he had become a billionaire in the decade since their relationship.
What an amazing three hours they had passed together, every moment now seared into her memory. His stateroom had been a marvel. He had filled the salon with his favorite treasures, million-dollar paintings, sculpture, rare antiquities. He had been particularly excited about a Tibetan painting he had just acquired—apparently not twenty-four hours earlier—and in his initial flush of excitement and pride he’d taken it out of its box and unrolled it for her on the floor of the salon. She had stared at it, thunderstruck, astounded, speechless, falling to her hands and knees to see it closer, to trace with her eyes and fingers every infinite fractal detail of it. It drew her in, exploded her mind. And as she had stared—mesmerized, almost swooning—he had pulled her skirt up over her hips, torn away her panties, and, like a mad stallion, mounted her. It had been the kind of sex that she’d never experienced before and would never forget; even the smallest detail, the tiniest drop of sweat, the softest moan, every grasp and thrust of flesh into flesh. Just thinking of it made her tingle with fresh passion.
Too bad it would never happen again.
Because afterwards, Blackburn had rolled up the magical painting, returned it to its box. Still aglow with the flush of their coupling, she had asked him not to; asked him to let her gaze upon it again. He’d turned, no doubt seen the hunger in her expression. Instantly, his eyes had narrowed to jealous, possessive little points. He’d jeered, said that she’d seen it once and didn’t need to see it again. And then—as quickly as lust had swept over her—a dark, consuming anger filled her. They had screamed at each other with an intensity she never knew she was capable of. The speed with which her emotions whipsawed had been as shocking as it had been exhilarating. And then Blackburn had ordered her to leave. No—she would never speak to him again, never gaze upon the painting again.
And then came the supreme irony. Their shouting had provoked the passenger in the next cabin to complain. She had been seen leaving the triplex. Someone reported her. And that had been an opportunity Cutter couldn’t miss. He had humiliated her on the bridge, in front of all the deck officers. She had no doubt it had already gone into her file and would be reported back to the company.
Many of the officers and crew, even the married ones, had sexual liaisons on board; it was so easy, like shooting fish in a barrel. They never seemed to get reported—because they were men. Men were expected to do this sort of thing, discreetly and on their own time, just as she had done. But it was different for a woman . . . or so company culture seemed to say.
Her career was over. All she could hope for now was the command of a middling-size cruise ship, one of the shabbier ones that tooled aimlessly around the Mediterranean or the Caribbean, stuffed with fat, white, middle- class seniors on a floating excursion of eating and shopping. Never seeing blue water, running from every storm.
. What better way to exact revenge than to take his ship from him, rip its guts out, and send it to the bottom of the Atlantic?
58
FOR SEVERAL MINUTES, CONSTANCE WATCHED AS PENDERGAST paced back and forth across the living room of the Tudor Suite. Once he paused as if to speak, but he merely began pacing again. At last, he turned to her. “You accuse me of selfish behavior. Of wishing to save myself at the expense of others on board the
He fell silent again, waiting for an answer, the light of amusement lurking in his eyes. This was the last thing Constance had expected to hear.
“I asked you a question,” Pendergast went on, when she didn’t answer. “Who among the vulgar, greedy, vile crowd on board this ship do you deem worthy of being saved?”
Still, Constance said nothing.
After a moment, Pendergast scoffed. “You see? You have no reply—because there is no reply.”
“That’s not true,” Constance said.
“Truth? You’re fooling yourself.
He spread his hands as if the answer was obvious.
Constance looked at him in confusion. What he was saying did strike her as true. She had been repulsed by the bourgeois airs and pork-belly gentility of most of the passengers she’d met. And she was shocked and outraged by the brutal working and living conditions of the crew. Some of the things Pendergast was saying rang an uncomfortable chord in her, arousing and reinforcing her own long-held misanthropic impulses.
“No, Constance,” Pendergast went on. “The only two people worth saving are ourselves.”
She shook her head. “You’re referring to the passengers. What about the crew and staff? They’re just trying to make a living. Do they deserve to die?”
Pendergast waved his hand. “And they, for their part, are expendable drones, part of the great sea of working- class humanity that comes and goes from the shores of the world like the tide on the beach, leaving no mark.”
“You can’t mean that. Humanity is everything to you. You’ve spent your whole life trying to save the lives of others.”
“Then I’ve wasted my life on a useless, even frivolous, endeavor. The one thing my brother Diogenes and I always agreed on was there could be no more odious a discipline than anthropology: imagine, devoting one’s life to the study of one’s fellow man.” He picked up Brock’s monograph from the table, flipped through it, handed it to Constance. “Look at this.”
Constance glanced at the open page. It contained a black-and-white reproduction of an oil painting: a young, ravishing angel bending over a perplexed-looking man, guiding his hand over a manuscript page.
“
,” he said. “Do you know it?”
She glanced at him, puzzled. “Yes.”
“Then you know there were few images on this earth more sublime. Or more beautiful. Look at the expression of intense effort on Matthew’s face—as if every word of the Gospel he’s writing was struggling up from the very fiber of his being. And compare it to the languid approach of the angel assisting him—the way the head lolls; the
