CONCEALED. VIKON IAMO
short grey hair and the oval-shaped glasses made him look very agile and smart.
They sat down at the desk, facing Mr. Parker. 'Well,' Jason mustered his courage and said, 'my father passed away very recently and left us with a few instructions to find some flat, which doesn't make sense to us at all.'
'We'll get to that in a minute,' Mr. Parker replied and opened a file on his desk. 'There is a bit of history you need to know before we talk about the flat.'
Jason interrupted, 'Pardon me, Mr. Parker, my dad seemed to be very anxious and pretty pressured throughout his last moments. I don't think there is time for any history lesson.'
'It's Frank,' Mr. Parker eased the situation and continued, 'I'm afraid we definitely need to go through the history, to make you understand the magnitude of the situation. I'd like to stress that there is no option for you apart from accepting this inheritance. You will have to consider any action necessary to complete this succession matter, since it is vital to the course of history and shall save your lives as well.
'Our lives? What do you mean?' Kate said, leaning forward and firmly gripping the edge of the tabletop.
'We will get to the details in a minute. For now, Kate, would you please get a grip on yourself rather than on the tabletop. This holds paramount importance and expressing unease simply won't do,' Mr. Parker said. ‘Jason, you and your family are descendants of a splinter group of the Templars. It all dates back a long time, from around the 11th to 12th century. As you might know, the Templars were shut down in 1312 officially. However, they continued to exist underground, and so did this particular splinter group. It was formed when times became difficult for them. This is where it started.’ Mr. Parker looked at the mystified pale faces of Jason and Kate, who were lost for words and simply staring back at him. He paused for a few seconds and continued, 'According to the documents this splinter group consisted of seven families. This was small enough to protect the secret and large enough to ensure its survival. The Templars were expropriated. Their power and properties were taken away from them, they weren’t to speak of the many detentions and executions of their members. The families of that inner circle strived for military careers as a camouflage from that point in time. As you know military personnel have always enjoyed some sort of protection, which was what they pursued. This worked out. Despite this shelter, many of these items have disappeared in the turmoil of those days and were embezzled over the centuries. As luck would have it, most families survived and passed down important information by word of mouth. This had proven to be the right way to safeguard the few items that remained in their custody. Over time, the group depleted in the wake of diseases, migration, assassination, and so on. You name it. But that's not all. There had been several attempts to compromise this small inner circle by way of blackmailing some of its families. Because of these circumstances, your family turned out to be the last man standing. The remaining items were entrusted solely to your family and have remained undiscovered for almost two centuries. Though your family managed to protect the artefacts entrusted to them, there were many obstacles along the way.'
Jason couldn't hold back, 'What exactly do you mean? I don't really understand what has been entrusted to our family?'
'Please let me explain the entire course of events, to show you the real picture. You need to understand all this to embrace your role attached to the inheritance,' Mr. Parker said and went on, 'over the course of the centuries, countries and rulers have changed, obviously. Your ancestors have managed miraculously to conceal the whereabouts of the artefacts and scroll, and keep the information concealed amongst them. This worked across generations.' Mr. Parker paused and looked again at the still befuddled and bloodless faces of Jason and Kate. He kept eyeballing them, obviously waiting for a reaction, but they were too gobsmacked to respond. Nevertheless, he continued to educate them, 'That worked until World War II and its aftermath. As you know, after Germany surrendered in 1945, the country was divided into occupation zones first, and later two German states were established.'
Kate interrupted as she couldn't connect the dots. 'Both of our families are British. Why are we being involved in some event that had taken place throughout the war in Germany?'
'I agree as far as your family is concerned. But the King's … ,' he paused briefly and turned to Jason ' … the King's family isn't as British as they think they are. Not even a century ago, they used to be the Koenig family, which is the German word for King.'
Jason not convinced by that, started arguing, 'Frank, I'm sorry, but this is pretty far-fetched. Nobody in our family ever mentioned something like that or claimed to be German. Do you have any evidence for this?
Mr. Parker affirmed, 'Indeed, there is proof. I'm almost bound to say it is hidden in plain sight. Let's start with your grandfather, Albert King. Do you remember him? He was mute, right? In fact, he wasn't. He just pretended, to hide the fact that he couldn't speak proper English, which would have attracted unnecessary attention. Concealed medical reports have shown that your grandfather had been in perfect health until death. He was a high-ranking German general with access to secret military technology. He had to leave Germany, because key members of the then German government suspected him being a turncoat. They were after him to protect their advanced technology from being revealed to the enemy. It was bizarre, for he was actually preparing his escape for the sake of the family secret rather than being a traitor. And the latter finally made him subject to investigation of the German government. In this way, his sheltered position in the military had turned against him. Though he could hardly trust anyone, he managed to have an underground organisation issue him with counterfeit British identity documents, with the name King. Your grandfather was able to keep that mute alibi alive since he was trained in sign language. He introduced that as the way of communication in his British family life. And he got away with this for a lifetime. For good measure, he worked as a journalist, which allowed him almost entirely to communicate in written form. Perfect set up, isn't it?'
'You are making this up, aren't you? And even if this is true, how on God's green earth would you know?' Jason asked, as he took it with a grain of salt.
'How do I know? Well, take an educated guess. Which office for administration and legal counselling do you think supported your grandfather when registering in Britain and settled all the issues that came along with his fabricated British identity? It was us, the Parkers. We identified a British citizen; Mr. Paul Engelbrecht, our former client. He almost looked like your grandfather and was nearly the same age. It was sort of a blessing in disguise. Unfortunately, that gentleman's name wasn't King obviously. But fortunately in a sense, he suffered from a terminal disease. Cancer, as far as I can remember. To cut a long story short, that gentleman agreed to donate his identity, sadly enough, because he had nothing to lose. The day he died, we took measures to dispose of his corpse without a trace and a new character was about to be created. It was the time for Albert King to enter the stage. He contacted authorities pretending to be Paul Engelbrecht, who wanted to change his name to Albert King. He reasoned, that carrying the German name Engelbrecht might cause issues in the future and applied for that very name change. Since he pretended to be mute, nobody could interview him properly, let alone find out if he was a native English speaker or not. The story was rock-solid, and the British authorities bought it. They changed the name of the replaced, late Paul Engelbrecht and issued a genuine British passport in the name of Albert King to your grandfather. Until that point, he used the fabricated British identity documents to manage daily life in the UK. On top of that, he could make use of Engelbrecht's walk of life attached to his new identity, and Bob's your uncle.'
'I don't know what to believe,' Jason gave voice to his unquenched scepticism.
Mr. Parker raised his eyebrow. 'You might simply believe me, even though you are not comfortable with this. So please listen. Your dad, Peter, was born in the UK, and unbelievably, he never noticed his father's camouflage. Since your grandfather couldn't speak out about his German descent, his son – your father – wasn't aware of his father's roots, and didn't speak German. So even if he had known about your grandfather's actual background, it would have been nearly impossible for your father to conduct a decent search for the artefacts and the scroll without involving others to overcome the language barrier. This would have been too much of a risk at that time, for many key people