Katherine was adorned in a red Nancy Reagan dress, her white hair done in a sprayed and brittle- looking perm. She looked like a once-beautiful, dried-up Palm Beach matriarch, which was exactly what she was. Her son was dressed like a senator: dark chalk-stripe suit, dark Florsheims, white shirt with gold and cobalt blue presidential cuff links given to him by G.W. himself to commemorate his Senate appointment, and a burgundy and silver Phillips Exeter Academy Alumni tie.
"There's nothing to discuss, Richard. The immigration bill is key to your election."
"The Latino vote in California was one of the keys to Obama being elected; I'll lose it if I vote for a bill that requires all Mexicans to register with Homeland Security and carry a special photo ID card. It's like putting yellow stars on Jews."
"It will play in every state in the union except California. It will win you back all the Bush states that Mc-Cain lost. It will also show that you can stand firm for the principles that made this country what it is."
"Your principles, Mother."
"Who cares whose principles they are? They've worked in the past and they'll work now. The country's a mess; you can clean it up and the first step is to throw out the trash."
"It won't do too much for my status in the party," said the handsome forty-something senator. He took a bite out of the oozing sandwich and put it down on his plate again. He chewed and sighed simultaneously. Kate Sinclair looked at her son and wished he had a little more spine. On the other hand, she knew where the soft side of his nature came from; growing up as Angus Sinclair's only son and in the ambassador's long shadow hadn't been easy. Most of Richard Sinclair's life had been ordained without him having any choice in the matter. Schools: Exeter and Yale. Discipline: law. Career: public service, followed by a strategic and well-thought-out jump to the Senate. Next logical step: a run at the White House. It had been Angus Sinclair's plan even before his son's birth, the banner eagerly taken up by Katherine upon her husband's death.
"To hell with the party," the aging woman said at last. "You have real power on your side."
"You mean your so-called friends in high places?" Senator Sinclair said, his lip curling. He knew exactly what his mother was talking about.
"Your friends, too," answered Katherine. "They've helped you along the way, helped pave the road to your success."
"You mean they paid for it," said the senator. "Which makes me beholden to them, right?"
"They only want what's best for the country," said Katherine. She sliced a scallop in half with her knife, added a daub of creamed spinach and popped the morsel neatly between her thin lips. She chewed without appearing to move her jaw, a trick she'd learned at Miss Porter's School in Framingham many years before.
"That's what Hitler told the Poles just before he invaded," her son answered sourly. He took another bite of his toasted tuna.
"Don't be irritating," snapped his mother. "You know exactly what I'm talking about and who. There's no choice in the matter. You are the next in line; simple history makes you heir if nothing else. You'll be the de facto head of the order and all its resources. Electing you president will be easy after that."
"You really believe Rex Deus still has that kind of power?" Senator Sinclair scoffed, popping a French fry into his mouth. He chewed.
"I know they do," his mother answered. "And you know it, too."
She was right, of course. The senator let out a long breath. Rex Deus and his place in it had been part of his life for as long as he could remember. Rex Deus, once also known as the Desposyni, supposedly the bloodline of Jesus Christ through Mary, his mother, leading all the way to the Merovingian royal families of Europe, was historical fact, at least insofar as its historical existence was concerned.
At one time the Desposyni had been regarded as the aristocracy of the early Church, but over the centuries Rex Deus had become an underground secret society with money and power at its core. Like the Masons, Rex Deus was attractive to the early colonizers of America, especially during the prerevolutionary 1700s, and there were as many Rex Deus signers of the Declaration of Independence as there were Freemasons, including, among others, Benjamin Franklin, of whom Katherine Sinclair was a direct descendant, and Robert Payne, an ancestor of Angus Sinclair.
By 1776 the battle lines had been clearly drawn; American diplomacy with their colonial masters was at an impasse. It was clear that the British would eventually ban slavery, if for no other reason than stopping the growth of the American cotton industry. Added to this was the tax imposed on the colonists by the crown to pay for the French and Indian War, plus the increased prices for manufactured goods imported into the colonies.
The Masons and the members of Rex Deus were either wealthy landowners or equally wealthy merchants, and it was no coincidence that a third of the signers of the Declaration were slave owners. The Continental Congress and the Declaration of Independence were established to fuel an American financial revolution just as much as a political one. Then, as now, it had been all about wealth and power.
"There are other people who want to be elected head of the order," said Senator Sinclair. "It's not as though I'm the only one."
"The Magdalene Conclave is in less than two weeks," insisted Katherine, her voice low as she leaned across the table. "We will win the election and you will become the new head of the order."
Senator Sinclair sighed; he'd seen his mother in this mood before. He remembered an embarrassing incident at basketball tryouts that had made him the punch line of a hundred jokes at Exeter. He sighed again and fingered his alumni tie. It was remarkable how easy it was for his mother to get under his skin.
"Why in God's name is this so important to you, Mother? Don't you think I can become president on my own?"
"Not without the help of the order, dear. With the order at our backs we can get the best of everything; we can bring the whole world over to our way of thinking. The order has unlimited resources; with you at the head we would be unbeatable."
"I'm not even sure I want to run, let alone win," said the senator, feeling the tuna sandwich making its mayonnaise-heavy way through his digestive system.
"Of course you want to be president, Richard," said his mother, looking up and staring around the lavishly decorated dining room. "Everyone wants to become president of the United States. It's the fulfillment of a lifetime dream. It was your father's dream. And mine."
Not my dream, thought Richard Sinclair.
"Yes, Mother," he said.
"Good," said Katherine. "That's settled then. Let's have dessert, shall we? Perhaps the peach cobbler with a little ice cream?"
"Yes, Mother."
21
They reached Mull shortly after one thirty in the afternoon, ditched the boat and managed to find a taxi in Fionnphort to take them to Tobermory and the little seaplane port on the bay. From there they took a Cessna Caravan to Glasgow and managed to catch a direct flight via Air Transat to Pearson International in Toronto.
By that evening, hungry and a little tired, they were half a world away from the sacred Isle of Iona and booking themselves into the Royal York, a twenty-eight-story chateau-style edifice from the twenties with more than a thousand rooms and its own apiary capable of producing seven hundred pounds of honey a year, or so said the brochure.
Once upon a time it had been the largest hotel in the British Empire and came by its "royal" name honestly, having hosted three generations of the Royal Family on a number of occasions, from the Duke of Windsor to Princess Diana, with a few proper kings and queens in between.
The hotel also had the advantage of being directly across the street from Toronto's old Union Station, a monstrous granite leftover from the Grand Central era that looked more like the British Museum than the British Museum did. There were trains departing for Montreal throughout the day and an evening overnight train to Halifax.