The Whole Truth (A. Shaw 1)

He suddenly realized he couldn’t stay here for another second. He pounded down the steps and threw open the front door. He felt like he couldn’t breathe, his lungs hard as stone. The image of Anna falling dead back into that room, the imagined vision of her killer standing over her and Shaw far away and helpless seared his brain.

He rushed past the officer on duty and catapulted out onto the street, where a split second later he knocked a person flat to the pavement.

He reached down to help, an apology ready on his lips, an apology he would never deliver. He merely gaped.

Katie slowly got to her feet. “We need to talk. Right now.”

CHAPTER 58

NICOLAS CREEL HAD HAD A BUSY DAY even for him. He’d ridden on his private jet from Italy to New York and then on to Houston where he’d picked up his executive sales team. They spent the considerable flight time going over last-minute details for their upcoming high-level sales presentation in Beijing.

Creel was now in his stateroom staring at a picture of a man he’d just been sent, along with accompanying details. His name was Shaw and he was working on The Phoenix Group massacre. He was attached to a highly secretive international law enforcement agency; though Creel had been informed, the agency often went outside the law to achieve results. Shaw was one of their best operatives and he apparently had a personal motivation to solve the crime. That was troubling. What was even more irritating was the e-mail he’d just received from Caesar. He had men watching The Phoenix Group building of course. And they reported seeing Shaw and Katie James going off together. He’d instructed Caesar to have them followed. He didn’t want this man Shaw to interfere with James’s unwitting role in his plan.

He returned to the jet’s conference room where his executives were putting the finishing touches on a sales pitch that they hoped would lead to the largest defense contract China had ever awarded to an outside firm. Actually, this was only the opening salvo, Creel alone knew. When the events in London were more fully explained to the world, the Chinese would understand quite clearly the precarious position in which they stood. The Asian Dragon would become a bull’s-eye for the Russian Bear. And the communists would triple their weapons order if for no other reason than to ward off the madman Gorshkov. With any luck, they’d be in bed with Ares Corp. for the next two decades at minimum.

That would have been plenty for most businessmen. But not Nicolas Creel. The Beijing piece was only half the equation.

After China, Creel would continue flying west and visit Moscow. He fully expected much resistance from the former Soviets, who as yet did not see a great need for the latest and greatest in military hardware. They, like the rest of the world, had ceded the field to the Yanks, who simply outspent everyone. Yet Creel was one of the few, perhaps the only visionary who saw that that need not be the case forever. World powers came and world powers

went. The Americans had been on top for a very long time, at least by recent historical standards. They were due to be overtaken. Whether by the Russians or the Chinese, or both, Creel didn’t really care. He just wanted to be the one to arm the next superpower.

He would not dwell on, or even mention to Gorshkov’s and China’s defense ministers, the issue of Russia versus China and the heightening tensions between the two nations. Instead, he would take a more positive tack. This is your time, he would tell both countries. This is your century. You must seize it or someone else will. He would let their respective imaginations fill in the identity of that someone.

His underlings could sweat the actual numbers and details. He was along for the ride to deliver the closer, to put into clear perspective what was at stake for both countries. And trillions of dollars were at stake for Ares, because once Russia and China undertook a substantial rearmament, so would everybody else with dollars to spend and egos to defend. That would include the Yanks, who would most certainly see their world leadership rank being usurped. What was a few trillion more in debt anyway? It wasn’t like the Americans could possibly pay back what they owed already.

Creel swiftly ran through the numbers in his head. National debt at about ten trillion dollars, not counting the Social Security accounting charade. Just interest on what amounted to America’s credit card debt was over $300 billion a year, along with $700 billion in defense spending, which totaled a full trillion annually, or about one-third of the total budget. Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid costs were well over $1 trillion, collectively. Welfare and unemployment expenditures were about $400 billion. That left a paltry few hundred billion dollars for everything else. In the grand scheme that was chump change. And every day the Yanks went hat in hand to the likes of China and Japan and Saudi Arabia essentially begging for money to finance their consumption. Creel had long ago figured out the ending to that song. He had to because it was in his business interests to know. Despite the Americans’ well-deserved reputation for ingenuity and resilience, the veteran businessman knew that the dollars never lied.

Unless the country does a complete turnaround, in thirty years or less the Yanks will be finished. That’s why I’m buying euros, yen, yuans and rupees and looking to expand my clientele well beyond the land of the free, home of the brave. No one with that much debt is free and the home is mortgaged to the hilt. Still, they can enjoy it while it lasts, credit card their way for another couple decades anyway. Future generations will have to pay the piper and all hell will break loose when that bill comes due.

Clearly, several other major defense contractors would get a piece of the global pie, but Creel’s firm was perfectly positioned to get the bulk of it. It would be the crowning jewel of his lifetime. His company would be saved, his legacy ensured. And, most importantly, the world’s natural equilibrium reinstated.

It was everything he could have hoped for. And they were almost there.

Yet he kept going back to the photo Caesar had sent him. His gaze burned into the tall man’s eyes. Creel didn’t like those eyes. He had made several fortunes by reading correctly the expressions, the poker faces of his opposition. And he didn’t like this man’s at all. In fact the eyes he was looking at in the photo seemed very familiar to him. As he glanced into a mirror hanging on the wall opposite he suddenly realized who it was.

They remind me of me.

Creel sat back and listened to his sales team drone on as they covered 550 miles an hour on the way to sell peace and security at the end of a tank muzzle to another satisfied customer.

And yet his mind kept going back to those eyes. And that man. Only one man for sure. Yet sometimes it only took one to bring it all down.

Creel would never let that happen. He was not afraid of much, but one thing that terrified him was uncertainty. That’s why he’d hired Pender, who made the world believe what Creel wanted it to believe. It was often a war of attrition. You made up the truth and then buried the real thing under so much garbage that people grew weary of trying to dig through it and instead just accepted what you offered. It was the easy way out and humans were programmed to always go that way. After all, there were bills to pay, shopping to do, kids to raise, and sports to watch, so who had time for anything else? Yes, you cover every base, but sometimes something or someone slips in and undoes it all.

But not this time.

No, not this time.

CHAPTER 59

“TAKE ME TO SEE THIS GUY,” Shaw said to Katie as they sat in his room at the Savoy. She had just finished telling him about her meeting with the Pole.

“I can’t do that,” Katie replied. “I promised.”

“I don’t care what you promised. He’s a material witness in a murder investigation.”

Katie looked out the window where Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, and the pie-shaped London Eye stared back at her with the narrow Thames in the foreground. “You don’t think I know that?”

“Okay, tell me his name then.”