Prologue
Bryce
The man across from me was sweating through his suit.It was custom-tailored, Melbourne’s finest, but expensive wool still puckers when someone is both furious and terrified.
“Ambassador Lewis, how the hell am I supposed to run a business like this?”he snapped, his knuckles white against the polished edge of my conference table.“Last week the tariff was ten percent.Yesterday, fifteen.This morning it’s twenty, and God knows what it’ll be tomorrow.How do you plan an export strategy when the bloody rules change every time the President opens his mouth?”
I folded my hands neatly on the blotter and leaned back, posture calm—because that’s what ambassadors do.Inside, I wanted to slam my head against the mahogany.
“I understand your frustration, Mr.Davenport,” I said, giving him my best measured sympathy tone, the one that kept people from storming out and calling us imperial overlords.“Unfortunately, trade policy comes directly from Washington.My role here is to maintain dialogue and—”
He cut me off, leaning forward, eyes flashing.“Dialogue?That’s bureaucrat-speak fornothing you can do.These tariffs don’t just hurt me—they hurt the American people buying my steel.It’ll cost them more to build homes, more to repair cars, more for everything.Your President is strangling his own people just to look tough on television.”
My jaw ached from how tightly I was holding it.He wasn’t wrong.Hell, he was painfully, excruciatingly right.But there it was: the diplomatic cage.I could acknowledge his anger, empathize, maybe even slip in a promise to “carry his concerns back to Washington.”But I couldn’t say the thing I wanted to: Believe me, I think he’s an idiot too.
The first sharp pulse of a headache needled behind my left temple.My right hand twitched toward the top drawer where the aspirin bottle lived, my constant companion since Inauguration Day.Not yet.I couldn’t do it while he was watching me, cataloguing every gesture, waiting for a sign that his words had landed.
I clasped my hands tighter instead and kept my face neutral.“I’ll make sure your concerns are relayed to the Secretary of State, Mr.Davenport.”
He laughed bitterly.“Yeah, I’m sure he’ll lose sleep over that.”
Before I could respond, the intercom on my desk buzzed.My assistant’s voice crackled through, urgent, clipped.“Ambassador?You need to turn on the news.Right now.”
Her tone stopped me cold.I shot a quick glance at Davenport.His jaw clenched like he was ready to keep going.
“Mr.Davenport,” I said, rising, already moving him toward the door, “I need to cut this short.Something’s come up.My staff will be in touch to schedule a follow-up.”
He sputtered, caught between outrage and resignation, but I’d perfected the art of polite dismissal years ago.The man was halfway down the hall before I was back at my desk.
Drawer open.White bottle in my hand.Two chalky pills dry-swallowed before the cap even clicked shut again.
With the aspirin still bitter on my tongue, I reached for the remote and flicked on the massive screen across from me on the wall.The embassy’s quiet hum collapsed into breaking headlines, Sky News flashing red.
And just like that, the problem of tariffs evaporated.
“We are just receiving confirmation from the American Embassy in London that the United States Ambassador to the Court of St.James’s, Ian Mitchell, has died suddenly of what officials are describing as a cardiac event.He was sixty-one.Mitchell, who had served in the post for three years, is survived by his wife, Eleanor, and their two children.Downing Street has issued a statement calling him ‘a trusted partner and a steadfast friend of the United Kingdom in turbulent times.’The White House, in a separate release, praised his ‘dedication to American values abroad’ and noted that he ‘served with distinction during a pivotal chapter in U.S.–U.K.relations.’”
The chyron screamedAMBASSADOR TO UK DEAD AT 61.
I pressed my fingertips into my temple, but the pounding only grew sharper.Ian Mitchell, gone.Just like that.
I switched the monitor off, the sudden silence almost violent in its finality.
Ian had been my boss once—Deputy Secretary when I was still clawing my way up from mid-level posts.He’d never made me feel like I had to claw at all.Once, in a strategy session packed with men who thought volume equaled authority, Ian had stopped the meeting cold, pointed right at me, and said, “Let’s hear Lewis’s assessment.He’s the only one in the room who’s actually been on the ground.”He hadn’t just given me space—he’d demanded the others shut up and listen.I’d never forgotten that.
And now he was a headline, leaving a widow and two kids who’d have to sit in the front row at a state funeral while strangers talked about “legacy.”My throat tightened, but grief was a luxury I couldn’t afford at work.
The intercom buzzed again.My assistant’s voice, brisk and apologetic: “Ambassador, Secretary Kirk is waiting on a secure link.”
Perfect.Nothing like Kirk to turn grief into indigestion.
I exhaled, reached for the remote, and brought the monitor back to life.The embassy’s secure comms platform filled the screen with Kirk’s face, all angles and smugness, the picture of a man who’d never met a mirror he didn’t adore.
Here we go, I thought, squaring my shoulders.Ian Mitchell deserved a memorial.What he was about to get instead was Franklin Kirk.
Kirk’s face blinked onto the screen, framed by the mahogany-and-flag backdrop of his office in Washington.He didn’t even pretend to look somber.
“Ambassador Lewis,” he said, inclining his head with the air of a man bestowing knighthood, “difficult day, difficult news.A terrible loss, of course.Mitchell was… dependable.”He drew the word out like it tasted bland on his tongue.“Solid fellow.Stuck around longer than I expected, truth be told.I’d been thinking for some time that a change was in order.”
