Keep Calm (48 page)

“It's over, Georgia. It's over. I don't mean with you and me, either. I mean with you, with this. All of this.” Georgia calmly agreed.

“Yes. It is over. All of it.” Her head bobbed as she took it all in. The room sat numb, waiting for her to process it all.

“It has to be put down elegantly though. There's so, so much at stake. I'm not talking about for me here, know that. For so many. For so many innocents. For you, Davina. All of it, we've all lost so much of ourselves. It's all spun so wildly out of control.” She looked over at Tatum. He was bearing down on her. He wanted the answers and assurance that she was fully ready to give him. She knew she owed him a moment to let his shoulders drop, to know that his ordeal had truly ended.

“Mr. Tatum, I will have you and your family flown home safely to Chicago, in quiet, first thing tomorrow morning, on a private plane.” She looked up to Early, giving him the note to have it done. Early looked over to Adam and told him with another nod that he could trust him, that it'd be just as she promised. “There will, of course, be no charges filed, and, in fact, I will firmly and fully publicly declare your unbridled innocence.”

“I want something else.”

“What is it? Money?”

“No, fuck you lady, it isn't money.” Georgia was taken aback. No one had ever really spoken to her that way.

“What is it, then?”

“I want my father-in-law's body. I want to take him to Chicago with us.” Georgia looked to Early, once again silently telling him to make it happen. She turned to address Steel.

“I will resign my office in sixty days. I will leave politics forever. I need a quick moment to drain the riverbed of those who are involved while keeping the full disclosure of what has happened under wraps for as long as possible—hopefully many years. Anything other than all of us quietly leaving right this moment and dutifully repairing whatever can be rectified in the next bit of time will only lead to both of us, Davina, in prison and an irreparable body blow to the people's psyche, the flow of government, and the very future of Great Britain. Do you see that?”

Steel swished it all around in her brilliant yet frazzled brain.

“If you don't resign, though, I promise I'll come visit, and it won't be to talk about perfume and such. You have sixty days.”

“I understand. I do, Davina. I assure you that it's all over. Mr. Tatum, I'm well aware of your file, of my movie debut hanging over my head. All I ask is time to make sure that those behind all that's been done are cut off from the chance to get their hands on the tiller. Then I'll go. Sadly. Gladly. Are we all three agreed?”

Adam nodded and shrugged. All he wanted was to go home and get his family back to something close to normal. He wanted someone to have to pay for Gordon's death, for Richard Lyle, for all that was done, but that was second place to his family's safety, so he'd take this deal and run with it.

Steel agreed as well. She had lost herself, oddly in the same way that Georgia had. Heaton had gotten to both of them, and she'd known immediately, maybe just as Georgia had known in colluding with him, that she had made a disastrous decision in killing him. Something had overcome her, be it fear, rage, vengeance, or weakness: she had been lured out into waters she could never swim back from. She didn't like letting everyone else off the hook to let herself go free, but in this moment it was sound reasoning that Georgia was offering, so, soaked through in shame and regret, Steel went with Georgia's bargain. They all did.

*   *   *

SOMEWHERE OFF IN
the distance, toward Albert Hall, there were church bells ringing twelve times. It was noon on a sleepy, now cloudy Sunday morning in London. Each of them quietly left Heaton's shattered, blood-spattered palace. Georgia and Early drove off in Jack's bullet-riddled Ford. Steel, after destroying the security camera system's computers, walked out the drive heading up the street toward her squad car. Adam was just behind her at the mouth of the motor court. She considered offering him a lift but realized that the two of them had not spoken a word to each other. They truly were strangers, she and the man she had hunted all over England.

They looked back at each other, quietly nodded one final time, then each walked the opposite way up the street.

 

TURNBULL
■
10

The prime minister went back to her flat at Number 11, sadly took another pill, then a steaming hot shower. Afterward she sat buck naked in her favorite chair, clipping and polishing her toenails as she mentally prepared herself for the days to come. There would be a record-setting firestorm from the media over David Heaton's murder. She was sure Burnlee and his group would cover it up and expose some lurid criminal side of David's life that had overcome him. Some Russian mob or another would be blamed. It would be perfectly papered over and eventually die down, she was sure of that.

She would do as she said, though. In the coming months, she would figure out how to lance the government of Burnlee and the others. She would smoke them out from the places of power they were nestled into, and then she'd be done. She'd resign.

She dressed, dried her hair, and then called her father. Fighting more tears, she told him she needed “help.” After her phone call, she made herself a tea. She sipped it slowly as she looked out the leaded windows onto the Horse Guards Parade grounds, trying as hard as she could to not think about Davina Steel.

 

STEEL
■
10

Steel picked her parents up at St. Pancras station. In a taxi on the way back to their flat, she told them that not only was it all over but that she would be leaving her job. She explained to her mother and father in the best way she could that she had solved the final piece of her puzzle, that the final image, as she pulled back to view the totality, wasn't the image of a person she was looking to be. She promised them she would never go back to that world. Her mother cried with joy in the rear of the bouncing cab as it made its way down to Bloomsbury.

The next morning, she helped them both open the café for breakfast. As she and Sheena hot-mopped the linoleum floor, her mother asked innocently about Georgia Turnbull, about the possibility of working for her.

“You two seem to get on so well, Davina. Why in God's name not?” Steel stopped what she was doing. She said nothing, then finally craned back to her mother, her eyes full and worn wet with a quiet sadness.

