The Carter Conspiracy

The Jedi Knight

The Jedi KnightMaria Consuella had seen many odd sights on the streets of Washington, but never before had she seen a Star Wars Jedi Knight walking towards her with the familiar white cords of an iPod headphone standing out against the darkness of the hooded cloak that billowed like a sail in the wind.

Maria was a naturalised American of Spanish descent. Her parents had moved to the US in the 1920s, just in time to lose everything they had in the great depression.

She had never been a woman of beauty and her most striking feature – her head of shining black hair – was now the product of a slightly peculiar hair dye, an orangey-red colour beloved by elderly American women.

Her main pleasure in life was now food and this showed in her waistline, or more specifically in her lack of one. She was rotund and her feet were beginning to swell.

Maria’s encounter took place on the streets of the diplomatic district near Rock Creek Park. For nearly forty years, she had attended to the needs of the Slinger family, whose large manorial house stood on the corner of two quiet streets. The house had a faded but homely appearance. It was unusual in the area, mainly because it was still a private residence while all the neighbouring properties were embassies or diplomatic residences. Maria had not heard of some of the countries represented and she often wondered why governments spent a small fortune on their US embassy while thousands starved to death at home. The house was also unusual in still being surrounded by its own garden. Most of the other gardens in the neighbourhood had been turned into annexes or car parks.

Initially, her job had been to look after the four children. Maria loved them all as if they were her own. She was unaffected by their arrogance and selfishness and the slightly demeaning way in which they talked to her. In her eyes, they could do no wrong. Anyway, all four had long since grown up and moved out and now she was responsible only for looking after Mrs Slinger, an eighty-eight-year-old widow who amazed her physicians by remaining alive despite being afflicted by a plethora of illnesses.

Maria would relieve the night nurse at 8.30am – they would take breakfast together and discuss the television shows from the previous evening. She would then help Mrs Slinger rise and settle her into her chair in front of the enormous TV set linked by satellite to hundreds of useless channels. Lunch was always served on a tray and the food had to be easily digestible and accompanied by a glass of wine. In the afternoon, Maria would clean and watch TV on the small portable set in the kitchen. Supper was taken in the dining room beneath the large and stunningly beautiful painting of a young Mrs Slinger. The working day ended at 7pm when the night nurse returned.

The job was stressful. Yet also boring.

The sight of the Jedi Knight cheered her up and she entered the property with a smile – realising instantly how rare and nice this was.

The Jedi Knight meanwhile walked on – also with a broad smile on his face inspired caused by the tune playing on his iPod: An Englishman in New York by Sting. Dom Clement Appleberry was indeed an Englishman, whose mind had wandered to the conclusion that Sting chose New York for his song and not Washington solely because his song had two notes to fill with a US city name and few if any worked. In fact the only two-syllable US city Clem could think of was Denver and he doubted whether a song called Englishman in Denver would have had quite the same impact.

Notwithstanding this, he was amusingly trying to re-word the song to fit his current location when he saw a Hispanic woman, aged about sixty, observing him with a strange and bemused expression on her face. Dom Clem was used to this. As a Benedictine monk, he wore a black heavy linen cassock, which stretched down to his feet. The garment also included a hood, which was only drawn up over the head during prayers – or when it rained!

Shoe styles were optional. Most of his colleagues back at the monastery in Somerset, England wore open-toed sandals. Clem found them cold and clichéd, instead favouring traditional black brogues, which his eldest sister bought him from Church’s in London – a traditional and well-known manufacturer of hand-made leather shoes. At a cost of £300 a pair, these were really too ostentatious for the order and frequently drew comments from the abbot. He just about got away with wearing them because they had been a present and his sister loved the irony that her pious brother wore shoes made by “the Church”!

The other striking feature about the monk was his physique. Most people expect monks to be meek men with tiny bodies and quiet voices. Six feet and an inch tall with a chest built on the rugby fields of school and the training grounds of the army, Dom Clem was quite the opposite. His love of rowing and cycling had maintained this impressive frame and built up his thigh and arm muscles. Most of this was disguised by the cassock, but on his days off, dressed in “civvies” few could guess his occupation.

His face on the other hand was more like a little boy’s. When wreathed in one of the widest and most relaxed smiles imaginable, there was no doubt that Clem was a ladies’ dream. Which of course it had to be – a dream that is – for Benedictine monks take a vow of chastity and this is an absolute.

As the song ended, Dom Clem’s mind drifted back to the matter in hand, to the purpose of his walk through the streets of west Washington. He was on his way to give the last rites to a wealthy American – to sit with him and watch him die.

Chapter 2