Swan put up his hand. ‘That won’t be necessary. Inside this envelope are my contact details, so they know where to reach me in London.’
She took it from him. ‘May I ask what this is, sir?’
‘It is a report which, after their work on the Watergate affair, I think a certain two reporters would be very much interested in reading. Whether they then run this story will be up to them, of course.’ Swan looked at his watch. ‘I am afraid I must be off now, I have a plane to catch. Cheerio.’
The girl smiled at the Englishman, as he turned on his heel, walked back out onto K Street and hailed a taxi.
One of those reporters had decided to take a late lunch, and waved to the receptionist on his way out to his favourite deli.
To his surprise, she called him over. ‘This was dropped off by some English guy.’
The reporter took the envelope from her hands and looked at the handwritten address. ‘Who was he?’ he enquired.
‘I have no idea, he didn’t give me his name. But he said that you can contact him if you need to speak to him.’
He shook the envelope. ‘So, any idea what this is?’
‘He just said that you both should read it, and if you want to, also run it in an edition.’
The reporter ripped open the package and, pulling out the papers, brushed the dark hair from his eyes to scan through them. He then leant on the reception desk for several minutes as he read through them again, this time more thoroughly. He had intended to go out for something to eat, but instead, rushed back over to the elevator and to his desk. It was early enough to hold tomorrow’s front page.
When the lift reached the newsroom floor, he excitedly ran to his desk. Opposite him, another reporter looked up from his typewriter.
‘Whoa, take it easy. What’s up, man?’
He held up Swan’s envelope, waving at his colleague. ‘I was just going to lunch, when Betty gave me this.’
Handing it across the desk to his colleague, the other reporter scrutinised the contents and his jaw dropped.
‘Jesus H Christ!’
Almost simultaneously, the two men shot out of their chairs and bolted towards the editor’s office.
Chapter 38
Later that evening, Tremaine drove his white Pontiac Firebird through the electric gates and up to his ranch house.
Inside, he put down his briefcase and walked into the lounge to pour himself a glass of bourbon. Adding a squirt of soda, the senator switched on the television and sat back in his favourite armchair, to view yet another news bulletin regarding his former president. It was only after sitting down and staring out into the twilight grounds through the French doors, that he noticed a small hole in one of the panes.
Checking the floor below, he spied fragments of glass on the polished wood floor.
Tremaine put down his glass on a side table and raising himself swiftly from the chair, walked over to a desk near the window and reached for a book. Opening that book, he pulled a key from a recess within the pages. The key opened the big drawer of his desk. He wrenched it open, but what he wanted was not there. There was now a look of panic on his face as he wasn’t able to obtain his snub-nose Colt revolver.
As he pondered what could have happened to it, a voice suddenly answered his question. A voice that carried a distinctive London accent.
‘If you’re looking for your little pea shooter, I have it here,’ commented David Reynolds. He was holding Tremaine’s gun in his black leather-gloved hand.
The senator’s already surprised eyes widened at the stranger standing before him.
‘Who the devil are you? And what the hell are you doing in my house?’
Reynolds walked over to the chair that Tremaine had just vacated and sat down on the edge of it, facing him.
‘If you just think a little more, you might just realise exactly who I am.’
Tremaine paused for a few moments. Then are understanding hit him like an express train, his face dropped.
‘Hey, I know who you are! You’re that limey, Reynolds!’ he exclaimed.
David Reynolds smiled. ‘There you go, it didn’t take you long, did it, Donovan?’
Tremaine stared at him. ‘So, what do you want Reynolds, money? I got enough in my safe to make your troubles disappear, if that’s why you’re here.’
Reynolds sneered. ‘Then I hope that it’s enough to compensate all the widows and children of the men I lost while performing your little play in Cyprus.’
Tremaine sank down in his desk chair. ‘I don’t know what you are talking about. What play?’
Reynolds chuckled to himself. ‘You really are a slippery bastard, Donovan. You think that you can walk away from something that has cost the lives of some really good men, special friends of mine, who since their deaths, I miss every bloody day! You’re not worth half of them. The way you’ve just tried to walk away from what you did, and hide behind your crook of a president as if you had nothing to do with it. You see Donovan, I was onto you from the start. Your man you sent to assign my team, Everard, ran into an old friend of mine — and in exchange for not being buried up to his neck in a hole on top of a sun-baked mountain, gave him your name.’
Tremaine poured himself another bourbon. ‘I know. Your friend, Alex Swan, told me about it this morning. I got to give it to Reynolds, that was some stunt you pulled. It had Everard completely fooled, that’s for sure.’
Reynolds let out a sigh. ‘So, Alex came to see you? He would have probably informed you of your little operation. The way you not only used me and my men, but also had some crackpot Irish-American submarine veteran try and declare a personal war on the Royal Navy. I’ve got to hand it to you, Donovan, it was a good bit of deception with what you did with that sub, disguising it as a Greek boat. So, what was it all for? Blame the Greeks for sinking a British assault carrier, only there to rescue British civilians? Have a British politician to draw up some false decree, handing our sovereign bases on the island over to the Turks? Why? What were you trying to gain from all this?’
It was Tremaine’s turn to gloat. ‘Do you know what Reynolds, I’ll tell you, but I doubt that you’ll completely understand everything.’
Reynolds gave the senator a cold stare. ‘Why don’t you just try me? After all, there’s not a great deal that can come from your mouth that will surprise me. You’re a politician. You lie for a living. Anyway, go ahead, I’m all ears.’
Tremaine began with a little history lesson, in how the British after the Suez crisis, had been left with only one stronghold in the Middle East, the two bases on Cyprus. Then he explained the Greek coup and the takeover in Athens by a military junta, a junta that looked closely at gaining Soviet support. ‘You see Reynolds, if that was to happen, the last outpost to protect the Suez region, could be lost and, when the Cypriot President was eventually overthrown, the world held its breath, as this Greek backed coup created a step towards the Soviets taking control of the routes to the Arab States.’
‘Which would mean that the West could find itself in trouble, as the oil could be blockaded by the Russians. Alex Swan and I had already worked this out,’ interrupted Reynolds.
‘Now you’re getting it. So, you British had a problem. A big fat one. You managed to get Makarios out by flying him to London, but that now left Cyprus under Greek rule, with a leader that no-one really wanted. The Turks threatened invasion to protect their citizens and when the Greeks ignored them, over they came. This gave the West an opportunity to stop the Greeks from calling in their Soviet friends to give them a hand. Turkey had formed its bridgehead in the north of the island and from there, was to go on to occupy a third of it. Being a strong NATO ally meant that we could have a base to protect the interests in the Middle East, including as you said, Reynolds, the oil.’