The Sins of the Fathers

Chapter Twenty-One

Buckingham Palace

London

Nick Symonds watched the video alone. It was still a fairly tight group of people who knew what was going on in the wider world, and he wanted to keep it that way. He rightly suspected that he was being presented with the final move, checkmate. It was not conclusive evidence of anything, but it was powerful, as much as he did not want it to be. It was still just what some meaningless nun had been told by another nonentity, but it fitted Montague's testimony and the UN investigator's theories. And despite everything else, he believed her. He wanted to have his doubts, he wanted to be able to argue that she was an unreliable witness, but the details were too convincing. Caris Johnson was an educated woman, a qualified doctor who apparently spoke six languages fluently before she was thrown into the Order. He had got his people to do a full background check on her, and her prodigious memory had been mentioned by former schoolteachers and university professors. And on the emotional video, he watched her regurgitate information about the women she had killed, and about Ralph Winstanley and Mother Bernadette, and he could see that it was all true. So, he had to change tack, fast, or things were going to get really nasty in the very near future.

"Madame Delacorte...has the Security Council voted?" He asked, cutting to the chase as the bloody woman's face appeared on the wall monitor. She was, in his own view, a perfect example of why women should be kept in their rightful place, but she had him over a barrel so there was no point in beating around the bush with her.

"Unanimously, Mr President." Delacorte sniffed, looking down her nose at him, making it quite clear what she was thinking.

"No abstentions?"

"No, Mr President...the Chinese are washing their hands of you, I fear?"

"We were already discussing reparations...nothing has really changed...nothing is actually proven...although I will concede that your assumptions are credible." He sighed, shifting in his seat, feeling uncomfortable, firmly on his back foot, unsure of how best to defend his own position in the light of her revelation about the Chinese. "We are eager to find a way to put this unfortunate business behind us without...distressing...the public?"

"We have to make a public announcement...our people are working on a statement as we speak...because this is too big a secret to keep forever." Delacorte said firmly, and Symonds sensed that her appetite for further discussions was fast disappearing. There would be further demands from that moment on, not further discussions, unless he could regain some sort of control over things. "Mr President...I need to send some people over to take your father into protective custody."

"That is never going to happen...he is ninety-four, Madame?" He replied, equally firm, as they jumped straight to one of his red lines. "He would not survive the shock of it?"

"He knows he is guilty, Mr President...so it will not be a shock?"

"I will put him under house arrest and you can question him by video link, if his doctors say he is up to it..."

"I would like to continue our investigations, Mr President?"

"No one else is visiting us, Madame...our borders are all closed to you from today...and I am expelling the entire American embassy staff right now...their current president is openly and aggressively trying to undermine my democratic government...but we are still prepared to be reasonable?"

"There is nothing reasonable about your position, Mr President...I would have thought that you would express some real remorse? Some regret?" And offer some recompense without having to have your arms twisted?"

"Madame...this was all a long time ago...I was eleven when this was all playing out...and of course I regret the deaths of so many people...but this country is not too blame?" Symonds insisted, but it was no use. They just danced around the same old houses, as she tried to get him to agree to more and more. And he made some concessions. He had no choice. Once he finally got rid of her, he sent for two people, Marcus Forbes and Callum Carter. Forbes was the first to arrive, from his office just along the corridor. "Marcus, we're fucked...I've just agreed to send an ambassador to the UN in New York to help draft a statement and enter into formal talks about reparations...real talks, with real outcomes?"