Chapter 47 - The London Dispatch on the Wire
The quiet of my second week in Portugal was unbroken until Thursday afternoon.
I was sitting on the low stone retaining wall beside my olive trees, slicing fresh pears into a porcelain bowl, when my phone vibrated with an urgent facsimile notification from Arthur Vance's law office[cite: 7, 10].
The transmittal header bore the dark blue crest of the High Court of Justice in London, King's Bench Division[cite: 5, 7, 10]:
IN RE: SOVEREIGN REVERSIONARY LIENS — ANGLO-AMERICAN TRANSIT POOL (1924)[cite: 5].
I set the knife down, adjusting my glasses as I read the crisp, devastating lines typed in British chancery format[cite: 5, 7, 10]:
To Diane Overstreet, Sole Trustee:
Be advised that following the criminal detention of Alistair Vance-Sterling, the surviving senior benchers of the London Maritime Directorate have unsealed the 1924 Centenary Covenant[cite: 5, 7, 10].
Said covenant asserts an unappealable maritime surcharge of thirty-two million pounds sterling against all Atlantic freight arteries connected to the Norfolk-Chatham rail corridor[cite: 5, 7, 10].
The liquidating partner, Sir Reginald Vance-Mercer, KC, will arrive in Lisbon tomorrow morning to execute a formal writ of sovereign sequestration against the American naval accounts at Banco Santander[cite: 5, 7, 10].
My fingers did not tremble as I laid the paper on the cedar table[cite: 7, 10].
The snake did not have two heads[cite: 5].
It was a hydra that had fed on borrowed paper and dead men's names for a hundred years[cite: 5, 7, 10].
They believed that an old woman who had spent thirty years baking biscuits would look at a King's Counsel seal and surrender her husband's land out of sheer exhaustion[cite: 5, 7, 10].
I picked up my mobile phone and called Commander Cruz at the American Embassy[cite: 7, 10].
"Evelyn," I said, my voice dropping into that cold, surgical clarity that had broken every lawyer from Charlotte to Geneva[cite: 7, 10].
"Yes, Diane?"
"A British barrister named Reginald Vance-Mercer is boarding a flight from Heathrow right now[cite: 5, 7, 10]," I told her.
"Tell the naval motor pool to bring the dark sedan around to my gate[cite: 7, 10]."
May you like
"Because tomorrow morning, we are going to teach the City of London how an honest woman balances a ledger[cite: 7, 10]."
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