The Lords' Day (retail) Read online

  A few hundred yards further along the Thames from where the siege was taking place, MI5’s Deputy Director of Counter-Terrorism rushed into his superior’s sanctuary. He found him staring at a blank television screen. It took some time for the director to respond to the intrusion; his face came round slowly, like a rusted crane, in tiny jerks.

  ‘Are they Bin-Men?’ he whispered. It was a reflex reaction. Anything that moved these past few years with a complexion darker than a suntan was assumed to be a follower of bin Laden.

  ‘We’re trying to match the faces with what we’ve got on the computers. It’ll take a while.’

  ‘But one of them is the sodding High Commissioner! What do we know about him?’

  ‘Pakistani. A tribesman from the mountains. Name of Zaman Khan. Only been here a few weeks. Reputation as a bit of a hard man, apparently. But then, they all are, in their new government.’

  The director began searching his pockets for a nicotine stick; he’d sell his daughter for the real thing right now. ‘What did he shout, when he jumped up?’

  ‘Sounded like Azadi. It means freedom.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And . . . nothing. That’s all. So far.’

  ‘I hope to God they’re Bin-Men,’ the director said, sucking furiously on his stick, gathering his wits. ‘Make sure they are, whatever you do. Don’t let any of them be home grown, not domestics, not a single one.’

  ‘We’ll do our best.’

  The director sighed and began punching buttons on his phone. ‘And then, perhaps, we can blame this entire catastrophe on those delinquents across the river at Six . . .’

  11.53 a.m.

  As he stood on the steps to the throne, Masood sounded like a schoolmaster. Some will have to stay behind . . . He made it sound as if he were handing out detentions.

  ‘All members of the Cabinet,’ he announced, ‘along with the ambassadors, the judges, the bishops – you will remain seated. And, of course, we must ask those members of the Royal Family who are here to stay with us.’ He even turned to offer the Queen a little bow – a nod of deference? ‘But I must remind you,’ he said, returning to his audience, ‘we know who you are. We know your faces. Those people I have mentioned – please, do as you are told. Don’t try to sneak out.’ He paused, his youthful face composed, his eyes casting slowly around him. ‘Otherwise, I very much regret that we will kill you.’

  He was clearing out those who were not essential to his plans, making room, giving him and his colleagues killing space.

  ‘We will use those doors on either side of the throne,’ he declared. ‘Now, please move.’ He shot a burst of gunfire into the ceiling to get them on their way. They began, mostly calmly, trying to be British about the whole thing, moving forward slowly, as if they were queuing for lifeboats.

  From her seat which had given her such a perfect view of events, Celia Blessing rose and tried to pretend she wasn’t shaking. Behind her, Archie Wakefield remained in his place.

  ‘Come on, Archie. Get yourself moving.’

  ‘Think I’ll stay.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m staying,’ he repeated.

  ‘What in the devil’s name for?’

  He paused, and ground his teeth. ‘I might be useful.’

  ‘You?’

  He let out a deep, slow breath, which seemed to deflate and crumple his whole body. ‘I’m dying, Celia. Got no more than six months. Nothing to lose. Not like most of the people here.’

  ‘But you—’ She began to protest, to argue, as had always been her way with him, but as she looked into his eyes she saw something she hadn’t noticed before. Behind the pupils, buried deep, was a milky paleness that was beginning to take over inside and drain it of its proper colour. She knew what he had told her was the truth and his logic, at least on this occasion, was impeccable. ‘Damn you!’ she spat.

  ‘What . . . ?’

  ‘If you’re staying, then I’m staying, too.’

  ‘Why?’

  She was scared, she didn’t have any great yearning to risk her life, but she was of an age when she knew she didn’t want to live for ever. Anyway, if he stayed and she left, he’d lord it over her for the rest of eternity, even if eternity in his case stretched to only six months. And she, too, wanted – how had he expressed it? – to be useful. To do her bit. It was what had always brought her to this place, this House of Lords, to turn out for her team even on those occasions when she knew they had no chance of winning. And she was a long-time widow, lonely; it was a pain that had shown itself all too often through her politics, making unnecessary enemies, like Archie Wakefield – and suddenly she was beginning to see him in a different light.

