God's Crusade

Part Six

Kieran Radcliffe smiled as the double doors finally closed behind Sir James Middleton and his pretty daughter. Charles Buckingham nodded and Alistair Forbes looked away, suddenly fiddling with his phone. Middleton would do. He seemed to understand the rules, and the daughter would make some useful headlines. She was obviously clever, according to Oxford at least, winning their highest scholarship by some distance. But with her sex precluding her from accepting it, she could have gone anywhere; Harvard, Princeton or the Sorbonne. So seeing her apparently choose to stay with her father, as a good little maiden, would make far better headlines than the odd C list celebrity ever had in the past; Forbes would make sure of it. Charles Buckingham called them positive role models and Forbes called them tomorrow's fish paper, but it was still a useful side benefit. It boosted public morale.

However, Philomena Middleton was an irrelevance. It was Sir James they really wanted to toe the line, and he seemed more than amenable. He almost wanted Washington more than they wanted to give it to him, probably because of Mrs Sharon Rosen, and even the Prime Minister was pleased with their joint plans for the future. Radcliffe realised that Middleton wanted President-elect Rosen most of all, and he could have her as much as he liked, as long as the information gleaned between his sheets came back to Westminster and British interests were kept on her agenda. His daughter was just icing on the cake.

"She would go the extra mile if she was my responsibility," Forbes growled, still sending one of his long texts, no doubt roasting some poor MP alive for doing something potentially stupid. "Middleton needs to see sense with her...she is a risk."

"Give him some time, Alistair...James assures me he is working on it, but he doesn't want to simply force her...she won't be believable otherwise." Quentin Robinson-Smythe sighed with a grimace, trying to keep everyone on side. "When people are willing there is no need to squeeze harder...give him some space."

"She really is exquisite though, isn't she?" Radcliffe suggested, and it was true. Forbes hated to admit it, but she was an incredibly beautiful girl/woman, and intelligent too. He thought that he might enjoy bending her to his will, given the opportunity. He hoped that Middleton intended to prepare her for her new life. She was a rough diamond, and to achieve their aims in Washington she certainly needed a little more polish, and a lot more obedience as well. Forbes would have agreed with that opinion, if they had discussed it. He could see the attractions of having a beautiful girl with some independence at the embassy in Washington to show another side to the British cliché, but she still had to be under their control. It was not something Middleton could fudge.

And she had annoyed him of course. He was someone. His self-importance had been hurt by her failure to recognise him. She might have been abroad but he was well known as one of the most important men around Buckingham, and she ought to have known that. She ought to know her place. Her attitude rankled with him and he could not get Mena Middleton out of his mind.

۩

"We did it!" As soon as the Jaguar's door closed on the new Ambassador to Washington he leant across and kissed his daughter on the cheeks in sheer delight. "Old Buckingham was clearly charmed out of his tree by you...and even that famously cold fish Kieran Radcliffe was friendly enough...they adored you!"

As the car purred down towards the armoured gates at the end of Downing Street, Mena caught her Father's hand and squeezed it. "I did nothing at all really...it was all settled before I got called into the Cabinet Room. You'd nailed the job long before I showed up." She did not mention that the Prime Minister seemed to assume that she was staying in Washington with her father, like some sort of consort. She had agreed to give her father a year, but that was all; she hoped Sir Charles had not misunderstood their intentions. But it was an honour and exciting of course. She could not deny that.