‘The left buttock actually,’ Wilbur Brown said.
‘And where is the Chinese bug?’
‘We don’t know for sure. Probably the right buttock, but that’s just a guess.’
‘You mean he’s literally talking through his ass?’ the attorney general asked. ‘How long will they go on transmitting, these bugs? ‘Till the next election?’
‘Negative,’ Wilbur Brown replied. ‘All these systems use solar radiation. Subcutaneous insertion, which is what we have here, means that they have to rely on the initial battery charge without any recharge being possible. Realistically I would say that all three bugs must be approaching the end of their useful life.’
‘Let’s be grateful for small mercies,’ Dirk Goddard said.
With Southern courtesy, the attorney general escorted them to his private elevator. ‘Thank you, gentlemen, very much for stopping by today. I’ll be in touch.’
On the way down, Brown asked: ‘Would a criminal conviction under the Logan Act lead to impeachment? Impeachment, as we know from experience, can be a long process and is seldom successful. You have to have a majority vote in the House and a two-thirds vote in the Senate.’
‘A criminal conviction would be enough to force him to step down,’ Hollingsworth replied. ‘But I’m sure there would be a lot of people, Goddard included, who would be ready to launch a formal impeachment process if the president looked as though he wanted to cling to office.’
‘What does all this make us, Bud?’ Wilbur Brown asked. ‘Co-conspirators?’
‘Patriots. It makes us patriots,’ Bud Hollingsworth countered. ‘That wasn’t one of his aides, or potential Cabinet nominees, trying to do a shady deal with the Russians, a deal with immense geopolitical implications. That was the man himself. Negotiating with a foreign power with no authority to do so. If ever there was a time to invoke the Logan Act, this is that time. The man crossed a red line, Wilbur. That’s all there is to it.’
‘What if Craig knew all along he was being bugged?’ Brown asked. ‘Knew we planted one on him ourselves, quite apart from any devices the Russians or the Chinese might have succeeded in installing. He might be testing our loyalty. He really might. And then we would look stupid.’
Hollingsworth laughed. ‘You’re getting carried away by your imagination.’
There was a lengthy pause as they each thought about what had just been said.
Then the two men looked at each other. They weren’t laughing any more.
‘The President could terminate us overnight,’ Hollingsworth said.
‘Overnight?’ Brown countered. ‘You must be joking! He’d fire us without notice or warning of any kind. We’d probably see it on the news first.’
The Director of the FBI shuddered. Deep down, he knew he’d probably handed the election to Ronald Craig, back in the fall of 2016 when, with just days to go, he reopened the inquiry into Caroline Mann’s emails. But that fact by itself wouldn’t necessarily save him. Not with a man as ruthless as Ron Craig. How did the old saying go? No good deed goes unpunished!
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
After all the excitement of that mad dash to Helsinki, Melissa Barnard decided to have a quiet weekend with her daughter, Fiona, and her partner, Michael Kennedy.
The Kennedys lived in a whitewashed fisherman’s house set above the harbour in a small village called Goleen on the South-West Coast of Ireland. On the Saturday before Easter they went to the pub for lunch.
It was a bright, sunny day, warm enough to eat outside. They were sitting there, at the table, while the seagulls swooped overhead, when a motor-boat came round the headland and made for the quay.
They recognized Jack Varese, of course. The whole world could recognize Jack Varese. The young woman with him, Melissa realized, was Rosie Craig.
Melissa rose. ‘Good heavens!’ she exclaimed. ‘Can I introduce myself? I’m Melissa Barnard, Edward Barnard’s wife. This is my daughter, Fiona, and this is her partner, Michael Kennedy. What are you two doing here?’
‘The same as you, I imagine.’ Varese smiled. ‘Looking for a quiet weekend before World War III breaks out. Rosie’s father’s just been firing missiles at Syria, he’s thinking about bombing North Korea and we’re all wondering whether the Russians or the Chinese will retaliate. How’s Edward? I haven’t seen him since he got bitten by a spider in Australia. Has he recovered? Do you mind if we join you?’
‘Things were getting pretty hot in Washington,’ Rosie Craig explained as they sat there in the sun. ‘Quite apart from the geopolitics, I’m in the middle of a turf war with Bert Rumbold, so I said to Jack, “Let’s get the hell out of here”. We just flew over in Jack’s plane and parked it at Shannon. We’re staying at a hotel down the coast. They suggested we pop up here for lunch. Lent us the boat, so here we are!’
What a charming young woman, she was, Melissa thought. Yet there was an inner steel there too, by all accounts. Before coming to Washington, she had run a multi-billion dollar retail empire, and you needed more than a pretty face to do that.
Rosie Craig was fascinated to learn about Michael Kennedy’s work.
‘I grew up here,’ Kennedy explained. ‘Went to Trinity, Dublin, and then worked as an international maritime lawyer in London before coming back to Ireland.’ He waved his hand at the little harbour. ‘With the internet, you can work anywhere nowadays. This is heaven on earth. Mind you, I travel a lot. I’m going to be in Yellowknife next week. We’re trying to push through some new international rules to protect the Arctic. It’s a free-for-all at the moment and as the Arctic opens up with global warming, it’s going to get worse.’
Michael Kennedy couldn’t have found a better audience.
‘I’ve a personal stake in this,’ he told them. ‘Back in 1979, my father died in the Bantry Bay disaster, not far from here. An oil-tanker caught fire and exploded. He was on it. I was a kid at the time. Better rules could have prevented that accident. Forty years on, we still haven’t got the standards we need.’
Jack Varese chipped in. ‘Watch this space,’ he said. ‘Rosie’s going to win her battle back in Washington and a lot of the things you care about are going to happen.’
‘My father will listen to me.’ Rosie Craig replied. ‘I know that. But there are other ways of getting to him too.’
With that cryptic message, the golden couple jumped back into their boat and chuntered back up the coast.
‘Pity Rosie Craig didn’t run for office instead of her dad,’ Michael Kennedy said. He was clearly smitten. They all were.
Melissa followed through on Michael Kennedy’s line of thought.
‘Maybe she will run for office one day,’ she speculated. ‘If the US president for some reason has to stand down, doesn’t the vice-president succeed? That would leave a vacancy. Rosie could step in there as vice-president, then next time round she could stand in her own right. Finally, a woman president!’
‘But why would the president step down?’ Fiona Barnard asked. ‘He’s only just been elected.’
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Mabel Killick, the prime minister, was sitting in her study in Number 10 Downing Street with her two closest aides, Giles Mortimer and Holly Percy. They had moved with her from the Home Office when she succeeded Jeremy Hartley as PM in the aftermath of the Referendum. What an extraordinary turn of events that had been, she reflected. First, David Boles, the justice minister, ruthlessly assassinates his Fellow Leave campaigner, Harry Stokes. Then, he plunges the dagger into his own breast, leaving Andromeda Ledbury as the only possible rival. Well, Mickey Selkirk soon did for Andromeda, the PM reflected. Maybe Andromeda had been too trusting. She had confided some of her most personal thoughts to that clever-clever duo, Molly and Tanya, from Selkirk News, only to see those thoughts splashed across the front page next day!