Darwin and his team as well as the signals squad had been sent back to base, doused in gratitude from the President.
'You must come and visit us in Nicosia, Captain. Accept a little of our hospitality.'
'And perhaps a medal or two?' Elpida added mischievously.
'It's been an honour, Sir - Miss.'
The Captain saluted starchly, but the President was too overcome with emotion for military etiquette. He threw his arms around his saviour in the manner of any Balkan bidding farewell to a much-loved brother, kissing both cheeks.
'Take care of yourself, Sir,' Darwin mumbled, colouring.
'Don't worry, my dear Captain Darwin. The worst is over. After what you have already achieved, the rest will be easy.'
There was little Sunday spirit in evidence. With some three thousand people marching with him and more than ten thousand promised when he reached Birmingham city centre, Makepeace should have been content, but all day long the skinheads had been driving up and down their route, blaring their horns and sounding trumpets, waving flags, leaning far out of car windows to raise clenched fists, spitting, goading, warning of trouble to come. Several supporters had tried to intervene and appeal for moderation, but by mid-morning and Walsall, empty beer cans and other forms of garbage had joined the obscenities being thrown in their direction. A morris dancer had already been knocked to the floor, and several marchers with young families had decided to quit.
Makepeace had appealed several times to the police to take some form of action to quell the disruption but the number of officers on duty was small and entirely inadequate to deal with the incitement. He was relieved therefore when, up ahead in the far distance, he saw a congregation of police cars, orange flashes on white, surrounded by a flurry of officers whose animation suggested they were intent on business. One was striding purposefully towards him.
'Chief Inspector Harding, Sir.' The officer introduced himself with a courteous salute. Makepeace gave no indication of stopping or even slowing, forcing the policeman to fall in alongside.
'Welcome, Chief Inspector, delighted to see you.' He shook hands. 'These yobs are proving a damned nuisance, they're deliberately trying to provoke trouble.'
'I'm very much afraid you're correct, Sir. Our information is that a counter-march is gathering with the objective of coming into direct confrontation with you in the city centre. Many hundreds of skinheads, British National Union types, neo-nazis, assorted maggots. Those you've seen so far are just the outriders. Has all the signs of a nasty bit of violence.'
A car passed, horn blaring, heading away from the gathering of police cars. A pair of tattooed buttocks protruded from the window.
'Blast them,' Makepeace snapped. 'This is a protest for peace, a family event, not an excuse for mayhem. What are you going to do about it?'
'That's difficult, Mr Makepeace.'
'Don't just wring your hands, you've got to do something.'
'My instructions are to stop it, Sir.'
'Excellent.'
'I don't think you understand. My instructions are to stop all of it. The skinheads' march. And your march too, Sir.'
'You're bloody joking.' Makepeace came to an abrupt halt. Flustered, angered, he motioned those behind him to continue. The marchers parted to either side of them.
The policeman persisted. 'The two marches coming together will cause violence and disruption of the peace.'
'Then stop their march. Mine is peaceful.'
'For better or for worse - I sometimes wonder which, Sir — we live in a democracy. They may be pavement scrapings but they also have a vote and equal rights to demonstrate.'
'Sticking their unwashed arses out of car windows is demonstrating? Demonstrating what?'
'They are entitled to their political opinions, Sir.'
'This is a sick joke, Mr Harding. Just sweep them off the streets, for heaven's sake.'
'If I stop one march I have to stop both.'
Makepeace was growing irritated by the other man's dogged sophistry. He began walking briskly once again, swept along by his supporters, but now he found himself accompanied by four uniformed constables who had fallen in behind their officer.
'This is crude blackmail, Chief Inspector.'
'It's protecting the peace.'
'I'm the one trying to protect the peace. That's why I'm standing for Parliament.'
'And organizing a march of this size that in itself constitutes a strain on public order, that includes anarchists, militant animal liberationists, a group of extreme environmentalists calling itself "One World Warriors", the Anti-Nazi League, some
..
.'
'The vast majority here are ordinary peace-loving families. I can't control everyone who wants to tag along behind.'
'Precisely.'
'Justice can't be this blind. It's a put-up job, isn't it, Chief Inspector?'
But Harding had no wish to debate further, not while swimming in a sea of Makepeace supporters. His brain locked into the appropriate criminal code and engaged gear.
'Sir, under Section 12 of the Public Order Act of 1986 I have reason to believe that this public procession may result in serious public disorder, serious damage to property or serious disruption to the life of the community, and therefore, under the authority accorded to me by that Act, I am directing you to bring this procession to a halt and disperse your supporters.' 'Not a chance.'
The officer was bobbing up and down on the toes of his highly polished shoes in a state of some agitation. 'Mr Makepeace, I must warn you that failure to comply with the lawful directions of a police officer in this matter is an offence and renders you liable to prosecution.'
'Bog off, you bloody fool!'
The roadway down from the Troodos knotted and twisted like a child's ribbon, making the convoy's passage through the pines uneven and uncomfortable. Their four-tonners had not been designed for high-speed cornering. The air above the macadam boiled, throwing up little whirlpools of dust which irritated the eye and cloyed the tongue. From their right-hand side the ancient Amiandos asbestos mine glared grey at them as though it had been dropped from the far side of the moon, a dust-raped landscape destroyed by pick axe and bulldozer. St Aubyn licked his drying lips in distaste.
