The Devil's Handshake (16 page)

Glancing over at her face, he took a moment
to reflect on the night before. An intense bout of lovemaking had
taken place after getting home from the restaurant. Demanding and
passionate, it reminded him of their time in Venice when they
created Victoria together.

They hadn’t wasted any time on their return
home, once inside their bedroom, tearing at the dress like a
possessed man, wasting the thirty thousand U.S. dollars in the
process but not caring as he made love to Nara.

The rest of the night was as just as frenzied
and passionate while they attacked each other. On and on, it went
with him exploding each time as his beautiful wild love controlled
him.

“
Yep,” he told himself as he
shook his head with a broad smile. “I am a blessed man!” He
caressed her long hair gently.

Leaving their bed quietly, he slipped through
the dressing room straight on through to the bathroom;
automatically the lights came on as the sensors picked up on his
body movement. Reaching the sink, he grabbed the can of shaving
gel, stretched, turned on the tap, lathered up his face, and
started to shave. As he did so, he thought about his imminent
meeting with the Prime Minister.

Ruminating that it is never the easiest of
jobs leading a coalition, Thomas concluded it was because PM always
ended up sounding like he was delivering a sound bite from a
PowerPoint presentation and also, in no small part, due to the fact
he was a product of a privileged education having gone to Eton and
Oxford, that the PM struggled in presenting himself as a man of the
people.

Each time he did he just ended up sounding
like a British First World War officer ordering his men over the
top of the trenches and then onto their deaths.

It was the Mayor who ensured Thomas used the
first part of his conclusion to their mutual benefit having told
him the KGB had tried to recruit him once when he was nineteen on a
visit to the Soviet Union knowing he was from the political elite
of England and on his way to Oxford. That attempt ultimately failed
because he wasn’t a traitor in the traditional sense of the
word.

When the Mayor became President, he chose to
use his National Champions allies in England to cultivate him this
time by using commerce and political self-interest as the tools of
choice.

“
Almost like Satan in John
Milton’s Paradise Lost,” Thomas suddenly thought chuckling to
himself as the razor glided over his chin.

Ambitious, principled, driven, not to mention
a family man, the Mayor had told Thomas over a dinner that he
actually quite liked him before ordering him to help him through
his media interests.

Following his instructions to the letter
Thomas proceeded to do just that in subtle ways until the man
finally sat in front of him in the China Tang’s Private Room
located in the famous Dorchester Hotel as the Leader of the
Opposition.

Described as the “Leader in Waiting,” it
hadn’t taken much for him to make a deal with him over his media’s
support for the next four years leading up to the General Election:
just the promise that TLH agenda received full access to his
ministers and support from him whenever they requested it.

“
You have to hand it to the
Mayor. He was right, the National Champions are the best
recruitment team of the Special Services of Russia!” he sadly
concluded looking at himself in the mirror.

His second country’s interests were now well
and truly established in his first country’s institutions of the
City and Whitehall, that was something the Soviet Union never
achieved in it is eighty years of existence despite the nest of
assets they had in the security services and civil service, and
reinforced by the fact that for the first time since the Special
Relationship had begun Britain hadn’t followed the U.S. into a
conflict by the way the PM had allowed the MPs of his party to vote
against Syria.

“
Rumpelstiltskin always gets
his due, old chap,” Thomas thought chuckling to himself over the
comparison of the Mayor to the famous children’s fable.

That said, the fact, that “repayment”
happened to suit the Federal Republic of Russia’s interests and not
that of the United States of America, the traditional ally of the
United Kingdom, was neither here or there.

Finished shaving he stretched again, feeling
his old wounds in the process throb in the process. He turned on
the cold tap very briefly to wash away the remains of his shadow
mixed with the shaving cream and to wake him up, then turned to the
power shower and stepped in.

As the water roared out hitting his body, he
reflected again on his life. More and more he was beginning to feel
like Achilles. Like many of the Oligarchs who had taken the wealth
of Russia’s soil, he had become the instrument of the Mayor. He
just wondered if his own particular heel would kill him one
day.

“
If I get this wrong, it
will!” he concluded as his mind went over what he needed from the
meeting that was due to place in a few hours’ time.

The warm water jets were exceptionally
relaxing against his skin, though he had little to relax from at
this precise moment—he had, after all, apart from the views
whirling in his head just had a bout of passionate and
stress-relieving sex with his amazing woman followed by a short,
deep sleep.

He was so wrapped up by his thoughts he had
not noticed the figure of Nara enter the bathroom until she
spoke.

“
Morning, my Thomas,” she
said through a giggle, her smile widening as she watched him turn
his head slowly back towards her with his own smile.

“
Morning beautiful,” he said
with his own naughty glint in his eye.

“
You’re up early. Do you
have to be somewhere, darling?” she asked innocently, earning a
response that he did although not telling her who with.

“
Then why didn’t you wake
me?” she said as a siren to a sailor, wrapping her hand around the
large silver handle set into the glass shower door making clear her
intention to join him. “I need to shower too, my love,” she further
added as she stepped in.

Seeing his devilish eyes twinkle with
amusement, she laughed as she shut the door behind her.

“
It certainly looks like I’m
not the only one happy that I’ve joined you my Thomas,” she
murmured looking at the stirring taking place below as her hand
went about weaving its magic as the water hit them both.

11

Venice 2001

The weekend they conceived Victoria was in
many ways one of few moments in their life together when Thomas and
Nara actually felt like an everyday couple losing themselves in
romance like the rest of tourists that visited Venice over the
ages. It was a time when they believed it was for it was just for
them, and nobody else.

