Death Benefit

13.

GREENWICH, CONNECTICUT MARCH 3, 2011, 6:45 A.M.

Edmund Mathews was sitting at his kitchen island with a cup of coffee when the house phone rang. Edmund picked it up in the middle of the first ring. It was Russell.

“Sorry if I woke you.”

“God no, I’ve been up for hours. You hear anything?”

“Henry Green e-mailed me a couple of minutes ago. His team has put together some numbers, and they want to show us at nine this morning. What’s the earliest I can pick you up?”

“You can pick me up now. What did he say about the numbers? Did you call him?”

“No, his message said not to call, just come by.”

“So we have no idea what they came up with. Great. Well, just swing by whenever you can. I’m ready when you are.” Edmund hung up the phone.

Nothing he’d thought about since the meeting at Statistical Solutions the previous afternoon had offered Edmund much solace. He wasn’t a numbers-cruncher like Russell, but he understood how heavily they were exposed by the insurance policies they’d purchased from diabetics. These people had looked like such a solid foundation for their business: a widespread and chronic condition with severe complications and a lot of lower-income policyholders. He’d seen more than a few e-mails from salesmen saying they’d reached someone whose policy was in arrears just as they were about to lose it. These were the perfect candidates, people happy to settle for ten cents on the dollar for something that to them was worth nothing.

Edmund wasn’t a man who spent a lot of time in regret or recrimination. If something was broken, you fixed it. The key was, you had to get ahead of the problem before it got serious. Edmund’s favorite historical character, predictably enough, was General George S. Patton. Edmund appreciated such a man of action. If Patton had been allowed to reach Berlin first in 1945, and then been allowed to keep going to Moscow, how different would things have turned out in the world? Such great men of history were always thwarted by the weak and the small-minded.

Edmund hated nothing more than feeling powerless, which was where the events of the previous day had left him. Gloria Croft had fired the first shot, and then Henry Green provided the coup de grace. Edmund felt completely blindsided. He hadn’t seen it coming, and neither had Russell. Russell was supposed to be the details guy who knew people who knew what was going on, the one who had his ear to the ground. Edmund had said as much on the long car ride home from Statistical Solutions the previous evening. Gloria would have been gratified at how long they spent stuck in traffic.

By the time he got home, Edmund was done sniping at Russell, and a dark cloud had made its way across his face and stationed itself there. Alice spent another evening staying out of her husband’s way and again, Edmund had few words for their son. With his scotch bottle as a companion, Edmund had taken up sorcery. He was trying to bore his way into Henry Green’s simulation software, willing it to come up with some way of limiting the damage that was being threatened to LifeDeals’ future. Short of relying on magic, he was certain there was something he could do. He had to get himself and his company to Berlin.