The Lateness of the Hour
Prologue: The Lioness
Jim McMillan scowled. He couldn't see her from his office, but he still knew that she was there, lurking on the perimeter.
She had been there for five days, camping in their old caravan, draped with banner that lambasted his bosses. Today, his heart had sunk as he'd noticed she'd been joined by two further tents. It was only a matter of time, he thought, before they were besieged by rent-a-crowd, dreadlocked anarchists looking for an excuse for a protest. He snorted in disgust. He reckoned he could put money on them being vegetarians too.
It had been two weeks since the Americans had accused Price and MacTavish of the murder of General Shepherd. Since then, the British government had been grovelling on their knees before their American masters, bleating assurances that they could be trusted. Meanwhile Stirling Lines was undergoing a rapid schism, with those who wanted to rapidly distance themselves from the mutinous pair and those, like himself, who could detect the faint odour of something rotten about the whole business. He had known Price for over fifteen years. He still owed him for the business at Pripiyat, and the rest.
He'd never liked Shepherd, and he'd never quite been able to put his finger on why. There had been something shifty about him, something not quite right. Since Price had reappeared, MacTavish had been dispatching him regular updates on the sly. The whole business about getting Price out of Petropavlosk stank to high heaven. He refused to believe that Shepherd couldn't have known who 627 was for a bloody start. Even if it had been someone else, what had been the final plan? To hang him out as bait? Makarov was an old warhorse, and the only reason he was still alive and not rotting in Petropavlosk himself was because he was smart enough to see through the plans of others.
In the meantime, he was still left with a war on his hands and now he had furious wrath of Vivianne to deal with too. He still hadn't found out who had decided that the best course of action was to declare Vivianne persona non grata, but when he found them, they were going to get a swift kick in the arse, and then some. The war had brought some old rivalries simmering to the surface, and, unwittingly, Vivianne was a pawn in someone's power game. It made him enraged that in times like these, the first thing some people thought of was how to further their own ends.
It gave him no satisfaction that he'd been right about the whole graveyard relocation in the first place. Sure, St Michael's wasn't limitless, and they had to think about the future, but having the additional admin of clearing grieving relatives for access to the base to visit the graves of their dearly departed was another pen-pushing headache no one wanted or needed They'd already had to separate a vicious cat fight between a widow and whatever you called the mistress of a dead man last Valentine's Day. The higher ups had insisted that loss of access to the burial ground would act as a deterrent against misbehaviour, but that had missed the finer points of the politics.
Overall, he thought it was harsh, even if he had never liked her. The press had camped out on Price's lawn, harassing his permanently nervous wife as she tried to get through her own garden gate. In the footage he'd seen she had looked like she was about to be sick or cry, possibly both at once. MacMillan felt quite sorry for her. Vivianne was made of sterner stuff. She had called them vultures, adding that there was no way in hell John Price was a traitor to his country. A fresh-faced woman from Al-Jazeera had asked her if she thought Price could kill an American general and she'd answered that of course he could, what the hell did they think they spent their time on the base doing, learning to bloody crochet? In the shocked silence that had followed she narrowed her eyes, drawn herself to her full height and said, imperiously, that if John Price had killed Shepherd then he had a bloody good reason for doing so and what were they doing standing there when they should be finding out why.
Secretly, MacMillan admired her bravado, even if her outburst had cost her. Plus, she was right.
He picked up the copy of The Guardian that had been left on his desk, with the interview in question helpfully earmarked. It was a two page spread with a picture of her in the centre, playing the part of the wronged widow with wide-eyed innocence, looking off camera wistfully into the middle distance. At first he'd struggled to put his finger on what was wrong with the picture, and then he realised that she wasn't not wearing makeup, she'd deliberately painted herself to look like the colour had been washed from her face, as if the struggle was draining her soul. He pursed his lips. It took great effort, but he had to admit that she was bloody smart little bitch.
He noted with interest that she was using the title, probably a warning shot to the MoD that she wasn't to be fucked around. She might be plain old Mrs Garry Bradley by marriage, but she was Lady Vivianne Fairfax by birth, the outcast scion on a family that had an unbroken military presence since the last century. General Sir Robert, or "Uncle Bertie" if you were a Fairfax, might have retired to a cosy velvet cushion in the Lords, but he still had clout in his old stomping grounds, and MacMillan knew he'd been chewing on his successors' ears to lay off his errant niece. If that didn't work, some other node of the family network would bring financial or political pressure to bear. With any luck, the problem would soon be out of his hair and not a moment too soon.
Author's Note: This has languished in storage for almost four years, and I make no promises about update schedule, but finishing Sam and Price's story was something I always wanted to do.