Creel gazed out onto the calmness of the Mediterranean where a hot sun slowly burned its way downward to the lazy shimmer of sea. Despite selling the best military hardware on earth, he was a peaceful man. He had never struck anyone in anger. He had, it was true, ordered the deaths of people, but it was never done with malice.
Yet from the first club wielded in anger to an A-bomb that wiped out six figures’ worth of people in a few ticks of the clock, physical conflict was an essential part of humanity. Creel knew this, just as he knew that war had many positive attributes. Most significantly, it made people forget the frivolous and bond together for the greater good.
He certainly felt guilt for what he’d done. In fact he’d already pledged ten million dollars to a fund set up for the families of the victims of the London Massacre. It was the least he could do, he believed. And while across the Atlantic in England people were trying to make sense of what seemed senseless, he had gotten down on his knees in his $175 million aircraft, and asked his god, who surely couldn’t be that much farther above him, to forgive him. And when Creel rose off that wool-carpeted floor and got back into his luxurious bed and turned off his ten-thousand-dollar designer lamp, he was reasonably certain his god had accommodated him.
While Pender was busy manufacturing something and selling it to everyone as the truth, Creel clearly knew what “real” truth was.
The world is a much safer place when the powerful actually use their power and much less safe when they don’t.
The United States could wipe out the problem in the Middle East in days. Certainly there would be innocents who would die. But what was the difference between millions killed in ten minutes or ten years? They’d still be dead and you would have avoided a decade of misery and uncertainty. And Creel would gladly provide every weapon needed to extinguish the savages. It really was all about us versus them. And only the strong survived.
“And the weak perish,” he said to the setting sun as it colored the water and the Italian coast a noble burgundy. The weak always did die. It was the natural order.
If Creel has his way the big boys would be back in control. Mutually assured destruction, or MAD, was a term from the cold war and the subject of much fear, all of it misplaced. MAD was actually the greatest stabilizing force in history, though so many people, ignorant of how the world really functioned, would be appalled by such a statement. MAD provided certainty, predictability, and perhaps annihilation of certain elements of humanity for the greater good.
He walked to the upper deck railing and looked down at his sleeping wife. She was an idiot, like most people. They were blind to everything but themselves. No vision. Simple, weak, lazy. He gazed once more at the photo of Shaw. He didn’t look simple, weak, or lazy. Because he wasn’t.
It would be a pity to have to kill him. Yet Creel would, if necessary.
He lifted the ship’s phone. The Shiloh’s captain, a man with thirty years’ experience on the open seas serving a variety of rich masters, answered in a brisk positive tone.
Creel said, “Arrange to bring all the children out tomorrow. Take in the sixty-footer to get them. And bring the mother superior. I want to give her a check.”
“Very good, Mr. Creel. Will you want to launch the submarine again? The kiddies certainly enjoyed it last time.”
“Good idea. Have it ready. And have the chopper prepped to take Mrs. Creel to the small jet. She’ll be going to the South of France in the morning. And have her maid lay out some suitable clothing. The more the better.”
“Right you are, sir.”
Creel hung up. The good captain might not have been so pleasant had he known what Creel had done. The captain was British, London born and raised.
But the children would come tomorrow. Creel’s life had become a series of balances. One bad deed weighed against one good one. Yes, he very much looked forward to the children coming tomorrow.
And to building them a brand spanking new place to be orphans in.
CHAPTER 61
THE STEEL BED ROLLED OUT with a clanking sound that Shaw felt down to his toes. The place smelled of chemicals and urine and other things he didn’t want to think about.
Frank stood next to him.
“Look, Shaw, you don’t have to do this. In fact I’m thinking you shouldn’t be doing this. Why remember her like this? In this place?” He waved his hand around the antiseptic space.
“You’re right,” Shaw said. “But I still have to do it.”
Frank sighed and nodded at the attendant.
For an instant, as the man’s fingers clutched the sheet, Shaw wanted to run, run to daylight before it was too late. Instead, he simply stood there as the sheet was lifted up and Shaw stared down at Anna. Or what was left of her.
He tried to avoid staring at the wound in the middle of her forehead, or the V-shaped suture tracks where the medical examiner had cut her open looking for helpful clues as to what had killed her, or at the twin bullet holes that had erupted through her chest. Yet he found that was all he could look at, the absolute destruction of the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. He didn’t even have the gentle embrace of her green eyes, since they were closed forever.
He nodded at the attendant again and turned away. The bed rolled back and the door clanged shut and with Frank’s help Shaw left the death room on shaky legs.
“Let’s go get drunk,” Frank said.
Shaw shook his head. “I have to go to Anna’s apartment.”
“What, are you some sort of masochist? First you see her on the slab and now you want to go rip your heart out some more. What’s the point, Shaw? She’s not coming back.”
“I’m not asking you to go. But I have to.”
Frank hailed a cab. “Right, but I’m still going.”
They climbed in the taxi and Shaw gave the driver the address. Then he hung his head out the window trying to fight the waves of nausea that were pounding him.
He shouldn’t have gone to the morgue. Not to see her like that. Not Anna.
Shouldn’t have, but had to.
He opened the door to her apartment a few minutes later, entered, and sat down on the floor while Frank stood nearby, his gaze on him. As Shaw looked around at the familiar sights, he slowly calmed. This was the living, breathing Anna here, not the butchered object he’d just left lying on unforgiving stainless steel. Here, Anna was not dead, not murdered.
He rose, lifted a photo off the mantel; it was of him and Anna in Switzerland last year. She was a fine skier, he was less than that. But the fun they’d had. Another photo of them in Australia. A third shot of them atop an elephant she’d nicknamed Balzac for its love of coffee that it would slurp right from the cup with its trunk.
Everywhere were her belongings, her loves, her passions.
Her.
He sat down again. In a few seconds he endured a million obvious thoughts that run through a bereaved person’s mind at a time like this. The bite of Adolph’s saw blade didn’t even come close to the pain he was feeling now. One bloody wound versus your entire mind, body, and soul being slowly crushed. They had no painkillers that could fight that.
Frank must’ve noticed the change in his expression. “Come on, Shaw, let’s go get that drink now.”
Shaw finally realized he couldn’t stay here either. In some ways the living Anna was more catastrophic to him than the dead one on the metal slab. It brought back so clearly what he’d lost, what they’d both lost together.