Aftermath

A British Prime Minister struggles to hold on to power in the aftermath of a mass assassination From Asteroid: A Collection of Ten Stories

Aftermath

 

"Prime Minister?"

She was looking out of the window at the policeman in his black and silver uniform, the hat familiarly and comfortingly curved on his head. She felt no comfort. It was gently raining, a light drizzle falling like mist.

"Prime Minister?" repeated the aide, a little more emphatically.

She answered, still looking out of the window. "I'm coming," she said.

 

She had always secretly felt a little ridiculous in the secret COBRA room beneath 10 Downing Street. As if its expensive Scandinavian wood table, leather upholstered chairs and wall of multiple screens were cartoonish, something out of a spy film, a borrowed concept designed to appeal to boys. The man-boys who occupied all levels of government, all over the world. And then she stifled a sound that struggled to stay down, clearing her throat as all eyes settled on her.

"Prime Minister, this is all we have found so far about the assassin." The wall of square screens lit up with images, words, bullet points and graphs. She blinked.

The flight back had only been yesterday. She had mounted the steps to the plane with discreet help, unable to quicken her pace up the metal stairs even as she lowered her eyes to avoid the flares and clicks of cameras.

How had it happened?

"The assassin appears to have been a security-cleared casual worker employed for the duration of the Summit," said her Chief Intelligence Officer, the shadows under his eyes grey, his stubble only just noticeable. He hadn't slept, she could tell. He dimmed the other screens, showing the Prime Minister the picture of a young woman in her early thirties. Sandy hair, blue eyes, an even set of features; nothing remarkably beautiful, nothing remarkably ugly. Not plain, but perhaps not quite anything else either.

The Prime Minister recognised the face.

Dressed in the Summit Staff uniform with the Summit Staff badge dangling around her neck, the Prime Minister's eyes had snapped on her in incredulity, in a disconnect so great between body and lens that she wasn't sure the distance could ever be undone. The young woman had walked calmly, purposefully. Grown men decades her senior, armed men twice her weight, FSB and former KGB, CIA and FBI, MI6 and many, many others had cowered and screamed, their only act of defence the thudding echo of overturning tables. The assassin had strolled. Nobody had been able to stop her.

The Prime Minister blinked.

"Her name is Melissa Bless. She's Swiss born and bred. So far, we have found no ties, no motive, nothing in her past. Her father is dead, her mother is in a home, no siblings. Her ex-boyfriend has been travelling in southeast Asia, where he was keeping a regular travel blog. He has already been detained for questioning and will be flown back within the next few days. So far, all we know is that they split thirteen months ago and he says she had begun seeing a woman."

"She'd turned lesbian?"

The two dozen people around the table stiffened a little in embarrassment. The Prime Minister was old. In her mid-sixties, she was considered a little out of touch. She knew it.

"She had started seeing a woman, yes. A pastor at a church."

"Evangelical?"

"No. Run of the mill Protestant, Prime Minister. So far, we haven't been able to -"

"Does she belong to any groups? Any affiliations?"

"She belongs to the Alps Cycling Action Network."

The Prime Minister frowned. "Are they hardliners? Environmentalists?"

A member of the contingent from MI6 ruffled his papers, while another broke the seal on a bottle of mineral water and lifted it to his mouth.

"No, Prime Minister. All we can ascertain from their email correspondence and email newsletter is that they organise cycling trips through the Alps."

There was a silence.

"The assassin was due to join a cycling sortie this Sunday," added a quiet, male voice. A young man the Prime Minister recalled seeing a few months before, at a discussion about strategy for the containment of a group of activists seeking to derail an annual arms fair. He had posed as one of the protestors.

"No history, no conversion to Islam, nothing?"

"Not one single political social media post. The only thing we managed to find out is that her grandmother was active in the campaign to procure Swiss women the vote."

The Prime Minister's hand went to her temple but touched her coiffed hair instead. She put her hand down. She wanted to weep. She wanted to put her head down on the table and bawl, and for her trusted aide and friend to come running from upstairs, from the family flat. She missed her husband. She wanted to run her hands through the hairspray on her head and she wanted to pull the stiffness of it out, sticky strand by strand.

The voices were rumbling on without her.

"The President of China, and his entire delegation, The President of the United States and his closest aides, the President of the Russian Federation, the President of Turkey, Iran, India, Pakistan, Israel, the entire Saudi delegation, the President of the Philippines, the President of..."

The list went on and on. The names and faces came up on the screen, one after the other. Four squares for the leaders, elected and unelected. Two squares for aides.

And four screens for the bigger names, the invisible names. Four screens for the meat of the Swiss Summit. They too had been killed. They were all gone.

 

She had looked so innocuous. At first, the Prime Minister had been confused. Who was this girl in a white blouse and black skirt and shoulder length hair, who seemed to be holding a silver pen horizontally as if she were doing a presentation, as if she were about to point at a whiteboard? Wasn't she a waitress?

And then, she had seen. It had taken her mind a few more seconds than it should have, on account of the lack of blood. Not a drop. Nothing. No red. Just men falling dead every time the young woman pointed the pen. It looked like steel and a soft, silvery bolt sizzled from it quickly, instantaneously, more quickly than the mind could take in. And whoever it was pointed at fell instantly dead, the heart stilled. And the way she had walked, the assassin. Calmly, as if the vast, world-class architect-designed conference centre hosting the Summit were a museum she felt free to stroll around at her leisure. She had been that slow. What had happened to the special agents, the police, the security? What happened to their guns? Had the Prime Minister seen guns in the hands of police, in the hands of the security? She had. But nothing hit the assassin. The Swiss waitress, member of a cycling action network and granddaughter of a campaigner for universal suffrage, had walked around the bullets from the firing weapons as if they were indoor party sparklers in the hands of children. The only target anyone managed to hit had been the stainless steel, leather and wood of the conference centre furniture and the padded, projector screen-laden walls.

