The Lords' Day (retail) (34 page)

‘You mean this is . . .’

‘A one-way trip.’

‘No, Harry, no!’ the policeman insisted. ‘That’s preposterous.’

Harry had grown still, leaving his hurts to themselves. ‘They’re not leaving that place,’ he said. ‘And they’re going to take as many of those people with them as
possible. Their day in the House of Lords isn’t over yet, and by the time it’s finished, I believe a very large number of those hostages are going to be dead.’

‘You sure that knock on the head didn’t affect you? Why would they as good as commit suicide when they could walk out of there? We’d have to let them go, you know
that.’

‘And why did those guys on the 9/11 planes fly them into the Twin Towers when they could have gone to Miami? Why did the Underground bombers on 7/7 fill their rucksacks with explosives
rather than Big Macs? Why do men and women walk into coffee houses all around the Middle East and blow themselves up rather than ordering a cappuccino? We have to get into the mindset of these
people. If they walk out of there, they’ll be nothing but a footnote and the Mehsuds will be shoved back into the same pit they’ve been in for hundreds of years. But if they decide to
stay and finish the job . . . think about it.’

‘Tell me you’re not serious,’ whispered the policeman.

‘It would be like 9/11 and the Battle for Berlin all rolled up in one glorious, bloody day of revenge that will never be forgotten.’

‘It would be self-defeating,’ Tibbetts protested. ‘We’d send an army in after them and root out every single Meshud leader, surely.’

‘We’ve been trying that ever since we stumbled across them,’ Harry replied. ‘Oh, they’d be the mother of all fusses about bringing those responsible to justice
– but what if those responsible are all dead, apart from Daud Gul? We’d go looking for him, sure, maybe get lucky again, but much more likely is that everyone will quietly agree to give
Waziristan a very wide berth in future and find some other spot on the globe to conduct their mutual bloodletting.’

Tibbetts moaned, deeply and violently. ‘Harry, you really mean this, don’t you?’

‘I’m rather afraid I do.’

‘So if you were Masood . . .’

‘As soon as Daud Gul’s out of harm’s way, I’d set about slaughtering everyone in there.’

‘Everyone?’

‘Starting with the Queen.’

8.12 a.m.

When COBRA reconvened, it did so at the request of Mike Tibbetts. Tricia Willcocks was content for him to take the chair, pleading a migraine, and it was apparent to everyone
present that a change had come over her. She seemed to have shrunk, both physically and emotionally, content to let others have their head. Not everyone believed it was a migraine; some of the more
uncharitable members put it down to the effects of whisky, while others assumed it was an ego dragged to repentance. For a few hours she had straddled the world, but her footing had slipped and no
one could tell how far she might fall. She had overplayed her hand and been made to look utterly foolish. For once she didn’t know what to say, so wisely she said nothing.

Tibbetts was ill at ease. ‘I’ve asked you back because there’s something I think you ought to consider,’ he began, casting a dark glance at Harry, still desperately
hoping this was a huge error of judgement. ‘There is a view’ – his tone made it clear that he would love to distance himself from it by the length of several mountain ranges
– ‘that the siege isn’t yet over. That irrespective of what happens to Daud Gul, they intend to start killing the hostages.’

His words froze every heart in the room.

‘We need to consider it,’ he sighed in apology. ‘Harry, this is your idea. You run it up the flagpole.’

All eyes turned. By this stage Harry looked a most pitiful specimen, his clothes tattered, his hand smashed and his swollen face beginning to bruise like a mouldering pumpkin. He appeared an
unlikely source of inspiration as he began outlining his theory. He raised his flag, yet no one seemed keen to salute.

‘An interesting theory,’ mused Five, when Harry had finished, ‘but only a theory.’

It was a point Harry was forced to concede.

‘And what probability do you give to the chances of your being right?’ Hastie asked, glad that for once someone else was under the cosh.

‘Brigadier, you know as well as I do that the estimates that get traded round this table aren’t worth a bucket of spit, yours included. No one can know these things, not for sure.
We’re not infallible, yet nevertheless we are forced to play God. It’s possible I’m deluded and I’ve got this completely wrong, but if you insist on a
figure—’

‘I’m in no position to demand, but I would be most interested, Mr Jones.’

‘Then my experience says my scenario’s better than fifty-fifty, and my instinct – for what it’s worth – goes even further.’

