Leviathan Page 8

  “Let him up. I’m outside by the pool.” Wright retrieved the maroon towel he’d draped over the back of his chair.

  As he dried off his hair and chest, a man joined him on the penthouse terrace. Wright sized up the figure, unimpressed. “I thought you’d be bigger.”

  “It doesn’t take a bodybuilder to shoot a gun,” the man said. “A bullet’s the same size no matter who fires it.”

  “I suppose that’s right,” the billionaire said. “I’m Oscar Wright.”

  “Ian Thorpe,” the stocky man said. His head was as square as his jaw, his face a latticework of scars from various brawls in barrooms and back alleys. Wright guessed he’d been a career military man, probably special operations. Thorpe wore a perpetual poker face and aviator sunglasses. “Nice to meet you, sir.”

  “You can disregard the pleasantries. Chitchat is shit chat.” Wright continued to wipe himself down, a puddle pooling at his feet.

  “What’s so important it couldn’t be taken care of over the phone?”

  “I only deal with people I trust, and I can’t gauge a person’s trustworthiness ‘til I look him in the eye.”

  Thorpe removed his glasses. “What do you see?”

  The billionaire ignored Thorpe’s question. He never let anyone else control a conversation. “You came highly recommended.”

  “By whom?”

  “A mutual friend.” Wright took a seat on the deckchair and motioned to the empty one beside him. Thorpe remained standing. “Tell me about yourself. I like to know my business associates.”

  “I was born in South Africa, grew up on the Serengeti.”

  “Where in Africa?”

  “Tanzania.”

  The old man went into a coughing fit for several moments. Hacking and wheezing, he struggled to his feet. Wright worked up a wad of phlegm, parted the chrysanthemums and spat a bloody gob off the ledge. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and asked, “What did your parents do?”

  “My mother was a nurse, and my father died when I was seven.”

  “Then you’ve been around exotic wildlife since your childhood?”

  “Yessir. Elephant, lion, croc, hippo: I’ve hunted it all.”

  “That’s what I wanna hear.”

  “I’ve been approached by your type before, wealthy clients looking for the excitement of a private safari. Last year I took Richard Branson to Zaire for a month.”

  Wright took umbrage at the comment. “My type? You’ve never met anyone like me.”

  “Apologies, sir, I meant no disrespect.”

  “Somebody got you whipped good. Marines?”

  “British SAS.”

  “You conveniently omitted the grayer aspects of your resume: poaching, drug smuggling, extraordinary rendition. Any job for the right price.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “No, of course not, I understand. Everyone’s done things for which they’re not proud. Hell, I have enough skeletons in my closet it should be zoned as a graveyard.” Wright threw his towel on the chair and slipped into his sandals. “Are you a religious man?”

  “God doesn’t check in on my line of work.”

  “Perfect. You and I will get along splendidly.” Wright motioned to the pool. “Tell me what you see.”

  Thorpe took a moment. “It’s shaped like a fist.”

  “Look closer.”

  “A middle finger.”

  Wright clapped him on the back. “That’s right. Anyone who flies overhead gets flipped the bird.” Thorpe didn’t crack a smile. “But mostly it’s for Him.” Wright pointed to the heavens, gestured obscenely at the sky. “Y’see, God and I aren’t on speaking terms.”

  “That’s between you two.”

  Wright moved to the glass door and opened it for his new partner. “Step into my office. We have some financial matters to pound out.”

  Thorpe walked inside and took off his sunglasses. He saw a grand piano situated in the corner. The floor was comprised of black marble tiles overlapped with authentic Persian rugs. An enormous fish tank lined one entire wall. The two-thousand-gallon container was filled with coral and assorted tropical angelfish, giant gourami and severum. “That was specially made,” Wright said. “And the Asian arowana there cost me two grand.” Thorpe watched the regal, striped fish as the old man disappeared into an adjacent bedroom. “You have a family?” the billionaire called out.

  “No sir,” Thorpe said. “Never been married.”

  “Don’t fall in love. It’ll only come back to bite you in the ass.” Several moments later Wright reappeared in Bermuda shorts and an open-collar shirt.