His exotic creature of Central Asia had been
with him two years or as she preferred to tell him, “Allah had sent
him to save her,” rather dramatically.

He had just received his knighthood,
something he knew would have pleased his mother if she had lived
and though Thomas and Nara’s relationship had certainly grown, it
wasn’t until what she said in the car on the way back from
Buckingham Palace to him that he actually realized what she meant
to him notwithstanding their many passionate moments together.

Up until that moment he had been convinced
she masked her emotions from him, something he thought was a direct
consequence of her former profession.

“
Your Mama would have proud,
my Thomas,” she had said, looking at him tears forming in her eyes,
her black kohl mascara running.

“
Of what?” he had responded
teasing her.

“
Of seeing her son and the
love of my life being made a Knight of the Realm by your great
lady, of course!” she had replied her feelings hurt giving him the
look of an innocent child.

“
So I am your love of life?”
he had teased again causing her to look at him with even more shock
and horror because he questioned her statement.

“
A-l-w-a-y-s, my Thomas” she
had responded continuing to show her shock that he would think
otherwise.

“
My God! She means it!” he
had thought, feeling guilty for teasing her.

Putting his arm around her as a way of an
apology Thomas kissed her gently on lips before allowing his mind
to drift for a few moments.

He knew he loved her. It was just that he was
having trouble getting his head around the fact she was so young
and he was sixteen years older than her.

“
But he had made a vow,”
Thomas had decided. “Vows are never broken!” he had admonished
himself.

“
I would like to take you to
Venice this weekend just you and me nobody else,” he had said
suddenly.

“
I would like that, my
darling,” Nara had answered

The person who didn’t was Mikhail. He went
ballistic when Thomas had told him of his intentions. The two of
them argued heavily over it.

“
It’s not bloody Moscow!”
retorted Thomas.

“
No, it’s worse. It is the
land of the Mafia!” replied Mikhail.

In the end he reached a compromise with
Mikhail insisting that he would carry his Glock pistol at all
times, and the team though not following them, would remain on
station in Venice and out of sight.

Having arrived at midday and now on the
launch, he took in the face of the young woman he had sworn to
protect as she saw Venice for the first time, as through the mist
and half sunlight the beautiful city appeared.

To many, the city is at its best when the
high water known by the locals as “Acqua alta” takes away the decay
floating around the city.

“
Thomas, it is so
beautiful!” she said excitedly.

“
Not as beautiful as you my
darling,” he said taking her hand.

Turning towards him, her lovely jet-black
hair drifting in the light wind from the Adriatic she pulled him
into her. She kissed him forcibly on the lips, her saltiness
tasting to him like honey.

“
I love you, my Darling!”
she said with a smile as their long kiss ended.

That afternoon, no guards, no demands, just
Nara and him like two young lovers, he showed her around the Venice
of his youth that despite the tourists, never seems to change. When
he last visited the floating city just after the First Gulf War to
take up a position as a researcher for his former professor at
Oxford who was writing a book, , he was a broken and bitter young
man by what he felt was a betrayal by the politicians of him and
his men when they had left them to die.

“
I want to you meet a very
special person,” he said as they walked hand in hand.

Taking her to an old church of the San
Martino, he presented to the man who, with his kindliness and
reflective advice had brought him back from the edge and set Thomas
on the road to become the man he now was.

A charmingly cluttered parish church, built
in the Renaissance Period, was located on a canal in Castello not
far from the Arsenale. The church wasn’t listed in most guidebooks
probably because it doesn’t have any famous masterpieces, but
Thomas had loved it for its art including some modern twentieth
century works mixed in with the old which ranged from the Byzantine
to Baroque periods and, he had further explained to her as they
walked together, that the church always felt less of a museum more
like an active part of the neighborhood.

“
Like our Mosques back
home,” Nara responded trying to show him she understood.

“
Yes, Darling,” he answered
with a smile followed by passionate kiss, their tenth of the day,
and again earning a “Bella Bambina” or “Molto benne” in admiration
from the male Italian residents of Venice every time he
did.

Walking into the Church he immediately
spotted Father Umberto Amersini.

He caught sight of Thomas at the same time
and quickly walked briskly towards him beaming and shouting out
loud, “Thomas! It is so good to see you again my son,” he said in
Italian to him as they hugged each other.

“
So many years! Tell me have
you beaten your demon, my son?” He looked at him with a quizzical
eye before answering his own question. “I think he lies only
dormant, my son!” he concluded almost sage like.

Changing the subject before the old priest
had time to question him further, the former researcher cum
billionaire introduced Nara to him. The old man smiled as he took
her in.

“
I can see though you have
captured his heart, La Signorina! Such a beautiful woman, Thomas
you’re a lucky man,” he said as he now took and then kissed her
hand.

Watching Nara blush as she thanked the
priest, he had to agree with his old friend who still had a twinkle
in his eye despite his vows.

Thomas, having decided to spend the rest of
the afternoon with the priest and with Umberto holding court
telling her things about him that even Mikhail didn’t know, watched
on, falling in love with her once more as she listened, warmly
smiled, and laughed over coffee and cake.

On returning to the hotel, Nara made him wait
by refusing him the honor of taking her in the shower instead she
insisted that he went first, dress for dinner, and wait to take her
out. As he entered the bathroom he decided if somewhat reluctantly
to follow her orders, she then smacked his bottom.

“
Bad Thomas!” she chastised
him.

When he came out, he tried to make a move
towards her again, but before he could grab her Nara ran past him
into the bathroom and locked the door behind her to the sound of
her saying, “Niet! Naughty, naughty!”