The Cornmarket Conspiracy Read online

  After pausing to exchange some updates with his top staff, Wellington disappeared into his private office. Behind closed doors, Wellington telephoned the Queen, speaking with her for exactly ninety seconds. These conversations were always short, direct, and for all practical purposes, simply a formality. The Queen had her own news sources, her own advisers, and for that matter, her own agenda. She would no doubt want to address the British people who would look to her for empathy and leadership. But in reality, her response was of no consequence to the reality of dealing with the situation. This was no time for figureheads or ceremonial heads of state. The country had a global-scale catastrophe on its hands.

  Next, Wellington phoned his good friend Peter Duddridge, current Leader of the House of Commons. He would need to speak to Parliament today as quick action would be required. Duddridge scrambled and was able to set up a joint emergency meeting of the House of Commons and the House of Lords for 11 a.m.

  The Prime Minister spent the next couple of hours methodically working the phones with the leaders of Parliament, various heads of government, and other world leaders. After speaking with Duddridge, his next call went to Angus Burnett, the former Arizona Governor and now newly-elected President of the United States. Burnett had only been in office a few months, but so far Wellington had forged a friendly, if not entirely trusted relationship with the former rancher and real estate magnate. Politically and personally, they were about as far apart as they could be, but making and maintaining these kinds of relationships was where Wellington excelled. He instinctively knew that as with any terrorist attack on this level, his country was left momentarily vulnerable. The attack had the potential to invite other attacks and adverse complications — both domestic and abroad — and had to be handled with great sensitivity. With four years sitting at the helm of British leadership under his belt, Wellington was a master at the political maneuvering and diplomatic balancing act that was required.

  While Wellington worked the phones and shored up support from the international community, Jeffrey, as the P.M.’s Chief of Staff, was thrown into emergency mode managing the details. After delegating a long list of responsibilities off to LaForge and Smythe, he spent the next few hours working through a preplanned checklist that had been formulated years ago to be enacted on a day just like today, laying out the framework for the government’s immediate response. Jeffrey spent two hours on the phone with the heads of the various military, police, and disaster response teams, which had been immediately deployed and had already been on-site for hours. Communication channels with the country’s first responders were confirmed to be up and running. Just before dawn, he spent twenty minutes on a conference call with his counterparts at MI6, Britain’s foreign intelligence division, discussing the details of the agency’s immediate terrorism response plans and what the next twenty-four hours would look like.

  All major rail stations across England, Scotland, and Wales were closed for at least twelve hours until they could be searched and secured. Buckingham Palace and both Houses of Parliament were put under tight security and closed for all visitors. National monuments and landmarks were sealed shut. Across Europe and the United States, the terror threat levels were raised to the highest level, and security at airports around the world were put on high alert.

  Jeffrey organized a press conference for 9 a.m. for the Prime Minister to address the nation and dispatched Wellington’s top speech writer, Mariel Duckworth, to produce a first draft by 7 a.m. Wellington might be the face of Britain’s government, but right now, Jeffrey Hunter, his oldest friend in the world, was its hands and feet.

  By 6 a.m., Jeffrey was satisfied that he had done as much as he could at the moment to launch the rescue and recovery, and that the initial stages of the investigation were in action. Still running on pure adrenaline, and realizing he’d have to soon face the pack of media already gathering outside their offices, he dashed back to his townhouse for a quick shower and change of clothes. He knew he would be facing the world’s press corps within a few hours along with a host of other demands on him that day, and he couldn’t very well do that wearing an old t-shirt and tattered navy sweatpants.

  Once he was back home and in the shower, for a few brief minutes while the warm water hit his face and washed over his body, Hunter was able to breathe and let his mind wrap around the tragedy that had just struck his country. He let his mind wander to the people on the train — fathers and mothers returning to work in London . . . families traveling to visit grandparents for the holidays . . . students returning home from university. The magnitude of the death of these innocent people was almost too much to comprehend. When did the world get so scary and dangerous? How did people get so entrenched in evil that they could exact this kind of terror on each other? It was more than Jeffrey could fathom at the moment.

  A wave of despair crept up over his thoughts and threatened to crash down over his whole body. The situation he faced was devastating, but in that moment, Hunter did what he always did when his job became overwhelming: He set his emotions aside and locked them away — he’d deal with them later. As was his usual practice while grappling with the enormous task of helping to run one of the most important countries in the world, he began to organize his thoughts, running over the herculean list of things he would need to accomplish today. After a few final moments of hot steam and quiet solitude, he turned off the water and reached for a towel.

  As he stepped out of the shower, his phone began buzzing on the bathroom counter. No name popped up in the little caller ID window, just a local London number, which was odd. Spam calls were automatically blocked on this line, and no one had this number, other than a couple dozen aides and top government officials, and they would’ve shown up on Caller ID. He reached for his phone, wondering who might be calling the Chief of Staff to the British Prime Minister on his private cell phone before dawn on this catastrophic day.

