Peter Hamilton - The Mandel Files

Adrian’s eyes tracked the slow-moving, foil-wrapped backside in front of them with radar precision. “You have no idea how truly you speak.” His mind was awhirl with hot elation.

“Are we talking about Julia or Katerina?”

Adrian broke off his admiring stare with obvious reluctance. “Katey, of course. I mean, Julia’s decent enough, despite her old man being a complete arsehole. But she couldn’t possibly match up to Katey, nobody could.” He dropped his voice, taking Greg into his confidence. “If I had the money, I’d marry Katey straight off. I know it sounds stupid, considering her age. But her parents just don’t care about her. It’s a scandal; if they were poor the social services would’ve taken her into care. But they’re rich, they sit in their Austrian tax haven and treat her as a style accessory. To their set it’s fashionable to have a child, the more precocious the better. That’s probably why she and Julia are such closeheads. Near-identical backgrounds; both of them ignored from an early age.”

Greg suddenly experienced a pang of sympathy, prompted by his intuition. Adrian was a regular lad, one of the boys, likeable. He deserved better than Katerina. Although he didn’t know it, his infatuation was doomed to a terminal crash landing. His rugged good looks and lack of hard cash marked him down as a passing fancy. Naivety preventing him from realizing that the teeny-vamp sex goddess whose footsteps he worshipped was going to chew him up then spit him out the second a tastier morsel caught her wandering, lascivious eye.

Still, at least it meant Greg could start the evening by giving Evans one piece of news which he wanted to hear. Though whether it was good news was debatable. To Greg’s mind, Julia would be hard pushed to find a better prospect for prince consort.

Philip Evans received his guests in the manor’s drawing room. Its arching windows looked out on to the immaculately mown lawns where peacocks strutted round the horticultural menagerie along the paths. Maids in black and white French-style uniforms circulated with silver trays of tall champagne glasses and fattening cheesy snacks. A string quartet played a soft melody in the background. Greg felt as if he’d time-warped into some Mayfair club, circa nineteen-thirty.

The men were all dressed in immaculately tailored dinner jackets, while the women wore long gowns of subdued colours and modest cut. It made Katerina stand out from the crowd; not that she needed sartorial assistance for that. A stunning case of overkill.

Greg saw that despite his blunt Lincolnshire-boy attitude Philip Evans made a good host. He slipped into the role easily. A lifetime immersed in PR had taught him how.

Julia stuck by his side; officially the hostess, being the senior lady of the family. The guests treated her with a formal respect not usually directed at teenagers. They must know she was the protégée, Greg realized. She accepted her due without a hint of pretension.

Greg hovered behind the pair of them, maintaining a lifeless professional smile as he was introduced as Philip Evans’s new personal secretary. The old billionaire had assembled an impressive collection of top rankers for his party-a couple of New Conservative cabinet ministers, and the deputy prime minister; five ambassadors; financiers; a sprinkling of the aristocracy; and some flash showbiz types, presumably for Julia’s benefit.

Lady Adelaide and Lord Justin Windsor, Princess Beatrice’s children, were also mingling with the guests, two tight knots of people swirling gently round them the whole time. Greg had managed to exchange a few words with Lady Adelaide; she was in her early twenties, and as politely informal as only Royalty could be given the circumstances. He gave way to the press of social mountaineers well pleased; Eleanor would love hearing the details.

As he left, he saw Katerina moving with the tenacity of an icebreaker through the people around Lord Justin. She wriggled round an elderly matron with gymnastic agility to deliver herself in front of him, blue eyes hot with sultry promise. For one moment, watching Lord Justin’s quickly hidden guilty smile, Greg allowed his cynicism to get the better of him. Could the young royal be the reason Philip Evans was unhappy about Adrian? Lord Justin was only five years older than Julia; a union between them was the kind of note an ultra-English traditionalist like Philip Evans would adore going out on. He eventually decided the thought was unworthy. Philip Evans might be devious, but he wasn’t grubby.

The new arrivals seemed endless. Greg wanted to undo his iron collar, he wasn’t used to it. But all he could do was smile at the blur of faces, sticking to form. The guests weren’t a nightstalker crowd, he realized grimly, not the ones who cruised the shebeens searching for pickups and left-handed action. This was class, the real and the posed. Their conversation revolved around currency fluctuations, investment potential, and the latest Fernando production at the National Theatre. Nobody here would be looking for a quiet moment to slip upstairs with someone else’s escort. Greg steeled himself for hours of excruciating boredom.

There was one guest for whom Julia abandoned all her decorum, rushing up and flinging her arms round an over-loud American. “Uncle Horace, you came!’ She smiled happily as he patted her back, collecting an over-generous kiss. The man was in his late fifties, red-faced and fleshy, his smile seemingly permanent.

The name enabled Greg to place him: Horace Jepson, the channel magnate. He was the president of Globecast, a satellite broadcasting company which had multiple channel franchises in nearly every country in the world; screening everything from trash soaps and rock videos to wildlife documentaries and twenty-four-hour news coverage. The PSP had refused Globecast a licence while they were in power, although the company’s Pan-Europe channels could always be picked up by Event Horizon’s black-market flatscreens, complete with a dedicated English-language soundband. The PSP raged about imperialist electronic piracy; Globecast calmly referred to it as footprint overspill, and kept on beaming it down. Greg had never watched anything else in the PSP decade.

Horace Jepson gave Philip Evans a hearty greeting, while Julia clung to his side. Then she steered him adroitly away from a cluster of the celebrities who’d begun to eye him greedily, introducing him to one of the New Conservative ministers instead.

It was an interesting manoeuvre: if those manic self-advancing celebrities had sunk their varnished claws into Jepson he would’ve had little chance of escaping all evening. So Julia Evans wasn’t quite the airhead he’d so swiftly written her off as, after all. In fact, her thoughts seemed extraordinarily well focused, fast-flowing. He couldn’t ever remember encountering a mind quite like hers before.

She returned and took her grandfather’s hand. They shared a sly private smile.

It was a rapport which was quickly broken when Philip Evans spotted a couple making their way towards him and muttered, “Oh crap,” under his breath. Julia glanced up anxiously, and gave her grandfather’s hand a quick, reassuring squeeze.

He studied the advancing couple with interest to see what had aroused the sudden concern and antipathy in both Julia and Philip. They were a handsome pair. She was in her mid-twenties, draped in at least half a million pounds’ worth of diamond jewellery, and wearing a loose lavender gown which showed almost as much cleavage and thigh as Katerina. The man, Greg guessed, was forty; he had a dark Mediterranean complexion, and obviously worked hard to keep himself fit. Each strand of his thick raven-black hair was locked into place.

Greg’s espersense sent a cold, distinctly prickly sensation dancing along his spine as they approached. Beneath those perfect shells something disquietingly unpleasant lurked.