by Mike Binder
Richard had been one of the last people left alive whom Gordon cared about. He felt a woozy kind of weak as he left the Cobbler heading south. He tried to drive but couldn’t. This was his fault. There was no one else to blame. He had been played by the same slick version of Satan that had been playing him since he was a child: David Heaton.
He stopped by the side of the narrow East Road, heading down just before it merged back with the Trinston Road leading to M45. He drove the car up onto a small grass embankment, toward a rolling, fenced-off blanket of green, got out, and walked in the crisp fresh air that was laced tightly with the acrid smell of fresh cow dung. He stumbled into the field through an ancient easement gate, trying like hell to keep breathing steadily.
Heaton had murdered Richard. He wasn’t going to stop. Adam. Kate. The kids. Himself. They all would have to go the way of Richard. There was no one to turn to, either. The police? Gordon knew too well the folly of that.
The press? That would be his only option. It would take a beat, though. In the meantime, he’d have to find Kate and Adam before Heaton did. There was no way he would let Heaton harm his Kate. Trudy. Billy, that fantastic little grandson. No, he’d spend the rest of his life in jail first; he decided that then and there in that hay-strewn field in Tewkesbury.
He and Heaton were done. Forever. “Sir David” was now officially down one porch jockey. Gordon drove back to London, carefully putting together a plan.
ON THE RUN ■ 7
They had headed east from Tunbridge Wells and spent the next few days and nights in a small cabin at the far side of a traveler’s lodge just west of an area called Lamberhurst. Adam had used Richard Lyle’s identification to rent one of the units at the back of the property. They left the cabin rarely, only for the kids to play in a run-down common playground, or for Kate and Trudy to drive to a Tesco for supplies. Adam watched the news whenever the kids were outside, trying to keep as close to real time as he could.
There was chatter on all of the cable outlets, all around the world. The press were hanging on even tighter than Adam. Thankfully, there was still no mention of him, the conference, HGI, Heaton, or, worse, “the Michigan radical that tried to kill the governor.” The talk was all politics, terrorism, the health of Lassiter, and who would run the Labour Party in the days ahead.
Inside the press glare, even as the dark drama washed over the airwaves, there were moments of levity that were, of course, lost on Adam. He watched wearily as the world news played and replayed footage of Georgia Turnbull falling asleep in the House of Commons at PMQs as the press heartily enjoyed her quick riposte to the portly opposition leader.
It was the evening of their fourth night at the cabin when it became time to leave. The Daily Mail had the story of Richard’s murder. The killers were said to have escaped in Richard Lyle’s aunt’s 1969 Volvo, of which the paper ran a photo. It wouldn’t be long before someone recognized the antique Volvo in front of the cabin. Adam figured that the powers that be were by now on the trail. For some reason the media had been left to twist in the wind as he was quietly hunted. He knew it wouldn’t be long, and even if the government didn’t make a formal statement, the media horde would put it together soon enough. The connection to the Heaton Global conference and “the nutter from Michigan” would be a new pail of chum for the sharks any hour now. In the meantime, he was checked into the lodge as Richard Lyle, a man who had been recently shot through the head, and was driving an old car being sought by the authorities and the press. They had to leave. Now.
They had nowhere else to go so they headed back, west and north, toward London. The best plan he could muster was to see Beau and Tiffany in Shoreditch.
* * *
ADAM MADE KATE promise not to say a word to Tiffany. The kids wouldn’t because they were embarrassed, he knew that—embarrassed and in shock at the thought that their father may once again be involved in an intense criminal scandal. No, the kids weren’t going to be a problem. It was Kate. She would crack soon. It was only a matter of time before she lost her composure, said something to someone she shouldn’t say. He could feel her, a dam ready to burst.
As they neared London, Adam had a troubling thought: Gordon. He broke an icy spell of silence that had persisted since Lamberhurst.
“Does your father know where Beau and Tiffany live? Does he know anything about them?”
“No. Why would he?”
