The Shadow Game Read Online Free Page B

feed to dodge the blizzard of digital excrement hurled by the masses. Social media had become the twenty-first-century pillory where the faceless and cowardly vented their spleen.
    Scott’s decision to bring back imperial honours had stirred the piranha pool into a feeding frenzy. What had started as aTwitterstorm had morphed into Twittergeddon, crowned with an uber-trending hashtag: #Knightmare.
    What she’d thought would be a deft political play had backfired. The knighthoods were intended to be a sop to the restive conservative wing of the Liberal Party, a counter to their deep resentment of a string of socially progressive decisions. Now Scott, a lifelong Republican, was branded an out-of-touch, opportunistic hypocrite. The move confirmed the electorate’s doubt about her character and judgement in one barbecue-stopping cock-up.
    The only winner was the man she had honoured: Jack Webster.
    Since he’d risen through the ranks of the RAAF to his current role as Chief of the Defence Force, Webster had been the go–to man in every major crisis – from the war in Afghanistan to natural disasters.
    The public couldn’t get enough of him. This was a country where real celebrity was in short supply and he seemed to have joined the ranks of rock idols and sports stars. Scott thought privately that Webster was part benign military overlord, part matinee idol. And he was one of the few safe pairs of hands working for her government. She knew she wasn’t the only politician to have relied heavily on his uncanny ability to catch the public’s mood. She had clung to him in the hope that her low stock would be dragged higher in his reflected glory. But it had only made her appear shabby.
    Everyone agreed he was the right man, conferred with the wrong award. When door-stopped at a citizenship ceremony, the burnished and braided military leader had been humble and generous to a fault.
    â€˜The prime minister is a fine woman and a thoughtful leader,’ he said. ‘I am certain she did this for the right reasons. It was not my decision and I won’t comment on your commentary about it. A military man serves at the pleasure of his leader and I accepted the knighthood to honour the warrior men and women I lead.’
    â€˜Do we call you “Sir Jack” from now on?’ one reporter called.
    Webster grinned. ‘I’ll always be just Jack. But if you serve under me, then it had better be “Sir”.’
    The reporters laughed. Everyone was laughing except Scott.
    A snap ReachTEL poll on Channel Seven showed eighty per cent of the population thought the move idiotic. Even the hard-right monarchists in Scott’s government recognised the danger and were now taking to the airwaves to disavow the award.
    â€˜It came as a surprise and a shock to me,’ the education minister declared as he beat a retreat from what was meant to be a low-key and unifying celebration of national pride.
    An exasperated chief whip had rung to inform the prime minister that he’d failed to snare even one voice prepared to publicly back her.
    â€˜That includes me,’ he snapped as he hung up.
    The decision had left Scott friendless, isolated and vulnerable. This was her nadir. She’d been dubbed the Accidental Prime Minister and the sobriquet had stuck because it was true. In seventeen months as the nation’s leader, the PM had blundered her way from one self-inflicted disaster to the next.
    Scott had regained the Liberal leadership in extraordinary circumstances. Her predecessor, Barry Landry, had lasted justa few months before he exploded in the only truly technicolour moment of his long gun-metal grey career. It turned out that the man the Liberal Party had thought was Mr Safe Hands – and who had taken his party to a commanding lead in the polls – was corrupt to his brown brogue shoelaces. Labor’s dirt unit had uncovered, and leaked, compromising details about his