Local time – 10:20am, Sunday 17th June, 2011.
Prague, Czechoslovakia.
The castle Douglas had so admired now felt stiflingly like a prison. After the midnight meeting of the comms committee and the awful plot outlined by Leo, Douglas went back to his room in a dazed state. He felt paralysed with uncertainty, and lay awake for an hour, tossing and turning with the dreadful feeling he was involved far too deeply in something he couldn’t get out of. After an hour of immense indecision, he convinced himself to knock on Leo’s door. But Leo was either a deep sleeper or wasn’t there, so Douglas was left out in the hall on his own, wanting to scream at the silence. After more hesitation about what to do next, he went back to his room and climbed deep under the covers, wishing he knew where the staff stored his mobile phone, desperate to speak to his wife. She would understand why he was so conflicted. She hadn’t been keen on him coming to the conference, and she was right as usual. It had become a disaster.
Starting with low expectations, he had been truly amazed at the bold plans assembled by the Bilderbergers. He understood the upcoming events had pitfalls and would cause incredible disruption to thousands, even millions of lives. That was the price of progress. But assassinating the President of the United States? Douglas couldn’t pretend to see any benefit in this action. Even when his tired mind found sleep, his dreams mocked him with images of Lee Harvey Oswald and the hole in JFK’s head.
When the sun came up and drenched his room in light he felt sick with exhaustion. He knew he wouldn’t get any more sleep, so he got up and had a cold shower, trying to shock himself into action. Only then did one clear conclusion crystallise in his tormented mind. It felt cowardly, but it also felt right. He didn’t want any part in this. He had to get out and find a way to warn the President.
He put on his suit, packed his bag and silently stepped out into the hall. Rather than turn right, and head for the entrance hall and the ballroom, he turned left, guessing this would be the way to the staff quarters. The hallway had nine more doors to rooms just like his, and he held his breath, waiting for another restless Bilderberger to emerge in the hall and ask him where he was going. When he got to the end of the hall, there were two doors, one straight ahead, the other on the right, leading, he guessed, back into the heart of the castle. He chose the one straight ahead, estimating it might take him to the boundary of the building. Relief washed over him when he realised he was, as he hoped, in the staff quarters. This was obvious from the lower grade of carpet and wallpaper, and the complete absence of the luxury which characterised the side of the castle the Bilderbergers inhabited. He moved quickly, keeping his eyes alert for any movement. There were more doorways here, meaning there were many small rooms. He followed the long stretch of hallway until it again brought him to two doors. But this time his choice was clear – one of them had an exit sign over it. A green light to safety, Douglas thought. Wasting no time, he pulled the heavy door open and closed it quietly behind him.
As soon as he turned around he realised his mistake. He stood in a stairwell. A small flight of stairs lead down towards a fire door, with another exit sign. Two flights of stairs went up to level one and two. But Douglas had been in enough University campus stairwells to know that usually, the only unlocked door was the one that took you outside. Even the door you closed behind you didn’t let you back to the place you came from. He raced down to the exit sign, and could immediately see he was trapped. The outside door was locked. Bilderberg security would never let someone slip out the back without a security pass. A small swipe card panel was clamped to the metal architrave, with a red light flashing to signify ‘locked’. His heart pounded as he climbed back to each floor, checking that he was in fact blocked from leaving the stairwell. And he was.
He sat on the cold cement step on the flight of stairs closest to where he had exited. His bag sat at his feet, and his back ached with anxiety. Feeling quite ill with exhaustion, he managed to sleep sitting up for maybe half an hour at a time. He wasn’t wearing a watch, so had no idea how much time was passing, but at last he guessed from the noises behind the door that the staff were preparing morning tea; it was possibly nearing 10:30am. He’d been trapped for over four hours. It hadn’t taken him long to decide it was best not to bang on the door and hope someone came to his aid. The risk that they wouldn’t believe he had got ‘lost’ in the halls of the castle was too high. But each time he woke, he concentrated on escape. He still held out hope of getting out without anyone seeing him. But how?
He thought back constantly to the speech given at the start of the conference, outlining the reasons why guests weren’t allowed to leave. Why new guests weren’t allowed phones, and the consequences of breaking the rules. He had almost laughed to himself at the time, amazed at the hugely paranoid stance the organisers were taking. But in the following day, it had become clear why this paranoia was necessary. Nothing was allowed to be written down and taken from the conference. The people who were allowed access to phones were acutely aware that they were bugged. And email or fax was also completely forbidden. No one wanted to be responsible for a Bilderberg file turning up on Wikileaks. That’s why the video with the sound recording from the dinner was so unexpected. Whoever did it definitely had guts. Or they were naive about the danger they placed themselves in. Leo had told him what happened to the person who’d broken the rules last year. They shut him up by threatening his business empire. Supposably the CIA had information on his father’s shady dealings with the Nazi’s during World War II; a lot of the money that started his numerous corporations came from Holocaust victims. Douglas considered his own naivety in getting mixed up with this group. He had felt so special, so accomplished, to be invited. But now he just felt like a fool. If they could do this to someone else who broke their rules, what could they do to him?
The solitude of the stairwell was suddenly broken by the sound of a closing door. Douglas’ eyes darted upwards, and he heard feet clattering towards him. He stood up, leaving his bag at his feet. As soon as he saw who it was, he realised there was no hope of negotiating; it was one of the beefy security guards from the gate. Leo had intimated that these men were young Mossad agents. The man didn’t notice him immediately; he was focused on getting a cigarette out of its box then reaching in his pocket for his swipe card. He jumped when he came face to face with Douglas.
‘Shit, what the fuck are you doing here?’ Douglas’s mind raced, searching for an appropriate response.
‘I was just popping out for a cigarette.’
‘With your luggage?’ The security guard kicked Douglas’s bag.
‘Apparently so,’ Douglas responded gloomily.