Lastly, though, on this part of his plan he couldn’t be sure that there wasn’t a guarantee that anybody was listening, he was sending a signal to the Mayor that the ball was in play, thereby putting in place his survival goal of his plan.
His mind reflected on that last part of the plan for a few moments.
“Yes,” he concluded. “It may be speculative to assume that SVR was monitoring all my communications just as it would be to assume that the National Security Organizations of the United States had been monitoring those calls but assume otherwise would be stupid.”
So much so, it was something he shared with Steve. They had both taken their batteries out of their phones and placed them on the table before they started their update.
“One thing life’s taught me,” Thomas said as he opened up the back of the phone. “The day you stop attempting to work out what would the other side was going to do in their situation would either be your last day on earth or it will end up costing you money.”
Steve laughed and then said, “One thing Snowden’s affair has shown the world was that with the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act allowing for the sharing of Internet traffic information between the U.S. government and technology and manufacturing companies it would be foolish not to assume that from the moment I called Joe McGiven, if not before, then all our communications together are going to be recorded and reviewed. So don’t worry, I am on the same page, old buddy.”
Thomas smiled at his friend. “Excellent Stevie! Welcome to the great game,” he said, offering him a toast in response.
“Hell, Tommy,” Steve replied as he picked up his drink. “If I pull this off I might even have a run at the Presidency myself one day!” he said, his ego rising to the surface as he tapped Thomas’s sake shot with his own.
“Indeed,” answered Thomas before he started to brief him on the next parts of the plan over the coming weeks.
He thought, “I might have guessed an Ambassadorship wouldn’t cut it for the famous Steve Krivets!” in reference to the question he asked as he presented his idea.
Moments later, with heads turning in their direction from restaurant, scores of celebrity watchers of London, the ‘jailbait’ looking Daniele and his stunning life’s companion walked back to join them.
“Stevie if you’re really serious about being President one day you’re certainly going have to give up ‘pursuits’ like that!” said Thomas in his best sage-like voice laced with a little humor.
“Yeah I know, buddy, but just not yet!” he laughed while offering his friend another toast.
Returning to the table, having changed places with Daniele so she could sit next him, Nara took his hand and he instantly responded with a little squeeze of his own, his signal he had finished his business for the evening.
Allowing normal conversation to resume until the meal ended with both Titans having a mock fight as who paid the bill. The honor fell to Steve.
“Keep in touch,” he said to Steve as they hugged each other.
“I will, buddy,” Steve responded as they left the restaurant together, but not before each man’s various protection teams took up their anti-threat positions, to allow their charges to get into their various limos as the blinding wall of light from the awaiting paparazzi lit up the night again.
Awake, having looked at the clock by the side of the bed and seeing that it was seven o’clock, Thomas quickly realized that he had only three hours sleep. Getting up, despite his body telling him not to, as he had a meeting at ten with the Prime Minister, he slid quietly from beneath the linen sheets trying hard not to disturb the sleeping Nara knowing she was not due to fly to Nice until midday.
Glancing over at her face, he took a moment to reflect on the night before. An intense bout of lovemaking had taken place after getting home from the restaurant. Demanding and passionate, it reminded him of their time in Venice when they created Victoria together.
They hadn’t wasted any time on their return home, once inside their bedroom, tearing at the dress like a possessed man, wasting the thirty thousand U.S. dollars in the process but not caring as he made love to Nara.
The rest of the night was as just as frenzied and passionate while they attacked each other. On and on, it went with him exploding each time as his beautiful wild love controlled him.
“Yep,” he told himself as he shook his head with a broad smile. “I am a blessed man!” He caressed her long hair gently.
Leaving their bed quietly, he slipped through the dressing room straight on through to the bathroom; automatically the lights came on as the sensors picked up on his body movement. Reaching the sink, he grabbed the can of shaving gel, stretched, turned on the tap, lathered up his face, and started to shave. As he did so, he thought about his imminent meeting with the Prime Minister.
Ruminating that it is never the easiest of jobs leading a coalition, Thomas concluded it was because PM always ended up sounding like he was delivering a sound bite from a PowerPoint presentation and also, in no small part, due to the fact he was a product of a privileged education having gone to Eton and Oxford, that the PM struggled in presenting himself as a man of the people.
Each time he did he just ended up sounding like a British First World War officer ordering his men over the top of the trenches and then onto their deaths.
It was the Mayor who ensured Thomas used the first part of his conclusion to their mutual benefit having told him the KGB had tried to recruit him once when he was nineteen on a visit to the Soviet Union knowing he was from the political elite of England and on his way to Oxford. That attempt ultimately failed because he wasn’t a traitor in the traditional sense of the word.
When the Mayor became President, he chose to use his National Champions allies in England to cultivate him this time by using commerce and political self-interest as the tools of choice.
“Almost like Satan in John Milton’s Paradise Lost,” Thomas suddenly thought chuckling to himself as the razor glided over his chin.
Ambitious, principled, driven, not to mention a family man, the Mayor had told Thomas over a dinner that he actually quite liked him before ordering him to help him through his media interests.
Following his instructions to the letter Thomas proceeded to do just that in subtle ways until the man finally sat in front of him in the China Tang’s Private Room located in the famous Dorchester Hotel as the Leader of the Opposition.
Described as the “Leader in Waiting,” it hadn’t taken much for him to make a deal with him over his media’s support for the next four years leading up to the General Election: just the promise that TLH agenda received full access to his ministers and support from him whenever they requested it.
“You have to hand it to the Mayor. He was right, the National Champions are the best recruitment team of the Special Services of Russia!” he sadly concluded looking at himself in the mirror.
His second country’s interests were now well and truly established in his first country’s institutions of the City and Whitehall, that was something the Soviet Union never achieved in it is eighty years of existence despite the nest of assets they had in the security services and civil service, and reinforced by the fact that for the first time since the Special Relationship had begun Britain hadn’t followed the U.S. into a conflict by the way the PM had allowed the MPs of his party to vote against Syria.