Kompromat

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

After all the excitement of that mad dash to Helsinki, Melissa Barnard decided to have a quiet weekend with her daughter, Fiona, and her partner, Michael Kennedy.

The Kennedys lived in a whitewashed fisherman’s house set above the harbour in a small village called Goleen on the South-West Coast of Ireland. On the Saturday before Easter they went to the pub for lunch.

It was a bright, sunny day, warm enough to eat outside. They were sitting there, at the table, while the seagulls swooped overhead, when a motor-boat came round the headland and made for the quay.

They recognized Jack Varese, of course. The whole world could recognize Jack Varese. The young woman with him, Melissa realized, was Rosie Craig.

Melissa rose. ‘Good heavens!’ she exclaimed. ‘Can I introduce myself? I’m Melissa Barnard, Edward Barnard’s wife. This is my daughter, Fiona, and this is her partner, Michael Kennedy. What are you two doing here?’

‘The same as you, I imagine.’ Varese smiled. ‘Looking for a quiet weekend before World War III breaks out. Rosie’s father’s just been firing missiles at Syria, he’s thinking about bombing North Korea and we’re all wondering whether the Russians or the Chinese will retaliate. How’s Edward? I haven’t seen him since he got bitten by a spider in Australia. Has he recovered? Do you mind if we join you?’

‘Things were getting pretty hot in Washington,’ Rosie Craig explained as they sat there in the sun. ‘Quite apart from the geopolitics, I’m in the middle of a turf war with Bert Rumbold, so I said to Jack, “Let’s get the hell out of here”. We just flew over in Jack’s plane and parked it at Shannon. We’re staying at a hotel down the coast. They suggested we pop up here for lunch. Lent us the boat, so here we are!’

What a charming young woman, she was, Melissa thought. Yet there was an inner steel there too, by all accounts. Before coming to Washington, she had run a multi-billion dollar retail empire, and you needed more than a pretty face to do that.

Rosie Craig was fascinated to learn about Michael Kennedy’s work.

‘I grew up here,’ Kennedy explained. ‘Went to Trinity, Dublin, and then worked as an international maritime lawyer in London before coming back to Ireland.’ He waved his hand at the little harbour. ‘With the internet, you can work anywhere nowadays. This is heaven on earth. Mind you, I travel a lot. I’m going to be in Yellowknife next week. We’re trying to push through some new international rules to protect the Arctic. It’s a free-for-all at the moment and as the Arctic opens up with global warming, it’s going to get worse.’

Michael Kennedy couldn’t have found a better audience.

‘I’ve a personal stake in this,’ he told them. ‘Back in 1979, my father died in the Bantry Bay disaster, not far from here. An oil-tanker caught fire and exploded. He was on it. I was a kid at the time. Better rules could have prevented that accident. Forty years on, we still haven’t got the standards we need.’

Jack Varese chipped in. ‘Watch this space,’ he said. ‘Rosie’s going to win her battle back in Washington and a lot of the things you care about are going to happen.’

‘My father will listen to me.’ Rosie Craig replied. ‘I know that. But there are other ways of getting to him too.’

With that cryptic message, the golden couple jumped back into their boat and chuntered back up the coast.

‘Pity Rosie Craig didn’t run for office instead of her dad,’ Michael Kennedy said. He was clearly smitten. They all were.

Melissa followed through on Michael Kennedy’s line of thought.

‘Maybe she will run for office one day,’ she speculated. ‘If the US president for some reason has to stand down, doesn’t the vice-president succeed? That would leave a vacancy. Rosie could step in there as vice-president, then next time round she could stand in her own right. Finally, a woman president!’

‘But why would the president step down?’ Fiona Barnard asked. ‘He’s only just been elected.’