Power Play (FBI Thriller 18)

“It was Brundage who first suggested I should think about becoming a diplomat. He said to forget the harems, I could talk him out of his last bite of butter-pecan ice cream. Unfortunately, he never saw it happen. He died at the beginning of President Gilbert’s first term. I remember he loved dancing at the inauguration ball. He was very pleased for Thornton and for the country.”

She fell silent and Davis didn’t say anything, let her gather herself. He finished off his second croissant, drank more of his coffee, sat back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. He said finally, “Okay, I’d like to get back to today, if you don’t mind. Are you ready to tell me why you wanted to see me?”

She sipped her coffee, frowned.

“Okay, perhaps you’ll let me get us started. According to what I’ve read, you’re back in the States officially on health leave, but really because of a scandal the British press created and is hounding you with. I saw they’ve labeled you a black widow ‘before the fact,’ a clever little aside they found amusing; in short, they were making your life a misery. And now there’s talk here as well, since you came home. Is that fair?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“I assume you expect the press here will be going after you and that’s why you have a bodyguard, to keep them away? You don’t have any DSS agents with you?”

“No. The Diplomatic Security Service is not normally assigned to protect me when I’m home, and I haven’t made a request for them.” She said nothing more.

Davis eyed her, continued. “I read the scandal in England involved the suicide of an Englishman you were engaged to marry.”

She nodded.

“The English press claimed you drove him to suicide because you broke it off with him abruptly, and that’s why they came up with the black widow moniker. His family was less than supportive, and some of the public seems to think you should be exiled to the Hebrides to live in a Viking hut. Not exactly a comfortable position for an ambassador to an important ally, I gathered. Did I hit the high points, Madame Ambassador?”

She studied him silently for a moment, then said, “I don’t believe George McCallum, my fiancé, did commit suicide, Agent Sullivan.”

Now that we’re officially sharing secrets, Madame Ambassador, call me Davis.”

“Very well. Davis.”

“Is that why you asked me over today, to tell me you don’t think George McCallum’s death was a suicide?”

“In part. Let me add that George was the eighth Viscount Lockenby, the head of the very large McCallum family. His family seat is near Canterbury, in Kent. Lockenby Manor.” She paused for a moment, and he saw grief in her eyes. She cleared her throat. “George was the polar opposite of Brundage. He didn’t know or care a thing about sports. To him, Wayne Gretzky could have been a Polish astronaut. It didn’t matter, he was a wonderful man. He loved life, loved his family, loved me. He paid attention to everyone, most especially me. He had this gift, I suppose you could call it. He knew, for example, when I needed to change my back tires or where I’d dropped a missing bracelet. Someone in his family was always phoning him, even about little things like a pet that couldn’t be found or a horse running in the fourth race at Doncaster. He was involved in all their lives deeply, and he took his role as head of his family seriously. He protected them.”

Again she paused, then met Davis’s eyes. “He did not, however, foresee his own death.

“They found him in his car at the bottom of a cliff near Dover. The car was smashed, of course, but there was no evidence the car had been tampered with, and there were no skid marks to suggest he was losing control and trying to regain it. The car went straight over the cliff.

“It’s true it couldn’t have been an accident, since the cliffs are a goodly distance beyond the road, thus anyone would have plenty of time to stop a car—if one wanted to. At first everyone believed he’d lost consciousness, maybe suffered a heart attack. There was an autopsy, but I was told it was difficult to determine what had happened, since his body had been so traumatized. Still, it was ruled an accidental death.

“Then the whispers started right after the funeral, whispers and tabloid stories that it was really a suicide, that George had fallen into a profound depression because I’d broken off our engagement, that I was to blame, that I drove him to kill himself. It seems I hadn’t even told him to his face, no, I’d sent him an email telling him, and it broke him.”

“Had you broken it off with him?”