Bentley Little - The Collection

"Oh yes you will, sir. You will take your orders from the queen."

Adam faced the butler. "And I damn sure won't take any orders from a two-bit monarch with a tabloid—"

"Stop right there, sir." There was something threatening in the butler's stance now, an intimation of menace in his voice. "You will bow before the queen and you will most as­suredly submit to her authority."

"And if I don't?"

"We had Kennedy shot; we can arrange something for you as well."

There was silence in the Oval Office.

He faced Crowther, trying not to let his nervousness show."The queen ordered—?"

"The queen had nothing to do with it, sir. It was a deci­sion by the operatives in this country, based on her own best interests. She was never told." He paused. "There are a lot of things we have not told the queen."

"Then you are disloyal."

"I beg to differ, sir. Sometimes the queen does not realize where her own interests lie. It is our responsibility to deter­mine what is best for her and best for the motherland and carry out those actions to the best of our abilities."

The butler looked from Adam to Simons. "I'm sure you two would like to be alone for a while so you can ... absorb all this, so we will leave you in peace." He motioned with his head and the maid nearest the door opened it. The ser­vants began filing out. "When would you like to meet again, sir?"

"Never."

Crowther chuckled. "Very well. You will let me know."

He let himself out of the room, closing the door behind him with a flourish that could only be considered mocking.

Adam turned toward his chief of staff. "So what do you make of that?"

Simons was shaking his head, still not able to speak.

"You think it's true?"

Simons nodded. "Looks that way."

"So what do we do?"

"What can we do?"

"Before we can do anything, I need to know the chain of command. Are we going to be simply following orders, or are we going to be given a certain level of autonomy?"

Simons smiled wryly. "You mean, is the queen a micro-manager?"

Adam snorted. "The queen. Can you believe this shit? Did you ever, in your wildest fucking dreams, ever think that something like this could happen?"

"What amazes me is the extent of it. They've corrupted our history from its simplest to its most complex level, from grammar school civics to graduate public policy. Every sin­gle person not directly involved in this ... travesty believes the same lie. In all my years in politics, in all my years of public life, I've never even had any suspicions that some­thing like this could be the case."

"I was a senator for twelve years," Adam said. "How do you think I feel, knowing that all of my effort and hard work was merely irrelevant grease for the public relations ma­chine?" He kicked the swivel chair behind his desk. "Fuck!"

"What are we going to do?" Simons asked.

"I don't know."

"What do you want to do?"

Adam thought for a moment, looked at him. "I want," he said quietly, "to secure our country's independence."

***

They met that night, his election team, in a Denny's cof­fee shop. Derek, his dirty trickster, was along to scan for bugs or other listening devices, and when he'd checked the table and the surrounding plastic plants and had set up a small black square to detect long-range microphone waves, they started talking.

"The first thing we need to do," Simons said, "is get the First Lady out of here. We need to send her on a goodwill trip to Japan or something. Get her as far away from British influence as possible. Who knows how low they'd stoop?"

Adam nodded. "Agreed."

Paul Frederickson cleared his throat. The secretary of state had been with him ever since his first senatorial cam­paign and, next to Simons, Adam trusted his opinion more than anyone else's.

"Go ahead, Paul."

"I think what we need to do first is discover the extent of the infiltration. This Crowther told you that all of the previ­ous presidents had come around. Does that mean that they'd been converted, that they truly believed this was the best form of government for the United States, or does that mean that they accepted the way things were but didn't like it?"

"I would suspect the latter." Ted Fitzsimmons.

"We need to talk to them, find out how much they know. They can probably tell the players well enough to put to­gether a scorecard we can use."

"Good idea," Adam said.

"We need to know about the various branches as well. Ju­diciary? Do the members of the Supreme Court know? Leg­islative? Any senators? We know that not all of them know, but maybe some of them do. FBI? CIA? Branches of the military? We need to be able to assess our strengths and weaknesses before we can formulate a plan of action."

They talked through the night, into the wee hours of the morning, and Adam could barely keep his eyes open by the time they left the restaurant and split up. He felt good, though. Assignments had been delegated and at least a rough idea of where they were headed had been hashed out. He no longer felt as hopeless and despairing of the situation as he had when he'd called the meeting.

He said goodbye to Simons on the sidewalk, then got into the presidential limousine. "The White House," he told the driver.

"Yes sir." The man started the car, looked at him in the rearview mirror, smiled. "God save the queen."

Adam forced himself to smile back. "God save the queen."

The military was all his.

It was the best news he'd had all week. The only hold the British had over the armed forces was the basic lie, the knowledge that each and every person in uniform believed that the United States was a sovereign nation and that they were supposed to uphold the U.S. Constitution, democracy's blueprint.

But he was still commander in chief.

It was a loophole, although not a particularly practical one. What could he do? Stage a coup and invade Britain? It would look like war. People would think him a dangerous lunatic, irrationally attacking a longtime ally, and he'd be in­stantly impeached. He needed to wage a backstage battle, a behind-the-scenes war. He needed to free America from Britain without letting the public know. He needed to make the myth a reality.

But how?

War at least was feasible. He was commander in chief, and the military was one thing he did legitimately control. It was messy, but as a last resort it might have to do.

There was a knock on the door of the Oval Office and Si­mons entered, carrying a manila folder stuffed with papers.

"What have you found out?"

The chief of staff sat down in a chair on the opposite side of the desk and leaned forward, whispering, "The Secret Service is all theirs. Technically, the FBI's under their juris­diction as well, but we seem to have most of them. The di­rector has assured me that as many operatives as we need are at our disposal."

"Do you believe him?"

"Do we have a choice?"

"What about—"

"The other presidents? They won't talk. I don't know if they've been bought or threatened, but we can't get word one out of them."

"I can't believe that."

"Maybe they got to them before we could." He paused. "The Bushes seemed scared."

"CIA?"

"Theirs."

Adam thought for a moment. "The director can get us op­eratives?"

Simons nodded.

"Crowther. The butler," he said. "I want him gotten rid of."

"Do you think that's a good idea?"

"Consider it the first shot. We'll gauge from their reac­tion how they'll respond to ... other incidents."

For the first time since all this had started, Tom Simons smiled.

In the morning, his breakfast was not made, his clothes were not ready. When he returned to his bedroom, the sheets had not been changed.

"You'll pay for this," one of the maids hissed at him in the hallway.