  CHAPTER THREE

  At thirty-seven years old, Jeffrey Hunter had spent his life on the British fast track. Born and raised just outside London among the centuries-old buildings and quaint cobble-stoned streets of Windsor, his boyhood home was literally in the shadow of the Queen’s country palace. His father, a Solicitor and Member of Parliament, had made certain his oldest son checked off all the items on the to-do list of life for a young man headed for success and power. At thirteen, he was shipped off to neighboring Eton for boarding school where he studied hard, played cricket on the school’s varsity team, and rubbed shoulders with the sons of Britain’s political and economic elite. Jeffrey was a skilled athlete and a top-ranking student. But it was his burgeoning friendship with fellow classmate Trevor Wellington that had set the course for his life.

  Wellington had been a popular student, studious, and obviously highly intelligent, even in a school where every student showed a high proficiency for academics. Easy going and friendly, with dark brown hair that he always wore swept back from his forehead and fixed in place with a fair amount of hair gel, he was the epitome of an accomplished politician even from a young age. He had a natural gift with people, always looking each person in the eye and making them feel like they were the only person in the room. He excelled in every area except one: his overly-trusting and affable demeanor often led him into trouble when street smarts and shrewdness were called for. He was naïve and often too trusting of others which invariably allowed others to take advantage of him. He and Jeffrey Hunter had established a fast friendship based on the fact that each brought valuable advantages to the partnership: Wellington was outgoing, whip-smart, and a natural born leader. Jeffrey Hunter was a loyal and steadfast friend, but had an innate discernment for people and ideas that proved to be imperative in the rough and tumble world of British politics. Their rare partnership helped guide the two to the top of the social and academic heap at Eton and on to the University of Oxford. Through the years, their friendship and unwritten alliance grew stronger and had ultimately worked to deliver Wellington to the top rung o
f political power in Britain, with Hunter always one close step behind. Twenty-four years in the making, their friendship was the backbone of their success. And now, it served as the backbone of the Wellington administration’s leadership in the United Kingdom.

  Hunter stepped out of the shower to grab his phone, his usually carefully combed dark blonde hair falling in a damp tousle across his forehead. His aquamarine blue eyes, once his calling card with any member of the opposite sex now divulged a series of tiny wrinkles, revealing the pressures of working so close to the top echelon of British government power. His once athletic body was still in reasonably good shape, especially for a politician who spent way too many hours behind a desk or in restaurants schmoozing with other politicians and lobbyists.

  Jeffrey used to love politics, the game of shaping policy, changing lives, and having a front row seat to history. In fact, that’s why he got into the political world in the first place. At university, he and his old buddy Trevor had forged a grand and ambitious plan that together they could help reconstruct Great Britain back into the kind of world power it once was, leading it once again into a position of world prominence. Oh sure, when people list the great nations of the world, Great Britain is always on the list. But in reality, Hunter and his buddy — who now held the title of Prime Minister — had known for a long time that Great Britain’s position on the world stage had faded greatly in recent years. The small island nation that had once ruled half of the civilized world was in reality a modern-day figurehead. Its economy was dwarfed by the real global powerhouses, the United States, China, Japan, and the European Union, which as of two years ago, no longer included England. Without a resurgence of political power and an economic transformation, England would sink into oblivion like other former world powers — Italy, Spain, Greece, and others — who had also faded into the backwater of world prominence.

  But those days were largely over. Hunter was tired now. He and Wellington had enjoyed some moderate success at the helm of Her Majesty’s government: together they’d pushed through a fair number of reforms that were slowly but surely breaking down some of the antiquated social traditions that still held England in a quaint but outmoded social hierarchy. In many ways, young people in England were still granted opportunity based on their name or who their grandparents were, rather than talent, skill, brains, or hard work. But that was changing — slowly. They had also had some marginal success in reenergizing Britain’s economy and expanding the country’s economic base to help it compete in the twenty-first century.

  But the world was changing too, and Hunter wondered if he could keep up anymore. The world’s global power base was increasingly hanging in constant instability. World peace was not controlled by strong and compassionate leaders, but instead was constantly threatened by ruthless and dangerous tyrants who had no trouble ordering the genocide of an entire race, let alone the murder of innocent men, women, and children on a Christmas-time train. The world had become a dangerous place, and Hunter didn’t know if he had the stomach for fighting the good fight anymore.

  Dripping with water, Hunter reached for his black iPhone and touched the green icon to accept the call. For a moment he stood motionless on the bathroom tile, trying to make sense out of what he was hearing. The person on the other end of the line spoke with a heavy accent, and it took Hunter a moment to wrap his mind around what it was he was hearing, taking the almost indistinguishable phrases and breaking them into words, and then deciphering it into English. Once his mind had translated the speaker’s accent into the King’s English, he stood stunned, staring at the evaporating fog on the bathroom mirror, revealing his own ice-blue eyes staring back at him. As the caller’s words sunk in, a hollow hole opened up inside his gut.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Annelise Craig slid her phone onto the bedside table and sat down on the edge of the bed giving herself a moment to regain her composure. After calling and alerting her boss about the biggest tragedy to hit their country on his watch, she needed to take a moment to take it all in.