‘You’re not being just a little oversensitive, are you?’ a junior minister pressed. ‘After all, you’ve taken a bit of a battering; it would be understandable if you
– how can I put it? – wanted to get your own back? You wouldn’t be happy watching them walk away.’

‘A fair point,’ a civil servant added, then hesitated, realising the implied offence. ‘We can’t be too careful.’

‘Yes, it’s a fair point,’ Harry accepted. ‘But not an accurate one.’ He stood up. ‘I hope you’ll forgive this little show of histrionics, but it’s
important.’ Rather clumsily with his one good hand he hitched up his shirt and the vest underneath to reveal the lurid red weals of the scars left by his years of military service.

The civil servant winced.

‘Yes, I’ve taken a bit of a battering,’ Harry continued, ‘but the point is I’m used to it. So shall we get rid of the personal motivation stuff and get back to the
point at hand?’

‘You’ll allow us all a little personal animus, I hope,’ Five intervened. ‘It would give me no end of pleasure to find some way of making the Americans grovel. It’s
their turn, I think. But even if you’re right, Mr Jones, we still face exactly the same problem as before,’ he said, wagging his nicotine stick. ‘How the hell do we go in without
losing the most valuable prize of all – the Queen?’

‘If I’m right, we lose her anyway,’ Harry replied softly.

‘But our chances of success have increased,’ Hastie said. ‘They won’t be expecting an attack now, not with Gul in the air. That gives us back the element of
surprise.’

‘Even so,’ Five countered, shaking his head, ‘who is there amongst this merry band who would take his courage – and Mr Jones’s analysis – and screw it to the
sticking-place?’

‘You, commander?’ It was Tricia, her first contribution. Her voice was weak, as though it came from a distance, but she wasn’t going to miss the opportunity of making someone
else squirm under the pressure.

And Tibbetts had feared this point. It was one of the reasons he’d been happy to take the chair, enabling him to move the pieces around the board, putting off the moment when they stopped
on his square. ‘I simply don’t know. I wish to God I could be certain that Harry was wrong, but I can’t.’ His shoulders heaved in resignation. ‘I’m afraid
I’m no Inspector Morse.’

Harry jerked upright as though something had struck him. ‘What did you say?’

‘That I don’t know . . .’

‘Morse. You said Morse,’ Harry muttered. ‘Of course!’ He slapped his hand down hard on the table; it was his good hand, but even so the effort made him wince. Others
looked on in alarm. Tibbetts was staring very pointedly at the face wound and trying to remember what he knew about secondary concussion.

‘That old bugger Archie Wakefield,’ Harry continued, suddenly brimming with enthusiasm. ‘I thought he was cracking up, couldn’t take the strain – he’s been
tapping his head like a lunatic. But he hasn’t lost it, he’s been trying to use Morse code. To talk to us from inside the chamber.’

‘And what was he trying to say?’ Five asked.

‘I thought signals interception was your baby.’

‘Morse code, Mr Jones?’ Five wrinkled his nose. ‘Went out with the dinosaurs.’

‘Then give me twenty minutes.’ Already he was heading for the door.

‘Where are you going?’ Tibbetts cried.

‘To dig up a few fossils,’ Harry said, leaving them in a state of bewilderment.

8.22 a.m. (1.22 p.m. BIOT time)

It took only minutes to drive from the gaol to the airfield. It was barely four miles, with little other traffic, apart from Filipino workers on their bicycles. No one spoke to
Daud Gul. At times he was forced to squint as the sun scorched off the surface of the road, but he caught glimpses of many low brightly painted buildings. They also passed a huge satellite dish,
and what appeared to be a fuel dump. Often the sea was hidden by the thick scrub that bordered the shore, but occasionally he saw raked beaches and, far beyond in the lagoon, the hulking presence
of grey transport ships. The hated symbols of the Stars and Stripes and the British flag were everywhere.

As they pulled up alongside the airport terminal building, the American major turned to him and spoke for the first time. ‘We need you to talk to your friends.’

Friends? He had no friends here. But they showed him to an office where a US soldier was talking into a telephone. When he saw Daud Gul, he muttered into the phone: ‘He’s
here,’ and rose from his seat, indicating that Daud Gul should sit. A voice was coming from the earpiece.

‘Daud
Khan
– are you there? Can you hear me, Daud
Khan
? This is Masood.’

