Editor’s Note: This is the fourth installment of Scott McKay’s new novel, From Hellmarsh With Love, which is being released exclusively at The American Spectator each weekend in September and October, before its full publication on Amazon later this fall. From Hellmarsh With Love is the sequel to King of the Jungle, which was serialized at The American Spectator in Spring 2024. You can purchase it on Amazon here. And you can pre-order a signed copy of From Hellmarsh With Love at this link.

So far in the story, our intrepid hero, conservative podcaster and web publisher Mike Holman, married the love of his life, former Secret Service agent and president-saving heroine PJ Chang. After the wedding, Mike and PJ hopped on a jet for a honeymoon in London where all is not as it should be. Amid the growing chaos in Great Britain and the increasing disconnect between its ruling class and people, Mike changes his mind, thanks to PJ’s subtle influence, and begins doing interviews with some of the country’s movers and shakers.

The new Hard Left British government does not like that one bit, and Mike finds himself arrested on suspicion of conspiring to commit an act of terrorism. 

Catch up on previous episodes here.

PJ tells us what happens next…

The Savoy, August 30, 2024

I looked at the clock, and it told me I’d only laid on that hotel bed for eleven minutes, but I still felt guilty and ashamed. Who knows what was happening to Mike and here I was wasting time lounging in luxury at the Savoy.

But riding the elevator to Room 844, in the aftermath of the trauma on the A4 coming from Heathrow, was a little like climbing Mount Everest. And by the time I got to the room, I was absolutely drained.

And what pulled me out of my miserable reverie was the phone next to the bed. It was ringing. So I rolled over and answered it.

“Is this Mrs. Pauline Holman?” a voice that sounded like it was attached to a cousin of Michael Caine’s asked.

“That would be me, yes,” I said, wiping my eyes. “Who’s calling, please?”

“My name is Thomas Brackett, ma’am. I suppose I’m your husband’s legal counsel. I was retained by a Thomas LeClair on behalf of Michael Holman a few minutes ago, and he suggested I might reach you at this number.”

“Yes, YES,” I said, straightening up and feeling a little bit of relief that gears had been turning while I’d been crying into a pillow. “Thank you, Mr. Brackett.”

“I’m sending someone round with some papers I’d like you to sign, as in a case such as this we’ll want to have me represent you as well as your husband. As of now, you’ve not been charged with a crime, but we should be prepared for that possibility.”

“That sounds ominous.”

“Yes, mum, Better to prepare for the worst, as they say.”

“No, I understand. So, I’m signing a representation agreement. Anything else I should be doing now? They tell me Mike is at the High Street Kensington police station. I don’t know if I should be going there, or…”

“No, ma’am. They won’t let you see him now in any event, and we don’t want them to have ready access to you. Once you’ve signed those papers, you will have legal counsel, and as such you would be a harder target. If you’re to be interrogated, I will be present.”

“OK. What about the U.S. Embassy? Should I call?”

“If it makes you feel better, ma’am.”

“You don’t think that would help? My husband is a fairly prominent American media figure; I would think that would…”

“Ma’am, Michael is being held on suspicion of conspiracy to commit a terrorist act. It is unlikely at this time that the American embassy will be of use in freeing him. But do check in; one never knows what might come from it.”

“I’m sorry; what did you say?”

“Yes, ma’am. That is the charge, at least in prospect. I’m heading to the station now for the interrogation…”

“But that’s absolutely absurd! Mike is a journalist. All he’s done are interviews! And we’re on our honeymoon. How could he possibly be plotting a terrorist act?”

“Best not to say more over a land line, Mrs. Holman…”

“Please. Call me PJ.”

“Yes, of course. PJ, what I would suggest is that you sign the agreement when it arrives, then have something to eat. I’ll call later with next steps.”

“All right.”

“And in the event that the press finds you, do not give an interview or make comment of any kind. Route all inquiries to me at this number.”

He gave it, and I wrote it down. Then he politely ended the call.

Conspiracy to commit a terrorist act? What terrorist act? And with whom did Mike conspire? And if he was guilty of that, then obviously I would have to be, too, right?

And if so, what had I done wrong?

The whole thing was surreal. Bizarre. Impossible. And yet Mike was off in some dungeon somewhere, because somebody in a position of power believed he was a … terrorist?

Or maybe they didn’t, and it just didn’t matter.

That was the thought I considered, and it just incinerated me that I thought it was the most likely probability. They’d told us to stop doing interviews after Lady Phillipa had cut her own political throat – they’d even demanded that we take down the interview with her, which was absurd and was never going to happen – and we hadn’t stopped interviewing. In fact, we instead interviewed the man they considered the most dangerous figure in British politics, and that must have made Mike equally dangerous.

As I thought about it, though, even though I knew there were people sitting in jail for posting things on the internet that the government didn’t like, and certainly most of those things I wouldn’t like very much, either, none of this computed with me.

I mean, I grew up in a world where you understood that the authorities were there to protect a free citizenry. Right? The cops enforced laws, which kept people from hurting each other or stealing each other’s property, and the military and intelligence agencies protected regular folks from foreign enemies and domestic revolutionaries.

I had faith in that world, so much so that after college I wanted to be one of the protectors. My three brothers all joined the Navy, after all, and I could have done that except my Dad forbade it.

“The military is no place for a woman,” he said.

Yes, The Great Peter Chang, California Democrat moneybags extraordinaire, doesn’t want women in the armed services. And Mom agreed. Not in her usual I-don’t-really-agree-but-I’m-not-making-a-fight-about-it way, she agreed for real.

So I applied at the FBI, the U.S. Marshalls and the Secret Service.

The Great Peter Chang didn’t like any of those ideas. But this time Mom didn’t agree with him. She didn’t love my plan, either, because she wanted me to go to Stanford Law School. My grades and test scores to get in were pretty marginal for that, and it would have taken a fat addition to their already bloated endowment to seal the deal.

But I didn’t want special treatment from The Great Peter Chang.

My brothers didn’t get that; all three joined the Navy out of high school and got college degrees either while in or after they finished their service. George, who’s captaining a sub in the Atlantic, did his degree in history from George Washington University online and he’s now working on a master’s degree online from Harvard. He’s getting a PhD when he finishes this, and then he’ll be a history professor somewhere when he gets out of the Navy. Dad thinks George can do no wrong, and the fact that George won’t take any of his money makes him even prouder.

Kevin and Hank went in, did their tours, and then got out and went to Cal-Berkeley on the GI bill, and then both of them went to work for Dad. They make crazy money at Chang Pan-Pacific, but Hank says transportation and logistics is soul-crushingly boring work and he can’t wait to branch off and do his own thing. I think it’s a matter of time before he takes his trust fund money and turns himself into a Silicon Valley tech bro.

Dad and Hank have never really gotten along. By the standard of the usual father-daughter relationship, Dad and I have never really gotten along, either. I think it’s something of a cultural thing; I’m way too independent for him. That’s not the traditional Chinese way, and since he’s Chinese, he thinks his daughter should be.

But while I might look sort of Chinese, I’m not. I’m as American as can be. After all, that’s what Mom is, and in a lot of respects I’m her mini-me.

Except her hair is blonde and mine is … well, it’s not naturally blonde, but when I resigned from the Secret Service I went out and got it dyed and I’m rocking this blonde do of mine. Even letting it grow nice and long.

Mike says it’s hot. Mike is really smart. It is hot. Hell, even Donny Trumbull said it was.

But The Great Peter Chang gave me a look of slight disapproval when he arrived at Liberty Point for the wedding. He hadn’t seen the new hairstyle until then, and of course he didn’t like it. And that also pissed me off, if you don’t mind a little salty language.

It’s not like I dyed it blue or pink, I didn’t have half of it shaved off. I looked a little like Margot Robbie in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood; you know, when she’s playing Sharon Tate? Longish straight blonde hair parted in the middle.

Not punk. Not antisocial. Perfectly respectable. Very California. And still he disapproved. Pretty much like always.

All the degenerate brats at that super-expensive school he sent me to who hated their parents and abused their privileges to get into booze and recreational drugs, who ran around San Francisco causing mayhem and getting their parents to bail them out of trouble, and I did none of that. I was a perfect daughter.

So I had a 3.4 GPA in high school and a 3.3 GPA in college. He wanted a 4.0 out of me. But I’m not “studious.” I couldn’t sit in a classroom feeling the life force drain out of me. I had to get out and do things. So I got into athletics. I played volleyball, I swam, I ran track, and the track coach asked if I wanted to try the pole vault because he didn’t have a pole vaulter.

Sure, I said. And I did, and I was good at it. Then I was really good at it.

Then I busted my ankle and had to rehab it for six months, and all the while The Great Peter Chang was telling me that this was a sign I needed to get serious about school and stop wasting time with sports.

And he berated me about the fact that I didn’t have a serious boyfriend, not that any of the guys in my high school that he would tolerate were interested in me. I was an ugly duckling as a kid. It wasn’t until late in high school that my braces came off, my boobs came in, and my zits went away. I went from being utterly invisible to sort of OK, by the standards of The Drew School.

No cheerleader squad or homecoming court for me, nor was I the brainiac with the 4.0 grade point average. The Great Peter Chang didn’t hide his disappointment.

And that irritated me. So much so that I devoted all my energy to rehabbing that ankle and then getting really, really good at pole vaulting. And I was all-conference and second-team all-state as a junior, and first team all-state as a senior, got invited to the 19-and-under national trials, and landed a full ride at UCLA.

So now I was just like my brothers. The Great Peter Chang wasn’t paying for my college, and he didn’t have me under his thumb.

But Mom did. Which was fine by me.

She went to every one of my meets. She’d travel with the UCLA track team. She paid for all of my college expenses, the ones the scholarship didn’t cover, out of her own money. She was my biggest fan. But she did it in a way that was never defiant of The Great Peter Chang.

Mom didn’t do fights. Mom was the peacemaker. And The Great Peter Chang needed – still needs – someone around him in that role.

He’s a funny guy in a lot of respects. People don’t see him coming. He’s very outgoing, very engaging, but he’s also somebody who will get his way no matter what it takes. Most of the time he maneuvers things so people just give in. When they don’t, he’s one of those people who keep on applying more and more pressure until they do.

It works for him. He’s built a very big, very profitable company that way.

But if he didn’t have Mom, he would have alienated pretty much everyone around him at some point or other.

It’s tough to be his daughter, but I’ve generally given him a pass. Here’s why.

I said before that Dad left China as a little kid, right in the middle of the Cultural Revolution. Our Changs came from Guangdong, and they’d been merchants and doctors and other professional types, but the Communists forced most of the city people to go and work out in the country during the various idiotic things Mao demanded. By the time 1970 came around, almost everybody in the family — all my great aunts and uncles, second and third cousins, and so forth — were either dead or spread all over the country. All that were left were my Dad and his parents, at least that we know of.

And then they killed my grandfather over some stupid disagreement; he was accused of criticizing some local commissar for some petty abuse, and for his trouble they put him through a struggle session and publicly executed him in front of Nai Nai (that’s what we called her) and Dad.

She managed to sneak herself and her toddler son aboard a truck that was headed for Hong Kong — he says one of his earliest memories is having to fight to stay completely quiet in that hidden compartment in the bed of the truck — and once there she got a job working for some guy who was a real estate fixer in town. It made her enough money that she managed to make it to San Francisco when Dad was 13, and in America he blossomed.

Straight As all through school, started a courier business while he was still in high school, then did a summer job back in Hong Kong while he was in college at San Francisco State and happened to make some contacts. By the time he’d graduated college, he was in the import-export business and the rest is history.

I’m telling you all of this because my family is a bunch of survivors. We do what we need to do, and we’re very good at finding angles that keep us independent. We’re people who don’t like to be hemmed in.

I don’t know why The Great Peter Chang ended up as a big political leftist. You would think that after the way the communists destroyed our family, he’d hate them and anybody who thinks like them. But what was a lot more important than that was the fact that everybody who was somebody in San Francisco was a big leftist, and The Great Peter Chang wanted to be somebody in San Francisco.

He did what he had to do to get where he wanted to go.

And along the way, he collected all those politicians.

Including Pamela Farris, by the way.

She’s about Dad’s age, maybe a little younger. She came to him for support when she ran for state representative at like 25 years old, and he was just really starting to make the big, big money. At the time, he had been married to Mom just a couple of years; I think George might have been the only one of us who’d been born. Maybe Kevin, too, or maybe Mom was pregnant with him.

Anyway, and I don’t know this for a fact, but it’s a rumor I’m not supposed to talk about, but Dad and Farris had a brief thing. The story goes that it went on for three or four months, and he knocked her up.

But he wouldn’t leave Mom for her, and she had the baby “taken care of.” I’m sure you know what that means.

Anyhow, Farris won her state rep seat and nobody was the wiser, and then she won a race to be the DA in San Francisco. She wasn’t very good in that job, but then she ran for lieutenant governor in California and won that, and then she won a race for U.S. Senate.

Then she ended up as Joe Deadhorse’s vice president.

I’d met her. I’d even spent a few months on her security detail.

Oh my God, what a bitch.

The thing about Farris is that she’s dumb. Like super dumb. Like she doesn’t understand anything, and won’t accept the idea that it’s over her head. So people would explain things to her, and she would start arguing with them. No, that’s not right, she’d say, and then she’d refuse to listen when they would prove to her that she was wrong.

Simple things. Stupid things. Dad had her over to dinner one night when I was probably 7, and there was this huge fight at the table because she totally refused to accept that Carson City was the capital of Nevada.

She swore it was Las Vegas, and declared that she’d been in the state capitol building. It was on Fremont Street downtown, she said, and there was a covered area next to it. It was a very 1950s–style building.

“I think you’re talking about Binion’s Casino,” said Mom. Dad gave her a “shut up” look.

Farris snapped at her that she knew the difference between a casino and a capitol building, but Mom didn’t let it go because Mom had actually been in the Nevada capitol building and knew it was in Carson City, and knew it wasn’t a 1950s–style building but more of a classical architectural style. She also knew that what surrounded and covered the area next to that building were trees.

And since Mom was no idiot and knew about the affair, Mom wasn’t going to back down and let Pamela Farris speak nonsense to her.

So yeah. Big fight, all of us kids were sent away, and The Great Peter Chang had to referee it. Mom still had zero use for Farris and wouldn’t show up to any of the fundraisers and other stuff he did for her.

So I actually knew the sitting vice president who was running for the top job, and I also knew, having taken a bullet in the rear end for him, Donny Trumbull, who was the Republican nominee.

You would think this would mean I could get on the phone and start pulling strings to help Mike. And that’s what I thought of.

But instead of calling The Great Peter Chang, I called Mom.

It was right at 7 in the morning back home when I called. She answered on the third ring.

“Honey,” she said, “it’s really early here. I hope everything’s OK with the honeymoon. Your interview with that weirdo education minister was absolutely crazy.”

“Hey Mom,” I said, “unfortunately it’s not OK.”

“Oh, no. What happened?”

“Mike’s been arrested. Apparently he’s charged with conspiracy to commit an act of terrorism.”

“WHAT?” came the response. “Are you joking?”

“I’m not. We were doing another interview, like at the airport, and we took an Uber back to the hotel, and they pulled us over and arrested him right on the side of the road.”

“OK, here’s what we need to do.”

I stopped her and told her we already had a lawyer, and filled her in on what had happened so far.

“Well, I’m going to get on a plane as fast as I can. I’ll be there soon.”

“Mom, I don’t think you need to do that,” I said. “I appreciate it, but I don’t know what good that’ll do.”

“But you’re all alone over there! And what if they decide to arrest you too?”

“So far apparently that isn’t going to happen. Right now, I’m just going to do what the attorney says.”

“I think he’s a solicitor or a barrister rather than an attorney,” said Mom.

“Barrister, I want to say. Anyway, he doesn’t want me talking to the media without him, and I’m supposed to…”

There was a knock at the door.

“Hang on, Mom. This is the guy with the representation agreement that I have to sign.”

“Don’t sign anything before you read it! Actually, let me read it.”

“How? They took my cell phone. I’m calling you from the landline at the Savoy.”

I put the phone down and answered the door, and there was a very cute, very well-groomed 20-something guy in a bespoke suit holding a file.

“Are you Mrs. Pauline Holman?” he asked with a smile.

“That’s me. Call me PJ.”

“My name is Simon, PJ,” he said with an awfully disarming smile. “I have some papers…”

“I know. Here’s the thing, though. My Mom is a lawyer, and she’s insisting I let her read them before I sign, but I don’t have a cell phone where I can scan them.”

“No worries, PJ. What’s her number?”

So I told him, and he texted them to her via the Signal app.

“I’ll be in the lobby,” he said. “I have some calls I can make. Simply come down when you’re ready and we’ll get you sorted.”

“That’s very considerate of you! I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

He smiled and left, and I went back to the phone.

“I’m reading this,” Mom said, “and it … seems … fine.”

“OK, let me see if I can chase Simon down before he gets into the elevator.”

After Simon left, I went down to the concierge and told them I needed to get some files uploaded to the internet but didn’t have a device to do it with. They were super nice about that and gave me access to the manager’s office. I had to call Tom collect and have him walk me through how to access Holman Media’s file transfer site from an outside machine, and in a few minutes the video and sound files of the Thomason interview were on their way from my thumb drive to the Atlanta server.

“We’ll have you set up with new devices tomorrow,” he said. “The Sentinel Network Security folks have an office in London and they’re going to put something together for you. You’ve got a new laptop and iPhone coming, and they’ll be encrypted with biometric security. Do not consent to any police searches of those devices; they will contain all the files no longer on Mike’s laptop.”

“Is that what he meant when he said an ‘emergency remote cleanup?’”

“Oh yeah. These machines have an internal mobile hotspot which activates even when they’re turned off, and because of that they can be scrubbed remotely. The police will have a really rough time getting any information at all off his laptop. Ditto for your phones.”

“I guess that’s good.”

“It is, but don’t be surprised if they’re not too happy about that.”

And I convinced Mom not to come to London. Maybe I shouldn’t have, considering how it all turned out. But I just had a really bad feeling about her coming and joining the effort to get Mike out of jail.

And I want to say that with Mike arrested I spent a sleepless night crying my eyes out. But I can’t. I’d spent the previous night staring at the ceiling in some at-the-time-irrational dread about what was about to happen.

I made it to about 9 o’clock local time, just late enough to see Sky News’ report about Mike’s arrest. They’d managed to interview Tom in Atlanta about the arrest, and he was really, really good — expressing indignation at the stupid idea his business partner was a terrorist simply because he was willing to air controversial views on a platform millions of people turned to for information and conversation, but stopping short of condemning the new government for the arrest.

“What I’ll say is that this could surely be a big misunderstanding,” he said. “I know that people must be on edge in the U.K. given the delicate balance of things, and in such circumstances, things can be misinterpreted. That’s likely what happened here, and when it’s realized that Mike is anything but a violent revolutionary, and whatever accusations have been made against him can’t possibly have any validity, this will all be resolved.”

That was almost certainly Megan’s work. She used to be the PR rep for the New Jersey State Lottery before she moved to Atlanta to do the ad sales for Holman Media, and she’d done PR jobs when the company got clients needing that service over the years. In fact, one of the big moneymakers for Holman Media lately was a PR service contract Pierce Polk had signed with them a few months before, and Megan was in charge of all of that.

She was really, really good. I’d say that without Megan, Mike’s company probably would have gone under. But it’s funny, because in the time I’ve known her Megan always acted like it had been Mike doing her a favor.

Megan was a trusted confidante. One of the things about our super-fast courtship is that I didn’t know the depth of their relationship.

Not that I think there was any particular romantic aspect to it. But they’d been together for like fifteen years and he never made her a partner in the company — she said she didn’t want it; her husband was a doctor, and it wasn’t like she needed that, and until lately Holman Media really wasn’t something you’d want to own stock in — and they just had a way of communicating that came off like they were family.

I liked Megan a lot. She was 45, married for 24 of them, and she and Will were legitimately the perfect couple, they had two kids, and everything about her was just about perfect. Or at least, pretty darned good. She was the mom in charge, she’d been the president of the Republican Women of Fulton County, she’d raised like a half a million dollars for her kids’ school last year. If the world had more Megans in it, we’d be way better off.

She sent me an email, though I didn’t get it until the next day, telling me that she loved Mike and I and she was praying for us, and that I needed to have faith we’d get through this because we would. It was probably the best thing I saw between the time Mike was arrested and, well…

Anyway, Tom’s appearance on Sky News was good, and the segment was generally supportive. The presenter had a panel with a former Tory MP and a Labour political consultant after Tom’s interview, and the Tory was utterly indignant and scored point after point about what an outrage this was while the Labour lady could only say that we should reserve judgment until the facts were out. I turned off the TV after that, thinking things would turn out OK.

But when I woke up the next morning, and I started watching the news channels other than Sky News, I wanted to go back to bed.

The BBC had a story about how Mike was in league with “far-right” elements who were planning a revolution in the U.K. There wasn’t a lot of specificity, but they had a statement from Martin Brownleigh, the London police commissioner, who said that Mike’s “fake journalism” was a front for incitement of civil unrest, and that he was detained on “credible evidence” that plans were laid to turn Great Britain into a “maelstrom of violence.”

You cannot be serious, I thought to myself.

And then I watched Al Jazeera English, and I thought I was in Bizarro World. Their segment on Mike’s arrest claimed that he was plotting with Robby Thomason to start a riot at No. 10 Downing Street and his interview with Thomason was to be a signal to “extremist” elements just waiting to “take on public security.” Al Jazeera said Mike was a “provocateur” sent from America to “disrupt the orderly conduct of society,” and his arrest was “a measured response to undue elements” from abroad.

They talked about Elon Musk and Kid Rock as similar bad actors. I almost couldn’t stop laughing at how ridiculous the whole thing was.

And of course, I didn’t have a phone or a laptop, so I had no idea what was going on online.

Nor was I able to communicate with anybody back home due to the time difference.

I got into the shower, and after I’d cleaned up, I stared into the little hotel room closet and realized I’d brought absolutely nothing on this trip that was remotely presentable for a court appearance or anything else I’d have to do as … whatever my role would now have to be. The day before I’d been in sneakers and a pair of green jeans with a T-shirt and a little jacket, which was perfectly fine to be Mike’s camera girl. But I didn’t really have anything more grown-up than that other than a cocktail dress, so I was poorly prepared for what was surely to come.

So I called Brackett’s office. His secretary said he wasn’t in. When I told her I was PJ Holman, she opened up and said “He’s at the police station now, love. They’re interrogating.”

“I should get over there, shouldn’t I?”

“My heavens, no, dear. Thomas will call you later today.”

“I don’t know what to do. I have nothing to wear if I have to…”

“No worries, love. As you Yanks say, this isn’t Thomas’ first rodeo. He’s in control of the situation.”

“So is Mike going to get out of this?” I asked her. “I know you can’t make any guarantees, but the whole thing is really jarring and I just feel like up is down, you know?”

“That’s very common. But just have faith that your husband is in the very best of hands.”

“OK,” I said, and then gave her the phone number for the Savoy and my room number. She said she already had them, and then she sort of shooed me off the line.

I guess I understood. There was no more reason to extend the call.

Other than that I was the client’s wife, and a client myself, and I was freaking the hell out, if you’ll excuse my language.

So I sat there on the bed, wrapped in a towel with my hair wet, watching Sky News in hopes they’d say something else about my husband.

And they didn’t. They were far more interested in the fact that Buff Biddy Brush, the rapper and music mogul, had just gotten arrested for child pornography amid reports he was running a ring of pedophile abusers in Hollywood that “may involve a large number of celebrities in the music and film industries.”

I guess that was a bigger deal than their own government imprisoning a journalist for doing his job. Maybe. But I found it a little unsatisfying.

So I dialed information, something almost nobody does, and got the number for Neville Savage’s office line in Parliament. The lady who answered the phone said he wasn’t in; she acted like I was some random stranger rather than someone who’d had lunch and drinks with her boss twice in the previous three days.

“I’m Mike Holman’s wife,” I said. “I really need to talk to him.”

“Yes, ma’am,” came the response. “I will pass along the message.”

But Neville didn’t call back. Not that morning.

I sat there and stewed. Finally, Brackett called.

“Well, this round of interrogations has ended,” he said. “I should tell you that your husband is a veritable Rock of Gibraltar.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?” I said.

“I suppose. He’s taking the position that they have nothing on him, which might be true but it isn’t having an effect which would lead to a non-confrontational resolution of the case.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“It means I’m getting very little from the police at present.”

“Oh. I see.”

“It doesn’t help that the interview with Robby Thomason has gone live. They want it taken down.”

“Well, are they offering anything if it is?”

“Let me answer that this way: that interview going online turned this from an exercise in recrimination to a true criminal case.”

“I can’t understand how.”

“Because now there is an identifiable terrorist threat which your husband is on record promoting.”

“I really don’t follow. What threat?”

“The threat to Number 10 Downing Street that Robby Thomason has made.”

“All he said was that he was going to lead a demonstration there. You can lead a demonstration without it becoming an act of terrorism, right?”

“That’s not how they see it, mum.”

“This can’t possibly be right.”

“I agree with you, but nonetheless, they have the right to hold him under the Terrorism Act for 14 days while they consider charges, and as of now they have every intention of doing just that.”

We ended the call shortly thereafter, with Brackett telling me that he expected I’d be able to see Mike soon and he’d call back with details.

I just sat on the bed, numb, afterward.

And then it hit me that just as Mike’s arrest was my fault, so was his detention.

I was the one who sent the files of that interview, after all.

And that realization made me absolutely frantic.

High Street Kensington Station, August 31, 2024

I could tell Mike hadn’t slept when I finally got to see him at the police station. But he didn’t let on that he was exhausted or in bad shape or anything. Instead, he gave me a big smile and told me there would be a hug to go with it, except…

“The rules aren’t too friendly,” he said.

“Honey, are you OK?”

“Yeah. I’m fine. This whole thing is stupid, but other than getting asked the same questions over and over again, this isn’t a big deal.”

“But Brackett says they’re going to charge you with conspiracy to commit terrorism. I’m really worried about this. What do we do?”

“There’s absolutely no way they can get a conviction on something so outrageous and they know it. I’m expecting this is going to go away.”

“Mike, the stuff they’re saying in the papers and on the BBC … it comes off like they’re trying to poison the jury.”

“They haven’t even charged me yet. They’re just threatening to do it, and they won’t. This is about sending a message to their own people.”

I didn’t think that was true at all, but it hit me that arguing with him about whether he’d get charged as a terrorist was a really cruel thing to do.

“I mean logically, you have to be right. Right?”

“Of course!”

“So how’s jail?” I asked him, a flirty tone to my voice.

“It smells pretty bad in the holding cell. Food’s not awesome. Beans and toast? Not a thing.”

“It’s not … unsafe, is it?”

“Nah. It’s fine. Just boring, is all. What’s going on in the real world?”

I told him about Buff Biddy Brush getting arrested and the big scandal going on back in the States.

He said he wasn’t surprised.

“We’ve done stuff on all the pedos and sex pests in Hollywood before. His name came up a lot. I’m kinda surprised at all the VIP’s from the Democrats’ convention who got busted, though.”

We made a little more small talk, but he could tell I was too freaked out to carry a conversation about anything other than the nightmare we were facing.

“So what’s next after you leave here?” he asked me.

“Brackett’s junior associate is taking me shopping,” I told him. “They’re going to want me to do media interviews and he says I have to be ‘posh.’”

“He’s right. You don’t really have anything good to wear. And you can’t wear sneakers to do talk shows. Plus, I like the strategy of putting the very stylish, upper-crust wife on the set to tell the ruling class how absurd it is that her celebrity husband is a terrorist. It’ll shame them.”

“Well, I’m glad you agree.”

“Make him get you a pair of high heels, for crying out loud.”

“Ugh. Do I have to?”

“The condemned man says yes, and you are not allowed to refuse him.”

“That isn’t funny, Mike.”

“Oh, come on. It’s gallows humor. I’m in jail, for crying out loud — I think I’m allowed.”

I forced a smile. I wanted to give him more, but I just couldn’t.

Because on the way to the police station, with my new encrypted cell phone courtesy of the folks at Sentinel Network Security who’d delivered a new set of devices to replace the ones the police had taken, I’d called my Dad.

Mom had texted me saying that I should do it. “It’s better that you talk to him,” she’d said. “He doesn’t want to hear any more from me.”

So I called.

“I’m sorry to hear about all of this,” he said. “I know it has to be painful for you.”

“Yeah, Dad, it’s painful. It’s also completely insane. Mike isn’t a terrorist.”

“Well, he’s promoting a riot, so I don’t know.”

“Dad! He’s not promoting a riot. He did an interview with Robby Thomason, who’s going to hold a demonstration. You know, a demonstration? We have them back home in California all the time.”

“But when those people demonstrate, it’s a riot.”

“Those people?”

“Yes, Pauline. They’re hooligans, and violence goes with them. They’ve done it over and over again, over there and here as well.”

He meant January 6. Don’t get me started on that subject. I was in the Secret Service and saw things that … never mind.

“Look, Dad, I need your help. And I don’t ask for your help, hardly at all. But this is a case in which I actually do need it. You’ve got influence, and I really need you to make a call or two and make this go away.”

“Out of the question.”

“Dad! He’s your son-in-law.”

“Never came to get my blessing, and I wouldn’t have given it. And now he’s done this stupid thing; he’s proven me right.”

“I can’t believe you just said that.”

“Pauline, you should think long and hard about where this has put you. Your career is lost, and Mike Holman is the reason why. He used you to get traffic to his website, and then he seduced you, and you’re radioactive with the important people in Washington now as a result. I can’t fix that for you while you’re still with him.”

“Wait, stop. Are you saying…”

“It’s time for us to consider an annulment. You’re welcome to come home, and in fact you can set up at the Pacifica house and decompress. Take runs on the beach, reconsider life, maybe apply to some law schools. Your mother can get you a job at her firm, or you can come and work for me. It’ll be fine.”

“I guess I didn’t realize how drunk you got at the wedding. You missed the part where I said ‘until death do us part.’ I’m not getting an annulment. How dare you even bring up the subject!”

“You’re not listening. There is nothing I can do for Mike Holman. And there is nothing I can do for you as long as you’re with him.”

I didn’t know what to do. So I did the only thing I could think of. I hung up on him.

A minute or so later, a text came in from Mom. “What on earth did you say to him?” she said. “He’s in a rage.”

“So am I,” I said. “He told me to get an annulment.”

“Oh, he did?”

“Yes.”

Mom didn’t respond to that. I thought it would be a heck of a good time to be a fly on the wall of The Great Peter Chang’s six-bedroom mansion on Buchanan Street just then.

“Hey,” Mike was saying as he broke my reverie, “did you disappear on me?”

“I’m sorry!” I said. “I’m just…my mind is running in a million different directions right now. You were saying you want me to get you some books to read?”

“Yeah. Get me every Rudyard Kipling book you can find. Kipling was pretty much the greatest author of Britain when it was truly great. Reading his stuff is basically a big fuck-you to the people holding me here.”

“OK, done.”

“And if you want to get me some Chesterton and some C.S. Lewis I wouldn’t be upset, either.”

“So, just books? That’s easy.”

“Plus I need a bunch of pens and some writing paper.”

“I can do that. How much writing paper?”

“As much as they’ll let you give me.”

“What for?”

“I’m going to write a book while I’m in here.”

“That’s one way to spend the time, I guess.”

“Well, the project Pierce and I were talking about before…this happened, it probably kicks off with a book.”

“Do you want to tell me about it?”

“He wants to call it the Polk Global Freedom Initiative. He wants me to run it. It’s a whole host of things that would rebuild Western civilization.”

“OK, cool. I don’t think that makes the British government any more interested in dropping the charges against you, though.”

“Well, they’re going to do what they’re going to do. So will I.”

I said OK, though it just seemed to me like Mike was completely disregarding how much trouble he was in. He was essentially talking about playing over the top of the British government when they had him in prison, and it struck me that all the men in my life were living in Crazy Town.

My father was asking me to dump my husband over his being unjustly arrested, and my husband was talking about becoming a global political activist from a jail cell. Could somebody please dial it down to something attainable?

Anyway, Simon picked me up from the police station when I was done with Mike, and he was really understanding and didn’t overreact when I was crying all the way to the car — we went out the back way and avoided the crush of reporters and photographers who were waiting for me outside the building — and took me for some retail therapy.

That was actually really fun.

I assumed he was gay, seeing as though Simon knew fashion like he was a designer. But no — he just had some talent with matters sartorial. And when I said I didn’t care what the budget was, we went to Harrod’s and a few other really high-end shops and completely crushed the American Express card.

Mike had demanded I get a pair of high heels, so at Simon’s urging I got a pair of black Christian Louboutin pumps with the red heels. I can’t say they were comfortable, but honestly, I couldn’t have cared less. They were 1,100 pounds and worth every penny, and all of a sudden I had an appreciation for what heels could do for me.

