The Secret Servant (Gabriel Allon #7)(19)
Fifty-eight men and a single woman have served as the American ambassador to the Court of St. James’s—including five who would become president—but only one has ever come from the ranks of the career Foreign Service. The rest have been political appointees and diplomatic debutants, known more for their money and connections than their foreign policy expertise. Their names read like an honor roll of American high society and wealth: Mellon, Kennedy, Harriman, Aldrich, Bruce, Whitney, and Annenberg.
The current American ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, Robert Carlyle Halton, was not born to wealth, and few Americans knew his name, though he was by far the richest man to ever occupy the post and his political connections were second to none. The president and CEO of the Denver-based Red Mountain Energy, Halton’s personal fortune exceeded five billion dollars at last estimate. He also happened to be a lifelong friend of the president of the United States and his largest political donor. The Washington Post, in a rather unflattering profile of Halton published shortly after his nomination, declared that he “had pulled off the extraordinary political feat of putting his best friend in the White House.” When asked about the accuracy of the report during his confirmation hearings, Halton said he only wished he had been able to give the president more money, a remark that had cost him several Democratic votes.
Despite the fact Robert Halton was no longer responsible for a global energy empire, he remained an early riser and kept a rigorous daily schedule that was far more punishing than those of his predecessors. As usual that morning, he had left Winfield House, his official residence in Regent’s Park, at the thoroughly undiplomatic hour of 6:45, and by seven he was leafing through the London papers at his desk overlooking Grosvenor Square. The pages were filled with dire news from Iraq. Halton was convinced the British, who had already made drastic cuts to their troop levels in Iraq, would soon be looking for the exits entirely, an assessment he had given directly to the president during their last meeting at Halton’s sprawling Owl Creek estate in Aspen. Halton hadn’t minced words during the meeting. He rarely did.
At 7:10, a tall young woman dressed in a cold-weather tracksuit and fleece headband appeared in his doorway. She had long dark hair, pale green eyes set in an attractive face, and a trim athletic figure. Without waiting for permission to enter, she crossed the room and sat on the arm of Halton’s chair. It was a gesture of obvious intimacy, one that might have raised eyebrows among the embassy staff were it not for the fact that the attractive woman’s name was Elizabeth Halton. She kissed the ambassador’s cheek and smoothed his head of thick gray hair.
“Good morning, Daddy,” she said. “Anything interesting in the papers?”
Robert Halton held up the Times. “The mayor of London is angry at me again.”
“What’s eating Red Ken now?”
Halton’s relations with London’s infamously left-wing mayor were frosty at best—hardly surprising, given the fact that the mayor had expressed compassion for the suicide bombers of Hamas and had once publicly embraced a Muslim Brotherhood leader who had called for the murder of Jews and other infidels.
“He says our security is causing major disruptions to the flow of traffic throughout Mayfair,” Robert Halton said. “He wants us to pay a congestion tax. He’s suggesting I pay for it out of my personal funds. He’s quite sure I won’t miss the money.”
“You won’t.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Shall I have a word with him?”
“I wouldn’t inflict that on my worst enemy.”
“I can be a charmer.”
“He doesn’t deserve you, darling.”
Robert Halton smiled and stroked his daughter’s cheek. The two had been nearly inseparable since the death of Halton’s wife five years earlier in a private-plane crash in northern Alaska—so inseparable, in fact, that Halton had refused to accept the president’s offer to become his envoy to London until first making certain Elizabeth would accompany him. While most young women would have leaped at the chance to live in London as the daughter of the American ambassador, Elizabeth had been reluctant to leave Colorado. She was one of the most highly regarded emergency-room surgeons in Denver and was discussing marriage with a successful real estate developer. She had wavered for several weeks, until one evening, while on duty at Denver’s Rose Medical Center, she had received a call from the White House on her mobile phone. “I need your father in London,” the president had said. “What do I have to say to you to make that happen?”
Few people were better positioned to turn down a request from the commander in chief than Elizabeth Halton. She had known the president her entire life. She had skied with him in Aspen and hunted deer with him in Montana. She had been toasted by him on the day she graduated from medical school and comforted by him on the day her mother was buried. But she had not turned him down, of course, and upon her arrival in London had thrown herself into the assignment with the same determination and skill with which she approached every other challenge in life. She ruled Winfield House with an iron hand and was nearly always on her father’s arm at official events and important social affairs. She did volunteer work in London hospitals—especially those that served the poor immigrant communities—and was a skillful public advocate for American policy in Iraq and the broader war on terror. She was as popular with the London press as her father was loathed, despite the fact that the Guardian had published a little-known fact that Elizabeth, for reasons of security, had tried to keep secret. The president of the United States was her godfather.