LITMIR.BIZ

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man’s fingers tracing languid lines along Sergei’s smooth cheeks.

      “You enjoyed that, didn’t you?”

      Sergei nodded. “You know I did. But must it always be in here, where I work? Can’t we go to your place sometimes? I feel like such a …”

      “Such a what?” Sir Edward purred, his hand reaching down for the boy’s rock-hard cock.

      “You know what,” Sergei moaned. “A whore.”

      “Ah, but my dear boy, that is the whole point of the matter. You are my little whore.”

      I hate you, thought Sergei, twitching against his lover’s fingers.

      He was on the point of orgasm when, without warning, Sir Edward Manning released him.

      “All right,” he said, to Sergei’s surprise. “If it makes you happy. Next time we’ll do it at mine.”

      It does make me happy. Very happy indeed.

      “Really?”

      “Really.” Sir Edward blew him a kiss. “Don’t forget to turn the lights out when you leave.”

      LATER THAT MORNING, RESTED AND SHOWERED and smelling of Floris aftershave, Sir Edward Manning sat at his desk rereading his new boss’s file.

      Alexia De Vere (née Parker), MP North Oxfordshire. Born April 8, 1954. Married 1982 Lord Edward, Stanley, Ridgemont De Vere. (Title renounced 1986.) 2 children, Roxanne Emily (1983), Michael Edward Ridgemont (1985). 6 years Trade and Industry. 2009–present, Junior Minister for Prisons.

      There was little in the new home secretary’s file to excite interest. But that was exactly what interested Sir Edward Manning. By the time somebody arrived in his office (like all senior civil servants, Sir Edward Manning considered the Home Office to be his fiefdom. Ministers came and went, but Sir Edward and his staff remained permanent fixtures. It was they who actually ran the country), they usually had an MI5 file as thick as the Koran and a lot more salacious. Sir Edward had served under five home secretaries, Labour and Conservative, and all five had had more rattling skeletons in their closets than in the average London plague pit. Nothing had ever been proven against any of them, of course. It was Sir Edward Manning’s job to see that it wasn’t, one of the few areas in which his interests and those of his political masters were aligned. In Westminster’s version of Snakes and Ladders, only the snakes got to the top, men and women who sloughed off scandal effortlessly like eels in a sea of oil.

      Alexia De Vere was different. Her file was so thin it was practically a pamphlet. Up until last year, when her sentencing reform bill had made headlines in all the wrong ways, Mrs. De Vere had been as good as invisible. There was nothing at all in her records prior to her brief stint as a Liberal MP’s secretary as a young woman. Since then, an uneventful few years in local politics had been followed by a spectacularly good marriage to a wealthy British lord and a free pass into the uppermost echelons of the social and political establishment. There were two children, one of them a dud. (Roxanne De Vere’s rumored suicide attempt over a broken love affair was the only hint of color in an otherwise storybook-perfect family life.) A modestly successful political career had no doubt been boosted by Mrs. De Vere’s personal friendship with Henry Whitman, the new prime minister. (Something else that bothered Sir Edward Manning. What on earth did the nearly sixty-year-old Mrs. De Vere have in common with the young, newly married head of the party? There must be a connection, but Sir Edward was damned if he could see it.)

      But there was nothing, absolutely nothing, to indicate why Alexia De Vere had been plucked from the lowly Prisons Ministry and appointed to the position of home secretary.

      Where are the dead bodies, the enemies she’s seen off along the way as she shimmied so silently up the greasy pole?

      Where are the land mines, the tangled web of unexploded bombs for me to dodge and weave my way through?

      Alexia De Vere’s file was not interesting for what it contained, but for what it omitted.

      She’s keeping secrets from me. But I’ll find her out. If I’m going to protect this office and our work, I need to know who she is, and what the hell she’s doing here.

      “Good morning, Edward. You’re in early.”

      A lesser man would have jumped. Sir Edward Manning merely closed the file calmly, slipped it into his desk drawer, and composed his hawklike features into a smile.

      “Not at all, Home Secretary. It’s almost eight o’clock.”

      He had told his new boss to call him Edward and to dispense with the title, but he found it irritated him every time she did so. Perhaps it was the grating, pseudo-upper-class accent. Or perhaps it was simply because Alexia De Vere was a woman. Sir Edward Manning had worked for women before, but never by choice. Discreet about his own sexuality, the truth was he found women quietly repulsive.

      “I wish you’d call me Alexia.”

      “I know you do, Home Secretary. If I may say so, you look a little tired.”

      Alexia caught a glimpse of her reflection in the office window and winced. He wasn’t kidding. Her eyes were puffy and swollen, her skin dry, and every line on her face was etched visibly deeper than it had been a week ago. They say high office ages you. Maybe it’s starting already.

      “I had a difficult night last night.”

      “I’m sorry to hear that.”

      “Somebody showed up at my house. A man. He wanted to talk to me, but by the time I got down to the gatehouse he’d gone.”

      Sir Edward frowned. “You don’t know who it was?”

      “Not for sure, no. But I have my suspicions.” Alexia filled him in briefly on the Sanjay Patel case, and the threats she’d received afterward. “We did get some footage of him on tape, although the quality’s awful.” Pulling a silver disc out of her briefcase, she handed it over.

      “Excellent. I’ll send this directly to the Met. We’re scheduled for a review of your security arrangements anyway this Friday at three. Can it wait until then?”

      “Of course,” Alexia said brusquely. “The whole thing’s a distraction anyway. I’m not worried. Now let’s get to work.”

      HE HEARD VOICES IN HIS HEAD.

      Some were voices that he recognized, voices from the past.

      His best friend.

      His wife. Ex-wife.

      His daughter.

      His daughter’s voice always calmed him, made him smile. But never for long. Because then there was the voice.

      Sometimes he thought it was the voice of the Lord, full of righteous anger. At other times it sounded more like the devil: distorted, sinister, inhuman. All he knew for sure was that it was the voice of fear. It told him terrible things, and it demanded terrible things from him. It was a voice that must be satisfied, must be obeyed. But how could he obey if he couldn’t even get to see her?

      Alexia De Vere was untouchable.

      “Did you say something, dear?”

      Mrs. Marjorie Davies eyed her latest paying guest suspiciously. During her twenty-five years running a bed-and-breakfast in the Cotswolds, Mrs. Davies had seen all sorts of oddballs come through her door. There was the couple from Baja California, who’d brought crystals down to breakfast every morning and arranged them in a circle around their sausages and beans, “for positive energy.” Then there were the French queers who’d refused to pay the bill because they’d found a spider in the bath, not to mention the born-again Christians from Canada who’d ordered and eaten four full cream teas (each!) in a single sitting. But this latest chap was more than just eccentric. He was downright strange, talking to himself and wandering around the house at God knows what time of night, spouting religious

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