The venue had been silenced, room after room. Those left alive quivered, uncomprehending, only knowing that somehow their fingers could still move, and that they still gripped onto life.

 

The Prime Minister had worked hard that day. Waking at five am, taking a hurried, discreet breakfast; no breakfast meetings that day. She preferred not to eat in front of others, and she avoided banquets and working meals where she could. She would take a cup of tea at breakfast meetings with international partners, and an occasional coffee if needed. She left her hotel room before seven am.

She had liaised for long hours the day before, and her aides had worked through the night, but their efforts came to nothing. The Prime Minister had been politely excluded from a meeting of financiers she had desperately lobbied her country to join, the meeting that it had been her mission to join. The financiers who had already spent extensive time with the American entourage, and a few ribald evenings with the Russian. Great Britain had been excluded from this meeting, and so her aides had hastily convened a series of meetings with some weapons traders and Arctic energy resources specialists. Her aide had compiled a presentation overnight, and the title had pleased the Prime Minister. 'Trade Strategy in the Era of Full Disclosure: How to Maintain Alliances'.

The Prime Minister had been elected for her air of quiet authority, for her British ability to hone in on and softly leach sweetness from power with discretion, with seamlessness and assurance. She had found favour with the people for her deftness, for her arch deflection of the Opposition and international detractors, and for this she was favoured by powerbrokers of all shades, from financiers to arms industry specialists and intelligence agencies from across the globe. She had personally cut deals that had brought in billions to the United Kingdom. Journalists never reported it as such, but she had ushered in a new era of trade; an avalanche of breeze blocks had been erected as armament factories studded the grey wastes of the North, finally stilling the ghosts where the nation's shipbuilding and coal mining industries had once drawn life.

The Prime Minister had eaten a quiet lunch, avoiding the men whose boisterousness had begun to grate. She had even drunk a half-glass of wine, unheard of for her. The Summit was mercifully coming to an end, and she had every intention of changing her flight to bring the return home earlier. She liked Europe for holidays, but for work too often it was unsettling and strained.

She had shaken hands and smiled welcomingly at the attendees to her hastily convened meeting, and briskly began working through the points of contention, suggesting obliquely tested methods for the obfuscation and deflection of public objection. She had always excelled at this. It was rather like deflecting the light of a distant galaxy, she had once told her husband. She had graduated in physics long, long ago.

And then she had noticed a kind of silence, one that echoed alongside her words, and she noted that the men's attention was drifting and that they had all turned slightly towards the silence beyond the closed conference room door, and then they had all heard a thud and a cry. Some of the men had risen from their conference room chairs. She had remained seated. Then there was nothing, and then another cry, then many, many screams. Even from a Summit that consisted easily of around eighty-five per cent men.

They had cowered in the room, unable to move the nailed down table, knowing the chairs were useless, the glass in the windows unbreakable, the drop to the ground below too long. They had waited. The young woman in her early thirties dressed like a waitress walked in, holding her silver pen.

At first they had thought she had come to help or warn them.

But why? Why had the assassin spared her? Why?

The question seemed to settle at the heart of the meeting, weighing heavily in air thick with unspoken questions.

"The assassin has wiped out the world's top arms dealers, Prime Minister. Vital intelligence officers are gone, and the global finance industry is reeling. Dozens of the world's leading financiers have been eliminated.

"The assassin was scrupulous in avoiding minor staff and aides, including all recent graduates. There is no doubt that she knew exactly what she was doing and who she was targeting. How she gained access to the Summit information regarding its attendees remains unknown. Most importantly, however, we do not know why she killed."

Her Chief Intelligence Officer was holding her eye insistently, ignoring the stares of her most important ministers, advisors, aides and even the Leader of the Opposition. He was silently urging her to focus, to listen. There was a kindness in his insistence.

"Was she some kind of activist?"

"There is no evidence whatsoever." He paused. "Regarding the weapon -"

The meeting again gathered tension, like a puff of black smoke taking form on the table, in the centre of the room.

"Conspiracy theories are running wild on the Internet. Due to your life having been spared, I'm afraid that many are accusing the British secret service of knowledge of the weapon and of Britain being the country of its manufacture. Some websites are even producing so-called evidence of it having been used before and claim it was traded illegally."

The young intelligence officer spoke again. "It is more logical to assume that the weapon was manufactured locally, with knowledge perhaps gleaned from the nearby particle accelerator at the CERN facility in Switzerland. Autopsies are being conducted and so far all we know is that the hearts of those killed stopped instantaneously. There are no marks on the bodies. Police are interviewing all staff at the accelerator and at other particle accelerators throughout the world. So far no links have been found with the assassin."

The Prime Minister slipped her hands beneath the table to prevent anyone see their trembling.

"So far, the hunt for the assassin has -"

She didn't need to hear any more.

 

"We're sorry to have to do this, Prime Minister."

She nodded. She was sat in her office, her favourite one. It was much smaller than the official offices allocated to her. It was where she worked privately, alone. It was furnished with the usual solid oak desk and antique brass bouillotte lamps with their dark green, glossy shades and delicate gold leaf motifs, but she had personalised it by having the paintings on the wall in front of her desk replaced with a giant map of the country. She marked this map with post-it notes and pins: her keen eye for the regions and for the counties far flung from London's seat of power had been key to her successful raid for voters from the Opposition.