  ‘Why?’ he demanded once more.

  ‘I’m writing my memoirs. Need a stronger closing chapter. Think this might do it, don’t you, Archie?’

  ‘Ridiculous woman,’ he muttered, while she retook her seat.

  11.55 a.m.

  Amongst the confusion created by the exodus from the chamber there was also an arrival. Magnus and William-Henry, sons of most powerful parents, were to play a central part in this game, although entirely unwillingly. They were hustled down from the gallery at gunpoint and forced to join the throng of hostages. Their faces were flushed with reluctance and anger; they’d both thought about taking their chances and trying to jump the gunman who was prodding the muzzle of his gun into their backs but, even as they considered it, the moment had passed, and with every fresh, hesitant step their youthful optimism turned slowly to fear. They began to feel as though they were walking through water, having to force their way, as if their limbs weren’t fully under their control. They stumbled through the door and on to the floor of the chamber, catching the eye of Robert Paine, whose face creased with concern.

  Nearby, the Queen’s protection officer made his own move, taking advantage of the inevitable measure of disorder to slide his way on to the bench where the ambassadors were seated. He was dressed in morning coat, as were many of them, and he disappeared easily amongst their ranks.

  It was a young member of the House of Commons, imprisoned at the far end of the chamber when the Pugin doors had been closed, who showed least composure. He clambered over the Bar and began pushing, tugging at sleeves, even using his shoulder to force a path in his desperation to get away, until a peeress old enough to be his mother turned, eyes blazing, and slapped his face. He withered on the spot. Yet it was the minor members of the Cabinet who were in deepest turmoil. They had been instructed to stay behind on pain of death. Every one of them was left wondering whether the young attacker was telling the truth in saying that their faces were known; every one of them went through minutes of agonised soul-searching about whether they should take the risk and try to sneak out. In the end, they all reached the same conclusion. Even if they survived the threat inside the chamber, they’d find themselves torn to pieces outside for deserting their Queen and leaving her in jeopardy. Anyway, these were men and women who cuddled calves, drove dustcarts, served tea in hospital wards, kissed smelly old pensioners, did anything they could to escape the clutches of anonymity. They’d spent their lives wanting to be recognised, insisting on it. So, when it came to the point of decision, none of them took the risk.

  Harry Jones was there, too, not inside the chamber, but close by. When the siege had started he had been only yards away, on the phone to the restaurant. His booking had just been confirmed when frightened politicians began running past, their eyes bulging in fear, their footsteps rattling across the mosaic floor. He didn’t join them. Harry, as he had done all his life, went instinctively in the opposite direction. Perhaps it was arrogance, a desire never to be part of the herd, or simply a natural curiosity, but whatever it was had helped make him one of the best fighting men the British Army had ever had, and once again his instinct kicked in. Even as others fled past, Harry moved towards the sound of gunfire. He watched the three cleaners grappling with the heavy Pugin doors, forcing them closed and locki
ng them before splitting up to stand guard on the doors at the side of the chamber. Harry followed one of them, still fighting against the tide of fleeing MPs, until he was standing within touching distance of the gunman. The cleaner didn’t notice him; his concentration was fixed on those in front, not on Harry behind. That made him vulnerable and a dark, ugly emotion gripped Harry, urging him to take the bastard out; it wouldn’t take much, a forearm round the throat that would lift him off his feet, the gun up in the air, a simple wrench of his neck. It would be a quick, noiseless killing, just as Harry had been trained to do, and had done before. But Harry couldn’t win, not on his own, so instead he studied the man for as long as he could, his dress, his weapon, his body language, his face, even his hairstyle. Know your enemy, down to the last button. Then Harry moved on.

