Apothecary (First Contact) by Peter Cawdron

Author:Peter Cawdron [Cawdron, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Published: 2023-03-30T16:00:00+00:00

Act III: 21st Century

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Cobra

Felix Wilson sits back, allowing a waiter to lay an embroidered napkin on his lap, protecting his William Westmancott from getting stained. It’s a suit. That’s all a William Westmancott is, but it’s a suit that cost twenty-eight thousand pounds to procure from Savile Row. His Westmancott looks like any other dark black business suit in London’s financial district, albeit with over a hundred thousand precisely-placed handmade stitches forming the seams. To the untrained eye, his suit is form-fitting with a snug jacket pulling in around his waist, but rather than coming off a machine assembly line, it’s been tailored for his figure and his alone. The shoulders are padded, but not overly so, leaving a hint of doubt as to the presence of muscle beneath. The cut of the V in the jacket is sharp, accentuating his tie.

Felix is wearing a red silk tie with a Double Windsor knot. The placement is impeccable, sitting up against his neck and setting off the angles that flow down across his chest in a cascade of triangles being formed between his tie, his collar, his shirt and his absurdly expensive Westmancott. The distinctions are subtle, but the crisp look projects power and confidence, along with unabashed wealth.

“We need to be more… reconciliatory,” Ambassador Chenko says, sipping a glass of wine.

Nothing about Ambassador Chenko is haphazard. Her words are precise, perhaps even rehearsed. The pause as she sips, the lingering moment before she sets her glass down, the careful placement of the glass on the restaurant table: Chenko is sending her own message. This casual dinner in a private section of the Mauree de Plume restaurant on the south bank of the Thames has been approved at the highest levels of the Kremlin. Even her dress has been chosen with care. The ambassador is known for wearing drab-coloured dresses. Grey and navy blue are her preferred colours, although Felix has been told she sometimes wears a mint green tea dress to garden parties in summer. Her dresses almost always have a high cut that reinforces the need for business over pleasure. Tonight, she’s wearing a light blue dress that accentuates her figure. A pearl necklace and plunging v-neckline direct the gaze down to the pale skin of her cleavage. It’s not a fuck-me dress, but it’s as close as she’ll ever wear with anyone other than a lover. It suggests a level of friendship she does not have with the United Kingdom’s Secretary of State for Defence.

Felix is brutal in response to her comment, ‘We need to be more reconciliatory.’

“We?”

He raises his glass and sips.

As an avid chess player, for him, these are the opening moves of a game. The wine glass is a proxy for the clock in a competition. After each move, it’s the opponent's turn to examine the board.

Felix is being laconic. There’s much he could say but won’t. The Russian Federation has a sordid history with the West and particularly the United Kingdom, where it has been reckless, to say the least.

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