The Chief Intelligence Officer was there, and the Chief of Police.

"Prime Minister, I know you have answered these questions more than once now. But we need to go over the facts for our own inquiries. Anything you tell us - absolutely anything - could be vital in the capture of the killer."

There was a pause. Dimly, distant from herself, the Prime Minister noticed how her reactions had slowed since the killings. She seemed to weigh each sound coming from another person's mouth carefully, as if the weight of each word would impart its essence before understanding. Words looked like tiny steel spheres in her mind, like dark metal bullets.

The Chief of Police cleared his throat, as if pondering a means to spark interaction. "We do not know where she is, who helped her, how she got away, or where we can find her. We think there is a strong possibility she may have assumed another identity. It is probable she left the Summit's conference centre through the underground passageways that link it to the disused train tunnels passing through the Swiss Alps."

More silence. The Prime Minister had had the photograph of her husband removed from her desk after his death. On the night of her re-election, she had wondered if his death had bought her any sympathy votes.

She missed her husband.

"Prime Minister?"

She nodded once again.

"We heard the cries. Two of the businessmen in the meeting - George Raleigh and James Cunningham-Hill - were already behind the door, holding their chairs ready to strike. When the killer walked in, they put the chairs down. She was just a girl, you see. A young woman. We thought she had come to help."

The Prime Minister shook her head at the Chief Intelligence Officer, who had begun pouring her a glass of water. She stared at the glass.

"The weapon sparked again and again. It fizzed. It looked more like a lighter than a gun."

"Anything else?"

"It was all too quick."

"There was no armed protection in the room with you?"

"No."

"Do you remember anything specific at all about the killer? Anything about how she looked? Did she speak at all?"

The Prime Minister took a sip of water. "She looked like any other young woman from the region. Blonde, blue eyes. She was slim, thin, even. Average height."

"Did she speak?"

The Prime Minister shook her head.

The Chief of Police leaned on the thick, polished desk. "You were the only one left alive in that room, Prime Minister. Of all the world leaders who went to that Summit, you are the most prominent to have survived. Do you have any idea why, Prime Minister? Is there anything she did or said that might tell us?"

The assassin had strode through the conference room as if time itself slowed in her presence, the molecules of it thickening in a glue, slowly sticking. Others had slowed in her wake.

Gabriel Leighton had been sat right next to the Prime Minister. Only they weren't sitting anymore - somehow they had slipped from their chairs, and were cowering behind the immovable conference room table. And yet the killer had met the Prime Minister's eyes, and held her gaze. Gabriel was still alive, too. Melissa Bliss had pointed the weapon at him, still holding the Prime Minister's eyes.

"Do no harm," she said, and then Gabriel had dropped dead.

"Prime Minister? Did the killer say anything to you or communicate in any way before she left the room?

"No. Nothing."

 

They left. She had to do some work. She would not - could not - allow anyone to take over her duties. She knew that that was why her Chief Intelligence Officer kept pushing her. To remind her. He didn't need to worry. Elected and unelected leaders all over the world were dead, but she would not leave her station; she would never desert her post. She had to carry on. She hadn't yet asked nor been given the reports but she knew she would have to see them soon.

She knew all she had to do was turn on the television.

She could guess what the papers would be saying. She could see from the Police Chief's face what he thought. The Chief Intelligence Officer's assessment would be more nuanced, more circumspect. And yet not one woman had been killed at the Summit. So had she been spared because she was a woman?

Just fifteen or so minutes before Gabriel died, he had told her of his plans for a family holiday. The Seychelles, he had said. He had been working too hard, and his wife was annoyed. Gabriel hadn't been a bad person. He was a good man. Ten years younger than herself, he had worked hard after Cambridge, gaining experience in the petro-chemical industry in the Middle East before turning his attentions to the Arctic. He had been instrumental in persuading his company to investigate the possibility of environmentally friendly drilling. He left behind two teenage daughters.

He had also worked in Intelligence, but that would not be mentioned in his obituary, nor at his funeral.

She hadn't asked when the British bodies would be flown home. It could be weeks before they were released. Particle physicists and molecular biologists would work alongside the autopsy specialists.

The Prime Minister hands went over her face. She stood up and buzzed for her secretary to lock up. She looked at the map of the country. The south-east county where her parents had lived and died. The Midlands from where her paternal grandfather hailed, the Wales mining village from where a great-grandmother had arrived, alone, to live a life in service at a mansion in the county where her parents would be born more than half a century later. Her father, who had worked as a teacher and then a head-teacher, never missing a day. Her country. How she had longed to serve it, to strengthen its prosperity, to return it to itself, to the values which forever formed its bedrock, its corner of the earth's crust. She believed in the state, in the presence of it, in the balance of peace and prosperity, in the acute judging of situations with one goal in mind: the preservation and prosperity of her country. She did all she did because she believed in Great Britain, in the solidity of it. She would carry on. She would find herself.

Tomorrow she would look at the map and it would speak to her and she would find her purpose once again.

Tonight, she was going to go upstairs. Charlotte would come over, and she would cook them something. A soup, maybe. Tonight the Prime Minister would not cook. She would sleep.

 

Melissa Bliss was sat at the foot of her bed. There was no pen in her hand. She was dressed all in white, like a ghost. A loose dress that shimmered in the darkness, a brilliant, silvery white.

She sat three-quarters turned to the Prime Minister who couldn't speak, the breath caught in her chest, pumping her heart full, her ribs swelling, her lungs full of air.

