Jim McGill 02 The Hangman's Companion

by Joseph Flynn

  Chequers, Buckinghamshire, England

  15

  If looks could kill, Galia Mindel thought as she looked at Patricia Darden Grant in the president’s suite at Chequers, someone somewhere should keel over dead. Presidential press secretary Aggie Wu was on the television screen in front of them, saying that the presidents of the United States and France had a cordial, professional, and entirely appropriate relationship. President Grant was a married woman who loved her husband and honored her wedding vows in every way every day. President Severin was a gentleman who respected President Grant both as a fellow head of state and as a woman. To say he would behave otherwise was a slander. To say President Grant would be party to an illicit relationship with anyone was likewise a slander.

  Aggie closed by saying that both leaders had their political enemies, but for President Grant’s part, if she were to find out who had started such malicious rumors, she would file a defamation of character suit against that party.

  Galia liked that. The best defense was a good offense.

  The press started shouting questions at Aggie as soon as she finished reading her statement.

  “Turn it off, please, Galia,” the president said.

  The chief of staff clicked off the flat screen television. The president sat motionless, staring in the direction of the blacked out surface. For a moment, she sat there silently. Then she asked Galia a question that took her completely by surprise.

  “Who made that television? Not the Brits, I’d guess.”

  “No, ma’am. It’s a South Korean brand, but I think the assembly is done in China.”

  The president’s frown deepened, even as she nodded. Galia knew Patti Grant was not pleased by either South Korea’s or China’s responses to her new defense proposals. The South Koreans wanted to keep the deck stacked in their favor, having free access to U.S. markets and having the American taxpayer pick up the tab for keeping the DMZ between the two Koreas fortified by American GIs, while restricting the access of American products and services to their home market. The Chinese wanted to see the United States continue to overextend itself militarily, and to play one-way trade on a scale that transferred wealth to Beijing in volumes measured by the boatload.

  Well, fuck them both, the president thought. We’re going to change the rules of the game. Anyone doesn’t like it, too damn bad. She might even come right out and say so, if they pushed back too hard.

  To her chief of staff, the president said, “Start the ball rolling, Galia. Within a week after we return to Washington, I want to convene a meeting at the White House. I want the best people we have from the private, public, and educational sectors to address the question of how U.S. companies can successfully compete in the manufacture and marketing of consumer electronics, not just domestically but worldwide. Goddamnit, we’re going to put Americans back to work making televisions, computers, and smart phones.”

  Stunned by the president’s vehemence, Galia got quickly to her feet.

  “Yes, ma’am, I’ll get right on it.”

  She left Patti alone, but a moment later poked her head back into the president’s quarters. “Ma’am, Prime Minister Kimbrough would like to have a minute, if you can see him.”

  Galia’s tone told Patti that Kimbrough was waiting just the other side of the door. A Brit would think it the height of rudeness for an American to show up unannounced at his door, but Kimbrough — Oh, to hell with it, she thought. I’m not like him.

  She’d kill the bastard with kindness. Or a fireplace poker, if that didn’t work.

  “Tell the prime minister he may come in.”

  Galia stepped back, and Kimbrough stepped inside, shutting the door behind him.

  “Thank you for seeing me without notice, Madam President.”

  “What are friends for, Norvin?” It was always presumptuous to address a new English acquaintance by his first name, Patti knew. She was testing the prime minister, and he was well aware of it.

  “Of course,” he said, “friends.” Without sounding friendly at all.

  “Please have a seat,” Patti said, gesturing him to an armchair opposite her.

  Just as she had with Galia, Patti asked Kimbrough a question that surprised him, “These chairs we’re sitting in, they’re from the Victorian era?”

  Kimbrough responded like a schoolboy, one proud to have mastered his lessons. “Why, yes. Thirteen years into Her Majesty’s reign, 1850.”

  “Built by English craftsmen.”

  “Of course.”