But could this be, that Masood was in the next room, because that was how it sounded?

‘I am here, Masood
Jan
, my son.’

‘Are you all right? What have they done to you?’

‘They tell me they are about to put me on a plane. To release me. I’m not sure I understand—’

‘I have some people with me here who have been very persuasive on your behalf.’

‘Then may God bless them.’

‘In His own way. Daud
Khan
, it is so good to hear your voice. Soon you will be back home.
Azadi!
You will soon be free!’

‘Then may God be doubly blessed. And I owe you much, Masood
Jan
. I wait to embrace you.’

‘
Inshallah
.’

‘May He give us both strength.’

8.32 a.m.

Harry arrived more than a little breathless at the OB van in Black Rod’s Garden. He was bordering on exhaustion and only stubbornness forced him on. Two armed policemen
stood guard at the door, their mood relaxed, like actors at that point in the play when the lines are done, the curtain is about to descend and there is nothing else to do but pray for applause.
They stood catching the light of a bright morning sun that was bouncing off the burnished aluminium walls of Daniel’s den.

Yet inside the van Harry encountered a picture of darkness and squalor. People had been sleeping in a pile of blankets that had been thrown into one corner of the floor – in fact, it was
moving even as Harry watched – and littered on every surface apart from the control desk were the remains and packaging of every type of takeaway food that could be obtained within half a
mile of the place. It was crowded, more than a dozen men and women, all still at their stations, unambiguously unwashed and over-ripe; they’d been here more than twenty-four hours and
although Daniel had tried to cut down on the numbers, they had refused. This was history, they were making it, and no one was going to be told to miss out. Anyway, most of them were on extended
overtime. It wasn’t the moment to cut and run. Sleep-fogged eyes turned to greet Harry as he stood in the doorway.

‘Can I help you, Mr Jones?’ Daniel asked from his desk.

‘We know each other?’

‘I’m Daniel. I’ve been watching you.’ He indicated the wall of screens in front of him. Harry’s heart leapt. While several carried the wide-angle view that had been
spread across the airwaves ever since the siege began, others came from the remote cameras around the chamber that were used for the everyday broadcasting of the Lords. Daniel had adjusted them so
that every aspect of the siege was covered. Much to Harry’s joy, in the middle of one of the screens sat the portly form of Archie Wakefield.

‘That man,’ Harry cried, jabbing his finger at the peer, ‘can you get closer?’

‘But of course,’ Daniel said. ‘Suzie, would you oblige?’

And further down the van, one of his colleagues made adjustments and an image of Archie came zooming into view that showed every individual eyelash.

‘And do you – please tell me you can do this – do you have recordings from that camera of what’s been happening since the siege began?’

‘We’ve been recording everything.’

‘I need to see what that man was doing at the times when I was in the chamber. Can you do that?’

Daniel sucked the end of his pen thoughtfully. ‘It might take a couple of minutes,’ he warned.

‘Daniel, whatever it takes. Show me those pictures and you can name your price. They’ll put up statues to you at Television Centre for this.’

‘A parking space would be sufficient.’

‘Done!’

‘Ah, a politician’s promise,’ Daniel muttered. ‘The day is clearly returning to normal.’

And as Harry watched, screens started flickering as the images of the previous day flew past at eye-baffling speed. While this was going on, another shadow loomed in the doorway.

‘Tinker at your service, Mr Jones.’ A man with a thick Brummy accent, around sixty years of age and not far off the same number of inches in girth, stepped inside, sniffing the air
and wrinkling his nose. Paddy Bell – ‘Tinker’ to all who knew him from his early days – was a doorkeeper in the Palace of Westminster. Like most of the doorkeepers he was
ex-military, a former ‘scaly back’ or radio telegraphist in the Royal Signals with a twenty-two-year army career that had taken him through the Falklands and up to the first Gulf War.
He was a slow, solid man who now ran an informal investment club that operated amongst some of the palace staff. It was through the club that Harry had got to know him well. It wasn’t that
Harry had ever been asked for insider information, particularly not as a Minister, but Tinker kept his ear to the ground and was masterful at interpreting the significance of a raised eyebrow or
chewed ministerial cheek. Since he’d been helping run it, the club had been returning close on twenty per cent a year. It was one of Westminster’s most closely guarded secrets.