Keep Calm

by Mike Binder

  “Maybe it’s an American thing. Has anyone put any thought to that?” Heaton quietly asked. Georgia and the others were stunned.

  “An American thing? What could that possibly mean?”

  “He’s an ex-cop, maybe he’s CIA. I don’t know. I am aware that the Americans would love us off our balance right now. I know they aren’t anywhere close to fans of Roland’s. I know they’d love a freer hand in the Middle East and I know they’d love the referendum to work out and for us to leave the EU. Let that money and those contracts flow west to New York and Los Angeles. It’s wild speculation but what isn’t about all of this, really? What if the CIA got to Gordon Thompson, paid him to set up his son-in-law, then planned to nicely do away with them both?”

  “That’s rich pudding. As far out as it gets,” Burnlee protested.

  “I agree, but it’s all rich pudding at this point. Isn’t it? None of this makes any sense.”

  The room went quiet. There were no more questions. Heaton didn’t have any other theories. Georgia politely ended the talk.

  After Heaton left the PM’s office, an accounting was taken, and Georgia and Darling agreed with the home secretary. Heaton hadn’t uttered a single truthful sentence. They sat in silence, wondering who would say it first: Heaton, and whoever his conspirators might be, had sought to destroy the government from the inside. This was officially a national disaster. It was no longer speculation. If Heaton was involved, then he had key insiders helping him. The brazenness of the attempt was breathtaking. Darling and Burnlee were both sure of it.

  Georgia’s worst nightmares had sprung fully formed into an awful reality.

  * * *

  IN THE BLACKEST hour of the morning, Georgia was awake, lying in bed, wondering where this would end, where tomorrow would take them. She truly had if not the weight of the world, then the weight of Great Britain on her shoulders.

  Her thoughts wandered and settled on Steel. She wondered if the young detective realized what murky waters she had waded into. She wanted to chat quietly with her about how scary the world had suddenly become, to speak of the events on the scale of their national gravity, but more important, she wanted to speak in shades of the personal and intimate, in terms of being a frightened girl, wide-eyed inside a woman’s body. Steel would understand that, she thought. She would understand and maybe softly brush Georgia’s face with the back of her tiny hand. Maybe kiss the tip of her nose and slowly run her fingers through Georgia’s thick hair. They would lock eyes and discuss the gravity of being caught up by history. She sat up, pulled her knees close, and thought of calling Steel, and then, when the impulse grew and took hold she went over and grabbed her phone and brought it back to the warm bed with her, burrowed back in, and phoned Steel.

  “Hello?” Steel heard her mobile buzz on the nightstand next to the bed. She woke from a deep sleep. She had been dreaming of skiing in America with her parents, who were both somehow younger and incredibly adroit at downhill. She woke so quickly that she remembered the incongruent fantasy and was still living it for a beat as she reached for the phone.

  “Hello.” It was Georgia, according to the caller ID. But her voice seemed different. She spoke quietly, more slowly than usual. “I’m so sorry to wake you, Inspector Steel.”

  “No, no. Don’t be sorry at all. Is everything all right?”

  “As all right as it can be, what with the world as it is.”

  “Yes, I can only imagine what you have on your plate. I shudder to think of it in terms of a workday.”

  Georgia took a moment to answer. She sipped cold water from a cut crystal glass at her bedside. “It’s beyond madness, Inspector. I can’t begin to tell you. It feels like a mountain has slid right over on top of me.” Steel nodded silently. What must that be like? To be suddenly thrust into this position, where everything comes down to you? Every decision that’s made is yours to make, yours to muck up?

  “You must feel so alone right now.” A tear rolled down Georgia’s cheek as a response. Steel didn’t need to see the tear to understand the silence floating along the line. The pain she heard in Georgia’s voice.

  “Is there anything I could do for you? To make it easier? Anything at all, Madam Chancellor?”

  “You could call me Georgia. I do appreciate hearing you use my name.”

  “You do? Truly?” That seemed unreal—Georgia Turnbull getting joy from Davina Steel of Bloomsbury addressing her one-to-one, yet she sensed maybe it was the truth.

