Message from Hell (A Creasy novel Book 5)
Page 26
Her laugh could have been a pleasant sound in other circumstances. She said, ‘Take a good look, Creasy. This is where you die. First you’re going to climb onto those branches. Then I’m going to shoot you in both kneecaps and both elbows.’ She gestured to a black Zippo lighter on the table to her right. ‘Then I light your funeral pyre and then I watch you burn. This is the moment I have worked for since the day I watched you shoot and burn my father. You will burn just as he burned. I will savour every second, Creasy.’
From the darkness behind her, a voice said: ‘You’ve got the wrong man, Connie. This is Creasy. And I don’t like pyromaniacs!’
She turned twisting, swinging the AK47. Guido dropped flat to the ground as he heard Creasy’s SMG bark into life. A second later she was lying across his body, gasping out her final breath.
Creasy’s masked face loomed over him. ‘Are you hit bad, Guido?’
‘Nothing fatal. But I took one in my right shoulder.’
‘Don’t move. Wait while I look around. It seemed like de Witt finally got his ticket.’ The face backed away.
Guido lay under the body and waited. A few minutes later the weight was lifted from him.
Creasy said: ‘There were four of them, including Van Luk Wan.’ He gestured towards the sarcophagus. ‘She had a nice little reception waiting for us. A nice little ceremony.’ He reached down, put a hand behind Guido’s neck and helped him to his feet.
‘Can you walk?’ Creasy asked.
‘Yes, it’s just the fucking shoulder!’
‘Keep your hand over the hole,’ Creasy said. ‘I don’t know what nerve gas she used, but it could be the type that penetrates through the skin.’ He was looking down at Connie Crum’s body. Then he glanced over to the table and the Zippo lighter. He walked over, picked up the lighter, and lit the paper under the wood.
It must have been soaked in petrol because immediately the flames shot up. Creasy laid his SMG on the floor, picked up Connie Crum’s body, tossed it onto the flames and said to Guido: ‘Pity to waste all the preparations. Let there be ashes to ashes.’
Chapter 76
‘I had no choice,’ Elliot Friedman said down the phone. ‘That guy has some influence. For one thing, he’s a consultant to the State Department. I had a lot of pressure - the guy even stood in my office threatening me with physical violence.’
‘He knows I’m at the Dusit Thani Hotel?’
‘Yes. He left Washington yesterday. I guess he’ll be there any time soon. Now, what about the remains?’
‘We’ve got them,’ Susanna answered. ‘The woman, Tan Sotho, showed Creasy the graves and the guys dug them up. It’s up to Forensics to identify them, but one is certainly Jake Bentsen. Did you get the paperwork fixed for the visas?’
‘Yes. An Air Force transport will fly you, the girl and the kid, and the remains back from Bangkok tomorrow. What about the guy, Arrellio?’
‘He’ll be OK. They got the bullet out this morning. He’s a tough one!’
‘You did a good job,’ Friedman said. ‘I’ll be at Andrews Air Force Base to meet you. You’d better be wearing a uniform, because there’ll be a ceremony to greet the remains.’
She hung up and turned to Creasy, who was sitting in a chair on the other side of the bed.
‘What was all that about?’ he asked.
‘That was about Professor Jason Woodward.’ She tapped her stomach. ‘The father of this embryo inside me. He’s on his way here.’
Creasy walked to the minibar and took out a beer. He said: ‘It seems to me that the guy might love you.’
‘Yes, he might. He’s not the kind of man to do impulsive things.’
Creasy drank the beer from the bottle. He drank it all, then gave her a level look and said: ‘If he loves you, and if he’s any kind of man, he has changed his mind about that baby.’
‘Maybe.’
He put the bottle down, walked around the bed and took her hands in his.
‘It’s decision time, Susanna. And we don’t need any drama. You talk to the guy, you make up your mind. We kept pretending that we never made love. We both know the reason for that. It was like a series of dreams. Dreams that will be remembered - but still, just dreams. People can be in love in a dream just as seriously as they can be in love in real life.’
The tap on the door was like the last chord of a symphony. Creasy went and opened it and for a long moment looked at the man standing there. Then he turned and said to Susanna: ‘He doesn’t look all bad to me.’
EPILOGUE
It was early evening when the doorbell rang.
Marina Bentsen looked up from her magazine at her husband. It had been two days since the phone call from Colonel Elliot Friedman, informing them that their son’s remains had been recovered and giving them the date and time of the military funeral which would take place at Arlington. She had bought a new dress for the occasion.
Her husband went to the door and returned with Creasy and a woman. Creasy introduced her as Susanna Moore. He said: ‘I’m sorry about Jake’s death. But I do know that it was very sudden. He would have suffered no pain.’
The old woman approached him, put her hands on his shoulders and kissed him on his cheeks. She said: ‘We are at peace, Mr Creasy. And we thank you. At least we know he is back here in America. He will lie at rest together with his comrades. Will you come to the funeral?’
Creasy shook his head. ‘I’m not good at funerals, Mrs Bentsen. But like you, I’m also at peace about Jake.’ He glanced at Susanna and then at the old man. He said: ‘There is one last detail. Before he died, Jake fell in love with a Vietnamese woman who, like him, was a prisoner of the Khmer Rouge. Three years ago she had a son by Jake. He’s called Kori.’
The old woman looked at her husband and then asked Creasy: ‘Are they still in Cambodia?’
Susanna answered for him.
‘No, I brought them back to America. The thing is, Mrs Bentsen, my department can arrange accommodation for them. The mother is only twenty-four years old. She will get a grant for education and so on, and be well looked after.’
The old woman was still looking at Creasy. She asked: ‘Where are they now?’
‘Not a million miles away, Mrs Bentsen. In fact, they’re outside sitting in our rented car.’
Marina Bentsen did not hesitate. She walked straight to the door.
The arrangements took no longer than five minutes. Mr Bentsen signed the papers that Susanna gave him without reading them. Mrs Bentsen took the boy and Tan Sotho upstairs to show them Jake’s old bedroom. In those five minutes, the old couple seemed to shed twenty years in age.
As Susanna drove Creasy back to the airport, he pulled a small ebony box from his jacket pocket and put it on her lap, saying: ‘You wouldn’t accept your share of the gemstones The Owl located back in Tuk Luy. But you’ll accept that. Consider it a wedding present.’
With her left hand, she reached down and slid open the wooden box. Inside was an intricate silver bracelet studded with sapphires. She closed the box and said: ‘Will you come to the wedding? It’s in two weeks, in Washington.’ He shook his head.
‘I don’t like funerals and I don’t like weddings. Especially when they involve past dreams.’
She had pulled up in front of the terminal building. He got out and retrieved his bag from the back seat and then made a gesture resembling a salute . . . A gesture of farewell. Before he could turn away, she asked him a last question: 'Creasy, do you think that boy Kori is really Jake Bentsen’s son?’
He shrugged and answered: ‘There’s a one in three chance, and that’s good enough for me!’
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