Reckless
LAKE GENEVA, SWITZERLAND, ONE MONTH LATER . . .
WHEN WILL YOU BE home, Henry? Remember we have dinner with the Alencons tonight.”
Henry Cranston looked at his wife, Clotilde, and wished she were younger. And prettier. And less demanding. Had he ever been attracted to her? He couldn’t remember. Maybe, before the twins were born and her stomach got all saggy and wrinkly, like the skin on an overblown apple.
“I’ll be home when I’m home,” he said rudely. “I have a lot on at work today.”
Clotilde Cranston tried to pout but last week’s Botox injections had rendered her lower face almost immovable. She really must change dermatologists. Dr. Trouveau was supposedly the “top man” in Geneva, but that wasn’t saying much. Clotilde missed New York. At least there she had girlfriends to distract her from her loveless marriage. Girlfriends and a decent dermatologist. And Bergdorf’s.
“I love you!” she called after Henry, desperately and untruthfully.
“You too,” Henry Cranston lied back.
Closing the door of his Bentley with a satisfyingly heavy thud, he immediately felt better. He did have a lot on at work today. He would spend the morning banging his new secretary, a perky little brunette barely out of her teens and wonderfully eager to please.
Then he would sign off on the bribes to the Poles and nail down his latest deal, winning Cranston Energy Inc. the fracking rights to a vast swath of Polish countryside bursting at the seams with shale gas. It wasn’t quite as good a deal as the one he’d struck for exclusive fracking rights in Western Greece, on land still owned by the exiled royal family. Unfortunately, thanks to their stupid, faggot son hanging himself, that had all unraveled faster than a politician’s promises after the election. But the Polish deal was a decent consolation prize.
After sewing that up, Henry would have a late lunch with his mistress, Claire. Claire was also becoming too demanding. He’d have to get rid of her soon, but not until he’d completed his home video collection and browbeaten her into having anal sex with him. I mean, really, what did the silly bitch think she was for? If he wanted boring, vanilla sex he could have it with his wife, without paying an extra half million euros a year on a rented penthouse apartment!
Henry Cranston slipped h
is key into the ignition and started the engine.
AT THE REUTERS OFFICE in Manhattan at that exact same moment, journalist Damon Peters watched his computer screen go blank, then fill with a familiar computer-generated image of red balloons.
The same thing happened at the London Times, the New York Times, the China Post and the Sidney Morning Herald, along with hundreds of other newspapers and media organizations around the world.
Except this time, the first balloon to reach the top of the screen popped. Tumbling out of it, in heavy, dark block letters, came the chilling message:
VIVA GENEVA. HENRY CRANSTON R.I.P.
In Manhattan, Damon Peters spun around in his chair. Looking at his colleague, Marian Janney, he asked, “Who’s Henry Cranston?”
“No idea.”
“And what the hell just happened in Geneva?”
LOCALS REPORTED THE EXPLOSION could be heard up to two miles away.
Clotilde Cranston was blown backwards through the front door of her house, shattering her pelvis and breaking four ribs.
Miraculously, she lived.
So did their dog, Wilbur.
Henry Cranston was blasted into a million, lying, cheating, mean-spirited pieces.
TRACY WHITNEY STUDIED THE pictures of the Geneva bomb scene again.
There wasn’t much to see. Twisted lumps of metal. Fragments of rubble from what had once been a garden wall. A single, severed finger.
Greg Walton asked, “How soon can you be out there?”
Tracy was in Gregory Walton’s office at Langley, being briefed on the latest development in the fight against Group 99. It was February, three days since Henry Cranston’s murder. Tracy had spent the last month in Washington, regaining her strength physically and mentally. At Greg Walton’s insistence, she’d been placed on a strict, high-calorie diet and although she remained extremely slim, she was no longer the skeletal waif who had shown up on Greg’s doorstep. Her white hair had been dyed back to its original chestnut brown, and she’d been prescribed strong sleeping pills, which seemed to be working.
The only part of the CIA’s treatment program that wasn’t working was the therapy. Tracy had answered all of the therapist’s questions politely and cooperatively. But she refused to even begin the work of processing Nick’s death.
“If I open that door,” she explained simply, “I won’t survive.”