Patriot

CHAPTER 56

Good morning, darling!” Ambrose Congreve trilled, practically bouncing into the sunny dining room of his country home, Brixden House.

Lady Diana looked up from her exquisitely tiny portion of perfectly poached eggs, kippers, and toast. It was early on a brilliantly sunlit Sunday morning. The French polished George III sideboard in the Adams dining room was groaning with piping hot goodies pour le petite dejeuner.

“Wait!” she said, gazing sternly at her husband. “Are you actually skipping, Ambrose Congreve?” she said.

“Am I? Well, I suppose I am, aren’t I?”

The portly old fellow hopped over to the cook’s vast sampling of delicacies arrayed beneath a large sporting oil of Diana’s late and unlamented grandfather, the Earl of Airlie. Ambrose, as was his wont, winked at the Earl and poked his forefinger at his belly. The old bastard was seated aboard his favorite hunter, Redhead, surrounded by his hounds.

Congreve heaped his plate with cheese-scrambled eggs and crumpets and Irish butter and a generous dollop of Mackays Three Fruit Marmalade. He filled his old mug with piping hot coffee and made his happy way around the long, long table to where his lovely wife was seated.

“What are you on about this morning, darling?” the lady of the house asked, patting her lips with crisp white linen.

“Well, for one thing, it’s a glorious day. Have you not bothered to look out the windows? God’s in his heaven and all’s well with the world, you cannot deny it.” He dropped his knife on the floor and bent beneath the tablecloth to retrieve it. “There you are!” he exclaimed, as if he’d found the mythical needle in the haystack.

“Really, Ambrose, wherever are your manners? This is not a rumpus room. Please, do try to compose yourself.”

“I shall, I shall. May I sample your eggs?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Sit down and shut up.”

“Now, now, mon petite bijou, try not to be so crab-appley on such a splendid day.”

“What has gotten into you? Why on earth are you dressed like that?”

“Like what?”

“Conflicting plaids of dubious shades.”

“Well. Where to start? Number one, we have left that drear idyll of ours on Bermuda far, far behind us.”

“Are you referring to Shadowlands?”

“I am.”

“I’d really prefer you not refer to a lovely old Bermuda home that’s been in my family for six generations as ‘drear.’”

“Duly noted. And, two, I have returned at long last to this… this royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle, this earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, this other Eden — this—”

“Seat of Mars? You got that right!” Lady Mars said, squirming on her well-rounded bottom and giggling.

“My curvy little Martian!” the husband exclaimed.

“Got that right, buster. And don’t forget it.”

“… this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this… England!”

“Are you quite finished?”

“A little Shakespeare never hurt anyone. Pass the Times, please.”

“There you are. Read, and weep. The world markets have tanked because the Russians are invading Estonia. All of NATO is up in arms. Happy?”

“I am, I am.”

“You’re happy? How can any sentient being possibly find joy in the ruthless, jackbooted invasion of a sovereign nation full of free and happy people?”

“Oh, I have my reasons.”

“Care to enumerate one or two?”

“I certainly can. One, I have the Russians at a distinct disadvantage, you see.”

“Really, dear? Poor old Russians. And what might that disadvantage be?”

“They have no idea that the celebrated Demon of Deduction is hot on their trail.”

“Completely in the dark, are they?”

“Utterly. And, two, I’ve donned my cloak and dagger once more. The game is afoot, you see. Well, there you have it, dearest. I cannot tarry, I fear. Headed down to Cambridge after breakfast. Taking the Yellow Peril. Going to see an old friend.”

“Male, one only hopes.”

“Indeed. You remember Stef Halter.”

“The history professor. Magdalene College. You were at Cambridge together.”

“Correct. Dr. Halter and I are set to have a very interesting day of it.”

“Picnic by the Cam? Punting, just you two and a blanket?”

“Don’t be clever, Diana. This is serious business. Halter, Alex Hawke, and I have enjoined our mighty forces once more. We are well into the fray, I’ll have you know.”

“What fray?”

“Hawke’s erstwhile friend, Vladimir Putin, the second and third president of Russia, has been acting very much the naughty boy lately. Eating countries like popcorn. We three valiants are going to put a swift stop to his gluttony.”

Diana looked up and gazed deep into the middle distance.

“My God, he’s serious,” she said, putting down her heavy silver fork.

“Deadly serious.”

“What has our Mr. Putin done now?”

“Blown up Miami Beach, for starters.”

“He did that?”

“Alex and I certainly believe he did. Using Cuban proxies, but yes. Saboteurs, you see. That’s why Professor Halter and I are meeting. Prove he did it. Stef and I can wrest the truth from the mire of lies, if anyone can.”

“This Dr. Halter. He’s a Russian scholar, is he?”

“No, my darling, he’s a Russian spy.”

“For whom?”

“MI6 for one. KGB for the other. A double agent. You might want to keep that bit under your hat.”

“A mole?”

“Hmm. The longest-serving double in the history of British Secret Service. Man’s a veritable genius at playing the Great Game. Not always one move ahead, more like nine. When he’s not teaching the unteachable at Cambridge, he’s lurking about deep in the labyrinthine wonders of the Kremlin. Together, the great Halter and I shall uncover who exploded Miami Beach. And who brought down that Russian passenger airliner. One and the same chap is behind it, I think. Major acts of military sabotage of epic proportions with civilian casualties. Quite unlike the typical fingerprint of a KGB operation. Stef thinks it may even be an outsider. Someone Putin keeps in the shadows, you see.”

