No one spoke. For a grisly length of time. The three of them stood silently together. Adam still didn’t even know the name of the younger woman, the cop who had just murdered Heaton in cold blood. He knew the prime minister’s name, but they, too, had never said a single word to each other. Conversely, Georgia thought she knew Steel so well, yet she obviously didn’t know her at all. She had no idea what exactly led her to take the leap she had taken when deciding to end David Heaton’s life.
The three of them stood there in the large, frigid foyer, standing over Heaton’s dead body, with more dead bodies out in the motor court and scattered through the backyard. Yes, Steel had never said a word to the American, yet she sensed that she understood him well. She knew what it was to be used as a pawn, to be played as a game piece, to be in fear for your life once your usefulness had ended. He had saved her life—three times. She knew him better than she ever knew Georgia.
The prime minister shattered the silent daze.
“Davina, I am so sorry.” She wanted to let more words fly, promises, declarations, pleas, but she couldn’t summon them up, so the stillness returned. The American spoke next.
“I want my name cleared. I want my family to get home, safely.” He took a deep breath and stared at Georgia across the lobby. He had more to say, but he didn’t want to waste words. He wanted her to talk and wanted her to sell him, not the other way around. He merely turned the iPad around to her and pressed play again.
“It didn’t make sense to me either, ma’am. But you said you wanted to write out the truth about the bombing.”
“That I was involved? Was I going to write that?”
“Yes, you were. That it was David Heaton’s idea, but you eventually went along with it. You had the American unknowingly place the bomb by switching the dossiers.”
Georgia nodded. The room fell silent again. Early hobbled over to the top of the steps on the second-floor landing. He, too, was beaten and battered, on the hard end of a bad Sunday morning, as they all were. He also said nothing. Just made a somber version of eye contact with his boss, then looked away. Steel finally spoke.
“It’s over, Georgia. It’s over. I don’t mean with you and me, either. I mean with you, with this. All of this.” Georgia calmly agreed.
“Yes. It is over. All of it.” Her head bobbed as she took it all in. The room sat numb, waiting for her to process it all.
“It has to be put down elegantly though. There’s so, so much at stake. I’m not talking about for me here, know that. For so many. For so many innocents. For you, Davina. All of it, we’ve all lost so much of ourselves. It’s all spun so wildly out of control.” She looked over at Tatum. He was bearing down on her. He wanted the answers and assurance that she was fully ready to give him. She knew she owed him a moment to let his shoulders drop, to know that his ordeal had truly ended.
“Mr. Tatum, I will have you and your family flown home safely to Chicago, in quiet, first thing tomorrow morning, on a private plane.” She looked up to Early, giving him the note to have it done. Early looked over to Adam and told him with another nod that he could trust him, that it’d be just as she promised. “There will, of course, be no charges filed, and, in fact, I will firmly and fully publicly declare your unbridled innocence.”
“I want something else.”
“What is it? Money?”
“No, fuck you lady, it isn’t money.” Georgia was taken aback. No one had ever really spoken to her that way.
“What is it, then?”
“I want my father-in-law’s body. I want to take him to Chicago with us.” Georgia looked to Early, once again silently telling him to make it happen. She turned to address Steel.
“I will resign my office in sixty days. I will leave politics forever. I need a quick moment to drain the riverbed of those who are involved while keeping the full disclosure of what has happened under wraps for as long as possible—hopefully many years. Anything other than all of us quietly leaving right this moment and dutifully repairing whatever can be rectified in the next bit of time will only lead to both of us, Davina, in prison and an irreparable body blow to the people’s psyche, the flow of government, and the very future of Great Britain. Do you see that?”
Steel swished it all around in her brilliant yet frazzled brain.
“If you don’t resign, though, I promise I’ll come visit, and it won’t be to talk about perfume and such. You have sixty days.”
“I understand. I do, Davina. I assure you that it’s all over. Mr. Tatum, I’m well aware of your file, of my movie debut hanging over my head. All I ask is time to make sure that those behind all that’s been done are cut off from the chance to get their hands on the tiller. Then I’ll go. Sadly. Gladly. Are we all three agreed?”
Adam nodded and shrugged. All he wanted was to go home and get his family back to something close to normal. He wanted someone to have to pay for Gordon’s death, for Richard Lyle, for all that was done, but that was second place to his family’s safety, so he’d take this deal and run with it.
Steel agreed as well. She had lost herself, oddly in the same way that Georgia had. Heaton had gotten to both of them, and she’d known immediately, maybe just as Georgia had known in colluding with him, that she had made a disastrous decision in killing him. Something had overcome her, be it fear, rage, vengeance, or weakness: she had been lured out into waters she could never swim back from. She didn’t like letting everyone else off the hook to let herself go free, but in this moment it was sound reasoning that Georgia was offering, so, soaked through in shame and regret, Steel went with Georgia’s bargain. They all did.
* * *
SOMEWHERE OFF IN the distance, toward Albert Hall, there were church bells ringing twelve times. It was noon on a sleepy, now cloudy Sunday morning in London. Each of them quietly left Heaton’s shattered, blood-spattered palace. Georgia and Early drove off in Jack’s bullet-riddled Ford. Steel, after destroying the security camera system’s computers, walked out the drive heading up the street toward her squad car. Adam was just behind her at the mouth of the motor court. She considered offering him a lift but realized that the two of them had not spoken a word to each other. They truly were strangers, she and the man she had hunted all over England.
They looked back at each other, quietly nodded one final time, then each walked the opposite way up the street.