Saints and Sinners

Chapter Twenty

The Ritz Hotel

London

"SHR and the Symonds estate should pay," Sean Fletcher insisted, placing his final cards on the table as he raised the stakes. Charles Montague puffed out his cheeks and glanced to his left, at Connor Symonds. His poker face looked rather pale. "The Symonds family are all well provided for after his death...we are not looking to rob anyone blind...but we need to understand the scope of his investment fund and put a number on it?"

"You are saying you want two trillion pounds?" Montague repeated the number, trying to get his head around it, sitting back in his chair and looking at Symonds again, expecting him to say something.

"That is the headline number...the rest of our demands are about immediate human rights improvements...but this is nice and simple...it is what making amends looks like?" Fletcher replied as Gideon Palmer took a piece of paper out of his file.

"When you took over from Boris Johnson, the national debt was one point three trillion pounds...and SHR has made hundreds of billions in profit from Hycanil and other pandemic related products...Drew Symonds put his share of those profits into the investment fund...so there is a sort of poetic justice in this?"

"You can't touch my money." Connor Symonds said quietly.

"Well...I wasn't planning to...personally...it would be your government who would have to seize it, if they don't want to write a cheque for the whole amount?" Fletcher grinned as if butter would not melt, enjoying himself immensely. "We don't really care where the money comes from...we were just sharing our workings to justify the number?"

"I think we should all remember what we are trying to do here, gentlemen?" Jake Palmer said, speaking for the first time. "Our official brief is to agree appropriate reparations without crippling the British economy or risking civil unrest...you have to be seen to be punished or the hatred expressed against Britain will get worse. And with the greatest possible respect Mr Symonds, it is not your money? You and your brother are trustees and you have personal responsibility for the management of the funds...but it is not yours."

Montague asked for a break to consult with his colleagues and report to the President, and they retired to their respective suites. Fletcher was instantly outside on the balcony, polluting the city air. Panos Deacon joined him with coffee for two.

"Montague thinks it's a good deal...he looked at Symonds straight away to see if he could come up with any objections, and the best he could do was that?" Deacon shrugged, not sure that he understood Connor Symonds. He considered himself to be a good reader of people and their emotions. But he was getting mostly spoiled brat from Connor Symonds.

"It is a good deal...as long as he can get the Symonds boys to cough up a cool trillion, the government only has to borrow what they already owed in twenty-twenty-one, which was just about manageable then, and should be easily manageable now." Fletcher said as he blew an impressive cloud of smoke into the spring air. "Montague knows that, and he doesn't care if his brothers-in-law have to give up some of their inheritance."

"Madame Delacorte is behind the deal?"

"Claudine has got the whole council behind it...they like the positives of an international benevolent fund and it's a nice round number with lots of noughts, so it will feel like the Brits are being punished...when in reality they will just need to finance the debt." Fletcher explained, not particularly bothered about being involved in one last political compromise in his career. International relations were notoriously complicated and multi-faceted, and the simple fact was that there was not enough political will to really damage Great Britain for something a small group of men did forty years ago. Quite apart from the fact that any forced action might meet with serious resistance from a well-equipped, well-trained army, with their own nuclear threat standing behind them. And many people, Fletcher included, found the idea of fighting the British people repugnant. The British had stood beside the United States time and time again as allies and friends, and it was not their fault that Drew Symonds was a monster.