  “And lovingly restored by the descendants of their makers?”

  The prime minister didn’t know what the woman was getting at, but he answered, “I can’t say if there was any direct family relationship, but workers from the same part of the country did the restoration work, yes.”

  “How hard is it to find first-rate artisans in the United Kingdom, Norvin?”

  “If you’ll pardon my language, ma’am, it’s a damn sight harder than when I was a lad.”

  The prime minister was in his mid-sixties. But he took good care of himself and could pass for a man several years younger.

  “Do you know what I’m going to do with the money I save by sharing the burden of the world’s defense costs with America’s friends?”

  Frosty now, Kimbrough replied, “No, Madam President, I do not.”

  “I’m going to create a government agency to fund the training of hands-on artistry.” The idea had come to her just that moment. “Something on a scale Franklin Roosevelt would have appreciated. Something to tap into the vast creative energy of the American people. I’ve met so many people, young and old, who express themselves in so many fantastic ways. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if there were always people around who could keep chairs like these looking lovely for centuries to come?”

  Poppycock, Kimbrough thought. The woman was as mad as a hat—

  Or was she? England was so diverse, so polyglot now, his grandfather might mistake London for Cairo, were he to come back to life. Perhaps a government scheme that paid decent wages and conferred a measure of prestige on young blighters of all stripes for restoring traditional arts and crafts would be worthwhile as a force for assimilation and unity. The rise of national artisanal class could—good God, the damn woman had him buying into her load of claptrap.

  If she had her way, Britain and every other European country would be compelled to pay more pounds sterling and euros for their own defense. The woman had come right out and said she would be shifting the burden. But she hadn’t said…

  “Pardon me for saying so, Madam President, but I was quite taken aback not to be given advance word of your proposal. Learning of it in the moment, so to speak, was hardly in keeping with the special relationship between our two countries.”

  “Neither was your blatant meddling in American politics, Norvin. You didn’t really think I was going to forgive and forget, did you?”

  That was just the sort of blunt, ruthless declaration that had characterized Kimbrough’s rise in politics. He couldn’t help but admire it—especially in so fetching a woman—but he did his best to conceal any sign of approval.

  “I suppose I shouldn’t have. So where does that leave us now?”

  “Well, you could always reject my proposal out of hand.”

  “And there goes any remnant of that special relationship.”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “It might be good for me politically to stand up to you.”

  “No, it wouldn’t. You’d be isolating yourself. From all I’ve read and learned firsthand, the English relish their disdain for the French, and the only people they loathe more are the Germans. If there’s to be a continental defense agreement that excludes the UK, and if London has thumbed its nose at Washington, you’re going to find yourself the odd man out, cold and lonely on this Scepter’d Isle, while Paris and Berlin become much more important.”

  The woman was not only ruthless, she’d played him exactly as she’d needed to: Having spru
ng her plan without warning, she’d given him no opportunity to sabotage it before she’d brought the frogs and the krauts aboard. Now his only choice was to acquiesce.

  Humiliated by a woman. Perhaps, he thought, he could return the favor.

  He stood and said, “Terrible thing, these rumors concerning you and M’sieur Severin.”

  “They seem to be keeping a great many people on Fleet Street busy, don’t they?” Patti replied evenly.

  Kimbrough nodded. “So far, though, they seem to have missed out on a few facts.”

  “Such as?” the president asked.

  “Well, you and Jean-Louis share the same birthday … and you acted in the same theater production while the two of you were at Yale … and I believe there was something about a cast party in New York City after a performance on your mutual birthday. Got quite licentious, I’m told.”

  Patti knew that she’d soon be reading about those tidbits.

  She told the prime minister, “I was quite serious about suing anyone who slanders me, Norvin. Anyone. And you have such strict laws about that sort of thing here in England.”

  “Yes, we do. But even here the wheels of justice can grind exceedingly slow. And who knows how one’s spouse might react in the meantime.”

