Young David in a spiffy turtleneck
Previously in the novel: Leon, a novice mercenary, is foiled in taking the Archbishop of Canterbury hostage and exchanging for an anarchist during the Great War by a mysterious man in black. The man in black turns out to be Edward the Prince of Wales.

No one seemed to notice the young prince enter the gymnasium and leave a few moments later to resume his run. David was quite pleased with himself—to murder someone who deserved to die. Even by his teen-aged years he learned the world was a dirty, rotten, stinking place where truth, compassion and honor and lying, dominance and greed were equally worshipped to the point of idolatry without any ambivalence. And there was nothing a good decent person could do anything about it. Well, he had some done something about it. His action stirred passions within him that rivaled even sexual ecstasy.
The rest of his time at Osborne was uneventful. Without their leader the other bullies lost interest in torturing the prince. He never developed any deep friendships but what of that? Part of his brooding view of life had no room for the fantasies of lasting friendship and the even more absurd concept of true love. He moved on to Dartmouth to continue his studies so he could enter the Royal Navy, leaving his sordid past behind and forgotten.
One day as he left his military tactics class, two gentlemen in unassuming navy blue business suits intercepted him and guided him to an awaiting sedan.
“Don’t be alarmed, Your Highness,” one of them assured him. “We are loyal subjects of the Crown. Very loyal subjects.” He paused to smile. “I’m sure you have heard of MI-6, his majesty’s, shall we say, secret service.”
David shifted uneasily. After all, he was a mere lad of fourteen. Yet he should have had the confidence of knowing one day he would be the king of England and therefore above reproach of the law. David still knew he had committed cold blooded murder.
“Please do not feel intimidated that you find yourself seated between two men in the back of a large black sedan. We at the agency have spent the last two months trying to arrange our meeting to be as private and inconspicuous as possible.” He paused to smile again. “So there you have it.”
“So there we have what?” David surprised himself by the assertive tone in his voice.
“Ah.” The second man patted the prince’s thin shoulder. “Good for you. You have cut to the chase.”
“And what might this chase be?” The back of David’s neck burned as he feared his secret may have been found out.
“As we told you, Your Highness,” the first man continued, “you’ve nothing to fear. We have nothing but high regard for you. Of course, as you may well have surmised by now, we are spies. More bluntly put, we murder in allegiance to crown and country.”
They knew. David should have never never assumed he would not have been found out. Have courage, he told himself. They did say they had high regard for him.
“Two years ago you attended the Royal Naval Academy at Osborne. While there you underwent intense hazing by a group of upperclassmen led by the brawny son of a car dealer named—“He looked over at his comrade and then at David before he pulled out a notepad and flipped through it. “Oh dear. I don’t seem to have his name here.”
“I won’t be able to help you with that,” David interrupted coldly. “I don’t remember the names of people I hate.”
The other man patted David’s shoulder again. “You see, I told you we made the right decision with this one here.” He nudged the prince. “I bet you haven’t lost a night’s sleep since then, have you?”
“No, I haven’t.”
The first man leaned in. “Your work was brilliant. Sudden. Cruel. You saw the fear in his eyes, didn’t you? Yet subtle. Spectacularly common. The case sat a full year in the Osborne magistrate’s office gathering dust. It was just by chance it came to the attention of MI-5. That’s our domestic agency. But you knew that, didn’t you? And what if you didn’t? You’ll know everything soon enough.”
Every muscle in David’s body relaxed as he realized what was being laid out before him. “Does the King know of this?” he asked, his tone still cold.
“Oh no,” the second man replied. “He doesn’t know anything. You know your old grandpapa’s piss has tuned to gin, don’t you?”
“Gin? I thought it would have been scotch.” David quickly added. “My father, the Prince of Wales, does he know?”

“Oh no. Not him either.” The first man wrinkled his brow. “No one in your family can ever know.”
David smiled. “That makes it all rather worthwhile, doesn’t it?”
The second man cleared his throat. “Please take a moment to consider the seriousness of this assignment, Your Highness. Spies rarely live long enough to see old age.”
The boy turned to look at him and raised an eyebrow. “You mean I’ll be killed? What of it? They have four more to take the crown if I die.”
The car ride lasted another hour or two. They explained to David that after he finished his studies at Dartmouth, he would enter a training mission in the fall of 1911 on the battleship Hindustan. And the world would know of it. The session was already planned. But he would learn things no king of England ever knew before. Next he would enroll in Magdalen College in Oxford, again with a special line of instruction. By 1912, David would embark on a tour of Europe, visiting relatives and learning new languages officially and extending his spy craft away from the public eye. Eventually, he would join the Grenadier Guards.
“And I cannot stress strongly enough, Your Majesty, all this will take time. You may not even hear from us for six months or a year at a time. You must have patience. This is a life time commitment.”
“However long that lifetime might be.” David relaxed into his new circumstances.
The second man asked, “Excuse the impertinence, Your Highness, but you have not been contacted by anyone else, have you?”
“Anyone else? You mean like the enemy, whatever nation that might be?”
“No, sir—I can’t continue this deference. Attracts too much attention. May I call you David, like your family does?”
“Of course you may. I rather like it. David the spy.”
“All kidding aside,” the first man interceded, “what my friend is trying to inform you is that we need not fear only a political enemy but an enemy that is far more sinister—an enemy that fights you for money, like a common whore giving herself up for sixpence.”
David sobered. “I would rather die.”
The memory was fresh on his mind, though it had been eight years filled with training, discipline, pain, fear and the inexplicable thrill of murder.
“David! David!” his father bellowed down the dining table at him. “What the blazes are you thinking about? Some common whore?”
“George!” Queen Mary was quite indignant. “If you continue to behave in such a boorish manner I will retire to my quarters immediately!”
The Prince of Wales smiled and murmured in a tone only his sister Mary and brother George could hear, “Common whore? Hardly. I only bed respectable wives of wealthy gentlemen.”