The Lords' Day (retail) Page 10

  ‘So why, why’ – Willcocks was stabbing her finger into the tablecloth – ‘did he call for me? What have I done to merit that?’

  Her inference was clear. It was because she was a player, a figure of significance in the global battle against the forces of darkness. Wasn’t it?

  The enquiry hung in the air, surrounded by silence. Then, eventually, Harry.

  ‘It’s because you’re a woman.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The murder of Marjie Antrobus was about as cold and calculated as you can get. Planned – but not personal. Someone was going to die, no matter what, and it was going to be a woman. I think they wanted to show us right from the start that they would kill a woman. Any woman.’ He let the idea sit with them for a moment. ‘Yes, perhaps even a queen.’

  As the thought began to unhinge the confidence of everyone in the room, a side door to the Cabinet room opened and the private secretary’s head appeared. ‘The President of the United States wonders whether you would be free to take a call in five minutes, Home Secretary.’

  She took a breath; it seemed to raise her height an inch or two, then she turned to the men at the table. ‘I think we’re finished here for the moment. You all know what you should be doing. Please make sure you do it – and rather more efficiently than seems to have been the case to date.’

  ‘In the meantime, what is the answer about releasing Daud Gul?’ the man from Five asked.

  ‘We play for time.’

  ‘And not agree to release him?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  Yet they all thought they caught the echo of doubt.

  As the others filed out, she called to Tibbetts. ‘A quick word, Commander.’

  When the door was closed, he was left standing; she didn’t invite him to sit.

  ‘Get rid of Harry Jones.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘I don’t want him here.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘He’s not a team player.’

  ‘I’m not sure I agree.’

  ‘Doesn’t desperately matter whether you’re sure or not. You’re scarcely in much of a position to argue the point.’

  ‘I think—’

  Her eyes lit up with passion. ‘What you think, and did, and failed to do, Commander, will no doubt be listened to in considerable detail by the commission of inquiry once this fuck-up is over. But in the meantime, from this point, I would be grateful if you would do as I ask. Do I make myself clear?’ She offered a smile as she said it, but it didn’t reach quite as far as her eyes.

  He walked out without replying.

  2.05 p.m.

  Lunchtime. And in the House of Peers, despite the extraordinary succession of shocks that had been delivered to their systems, the needs of normal life were beginning to reassert themselves. They were growing hungry, and thirsty, and, in the case of Celia Blessing, distinctly uncomfortable. It happens, to elderly ladies with bladders.

  ‘What do we do, Archie?’

  ‘We wait, and sit patiently.’

  ‘But I can’t. Don’t you see, I simply can’t.’

  Masood and the others had been busy. A chair had been placed behind the throne, on which sat the gunman wearing the explosive jacket. It also became clear what sort of device this was, not one operated by remote control, by any signal that might be blocked, nor by a push-button that might not be reached, but by the simple means of a pull cord. It was rather like that on a parachute. The cord had a ring at its end, and that ring was always either around the wrist of the jacket’s wearer or attached directly to the throne. This would ensure that if he were shot or taken by surprise his flailing arm would detonate the device. The same thing would happen if he were blown off his chair or if he were even to fall asleep. So simple. Killing a queen had never been easier.

  The other gunmen split into two teams. While one team guarded the hostages, the others secured the entrances to the chamber on the ground floor so that they, like those in the gallery, were blocked with grenades. With the exception of the Pugin doors, these entrances would present no great obstacle to an attacker, but they couldn’t be overcome quietly or without destroying the element of surprise, and therein lay disaster for those who wished to protect their monarch.

  And, like a bag of discarded rubbish, the body of Marjie Antrobus was dragged to the far end of the chamber.

  It was while these preparations were underway that Celia, who was growing increasingly restless, took her chance. She had taken off her robe of scarlet and ermine, which was hot and uncomfortable, and had retrieved her personality, which was formidable. Her grey hair was pinned in a bun behind her head and her cheeks painted in a vivid shade of crimson while, above the eyes, she had gone wild with a palette of green. It was her way, always over the top. She often reminded Archie of a woman in an abandoned geisha house who had been left behind when the twentieth century moved on. Eccentric, outrageous, opinionated, but she was formidable, this old bird, with a voice that might have blown Battersea power station to bits if it had been let loose.

  ‘Give me a hand up, Archie,’ she said. ‘Old knees getting stiff.’ And she hauled herself to her feet, just as Masood was passing by.

  ‘Young man,’ she barked.

  He turned, eyes ablaze with suspicion, his weapon trained at her.

  ‘What do you propose to do about the necessaries?’

  ‘The necessaries?’

  ‘You know, food. Water. And toilets. Goodness, don’t tell me you’ve forgotten about all these things. If we’re going to be here for twenty-four hours you’re going to have to do something about it, otherwise we’re not going to very much care whether we live or die.’

  ‘Easy does it, old dear,’ Archie whispered in alarm, but she was not to be restrained.

  ‘Really, what you seem to know about hostage taking could be written in a tin of treacle!’

  Masood stepped forward, wary, like a fox, one paw at a time, watching with bright, alert eyes. ‘Sit down, old woman.’