  There was yet another waft of silence between them. Steel’s heart was beating wildly as the chancellor spoke to her. “I do enjoy talking with you, Davina. It seems like I have no one to talk with these days. Oh god, how pitiful must that sound?”

  “No, no, I feel the same way. I enjoy talking with you, too, Georgia.” Somehow saying her name made Steel slightly giggle. Georgia responded with a laugh of her own and it went on that way, the two of them serving back and forth simple rounds of small talk and chitchat. Life. Childhood. Stress. Weight gain. Weight loss. Hair care. Fashion. Dogs. Cats. Tennis. Uncles, aunts, Britain, and even Adam Tatum. They were all touched on for over an hour until suddenly there was silence. Steel waited for her partner’s next volley and it didn’t come.

  “Have you fallen asleep on me? Georgia? Georgia?” After a moment she was back. Her voice was even groggier now.

  “Yes, I think I may have. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be rude.”

  “It’s not rude at all. I’m going to let you go. I’m sure you have a full day ahead of you.”

  “I wish you were…” Another silence.

  “Wish I was what? Georgia?” She had stopped herself. Steel sensed it. She knew she had stopped because the words that would have come out would have been hard to take back. They would have been too emotional, too laced with longing. They were both better off saying good night, so they did.

  “Good night, Georgia.”

  “Good night, Davina. Thank you for a wonderful talk.”

  ON THE RUN ■ 8

  Kate went shopping with Tiffany the next day, who jokingly said she wanted to “show off” the giant Whole Foods on Kensington High Street. It took everything Kate could do to keep from breaking down in tears, but she had promised Adam to keep it together while he figured out their next move. Tiffany made small talk as they squeezed and weighed vegetables and fruit. Kate pondered sadly to herself at how mundane life can be, how rote the day-to-day steps can become, and in the same moment she found herself envious of Tiffany and the uneventful future she would most likely have. She saw her own family’s future as cold and unforgiving. She tried to envision a time when she’d casually weigh and bag the evening’s vegetables again, but she knew life wouldn’t be anywhere close to carefree in the near future, if ever.

  As they waited to check out, Tiffany talked about Beau and his ailing father, about living in London, about being an American in Britain, about raising the kids so far from her parents in Indiana. Kate nodded, did her best to carry a small part of the conversation, but all she could think about were the last seven days: Adam forcing them to run, the realization that her father had knowingly set up her family and her for a horrible fall, about Richard, his face in the steamed-up bathroom mirror, his murder, the blood on the courtyard that Adam was sure she didn’t see, the fact that she and her family had caused the end of his beautifully awkward one-off of a life, the constant gloom on Adam’s face, the way he watched the news with certain knowledge that a wave would wash him away at any time—toss them all away.

  * * *

  KATE FINALLY COULDN’T take it anymore. Interrupting another one of Tiffany’s anecdotes about her kids, she started to cry, a deep, guttural moan that took her breath away as the car rolled along on the pockmarked roads back toward Shoreditch.

  Tiffany jerked the family’s BMW wagon over to the side of the street. She had felt the sullen, sour air floating around Kate and the family since the moment they had arrived, but this level of anguish was well beyond her expect
ations. Tiffany had no idea what to say. She figured it best just to let her cry it out.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay, Kate, just let it out. Let it out, babe.” That was really the best that she could do. Kate squeaked out a silent thank-you and did in fact “let it out.” She cried for another few minutes until there were no more tears. As Tiffany warmly took her hand, Kate did the one thing she promised her husband she wouldn’t do. She told Tiffany everything.

  * * *

  LATER THAT NIGHT, after a silent dinner where none of the adults spoke, while the kids hypnotically watched a Pixar film they had each seen a dozen times before, Beau spoke candidly with Adam on a leisurely walk in the early evening among the cold, tan brick buildings of Great Eastern Street.

  “I’m afraid you’re going to have to leave, Adam. Tiffany’s upset and she has every right to be. No matter how innocent you are, you’re going to be the prime suspect any moment now and you know as well as I do that hiding you here will be a crime. There’ll be a steep price for us to pay, even if you somehow wriggle out of this godforsaken nightmare.”