Melissa Bliss's eyes were clear blue crystals. Her face was fine, the cheekbones refined if understated, her mouth rosy and more generous than shown on the COBRA room screen.

She sat like an old friend, a mother, smiling kindly. She looked straight into the Prime Minister's eyes.

"Do no harm," she said.

The Prime Minister smashed on the bedside lamp, which knocked against the bedside cabinet, falling to the floor. The bulb shattered, glass triangles and rhomboids hooked into the thick cream carpet. She didn't think to get out of the bed from her husband's side. She could hear steps running upstairs. The Prime Minister waited for help.

 

"Just a second now, Prime Minister, you're almost there," said the makeup artist. The voice was kinder than usual. The Prime Minister muttered her thanks.

"There, you're done."

She rose from the chair and looked in the gilt mirror whose carved grapes and leaves framed her face, her skin lit by the six yellow bulbs of the chandelier and four antique lamps. She looked as authoritative as an eagle, and yet as feminine as any leader was allowed. Her lips were a discreet, friendly magenta, a red as far from the colour of blood as possible. Her blusher was just right.

She went to speak in front of the cameras.

 

"And I want us to make no mistake, this was an act of terrorism. The perpetrator might still be at large, but she will be found. And Great Britain will continue to help its allies, and work tirelessly to preserve the order and stability that enables trade and prosperity all across the world. Thank you."

The clicks from the journalists' cameras linked together, making a sound-chain in her head. Questions flew above the links of metal, the words of the questions floating airy as a paper chain.

"Prime Minister," said the Foreign Secretary once she was safely back inside. "I have some requests..."

 

It was a lunchtime meeting, if the modest offerings on the table could count as a working lunch. She had ordered fruit salad, tea, coffee, and water crackers, and not much else. It was all she was willing to authorise, so it would have to do. She felt loath to spend any more. Anything else would have felt like an extravagance.

The Chief Intelligence Officer and the Foreign Secretary exchanged a glance upon taking in the offerings.

"Prime Minister, obviously we are in a delicate position. Protests have broken out across the world; it is fair to say that in the capital cities of many of our allies, people are looking to take advantage at the elimination of their leaders. Some are willing to push for revolution, even. Strongmen leaders have been eliminated, Prime Minister. Leaders who successfully decimated all legal opposition, some of whom had been entrenched in power for decades. The media is going ballistic, and some very vulnerable countries do not have the resources to police the online world on top of everything else right now.  Everything is up in the air and the people have grasped that there is everything to play for."

The Prime Minister nodded. She sipped on her cup of tea, judging that coffee would not help her sleep later.

"China, you said?"

"Mass riots and demonstrations demanding real elections and democracy. So far, what's left of the regime has not commanded its soldiers to shoot."

The Prime Minister put down her cup of tea.

The Foreign Secretary's plate boasted two water crackers and a grape. "And as for our suppliers of oil and gas..."

She sighed. She'd watched the news that morning.

"So we are in a delicate position. Either we do all we can to bolster the regimes that frankly, are a hair's breadth away from permanently falling, or we wait and see. We could, of course, consider helping opposition in countries where the regimes have traditionally been less than friendly..."

She frowned. Foreign policy had never been her preferred area. She knew this was widely suspected, and editorials had mocked her for it. It was ridiculous for a Prime Minister, she knew. She was arch enough to understand that perceptions mattered, so she let it be known she believed in trade, but only in so far as it prospered the country. Under her, the nation's credit rating and currency were strong, its growth figures impressive. She knew that nobody could taste a good national credit rating or bite into an impressive quarterly growth figure, but under her guardianship, everybody would get a share of the national pudding eventually, so long as they believed. And they did, and they trusted her, however sharp the spokes in the rolling wheel of online commentary. The mockery of her as a would-be Elizabeth I, with pirates a whole lot less effectual than Francis Drake rankled. Her mind went over the calamitous social media campaign that had scuppered a trade deal the year before, one where the international partners had been accused of unsavoury practices, including child labour.

What the papers never got to print was always more interesting, of course. She had closed more than one brothel in London, fast-tracking the female victims of human trafficking for brisk deportation or British citizenship where warranted. Certain embassies hadn't been happy. She had looked over photographs, seen the faces of the women from countries as far afield and foreign as Georgia and Somalia, Chechnya to Bangladesh. She had helped all of them.

She sometimes sickened in rage at the image of her that was perpetuated in some sections of the media.

"Saudi Arabia is pushing for its weapons export to be brought forward. Their regime hangs in the balance -"

The Prime Minister nodded. "Of course."

There was no way they could wait and see if sensible, mature democracy would suddenly alight upon countries that had never known it. That mistake had been made before.

"Unfortunately, the site of the factory is subject to intense protests at the moment -"

She put down her cup. It was almost empty, its discreet pink floral pattern framed in the whiteness of china rendered only more exquisite by the gold remnants of tea, one sugar.

"There is a danger that riots could spread here and I would strongly recommend we follow our closest allies on the continent and declare a state of emergency -"

"I appreciate your thoughts, Peter. But the answer is no. I will not install curfews or declare a state of emergency. Britain is still a democracy and her Prime Minister is still alive. We are open for business. Cite national security, make sure we inform the correct sections of the press, and remove the protestors. We will export the weapons our allies need."

"Of course, Prime Minister."

 

That night she asked if Charlotte might not sleep in the room next door. The one previous Prime Ministers had used for children. She kept a tiny reading light on. She slept like a baby.

