The Lords' Day (retail) (38 page)

Several hours earlier he had been ordered to head his ship south-southeast at all due speed and await further orders. Now those orders had arrived. His was not to be a glamorous role on this
day, but it would be vital nonetheless. Instinctively, the skipper searched the late afternoon sky. Even though the carrier had been making 36 knots they were still 300 nautical miles from their
target. Half an hour’s fly time for a Super Hornet. Then another mission would have been accomplished.

11.30 a.m.

Archie Wakefield could feel sweat beginning to trickle down his temples. He’d read the message that was being flashed up on the screens three times, and still it
didn’t change. He grew short of breath and was struggling to control a rising sense of trepidation. From her position beside him, still prostrate, Celia Blessing sensed his confusion and
opened one eye to find out what was happening.

‘
Urgent
,’ the message read. ‘
Believe terrorists still intend
attack. Require you deal with bomb
.’

Archie knew what that implied, but did they? Did they realise what they were asking him –
requiring
of him? He had little to lose, but even so, this needed him to find resources
within himself that in truth he didn’t know if he possessed. It was all very well bragging to Celia, impressing her, and he’d meant every word – then. But now?

‘
Chamber to be stormed
,’ the message continued. ‘
Pull ear if
understood
.’

But when? How? He wanted to ask all sorts of questions, but his captors were still keeping a wary eye on him. Yet the more he thought about it, the more he realised that everything depended on
him, and he sweated all the more. They would have to build an attack around him, for without him, the day was lost. ‘Bollocks,’ he declared quietly. If he screwed this up in front of
Celia he’d never live it down. That was right, he’d never live it down. Celia was still staring at him, her solitary eye open wide in concern.

He bent down, close, as though to inspect her, and whispered. ‘Know something, duchess? It’s time for you to stage a remarkable recovery.’

11.33 a.m.

Harry began slipping off his shirt for the last time as he prepared to go back into the chamber. He struggled with the buttons, one-handed; they were awkward and he
couldn’t get the wretched thing off. Not the best of omens.

Strange, he pondered, how almost Jacobean this situation had become, the high game of politics reduced to the most basic of
struggles, a matter of bloodlines. Fathers, mothers, sons, all players, and all potential victims in one way or another. A President whose entire sense of purpose had become focused on her son,
while the Prime Minister’s had been cruelly undermined by the presence of his. There was Daud Gul’s son, too, who had come halfway round the world to save his father and turn all their
lives on their heads. And the Queen and Charles. She had been sitting there for almost twenty-four hours now, seeming impassive to it all, but how could she be? No one else was. Strange, this
parent thing.

Harry, too. Not for a moment had he forgotten about his own son – yes, it would be a son, that’s what his instincts were telling him. Yet he had become so wrapped up in other
people’s lives. Perhaps he’d got his priorities wrong, he should be sorting himself and Melanie out first, let others deal with this nonsense, but it was too late now, his decision had
been made, although whether by him or for him he wasn’t entirely sure. So, go in, get it over and done with. If he walked out in one piece he’d still have time to sort things out with
Melanie and if he didn’t – well, it wouldn’t matter then, would it?

Bloody Mel. Where was she? With a girlfriend, he assumed, or was that merely what he hoped because he couldn’t deal with his fear of the alternative?
Come on, Harry, relax!
Yes, she
would have been deeply hacked off by his no-show at the restaurant and in turmoil over her predicament with the baby, so for sure she would have sought comfort on the shoulder of a girlfriend, and
that’s where he’d find her, later this afternoon, after . . .

Fuck it, there was no point in pretending. This was his fault, too; he’d neglected her, given more time to other people than he had to Mel. Little wonder she had grown so distracted. He
should put aside all the harsh words and do a little grovelling, tell her he was sorry, give themselves at least a chance of putting things back together again. And he should do that right now,
this minute, before he went back inside, just in case. He stopped fumbling with the shirt and reached for his phone. He dialled; still no answer. Voicemail. He hesitated. With a pang of anguish he
realised this might be the last message he ever left her. What should he say?
Where the hell was she
? Yet the more he tried to put aside his suspicions, the more insistent and hurtful they
became. He ended up punching the red button.