  Adam understood. He’d seen it coming the minute Tiffany walked through the door from her excursion with Kate that afternoon. It made sense, too. They couldn’t afford to drag the McCalisters into their mess. It had already cost Richard Lyle his life.

  An old woman was digging through a garbage can outside a block of office suites, hunting for recyclables. Two young boys on bikes were spinning circles in the middle of the turnoff to Garden Walk. No one seemed happy. Not the boys on the bikes, not the pedestrians on the street, not the people on the buses that floated by. It was if the whole city had been robbed of joy along with Adam and his family. He had taken the ultimate darkness to Richard Lyle, dimmed the lights of the McCalisters’ life, and now it seemed as if he were soaking the entire city, blocks at a time, with despair. He was cursed. He felt that then, in that moment, with his friend who desperately needed to distance himself from Adam and his doomed family.

  “Just give me the night to figure out what to do, Beau. We’ll leave tomorrow. I think that I have a plan. Just give me the night to come to terms with it.”

  Beau answered sincerely. “I’m sorry, Adam. I truly am. If there was anything I could think of to do for you, I would do it.”

  Adam nodded as they kept walking. He searched as intently as he could through the windows of pubs and restaurants to find one person laughing, even smiling. No one was. The curse of Adam Tatum loomed like a thick cloud over Shoreditch. It would stay there for as long as he remained.

  * * *

  WITH THE FIRST light of day, Beau’s family BMW wagon pulled up to the main pavilion of the sparkling new American embassy in the Nine Elms area of London. The embassy, recently opened, looked like an installation dropped to Earth from another planet. It was a large gleaming cube sitting proudly, defiantly secure, looking out onto the river, daring anyone to breach its perimeter. Adam and his family got out of the car with the few handbags they had left. Richard’s father’s guns had been thrown away in a trash can on the ride down.

  Adam thanked Beau again. Kate gave him a warm hug. There was no need for small talk. Beau got back into his car and drove off with his normal stoic grace. Adam solemnly led his wife and the kids across the street, up to the pavilion, eager to throw himself at the mercy of his government; to have his family taken from the country, and for him to be put into a jail cell for God knows how long. This was his best-case scenario: an unknown time in a series of prisons, maybe even for the rest of his life. It was the most he could hope for unless the curtain opened to expose Heaton and what he’d done.

  As they crossed the street, Trudy heard someone call out her name.

  “Trudy. Trudy … My love. Please…” She turned around to see Étienne standing beside a Heaton-issued Mercedes. She stopped in her tracks, the very sight of him stirring her, causing her to flutter. Despite knowing all that she did, she crossed the street toward him. There was so much she wanted to ask him, so much she wanted to say. Her heart had taken control of her feet.

  Adam and Kate both turned back a beat later, already well on the way to the front gate of the embassy. Adam instinctively knew someone had lagged behind. When they saw Trudy, crossing over to Étienne at the Mercedes, with Harris and Peet, Heaton’s gunmen, now stepping out of the car, all he could do was scream at the top of his lungs.

  “Trudy. Trudy, no! Stop!” She turned back in the middle of the street; her father’s voice had broken the trance. She saw the fear in his pleading eyes as he and Kate, with Billy in tow, raced back to the street for her. The lovelorn teen knew in an instant, when she saw Harris and Peet shuffling menacingly toward her, that she had made a grave error. She was about to run for her parents and try her best to get away when another Mercedes barreled up the road and stopped in between her and the Heaton men. It was her grandfather, Gordon.

  He slammed the brakes in the middle of the road, his window rolled down, and called to his granddaughter.

  “Get in love, quickly.” He reached back and opened the rear door. Harris and Peet, whose shoulder was still in a sling, were on their way over, her parents coming up from the other side. She jumped into the car. Gordon stepped out; in a blur he threw his arm over the roof of the car and fired a pistol toward Harris and Peet. They both ducked for cover, buying Adam, Kate, and Billy time to get over to the car. Gordon turned to them, his face as sour and hardened as either of them had ever seen him.

