He contemplated this, snapping together three separate components of his assault rifle before continuing.
“We don’t usually cock things up quite this badly but then when you a dealing with a bunch of religious maniacs, and with a hereditary monarchy that belongs more to the sixteenth than the latter twentieth century, I suppose we ought not to have been anywhere near as surprised by the way things have gone,” he sighed, “as they have.”
Melody said nothing.
The man grimaced apologetically.
“Alonso was confident that he could protect you two ladies but obviously, events rather overtook us all. Anyway, I’m here because I was ‘it’, HMG’s last ‘standing’ asset in-country with half-a-chance of extricating you two.”
“What about all the other people at the Embassy?” Henrietta asked, her curiosity aflame.
“As you see, I’m the only one here with you on top of this mountain.” He decided he had talked enough about himself. “Is it true that you’re Alonso’s mistress?” He put to Melody, genuinely and in no way salaciously curious.
Henrietta giggled at her friend’s unease.
“Yes, and no!” Melody replied, recovering fast. “It’s complicated…”
“Ah, that explains it. He gave me the distinct impression that if I didn’t escort you◦– and of course, Lady Henrietta◦– safely to the border that I would regret it. Which is odd, because Alonso has always been such a level-headed fellow about members of the fair sex before.”
Melody refused to be distracted again.
“Okay, you’re telling us that you’re CSS?”
“Sorry, I thought I’d made that clear. I work for Matthew Harrison, and I suppose, for Lady Henrietta’s father.” Nash completed re-assembling his Martini Henry, he snapped back the breech.
A round clicked into the chamber.
Locked and loaded.
“I really do suggest you ladies try to get a little bit of shut eye before we set off. Don’t mind me.”
The women hesitated.
“I’ll be just outside the door,” he promised, rising to his feet, holstering his pistol at his waist and hefting the matt black assault rifle in his arms.
“You’re guarding us even in this place?” Henrietta blurted.
“We live in strange times, My Lady,” Paul Nash grinned. “Better safe than sorry, what!”
ACT III – THE VIEW FROM THE EDGE
Chapter 27
Saturday 1st April
Palace of the Nations, Place de la Concorde, Paris
Sir George Walpole, His Majesty’s Secretary of State for Foreign and Colonial Affairs, smiled sternly for the massed cameras of the press and at the last moment, remembered to nod◦– several times, with appropriate gravitas◦– in acknowledgement of the live TV coverage of his arrival in the Place de la Concorde. Not that he was in any mood to smile overmuch at anything in particular as he walked stiffly into the regal, cathedral-like reception hall of the Palace of the Nations, the great neo-classical complex built upon the ruins between the Seine to the south, the Champs-Elysées to its west and the gardens of the ruined, never re-built Tuileries to the east.
On another day the most respected◦– by friends, allies and enemies alike◦– historian-politician manipulator of World affairs of his generation, a man one Russian minister had once, in perplexed exasperation called ‘Machiavelli in a frock coat’, might have paused to enjoy and to marvel at the great buildings ringing the octagonal Place de la Concorde, of which the Palace of the Nations was the magnificent jewel. Today, he was pre-occupied, having spent the whole of the five-hour journey from London to Paris via the Channel Tunnel, deep in conference with his bevvy of aides and advisors, afraid of what new disasters might be presaged by the telegrams he knew would surely have accumulated awaiting his arrival at the Gare du Nord Terminus.
He was still struggling to absorb the alarming implications of the latest updates from Spain and the bellicose pronouncements◦– not unexpected but unwelcome nevertheless◦– of the Governor of the Spanish Royal Province of Cuba.
It was hardly surprising that the Foreign Ministers of ‘the powers’ were rapidly coalescing in Paris that afternoon several days in advance of their scheduled monthly ‘get together’ customarily attended only by junior representatives briefed to discuss predominantly ‘technical’ matters relating to the routine ‘fine tuning’ of international relations.
Sir George Walpole’s mood was not improved when he was kept waiting in the British Rooms of the western wing of the Palace by his counterpart, and co-chair of the Council of the Nations, Count Lothar von Bismarck of Hesse-Kassel.
The German Legation had apologised profusely for its principal’s ‘unavoidable delay’ but Walpole suspected it boded ill for the conversation he was about to have with his old friend.
He and Lothar were of an age, nearer sixty years old than fifty and had sparred, in academia in their younger days and◦– off and on◦– in the less amenable, dangerous sphere of realpolitik for the last, ever-more troubling decade. On Walpole’s part, their political encounters had been interrupted now and then by the vagaries of the workings of democracy in the United Kingdom, not a cross that von Bismarck, whose family had been◦– as near as dammit, Walpole had written many years ago◦– under the Germanic Imperial system, ‘the hereditary custodians of the Empire’s foreign affairs for the last century.’
In preparation for his life-long role, first as a junior secretary in the Kaiser’s Colonial Office ahead of a succession of increasingly senior posts until eventually, he had succeeded his father at the Wilhelmstrasse, the German Foreign Office on the Unter den Linden in Berlin, Lothar had spent two years at Harrow, and studied Classics and Medieval History at Balliol College, Oxford, where he had met many of the men with whom, it was anticipated, he would work with, and sometimes against, in pursuance of his Kaiser’s policies in later life.
In comparison with the large, fierce, somewhat over-bearing persona of his illustrious forebear◦– at least, in his depictions in portraits of the period and those early still photographs of him in old age, who was the acknowledged guiding hand behind the Treaty of Paris, the man German children were taught was the ‘saviour of the First Reich’◦– Lothar was a man constructed on slighter, dapper lines belying the fact he was the ‘Iron Man’s’ great-great grandson.
His mother was the sister of Her Majesty the Duchess of Windsor, the Queen Consort of the King, George V of England, which made the King and Queen his aunt and uncle. Nobody had designed that particular match, royalty having been bestowed upon it by assassination and fate rather than by any reach of imperial match-making. Nevertheless, by a strange accident of history Lothar von Bismarck presently found himself nineteenth in line of succession to the English throne.
At one stage back in the late 1950s he had actually been seventh in line but since then◦– much to his relief◦– the present King of England’s offspring had been loyally, dutifully and with no little gusto producing new royal princes and princesses at a rate which far outstripped the rate older members of the Royal Family were passing away.