Final Witness Read Online Free PDF Page B

political mess down in London. But the wine loosened his tongue, and he ended up telling her everything he thought and felt about the crisis. She listened while he drank the best part of two bottles of wine, and then she told him what to do. Her advice was so simple, but it hit him like a bombshell. “Speak out,” she said. “Do what you think is right. Don’t worry about other people or the future. If the prime minister was right, then he deserves your support.”
        Later in the afternoon, Greta interviewed Peter about the crisis, and by the end of the week the story had been taken up by all the networks. It was as if everyone had been waiting for someone to say what Peter had said. The political tide turned, and in the reshuffle that followed the prime minister’s election victory three months later, Peter was made minister of defense. The conduct of future military rescue missions would be his responsibility.
        Peter did not forget the young reporter in his moment of triumph. He gave her a job as his personal assistant, and he had never for a moment regretted his decision. She was always there for him. Not like Anne, who found politics boring and got a migraine every time she left Suffolk. Greta stayed up with him into the small hours drafting and typing his speeches. She encouraged him through the bad times, and she shared in his successes. Greta. Where would he be without her?
        Peter thought of his personal assistant sleeping now on the other side of the corridor. It was extraordinary how she’d carried on coming down here even after what had happened with the dresses, particularly as Anne hadn’t made it any easier for her. She came because he needed her. And Anne wouldn’t even come to London for the opening of Parliament. She was too busy with her garden. With all those bloody roses.
        Peter turned out the light, leaving the windows open in the vain hope of a breath of wind to circulate the fetid air in the room. Outside the thunder persisted but there was still no rain. He twisted and turned, and the wet heat made the sheet cling to his body.
        Toward two o’clock he fell into an uneasy sleep. He dreamed that he was standing naked at the foot of his own bed here in the House of the Four Winds. The room was dark, but he could see by the light of the full moon, which hung outside the high open windows like a witness. In front of him a woman was lying facedown on the soft white eiderdown. She was wearing a white silk skirt with the hemline ending just below the knee. It was the same skirt that his wife had worn at dinner that evening. Above the waist the woman was naked, and she lay with her invisible face and forearms supported on a mass of white pillows. He couldn’t tell if she was sleeping, and so he leaned forward and slowly traced two lines with the tips of his fingers down the back of the woman’s calves, feeling the strength of the tightening muscles underneath.
        As he reached her ankles, she drew herself forward, away from him, and raised her body up into a kneeling position. The skirt gathered up onto her thighs, and Peter followed her, kneeling at the end of the bed. Reaching out with both hands, he took hold of the skirt and folded it up onto the woman’s waist, exposing her perfectly shaped buttocks.
        And then it was as if time and movement were suspended. He knelt above the woman’s body with every fiber of his being willing him forward to take hold of her. Yet nothing could happen unless she gave some indication of her consent.
        It was a tiny wisp of wind that broke the moment. Some stealthy movement in the still air elicited a scarcely audible sigh from the naked figure beneath him. She pulled her knees forward and apart, raising herself up on her forearms so that Peter could see the swell of her breasts hanging down onto the white eiderdown. Everything was revealed to him, and with a cry of fulfillment he thrust himself forward and