The Whole Truth

CHAPTER 60

NICOLAS CREEL’S TRIPS to China and Russia had been successful. No firm deals had been announced, but he had laid the groundwork for that to almost certainly happen and soon. When the “real” truth of The Phoenix Group came out – and Creel expected Katie James to publish it anytime now – the dynamic between China and Russia would quickly change from regional competitors to that of absolute enemies. And the trillions of dollars would begin flowing his way.

Yet with that triumph just behind him, he still had a problem.

He once more sat on the top deck of the magnificent Shiloh, one of the world’s greatest super-yachts, while his ditzy wife lay sprawled naked on a plush chaise longue on the foredeck. Creel had finally gotten fed up and demanded that she put something on. She flatly refused, claiming that even a string bikini would unbalance her tan.

She’d told him in a pouty voice, “My body is perfect. No tan lines. No lines, Nicky! You can’t make me.”

How could one respond to such stark logic, to such earnest narcissistic proclamations? Creel had almost laughed, as he would’ve when a child had done something silly. No, this marriage was clearly not going to last. His ship phone rang. It was the captain. Mrs. Creel had finally fallen asleep.

“Then put a damn blanket over her, neck to toes,” Creel instructed and hung up.

The woman he’d met in L.A. when he’d been given the philanthropic award was an art curator at the Met in New York. With multiple degrees from Yale, she was stunningly intelligent, world-traveled, attractive, nicely built, and he seriously doubted she would have been the least concerned about tan lines across her ass. He’d had a wonderfully fascinating evening with the woman that had involved no physical contact at all. He’d have his attorneys draw up the divorce papers when he returned home.

But that looming domestic change was not the problem Creel was troubled by.

He stared down at the photo of the man with Katie James. James had left Shaw’s hotel in tears, Creel had been told. Was the man going to screw this up? He wanted revenge. He was highly skilled. Yes, a potential problem. Shaw’s days were probably numbered. But then what was one more?

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.