 

"Prime Minister, Prime Minister!" She was being woken by an aide. Charlotte was there, peering anxiously at her.

"What is it?"

"We have some news, Prime Minister."

She hurried downstairs to meet intelligence agency representatives and key advisors in her dressing gown.

 

It wasn't even five in the morning. The room's chandelier was dark, like a grey spider's web on the ceiling. The lamps were lit, the lamp in the centre of the table gently blossoming on the embossed surface of green leather. She suddenly felt embarrassed that she hadn't even stopped to get dressed.

"All around the world, people are on the streets, seeking to take advantage of the elimination of their leaders, Prime Minister." It was the Chief Intelligence Officer.

"It is Britain I am concerned with, Peter."

"Prime Minister, the arms factory has been surrounded. Protestors were removed, but unfortunately, footage of their removal from the scene has gone viral on social media. The police have just thwarted an arson attack."

"Have the suspects been arrested?"

"No, Prime Minister. But a homemade grenade was successfully neutralised onsite."

She didn't care her hair wasn't set and they could all see. Her hands went through her hair.

She mumbled to Charlotte to see to it for tea.

"I'm afraid we have some other news, Prime Minister."

"What?"

"It's about the assassin, Melissa Bliss."

The Prime Minister put her hands on her lap, out of sight.

The  young intelligence officer was there again. She noticed the bags under his brown eyes, and the expansive blackness of his pupils. "She left school at eighteen, travelled for six years through Europe and Asia and then returned to Switzerland where she took a succession of casual jobs. As you know, we found nothing on her mobile phone or laptop to indicate any extremist or in fact any views. We found no trace of any kind of political affiliation nor did we find any suspicious activity."

"And? Do you know where she is?"

"Not yet. But - the Swiss police got lucky. One of her acquaintances came forward, one of a hundred or so who voluntarily came forward for interview by the Swiss police after a request went out on national television for help. Anywhere she worked or studied - down to her old school friends - anyone who ever knew her was invited to help in the search for information that could help explain her motives or aid her capture. So, the Swiss police were told by a school teacher whom they almost turned away for interview that Bliss had once helped her install software on her computer. This was when Bliss did a brief stint as a classroom assistant in Zurich. She also fixed this teacher's PC on one occasion."

The young man held the Prime Minister's gaze, relishing each second. "In return, the teacher told Bliss about an old man who was housebound, living alone in a mansion with some land attached, who needed occasional help with his taxes, bills, and administration and so on. The teacher didn't think it was important.

"The police visited the old gentleman. In fact, Melissa Bliss undertook regular paid work for him, visiting at least once a week and sometimes more. She would also stay the night sometimes.

"She was using this man's laptop to connect to Tor, the Dark Net, Prime Minister. She lived a secret life online without the knowledge of anybody else who knew her. From her activities, we have found that not only is she a computer networks specialist, she has something resembling an expert's knowledge of particle physics."

The Prime Minister didn't notice the tray of tea and coffee being placed on the table, cups pooling under the brass stem of the lamp.

"The Swiss police have arrested two young particle physicists at the accelerator. In addition, we found that Melissa Bliss routed her communications through a complicated array of servers to throw any pursuit off the scent. We only found traces of her activity after we conducted a complex and meticulous search of typical Swiss-English compounds and phraseology bounced along unusual locations.

"She even encoded her communications to go through a server in Beijing, China."

The Prime Minister's hands stopped trembling.

"What?"

"She worked with a scrupulous discipline. She only conducted her activities when at the old gentleman's house, who suffers from dementia and was never aware of any of it."

"So doing his accounts and administration was just a smokescreen?"

"Effectively, yes. Although we are told she discharged those duties admirably as well."

There was a pause.

"We still have not yet found a trace of the assassination plot, and no mention of the Summit. But we think it's only a matter of time before we do. Once we have found the plans, it's only a matter of time before we land the assassin herself."

The Prime Minister's mind felt as clean as a wiped hard drive. The young man's exposition had slipped in as easily as sugar, with no need for precious seconds to taste the metallic strangeness of each word. For the first time since the Summit, a kind of grim optimism settled on her. Melissa Bliss's face receded as far as a distant galaxy, a misshapen fact at an odd angle to the Milky Way. The Prime Minister brought her hands to the teapot.

 A dark smudge caught her eye, and she looked in the gilt mirror above the fireplace.

"So she isn't some lone, insane killer. She's an activist after all, Prime Minister."

The Prime Minister blinked. She could see a face in the mirror. It was darkened in reflection and shadow, but the bones under the skin were the same shape, the same gradients running in dark, pre-dawn shades. She sprung up from the table and swung round.

"Prime Minister?"

Her dressing gown cord had come undone.

"Prime Minister, are you all right?"

She charged around the conference table and stared wildly through the doorway. There was no one there, just the tea lady and Charlotte in the little hall, the polished tea trolley in its usual place.

Her silk pyjamas were mercifully modest.

"Prime Minister?"

"I'm sorry. Just a little shock," she said, manufacturing a smile tempered through a slight breathlessness.

The men about the table looked at her in disquiet.

 

She had stayed in the house of 10 Downing Street for days, and she knew it was time to be seen. Police cars and motorbikes surrounded the chauffeur-driven limousine, and despite wanting to lower the window, she didn't. She knew they were being filmed by passers-by, and of course, journalists. The road had been cleared, and the River Thames came into view: its usual reassuring grey, and the Houses of Parliament unable to impose its reflection in it, but still the face of England, and as implacable. She had always liked how the buildings were magnificent, but not ostentatious. This was what she liked about her country: a quiet confidence in its age and wisdom, and its ability to withstand the onslaught, whichever form it might assume.

