The Nassau Secret (The Lang Reilly Series Book 8) by Gregg Loomis Read Free Book Online Page A

Haynesworth was not wearing swimming attire but was identified by the wallet she had in the pocket of her shorts.
                  BP Lieutenant Lemual Goodlow said, “There were no obvious signs of foul play but the medical examiner’s office will determine the cause of death in the next few days.”
                  He was also quoted as saying the body did not appear to have been in the water more than 24 hours.
                   Should it be determined Ms. Haynesworth perished from other than  naturalcauses, it would be the island’s two hundred twentieth homicid e since 2009.

11.
                 
    85 Albert Embankment
    London
    14:22 Local Time
    The Next Day
     
                  The futuristic pile that is home to England’s Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, is familiar to fans of James Bond films, having been featured in over half a dozen of them.
                  On the sixth floor with a view of the Thames through a single bullet proof window, Alred James sucked contemplatively on the pipe he was no longer allowed to smoke inside the building. He looked longingly at the others in the rack: Two ornately carved meerschaums, several briars and a calabash. He was particularly fond of the latter. It conjured up images of the world’s greatest (if fictional) detective: Sherlock Holmes.              
                  James had been with MI6 since his Oxford days, nearly forty years past. Retirement and a civil service pension seemed to be coming on with increasing speed daily.
                  Retirement.
                  He could devote more time to the prize winning roses that grew around the cottage on Kiln Lane in Betchwort, Surrey. Wobbly brick floor that had seen the feet of three centuries, smoke blackened beams, inglenook fireplace, sharply slanted tile roof that had replaced thatch only a decade ago. Once there, carbon emissions, clogged streets and crowded tube seemed a world rather than just a border away.
                  Retirement.
                  He looked forward to it but there was a final task he owed his country before he swapped his Bond Street suits for cardies and Wellies, a task the hierarchy of MI6 knew nothing about. It was, as they say, “off the books.” Only he and a handful of other employees of the agency were in on it, only those who were members of the highly secret St. George Society.
                  The society espoused and practiced patriotism, the kind that had gone out of style as the British Empire shrunk and then morphed into the absurd commonwealth, a group of nations whose only real tie to England was that they had been former colonies. Although the queen appeared on many of their stamps and currency, they bore no real loyalty to her. Not unless you considered as loyalty the constant stream of illiterate, crime-prone, poverty ridden immigrants who lived off the dole in counsel housing.
                  As for the Queen. . . who really showed respect for the royals anymore? Not since Dianna, Fergie and the lot of them had revealed themselves as so much Euro-trash.
                  The Society had put paid to that or at least part of it in the Pont de l’Alma underpass in Paris. Oh, there had been a the few loose ends, the burst of bright light a couple of witnesses reported, witnesses easily discredited. And the white Fiat Uno whose paint matched that left on the Mercedes. The owner, photo journalist James Anderson, had been found dead in a burned and locked BMW. The keys were never located.
                  Loose ends or not, the possibility of the future King of England having a Moslem for a half sibling, of WOGs running around Buckingham Palace, no longer existed.
                  Service to the crown frequently went unrecognized or appreciated.
                  There was a