The Lords' Day (retail) (16 page)

The Prime Minister shook his head, although whether in disagreement or despair wasn’t clear.

‘That is a pity,’ the young man continued. ‘It appears they have not learned the lesson – yet.’

‘I’ll . . . try again,’ Eaton sobbed. His hands were shaking uncontrollably.

‘But they have not listened to you.’ As he uttered the words, Masood raised the barrel of his gun towards the back of Eaton’s head. ‘So what further use are you?’
Masood said as the muzzle reached the nape of his victim’s neck. ‘None, I fear. Goodbye, Mr Eaton.’

In pain, Eaton twisted his head, looking towards Magnus. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered, ‘so very sorry . . .’

5.10 p.m.

Britain had ground to a halt. Even though it was the middle of the rush hour it was later estimated that thirty-six million Britons were watching at that moment, and hundreds of
millions in other countries. There was only one camera broadcasting images, situated on a high platform in the public gallery at the far end of the chamber from the throne. Its operator had long
since fled along with everyone else who could, but the unmanned equipment gave fair coverage of the area now crowded with hostages, and Daniel wasn’t about to upset either the gunmen or his
bosses by switching to any other shot. Through the eye of this solitary camera, the world watched.

In the middle of Piccadilly Circus, beneath a huge screen carrying live coverage of the happenings, two Benedictine monks knelt on the cold pavement. Many others joined them; the rest of the
crowd stood in silent awe. Trains out of main stations stood abandoned as passengers and crew refused to board, their attention fixed on the news screens. The editor of the
Sun
, seated at
his desk at the end of a newsroom frozen in apprehension, began scribbling his morning’s simple headline: ‘Sacrificed’. A producer in the BBC newsroom bent close to the ear of a
young researcher, whispering the name of Spencer Perceval, the last Prime Minister to be murdered. In Downing Street, Tricia Willcocks reached for her glass of water, and spilled much of it on the
tablecloth. The London Stock Exchange was closed, of course, but exchanges around the world were still open, and everywhere they began selling sterling and every type of British holdings with ever
increasing determination.

It was at this point that a figure rose from the rich leather benches of the House of Lords. ‘I think there may be a better way,’ his voice rang out. It was Robert Paine.

The young Mehsud looked up. ‘The ambassador of the United States of America can have nothing to say that will interest me,’ he spat. ‘Perhaps you would like to join your
friend.’

‘I am in your hands,’ Paine acknowledged. ‘But your leader is in other hands, too. Surely there is room for some deal.’

‘What – you believe you can do what the British Prime Minister cannot?’

Paine looked at the broken, trembling man on his knees before them. ‘I think so,’ he replied softly. ‘We Americans allegedly have some influence in these matters.’

‘What are you proposing?’ Masood asked, curiosity oiling his words.

‘I’m not a politician but I believe I have some position here. And some skills. I’m a diplomat. Allow me to do what I am trained for. Let me see if I can bring about a
resolution.’

‘You misunderstand us badly if you think you can romance us out of our demands.’

‘Sir, I see no romance in a muzzle. I know your purpose. I have no reason to deny it.’

‘Then what will you do?’

‘Let me out of here to talk face to face with those who can give you what you want. Try to persuade them.’

‘Let you out? But I have only just captured you, Mr Ambassador,’ the young man mocked. ‘Let you out to sing like a canary? Or to fly away like some fluttering pigeon? No, I
think not.’

‘I give you my word. I will return. By ten o’clock tomorrow.’

‘The word of a diplomat!’

‘You know I must return. You have the son of my President.’

‘We do. Yes, so we do,’ Masood agreed, nodding ruefully. ‘Perhaps we should try your suggestion. But first’ – he raised his gun once more – ‘I think I
will shoot the Prime Minister, just to encourage you in your efforts.’

‘No! You shoot him and you show the whole of humanity your word cannot be trusted. You would give me nothing to negotiate with. Shoot him, and I can only assume you would shoot us all. I
could not – would not – speak on your behalf.’

‘You would barter with me?’

‘Your leader in exchange for the lives of everyone here. Isn’t that what we’re about?’

