Free Avalon by Stephen R. Lawhead Page A

guess,” James replied. “No real surprises.”
    “Ah!” Donald said, jumping on James’ assessment. “There
was
one small victory snatched from the jaws of defeat.”
    He learned forward, his expression growing keen and excited. It was only then that James recognized him as the backbencher who had thrown Parliament into a tizzy with his question about the State funeral for Ready Teddy. It suddenly dawned on him why Caroline had been so unaccountably pleased to hear that the issue had been raised in the broadcast. Then, he had been just another pinstriped politico waving an order paper. Now, however, he looked like a schoolboy who has just found out a dirty secret about his teacher. “One small victory. Know what it was?”
     

Six
     
    “I wouldn’t be surprised if the Save Our Monarchy lunatics put him up to this. Those bastards have been a pain in the as from the beginning. I want them squeezed until the pips squeak, understand?” Prime Minister Waring thrust himself back in his chair and glared at the unhappy faces huddled around the oval table.
    The PM’s deputy, a carefully coiffed, Armani-suited redoubtable woman named Angela Telford-Sykes, was first to speak. “Calm down, Tom,” she said, trying to smooth her chief’s ruffled feathers. “They’re just a bunch of blue-haired old dears. They make tea and hand out leaflets in shopping centers. Why, in a day or two, I wouldn’t be surprised if —”
    Waring’s fist struck the table with such force the empty water jug bounced on its silver tray. “We don’t have a day or two!” he shouted. “Bloody hell! Is everyone braindead around here?”
    Telford-Sykes gazed over the top of her glasses, unmoved. A veteran of many campaigns, she was used to taking much worse from the PM. One or two of the other members of Waring’s kitchen cabinet — those few trusted advisors of his inner circle — glanced nervously at the deputy.
    “Because of that blasted question,” Waring said, lowering his voice, “we’re being maneuvered into providing a gala State funeral for that reprobate winesop. The whole country heard it, for Crissakes! Any hope we had of sending him off with a quiet private ceremony is ruined.”
    “I don’t believe that was ever a realistic option, Tom,” Angela said soothingly. “Perhaps they’ve done us a favor by bringing this out into the open. We can use it.”
    “Bloody right we’ll use it,” Waring snapped. “But it will cost an absolute bomb.”
    Adrian Burton, Chancellor of the Exchequer, spoke up. “As it happens, I’ve had some figures prepared” — he lifted a sheet of paper from the leather folder before him — “and it looks like something in the region of fifteen million pounds is a reasonable minimum.”
    Waring stared daggers at the man. “I was thinking more in terms of the
political
cost, Adrian,” he enunciated coldly. “I don’t give a damn about the money.”
    “Quite,” replied Burton. “Yes, quite.”
    Waring turned his eyes away from his chancellor. “Hutch has been on the phone all day, doing damage control, but the media smell blood. They are circling. Unless we provide a suitable alternative, gentlemen, this thing could get very painful.”
    “Hutch” was Martin Hutchens, his press secretary. His slight stature, cheap suits, and prep-school haircut went a long way towards disguising a fiercely calculating, creatively resourceful adversary. When he stumbled across a journalism course at the Poly years ago, the NHS may have lost a proctologist, but the Government gained a top-flight spin doctor. Ever since the televised House announcement, he had been laboring to deflect the increasingly strident insinuations that the Government had something to hide in the matter of the King’s death.
    “This is where it sits at the moment,” Hutchens said. It was time to bring the rest of the inner circle up to speed. “The story is that the King’s suicide — yes, we’re using the ‘S’ word now,