The Lords' Day (retail) (35 page)

‘Tinker, thank God you could get here,’ Harry replied in relief. He didn’t bother with introductions.

‘Sorry it took so long, boss. I was expecting the day off.’

‘You may just be about to perform the most valuable day’s service of your life – look!’ Harry waved his finger as the pictures of Wakefield pounding at his head flashed
into life.

‘That’s Lord Wakefield, ain’t it?’ Tinker observed. ‘Decent sort of fella, he is. For a hairy-arsed
matelot
.’

‘A sailor, was he?’

‘A merchant marine sparks. A wireless wally.’

‘Which would explain it!’ Harry declared in triumph.

‘What’s that, boss?’

‘That,’ Harry said, pointing, ‘unless I’m a pig’s arse, is Morse code.’

Tinker leaned over the control desk, breathing heavily and squinting hard. ‘You know, I think you’re bloomin’ right.’

‘So what is it? What’s he saying?’

For a few minutes that seemed to stretch to half of Harry’s lifetime, there was silence, punctuated only by Tinker’s heavy breathing. Then he straightened his back. ‘Well, blow
me down,’ he muttered, shaking his head.

‘Report, Yeoman Bell!’

‘Sorry, boss. He’s sending the same thing. Over and over again: “
Attention. Believe can deal with bomb. God save the
Queen
.” ’

8.34 a.m.

T
HE PRINCE OPENED HIS EYES
. Much to his dismay, nothing had changed. The wretched world was still out there, waiting to
humiliate him. He felt pitiful, almost shamed. He had believed he could have made a proper end of it, like the other Charles, but it had proved to be nothing more than yet another wasted gesture in
a worn-out life. He had been humiliated, and not even a stinking terrorist would take him seriously.

He had struggled so hard, yet ‘they’ – those whose respect he so longed for – seemed determined never to accept him. There was never a moment when they didn’t
accuse him of arrogance or indulging in double standards. He had devoted himself to the environment, yet they mocked every time he flew. When he wrote to Ministers, entirely privately, to encourage
or gently to cajole, they ran to the media to accuse him of meddling. He had spent years building up the estates of the Duchy of Cornwall, transforming them, modernising them, providing jobs,
improving the countryside, yet all they could do was sneer that he charged a pound for every slice of ham.

And then there had been the marriage. They’d always sided with her, killed any chance of it ever working, and as good as killed her, too, in the end. Shouldn’t have been like that,
any of it. He’d done some bloody stupid things, to be sure, but hadn’t any couple whose marriage was falling apart? Only difference was that other people didn’t get their phones
tapped and their servants bribed or have microphones thrust between the sheets. God, it had hurt. And the boys – all that got him through the mess of those years had been his sons, he owed
them everything, and perhaps that was why he’d become so emotional about saving the two out there. Pity’s sake, he didn’t want to die, but finding something to die for seemed to
be such a whole lot better than having nothing to live for and yet he couldn’t even do that properly. Buggered that up, too. Everything he did ended up being thrown back in his face, just
like the guardsman and that snowball. So he closed his eyes and pretended to sleep, crying in his bones and hiding his humiliation.

He was still struggling inside when he felt something touch his wrist. He opened his eyes on to the same wretched, deceitful world and wondered for a moment what had distracted him, until he
looked down and saw his mother’s hand resting on his. She was gazing at him in an odd, unfamiliar manner. He didn’t understand it at first but it reminded him of – what?
Something, some occasion, a time long ago in their lives that he could no longer fully recall. He closed his eyes, trying to capture the brief-lived images, using the techniques of dream therapy he
had mastered to snatch at these fleeting glimpses from the corners of his mind. And slowly they came back to him. Of course! It was perhaps his first memory. Of the coronation. That day when she
stopped being his mother and started being his Queen – at least, that’s how he remembered it. She had been so serious, that day, so stern even, until the time when they had gone out on
to the palace balcony for the last fly-past and taken the final, impassioned roar from the crowd. He had stood on tiptoe to wave and watch it all. He had been four.

She had put him to bed that evening, had come to tuck him in and say goodnight. Not something she often did. And she had looked down upon him – in just the same way she was looking at him
now. She had seemed so serious, hadn’t smiled, but had held his hand and brushed his forehead until his eyes had begun to droop.

