repugnant as you can possibly imagine. There will always be weeping and gnashing of teeth that will fill our ears as we labor, but those cries and protests do not endure.” He chuckled to himself for a moment. “The surviving citizens of the plague of Milan erected a column of infamy on the ruins of my barbershop,55 but it stood for only one hundred and fifty years and is now forgotten.”
Evan nodded in agreement and then mustered the courage to probe for more information. “Why do you think she is hunting down and capturing the members of the Cognomina who do not join her?”
“She has a long memory and has talked with me for centuries about how you excommunicated her, but now it is about your doctor friend’s breakthrough. There is no way she’ll allow that gift to fall into the hands of humanity at large. Imagine what a cesspool the world would be if they lived twice as long. No way. That’s why she’s doing it.”
Elsa set down her drink and spoke. “She wants to control life-extension technology as a way to hold leverage over our human assets in La Mutuelle. Dr. Ling just needs to complete his research and replication of the formula. She believes that the promise of that longer life could be the exact incentive to get our assets to agree to anything we might ask of them. She plans to announce it this week at the Conclave.”
“What’s a Conclave?” Kerr asked.
“Like a board meeting at a masquerade ball,” Elsa answered with a mischievous grin.
“That turns into the most amazing party you’ve ever experienced,” Zao added. “It’s not to be missed.”
“The next one is happening later this week,” Elsa said.
“Where are they held?” Kerr asked.
“In Venice on the first night of Carnival. Lesannées finds it best to run the Conclaves during Carnival,” said Zao with a smile. “The kind of people we recruit do not like to be recognized attending such a meeting, so the masks work perfectly.”
“And we have a La Mutuelle team dinner with Lesannées before the real fun starts. That is where you will get to meet the rest of our family,” Elsa added.
“One more thing that apprentices need to learn—we have a traditional greeting and goodbye that the leaders and Lesannées use with each other,” said Zao, leaning forward. “‘I am my own servant,’ followed by the reply, ‘and I serve a just master.’”
“What does that mean?” Kerr asked before finishing the last of his brandy.
“It means that, in our current incarnations, we act as servants and benefactors to ourselves in our future lives,” Zao answered.
“And hopefully in a better world,” added Elsa.
The pilot’s voice broke into their conversation over the cabin loudspeaker. “We touch down in Milan in two minutes.”
“My old hometown,” said Zao, looking out the window at Milan coming into view. “You kids have fun now,” he said with a smile before turning to a serious tone as he looked at Elsa. “I am my own servant,” he said to her and extended his dark hand.
“And I serve a just master,” Elsa replied before taking Evan’s hand to lead him off the plane.
53. Zao seems to describe Sigismund III Vasa, King of Poland and Sweden. Zao’s claim that King Sigismund III kept spaniels his whole life would seem to be corroborated by two paintings (one from his youth and another two years before his death) that portrayed him with his beloved animals. The first is in the Swedish National Museum, and the second is in the Wawel Royal Castle National Art Collection (Krakow).
54. King Sigismund III did start a series of wars with Sweden, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire that lasted for nearly seventy years and devastated the Polish Commonwealth. A statue to him stands in central Warsaw.