“Georgia Turnbull is dead to me, Mother. I'm going to ask you nicely to never mention her name again, okay?” Sheena wasn't sure what to say or how to answer. She wanted to ask more, hear more, but knew it was best to let her daughter just keep on with her mopping.

“Yes. Yes, of course, doll. The name'll never come up again. I promise.”

Steel went and washed her face in the sink. She soaked it in the cool water, then dried off. She walked to the counter by the window and quietly looked out onto the street, watching the cars and the people going back and forth, trying desperately not to see Georgia Turnbull's face in the crowd.

 

TATUM
■
10

On Monday morning, the Tatum family was driven to Luton Airport where they quietly boarded a Bombardier Global 5000, a private business jet that had been chartered by the prime minister's office to fly them home to Chicago. The kids were more than happy to be flying in their “very own” plane, and Kate, though still cautious, was finally settling in to the fact that the worst was behind them. She tried not to deal too much with the sharp heartache she felt every time she remembered that her father was dead, or for the loss forever of sweet Richard Lyle. She did take some small comfort knowing that Gordon's body was in a coffin in the plane's hold, that Adam had arranged for them to take him home to Chicago with them.

There was so much not to think about as she climbed the metal steps to the private jet and lumbered into the row of plush leather seats alongside Adam. They were going home and the kids were safe. She tried her best to focus on that and find whatever comfort she could.

Adam was numb as well. He was aching, beaten, bitten, and nearly broken. He was alive and free, though. Isn't that really all that mattered? What was really important? What could be walked away from? Each question raised another. Could he ever just be a normal guy with a family again? What about Kate? Had he dragged her too close to hell to ever live with her in happiness again? Would she ever just want to take a long quiet walk with him, or would every conversation forever be loaded down with pain, discomposure, and grief?

What about his children? Something told him they both would be able to recover, that they each would come to know in their hearts that their father was a victim, that he came out a victor. One day soon, he thought, they would take comfort in that and in the fact that they stood by his side through it all. It was all too soon, though. Everything was still too bitter. Everything still too raw to take much heart from. All that assessment would come along much later. There was no point in taking anyone's temperature on anything yet. There was no possible way to get any kind of an accurate reading, so he didn't. He just stared out the window at the private jet terminal's concourse.

As the plane took off, Kate instinctively took his hand. Her skin was as soft as he could ever remember it being, her fingers wrapped tightly around his. Once in the air, as the aircraft settled into the long flight east, she turned to him with a needy query.

“This is all over, right? All of it? With all of them? These people? It's done, yes?” He looked lovingly into his pretty blond wife's blue eyes. He stroked her creamy cheek while making an oath to himself that no matter what happened between the two of them, this would be the very last time in his life that he ever lied to her.

“Yes, babe. It is. It's all over.”

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Being a first novel, this work needed more help than maybe another book would have, and so I have many people to thank. First is my wife, Diane, who is always my closest confidante and bearer of all news and views during dreaming, writing, rewriting, selling, and then even more rewriting. She was more than helpful in many early morning talks and late night walks. Then of course my truly special daughter Molly, the very first to read the book once I had written it and who gave notes along with Diane. Also, my good friend Peter Thompson, the former newspaper editor and historian who lives in London and has walked many, many of these streets with me for hours at a time, and was an early reader as well a strong sounding board. Also thanks to the American ex-pat novelist and rabble-rouser, London-based Christina Robert Thompson, who read early and gave good feedback as well.

There's a huge debt of gratitude to my good pal from Detroit, Mitch Albom, another early reader, a solid friend along the way and, in so many aspects, a bright spot on the horizon always worth heading for. The biggest debt is probably to David Gernert, my agent who picked
Keep Calm
from a pile and made it, with his support and expertise, a real book. I can't fully express what a treat it's been to have an agent with his level of experience and insight behind me.

Much thanks of course to Steve Rubin and everyone at Henry Holt who bought the book and believed in it right away, and of course the book's editor, Michael Signorelli, who taught me a lot about how much fruit can be harvested from having a first-class editor to rely on. This book went through so many changes once David, Steve, and Michael came on board that it would be unfair not to mention how much they have each added and, in fact, literally transformed the work.

Thanks are also in order for Adam Levine at Verve, my agent and friend, Alex Gartner, my longtime producing pal, and Chuck Roven at Atlas films. A shout-out as well to Toby Emmerich at New Line Cinema who was also an early reader and threw in some good threads that the story needed. Much love needs to be showered on my two best friends Clay Tatum and Dr. Kevin Sands and also my longtime buddy Max Kennedy, all who have helped and backed me in so many ways, for so many years, as have my dear friends Olugbemiga Idowu, Rachel Zimmerman Leonard, and Shauna Roberston Norton and my brothers Gary, Lee, and Jack, all who I love so much.

Finally thanks to Judy Trumbull Binder, my sweet, nutty, funny, mother, Eli and Edye Broad, my amazing godparents, who have been so warm to me for as long as I have memory. To Jeanne Binder, my wonderful and not at all wicked stepmother, who first taught me the value of a good book, and also to my sister Kristen Binder Stevens and her husband, Stan, all the above for supporting me for an entire lifetime.

And last I have to thank my mentor, brother, friend, coach, and confidant, Larry Brezner, the funniest, warmest, noblest, most talented and craziest man I ever knew. Thanks for always being my pal. I miss you so much Lar. God bless.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR