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SIDNEY SHELDON’S
THE TIDES
of MEMORY
Tilly Bagshawe
For Heather Hartz
With Love.
CONTENTS
Prologue
Part I
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Part II
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Part III
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Part IV
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
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“WAS THERE ANYTHING ELSE, HOME SECRETARY?”
Alexia De Vere smiled. Home secretary. Surely the most beautiful two words in the English language. Except for prime minister, of course. The Tory Party’s newest superstar laughed at herself. One step at a time, Alexia.
“No, thank you, Edward. I’ll call if I need you.”
Sir Edward Manning nodded briefly and left the room. A senior civil servant in his early sixties and a bastion of the Westminster political establishment, Manning was tall and gray and as rigid as a matchstick. In the coming months, Sir Edward would be Alexia De Vere’s constant companion: advising, cautioning, expertly guiding her through the maze of Home Office politics. But right now, in these first few hours in the job, Alexia De Vere wanted to be alone. She wanted to savor the sweet taste of victory without an audience. To sit back and revel in the profound thrill of power.
After all, she’d earned it.
Getting up from her desk, she paced around her new office, a vast aerie of a room perched high in one of the Gothic towers of the Palace of Westminster. The interior design was more functional than fabulous. A matching pair of ugly brown sofas at one end (those must go), a simple desk and chair at the other, and a bookcase stuffed with dusty, unread tomes of political history. But none of that mattered once you saw the view. Spectacular didn’t begin to cover it. Floor-to-ceiling windows provided a panoramic vista of London, from the towers of Canary Wharf in the east to the mansions of Chelsea in the west. It was a view that said one thing and one thing only.
Power.
And it was all hers.
I am the home secretary of Great Britain. The second-most-important member of Her Majesty’s government.
How had it happened? How had a junior prisons minister, and a deeply unpopular one at that, leapfrogged so many other senior candidates to land the big job? Poor Kevin Lomax over at Trade and Industry must be spitting yellow, coffee-stained teeth. The thought made Alexia De Vere feel warm inside. Patronizing old fossil. He wrote me off years ago,
