“Really?” asked Michael.
“That’s Sir Humphrey Litchfield. He was one of Elizabeth the First’s famous Seadogs,” she briefed him.
“Christ, you really do know everything about Litchfield!” replied an impressed Michael with a smile at the extent of her knowledge covering his family history.
“That’s a little harsh Elizabeth, I have never traded slaves!” a voice behind them said with a chuckle as he joined them.
“You must be David,” Thomas said, dressed like Michael in a tailored white dinner jacket and black trousers, offering his hand
Taking his hand with a firm handshake, Michael confirmed his cover identity.
“I trust everybody is looking after you?” Thomas enquired as he did earlier with Rebecca.
“Very much so, Sir Thomas, and thank you for inviting us this evening,” replied the diplomat despite his hidden agenda.
“You’re most welcome and thank you very much for your assistance,” Thomas responded in turn in reference to his and Rebecca’s meeting this afternoon as Nara wearing a stunning couture Chanel dress joined him at his side.
“Madam Gurbanammedowova, I am Elizabeth,” Rebecca said offering her hand seizing the initiative to introduce herself to the woman who shared Thomas’s life.
“I am impressed, Elizabeth, most people have no idea how to pronounce my name,” Nara replied smiling, taking Rebecca’s hand who in turn was also assessing the attractive mature woman in front of her.
Thomas looked on with a quizzical eye.
“There were very few women in the world who can hold a candle visually to Nara in looks. Rebecca, although a polar opposite, is one of them,” he concluded as Rebecca informed Nara in fluent Russian with a hint of a French accent that was because she was once attached to the British Embassy in Moscow.
“Your Russian is perfect!” an impressed Nara said with a sparkle in her eyes.
“With a St. Petersburg accent as well!” injected an equally impressed Thomas as if a complement in reference to the fact that her accent with its French undertones sounded like the highborn society women of the early twentieth century from that city.
“A lady of many talents,” Nara implied, now eyeing up the woman copiously considering her as a possible rival after seeing the light in her Thomas’s eyes as he looked down at the woman while she introduced herself to her companion.
It was something that hadn’t been lost on Michael either as they wandered out towards the lawns of the house at the back, having had their introductions curtailed by Nara spotting one of her friends behind them, dragging Thomas off to say hello to them.
“I see he likes you, Elizabeth! Are you sure you two never met in Moscow?” he asked ever the intelligence officer, knowing they were both there at the same time.
She turned her head ever so slightly towards Michael. “His eyes just like to wander!” she answered, attempting to deflect him.
Michael smirked as if not quite believing her as yet another member of staff asked for their names so he could show them to their table for the night.
“My eyes wouldn’t wander if I had that firecracker in my life!” He muttered in reference to Nara’s beauty as they followed the young man to their table.
“Michael! What would your wife say,” mocked Rebecca.
“Where did he find her?” he asked intrigued whist ignoring the quip.
“The legend goes he bought her off a pimp in Turkmenistan!” answered Rebecca quietly as they walked down the path of the gardens.
“Really!” he answered in genuine shock.
“So he is a slave trader then,” he joked as he took onboard her response.
Rebecca smiled back at Michael’s joke but didn’t say a word.
“He certainly doesn’t play by the rules of society!” she thought knowing the details behind the legend of how the beautiful woman entered his life having researched him. The psychoanalyst report made reference to the particular moments and decisions in his life appeared to follow a form of Homeric views.
Not knowing what the analyst meant by Homeric she had looked it up and agreed instantly with his synopsis. It was why she used the Greek legends during their conversation at the Connaught.
“Everything he undertakes in his professional and personal life appears to have reason, intelligence, worldliness, secularism, courage, honor, integrity, and restraint,” the analyst had concluded. Rebecca though recognized something else. That being, because Thomas was bound to act in a particular way and to live up to his nature and not shirk from it. More specifically he had a strong inner and outer strength to achieve it. This meant once you put them all together then it was fair to assume that Thomas certainly didn’t feel the need to conform to the defined laws of society or even feel the need to be bound to it and as such in the future, this might represent a threat if on the other side,
The saving of the beautiful woman at his side was pure consequence of those views. The romantic in Rebecca saw him as a throwback to a warrior king from the stories of ancient Charlemagne. Yet from a national security viewpoint Thomas represented a dangerous threat to the national security and to the way of life she had sworn to protect if Britain’s interests ran contrary to his own, such was his influence and power.
For now though, he was an ally in her quest. At their table Rebecca and Michael found the dashing Angus and his wife, Anne, the rather young looking new Russian Ambassador to Adwalland known as Vitkor Vladimirovich Karpin, and his wife Olga.
Introductions out of the way, the dinner started with a routine by a famous wit from British Television and a contemporary of Thomas’s from Oxford as the host of the night promptly followed by a short speech by Thomas.
With the first courses delivered as the first band of the night started the entertainment, all the parties made a toast with the excellent Penat-Chardonnet Grande Reserve Grande Cru.
His speech finished, Thomas quickly left the stage and made his way to his table, stopping to shake a few hands along the way in the process with the Minister of Business, the local MP and his wife, who made sure the society photographer got a photo of her kissing his cheek.
Arriving at the table, Thomas apologized for getting caught up. Luckily everybody had started without him as Nara told everybody not to wait, knowing from experience he would most likely get waylaid.
Going around the table, Thomas hugged the Russian Ambassador to the United Kingdom, then Steve Krivets followed by a handshake with his long term friend and fellow National Champion, Valeri Aleksandr Berezutskiy, before finally their particular wives with kisses on the cheeks, and in Steve’s case his girlfriend Danielle. It did not go unnoticed by Nara that the girl had stroked Thomas’s side rather too suggestively for her taste.
“Little Jelep!” she thought in disgust.
As they picked up their glasses for their private first toast, Elena a beautiful young former ballerina from the Bolshoi, whom Valeri had acquired as a second wife, commented on the champagne.
“Nara, this champagne is like fresh, crisp green apples in my mouth it is so complex, where did you get it from?” she asked with her piercing blue eyes.
Knowing her young friend had a penchant for following them, having taken her under wing when she moved to London with Valeri, Nara replied.
“You can’t buy it, Elena, because we own the entire vintage.”
“The entire vintage!” cried Steve impressed. He didn’t think that was possible.
Stepping in to cut short the discussion as Thomas hated it when Nara went into one of her ‘One-upmanship’ modes, despite understanding that it was part of her make-up, due to having nothing before he entered her life and a general affliction of his National Champion colleagues, including Valeri who had just brought his own Premier League team, he interjected.