  Sitting there in the dark, her eyes once again fell on the iPad screen, filling with updated news reports about the unfolding tragedy. Annelise’s long strawberry blonde hair fell down around her shoulders, making soft curls against her ivory skin. Her slender fingers massaged her forehead as she struggled to organize her thoughts. She could hear the measured breathing of her husband Richard, still sound asleep on the other side of the bed. That man was a bear and could sleep through anything, she thought.

  Annelise Craig — Annie to her friends — was smart, but more than that, at just thirty-two years old, she was tough and could manage any crisis without breaking a sweat which made her invaluable to her boss Jeffrey Hunter. His job required a Herculean amount of discernment and finesse, and Annie Craig was exactly the person to help him do it well. For the eighteen months she had worked in the Prime Minister’s office, she had already proven herself invaluable at working alongside Jeffrey Hunter as he managed the day to day operations of Wellington’s administration. Although she carried the non-descript title of Assistant to the Chief of Staff, she handled the delicate dance of high stakes political drama with delicacy and diplomacy. Jeffrey Hunter was already highly dependent on her professionally, as well as being his loyal friend.

  Annie’s head was spinning with thoughts of who should be called and what she should do first. The press would be swarming the office when she arrived, so she had to clear her head and be ready. She should call Andrew right away before Richard woke up, she thought to herself, and let him know what was going on. He would need to know.

  She slipped into the small office adjoining their bedroom and decided against turning on the lights. Dialing Andrew’s number in the dark, her call went straight to voice mail. Odd, Andrew always kept his phone charging right next to his bed at night and the ringer turned on, ready for the occasional call that was a necessary part of his job as Special Advisor to the Prime Minister. She would have to call him later; it was too risky to call now, as she could hear her husband began to stir in the adjoining room.

  Well before daylight, Annie had showered and thrown on the navy blue dress that was her go-to when she needed to look professional but didn’t have time to fuss. She whisked her hair back in a low ponytail and dabbed on a quick coat of mascara. She realized she needed to wake her husband and fill him in on the awful news before she darted out the door.

  “Richard, honey, wake up . . . something’s happened.”

  “Wha? What? What’s happened?” Richard slowly turned over, opening his eyes, just enough to sleepily peer at his young wife, perched on the edge of the bed.

  “I’ve got to go into the office. There was an explosion, on the Chunnel train. It’s bad. I think there are going to be an enormous number of casualties, and the tunnel is damaged… maybe destroyed. I’ve got to leave. It’s going to be a terrible day for a lot of people. You probably need to get up too.”

  Her husband of four years blinked at her, taking it all in. So here it was, the deadly blow for which London had been bracing for years. Since New York’s 9/11, London knew its day would come. Certainly, there had been terrorist hits before . . . July 2005 when Islamic terrorists hit three London train stations and a bus depot in one day. But even with that terrible devastation, the English knew that it was only a matter of time before London would suffer something on the scale of the Twin Towers. Certainly Paris, Brussels, and other European cities had seen terroristic tragedies, but only the UK, with its close ties to the United States, would give the terrorists satisfaction in their thirst for the blood of Westerners. And today was the day.

  “No . . . no. There’s no way . . . I can’t believe it. When? How many dead? Turn on the television.” Richard stumbled out of bed and grabbed the remote off of his side table. The flat screen on the wall blinked on, and all that was visible was a night shot of ambulances with lights flashing, stationed at the mouth of tunnel. The queue of emergency vehicles was waiting for victims to be pulled
from the rubble and brought up out of the tunnel on a service car that was running down to the wreckage. Talking heads sat dumbfounded at a news anchor desk, fumbling for information that was trickling in from the scene.

  “I’ve got to go. I’ll call you later and let you know what’s going on. Not sure when I’ll be home.” Annie was out the door before Richard could respond, and she rushed off into the night. Richard could hear the tires of her Volvo squeal as she sped out of the driveway and onto the small lane that connected their flat to Kings Road in Chelsea. She would be at the office in fifteen minutes.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “As Salam Alaykum wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakatuhu.”

  Rasul Aziz turned his head to the left, as was customary as he murmured the last words of his morning prayer. Rolling up his prayer rug, he hurried out of the mosque into the glistening dawn. It was unusually cold in Paris for a December morning.

  Moving down the street at a quick clip, he couldn’t help but notice the headlines screaming from the news stalls as he dodged the foot traffic on Avenue de Flandre. “Channel Tunnel Massacre, Hundreds Dead,” . . . “Explosion Rips Through Chunnel, Scores Feared Dead,” . . . “Terror Strike Unleashed on EuroStar Train.” Rasul averted his eyes and crossed the street, avoiding a contingent of French policemen who were loitering near the corner. They were there, no doubt, in a show of force on this tragedy-soaked morning.