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Excerpt

Prologue

ARRIVING IN TIME INTERVALS of about one-half hour in the middle of the night, three limousines drove through a massive wrought iron gate and up a winding driveway to a magnificent old mansion that overlooked the Pebble Beach Golf Course and the Pacific coastline of Northern California.  Three people thus arrived in secret for the first annual meeting of The Club of Pericles.  The owner of the mansion was a thin, wrinkled, little man with totally bald head and stooped shoulders.  He appeared to be at least ninety years old.  He was an ex-Secretary of State and a Nobel Laureate who had become extremely wealthy as a consultant to nations and speaker at corporate meetings after his retirement.

The Club of Pericles consists of five members that were to meet periodically in secret.  They had been communicating with each other for the last three months in an ultra-secret, encrypted network of computers.  Their avowed purpose was to prevent the creation of an Orwellian world being brought about by the power of the Singularity

Chapter 1

Somewhere, over the rainbow, bluebirds fly.  Birds fly over the rainbow,
Why then – oh, why can’t I?
The Wizard of Oz

Sir Alexander Quickly, my partner in the consulting firm, Quickly & Burton, was in an unusually excited mood.  It had been some time since our resolution of the famous case, The Fisherman’s Son, in which we had foiled a cruise missile attack on San Diego.  As we were wrapping up that case, Quickly had mentioned a pending new murder case regarding a billionaire who owned the world’s largest private yacht—a 30,000 square foot behemoth—but since then Quickly had been strangely quiet about it.  The case had gone cold.  But now the file for a new project, labeled Singularity Man, was on his dining room table in his villa on Mount Soledad.

Seated with us at the table was Zelda Rivers, another partner in the firm, and until recently the passionate love of my life.  But our intimate relationship had been put on hold—for reasons that I deplore—and painfully feel compelled to explain, which I shall do at an appropriate time.

My name is Julius Burton.

Our new client was a man by the name of Truman Isaiah Trout.  He was founder and owner of Trout Institute in La Jolla, and had invited Alexander Quickly, Zelda and me to visit with him on his yacht, the Esmeralda, which was now anchored in San Diego harbor.  I was curious to learn what had brought the case to life.

Alexander Quickly, whom I refer to as Alex, was attired in his usual velvet smoking jacket with ascot, and sipping a strange new cocktail that he called a brandy martini.  He had given up trying to get Zelda and me to join him in his love of martini experiments.  She and I were more the whiskey and wine types, and drank sparingly.  Besides, whoever heard of a martini made with brandy?

Alex began his presentation.

“I’m pleased to tell you that the Trout case has finally reached a point where he is ready to engage our firm to prove his innocence of a murder which he fears has besmirched his reputation.  Let me describe the murder.”