Jack Higgins - The White House Connection

He was horrified. 'But what are you going to do?'

'We'll go back to Compton Place and review the situation.' She lit a cigarette. 'Drive on, Hedley, drive on.'

She pulled out the coded mobile, phoned Barry and found him still in bed. 'It's me again,' she said. 'Just keeping you up to date.'

He sat up, reached for a cigarette and managed to stay surprisingly calm. 'Good news or bad news?'

'All bad, I'm afraid. Your Connection turned out to be a man called Thornton, the White House chief of staff. He enjoyed playing up-the-rebels because he had an uncle shot by the British after the Easter Rising, plus a girlfriend killed in a firefight in Belfast by British troops. Wrong place, wrong time.'

'And how would you be knowing all this?'

'Oh, he was run to earth by Sean Dillon and Blake Johnson. There was a confrontation at the party the President was attending. I happened to be in the garden at the right moment. I overheard everything.'

'And Thornton?'

'I shot him in the back of the head. Afterwards, he was blown to pieces in a rather large explosion. Does that sound familiar?'

There was a long silence. 'Well, now,' Barry said. 'I guess that just leaves you and me. Where would you be now?'

'Still in Long Island. I'm flying out almost at once to Gatwick, then home to Norfolk.'

' Compton Place. I know about that.'

'So I can look forward to a visit?'

'You can depend on it. I'll come flying in.'

'I'm so glad.'

She put the mobile away and Hedley said, 'You're just asking for it, Lady Helen, and others could be coming looking for you, like Brigadier Ferguson.'

'I couldn't care less, Hedley, as long as Barry finds me first.

Just pass the flask.' He did so reluctantly. She shook a couple of pills into her palm and washed them down with whiskey. 'Good. Now get me to the airport.'

On the terrace with the President, Blake and Dillon, Clancy told them what had happened.

'Okay,' Blake said. 'He was big and black and he said he served in Vietnam?'

'That's it,' Clancy said.

Dillon turned to the President. 'It has to be Hedley Jackson. The final proof, I'd say.'

Blake said to Clancy, 'You and the boys go looking.'

'There's more than five hundred people here,' Clancy said.

'Just do it.'

Clancy went out. Cazalet said, 'What happened to Thornton – a convenient accident, wasn't it?'

'If you say so, Mr President,' Dillon told him.

'Except that you don't believe in accidents?'

'Never did, Mr President.' Dillon smiled softly. 'And certainly not with this lady.'

Not long after Helen Lang had called Barry, Dillon spoke to Ferguson at Cavendish Square. 'I always seem to be phoning you at ridiculous hours in the morning to give you bad news.'

'Tell me.'

Which Dillon did.

'What a mess,' Ferguson said. 'The chief of staff? Who'd have believed it?'

'Doesn't matter now,' Dillon said callously. 'Cooked to a turn and I'm not sorry. He was responsible for many deaths, and in the case of Peter Lang, an atrocity of the first order. Heinrich Himmler would have been proud of him.'

'Where is Helen Lang now?'

'Blake's checking. I'll keep you posted. She certainly isn't here.'

Ferguson put the phone down, thought about it, then called Hannah Bernstein. She answered astonishingly brightly, but then that was fourteen years of police work.

'Bernstein? It's me,' Ferguson said. 'And what a tale I have to tell. Long Island has turned out to be the modern equivalent of a Greek tragedy. Sony, Chief Inspector, but I'm going to have to ask you to make an early start.'

'Of course, sir.'

'There is one thing. The Commissioner phoned me late last night from Scotland Yard.'

'Trouble, sir?'

'Only for some. You are now a Detective Superintendent, Special Branch.'

'Oh dear,' Hannah said. 'The boys won't like that in the canteen.'

'Let me be brutal,' Ferguson told her. 'Forget your Cambridge MA in psychology. To my knowledge, you've killed four times in the line of duty.'

'Something I'm not proud of, sir.'

'If I may stir your Hasidic conscience, Superintendent, Sword of the Lord and Gideon, those people were all worth killing. You took a bullet yourself and I'm damn proud to have had you work for me. Anyway, Kim can get scrambled eggs going and we'll wait together to hear further bad news from Dillon. I'll fill you in when you get here.'

Blake came into the study where Dillon was talking to the President by the fire. Cazalet turned. 'Any news?'

'On Lady Helen Lang, Mr President? Yes. She flew over here from Gatwick in one of her firm's Gulfstreams and landed at Westhampton.'

'And?'

'By the time I'd chased all this up, she'd taken off again just before ten.'

'Destination?'

'Gatwick.' Blake hesitated. 'What do you want done, Mr President?'

'About Lady Helen?' Cazalet frowned, the tough, experienced politician in charge. 'If this comes out, the whole peace process can come toppling over. Let's be practical about this mess.

Thornton 's death can be dismissed as an unfortunate accident. A man tried to attack me, Thornton chased him, and they both died. Brady, Kelly and Cassidy already have explanations for their deaths. Tim Pat Ryan in London?'

'A gangster,' Dillon said. 'And every other gangster in London wanted his crown.'

'Exactly. As for Cohan -' Cazalet shrugged – 'I'm not going to shed tears over that bastard. So he'd had too much to drink and fell from the terrace of his suite.'

Blake said, 'You mean it never happened, Mr President?'

'Blake, it stinks, not only for the White House, but for Downing Street. We're all for peace and yet a thing like this

'Sinks the ship,' Blake said.

'And there's always Jack Barry.' Dillon lit a cigarette. 'The last man standing. Now, if he went down?'

'It would be as if the whole thing really had never happened,' Blake put in.

There was a pause before Cazalet said, 'That still leaves Lady Helen. She killed six men that we know of.'

'I see,' Dillon said. 'You mean she must pay for sending out of this vale of tears a bunch of absolute bastards, directly responsible for many deaths and the appalling circumstances of her son's death.'

'She broke the law and about as badly as it could be broken,' Cazalet pointed out.

'I've killed many more in my time and sometimes for worse reasons,' Dillon told him. 'Come to think of it, you earned a few medals in ' Nam, Mr President, and Blake, too. What was the body count?'

'Damn you, Dillon,' Cazalet said. 'Right. But it still leaves us with the problem: what do we do about her?'

'She's out of your jurisdiction now,' Blake reminded him.

'But she's still partly my responsibility.' Cazalet hesitated. 'Okay, get me Brigadier Ferguson.'

A moment later, Ferguson was taking his call. ' Mr President.'

'Dillon tells me you know the worst. The thing you don't know is that Lady Helen Lang has left Long Island in a Gulfstream for Gatwick. This is a mess, Brigadier. Let me tell you of my conversation just now with Dillon and Blake Johnson.'

'So, it never happened, Mr President,' Ferguson said, his voice clear over the speaker. 'All right, I think I can work with that over here. But what about Lady Helen?'

'I'm hoping you can think of something for that. You can speak to the Prime Minister, if you want. I'll talk to him later, but what we need is a solution from you. Tell you what. I'll send Dillon and Blake post-haste to London. I've got a plane here they can use.'

'Leave it with me,' Ferguson told him. 'God knows what, but I'll come up with something.'

Cazalet turned to Blake and Dillon. 'You heard. In view of what we've said, I think we can keep the lid on what happened here.'