The Collector was entirely without mercy, entirely committed to his mission in this world. Eldritch was still human enough to have doubts; the Collector was not. There was no humanity left in him; Eldritch wondered if there ever had been. He suspected that the Collector had simply come into the world that way, and his true nature had become more obvious over time.
How strange, thought Eldritch, that a man should fear one to whom he was so closely bound: a client; a source of income; a protector.
A son.
Eldritch had come down to the basement for two reasons. The first was to check the fusebox: there had been two brief interruptions to the power supply that afternoon, and such occurrences were always a source of concern. There was so much information here, so much knowledge, and although it was well secured, there would always be concerns about potential vulnerabilities. Eldritch opened the box and checked it by the beam of a flashlight, but as far as he could tell all appeared to be well. Tomorrow, though, he would contact Bowden, who took care of such things for him. Eldritch trusted Bowden.
His movements on the basement floor had triggered the next set of overhead lights, illuminating shelf upon shelf of files. Some were so old that he was reluctant even to touch them for fear that they would crumble to dust, but the necessity of reaching for them rarely arose. For the most part, these were the closed cases. Judgement had been passed and they had been found wanting.
Someone had once pointed out to him a distinction, real or imagined, between ‘judgement’ and ‘judgment’, although to the old man it was largely a matter of preference, the former having more heft and substantiality in his view.
‘“Judgment”,’ the man had said, his voice booming in the confines of the parquet-floored Washington hotel room, ‘refers to human justice, but judgement with an ‘‘e’’ refers to the Divine,’ and he had leaned back and smiled in satisfaction, his teeth perfect and white against the flawless ebony beauty of his skin, his hands clasped upon his small belly, hands with so much hidden blood on them that Eldritch was convinced it might well show up under a combination of luminol and ultraviolet light. Before him lay a document detailing allegations of rape, torture, and mass murder, a product of years of investigation by a group of men who were themselves now dead, killed by this man’s agents, and in the fallen leader’s eyes Eldritch could see a similar fate being planned for him.
‘Really?’ Eldritch had replied. ‘That is fascinating, although my understanding is that the King James Bible favors “judgment”.’
‘This is not true,’ said the man, with the unalloyed confidence of the truly ignorant. ‘I tell you this so you will understand: I will not be judged by a human court but by the Lord God, and He will smile upon me for what I was forced to do to His enemies. They were animals. They were bad men.’
‘And women?’ added Eldritch. ‘And children? Were they all bad? How unfortunate for them.’
The man bristled.
‘I told you: I do recognize or accept these allegations. My enemies continue to spread lies about me, to vilify me, but I am not guilty of the accusations made against me. If I were, the International Court of Justice in the Hague would have taken action against me, but it has not. This tells the world that I have no case to answer.’
That was not entirely true. The International Court of Justice was in the process of assembling a dossier on this man, but its progress was being hampered by the ongoing deaths of crucial witnesses, both outside the nation in which he had conducted a genocidal guerilla war for over a decade, and within it, where there were those now in power who had utilized this man and his forces for their own ends, and would have preferred it if the more embarrassing details of the past were forgotten in the rush to embrace something like democracy. Even in the US, there were politicians who had embraced this butcher, this rapist, as an ally in the fight against Islamic terrorists. He was, in every way, an embarrassment and a disgrace: to his allies, to his enemies, and to the entire human race.
‘So you see, Mr Eldritch, I do not understand why you have chosen to believe the lies of these men, and to accept them as clients. What is this, this