“I’ll save you a trip. The Chinese brought that airplane down, Ambrose, not the Russians. Murdered all those poor souls. Even I and the BBC could have told you that.”

“Not necessarily true, Diana. Stef has some very good friends inside the uppermost echelons of Mandarin society in Beijing, you see. The crème de la crème of the Chinese Communist Party. And the inside poop is that the Chinese had nothing to do with that horrific act. It was the Russians.”

“Preposterous. Even they are not capable of killing three hundred of their own.”

“Ah, but they did.”

“So you say. Why, for heaven’s sake?”

“A feint. A dodge. A distraction. Putin is hell-bent on re-creating the former Soviet Union. He’s decided it’s his legacy to history. Despite how all the denizens of the free world may feel about it being overrun by Russian tanks. Unconfirmed reports have him mobilizing Russian troops on the Czech border, the Polish border, Hungary, and God knows where else. All under the cover of war games. Stef and I aim to uncouple the Russian words for ‘games’ and ‘war’ before we’re through.”

Diana paused, put down her napkin, and stared far into the middle distance. There was a pretty starling in the Japanese cherry beyond the windows. Then she turned her worried countenance once more upon her husband.

“You really are going up against Putin, aren’t you?”

“Yes, Diana. I am.”

“I don’t like it. Not a bit of it.”

“Why?”

“Why? Because he’s incredibly dangerous, that’s why. You could get yourself killed.”

“Goes with the territory, darling. I’m a copper. It’s what I do.”

He tried to caress her hair, but she pulled away, her eyes glistening.

“What you do is scare me to death sometimes. I simply could not face life without you, you know.”

“Nor I without you.”

“And yet, off you go again.”

“Because I must. It’s my duty. My honor.”

“Well, go on then, damn you, and do what you must. And, for God’s sake, please be careful. I don’t relish the idea of you driving among all those lorries on all those motorways in that little bright yellow toy car of yours. Why don’t you take my Range Rover? You just might find that Boz Scaggs CD you’ve been searching high and low for in the audio player.”

“I’ll be fine. The Yellow Peril is unmatched when it comes to sheer roadability.”

“So you say. You’re not wearing that horrid yellow jacket and yellow tie to meet with a distinguished Cambridge don, are you?”

“What’s wrong with them?”

“Well, they’re both equally hideous, for starters.”

“Match my car, do they not? The old Growler?”

“Try matching your big blue eyes. Always a better strategy.”

“I vastly prefer yellow.”

“That’s because, unlike you, my darling, I was endowed by our Creator with impeccable taste.”

“You’re not opposed to this cap’s sprightly young check, I don’t suppose… are you?”

“Your red driving cap? No. By all means wear it. Maybe we’ll all get lucky and it will blow off…”

Ambrose turned and headed for the staircase.

“I’ll be off as soon as I change, then. I do love you madly, dearest.”

“And I you. Will you be home in time for supper?”

“Maybe a little late, depending. Could you ask the kitchen to leave me a roast beef sandwich on the sideboard? Rare with Dijon mustard? With crisps and cornichons? Be a good chap, will you, and leave something out?”

“Oh, all right. Consider it done,” she said, following him upstairs and going up on her tiptoes to kiss his rosy cheeks.

Too soon, he was away. In a moment, his little yellow Morgan roadster had disappeared round a bend in the sweeping drive. He was lost within the fold of deep green woods surrounding Brixden House. Despite her heroic and stoic intentions, Lady Mars suddenly found herself bereft and in desperate need of the solace of flowers and the red and gold of fall foliage.

So there she remained, bathed in the golden light streaming down through the Gothic library windows. And, long after Ambrose’s lovely little lemony putt-putt was gone, she remained there; gazing out into the garden, thinking of a summer to come when the grounds would be dappled with O’Hara roses, Sweet Avalanche, Veronica, and Lisianthus showing the softest pale grey foliage…

Her dear old knight errant, off tilting at windmills once more, convinced he was saving the world once and for all. God, how she loved that man. She knew he played the fool for her sometimes, just to see her smile. But she also knew that the crystalline mind he’d inherited from his mother was his diamond.

Clear, hard, and brilliant.

And, really, who knew? Perhaps he was well and truly off to save the world and perhaps… She sighed, and then bent down to gather up her needlepoint and needles from the seat of her favorite chair. She then moved outside to her shady bench in the garden. Glancing at her busy hands in the warm sunlight, she found herself much heartened by the brief but brilliant flash of her precious engagement ring, nestled beside her wedding band.

A solitary diamond he’d given her long ago on the beach at Pink Sands in Bermuda, the one that had belonged to his dear mother, Charlotte. The precious stone suddenly caught fire in the sunlight, like a distant explosion, though it was only inches away from the tip of her nose.

A lone tear had escaped her eyes, and she brushed it away with a flick of her wrist.

Charlotte’s son, Ambrose, had, after all, been his mother’s solitary diamond, too.