Fairchild had made her angry but she blamed her father for that. He’d asked her to come and visit and, if she knew him, he had to have been the one behind the crazy accusation Fairchild had made. What the purpose of such a story was, Silva had no idea. Then again she’d never been able to work out her father’s motives and likely this was some kind of game or test. Pass and she’d be in his good books. Fail and his disapproval would follow. And walking out definitely fell under the fail heading.

Calmed by the monotony of the motorway, Silva played back everything Fairchild had said to see if she could work out exactly what was going on. Fairchild had claimed her mother was investigating Karen Hope, but that was plainly wrong. Her mother concentrated on the Middle East and North Africa, and she’d been killed while interviewing the head of a women’s aid charity. When Silva had visited her in Tunisia a few months before her death, she’d been filing report after report on the people traffickers preying on the refugees prepared to risk everything to make the deadly sea crossing to Europe. Her work had nothing to do with US politics. Silva guessed there were plenty of journalists digging around looking for dirt on the congresswoman, but it was inconceivable her mother was one of them.

She tried to recall what she knew about Karen Hope to see if there was anything that might be a clue as to what her father was up to. Like the cryptic crosswords he did, his games often involved some measure of obfuscation. Peel away the obvious and perhaps the answer would reveal itself.

She knew Hope was a Democrat and was involved with the military in some way. If Silva remembered correctly the family business built up by her father was armaments. That and the fact Hope was on the right of the party gave her an ‘in’ with Republican voters, and broad cross-party appeal meant she was the front runner in the race to be president. Aside from the obvious military angle nothing suggested a connection to her father. Was there something there? Something from his time in the Ministry of Defence? She didn’t know. If whatever he was up to was cryptic then she lacked the wherewithal to decode it.