It was a dark and stormy night...

Berger clung like a leach to the side of the black coach as it lurched along the damp moor. They were miles from the village now; night was closing in and a light, cold rain was falling. Up above on the coachman's platform, Begala jerked and snapped the reins on the tired team of horses. The two menials - Berger the cutpurse and thief, with remnants of his last snack at the corners of his mouth, and Begala the toady, with a face radiating such stupidity that it amounted to a kind of pitiful innocence, had boarded the coach hours earlier when they set out with Lady Hillary for the country house of Lord Soros.

Inside the coach, her large, luxurious body pitching and rolling like a steamed suet pudding in a muslin bag, sat Lady Hillary. Across from her, snoozing, lolled the vulpine Carville. The shadows cast on Carville's face by the dim carbide gas lamp gave him the appearance of man at some stage of transformation into a possum. Outside, Berger whimpered in the wet, cold night air.

Why, Lady Hillary thought, had she brought that freckled, red-faced, bilious wad along on this mission? Because Lord William had insisted. Something might have to be stolen, he said. Lord William also insisted upon Begala, even with his inexpert hand with horses and his episodic delusions of importance. Even Sir Robert Gibbs, with his encrustation of conceit, his mental incontinence and un-baked cookie face was more impressive than Begala.

And Carville? She wanted Carville, but not in the usual way. That was out of the question, as attractive as he was to her. He would simply come in handy when there was dirty work to be done. The rancorous half-man Carville held a canine sense of loyalty, and also like a dog was unable to comprehend the shabbiness of its masters but would kill in their defense. Some said he'd been a Marine, and some also said he was the best reason to keep heterosexuals out of the military.

Yes, Carville was useful, and the words "primary challenge" rolled like tiny, velvet feather pillows, back and forth, inside Lady Hillary's skull. The year was 2012. The man to be deposed was....Lord Soros would understand. He had to. He would be made to understand. There was a world to subdue, and she and Soros would subdue it...