On the other side of the road they passed a small stone monument which remembered the Troodos of more gentle times, a drinking trough which trickled with the cool waters of a nearby spring. St Aubyn read the inscription: 'Erected to Commemorate the Construction of the Nicosia-Troodos Road - VRI 1900.' Victoria Regina Imperatrix. A hundred years gone by and still the British were bailing out these people. Or still interfering, perhaps. He ignored the faded Greek graffiti.
Around the bend they encountered their first serious opposition, a BBC television crew, the advance troops for what St Aubyn knew must be a formidable media invasion, waving their arms and pleading for assistance. They were standing beside the yawning bonnet of their car from which sibilant clouds of steam were emerging, the perils of an over-hasty hire and an intolerably impatient editor. St Aubyn looked the other way, passing by at the gallop.
The road continued to hug the side of the mountain, curling, dipping, disappearing around the bend into the pine trees ahead. That's when St Aubyn saw the cutting, a man-made valley slashed through the rock, an angry scar whose steep sides and unhealed slopes seemed to cry with pain at the memory of the explosives and mechanical shovels that had blasted this great wound through the mountain's side, then inexpertly cauterized it with hot tar. Scree trickled like tears to either side.
It was inhospitable, claustrophobic, no trees or any form of vegetation seemed to want to grow here, this was no place to tarry. Then some fool up front stamped on his brakes.
There was a touch of Irish in Makepeace on his mother's side, buried a couple of generations deep, which seemed to rush to the surface at moments of indignation and perceived unfairness, blocking his judgement and making him desperate to find some physical outlet for his anger. As when he had crossed the Floor of the House. He was never entirely sure where principle stepped aside and old-fashioned Celtic passion took over, but that was his make-up, the way he was - anyway, there seemed little point in principle divorced from passion. Now there was some ridiculous policeman with pips on his collar standing in his way and telling him he was no better than some nazi who stuck his bum out of a window. Nuts! As the Chief Inspector moved closer, Makepeace raised his hands to push him away. Or was he going to strike the man? Quickly Maria restrained him, reaching out before any of the constables had the chance.
'Don't give them any excuse other than a political one,' she urged.
Makepeace had stopped walking and those following were beginning to falter, uncertain what was going on. They began to mill around Makepeace and the policemen, a march turning into a melee.
Harding attempted a placatory smile. 'Please, Mr Makepeace, no one regrets this more than I do. We want to make this as simple as possible for you, we've even arranged a venue about a mile down the road, a sports ground where we would be happy for you to wind up your march with your supporters. But with the threat of violence hanging over the whole community, there is no way we can allow you into the centre of Birmingham.'
Makepeace was blinking rapidly, trying to brush away the mists of rage and clear his thoughts. Maria was there first. 'What of tomorrow, Chief Inspector? And the next day? And next weekend in London?'
Harding shrugged. 'Not in my hands, Miss. That would depend on the local police force. But if the threat of violence is still there
..
.'
'So you would allow a bunch of thugs to run my election campaign completely off the road,' Makepeace snapped.
'I'm sorry.'
'And what will you do if I refuse?'
'Mr Makepeace, I have given you a lawful direction to stop this march. If you don't, you would leave me with no choice but to arrest you. Neither of us wants that. Wouldn't do your election campaign much good either.'
'You'll allow me to be the judge of that.'
But others were also judging, pressing around more closely as they began to understand that the police presence surrounding Makepeace was not for his protection. The mood was turning edgy.
'I don't pretend to understand politics, Sir, but I have a job to do. So let's wind this march up peacefully.'
'No, I think we'll take the other route. Arrest me or get out of my way.' Makepeace began marching once more, trying to clear a path through the bodies in front of him.
'Please, Sir
...'
Harding was reaching out after him; Makepeace brushed aside the restraining hand. Harding hurried to bring himself alongside.
'Sir, you do not have to say anything. But if you do not mention now something which you later use in your defence, the court may decide . . .'
The rest was drowned in a growl of opposition from various memb
ers of the Akropolis weightlift
ing team who had begun pushing forward through the crowd. Parents with children in arms were getting jostled, someone tumbled, cries of confusion sounded on all sides, the march had suddenly tugged on the edge of chaos. Is that what Harding intended? Makepeace arrested in the midst of violence without a neo-nazi in sight? Forcefully Maria thrust herself between Makepeace and the advancing muscle, shouting reprimands in seaman's Greek and waving them to subside.
Makepeace had a constable latched on to either arm but he did not struggle or resist. Instead he, too, was calling out for order. 'Relax. Get on with the march,' he shouted to those around. 'I'll be back with you as soon as I've got this nonsense sorted out.'
But Harding's placatory smile had disappeared. 'No, Mr Makepeace, I don't think we can allow that. Not at all.'
The cutting had been blocked by a barricade of eight buses, ancient Bedford and modem Mercedes, parked sideways and four deep, fronted by a low rampart of boulders and pine trunks. There was no way through and, since the sides of the cutting rose steeply from the roadway, no way round. The buses were empty, doors ajar, curtains flapping at dust-streaked windows, yet the silence had an unmistakable menace which filled St Aubyn's throat with bile.
'Back!' he yelled, waving his hand in a circular motion above his head as the driver made an agile three-point turn and started off for the far end of the cutting. The four-tonners snorted and complained like beached whales as they struggled in the narrow confines to follow suit.
It had been less than three minutes since they had passed into the rocky valley, but when they returned to it the entrance was not as it had been. Seated in the road as though engaged in a summer's picnic were two hundred chattering schoolgirls, in uniform, none more than fifteen. A barrier as unbreachable as rock. The Land-Rover slid ungracefully to a halt in a cloud of dust.