Surviving The Evacuation (Book 3): Family Read Free Page B

to get across to England without the authorities knowing I’d left. This was back when I was just planning to kill Quigley and old Lord Masterton. My plan was to make a lot of noise about taking my boat out for a weeks fishing and hiking. Except I’d have been picked up by her trawler somewhere out in international waters. We’d head east, and then her boat would get into trouble and need to be towed to the nearest port for repairs. And with a boat that size, and that’s why I bought her a boat that size, it would be somewhere in Britain. No one would notice if one of the crew disappeared for a few hours and that was all I needed.”
    “Seriously? You told her that?” Kim asked.
    “Of course not.”
    “Well what did you tell her?” she insisted.
    “Is it important?”
    “Aside from the fact we’re likely to meet her? Yes, it is important,” she replied. “For all this talk of other people out there somewhere, right here right now it’s just us. We have to trust each other and that means no more secrets, no more sly insinuations or political prevarication. So what did you tell her?”
    “Alright, the truth. I told her I was waging my own private war against this mob she’d borrowed the money from. I told her that one day, maybe, I’d have them on the run. And when I did I’d need to follow them across to Europe. Then I showed her a photo. It was from the front page of the Washington Post, and it was one of me standing next to the President back when he was still the Governor.”
    “You led her to believe that you were some kind of crusading super-hero with west-wing credentials?” she asked, incredulously.
    “So what? I wasn’t going to tell her the truth. I don’t know if she actually believed me or if she just wanted to. I bought her boats legitimately. Two deep-sea trawlers that were state of the art, for their day. All the taxes were paid, and the press were there to film my candidate smashing a bottle of champagne on the Santa Maria’s prow. She had what she wanted. And so did I. Until I discovered Prometheus. The more I found out, the plainer it got that I was going to end up with the NSA, the FBI, the CIA and the rest of that federal alphabet soup on my trail. Sophia and her boat just weren’t going to cut it. I had a friend who owned a farm. It was more of a compound really, the kind with its own airstrip. That was how I was planning on getting out of the US. When the outbreak hit, that’s where I went.”
    “You’d have been shot down, if you’d flown here,” I said.
    “Maybe. Maybe not,” he said, airily. “It didn’t matter. By the time I got there the plane was gone. If I was going to get across the Atlantic it was going to be by sea. Except when I managed to reach Sophia, she was already stuck in the middle of that flotilla of refugees all heading for the UK.”
    “So who dropped you in Norfolk?” I asked.
    “I’m getting to that. On the day of the outbreak when the news was still talking about virulent strains, pandemics, and terrorist attacks, Sophia loaded up her two boats with food, fuel, family, friends and the few lucky strangers who just happened to be passing. She took the boats out, and headed north. They found a secluded bay, and it would have stayed secluded if everything that could float wasn’t looking for that exact same thing. Now from what she said...”
    “The short version,” Kim cut in sharply. Begrudgingly, she added, “Please.”
    “Alright. A lot of boats sailed into that bay. The Santa Maria was the only ship that sailed out. We’re talking about a couple of weeks after the outbreak and she had no idea where to go. She’d lost one boat and a lot of friends. There were thousands of ships out in the Atlantic all in the same... well, I was going to say ‘the same boat’. They were all in the same situation, low on food, low on fuel, looking for sanctuary. Most of the ships that had set off in those early days had ended up in Greenland. It was