  “If you want my services as an expert marksman, you must be interested in big-game hunting,” Thorpe said.

  “The biggest.” The old man waved him over to a polished maple desk. Wright took his place in a leather chair, motioned to the seat across from him. “Cigar?”

  Thorpe sat and said, “Please.”

  Wright opened a humidor to remove two stogies. He snipped off the ends, handed one to the hunter. “Best you’ll ever have, guaran-fucking-teed. Castro had them express shipped, so they’re fresh too.” The old man produced a silver lighter and lit both cigars. The sweet, cherry tinge of tobacco smoke wafted through the air. He took a deep drag and said, “Alfred Lord Tennyson posited that it was better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.” He paused, considering. “What a crock of shit.”

  Thorpe’s gaze drifted to the room’s centerpiece, a three-by-five-foot portrait of the Wright family that hung over the billionaire’s desk. “Are those your loved ones?”

  The old man regarded the stogie in his hand. “A portrait I had commissioned.”

  Thorpe noticed the brunette woman in the painting. “Your wife?”

  Wright nodded. “Brenda.”

  “How did you two meet?”

  Nostalgia rushed back to the billionaire in a flood of memories. “We went to college together. I majored in engineering and she studied British literature, two people with different passions who met completely by chance. I didn’t think it was chance at the time. Damned fool that I was, it seemed more like destiny. There was a time I believed in predestination,” Wright said. “Not anymore.”

  “Was she born in the States?”

  “She was raised in Liverpool and came to the country for school.” A faint smile spread on his lips. “University, she called it. I fell for her because I empathized with her. Being European, she wasn’t used to American customs and often felt like an outsider. I recognized that same sense of alienation in myself.”

  “When did you get married?”

  “June seventh is our anniversary. We eloped to Toronto, spent our honeymoon there. I would’ve rather taken her to Rome or Paris, but Canada was the most lavish getaway we could afford at the time. Both of us were busted-ass broke, deep in debt from student loans.” Oscar Wright raised his arms to the skyscraper around him, to the kingdom he’d single-handedly built. “Now I can buy anything I want, yet nothing I need.”

  “How long have you been together?” Thorpe asked.

  “We knew each other nine years before she was snatched away.”

  The hunter didn’t want to pry. He’d hit on a sore spot for the old man and didn’t want to overstep any boundaries.

  Wright pressed onward through the emotional trauma. “She died giving birth to our only child. It’s a rarity nowadays, wasn’t so uncommon thirty years ago. Brenda forfeited her life to give Joseph his. It was simultaneously the happiest and saddest day of my life.” The old man grew quiet. “Then the diagnosis came.” Wright’s eyes refocused on Thorpe. “Have you heard of osteogenesis imperfecta?”

  “Not really.”

  “Also called Brittle Bone Syndrome. The bones are so soft, they snap like chalk at the slightest blow.” Wright glanced to the portrait above him. “Joseph would’ve looked like that had he not been born with certain . . . disadvantages.” The old man couldn’t bring himself t
o say disabilities.

  Wright rasped for several seconds then succumbed to another coughing spasm. The sounds echoed through the vaulted room, spittle flying from his cracked lips. He took a bottle from the desk drawer, tamped a couple large pills into his palm before downing them with a shot of scotch. “My boy never had a chance at normalcy,” the old man said uninterrupted. Oscar Wright was an expert at ignoring problems. “He lived his life like a China doll. He couldn’t go to a regular school, had to attend a physical therapy center instead. It was called Eastgate. The teachers there did an outstanding job with all the handicapped kids.

  “Joseph was a fighter from the beginning. Most children with O.I. are stillborns. Because their bones are so pliable, their bodies can’t survive the powerful contractions of the birth canal. The skulls are crushed during delivery, their heads turned into sacks of marbles.”

  Wright took a long puff on the cigar and blew smoke out his nostrils. “That was the ironic, final nail in my wife’s coffin. The physicians told me he wouldn’t live beyond infancy. But he made me proud. Despite being deaf, he had no mental incapacities. A tutor taught me sign language so I could communicate with him. I was fluent for a while; sadly, memory fades with time. Joseph comprehended his dire predicament, accepted it with a dignity no child should be forced to bear.