He scolded himself, he was distracted, confused. He had to concentrate, focus on the task that lay ahead, clear himself of the clutter. He was about to walk back into the chamber on the most
important mission of his life and he knew he might not be walking out again. The danger would only deepen if his mind were caught on thorns, yet the more he struggled to set his thoughts free the
more they became hopelessly entangled. He wasn’t ready for this, none of it. In frustration he snatched at his shirt; there was a tearing sound, a dozen sharp-toothed weasels seemed to rip at
his left hand and the buttons raced mockingly away across the tiled floor of the parliamentary post office. Suddenly, Harry realised he was afraid, not just of the danger that lay ahead but about
many things. No, he really wasn’t ready for this.

11.35 a.m.

Other people, too, were lost in their private thoughts. John Eaton kept glancing at his son, trying to make eye contact, but Magnus seemed determined not to oblige. Even if
Eaton hadn’t known it before, he did now; there was nothing he wouldn’t do to save his son. Years of guilt and fatherly pride – and, yes,
love
– weighed heavily on
him and had forced him into humiliating capitulation in front of the terrorists. That would cost him dear, no doubt. He had probably lost the respect of his son and certainly that of others, and he
would lose his job, too, after this, but that seemed of little consequence so long as Magnus survived. He would prefer to live with his son in torment than not to live with him at all.

Robert Paine was another who knew that the world around him had changed for ever. Whatever the outcome of this siege, it would leave all sorts of wreckage in its wake. Leaders would be called to
account and found wanting. Oh, they would spin themselves to dizzy heights and vow that such appalling failures would never be repeated, but it would take more than the head of that poor, broken
fool Eaton to appease the cries for retribution. Windows would be broken not just in Downing Street but in the White House, too. Yet at least the Prime Minister and President might have the
privilege of watching their sons grow to manhood; it was far, far more than they deserved.

By contrast, Tricia Willcocks was in less pessimistic mood. She had showered and undertaken running repairs in order to prepare for the outcome, and whatever that might be, she believed she
could embrace it. If it were all to end in bloody disaster, she knew she’d left enough of her misgivings littered around the floor of COBRA to be able to wash her hands of those medding Boy
Scouts. Yet – and she had been so careful about this – she had not vetoed the operation, as she might have tried to do, and if through some process of divine intervention their efforts
succeeded in saving the day, she would be the first to applaud, and be sure to do so very publicly. Why, she’d been in charge, had counselled them, cautioned them where necessary, and wished
them God’s guidance even as the decision to attack had been made. She’d be suitably modest, of course, but the truth was she was responsible for the entire thing. Rejoice! Rejoice!
Anyway, so great would be the outbreak of public rejoicing that no one would have patience for any cockroaches and critics who might crawl out with complaints after the event. She’d shown she
could take the pressure, handle the responsibility, and even though her name had been marked as the first victim she had been lucky enough to survive. The media liked lucky leaders. All in all, she
thought she’d done rather well.

Nothing more was required of her, except to wait.

11.48 a.m.

Daud Gul had never known such terror. The Americans had promised that he was going home, but they had surely lied. Instead they were trying to terrify him to death. It was a
tactic he knew they used, like waterboarding, when they strapped you to a plank of wood with your head below your feet and your mouth and nose covered while they poured water over your face, so you
thought you were drowning. Sometimes you did, choked to death, or broke bones in the desperate struggle to free yourself from the restraints. Yet now he didn’t even have time to prepare
himself. He’d been thinking of his mountains, lost in a world of dreams, when without warning his inner calm had been shattered by a loud female voice. ‘Bingo Fuel!’ it shouted at
him. ‘Bingo Fuel!’ it repeated. He opened his eyes in time to see the indicators in front of him changing from green to yellow and beginning to flash. ‘Bitching Betty’, as
the voice was known, was announcing that they were running short of fuel. He glanced anxiously out of the window but could see nothing except a haze where sky and sea seemed to melt into each
other, and he couldn’t even be sure which way was up or down. He knew he was far, far from his home still; outside the cockpit there were no mountains, no land of any kind, and now the plane
was dropping from the sky, falling lower and lower, the instrumentation changing all the time. He had been prepared to meet his death ever since they had captured him, but he had hoped for a
warrior’s death, a bullet or a blade; he hadn’t counted on this.

