The Leader

by Guy Walters

  ‘No, sir, I’m afraid not.’ The Leader paused.

  ‘Well, Ousby, there is something you can do that will make me slightly happier with you.’

  ‘Anything.’

  ‘You can get the fucking French to arrest Armstrong’s brat and throw him in the Channel.’

  Ousby didn’t flinch. He had been expecting this conversation.

  ‘And when would you like this to happen, sir?’

  ‘When do you bloody think? In a month? Twenty years? Goddammit, I want it done now!’

  ‘Very well, sir. I shall issue the order immediately.’

  The line went dead. Ousby held the receiver away from his ear, looked at it, then placed it gently back on the cradle.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said to those in the room, ‘would you mind leaving for a moment? I need to make a confidential phone call. You can leave your things in here – I’m not going to be more than a minute.’

  The men stood up and left. Ousby dialled the number as soon as the last one out had closed the door.

  * * *

  London had known more enthusiastic Coronation mornings. For George V’s Coronation, thousands had camped out along the procession route the night before, but this time there were no more than a few hundred. As with the parade following the signing of the Treaty of London back in June, there was a vastly complex ticketing system in place, which ensured that there would be a minimum attendance of at least 200,000.

  For the past week, The Blackshirt and Action had carried photographs of the royal couple on their front pages, which readers were cordially invited to stick in their downstairs windows. Anybody doing so would be eligible to win one of the one hundred signed photographs of the King and the Leader – ‘An heirloom of the future too good to miss!’ said The Blackshirt. However, the bait was not taken, and soon Blackshirts could be found knocking on doors to ‘encourage’ people to put the pages up. One wag put the picture up all right, but in a window that faced his back yard. News of that spread quickly, and soon hundreds of thousands of houses in Britain had the picture up in the kitchen, or the privy – any window, so long as it did not face the street.

  That morning’s papers were bumper issues, and in amongst the articles concerning the happy event – complete with a full biography of the Queen in which it was revealed how the alcoholic Mr Simpson had beaten poor Wallis – more observant readers noticed a short paragraph that told of ‘severe and inclement’ weather that had unfortunately prevented both Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini from flying over for the occasion. The sarcastic among them observed that the blue sky this morning was obviously a mistake, although such a comment was not to be heard expressed in public.

  However, there were many who genuinely wanted to see the procession. Some wished to witness the pomp; others were simply curious. The keenest were of course the Party members, those who agreed wholeheartedly with the Leader’s recent broadcast on the SBC declaring that the Coronation was not just the crowning of King Edward VIII, but the crowning of fascism – its coming of age.

  It was in the ranks of these people that Armstrong and Lucy found themselves as they walked briskly along the Victoria Embankment on their way to the Abbey. Both were sporting fascist armbands, as well as flags that showed a picture of Edward and Wallis set in a Union Jack combined with the ubiquitous lightning flash. Such flags were hanging from every flagpole they passed, Armstrong noticed. The Union Jack had been violated, he thought. Indeed, was it even possible now to get hold of a Union Jack without the lightning flash?

  Armstrong and Lucy reached Parliament Square just before ten o’clock. As they had got closer, the streets had become increasingly congested, and they had to jostle their way through to a position in which they could see the west door of the Abbey. The square was filled with the chatter of spectators, as well as the noise of the military bands that were parading along Whitehall. Armstrong occasionally caught glimpses of soldiers from every part of the Empire, men of different races and creeds, all of whom were now being dragooned into fighting not just for the Empire, but also for fascism.

  For a few minutes, he and Lucy stood in silence, taking in the atmosphere. The air was clear and fine, making him wonder how many would have ventured out if it had been raining – no doubt the regime had made a contingency plan in such an event. One thing that became slowly apparent was the general lack of excitement amongst the crowd. Despite the hubbub and the flags and the smell of roasting chestnuts, there was something missing. Of all the crowds Armstrong had known, this one was different. What was it? It was soulless, he thought – it had no core, no kernel. People were here because they had to be here, not because they wanted to be. It was a duty, a chore, an order. The crowd lacked any senses of unity or purpose, and as a result it was not cohesive. There were no exchanges, no connections being made between strangers. It was symptomatic, thought Armstrong. This was what Britain had become under Mosley – no longer a society, but an assemblage of hundreds of thousands of little groups, none of whom trusted any of the others. If there was any commonality, it was that mutual feeling of mistrust. Armstrong looked at the clock on the Abbey – five past ten. In just over an hour, the British people would be heading back towards a society in which they could talk openly to each other.

  At first he thought it was a jostle, just the crowd surging forward, but within a second he knew exactly what was happening. His wrists were being firmly held, and then he felt the unmistakable cold, tight metal grip of handcuffs, something he hadn’t experienced since his arrest on Vauxhall Bridge Road. A voice spoke in his ear.

  ‘You’re coming with us, Captain Armstrong.’

  He turned to face Lucy, only to see that she was being similarly treated.

  ‘Get off me!’ she was yelling. ‘Get off!’

  ‘Shut up, bitch!’ barked a man in an overcoat and snap-brim hat. Secret Police, thought Armstrong, Ousby’s men.