Masood examined the other man, his eyes wrinkled in suspicion, as though inspecting a mountain ram he had been offered at too low a price by some passing Pathan. Eventually his eyes flickered
away to the digital clock behind the ambassador’s head.

‘Then, Mr Ambassador, you’d better make a start. You don’t have too much time left.’

5.44 p.m.

Many people were to play a role on that day. Maria Melo Almeida was one who was about to participate in a minor but, for her, a life-changing way. She was in her sixties but
still working to keep her mildly incapacitated and chronically indolent husband in cigarettes and Sky subscriptions. Portuguese by birth, she lived near the flyover in Notting Hill and worked as a
cleaner for several people during the week. This day had been spent at a local travel agent’s dusting around catalogues and washing up several days’ worth of coffee mugs, and after the
office closed she decided to pop in on another of her clients whose apartment was on her way home. She bought some milk at the corner store in case he needed it, and a small bunch of flowers with
which to brighten his utilitarian living room. He needed help like that, and she liked to add these little courtesies to her job, turning clients into friends. That way they kept her on and she
could relax into a routine, otherwise she would end up spending her days sweeping around her wretched husband.

Maria had her own keys to the apartment, which she carried on a large ring along with many others. She let herself in and picked up the newspaper from the hallway floor. Strange, she thought,
that he hadn’t taken it himself. Perhaps he was having one of his off days, like people confined to wheelchairs sometimes do. She walked into the living room fumbling with milk, flowers,
newspaper and the large bunch of keys, and at first didn’t notice what was waiting for her. When she did, when she saw what had happened to her client, she let out a piteous scream that
reached all the way to Downing Street and left her so emotionally broken it ensured she would never do another day’s cleaning for the rest of her life.

6.10 p.m.

‘Bob . . . how are you?’

Paine didn’t care for the diminutive, usually insisting on the use of his full name, yet it was but one of many indignities he had endured in the last few hours. Anyway, who was he to
argue with his President?

‘I’m fine,’ he said, into a secure phone, but his slight hesitation betrayed the strain.

‘You poor man.’

He was sitting in the back of his ambassadorial BMW, near the Cenotaph in Parliament Street, just beyond its intersection with Downing Street. It was inside the security cordon and eerily quiet.
A stray newspaper bowled along the gutter, pushed by a gentle breeze until it caught beneath the wheels of a parked coach, one of several that had transported the armed units of CO-19. A little
further down the street stood a soup kitchen, emblazoned with the name Teapot One, serving drinks to a small group of snipers, yet the usual banter that marked such occasions was gone. Everyone
seemed lost in his own world. Even as Paine watched, a column of unmarked white vans drew up and the doors flew open. Men began to scurry out. The SAS had arrived.

‘Bob, give me your assessment.’

‘I haven’t yet had a chance to talk with the British authorities. I insisted on reporting to you first.’

‘We don’t have a great deal of time, Bob. Can they cope, the British? I need your gut feeling on this one.’

He rubbed his gut, still sore from the blow of the rifle butt. It told him all he needed to know. ‘The terrorists are serious. It’s going to be tough negotiating our way
out.’

‘So what’s the alternative?’

‘I’m a diplomat, Madam President. You’re asking for a political judgement.’ And a deeply personal one, he thought, with her son inside.

‘What do you know of their Home Secretary, Tricia Willcocks? Is she up to this?’

He considered the question as yet another convoy of white vans pulled up and began unloading a small arsenal of weapons. ‘She’s ambitious, a little too obviously so for many. Has a
reputation for taking advantage of every opportunity – and any man – that might be useful to her.’

‘A tough cookie, then.’

‘The sort of woman who insists on making her mark. Has a personalised number plate on her car, and in this country that’s still considered brash.’

‘Not a team player, then.’

‘Her colleagues wouldn’t think so.’

‘I sense she has no overwhelming desire to climb into bed alongside me, either.’

‘You asked me for a gut feeling, so I’ll risk it. If she stays true to form, it’s my judgement she’ll play this for her own advantage.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Whatever else happens, she’ll not give up Daud Gul unless she’s forced to do so. And there’s no one left around here to force her. She knows the British media will
crucify her if she is seen to be weak – the woman that wobbled. Cracked up, just like John Eaton has. They’ll compare her to Maggie Thatcher and conclude she has nothing but a cotton
bud for a backbone. She won’t allow that to happen. So she won’t let Daud go.’