Only at the last moment, as he knew they were about to crash, did he see the carrier beneath them, a tail of tortured water stretching out behind. And no sooner had he seen it than they were
upon it, hitting it hard, his entire being shaken like a lamb in the jaws of a lion. It took him some time to realise that he was unhurt; now he understood why they had strapped him in so tight.
And as they opened the cockpit he was assailed by noise, men shouting, machines pounding, everything around him was moving, his head was spinning. That was when he threw up. All over their bright
and shining airplane. No time for the barf bag. The American engineers cursed, and he might have been proud of himself had he not taken it for a sign of his own weakness.

They dragged him from his seat, shouting in his ear, but he under stood little of it, his attention focused on the mayhem of machinery that whizzed past and around him, all seemingly intent on
killing him. But then he was inside the ship, they were stripping his soiled flight suit from him and telling him to use the head. Then they began hauling him back into another set of their tight,
chest-crushing flight clothing. Oh, God, he cried, they were going to start with torture all over again.

11.50 a.m.

The mess at Wellington Barracks, in the lee of Buckingham Palace, was an unusual sight. The forty-odd men of Colonel Topolski’s Delta Force detachment appeared to be
relaxing in whatever way they wished; some ate, drank water, coffee, nothing hard, while others played cards or sat propped against walls and dozed. Some even smoked, although that was against the
law, but no one seemed interested in interfering. They even had their weapons at their sides. Only the presence of armed guards standing on the other side of the mess doors gave any hint that they
were not entirely at their ease.

When the door opened to admit two men, Topolski was relieved to see that one of them was Braithewaite. He liked and respected the man, and the fact that they had ended up at opposite ends of the
barrel could only be explained by the outbreak of some virulent form of swamp fever. The man accompanying the British captain was considerably older and more senior, but the American was fighting
the fog of fatigue and was too disorientated to recognise him or immediately identify the salad bowl of ribbons that hung from his chest. Topolski stubbed out the remnants of his cigar – one
of a fresh supply provided by his British captor – and stood. The older man saluted and extended a hand.

‘Colonel Topolski,’ he said, ‘I hope we’ve been taking care of you. But I’m afraid I must ask you and your men to move out. Right now.’

‘You’re just in time,’ Topolski muttered. ‘We were about to tunnel our way under the wire.’

‘We need you at Westminster,’ the other man continued, undeterred by the American’s flippancy. ‘You see, we’re just about to go in, colonel. And you’re part
of this operation. We very much want you to be flying the flag beside us, as usual.’

‘I don’t—’

‘What? You didn’t think for one moment we’d try to keep you away from the fun, did you? Not after you’ve come all this way.’ The older man offered a clipped smile.
‘I can’t promise that we’ll need your men for the operation itself, but I wanted to come down here personally to say how extremely grateful we are for your support – as
always, eh? So if you and your men are ready, I’ll leave it to Captain Braithewaite to take care of the arrangements. You’ll forgive me, but I have to be elsewhere. I hope we’ll
meet again later, colonel, after this little dance has been done. In the meantime . . .’ And with the crispest of salutes, he was gone.

‘Who . . . ?’

‘That,’ Braithewaite responded, ‘was the Chief of the Defence Staff.’

‘So why . . . ?’

‘I think he wanted to ensure there had been no misunderstanding.’

‘And this . . . ?’ The American cast around him at his men in their informal but unambiguous confinement.

‘Never happened.’

12 noon.

They made their final preparations under cover of Big Ben as it tolled the hour. The clatter of the helicopter overhead had become so much part of the scene that those inside
the chamber had long ago discounted it, blocking out the pounding on their ears, and they failed to notice as it dropped just a little lower still. It was much the same with the clatter of the
light tanks outside as they shifted positions yet again. Like a flood tide that laps around the unsuspecting, spaces that only moments beforehand had been empty were occupied by whispering men,
waiting to strike.