Which mostly came from Simon. He was younger than me, but that didn’t change the fact that he was an authority on what looked good on a woman, and every bit of the six grand he made me spend on clothes — a Victoria Beckham skirtsuit, a Burberry trenchcoat, a Chanel sheath dress, a Max Mara blouse, and a pair of Stella McCartney wide leg pants, and a few accessories and other items — was money invested well.

Simon said we needed to make me look like somebody who’d be perfectly in place at a high-end restaurant or at dinner at a great house, because if the upper-class Brits watching TV interviews on the BBC or Sky News saw me assuring them that my husband was a gentleman and not a revolutionary, they’d be far more likely to believe it.

Which was what Brackett had said.

I’d never spent more than $100 on a garment in my life, though I guess Mom had broken that limit for Christmas presents here and there, and all of a sudden I was completely breaking the bank. I can’t deny it felt pretty good, though, and when Simon dropped me back off at the hotel with practically more bags than I could carry, it almost seemed like I could handle what was coming.

And my cell rang as soon as I got back to the room. I dropped my bags on the bed and fished the phone out of my purse, only to see “Pierce Polk” show up on the caller ID screen.

“Hey, Pierce,” I said.

“How you holding up, honey?”

“Not great, honestly. I didn’t tell Mike this, but my Dad wants me to annul the marriage and he won’t help us. The lawyer says they can hold him for two weeks without even deciding whether to charge him, because that’s what the Terrorism Act allows, and he seems pretty sure that they’re going to charge him with conspiracy to commit a terrorist act. Pierce, it’s absurd! Mike isn’t a terrorist! All he did, and this is literally what they’re about to charge him for, was do an interview with Robby Thomason where Thomason said he was going to do a protest outside Number 10 Downing Street.”

“I get it, PJ. It’s ridiculous. You know I feel his pain.”

“Yeah, right. You have the same stupid problems in America.”

“That’s why I live in a jungle. So how can I help?”

“Well, tell your guys thanks for the phone and the laptop. Brackett says you wiping Mike’s old hard drive while it was in police custody infuriated them, though, so I can’t decide whether to thank you for that.”

“I doubt we scrubbed anything that would prove Mike was a terrorist, but it’s still bullshit that they’d be rifling through his devices. So if we could stop that, we’ll stop it.”

“I don’t know how to get him out, though.”

“What does the lawyer say?”

“He’s acting like this is going to go on for months.”

“Yeah, that doesn’t work for me.”

“Me neither! This is awful, Pierce. Brackett seems to have a strategy, but honestly I don’t see that he’s got a lot of urgency about killing this thing.”

“He’s a lawyer. They’re used to things moving slowly.”

“But that’s not good enough! Pierce, I’m desperate here.”

“Well, there are things I can do which will get him out. I’m not sure we want to do them just yet.”

“What does that mean?”

“I wouldn’t talk about any of that over the phone. Not even over an encrypted connection.”

“Well, what do you want me to do?”

“Just do what the lawyer tells you. But I’m going to make some moves on my end and you’re about to see those real soon.”

He told me he was going to have his on-again, off-again girlfriend, the famous British tennis player and model Brienna Givens, go on TV and give a testimonial about how Mike saved her sister’s life in Guyana. Which he did. She got bitten by a snake and he managed to get her aboard a private jet to a hospital in Miami in time to keep her from any permanent damage.

That sounded pretty good. Especially since Sarah Givens was a well-known lefty activist. She had some non-governmental organization which did environmental advocacy and she was on TV here and there in the U.K. The fact that Mike had saved her would make it less likely that he was a terrorist trying to bring down a lefty U.K. government, you’d think.

But while I thought it was very much worthwhile to throw that into the PR offensive for Mike, I didn’t get the impression that it would matter much.

It seemed like getting pressure going from the State Department would do more. But all my calls to the embassy had generated nothing, and when I told Pierce he laughed.

“Of course not,” he said. “Hell, we don’t know they’re not in on this.”

“Oh, come on,” I told him.

“PJ, you know it’s that bad. They aren’t going to help.”

I couldn’t tell him he was wrong.

I ate dinner in the room, watching as Sky News did a piece on Piers Stormer, the new prime minister, and a fresh new scandal he was enmeshed in. Stormer had run on a platform of cleaning up corruption in the government, but it turned out that campaign donors had given him and his wife a flood of gifts — clothes, luxury travel, concert tickets, a Land Rover, stock in several companies — and all of this was coming out just as he was trying to get the government to pass a cut in the subsidies they were giving to pensioners for heating oil in the coming winter.

His approval rating was in ruins even before Mike’s thing had come up. And now one of the Labour MP’s, a back-bencher from Bristol named Mary Rosebottom, had announced she was renouncing her party membership and going independent because she couldn’t “stomach the nefarious and increasingly outrageous sleaze emanating from Number 10.”

Good, I thought. Let it burn.

Then I got a text message from Brackett:

Mike is being moved to HMP Belmarsh.

The post Aftershocks: <i>From Hellmarsh With Love</i> Ep. 5 appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.