“I don’t know. Have you ever mentioned them to him? I need to know if he knows anything about Beauregard, about us having friends in Shoreditch. I don’t want to be surprised again by Heaton’s thugs.” What he really wanted to say was that he didn’t want to get Beauregard and his family killed.
“No, my father doesn’t know about them. I’ve never breathed a word to him about them.”
“How do you know? How can you be so sure?” She took a moment, then finally spoke, as if telling a truth on herself she hadn’t intended on sharing.
“Because I didn’t tell him on purpose, from the beginning, when we made friends in Michigan.”
He turned to his wife. She sat in severe rigidity. Her skin was tight, her jawline hard. She was bracing herself, preparing to put the ice wall back up, yet still trying to stay in the moment with him, trying to be there for all of them as they drove into a chapter of their lives that had nothing good to offer.
“I didn’t want him to be jealous that I had made friends with people from home. I know that sounds stupid, but you need to remember how wounded he was that I wasn’t coming back to Britain, that I was firm set on living in America forever.”
“He could have easily hopped on a plane, you know. All those years, it wasn’t all on us. Other people do it all the time, visit family far away.” Kate nodded. It wasn’t a debate she wished to pursue. Whatever had gone wrong between her father and her had happened too long ago, and too far away. Gordon’s actions in the present were enough to upset her for a lifetime; she couldn’t be bothered with what did or didn’t happen almost twenty years ago.
* * *
ADAM AND KATE and the kids dropped in unannounced at the McCalisters’ flat at around eleven p.m. Beau and Tiffany were, to say the least, shocked. In the age of smartphones, people don’t just surprise one another, and certainly not whole families. Adam quietly pulled Beau aside and explained that there was trouble, that they needed a place to stay until he could sort things out. Beau didn’t blink; Tiffany wasn’t the least bit fazed, either. She just turned and headed toward a closet full of spare sheets and blankets.
Within minutes the Tatums had taken over the guest room. The kids would sleep on the floor in sleeping bags; Adam and Kate would have the lumpy oversized spare bed. Beau and Tiff quietly checked in with each other when they were first briefly alone. It was fine. They both assumed that Adam had lost his job. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Beau wondered if the bombing had something to do with their stricken visitors. Perhaps, he thought, the unexpected event had crimped Heaton Global’s business model, which would then have adversely affected Adam. In no way could Beauregard imagine the real reason the Tatum family was on their own, lost, slightly disheveled, knocking on the door of his seventh-floor flat in the middle of the night.
Adam suggested that he and Beau take a ride around the city. He needed some time to unload and strategize. He spoke in short, clipped, grim clouds of speech, his voice for some reason slower and an octave lower than Beau remembered it being. Of course he said yes. It was obvious that Adam was in the middle of something profound. Who could say no to a friend in a moment like this?
When they got to the curb, Adam walked over to the old brown beat-up Volvo.
“Where the hell did you get this one, Adam? It’s got to be thirty years since it’s had a car wash.”
“It belonged to Kate’s old boyfriend. We had to borrow it. Can you follow me for a while in your car? I need to get rid of this and then I can’t walk back or take a bus or the Tube. Too many cameras.”
“Too many cameras?
… I don’t get it. What are you afraid of?”
“I’m afraid of everything.”
“What’s going on, Adam?”
“I’m gonna tell you. I just need to get rid of this car first. Can you follow me?” Beau thought quickly and nodded yes. He wasn’t sure how many more yeses he could offer, but he got his car from the building garage and followed Adam in the old Volvo out into the London night.
They drove through Shoreditch and snaked their way down toward the river on Brick Lane into Osborn Street, taking every turn as if Adam knew precisely where they were going, but he didn’t have a clue. He just drove, wanting to put as much distance between Beau’s house and the car when he dumped it, but without going too far away, not wanting to be spotted or stopped on a long ride back. Beau played along, following in his car. He wanted to ring Adam on his mobile but knew Adam had “lost” his phone, so he put up with the wild, curious drive for as long as it would last.
When they hit Wapping Gardens, a block or two north of the river, Adam ducked into the parking lot of a block of council flats and found an empty spot. He waited for Beau to pull in, got out, and jumped into the passenger side of Beau’s car. There was nothing to take: what luggage and supplies they had, along with Richard’s father’s shotgun and pistol, were all hidden in the guest room back at the McCalisters’ flat. Adam even left the key in the ignition.