The uncharacteristic warmth and sympathy from all sides of the House of Commons bolstered her. She tried to stand firm, and ensure that no excess of emotion was shown as Members of Parliament took turns to stand and read from their notes, expressing their horror and solidarity, so that all the echoes were of the affirmations she heard, and not the memory of leaving the conference room, and the sound of her own voice emerging in cracks and moans as she had walked over the corpses. In the end, she nodded and looked down, wishing the session would come to an end, if only so she could tell herself that she had managed it, she had been the example she hoped the country would follow: in shock, in grief, yes, but also strong, and above all else, unmoved and unchanged.

Remaining unchanged in the face of terrorism counted most of all.

She had followed the Secret Service advice and revealed nothing about the killer to Parliament.

Rumours flourished, but no one in Parliament mentioned them. No direct reference was made to the assassin in the eulogies and sympathies offered; it was a rare day of solidarity. Yet the Prime Minister wondered why a strange kind of satisfaction failed to grip her when she heard from an aide that some online sites mocked Melissa Bliss for her porn star's name and bland, porn star's face.

She would leave the Houses of Parliament at five o'clock in the evening, just before dark. The Foreign Secretary had asked for a meeting, and she knew it would be amongst his most senior advisors.

She made her way to his office; she had wanted to come to him. She preferred to avoid the staff in her own offices. She had absorbed enough warmth and sympathy. She wanted to get back to business.

As she entered the Foreign Secretary's spacious, green-carpeted office, she started at the sight of the Chief Intelligence Officer. He nodded a greeting, as if his presence there was normal and habitual.

She sat down, her aides assuming a hapless air as they scrambled to take notes, their surprise palpable, unlike hers. The Chief Intelligence Officer began to speak.

The Prime Minister tried to stop herself from thinking over her performance in Parliament as she weighed his words, but thoughts of the cameras and her colleagues filled her being with the person she had been before the Summit, filled her with the welcome return of the self-knowledge that she had built during the years spent in preparation, the bedrock within that had finally enabled her to claim her real life in politics.

"The danger is, of course, Prime Minister, that if we effectively condone or support - through inaction - the overthrow of undemocratic regimes, especially those of our allies - then we exacerbate a chain reaction, a domino effect that could overthrow everything we know, including here at home."

The Chief Intelligence Officer finished speaking.  The Prime Minister still hadn't quite processed his presence in the Foreign Secretary's office. The Foreign Secretary looked at his hands.

The Prime Minister had dressed in red that morning, and she had worn her face set.

"You understand, Prime Minister, that due to the top tier of the world's financiers and business leaders in weapons export having been killed, we have the whole global financial system in confusion and disarray. Money has been lost, in short, Prime Minister. Money that should be in the system - that was in transit and due to reappear wherever thought best after the Summit - has gone. Our allies, therefore, need to pay for these weapons through more unconventional means. They are begging and pleading for our help. Without our aid, their regimes are toast. And without their regimes we could be ushering in an era of war, instability, chaos -"

The Foreign Secretary was avidly nodding his concurrence, confidently and repeatedly meeting Peter's eyes.

She knew what he was really doing. He was saying that she was not invulnerable. Peter had appeared in the Foreign Secretary's office as a warning. She had to get her act together. She may have survived a massacre, but it had already been almost a week. And if she posed too much of a problem, they would get rid of her. The Foreign Secretary would take her place soon as look at her.

Had she behaved too strangely since the Summit? Since the massacre? Did they no longer believe her to be a safe pair of hands?

"I will not sign anything before reading it, Peter. That is final. I know our allies feel there is little time, but I have to think of what is best for Britain as well as our mutual interest. Circumventing the checks and balances we put on the flow of funds through the City of London would be acceptable to me under only very specific circumstances. I am sure you understand that in the face of rising global anarchy, we must only adhere all the more to proper procedure."

She hadn't raised her voice or even altered her tone. Her senior aide took notes, and looked nervous. The Foreign Secretary inhaled deeply, his intake of breath resembling a sigh.

She kept her eyes on both men. She was angry. All her life, having to assume an authoritative tone that could somehow quiet and circumvent others, the others who were always men. To impose her presence on others rather than just be. To keep a distance, to curtail humour, to feel vulnerable to a tearing down and dismantling of her person at any moment. And behind that, the fear. The fear of assault in youth replaced by the older woman's fear of humiliation. It was tiring.

But there was a power in her yet. She had emerged the only human alive to come out of that conference room, and the most senior leader to live after the murders. She had done her utmost to embody her nation in Parliament, the very best of her nation, and the newspapers and the people would hail her for it, she was certain. She had no doubt that after the televised address and debate shown in the Commons, the polls would show voters rallying around her. And soon Melissa Bliss would be in jail, joining her Dark Net loitering particle physicist friends. She was thrice a survivor: of her husband's death, the election, and now this. They could never survive the same, and because of that, they could never overthrow her, no matter what.

She had been relieved that no one in Parliament had brought up the deaths in riots and demonstrations across the globe, and the quelling of protests with weapons exported by the West, particularly those manufactured in Britain. She had been relieved also to hear that protests across Britain had quietened, for now.

"I have a question, Peter. I want to know why when security opened fire on Melissa Bliss, nothing happened. Not a single bullet hit her. Somehow, they all missed. Do you know why?"

The Foreign Secretary stared at the Chief Intelligence Officer. He nodded, as if the question were fair and not unexpected.