  “My boy endured so much: a parade of surgeries in his early years, the constant doctor visits, the special diets and extra precautions. He couldn’t play outside because a jungle gym was like a deathtrap to him. Poor kid couldn’t even have his own bed. He slept on a mattress on the floor, surrounded by mounds of pillows.

  “It was overwhelming in the beginning, so stressful I hired a nurse to help take care of him, Maggie. For the first few years of his life, Joseph thought Maggie was his mom. And I let him believe that. I didn’t have the heart to tell him his real mother was rotting in the ground.”

  The billionaire reached for a framed picture on the corner of his desk, handed it to Thorpe. “That’s my Joseph.” The photograph showed a smiling Wright with his son.

  Joseph was a dwarf whose arms and legs were twisted at unnatural angles due to countless fractures that hadn’t properly healed. His limbs were like a snowman’s, as if his extremities had been substituted with misshapen sticks. The boy grinned in the photo, happy to spend time with his father. His skin was translucent, bluish from the underlying network of veins. Joseph was barrel-chested too, his sternum poking out at a fifteen-degree slant.

  Thorpe gave back the frame and said, “Seems like a happy kid.”

  “He had the biggest heart I’ve ever seen. It was the very thing that killed him.”

  “Pardon?” Thorpe asked.

  “He was also born with an enlarged heart, a congenital defect. One morning he had a massive heart infarction after breakfast. Both Maggie and I tried to revive him. He died in my arms, a week before his eighth birthday.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “I’m sorrier to have lived it.” Wright trailed off for a moment, his eyes glazed over as he stared into space. “Sorry, I don’t usually talk this much. You got me on a roll about my family.”

  “The business,” Thorpe prodded.

  “Yes, the business.” The old man’s fingers drummed on the maple desk. “Regardless how it may appear, I do believe in God. Before I started this company, Brenda and I were destitute. We lived in a trailer in Virginia, and every spare cent that didn’t go to bills went to develop my first invention. We prayed a lot in those days. And He let me down. I may have several billion in the bank, but at what price — my loved ones? That’s too steep a payment. I’d return every dime I ever made to get back my wife and son. Everyday I see successful men trudge down Wall Street, and I envy them. Because they go home each night to their families, while I have this empty empire.” The sadness in Wright’s eyes was replaced with anger. “I want Him to pay.”

  Thorpe felt uncomfortable. The old man had been dealt a bad hand, no doubt, but the hunter didn’t see what he could do to fix that. “I’m not sure what you have in mind.”

  The old man passed him a manila folder. “I have dozens of people in my employ who collect data for me.”

  “That has to be expensive.”

  “Money buys a lot of eyes and ears.” He walked around the desk to observe the fish tank. “Over the last twenty years, I’ve invested millions to find proof of God, any shred of evidence to confirm His existence.”

  “Like what exactly?” the hunter asked.

  “Five years ago I had the Shroud of Turin tested for authenticity.” He turned his back to Thorpe, watched the hunter’s reflection in the tank’s polished glass.

  “The Shroud of Turin?”

  “Christ’s death cloth. Jesus’ face is supposedly imprinted on the fabric itself.”

  “What was the result?”

  “Extensive experiments proved it was a forgery. Of course the Vatican doesn’t want anyone to know,” the old man said. “Two years ago I was excited when news came out of Turkey. Archeologists claimed to have uncovered the remains of Noah’s Ark. They found the hull of a ship imbedded in the permafrost of Mount Ararat, where religious scholars believe the Ark landed. I sent a team there to found out for sure.”

  “What happened?”

  “Hell if I know,” Wright said. “Never heard from any of them again. They took my money and ran.”

  “Well, I won’t do that,” Thorpe noted.

  “I know God exists because He screwed me over. And I finally got Him cornered.”

  Thorpe thumbed through the dossier. “Cornered how?”

  “There’s been a series of attacks around the Caribbean during the last month, missing persons and the like. Not notable by themselves, except there have been twice as many as normal. And it appears a research expedition in the Atlantic found the culprit.”

