Whether Browne wanted to fix the problems that had occurred on his watch or merely couldn’t imagine doing anything different with his future—or both—Sutherland would have none of it. As the story goes, in July 2006, an increasingly frustrated Sutherland called Browne into a meeting and demanded that he retire in 2008. Browne told Sutherland he would think about it. A day later, Browne made his decision. Instead of consenting to leave in February, he stalled for time, agreeing to leave only at the end of 2008. The formal announcement of his departure was to take place in January 2007.

Just as Browne was busy fending off Sutherland and the plaintiffs’ lawyers in Texas, his relationship with Chevalier began to crumble. For a while, each man had seemed to enjoy his appointed role. According to Chevalier, Browne told him what to wear, when to be at which function, and even who should attend the young man’s birthday party. The dinners on posh Cheyne Walk beside the Thames, with various political, social, and cultural celebrities, weren’t exactly relaxed affairs; Browne dictated they last precisely two and a half hours, according to attendees, though it couldn’t have been that painful to listen to, say, Tony Blair speculate on his life after leaving office.

Eventually, in an attempt to help him have something of his own, Chevalier said, Browne contributed about $50,000 to set him up in business. It was a business with the somewhat quizzical name of Txist; the goal was to sell cell-phone ringtones. But you, too, would have trouble getting a new enterprise off the ground if, at the same time, your partner was expecting you to accompany him to an event in New York on one day and Venice on another. On his Facebook page, Chevalier suggested that Woody Allen’s “The Whore of Mensa” was essential reading for anyone who “has ever been in a relationship with a neurotic, control freak, self-obsessed, vain person.”

The two men tried to keep the relationship afloat, but after four years, Chevalier went back to Canada. He said that, at a meeting in June 2006—sometime after the Alaska spill and amid increasing pressure on Browne to retire—the C.E.O. agreed to help Chevalier make a new life for himself. He alleges in court documents that Browne agreed to “assist in the first year of me transitioning from living in multimillion-pound homes around the world, flying in private jets, five-star ­hotels, £2,000 suits, and so on, to a less-than-modest life in Canada.”

During this time, Anji Hunter, once a press aide to Tony Blair and more recently director of communications for BP, reportedly suggested that Browne behave proactively and go public with his homosexuality, thus defusing any of Chevalier’s potential revelations. As it happened, Browne was scheduled to appear on a popular BBC radio program called Desert Island Discs, which invites notable Britons to muse upon the music that is near and dear to them—in other words, music they would take with them if they were stranded on a desert island. Browne’s list was eclectic: Along with various arias, he liked “Chan Chan,” by Francisco Repilado, and Marshall Crenshaw’s rendition of Bob Dylan’s “My Back Pages.” Hunter and Browne are said to have agreed that the appropriate moment for Browne to reveal his sexual orientation would be during a discussion of Così Fan Tutte—the first opera he ever attended, with his parents. BP spinmeisters held their breath as Browne rhapsodized about all the wonderful things he had learned from his mom and then . . . nothing. Browne balked and didn’t reveal that he was gay, on Desert Island Discs or anywhere else.

In the meantime, Chevalier continued to press for more support, sending a note to Browne on Christmas Eve: “I have nothing left to lose,” he wrote. “I am facing hunger and homelessness after four years of sharing your lifestyle. . . . The least I am asking for is some assistance. . . . Please respond. . . . I do not want to embarrass you in any way, but I am being cornered by your lack of response to my myriad attempts at communication.”

Some people might have considered that a threat.

in Britain, the Mail on Sunday is something of an anomaly, or rather, like Lord Browne, it leads a bit of a double life. Indisputably right-wing, it isn’t exactly a tabloid, but it isn’t quite legit like the Independent, Guardian, or Telegraph either. It is hated by the intelligentsia but was recently chosen Sunday Newspaper of the Year by the London Press Club. In other words, Jeff Chevalier would read it; Lord Browne would not. Also, unlike Britain’s more respectable papers, the Mail on Sunday sometimes pays lavish amounts for stories. “If it hadn’t been for the Mail on Sunday, the story wouldn’t have come out in the sensational way it did,” says Andrew Neil, publisher of the Spectator, a right-leaning weekly magazine. “The Mail never liked John Browne. They saw him as a pro-Blairite businessman.”

So when Chevalier contacted a reporter at the Mail on Sunday, the interest in running his story was, to say the least, high. Editors were briefed, and a reporter was dispatched to Canada to meet with Chevalier in person. The rent boy from Suited and Booted started talking. According to press accounts, some poor soul from BP had to locate Browne, on an idyll in Barbados, to give him the news that the paper was seeking his comment on his relationship with Chevalier.