Creel added, “Go up on the bridge and see for yourself.”
One of the policemen ran up, then came right back down looking green and making the sign of the cross. “My God, he has been mutilated.”
The officer looked at Shaw. “Did you kill that man?”
“Yes.”
Creel said triumphantly, “At last, a confession.”
“I killed him in self-defense. I didn’t exactly get this way all by myself.” He indicated his bruised face and torn shirt.
“That’s for an Italian court to decide. Officer, please take this murderer off my boat immediately.”
The policeman drew his weapon, as did his men. Frank and the FBI agents did the same.
“No,” said Shaw. “I’ll go with them.”
He looked at Creel. “This isn’t over.”
“Of course it isn’t. You’ll bring your ludicrous charges and my team of lawyers will fight them and by the time it’s over I’ll still be a free man loved by the world while you rot in prison. Now that’s what I call justice.”
Shaw launched himself at Creel before he was pulled off. No one saw Shaw’s hand slip inside the man’s pocket.
A breathless Creel said, “And now you can add assault charges to the list.”
“Come on, Shaw,” Frank said. “We’ll get this all straightened out. And you,” he said, pointing at Creel. “You try to get off the boat in a sub, a chopper, or a freaking spaceship, your ass is history.”
“Good-bye, gentlemen. I look forward to addressing all of this in court and to seeing each of you suitably punished,” Creel said coolly. He faced Shaw and smiled broadly. “And I’ll think of you every time I’m on my yacht.”
After the chopper and boat left, Nicolas Creel retired to his stateroom. He had numerous phone calls to make to deal with this mess, the first being to the men who were no doubt planting his fourth wife in Italian soil right now. Yet he would get it all worked out. He always did. It would just take a little time, a little money, and a little ingenuity mixed with nerve. That’s all it ever took.
He slipped a cigar from his humidor and felt in his pocket for a lighter. His hand closed around a metal object, but it wasn’t a lighter. He pulled it out. It was slender and flat. How the hell had that gotten in his pocket? He looked at it closely. Was that a smudge of blood? He could also smell something, something that seemed remotely familiar.
Creel had no way of knowing that at that moment Shaw was gripping a small remote control device. His hands manacled together as he rode in the police boat, he eyed Katie who was standing next to him. She looked at him – more specifically, at his torn shirt. Only Katie seemed to have noticed that the stitches Leona Bartaroma, the tour guide/retired gifted surgeon from Dublin, had sewn over Shaw’s arm wound were missing. Then Katie eyed the small device in his hand before glancing up at him.
As their gazes locked, Shaw started to say something, but Katie shook her head. “It’s okay, Shaw. You do what you have to do.”
She squeezed his hand and looked away.
While the FBI chopper soared over them Shaw looked out to sea where the large steel floating footprint of the Shiloh sat like a great overstuffed whale on its back. Yet he wasn’t thinking about billionaires’ water toys bought with death money. Nor did he dwell on PM masters like the deceased Pender. Neither was he focused on going to an Italian jail for killing Caesar. And right now not even the truth concerned him all that much.
Against the dark sky he thought he could see Anna’s face staring at him, perhaps beckoning to him, he wasn’t sure. They were just two people trying to love one another in a world that didn’t always allow that to happen. They had been caught up in a nightmare not of their making. And Shaw was so enraged by it all, so paralyzed by a loss that he would never be able to fully understand or overcome, that it was all he could do to merely press the button on the tiny remote he was holding. But staring at Anna’s imagined face in the sky he found the strength. When he was done he tossed it over the side where it disappeared into the water leaving barely a ripple. The effects elsewhere would be far more lasting.
In his stateroom, Creel felt the metal object growing warm. It was the last thing he would ever notice.
When he heard the screams and smelled the smoke the captain raced down the stairs and entered the stateroom. Yet by the time he got there the spot where Creel had been sitting was now only a blackened mass of ash and bone lying on the floor. Later examination would show that it was the remains of the man even if it no longer resembled a human being. The captain would later testify that Creel had been completely alone when he died. And thus no one would ever be able to explain exactly what had happened. Or why Nicolas Creel had apparently committed suicide using a highly lethal phosphorus-based incendiary device.
CHAPTER 99
OPERATING ON A TIP, the local police discovered the body of Mrs. Creel in a freshly dug hole at the bottom of the excavation pit the next morning. A few minutes after that, Shaw was released from an Italian jail. He walked out a free man with a fresh shirt on and his arm wound stitched up nicely courtesy of a local doctor called to the prison.
It would take a long time to uncover, catalog, and dissect what had happened with the Red Menace, Nicolas Creel, and Pender amp; Associates. But regardless, that truth could never be told to the public, decided the powers that be, including the United States, Russia, and China. Every scrap of information unearthed about Nicolas Creel’s grand plot was immediately classified and buried forever. It might seem amazing that this was possible, but it was also true that such “burials” happened all the time all over the world.
Katie, Shaw, and Frank, among others privy to the details, were sworn to secrecy for the rest of their lives.
Katie had not taken this directive well. “Why keep it a secret? So we can make the same mistake again?”
She was told that if the world learned how close it had come to Armageddon and how governments around the globe had been deceived it would cause people to lose faith in their leaders.