“Go. Quick. Take off.” Beau looked at him and wasn’t sure for a second that this wasn’t a put-on. Adam locked weary eyes with Beau and told him with a look that there was no punch line coming.
“Drive, Beau. Please, let’s go.” Beau pulled out. Adam burrowed low into the depths of the bucket seat. The streetlights came and went; the car interior flickered between piercing brightness and calming dark, surfing from one pool of light to the next as they drove away from the Thames.
“What is it, Adam? Tell me what’s going on.” They barreled ahead, taking one short turn after another, slithering through the empty city streets. Sometime later, about halfway to Shoreditch, Adam told Beau the whole sordid tale, beat for beat, the unvarnished truth. He had nothing to hide; there was no reason to leave anything out, so he didn’t.
ON THE HUNT ■ 7
The BBC ran an hour-long special on the life of Georgia Turnbull, a what-if on the woman who very well may become the next prime minister. A week and a day had passed since the explosion and the press had no choice but to focus on a presumptive successor. Georgia was clearly the most attractive. The inevitable comparisons were slapped into place to underline her Thatcheresque humble origins, right down to the shopkeeper father and the stern, steady rise to power. Much was made about the way she would rule, with whom she would govern, and even who would rue the day she came to power. It was sensational, tawdry, speculative, and completely compelling.
Steel watched from her family’s flat in Bloomsbury with her parents. She tried her best to be blasé. She wanted so badly to tell her mother how well she thought she knew “Georgia”; how strong she felt the bond between them had grown; and, yes, how madly in love she thought she had fallen. She said nothing. She watched coolly, playing the part of a detached co-worker who had no real opinion one way or the other on the famous woman being profiled.
It was later, alone in her bed, in the dark, while she thought of gently kissing the chancellor’s naked body, her head arched back deep into her pillow, when she finally let her face show how truly enthralled she was with all things Georgia Turnbull.
* * *
THE NEXT MORNING Davina woke early and drove down to the Kensington Palace Gardens to wait for Heaton. She stood stoically beside a patrol car, her hat off, her short fine hair blowing in the wind, as Heaton’s driver pulled out on the way to Number 10. If she wasn’t going to be included in the discussion among Heaton, Turnbull, Darling, and the home secretary, she wanted some shelf space inside his mind. She wanted him to know that she would be there when it came time to arrest him, when it came time to put him into the pit at the end of this ordeal, when she finally placed the last piece of the puzzle and saw the unmistakable figure of a man who had betrayed his country.
She followed closely in traffic as Harris steered the way through Knightsbridge, down the back of Belgravia, behind Buckingham Palace to the Birdcage Walk, and finally onto Whitehall. Any chance she could, she’d have her patrolman driver pull up next to them, and she’d sweetly half smile at Heaton and nod as he proudly nodded back. He was so clever, so calm, so confident that this would end well for him. She needed him to know that it wouldn’t. True, it didn’t seem to faze him, his grin as cocksure as ever, but she knew it made a dent. He would fold, Heaton. He would crumple one day soon. She was convinced of it.
She chuckled to herself at the last traffic light when she saw Peet in the passenger seat up front and realized his shoulder was bound tight in a sling. He had taken a bullet, she had no doubt. Tatum had scored a hit. She couldn’t help but feel a devious sense of joy. When Harris turned the freshly washed Mercedes onto Whitehall and then quickly onto Downing Street, Steel and her patrolman slogged on up along the bottom of the busy boulevard. She had done what she needed to do. The rest was in the capable hands of her lovely partner Ms. Georgia Turnbull.
* * *
“I’M TELLING YOU, Georgia, we are all sick about this. Everyone at Heaton Global, from myself on down. It’s a heartbreaker is what it is.” Heaton’s cologne was stronger than Georgia had ever noticed it to be before. She had known him for years, even went out on a few unmemorable dates in the late nineties, and had always been aware of his propensity to wear too much cologne, but this was a lot, even for Heaton. She couldn’t help but wonder if it were because he was nervous, if the thought of this “sit-down” had gotten under his skin.