  ‘I’m not old, I’m ancient. Which means I don’t give a damn for all your thundering and threats. And I want a bloody loo.’

  ‘Shut up. We are busy.’

  ‘I will not shut up. There was a time when I would have required no more than a horsewhip to deal with a man like you.’

  ‘And I need no more than a single bullet to deal with you.’

  ‘What, you’d shoot an old woman in front of an audience of – how many millions’ – she wagged her finger at the television screens – ‘simply for asking to go to the loo? What’s that going to do for the revolution, then, Abdul, or whatever your name is?’

  Embers of rage were glowing in his eyes. ‘One more innocent victim – what does that matter if we can change the world?’

  ‘Change the world? From here? Don’t be stupid, this is the House of Lords!’

  She was goading him, in a manner she had perfected over decades of parliamentary debate, deliberately testing him to see how much he would take. Yet it was clear he wouldn’t take much more – perhaps she had already gone too far – and she decided the moment had arrived when she should sit down, bladder or no, yet before she could manoeuvre her old hips back into their seat another hostage stood up. It was Robert Paine, the American ambassador.

  ‘Might I suggest to the good baroness that this is perhaps not the best way to achieve her ambitions?’ He spoke in the third person, full of formality, deliberately pompous, to deflect the moment. With more than a trace of relief and not a little awkwardness, she regained her seat.

  ‘Sir,’ he said, turning to Masood, ‘could we at least ask what your intentions are with regard to a little food and water? And the other matters the baroness referred to?’

  In reply, the young man smacked the stock of his weapon into the ambassador’s belly and sent him retching to the ground.

  2.17 p.m.

  ‘Brave man, the ambassador. Not sure I’d have the balls to do that,’ Tibbetts remarked as he and Harry dr
ove away from Downing Street. They were watching events on small screens built into the back of the seats in the policeman’s official car.

  ‘But look, he’s won.’

  Even as they spoke, Masood was gesticulating at the camera and making demands for food, water, yes, two chemical toilets and a secure field telephone. He probably had intended to do all this in any case, but it marked a new phase in the situation.

  ‘Our chance. Now we can start talking!’

  At the heart of every successfully resolved hostage scenario is the ability to negotiate. To talk. To discuss, to deceive, to compromise, to wear down, to come to an understanding. Yet without dialogue, there is little to deal with but despair. Already Tibbetts was on his phone, issuing instructions. When he had finished, Harry reached over and grabbed his arm.

  ‘Mike, let me take the kit in.’

  ‘Can’t let you do that, Harry. You should know better than to ask. You’re a civilian now – worse, a bloody politician.’

  ‘You send in a young policeman or a soldier and they’re likely not to be coming out again, Mike. We’re already seen what Masood’s like.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘The advantage of a few grey hairs. I don’t represent a threat.’

  ‘The Home Secretary thinks you do. She’s told me to get rid of you.’

  ‘All the more reason to keep me in the loop.’

  Tibbetts sat quietly for a moment, debating the matter with himself.

  ‘Of course, Mike, you send me in and you’ll probably lose your job,’ Harry added. ‘But the way I see it, most of the senior coppers in London’ll be out on their arse after this, anyway.’

  The policeman remained silent, his heart churning as they drove through the silent, emasculated streets of his beloved London. He didn’t speak until they were on the ramp that led to the underground car park in the Yard.

  ‘You got clean underpants, Harry?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s just that Masood’s no fool. I think he’s going to require you to strip.’

  2.20 p.m.

  It was, for some, a remarkable thing to have chosen a woman to become the President of the United States; it wasn’t the norm, some thought it a huge mistake, but America was going through one of those intermittent bouts of introspection when it stood back, confused as to what it stood for and where it was headed. The American paw had got itself burned by being thrust into the fire of too many foreign adventures and, little by little, hoping that no one would notice too much, it was withdrawing, in pain.

  That’s what had won her the election, the promise that there was a better way forward, that they should move on, for America to ‘come back home’, in the words of her election campaign. It had won the day and now, little by little, corps by corps, their boys were being brought back. America first! She’d also been helped by the fact that most had seen the race for the White House as a choice between a black, a woman and a half-screwed religious nut, so they had embraced the traditional virtues of middle-American motherhood in the person of Blythe Elizabeth Harrison Edwards. She had many advantages. She spoke Spanish, treated all foreign leaders to a splash of mint julep and suspicion, had never started a war and had never been caught indulging in extramural sex, all of which helped. As a baby she’d also been photographed bouncing on John Kennedy’s knee, which gave her campaign the blessing of Camelot.