  “Culprit?”

  “An enormous sea monster, a new species entirely.”

  “Species of what?”

  The billionaire walked to a bookshelf along the far wall and selected a volume, opening it to a bookmarked page. “Are you familiar with the Book of Job?”

  “You mean the Bible?” Thorpe shook his head. “I don’t know much beyond Sunday School stories.”

  “I’ll read it to you then. This is Chapter Forty-One:

  “Can you pull in the Leviathan with a fishhook or tie down his tongue with a rope?

  “Can you put a cord through his nose or pierce his jaw with a hook?

  “Will he keep begging you for mercy? Will he speak to you with gentle words?

  “Will he make an agreement with you for you to take him as your slave for life?

  “Can you make a pet of him like a bird or put him on a leash for your girls?

  “Will traders barter for him? Will they divide him up among the merchants?

  “Can you fill his hide with harpoons or his head with fishing spears?

  “If you lay a hand on him, you will remember the struggle and never do it again!

  “No one is fierce enough to rouse him. Who then is able to stand against me?

  “Who has a claim against me that I must pay? Everything under heaven belongs to me.

  “I will not fail to speak of his limbs, his strength and graceful form.

  “Who can strip off his outer coat? Who would approach him with a bridle?

  “Who dares open the doors of his mouth, ringed about with his fearsome teeth?

  “His back has rows of shield tightly sealed together; each so close to the next that no air can pass between.

  “They are joined fast to one another; they cling together and cannot be parted.

  “His snorting throws out flashes of light; his eyes are like the rays of dawn.

  “Firebrands stream from his mouth; sparks of fire shoot out.

  “Smoke pours from his nostrils as from a boiling pot over a fire of reeds.

  “His breath sets coals ablaze, and flames dart from his mouth.

  “Stren
gth resides in his neck; dismay goes before him.

  “The folds of his flesh are tightly joined; they are firm and immoveable.

  “His chest is hard as rock, hard as a lower millstone.

  “When he rises up, the mighty are terrified; they retreat before his thrashing.

  “The sword that reaches him has no effect, nor does the spear or the dart or the javelin.

  “Iron he treats like straw and bronze like rotten wood.

  “Arrows do not make him flee; slingstones are like chaff to him.

  “A club seems to him but a piece of straw; he laughs at the rattling of the lance.

  “His undersides are jagged potsherds, leaving a trail in the mud like a threshing sledge.

  “He makes the depths churn like a boiling caldron and stirs up the sea like a pot of ointment.

  “Behind him he leaves a glistening wake; one would think the deep had white hair.

  “Nothing on earth is his equal — a creature without fear.

  “He looks down on all that are haughty; he is king over all that are proud.”

  Wright surveyed the hunter. “Care to guess which animal’s being described?”

  Thorpe ran through a mental menagerie of beasts he’d tracked over the years. There wasn’t an exact match to anything he knew. “It sounds like . . . well, a dragon.” It was an absurd notion, especially when he heard the word aloud.

  “Precisely.” Excitement infused the old man. “An underwater dragon has surfaced, roused from the ocean’s depths.”

  “And you want me to kill it?”

  Wright set the Bible on the desk and shook his head. “Absolutely not. I want you to find this creature. I have every intention of killing it myself.”

  “Wouldn’t it be worth more if captured alive?”

  “This isn’t about money. It’s about getting the opportunity to smite the Lord with my bare hands. If the Bible’s true — which it claims to be, from the very mouth of God Himself — then this being must exist. Why then are there no accounts of it?”

  “Maybe no one’s survived any such encounter.” It sounded like a plausible explanation to him.

  “This is the proof I’ve been searching for.”

  It struck Thorpe as a quixotic mission but also held the promise of a profitable paycheck. If the old man wanted him to sail around Florida for a week, he had nothing against it. Let the crazy bastard try to console his broken spirit. Thorpe knew there was nothing in the Atlantic. No creature like that could’ve existed thus far without scientific documentation. Wright wanted to chase windmills, and Thorpe was happy to oblige so long as he got paid.