Chequers Endgame

A line of black limousines pushed through the Buckinghamshire countryside, two outriders clearing the way. It is an early spring evening and they are running late. Preparations had been thorough and he was, despite it all, quietly confident. But his mind was elsewhere, distracted. Life, it seemed, was never simple.

C, the Director of MI5, had ambushed him as soon as he had stepped out of bed at Number 10. Over breakfast in the study the taciturn head of homeland security alerted him to a singular terrorist threat. By singular, he meant to him, the PM. In anticipation of the off-site meeting today, C would be allocating a few of his own men... "just to be on the safe side."

Inured to the ongoing white noise of threats, deranged or otherwise, on any other occasion this would be grist to the mill. But the resolute, unflappable C was there, early and direct. This was a credible cause for concern.

His companion, quiet since London, closed his tablet and took a second or two to drink in the passing spring fields, and hedgerows alive with white hawthorn blossom.

"The Foreign Secretary is there sir; just another ten minutes."

"This isn't me Richard. I arrive early, tapping my watch as others roll in late."

"But under the circumstances...."

"Still no excuse Richard... he doesn't know."

Richard Swann, the PM's forty something, perpetually youthful Private Secretary had watched his boss visibly age under the white heat of media pressure. Such, it seemed, was the appetite for myopic, brutish, hysterically biased misinformation. So many fires to be doused where once none existed. Swann turned to the man he also liked to think of as a friend.

"The one thing I will say for John, is that he is not a stickler for discipline..."

"...small mercies..."

The PM's voice came tired and low. His thin mouth set firm within the trim silver beard. Receding and thinning hair, brushed back, open features projecting warmth, trust and integrity. At least that was how it was before he took office. Now, he just looked tired.

They flashed through the village of Ellesborough, locals feigning not to notice, at ease with their VIP guests for nigh on one hundred years.

"Is everyone on message?"

"Yes sir, LaPorte reassured me nothing can touch you at Chequers."

"Hmmm."

That was so like LaPorte.

"At least we don't have the nightmare of foreign dignitaries this weekend," said Swann, "and surely LaPorte's right."

"Maybe. But how in hell did they, whoever they are, know? Christ, I only arranged it a fortnight ago..."

The Scottish brogue broader, more Glaswegian, the lower his guard. He distrusted the current climate of porosity and the right to know...it made a farce of the democratic process, a free for all for the self-righteous and the weak.

"Things leak these days, a stray tweet, an off the cuff remark and it's out there." Swann recognised the hollowness of his words as he fought to get the man next to him back on message.

Shown into the study earlier, as C proclaimed the threat in as much detail as he was able, he had seen the PM shrink even further into himself.

"Money changing hands across Europe, the Middle and Far East, and a series of coded communiques routed through God knows how many proxy servers. One name keeps recurring sir, yours."