A Sentimental Traitor Read Free Page B

girl, her face buried in the child’s hair, thanked God
for the distraction.
    Back in the cockpit, the two pilots stared ahead of them at the dark water that was now fast approaching. They were almost down to the height of the buildings scattered around Canary Wharf. The
captain did a little mental arithmetic. They’d hit at around two hundred and twenty knots, and not quite level, around two degrees. Not a lot, but enough to spear the nose into the water and
flip the plane on its back. That’s if they didn’t hit anything first. He’d once talked about these things with an old-timer, a retired test pilot who’d told him how it
worked. You never drown, it seems. The plane hits the water and stops, but you don’t. Your head is fired forward and snaps your neck; either that or it shakes your brain to jelly.
    ‘Bryan, something I need to tell you.’
    ‘Yes?’ The first officer was startled from his thoughts, tearing his eyes away from the approaching water and the bridge beyond.
    ‘You were right.’
    ‘About what?’
    ‘Me and Abi.’
    The two men turned to face each other. Slowly, as though it were made of lead, the captain extended his hand. His first officer took it. Then, once more, they stared out at what lay ahead, and
said not another word.
    The captain had chosen a section of the river called the Pool of London. This was the old mercantile centre, the site of the once-great port of the capital city and deep enough for a World War
Two destroyer and even small liners. It was also playing host to a Polish tall ship, its masts towering more than a hundred feet above its wooden decks as it waited for passage through Tower Bridge
later that night to begin a Christmas goodwill visit. The wingtip of the Airbus brushed the tallest of the masts, causing the plane to yaw. The aircraft was no longer level, the port wing hit the
water first, tearing away from the fuselage, which then cartwheeled twice. As the chaos of the crash subsided, only the tail was clearly distinguishable, sticking out defiantly above the river,
surrounded by floating debris and a small oil fire.
    Even after the waters had ceased their raging and settled to nothing more than a dark tidal ripple, there was no sign of anyone on board. They were all dead.
    Lake Taupo, New Zealand
    Benjamin Usher, the British Prime Minister, a face fashioned for caricature. As a boy he had taken a tumble down the slope of a Cumbrian fell near his home, which had left him
with a squashed nose, ragged ear and a scar high on his cheek. The passage of later years had given him wrinkles that left him looking rather like a bulldog. Resilient. Determined. Even a little
stubborn. He was going to need all those qualities in the coming weeks; he had an election to fight, and no Prime Minister takes such moments for granted, even when eight points ahead in the polls,
as he was. He had never forgotten the words of one of his predecessors, Harold Macmillan, who had been asked to define what worried him most. ‘Events, dear boy, events,’ he had
replied.
    At the moment Speedbird 235 hit the water a short distance downriver from the Houses of Parliament, Usher was tucked far away from his problems, or so he thought, in a luxury resort beside Lake
Taupo on New Zealand’s north island, where he was attending the biennial meeting of Commonwealth heads of government. It had been a fruitful three days, swapping ideas and intimacies with
leaders from vigorous economies like India, Canada, and Australia; countries that had escaped the economic permafrost that seemed to have settled on Europe and its currency, and now the
deliberations were almost at an end, time to wrap things up and head home for Christmas. It was early morning on Lake Taupo, and the Prime Minister was enjoying his breakfast, sitting on the
verandah of his lodge soaking up birdsong, when a nervous steward spilled orange juice over the Prime Minister’s immaculately laundered shirt. Only a few drops,