  Not that she was an outsider. Her money was old money, which meant there was no ambitious prosecutor trying to lift her petticoats, and she didn’t have to raise her voice to be heard. She was soft-spoken, a girl born in California who had an accent that had been polished in many places along a route that stretched from the sororities of Vassar College to the slopes of Gstaad. Her pedigree included a lot of lawyers, a bit of Mormon and, from way back, William Henry Harrison. He was a war hero and Indian fighter who had got himself elected president and went on to deliver an extraordinarily overblown inaugural address in the middle of a biting storm. It turned out to be the longest inaugural address in American history – and the shortest presidency. William Henry succumbed thirty days later to the pneumonia he had contracted on the steps of the White House. His grandson, Benjamin, also became president, and admitted more states to the Union than any president apart from George Washington, but otherwise his career was undistinguished and he wasn’t re-elected. It had left a legacy of frustration within the Harrison family that the new president felt most keenly and was intent on putting behind her. She had named her only child after the first president, and hoped that in his time he might become the fourth. The wind of history had always ruffled the Harrison hair, but it had turned to a seething storm when she had been woken in the White House by a phone call to tell her that William-Henry had been taken hostage. She had dressed, summoned her security advisers, said a prayer and put a call in to Downing Street, all in less than three minutes, but it had taken the British almost an hour to find someone she could talk to, Tricia Willcocks, a woman she had never met and knew very little about. She had plenty of time to express her frustration and for her fears to grow before they put her through.

  ‘Madam Home Secretary,’ she began, very formally, ‘may I firstly express my relief that you personally have escaped this terrible situation. Let’s hope that God is smiling on us today.’

  And His blessings came in most peculiar ways, Tricia thought. She hoped no one had let on that she was still in bed when the attackers had struck.

  ‘You can imagine my distress,’ the President continued. ‘What is happening?’

  ‘Let me assure you we are doing everything that it’s possible to do, Madam President,’ Tricia replied, a little breathless. Despite the circumstances she was feeling exhilarated, as though in talking to the most powerful person on the earth she had stepped through a door and found herself in a world reserved solely for gods and titans. She began to talk about armed police units and strongholds and the SAS, all the details that had been passed on to her by Tibbetts and the others. As she did so it began to grow on her that, given the situation, they were remarkably thin. The moments of silence on the end of the phone suggested that the President thought so, too.

  ‘I have, of course, asked all my intelligence agencies to do everything they can to assist you, Madam Home Secretary. What else can we do for you? Hostage negotiators, electronic surveillance equipment, weapons, personnel. I can have anything you want there with you in hours. You have but to name it and it’s yours.’

  ‘That is kind of you, Madam President, but . . . I think for the moment we have the situation under control. No one can get in or out of the building.’

  ‘The terrorists seem to have gotten in.’

  Willcocks bit a fingernail, trying to pretend she didn’t feel the full impact of the remark. ‘No one could conceive they would try anything like this, any more than you could have predicted 9/11.’

  ‘I want to press you a little, if you don’t mind. I have a very fine relationship with your Prime Minister, I am such a great admirer of his, and I feel sure we would be of one mind . . .’

  She was using muscle, trying to pull rank, patronising her, implying that Tricia didn’t belong in this super-powered world of hers. The magic of the moment was fading for Tricia, turning everything sour. A shard of chewed fingernail fell helplessly to the baize tablecloth.

  ‘We have to stand side by side,’ the President was continuing. ‘Help each other out here. I’d like there to be some American presence beside your men to show the world we are united on this.’

  Was she trying to suggest the British weren’t up to the job, that she didn’t fully trust them, Willcocks wondered? ‘I appreciate your concern, Madam President, and I fully understand how you must be feeling, but I think an active American presence at this stage would be a little premature. Could lead to confusion, even make things worse in the eyes of the terrorists.’

  ‘How much worse can things get there, Madam Home Secretary?’ the President retorted.

  ‘This
has to be a British operation – for the moment, at least. It’s our queen, our parliament building that’s been taken hostage.’

  ‘My ambassador, too – and my son!’ The voice was tight, close to breaking.

  ‘I will of course keep you fully informed of everything we’re doing.’

  ‘I’m watching it all on television – right now.’ There was a notice able catch in her voice. It was time to end the call, for both their sakes.

  ‘I wish we could have met in happier circumstances, Madam President.’

  But the other woman was gone. To hide her tears, and perhaps her rage. Damn. That hadn’t gone very well at all.

  3.17 p.m.

  ‘You go in and out, no tomfoolery, just do the job, you understand?’ Tibbetts said.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘We need information, not heroics.’

  ‘Yessir. Sure thing.’

  The policeman sighed. ‘And I’m teaching one of the oldest and meanest street dogs in the business to suck eggs.’

  ‘You carry on like that and you’ll sound just like the Home Secretary.’

  ‘Promise me one thing, Harry. Before that happens – shoot me.’

  They were walking briskly to the parliament buildings from Scotland Yard, which lay just beyond the new stronghold zone. Tibbetts wanted to see the scene first hand, and chose to go by foot – it would take only minutes longer and would give him the opportunity to blow fresh air through his troubled mind, but still the commander’s official car prowled along a little way behind, just in case.

  As they approached the cordon that now blocked off Victoria Street where it entered Parliament Square, an armed policeman saw them coming, and saluted as he drew back the metal barrier.

  ‘That’s how they did it, Mike,’ Harry muttered.

  ‘Did what?’

  ‘That’s how the terrorists got in. Sloppy security. People taking identities for granted. You know, not even I had to show my pass this morning – and you know what a street dog I am.’