“We hired this man as a courtesy to my oldest friend in the world, Gordon Thompson, after his son-in-law had had some legal trouble in Michigan, and I had little idea, by the way, what that entailed. He subsequently went to work for our Chicago office. At best reports he did well there, and somehow or another Thompson got him along on this delegation we took here. Again, I didn’t know the man, had never set eyes on him until a few days before the final conference.” Heaton felt the weight of uncertainty in the room, the pressure to force some version of the truth about Tatum, about Heaton’s connection to him.
“Georgia, ask yourself, how well do you remember the man in that meeting?”
“Not at all. I don’t recall him saying a word.”
“That’s because he didn’t. Nor to me, before or after. To this day here, I still have no idea how he got anything in or was able to leave anything behind.”
Darling had the answer at the ready. “It was inside a large notebook that was left behind and placed in the cupboard—the dossier that you had instructed Lassiter to look over personally.”
“Before I could get to it,” Georgia added. All eyes were watching Heaton as closely as humanly possible, hoping for a telltale sign of inconsistency, a hint of deviousness or deception. Heaton remained calm, steadfast in his own victimization in the matter.
“You must believe that we were all floored when this came out, of his past, of his complicity in this, of these threats he had made toward Roland on the Internet. It just defies logic how this could be the truth. No one who worked with him at the company has anything at all to report in terms of untoward behavior, deviancy, or the slightest hint of aggression. Nothing. By all reports that we have put together, he was a very, very personable man. Quite charming in fact. Yes, he had been in some trouble in Michigan, but somehow or other, which we can only blame on his father-in-law, he had been able to hide the full nature of his legal transgression from the Chicago human resources people when Thompson first got him his interview.”
“So you’re saying that Gordon Thompson was able to get him in under the wire in terms of a background check?”
“Yes. Sadly, that is what I am saying. HGI is a very large company. Too large, maybe, it now seems.” Georgia list
ened as Heaton spoke, leaned back on the couch, and tried her best to take it all in.
“So you’re thinking that the father-in-law conspired? Is involved in the bombing? In whatever is behind this?”
“And where is this Thompson now?” Darling wanted to know.
“He’s been up at my farm. Outside Worcestershire. He’s supposed to be back in London today. We’ll be doing an inquiry ourselves after we’ve made him available to your people to question. That takes place at one p.m. at Scotland Yard.” Georgia looked over to Darling for confirmation. Darling agreed, the meeting was set, but he seemed troubled. None of this seemed to sit well with the grizzled Darling.
“And tell us again, David. Why had you asked Mr. Lassiter to look into the brief? What was it that you wanted him to see before Georgia got to it?”
“That was merely business, Major Darling. We had spent three years on a deal to more or less privatize a financial service system that has done nothing but given its members short shrift in terms of retirement packages. I just wanted Roland’s help in putting the whole thing to bed. You see that, don’t you?”
Darling answered halfheartedly. “No, actually, I don’t entirely. What is it that you wanted Roland’s help with?” Heaton took the query in, actually chuckled slightly.
“Well, I hate to say it like this, but I needed him to help me sell Georgia. She’s a tough one to get over and was the final hurdle. No one could work the good chancellor over quite like Roland. I begged him to put his back into it, so to speak.”
Darling followed the answer with another nod, yet still, for some reason, didn’t quite see it as true.
Something seemed off to Burnlee as well. His face gave it away. The home secretary, twenty years older than Heaton, Turnbull, and Darling, had known Heaton’s father and his uncle, both members of Parliament in their day. In fact, the uncle, Edmund Heaton, had once held Burnlee’s title. He was a wary watcher, Burnlee, and didn’t say much in moments like these. He let others do the talking so that he could hear between the banter. His way had always been to listen to the larger tone of the room and not the short bursts of words that were thrown fast and loose around this storied building. His stony silence hinted at his suspicions. Heaton was lying. Burnlee had no doubt.