‘Kind of narrows the options.’

‘The trouble is, Madam President, that I don’t think the terrorists are in a mood to accept anything less. We are – all of us – walking very close to the edge on this
one.’

There was silence from the Oval Office; the President didn’t seem to care for what she had heard.

‘Madam President, I need your instructions.’

‘Bob, tell me . . .’ The words hobbled along in torment. ‘How is my son? How’s William-Henry bearing up?’

‘Oh, you can be so proud of him, Madam President. A chip off the Harrison block, if you’ll permit me to put it like that. He gave me a message. Simply asked me to tell you that he
loves you very much.’

Silence screamed down the line. For a moment he thought the connection had been cut.

‘I need to know what you’d like me to do,’ he pressed.

‘I can’t order you back inside there, Bob. This is too personal. You’ve got to use your own judgement.’

‘My judgement is very simple, Madam President. If I fail to go back, they will shoot your son. But if I do, I think they will shoot me.’

‘Bob, if I could take your place, you know I would.’

‘I don’t doubt it for a second. But I also hope you know me well enough to trust that I’ll do whatever is necessary.’

‘I’m struggling to know what the right thing is here, Bob.’

‘The Harrisons have always found it in the past.’

‘The Harrisons and the Paines – I guess our families go back a long way, don’t they?’

Yet only the Harrisons will go forward, he thought, but dared not say so. The memory of his son swam before his mind and he bit his lip until it bled. ‘Yes, Madam President,’ was all
he could summon up as a response.

‘I think I know what the first William-Henry would have done. He wouldn’t have sat on his butt and waited to be told what to do by others.’

‘I don’t doubt it.’

‘But what will Tricia Willcocks do? That’s the question.’

‘Sadly, Mrs Willcocks remains something of a mystery.’

‘Then perhaps we should find some way of giving the lady a shove . . .’

6.33 p.m.

‘They found them, Harry, just as you said they would,’ Tibbetts said.

‘What’s that, Mike?’

‘The missing guests. The ones in wheelchairs. Two of them, meant to attend as representatives of the Disabled People’s Council. Instead they had their throats cut and were left to
bleed to death.’ The policeman slapped the table in bitterness. ‘Why the hell didn’t they just shoot them, get it over and done with cleanly?’

‘Makes no noise, slitting a throat.’

‘I’ll take your word for it.’

‘Anyway, they’re mountain people, Mike. Never been conquered or suppressed, not in all their history. Moghals, Sikhs, Russians, British, we’ve all tried it and none of us has
succeeded,’ he said, pouring out the contents of a thermos flask into two Styrofoam cups and handing one to the policeman. ‘But then we got lucky and dragged their leader off in chains.
Bound to end up messily.’

‘They’re terrorists! They created this mess.’ The policeman spat the coffee back into the cup. ‘And there’s no bloody sugar.’

Harry tossed him a sachet of sweetener. The table they had commandeered in the small post office was already covered with coffee smears and crumbs. ‘When the British first fought them and
we got beaten, we took our reprisals by tying our prisoners across the barrels of loaded cannon. Now that’s what I call a mess.’

‘Right now I’d settle for that.’ Tibbetts pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to squeeze life back into his battered brain.

‘But there’s something I really can’t understand, Mike,’ Harry continued.

‘Ah, at last, something you don’t understand either. Thank God. Frankly, I was getting rather brassed off being left behind by you all the time.’

‘They’re mountain people,’ Harry said again, ignoring the sarcasm, ‘from halfway round the world. They’re street fighters – or whatever passes for streets in
the villages of Waziristan. These people don’t mount campaigns, they just descend upon you one evening to slice the balls off you, then it’s back to chasing sheep. They don’t plot
and plan, they just do it.’

‘And your problem?’

‘So how come they end up here so well prepared?’

‘The weapons, you mean?’

‘Not just that. It’s . . .’ He kicked a wastepaper bin for inspiration. ‘Look, they know what to do – and who to do it to. They’ve tied up the House of Lords
tighter than a nun’s knickers. Figured out the security, knew where to get the passes . . .’