Chapter 66
“An item has come to my attention, James.” PM Leith’s accent didn’t include the least bit of breeding. Yorkshire. Since when had anyone useful been born of Yorkshire? The next PM would probably be Scottish or, even worse, Welsh with a ridiculously unpronounceable name, at least by civilized people.
“Oh, and what pray tell is that, Prime Minister?” She didn’t even have the wherewithal to scowl at the dropping of her surname in his address.
She tapped a button on her keyboard and the large screen to the side of her desk lit up.
A dozen men in camouflage were hog-tied on the tarmac.
A female group captain was standing over them.
RAF Brize Norton. He’d already been informed that the teams he’d sent in had gone silent. At least now he knew why.
“I have no idea what this is. An exercise?”
“Apparently one in futility.” The PM sighed. She tapped the screen again.
And there, impossibly, was bank documentation of the payoff of the numerous debts of the family estate—by the House of Saud.
They had saved him from being evicted due to his mother’s gambling debts and his own failed investment strategies.
Tens of millions pounds sterling had simply appeared in his accounts.
And they’d asked for so little in return: favorable intervention on BP contracts, a relaxing of criteria for military export sales, and the like.
All of which would probably have been granted through normal channels anyway.
He had simply made it easier—in most cases.
There were a few however, that it would be better if no one ever…
The PM tapped the button once more, and there on the screen was what he’d been promised would never come to light.
She pressed a button on her phone, but said nothing.
The doors behind him swung open, though he couldn’t look away as the PM rose to her feet. She was too tall and brittle to be womanly.
“James Alfred Lloyd III, you are to be tried for high treason. Pending trial, you are removed from your role as Foreign Secretary. You will be held in His Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh without possibility of release.
All of your accounts and assets, both domestic and foreign, are hereby frozen.
Officers,” she looked past his shoulders, “please read him The Caution and get him out of my office.”
He stood numbly as they bound his wrists behind him and informed him of his right to silence.
All he could see was his wife’s and her mum’s faces when they were ejected from their ancestral home.
The estate had come down their matriarchal line since a grant from King Henry IV.
He was the interloper, the one who’d “married up” in the world.
Somewhere he found the words to admit he understood his rights—none.
When they turned him about, the Americans were still there. Four military…officers. He knew the stance on even the plain-clothed one from the time he’d served. And, if he imagined her younger…
“Evandra?” Unlike the PM, she was still lovely. Her long blonde hair gone silver. The men’s suit didn’t mask that she remained slender. Her eyes were still the same bright blue of the spring sky that lit her lovely face.
“Rather than kidnapping and drugging me to find out what I knew, you should have had your men kill me outright, James.”
He nodded. “As always, you are correct. I should have.” Then he glanced at the two officers.
They hadn’t missed that for a second. One whispered the date and time, they must have a recorder running.
Another nail in his already sealed coffin couldn’t matter.
He knew that no secrets survived long around Evandra.
As they led him from the room, he nearly fell over a Sheltie who’d fallen asleep by the door.
He hadn’t known that the PM had a Sheltie, too.
He’d always liked them and saw no reason to hold their origin—or their owners, he risked a glance over his shoulder and saw nothing but sorrow—against the cheery animals.
For his last step of free choice, he circled quietly around the dog so as not to wake her.