  A bright smile lit Patti’s face.

  “You mean my husband? Jim?”

  Not many people would laugh at the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom to his face, not at his own country home, but the President of the United States did.

  “Oh, Norvin, thank you,” she said, laughing. “I really needed that. Jim.”

  Simply saying McGill’s name brought on another gale.

  Kimbrough turned bright red with anger, looked for a moment as if he might do or say something truly foolish, but he held his tongue, turned on his heel and made his retreat.

  Rive Gauche, Paris

  16

  After giving McGill her Beretta, Gabbi handed him her mobile phone and said, “Hit number one: That’s speed dial to the embassy. Tell them where we are and what’s happening.”

  McGill glanced at their surroundings. He knew from his map study they were on the Left Bank, veering swiftly away from the Seine, heading northwest he thought, cutting off traffic, swerving around slow-moving vehicles, and ignoring speed limits with an impunity only diplomatic immunity and superior driving skills could confer.

  For all that, the thugs in the European minicar behind them were still on their tail. Not that they looked like diplomats. There was one other problem with Gabbi’s plan.

  “Sorry,” McGill said. “We’re going way too fast for me to comprehend street signs.”

  As if that wasn’t bad enough, a middle-aged guy with a half-dozen baguettes under one arm and a cell phone in his opposite hand stepped into the street, oblivious to the two cars that were about to mow him down.

  There was no way Gabbi could have stopped in time, but there was a narrow street, maybe just an alley, at an oblique angle to her left. She shot into it, passing the heedless pedestrian closely enough to make him jump a foot into the air and send his baguettes flying. McGill turned to see if their pursuers struck the man; the second car also missed him by a whisker. But an opportunistic hand darted out of a passenger side window and grabbed a loaf of bread as it fell out of the sky.

  Neat trick, McGill thought, but reflexes that quick were not a comforting quality in a potential adversary.

  “Press 011,” Gabbi told McGill. “The French cops’ll home in on us.”

  McGill had another idea. There was no one in the alley. No one even looking out a window as far as he could see.

  “Try to get us enough of a gap so you can hit the brakes without causing a crash,” he said.

  His companion flicked a glance his way, trying to determine if the man she was supposed to protect was an imminent danger to himself. No way would she—

  “Come on,” McGill said, sensing her resistance, “it’ll be fun.”

  Choosing to construe that suggestion as a direct order, figuring she’d only lose her job a little sooner than she intended to leave it anyway, sincerely hoping they didn’t have to kill anyone, Gabbi flicked on the car’s hazard lights and goosed the accelerator at the same time. The flashing red lights caused the little car behind them to drop back; the interval between the vehicles lengthened; and Gabbi hit the brakes. McGill jumped out of the car, gun in hand, moving toward the autobug which by now had also stopped.

  The driver of the pursuit vehicle looked as if he might put the bug into reverse and try to retreat, but when McGill shook his head, and Gabbi stepped up with another gun to point at them, that notion was abandoned. Following McGill’s gestures with the Beretta, three oversized, over-thirty, none-too-clean men pried themselves out of the small vehicle.

  McGill asked, “Who are you guys?”

  Gabbi responded first. “They’re Brits, soccer hooligans.”

  The biggest one, a red-haired lug, smiled with gray teeth and said, “That’s football, if you please, miss. Football hooligans. What you Yanks play, that’s gridiron.”

  Red’s mates elbowed each other, chuckled, and nodded. The smallest of the three, who was well over six feet tall, bit off the end of the baguette he’d plucked out of the air.

  McGill said, “Okay, now that we’ve got that straight, why were you chasing us?”

  “Recognized you, we did,” said the mid-sized one, who was missing a front tooth. “You’re the bloke what married the smasher that lives in your White ‘ouse.”

  So they actually knew who he was, McGill thought.

  “Follow international politics, do you?” he asked.

  That cracked all three of them up.

