Winterstead
Prologue
Winterstead Residential Home, set in forty acres of the English countryside about sixty miles north east of London, owned since just after the Second World War by a company registered in the British Virgin Islands. Very few would know, or be able to learn of one Zara Braun, a descendant of the original purchasing group, let alone Joachim Smitt, an electronics scientist closely connected to her courtesy of the historical association between their ancestors. Zara Braun, or Madam Zee as she was known to those she would allow to know of her existence, spoke firmly with just a hint of a German accent, which belied the very strong Bavarian roots she had. Smitt, on the other hand, was all German in his presentation and, like Zara Braun, maintained an almost perfect anonymity regarding his existence. Smitt had followed in his grandfather’s and father’s footsteps in the field of electronics, and courtesy of their previous work had developed ground breaking technology in the area of what he termed subliminal intervention. Originally designed as a method of interrogation, to elicit information without recourse to time-consuming torture leading in turn to severe physical damage to the subject, even death, the early designs were still prone to cause a degree of brain damage. As research developed, and with permanent damage to any brain or nervous function eventually eliminated, an unintended by-product, as it were, of the process involved, became known. It had evolved to become a powerful tool of control and coercion. Known of, and licensed to only a very small number of enterprises around the World, this technology eventually bestowed untold riches on the descendants of the Nazi scientists who first realised its potential. Braun and Smitt were two such descendants now experiencing the legacy afforded them.
Winstead served a particular type of resident. Always elderly, with age restrictions limiting eligibility for residency to those between sixty five and eighty five years of age. Anyone older, or demonstrating any signs of dementia, was shipped out immediately upon being so. Residents were invariably very wealthy, or had family connections able to support their presence. Every conceivable need was serviced by support staff never older than twenty five, never younger than twenty one. All staff were particularly attractive and always had very few, or no other family members still alive. Most stayed onsite in specially designed quarters, and those that did have accommodation away from the Home were required to have had that accommodation visited by other support staff who happened to be attached to Smitt’s operational team. Servicing the residents’ needs was the primary purpose of all Winterstead staff, but on occasion they were sub-contracted externally to serve the needs of carefully vetted clients, all in all a situation requiring particular attention to be paid to ensuring that all such needs, internally or externally, were satisfied to the fullest extent possible, for after all it was this that was the key performance indicator that the enterprise was succeeding. Fully satisfied residents, or clients, in any way, had eventually become Winterstead’s raison d’etre, as the French would say, unless they were German.