"We have no explanation as of yet, Prime Minister."

"Then I suggest you concentrate on finding out."

 

She decided to go to Chequers the next day. She had avoided it for weeks after the death of her husband, but for this weekend she had invited the Cabinet, to demonstrate her power and to discuss the global crisis. She had boxes full of papers and electronic briefings to plough through, and decisions to make. The City of London was more vital than it had ever been in its existence to the configuration of trade and exchange throughout the world, and ailing governments across the world were waiting on her. If she dithered, regimes would fall.

The United States was in the midst of a power struggle, and the Vice President could be overthrown at any moment. The Russian Federation was arresting protestors, but police and army were abandoning their ranks and the fall of the regime looked to be inevitable. She paused as she read. She'd heard of inevitable regime falls before, and some had never manifested, despite the keen analysis of deeply embedded spies.

She had received urgent contact from an exiled oligarch, wishing for her help. He evidently wanted to go home to Moscow, and run for office. And win, of course, democratically.

She settled at her desk, the map of the country in front of her in her tiny office. The lamps glowed comfortingly. She had asked Charlotte to prepare a fire for her upstairs. She would finish up any moment. It had been a good day. The evening newspapers were lavish in her praise.

She pondered the missive from the exiled Russian oligarch. How people gravitated to power, how people gravitated to hierarchies, to riches. Ever since humans had broken free of the East Rift Valley in Africa, they had organised themselves into leaders, chiefs, merchants, slaves. She believed in an orderly hierarchy, and she believed in a benevolent elite that would not hamper opportunities to others, but would not quite pass the reins to those not quite in the know either. She believed that the exiled Russian oligarch should go home, and build on the work begun by the dead leaders of the country. Break up private monopolies or oligarchies, even, and open up the country for business. It was an opportunity.

It was vital that the supply of oil and gas was not disturbed any more than it had been. That was vital.

She began to read the papers the Chief of Intelligence had compiled with the Foreign Secretary.

 

There was a knock at the door. The young intelligence officer with the bags under his eyes came in. He held an envelope containing a private message from Peter.

"Hello. Peter couldn't come himself?"

"He's busy at the headquarters. They think they're about to home in on the assassin."

The young man had to be half her age. He was handsome, in an ill sort of way. Sallow skin, brown eyes, dark, silky hair. He looked as if he needed to see more daylight.

"Peter asked me to wait for your reply."

She didn't open the envelope. "Tell Peter I will be in touch as soon as I am able."

The young man waited.

"What is your name?" she asked.

"John Higgs."

He didn't say anything else. Normally people attempted to spark conversation with her, and if they managed that, to lengthen it; people forever wanted to talk to her whether she wanted them to or not. She began to feel uncomfortable.

"You may go, John Higgs."

"Peter said I was to wait."

"Leave, please."

John Higgs walked to the door. He glanced at the map of Great Britain, taking in the pins stabbed into the map, his hand resting firmly on the brass doorknob. He turned to her.

 "Peter says we cannot wait. The world order might be about to fall. He says whatever happened, whatever you saw, it's about time you picked yourself up and got on with it. The media's not reporting on the riot police on horseback holding back demonstrators a few miles away from here, but soon they will. And if you read the briefs you've got in that pile on your desk, you'll learn about people being killed on the streets of every continent. It's chaos and it's about to get worse. So, please, Prime Minister. Peter says it's not as if it can be PMT you're suffering from, so it's about time you cut the emotional crap out. It's time to get on with it, Prime Minister."

And he left.

The Prime Minister stood up, ready to holler after the young man, ready to bang the door and scream in rage. And then she stopped. She could hear the policeman letting him out of the back door. John Higgs had already gone, the grey road with the impeccably painted black doors and chrome and brass door numbers as much his as hers.

This was how it began, she told herself. The disrespect, the reference to her discontinued menses. She wasn't a sexually functioning woman anymore and she was still not one of them because she was not a man. That was what they wanted to tell her. That was what informed their judgement. She felt the rage curl under her fingertips.

She picked up the phone to call the Chief Intelligence Officer.

And then she put the phone down.

 

The fire was burning in the flat upstairs. She had a decanter of gin at the ready, and the tonic was cool. There was an ice bucket. It was the wrong time of year, but she preferred it to whisky. She preferred it to wine, but didn't let others know.  She remembered how the President of the United States had offered her a bourbon once, and with the glass still full in her hand, she had watched the First Lady down hers and smile with eyes shining at the waiter until he poured her another, this time a double. The Prime Minister had made a promise to herself to never drink spirits when working after that, and she kept it.

She told herself she would get through the papers that night. And yet, her mind kept moving. She kept thinking about Peter.

She had known him for decades. They had been friends for many years. She had always known he was a little to the right of her on the political spectrum - he did work in intelligence, after all - and she had always known that above all things he was pragmatic and unsentimental, but she had always thought the same things of herself. How could he talk about her like that to a man more than half her age? How could he betray her, and so blatantly make evident his preference for the Foreign Secretary? How?

He thought that right now the Foreign Secretary constituted a safer pair of hands. Someone not marked by trauma. Someone not reeling.

She picked up the brief that the Chief Intelligence Officer and Foreign Secretary had given her that afternoon.

What they asked of her was not without cost. Maybe they meant to funnel funds abroad and then blame her for it in a pre-planned exposé and get rid of her on charges of corruption. She could go to prison. Perhaps Peter planned for the Foreign Secretary to relieve her of power temporarily, while she recovered; he could plan it, but events always escaped plans, like time always ran from happiness. Maybe there was no plan, other than what they said, which was to save Great Britain's allies falling like so many dominoes to the forces of populist chaos.