  “Get in the car. Now!”

  Adam tried to reason with him. “We’re going to the embassy, Gordon, and I’m turning myself in.” Gordon turned back and fired off another two rounds in an effort to keep Harris and Peet on the back of their ankles.

  “It’s a mistake. You’re playing with people that can melt minds inside of that place. Top-drawer people. You’re in real rough waters, son. This isn’t the plan. I have one. I promise. Get in.” He turned to Kate. She was staring at him in a disgusted way that made his heart drop to his groin, little Billy burrowed into her side, scared out of his young mind, looking up in confusion at his now gun-crazed granddad.

  “Trust me, Kate, you need to get into the car. Right now. On your mother’s soul, I’ve nothing but your best here. Get in!” She turned to Adam right as Harris found a parked car to hide behind and shot off his revolver, smashing out Gordon’s side window. A siren went off at the embassy. Red lights flashed on the gates. It would be mere seconds before the street would rain with embassy soldiers pouring out of the intergalactic cube at the top of the plaza.

  Adam nudged Kate and a crying Billy into the back of the car with Trudy. He jumped in behind them as Gordon tore away up the street under a storm of gunfire coming from both Harris and Peet. The Mercedes raced through the back streets, snaking its way up to Battersea Park Road. Gordon pulled out a manila folder and threw it back to Adam, who was huddled up into a ball doing his best to calm his terrified family down.

  “It’s passports. The best fakes money can buy. I have a friend. He’s putting a boat together on the west coast to get across the St. George Channel to Bray. From Bray, you’ll cross over to Galway. We’ll get you on a cruise ship to New York.” Adam opened the envelope. He found the passports with all of their photos and an impressive amount of cash: the Davis family from Greenwich.

  Gordon punched the car now and made a final speedy tear on the pavement until he came up to the intersection at Queenstown Road. Then he made a sharp, squealing turn. Kate spoke for the first time.

  “How did you know that we would go to the embassy?” She was probing. Still not ready to trust him.

  “I didn’t. Harris did. Heaton did. I’ve just been following them. I knew job one for them was to find you. They’ve been here on and off waiting for you for two days. Figured I’d be here when they finally caught up with you.” He turned down a small street, went slowly under an old brick railway underpass, and parked the car.

  “First thing we need to do is get you as far away from London
as we can.” He jumped out of the Mercedes and motioned for the family to follow him across to a late-seventies Volkswagen van, also parked in the shadowy tunnel of the overpass. It was loaded down with fishing rods and family bikes, folded easy chairs strapped to the roof, fishing licenses, and ripped remnants of semi-funny bumper stickers plastered all over the front. Adam instructed the group to do as Gordon said. They piled into the dusty old hippie wagon. Gordon put on a large, oddly shaped fishing hat. Adam sat in the front seat as his father-in-law handed him another version of the same silly cap.

  He turned back to his granddaughter.

  “There’s a bag of sandwiches in that cooler there, luv. Some drinks, too, and a couple of travel games I picked up for you kids.” He caught Kate’s eyes in the rearview mirror and winked at her as he turned the van back, slowly ambling onto Battersea Park Road in the very same direction that they had come from.

  The other lane was filled with police and embassy vehicles barreling by them, lights and sirens, shouting and dancing. Two embassy helicopters were escorting the squad cars with a wild windy whip from a hundred yards above the earth as Gordon slowly wheeled the van away, right under their noses.

  Kate wasn’t sure yet what to make of it all, what colors she wanted to show to this new rendition of her father, but inside, in her heart, she was smiling for the first time in over a week.

  ON THE HUNT ■ 8

  In yet another meeting in the Cabinet Room the next morning, Munroe and Burnlee wanted Georgia to agree to allow Munroe to release Adam Tatum’s name and likeness to the ravenous press corps. It was high time to tell the whole story and hopefully tighten the net around Tatum and his family. The minister of communications was convinced a loud bang to the announcement would make it not only almost impossible for Tatum to move around, but even more difficult for anyone to quietly dispose of him. Burnlee agreed.