‘Remember, Charles, that you and I are like no other mother and son in the whole country.’

‘Because I’m going to be King one day?’

‘Yes, because of that. I fear it will come between us.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it always does. There will always be people getting between us, telling us what to do, even though they have no idea in the world what it is like to be you and me. You and I will
always look at the world differently from other people, and only you and I will know it. So remember, my little one, that we may not always be together, but we will always be as one.’ She
bent to kiss him. ‘And I will always love you in a very special way.’

He hadn’t remembered her ever coming to tuck him in bed that way again. Yet now her eyes were those of that young woman once more, unguarded, unquestioning, loving without reservation.

She smiled. ‘What you did was the noblest act I have ever seen. But it’s over now, Charles.’

He looked out once more over their troubled world and frowned that most famous frown. ‘For us, it’s never over, Mama.’

8.35 a.m.

‘But how? How the hell’s he going to knock out the bomb?’ Harry exclaimed in exasperation.

‘He doesn’t say,’ Tinker replied.

‘If only we could ask him.’

The silence that consumed them was broken only by the sound of Daniel gulping messily at a slice of cold pizza, muttering an apology as he did so. He picked up a paper napkin to wipe the grease
from his chin.

‘You know, we might be able to,’ he said, still sucking at something stuck between his teeth.

‘Might what?’

‘We might be able to ask him. Perhaps we can transmit a bit of Morse back to him, over the screens.’

‘How?’ Harry demanded.

‘Well, sort of . . . digitally block off a small section of the screen. Nothing too big or conspicuous, the sort of thing that a viewer sees when reception gets screwed up. Nothing that
the attackers would think was unusual, even if they saw it. Look . . .’ He moved to a seat in front of one of the sets of controls. ‘Give me a moment, it’s been a while since
I’ve touched these things, but . . . something like this?’ He punched a button and a black square suddenly appeared over a small section of the scene from the House of Lords. ‘We
just take out the digital signal so the picture in that part of the screen goes to nothing – black. Don’t worry, they can’t see anything in the chamber, this is only for our
pleasure at the moment but . . .’ He manipulated a small joystick and the square began to move around the screen. ‘And we can even change the size.’ He grabbed a control like a
gear stick and the digital square first waxed, then waned, until it had all but disappeared.

‘But how does that help us?’ Harry enquired cautiously.

‘Oh, sorry. Yes. You see, you can cut it in and out. Like this.’ And the producer began tapping a button that made the square disappear, then reappear. ‘Could even change the
shape, if you wanted, make it into a star or snowflake. Whatever you want, actually. But I suspect straight old boring squares is what you need.’

‘You mean, by tapping that button there, it’s like a Morse key. We could make that square talk? And just on those screens in the chamber, not to the outside world?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Danny Boy.’

‘Yes, Mr Jones?’

‘How many parking spaces do you want?’

8.52 a.m. (1.52 p.m. BIOT time).

The ground crew at the airstrip on Diego Garcia had been told to expect a package for onward handling, but the rest of their instructions had convinced them that those issuing
the orders couldn’t as usual tell the difference between their elbows and an afterburner. Strip the plane down, they’d been told, junk all the stores and ordinance except for three bags
– additional fuel pods – under the wings. What the hell for, they had wondered? Even with the extra fuel it couldn’t go anywhere. The F-18F Super Hornet was a twin-engine
fighter-attack aircraft, a forty-million-dollar bundle of the most sophisticated fly-by-wire avionics that the US Navy possessed. It had a normal combat radius of 150 nautical miles; no way was it
a delivery wagon.

They’d been given less than an hour to work on the plane. All they knew was that a package was to be strapped into the rear cockpit seat. Perhaps the base commander’s Martinis needed
a good shaking. They were astonished when they realised that the package was a passenger, and doubly so when that passenger turned out to be Daud Gul. ‘Gonna shove him out at thirty thousand
feet,’ the armourer suggested. ‘Turn her over and just flip the lid.’