She read some more. She put the printed sheets down. Printed on thick, ivory paper of the best quality, the sheaths were slippery, and would be destroyed shortly after her signature had been obtained, they said.

They couldn't destroy anything, and they knew it and so did she.

She pondered. She knew, after all, that the City of London was the filthiest financial centre in the world and second to none in money laundering. And they all knew that there was a cost to prosperity, a pragmatism to finance that brooked no moral objection; the world's markets worked quicker than that. And did Great Britain not give as much to the world as it reaped through the City's glossily whimsical, silvery-windowed skyscrapers?

One night many years ago she and Peter had flirted over a few drinks. It had been nothing, it had come to nothing. She had been married for a decade or so at the time. It was she who had championed his career, as a junior minister and then as Home Secretary.

She took a sip of gin. Her glass was rather full. She wondered when Charlotte would come upstairs.

Prosperity came to those who not only worked hard, but those also able to juggle key demands, who could balance key juxtapositions. Prosperity spreads prosperity she had said once in a public address, and she knew, but had never said, that even the trafficking of women, weapons and drugs, even the blood money of mafia or the ravaged pensions of frozen Russians could ultimately be translated into good.

As well as closing a few brothels, she had instituted some measures to control the flow of currency culled from arms sales through the City. She knew there were ways to subvert the new rules, but she judged it prudent to streamline the channels that funnelled wealth so that they could be better defended. In her mind, the City shone like a great reservoir of deep grey water, analogous to the Thames, and the markets and trades leading to it were its tributaries; old, deep conduits steeped in global seas of opportunity, some ebbing, some surging.

The door to the Downing Street flat clicked open. Charlotte had arrived, at last.

She walked into the room and stood by the armchair in which the Prime Minister sat, her rose perfume yet to seep into the air.

"Charlotte, I am so glad -" She turned to her friend.

Melissa Bliss sat down in the armchair opposite the Prime Minister's. The flames in the hearth crackled softly as the Prime Minister's heart squeezed tight in her chest, her jaw opening, her breath scarcely able to find the route out.

She wasn't holding a pen. She wasn't dressed in white. She was dressed perfectly normally and discreetly, like any Downing Street aide; a cream blouse, black skirt, black shoes with heels.

Melissa Bliss waited.

The Prime Minister could not speak.

"You thought I didn't exist," said Melissa Bliss. And the Prime Minister noticed the lack of an accent - a fact that had eluded her when she had examined the assassin's words, tasting the sounds of them over and over again.

"I know you exist all right," she replied, finding her tongue could speak, however dry her throat and tight her chest.

Melissa Bliss smiled. "And you know why I am here," she said.

"What have you done to my staff?"

The killer was controlling her expressions exactly, the Prime Minister could see it. She had known politicians all her adult life and had had a headmaster for a father, after all. She could see that the assassin was perfectly controlled, and perfectly aware.

"They are fine. Charlotte will be here shortly." She spoke as if she were one of the staff.

"How did you get in?" She moved forward in her armchair, but Melissa Bliss raised an eyebrow and the Prime Minister held still.

"I will be gone shortly. Now put those papers in the fire, Prime Minister, please."

She felt her chest tighten some more. Her lips were dry, with the kind of coldness she sometimes felt before they started cracking in winter. She couldn't speak.

Melissa Bliss sat back. "And no, I didn't let you live because you are a woman. But you knew that, of course."

Still no accent. Hardly any cadence or intonation. If the Prime Minister had been able to touch the assassin's face, she could have known for sure. Was she a robot, a cyborg?

"Then why?"

She shrugged. "The power structures of this country run much deeper than those of many others, and much deeper than that of your mere office. And I wanted to give you a chance."

"You killed hundreds of innocent people, without trial, without mercy, you -"

"I did what was necessary. Put the papers in the fire."

The Prime Minister swallowed.

"Necessary for what?"

Melissa Bliss laughed. "You are such a politician, Prime Minister."

"If I do as you ask, I will be deposed and the country would then be in grave danger. And they will replace me with much worse."

Melissa Bliss raised an eyebrow quizzically. "I think you will find that the trajectory of your career and that of your country are two different things. And as for why - well, to break the hold of both the arms trade and big money on the globe, of course. But you knew that as well, Prime Minister."

She spoke so reasonably. She spoke like someone debating a gentle point over a pot of tea, a tiny clause in a non-consequential act concerning education, or women's issues.

"You won't stop anything happening even if you burn every piece of paper in this room."

"We will gain enough time. We only need two days." She smiled. Her teeth were small, and white. She wore a small gold chain around her neck.

The Prime Minister leaned forward. There was no panic button by the fire. There was no way she could escape. And yet, Melissa Bliss was small, and thin. She wasn't holding her silver pen. There had to be a way.

It was one thing to allow repressive regimes around the world to fall like dominoes. It was another to be subject to overthrow through the machinations of men she had known for decades and on occasion trusted.

Melissa Bliss leaned forward too. "You will be all right. You always are." She said the words softly, kindly, and looked towards the door, as if she knew she was running out of time. The Prime Minister held onto her papers.

The flat door clicked again. "Jill?" called Charlotte's voice.

The Prime Minister began to rise from her armchair, her calling voice striking the quiet fireside room with force, "Charlotte -"

Melissa Bliss stood up. She was holding her silver pen. Her eyes were steely.

"This won't kill you. But if you wake in the morgue, be sure to knock hard."

And the silver bolt flew.