Chapter 5

Sir James Wylings had been born a leech. He had lived a leech. Being a leech on society was what Wylings knew. He was good at it.

But that didn’t mean he couldn’t remake himself into something better. He was convinced that all his famous, noble forebears had earned their royal status. So had Sir James Wylings, as far as the world was concerned. But Wylings himself knew the shameful truth. His knighthood had come about through the manipulation of events and, frankly, a little mass murder. You couldn’t arrange to save a starving camp full of refugees without allowing a good number of them to actually starve first. Wylings tried not to think about that part of the scheme. After all, it was only inland Africans who did the starving. His great-grandfather had a term for such people: “ignorant savages.” It was such a quaint old-England turn of phrase.

Sir James imagined the old duke saying, “They’re just ignorant savages, my boy. Any token of civilization you can give them makes them worlds better off than they were before. Aren’t those ignorant savages better off because of the blessings you provided?” The old man wouldn’t have allowed anybody to answer that before concluding, “Of course they are! You touched their lives with the magic fairy dust of English culture! If they weren’t ignorant savages, they’d understand that it was well worth the lives of a few ignorant savages.”

That mind-set was totally lacking in the modern world of the twenty-first century. It really wasn’t so long ago, the time of the British Empire, when England ruled the world.

Bloody England today was nothing more than America’s manservant, and every time the Americans got mud on their face, England was right there getting spattered, too.

Not that Wylings wanted the U.K. to be popular. What was the value in that? He wanted the U.K. to be powerful. He wanted his great-grandfather’s British Empire back. A leech such as himself could find a real niche in a nation intent on good old-fashioned colonialism.

He’d been drawing up plans for years, but they all looked like crazy schemes in the end. He had been wielding his influence conservatively, creating the perfect image. He held roles in the British government and was perceived as competent and loyal. The competence took some back-room game-playing to create, but he was genuinely loyal to the British crown—although to a crown that did not necessarily still exist …

But maybe, one day, his version of England would be reborn. Maybe, just maybe, he would cause it to happen himself. Maybe all the craziness in the world this week would give him a leg up—if he only worked it just right.