For a while, Daud Gul thought much the same. ‘It is one of their angels of death,’ he whispered to himself. They dressed him. A flight suit, gloves, leather boots, ear plugs, a pair
of over-trousers they called a G-suit. He felt extraordinarily uncomfortable, claustrophobic, far more so than in any cell he had ever known, as though they were binding him in, making him totally
defenceless. They were talking to him, giving him instructions about barf bags and piddle packs and what to do if he had to eject. They were losing him, he didn’t understand all their jargon.
‘Don’t matter a damn in any case,’ drawled one, ‘if he ejects he’ll probably break his friggin’ neck.’ Then the helmet, as though they wanted to crush his
skull. He felt sick. The smell of jet fuel and exhaust fumes was overwhelming. He had to struggle not to vomit.

They strapped him in. For a moment he considered refusing, but if he was going to die he wanted to show no fear. There were voices in his head, instructing him not to touch anything, and strange
dancing screens in front of him with switches and flickering lights. A second plane stood alongside them on the runway, its pilot signalling with his thumb; suddenly the engines began to roar and
someone was shouting in his ear: ‘Macko flight, you are cleared for take-off. Climb pilot’s discretion, runway heading, to flight level three-one-zero, contact departure when
airborne.’ Without warning and from nowhere, a terrifying roar attacked Daud Gul and his head was thrown back into his seat. Out of the corner of an alarmed eye he saw the runway moving
beneath them at an extraordinary rate, and ever faster.

Then he was flying.

9.01 a.m.

The COBRA suite contained one of the most sophisticated communications systems in the world, intended for every type of emergency. Patching through to Harry in the BBC’s
OB unit was not even a challenge.

‘Harry, what’s going on? You said twenty minutes.’ Tibbetts didn’t attempt to hide his impatience.

‘Got a little caught up, Mike, but we may be on to something very hot. Archie Wakefield’s been trying to communicate with us.’

‘To say what?’

‘That he can deal with the bomb.’

Harry could hear the stirrings of excitement at the other end.

‘How, for God’s sake?’

‘Don’t know yet. We’re just trying to communicate back with him, flashing a message in Morse code through the screen.’

‘But won’t that alert the terrorists?’

‘Don’t think so. It’ll look like nothing more than a pretty poor picture, a bit of atmospheric interference or something.’

‘You know what the terrorists have said about us screwing around with the picture.’

‘I remember. But I don’t think that’s our biggest problem.’

‘Then what is?’

‘Archie isn’t looking at the bloody screen.’

‘What do you propose to do?’

‘Give him another ten minutes.’

But ten minutes creaked by, with Harry hovering impatiently over Tinker’s shoulder. Then they waited another five, and still Archie Wakefield hadn’t seen.

9.16 a.m.

Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, it’s not enough. No amount of willpower could draw Archie’s attention to the screen.

‘I don’t think this is going to work,’ Daniel muttered, crystallising the thoughts of everyone in the OB unit.

‘Then make it work, Danny!’ Harry snapped. ‘Find some way of attracting his attention. Don’t sit on your arse wringing your hands in despair!’ It took him a few
deep breaths before he had calmed. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered. ‘It’s just that I don’t understand what you’re doing. This is your kingdom and I can’t help. It
makes me edgy.’

‘Think nothing of it,’ Danny replied. ‘You want to hear my editor.’

Harry placed his hand in gratitude on Danny’s shoulder. ‘I’ll owe you a drink after this.’

‘Grand. And since I can leave my car in the car park it’ll be a very large one.’

‘So, my friend – find me a solution.’

‘I suppose we could take the whole picture out. You know, massive interference. Make sure everyone sees it and pray that Archie’s the only one who understands Morse.’

Before Harry had a chance even to consider the proposition, the speaker crackled into life. ‘Harry, speak to me. What’s happening?’ Tibbetts demanded. He, too, was growing
edgy.

Harry hesitated only for a second. ‘We’re going to try to attract his attention by taking out the whole picture. Just for a moment.’

Several voices began talking across each other in COBRA, their words tangling, but all joined in warning.

‘What if the terrorists understand it?’ a tired voice broke in. ‘Isn’t that a huge risk?’

‘I think we own the risk business right now,’ Harry replied.

More voices broke across each other. ‘Do nothing, Harry,’ Tibbetts instructed. ‘We’re going to have to consider this very carefully.’