  Three minutes later, as the doors beside the throne were opened to allow the non-essential players to leave, Harry was there, hiding in the mêlée, watching those who stood guard on the doors, measuring them up. He took in all he could, at close quarters, until, without warning and with people still trying to flood through them, the doors were slammed shut.

  12.00 noon.

  Not even the deep tolling of Big Ben could drown the cries of desolation that rose from those still trying to leave. They thought they’d been promised safety, passage to freedom, but the word of a terrorist was not to be trusted.

  And, as the great clock struck the hour, another voice was raised in despair. The Prime Minister, John Eaton, saw the one thing he feared the most, and let forth a pitiful groan.

  Eaton was in his early sixties, almost elderly by the standards of an age that worshipped youthfulness, but the silver highlights at his temple suited him and there could be no doubting his experience. He knew where most of his colleagues had buried the bodies from their murky pasts, and precisely when to resurrect them. He controlled the political machine with a combination of many favours and a few judicious threats, being generally content to let his younger colleagues fight out the details of government policy amongst themselves while he gave the impression of rising above it all.

  Yet, like many before him, John Eaton had been driven to seek public office by private shame. It was a way of covering up, of burying disgrace, and where better to bury the past than from behind the desk in Downing Street? It was a surprisingly common practice; Winston Churchill had been driven by the failure of his father, Harold Macmillan by the fact that he was a long-time cuckold, not even certain about the paternity of children he claimed as his own, while Tony Blair – well, historians were still arguing whether there was any private shame of his that might match the shame that had been heaped on him in public since his departure.

  Eaton’s sense of humiliation was not a grand one by the standards of his predecessors. It was a sordid little thing, intensely private, nothing he should have felt guilty about, but when you are raised in a household with an abusive father who beats his wife when he gets drunk and then beats her again in order to sober himself up, it’s the children who tend to blame themselves, for being the cause of it, for not being able to make it stop. Eaton had spent a childhood squirming beneath the sheets, trying to stuff his ears and drown out the sounds of violence, and he’d resolved that when he grew up he’d never be so powerless again. He had run away from home at sixteen, and hadn’t stopped running until he’d reached Downing Street.

  His lack of commitment to the higher reaches of political philosophy wasn’t necessarily a weakness; it meant that he leaned heavily on his skills of presentation, honed early as a child in order to avoid the beatings dished out to his mother, and his well-groomed age gave him an appearance of maturity that he could use to intense and occasionally even comic effect, playing everyone’s uncle, the father of the nation. If a fact or figure slipped through his fingers at the Despatch Box, he sometimes blamed it on the fading memory of a man who had done so much more than he remembered, at the same time always making sure to remember so much more than he had actually done. It made his opponents seem juvenile and petty. And if John Eaton liked a drink, he wasn’t the first. Thatcher loved her whisky, while Churchill claimed to have drunk half a bottle of champagne for lunch every day of his adult life, declaring that he took more out of alcohol than alcohol ever took out of him. Yet, with the cases of both Winston Churchill and John Eaton, on occasions the race against alcohol was a damned close-run thing. Something of the Eaton father had been passed down to the son no matter how hard he tried to escape.

  Another thing Eaton shared with Churchill was the fact that he had only one son. Wanted more, but it wasn’t to be, so Magnus wasn’t joined by Minimus or Minima or any other offspring. The result was that Eaton poured all his frustrated affection on to his son, loved him ferociously, intent on building for the boy the sort of life that had been denied to him. He did everything to protect the boy, sometimes went too far, to the intense annoyance of Magnus, but, if it were a fault, he told himself it was so very much better than being a drunken failure of a father.

