A Sentimental Traitor Read Online Free Page B

Callaghan hadn’t dodged the Heathrow pack but had spoken to them, very briefly but unguardedly. ‘Crisis? What Crisis?’ the
headlines reported him as saying. In truth he’d never uttered those words, they hadn’t even passed through his mind, yet that hadn’t stopped them being engraved on his tombstone a
few months later. A Prime Minister couldn’t be too careful, not with en election in the offing.
    On the road back in to central London, a Stars & Stripes dangled limply beside a Union Jack from an overpass. As they came closer to the centre, there were more, from lamp posts, in windows,
stretched across barriers. Usher telephoned ahead to make sure that the Downing Street flag was flying, and at half mast.
    When he arrived he walked directly to the Cabinet Room, which was crowded. He was quickly brought up to date with developments – there weren’t any of substance, apart from the
bodies, which were still being washed up on mudflats and shorelines downstream. The wreckage was being recovered, the Air Accident Investigation Board already at its work, the flight recorders
already being decoded in their laboratories. In the meantime few facts, only theories, and none of them explained how he could deal with the families’ grief. A message to say that the
American ambassador had called, twice. A shower, a change of clothes, a careful selection of a sombre tie.
    There was no one else on the stairs as he walked slowly back down from the top-floor apartment. He had this feeling of being entirely alone. He struggled to find some words he might use, a
phrase or two that might help bring a traumatized country together. Put him back in control. Something that came from within. But he was tired from the flight and he felt empty.
    He was still juggling phrases in his mind, dropping them, when he reached the black-and-white marble-tiled hallway. He could hear the buzz of impatience from the crowd beyond the steel door. He
was making one last check of his tie when he found his political secretary at his elbow. A young man, always eager to please, sometimes too much so.
    ‘The American Embassy on the phone again.’
    ‘The ambassador?’
    ‘No. His wife.’
    ‘Save me from this . . .’ Usher muttered, trying to turn away.
    ‘Wants a quick word. Just one. Needs it, she says. Now. She’s hanging on.’
    The ambassador’s wife was a delightful woman, a Virginian, big blue eyes, late thirties, just a little flirty in the way diplomatic wives are encouraged to be, who played her part to the
full but who had never wanted more than to be a softball and cookie-baking mom. Yet now . . . Now Usher felt himself go solid inside. Like a machine. He’d talk to her later, knew he
wouldn’t be able to keep it together if he did it now. Already the polls were showing he was being blamed, not for the accident but for his poor choice in being elsewhere, in the sun while
little children suffered, and he knew he could afford no more slips. So no distractions, not even for her. He shook his head. The young man backed off, a look of disappointment creeping into his
eye. And once more, Usher was on his own.
    He had been rushing, trying to cram too much in, and was sweating a little when at last he emerged from the front door of Number Ten to face the massed ranks of microphones, camera lenses and
television lights, every one of them pointed at him.
    ‘Christ, it’s cold,’ he muttered to himself as for the first time in days he felt the bite of the British winter. He wondered if that’s what it had been like for King
Charles. 1649. A freezing January day, so it was written, when he’d stepped out from the Banqueting Hall just a little way along Whitehall and onto his scaffold. The King had worn two shirts
in order to stop him shivering, in case the crowd mistook it for fear. At this moment, Usher felt very close to the King.
    Somehow the years of experience kicked in, and he found the words. Not the precise and carefully