was eradicated in a daily dose of fire and pain, Richard focused on each step, just as he had done in business. Get through the session. Put on the narcotic patch. Work on producing saliva. Rest. Repeat. Accept that the feeding tube inserted into a cut in his side and strapped to his shoulder was an experience, not a weakness. How many men had poured high-caloric cocktails directly into their stomachs? He focused on the fact that the feeding tube was allowing his throat to heal. Besides, the concurrent chemotherapy made even the thought of solid intake nauseating.
When he had beaten the disease, he found that his taste buds had essentially ceased to function and he wasnât able to put on much of the thirty-odd pounds he had lost. But that was the price of victory. And he had won. If necessary, he would win again. That was what Richard Hawke did.
The Agusta A109 twin-engine helicopter was ready to take off when he arrived. It was gleaming white, with the blue silhouette of a hawk in flight on both sides. Hawke climbed into the private passenger cabin. He selected one of the five big, white leather seats on the port side and looked out the large rectangular window as the helicopter rose over the Hudson River. He looked down at the thick traffic on the West Side Highway. He felt good not having to be a part of that madness. He had risen above it literally and figuratively, by the efforts of his mind and will. He looked at Manhattan as he rose to the equal of his tower and then the larger buildings. He had succeeded in one of the toughest markets society had ever birthed, a city that crushed more ambition every minute of every day than any anvil in human history. That was a source of unending pride. And then to beat cancer as wellâ
It wasnât enough.
He had realized that when he returned from Germany after receiving his last treatment. He flew home, to his triplex apartment on 57th Street, over this city, over his city, and knew he needed more. He had always thought like a teenager trying to get out of Hellâs Kitchen. He had matched the achievements of the greatest entrepreneurs from Andrew Carnegie to Steve Jobs. But that was like being at the top of the historic âB list.â He had impacted culture but not the course of civilization. During his recuperation, Hawke read biographies of men like Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Lenin, and Mao Zedong. These men were like the treatments he had received in Germany: they cut out every sickness, every impediment to their vision. As with radiation and chemotherapy, that process was not gentle or sentimental.
And it doesnât always work, he thought. The mortality rate among stage four oral cancer victims was less than forty percent. The mortality rate among despots was even higher. But the theory was sound: big problems require powerful, targeted solutions. Lying in the clinic in Bad Mergentheim, he reasoned that there had to be a better way to impact the course of history, especially for a man with his resources.
He believed he had found that.
The helicopter reached JFK International in under ten minutes. Within a half hour of leaving his office Richard Hawke was on his jet. The sleek white aircraft had a Concorde-like design, improved for speed and silence with two small forward wings and rear diagonal struts that ran from the top of the tail to the rear center of the swept-back wings. He would be on his yacht off Saint Martin in less than two hours. He wanted to be away from the office, away from the United States for a while. He did not want to hear the melodramatic whining of newscasters and colleagues as events expanded and intersected and became something that even the visionaries or the tyrants had never imagined.
Sausalito, California
Jack Hatfield slept poorly.
What clung to his nostrils and ears, eyes and mind, was the carnage he had witnessed at the destruction of the Chinese clinic.
Jack had stayed at the bombsite until well after midnight. He
When he had beaten the disease, he found that his taste buds had essentially ceased to function and he wasnât able to put on much of the thirty-odd pounds he had lost. But that was the price of victory. And he had won. If necessary, he would win again. That was what Richard Hawke did.
The Agusta A109 twin-engine helicopter was ready to take off when he arrived. It was gleaming white, with the blue silhouette of a hawk in flight on both sides. Hawke climbed into the private passenger cabin. He selected one of the five big, white leather seats on the port side and looked out the large rectangular window as the helicopter rose over the Hudson River. He looked down at the thick traffic on the West Side Highway. He felt good not having to be a part of that madness. He had risen above it literally and figuratively, by the efforts of his mind and will. He looked at Manhattan as he rose to the equal of his tower and then the larger buildings. He had succeeded in one of the toughest markets society had ever birthed, a city that crushed more ambition every minute of every day than any anvil in human history. That was a source of unending pride. And then to beat cancer as wellâ
It wasnât enough.
He had realized that when he returned from Germany after receiving his last treatment. He flew home, to his triplex apartment on 57th Street, over this city, over his city, and knew he needed more. He had always thought like a teenager trying to get out of Hellâs Kitchen. He had matched the achievements of the greatest entrepreneurs from Andrew Carnegie to Steve Jobs. But that was like being at the top of the historic âB list.â He had impacted culture but not the course of civilization. During his recuperation, Hawke read biographies of men like Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Lenin, and Mao Zedong. These men were like the treatments he had received in Germany: they cut out every sickness, every impediment to their vision. As with radiation and chemotherapy, that process was not gentle or sentimental.
And it doesnât always work, he thought. The mortality rate among stage four oral cancer victims was less than forty percent. The mortality rate among despots was even higher. But the theory was sound: big problems require powerful, targeted solutions. Lying in the clinic in Bad Mergentheim, he reasoned that there had to be a better way to impact the course of history, especially for a man with his resources.
He believed he had found that.
The helicopter reached JFK International in under ten minutes. Within a half hour of leaving his office Richard Hawke was on his jet. The sleek white aircraft had a Concorde-like design, improved for speed and silence with two small forward wings and rear diagonal struts that ran from the top of the tail to the rear center of the swept-back wings. He would be on his yacht off Saint Martin in less than two hours. He wanted to be away from the office, away from the United States for a while. He did not want to hear the melodramatic whining of newscasters and colleagues as events expanded and intersected and became something that even the visionaries or the tyrants had never imagined.
Sausalito, California
Jack Hatfield slept poorly.
What clung to his nostrils and ears, eyes and mind, was the carnage he had witnessed at the destruction of the Chinese clinic.
Jack had stayed at the bombsite until well after midnight. He
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