Saints and Sinners

Chapter Eighteen

The Ritz Hotel

London

"How the hell did they find out about our shareholding in BIB?" Connor Symonds roared as the door to his suite crashed back into its frame. Brett Stoddart only just got inside before it smashed him in the face. Both negotiating teams were staying at the Ritz, with three rooms set aside for their meetings, one for each side and the larger negotiating suite, but Symonds had headed straight for his own suite in his anger. "It's a private fucking company? No public filing...so how the fuck did they find out?"

"No idea...that is senior partner clearance?" Stoddart said a little nervously, because Sean Fletcher had just lobbed several hand grenades into their laps in their first session.

"Senior partners and you?" Symonds snarled, taking off his jacket and throwing it down on a sofa, before walking to the windows. "And they have far too much information about my business in Boston...what the fuck is going on?"

"Well...Bateman knows?"

"And you think Bill Bateman is going to give Fletcher that sort of stick to beat us with? He wouldn't give Fletcher the pox?"

"Yes...but the information is on file...heavily encrypted but it is there?" Stoddart said with a gulp, a little cowed by his employer's fury and even the slight suggestion that he might be responsible for any leak.

"So...not Cartwright this time...because it is way above his pay grade...and now the White House is leaking like a sieve?" Symonds scoffed angrily.

"Sir...they were bound to look at your finances...as a family...and the UN have resources that can get blood out of a stone?"

Four doors down, in the British suite, Charles Montague was thinking hard, trying to work out what he thought about the investment fund idea, rather than worrying about Fletcher going after Symonds. At face value, if they were going to pay for anything, a fund for good causes would at least create some good publicity out of what was a disaster for the country as well as the rest of the world. He could see how that could be spun. And the international community were planning to contribute as well, by various means, which would take some of the spotlight off of Britain paying into it as a blatant punishment. At that stage, the amount being demanded was irrelevant, because that was all up for negotiation, but the starting point was indicative. One and a half trillion plus an as yet unspecified amount of Symonds money as well, once the UN team had some clarity about Connor's activities in North America.

Montague knew that Fletcher would see the Boston situation for what it was, a financial invasion of a market the British clearly found attractive. America had two hundred million or more active Christians, most of whom were already either Reformists or sympathetic to the Reformist cause. In the past, the British had concentrated on organic growth and helping the Republican party get men like Bateman elected, but that was slow and haphazard, and had not really got them very far. But Connor Symonds, perhaps acting at least initially on instructions from his father and/or Michael Winstanley, had taken a different route, definitely following Montague's own blueprint, by buying influence and then making the companies and the men he had bought encourage greater piety. Montague had no idea how long it had all been going on, but he guessed many years, which meant that Andrew Symonds would most certainly have been involved, but buying a company like BIB made it really pretty easy to encourage ambitious men to embrace the church in return for promotion and money. And then it was just a little snowball rolling down a hill, getting bigger and bigger until it was unstoppable.

"Owning BIB is pretty mad...their market capitalisation is huge?" Peter Munroe said as he handed his old friend a coffee. He was part of the team for his skills with a spreadsheet and his political experience.