  “All we really wants,” Red told McGill, “is to buy you a pint or two. Your bird, too, if she’d care to join us.”

  “You chased us so you could drink with us?” Gabbi asked.

  “Was you what started the stunt drivin’, dearie,” Breadboy said around another bite of baguette. “That just added to the excitement.”

  Gaptooth added, “Seein’ you close like, though, I’d be happy chasin’ you any time.”

  Another round of guffaws ensued. McGill and Gabbi exchanged a look. These three loons were drunk, and they’d led them on a chase that had almost cost a man his life.

  McGill said, “Let’s try this again. You know who I am, and you wanted to buy me a drink. Why did you want to buy me a drink?”

  The three louts looked at each other as if the answer to the question was obvious.

  “Well, yer the blighter workin’ to get the copper what killed Terry the Frog Duchamp out of the nick, aint ya?” Red asked.

  McGill’s lag time comprehending the idiom was a half-second, and he said, “Uh-huh, and how did you know that?”

  The oral exam had just gone one question too far. The three Englishmen abroad looked at one another and wordlessly decided to withdraw their offer of hospitality to McGill.

  Red said, “We’ll just scarper then, if you an’ yer bird don’t mind.”

  They started toward the car but stopped when McGill put his gun on Red.

  “You don’t really mean that, do ya?”

  “Never can tell. Why take the chance?”

  Without looking, McGill could feel Gabbi tense up.

  Red spotted the dissent in the ranks.

  “Yer bird wouldn’t like it,” he said.

  Gabbi put her gun on him, too.

  “Frogs are terrible hard on foreigners usin’ guns,” Gaptooth said, sounding knowledgeable.

  “We have diplomatic immunity,” McGill told him.

  “Christ’s sake, ‘arold,” Breadboy said to Red. “Tell ‘im or I will. Let’s just get the fook out of here.”

  Harold swallowed his pride and confessed, “I do small favors for this bookmaker in London, name of Pembroke. He told me all about you lot. Gave me yer picture. Told me yer story, helpin’ the Yank what killed Terry the Frog. I thought that was brilliant. I wanted to buy you a pint with my
own money, the way that fuckin’ Terry was always makin’ my Arsenal side look a pack of gits. But Pembroke, he paid for me and my mates to come find you. And that we did. But now I’m thinkin’ it’s time we get our arses back to Blighty.”

  Just then the man whom they’d nearly run over appeared at the far end of the alley. He’d finally come after them. Breadboy dropped his half-consumed baguette and said, “Now, we’re in the shit for sure. That bugger can’t but have coppers half-a-step behind.”

  McGill told the thugs, “Write your names and where we can find this guy Pembroke for me, and I’ll square things with the French.”

  Gabbi provided pen and paper, and went to attend to the aggrieved local.

  Harold returned the information and Gabbi’s pen to McGill.

  “Yer all right, mate, for a Yank. An’ we won’t say a word.”

  “Say a word about what?” McGill asked.

  He nodded his head in Gabbi’s direction. “You and yer bird. You have a right, what with yer missus did.”

  “My wife?” McGill asked. “The President of the United States?”

  The three of them snickered. Breadboy said, “Her, all right.”

  And Gaptooth gave him a copy of a Paris tabloid he’d had in his jacket.

  “Hot off the press, mate.”

  The front page featured a composite side-by-side photo of Patti and Jean-Louis Severin.

  The headline read: Entente Très Cordiale.

  Rive Gauche, Paris

  17

  Gabbi drove McGill back to his flat above the Hideaway. She said, “I’d have had some serious explaining to do if I’d let you get hurt or killed.”

  “Or if we’d run down that pedestrian,” McGill added.

  The State Department officer shook her head.

  “He’s a professor at the Sorbonne. Marginally tolerant of Americans at the best of times. The thing that saved us was he really despises the English, and he made me promise we’d have the police give the Brits a sound beating.”