Jack Du Brul - Charon's landing

Keith Johnston entered his study that night wearing a dusty suit, for success had not kept him out of the field. He still loved to visit the pumps, machinery, and men that made the oil flow from the south Texas plains. His wife had told him of Max’s suspension, and his mood was foul. Max, a large boy for his age, physically cowered.

“Cheating!” the elder Johnston had screamed. “There is nothing worse than someone who cheats, except someone who cheats for another’s gain, except someone so weak that he grants permission for somebody to rob him. Listen to me, boy, because this is the only time you are ever going to hear this.

“I built this company for you. I lied and cheated and stole to create all of this for you, so you could go on in my footsteps. And now I find my sole reason for working is nothing but a weak, impotent lackey, who gives away what he’s earned. Had you been cheating so you could get a better grade, I would have understood, but you knew the material for the test and gave it away so someone else could get as good a grade as you. You are a disgrace, a ready victim for anyone who comes along. I can’t believe that you are my son.

“We came from nothing, and you goddamned better not drag us back down to nothing or so help me Christ, I’ll kill you myself.” The hatred in the old man’s voice was the worst thing Max had ever heard in his entire life. “You disgust me.”

That was the last day they spoke to each other. Keith Johnston did not attend his son’s graduation from high school or from Texas A amp;M, where Max gave the valedictorian speech. He didn’t go to Max’s wedding, nor after his retirement did he offer congratulations when Max became CEO of the company named for him. The old man was still alive when, under Max’s guidance, Petromax topped one billion dollars in assets; however, he never said a word. The last lines of Keith Johnston’s will, read by an embarrassed family lawyer, cut Max so deeply that he actually fired the man who had been a friend for years.

“Just because I’m gone doesn’t mean I can ever forgive you or forget what you really are. No accomplishment will ever erase the fact that you are weak. Someday it will destroy you and the company you never deserved.”

The bitterness still burned the back of Max Johnston’s throat. He tried to wash it away with Scotch, but the respite was only temporary, for even as the liquor exploded in his belly, his jaw tensed and acrid saliva flooded his mouth.

“You’ll respect me,” Johnston said softly, a defiant plea for the acceptance of a man who could never give it.

Academics hadn’t impressed his father, himself a high school dropout who’d worked since he was twelve. Being at the top of his class in high school and college had not gained Max the praise he so desperately wanted; he should have known that such honors would mean nothing to his father. Max realized his father had been driven by the desire for wealth, not knowledge.

Certainly turning Petromax into a global holding company with far-flung interests and billions of dollars would get to the old man, reclaim the love he needed. Surely a balance sheet of half a billion dollars would get his father’s attention. When the respect did not come, Max turned the company into a one-billion-dollar behemoth. Then two.

When that failed, Max thought about what all that money represented. What was wealth’s purpose? It took him years to finally see what his old man had seen, to understand that the accumulation of wealth was nothing. It was the power that went along with it that was the reason for money’s existence. That was what the old man coveted, that was what the old man respected.

Keith Johnston was a drooling invalid who couldn’t use a bathroom by himself when Max gained his first White House invitation, and the old man had been dead for six years when Max financed his first successful campaign, buying himself a junior congressman for a mere eight million dollars. Even with his father dead, Max single-mindedly pursued those things that he hoped would impress the elder Johnston, gain the credibility and character that his father believed he did not possess. Now the President of the United States regularly consulted with Max about the Middle East and on energy matters, yet still he knew the old man was not impressed.

Power. The ability to control the lives of others with impunity.

Max Johnston was about to gain more power than any human being had possessed since the days of Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler. It wasn’t the scholastic honors gained through late-night studies. It wasn’t the mountains of money made through shrewd financial dealings. Nor was it being courted by politicians more concerned with reelection than actually accepting the responsibility given to them. This is what Keith Johnston had always wanted, the accumulation of so much power that the entire world would take notice. Now is when Max would finally regain the old man’s respect. Everything in his life had been a prelude to this moment. All the learning and all the money boiled down to this ultimate prize, the one thing that would make his father love him again.

It didn’t matter what was left in the wake of what he was about to do. The deaths were meaningless, no matter how many or who. Wars were about to start because of him, nations destroyed, possibly even his own, but when that moment came, when his father finally respected him and the voice late in the night finally fell silent, it would all be worth it.

Johnston hated what he’d become, hated everything about himself, from the urbane sophisticate he presented to the world to the shame-faced sixteen-year-old boy who still lived within him. He’d become the same cold, hate-filled, intractable man who’d dominated his entire life. He’d broken ethical codes, skirted moral ideals, and ignored international laws on this quest, and there was nothing he wouldn’t do now. No boundary was too far for him to cross. Nothing else mattered.

Somehow the glass he’d been gulping from had emptied and he got up to pour himself another, shying away from his mirrored reflection behind the minibar. When he finally did look at himself, staring deeply into his frantic eyes, he saw only shadowless clarity and single-minded purpose.

Max Johnston’s chance to finally lay to rest his personal demons was about to change the face of the earth, lay waste to thousands of square miles of land, and cause the deaths of countless thousands of people. Staring at his reflection, he knew that the price was cheap. He would do anything, achieve any goal or destroy any obstacle, to finally gain the love of a long-dead monster.

Knowing that his daughter was in Alaska, unintentionally in the middle of his personal crusade, Johnston knew even her death would be meaningless if his father finally left him alone.

After everything had returned to normal at the British Museum, the question would still linger as to who reacted first to the sound of gunfire echoing through the marble halls — the women who started to scream as soon as the shots erupted outside the building or the countless bodyguards, secret policemen, and other security professionals who’d been hired for the event. By the time the terrorist missile had destroyed Khalid’s Daimler limousine, the guards were herding their panicked charges toward one of the “Authorized Personnel Only” areas at the back of the building that afforded the easiest defensible exit.

Most of the well-heeled guests, Arab and English alike, had lived under terrorist threats before, whether Islamic extremists or IRA separatists, and many found themselves behaving much more calmly than they had expected. With an orderliness born from acceptance, they allowed the guards to take them to safety. They talked little as they moved in a large group down long marble corridors, passed glass-faced display cases groaning under the weight of precious artifacts and archaeological treasures. Surprisingly, the Arab couples displayed more affection for each other than their English counterparts, taking their spouse’s hands or muttering reassurances as they were hurried by the urgency of armed guards.