  Yet now, as Eaton made his way under gunpoint from the Bar to the other end of the chamber, he found his darkest fears come to life. He saw his son. As the implications hit him, he began to lose control. His knees would no longer carry him, for a moment he buckled, needed the support of others, but he was a seasoned oak and quickly recovered his poise, at least on the outside. But this was unlike any other storm he had known, and it was growing still more ferocious. He quickly came to realise that his initial fears had merely scratched the surface. It wasn’t only Magnus they had caught, as terrifying as that was; the attackers had also taken the son of the US President and the son of the Queen. They had their hands not only on the most powerful people in the country, but also on the children of three of the most significant people in the world. Why? What was their purpose? This surely couldn’t be chance. As his tumbling thoughts began to fall into some sort of coherence, they started to form a picture of horror that grew more vivid and cruel with every moment that passed. He slumped into his seat before his knees betrayed him once more; inside, John Eaton was screaming with terror.

  12.03 p.m.

  There were now fewer than eighty hostages remaining in the chamber. Their captors arranged them so that they were seated at the southern end, near the throne, where they could be watched more easily. This crowding together of bodies would also ensure that any firefight would inflict the maximum number of casualties. The attacker wearing the suicide jacket was standing behind the throne, which gave him excellent cover and kept him only inches away from the Queen. Yet still the attackers acted quietly, almost courteously, given the extraordinary circumstances.

  An uneasy calm descended. There were those who still prayed it was some sort of hoax, or tried to convince themselves that they had been caught up in the mother of all security drills – the desire to survive is unquenchable and grasps at the thinnest of reeds. Then John Eaton rose in his seat. He didn’t know if he was physically a brave man, the matter had never been put to the test, but he was ashamed of his earlier show of weakness and he knew what was expected of him. He had to test the mettle of the enemy, even while he was testing his own. He stared directly at the young attacker standing on the steps of the throne.

  ‘Who are you? What do you want?’

  ‘Ah, Mr Eaton,’ the gunman began, smiling. ‘I hope your knees have recovered.’ It was a cruel jibe and Eaton wanted to throw it straight back at him, man to man, just as he was used to in Parliament, but he wasn’t a fool. He bit his lip. The young attacker had already won their first round. ‘My name is Masood,’ he continued. ‘And you ask me what I want. I want three things. First, very simply, the television coverage must be restored. I want what happens here to be witnessed in every part of the world. We have nothing to hide.’

  ‘Sadly, I don’t control the BBC,’ Eaton responded, trying to cast a net of lightening humour. ‘Even you must know that.’

  ‘At this precise moment you control nothing at all, perhaps not even your bladde
r. But you see, Mr Eaton, I think I am more powerful than you, more powerful than even the Prime Minister of Great Britain. I can persuade the BBC. I feel sure they are listening to us. And if the cameras in this chamber aren’t working in sixty seconds and the television coverage restored, something – how shall I put this? – something quite unpleasant will happen.’ He pointed to the blank monitors set high in the chamber. ‘I want these screens back in action and showing us what the rest of the world is seeing. In sixty seconds. Or else.’

  ‘Or else what?’

  ‘Or else you might die, Mr Eaton.’ The young man laughed, but it hit a false note. He was nervous, too, yet his hand was steady as he raised his assault rifle and pointed it directly at the Prime Minister. He began examining his watch.

  Twenty seconds had already passed before Daniel, cocooned in his OB van, realised that the world was waiting upon him. He was the last link in the BBC chain. He had cut off the broadcast; he was the only one who could reinstate it. And the digital clock was ticking. He shook himself out of his daze and began staring at his phone, waiting for it to ring with instructions from any of a huge number of more senior BBC executives who might take the weight of responsibility from his shoulders, but the bloody thing remained ominously silent. No one was willing to lift the burden from his shoulders. Another fifteen seconds passed, and the next five seconds were filled by the young attacker reminding him they were running out of time. ‘What do I do?’ Daniel demanded in despair of his colleagues; no one had an answer or would catch his eye, and he knew there was nothing in the BBC’s Producer’s Guidelines that would save his hide. His head began to throb, he thought he was getting another one of his nose bleeds – pity’s sake, not now! Blood. Pain. Confusion. Despair. The only thing Daniel could be certain of was that he was on his own. The decision was to be his.