  Armstrong didn’t speak as he was bundled and kicked through the curious crowd into the back of a windowless van. Things, he thought, were going according to plan.

  The ride was shorter than expected – Armstrong estimated that it took about five minutes. As the van came to a halt, he spoke.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said to Lucy.

  ‘Don’t worry!’ she screamed in the darkness. ‘Don’t worry! How can you say that?’

  ‘Be patient,’ said Armstrong. ‘This is just what I expected.’

  ‘What . . . what did you expect?’

  ‘This,’ said Armstrong. ‘Just this.’

  Their conversation was interrupted by the van door being opened.

  ‘Out.’

  The voice was neither threatening nor severe, but bland, emotionless. Armstrong and Lucy got awkwardly to their feet and stepped out of the van. They were in a small underground car park. Armstrong noticed about a dozen black Wolseleys and Vauxhalls – the favoured cars of the secret police.

  ‘This way.’

  With two secret policemen ahead of them, and at least six behind, Armstrong and Lucy were frogmarched over to a small wooden door in the corner of the car park.

  ‘Downstairs.’

  Armstrong didn’t know why, but he had expected they would be going up, to an office, perhaps to meet Ousby himself. The staircase was made from rough concrete and it descended about the depth of two storeys. Where were they going? To some torture chamber?

  They reached a long concrete corridor. It was almost dark and Armstrong could only see about twenty feet ahead. The air was stale and dank – it reeked of cigarette smoke and diesel fumes.

  ‘In here.’

  They were shoved through an open door to their right, into a small room in which there was a wooden table. A figure sat on a basic chair behind the table, but Armstrong could not see his face because a low-hanging light-bulb obscured it. There was nothing else in the room, apart from a door to the left.

  ‘Good morning, Captain Armstrong, and to you too, Miss Craven.’

  The door slammed beh
ind them. Armstrong recognised the voice. He had heard it back in the Tower of London – it was that of Sir Roger Ousby. Neither Armstrong nor Lucy replied. Ousby stood up, walked round the table, and stopped in front of Armstrong, looking down at him from his vast height.

  ‘I’m sorry to have brought you in so late in the day,’ he said. ‘I must have got your hopes up. I thought it best that the resistance beavered away merrily while I sat and watched.’

  Armstrong couldn’t resist a question.

  ‘And how were you watching us?’

  Ousby’s eyes crinkled in what passed for a smile.

  ‘I’ll show you,’ he said.

  He turned on his heel and walked over to the door to the left. He opened it wide and said, ‘I think he wants to see you now.’

  ‘At last!’ came a voice.

  A few seconds later, a figure entered the room.

  ‘Hello, old chap!’

  ‘Hello, Alec,’ Armstrong replied, his tone resolutely phlegmatic. ‘Or should I call you Dog?’

  * * *

  It was quarter past ten, and the Leader and his wife would leave Downing Street in precisely thirty-five minutes, arriving at the Abbey at five minutes before eleven. The Leader was looking at himself in a full-length mirror in the dressing room whilst a valet brushed down the back of his immaculate uniform, complete with ceremonial sword.

  ‘You know, my darling,’ said the Leader, addressing the reflection of Diana on the other side of the room, ‘today is going to be a triumph.’

  ‘I know, dear,’ his wife replied. ‘I suspect it will be a day to remember.’

  Diana looked a vision, the Leader thought. She was wearing a long eau-de-Nil dress in raw silk, a material that tightly hugged her figure, although not so tightly as to be indecent. Over it she wore a short jacket in the same material, on to which her personal dressmaker was fastening a brooch studded with jewels that formed the shape of the Party’s lightning flash.

  ‘That’s new,’ said the Leader. ‘Where did you get that not so little bauble?’

  ‘His Majesty gave it me.’

  The Leader walked over to examine it.

  ‘I like it very much,’ he said. ‘I always knew His Majesty to be a man of taste, but he has excelled himself here. I confess that I am a little jealous.’

  Diana smiled coquettishly.

  ‘You’re not the only one with admirers,’ she said.

  For a second his face darkened, and then his mouth formed into a brilliantly white smile that elongated his pencil-thin moustache.

  * * *

  ‘I wish I could say this was a surprise,’ said Armstrong, ‘but I’m afraid I’ve known for quite some time what you’ve been up to.’

  Armstrong had never seen an expression change so quickly, from that of smug dealer of shock to one of utter astonishment. Alec did his best to maintain an air of togetherness, but it was apparent to both Armstrong and Lucy that it was a struggle. For his part, Sir Roger Ousby’s normally blank features were registering what for him constituted a severe display of bewilderment.

  ‘Is that so?’ asked Alec eventually. ‘May I ask how you came to know?’

  Armstrong shrugged as if it was a trifle.

  ‘Well, it was the letter, the letter that Ted was supposed to have sent us when we were in the Tower of London. He didn’t write it – you did.’

  Alec folded his arms.

  ‘Carry on,’ he said.

  ‘I knew that our escape was too easy,’ said Armstrong, ‘and I knew that it required help on the inside. Of course we both knew that, although you encouraged me to think that it was Ted in cahoots with good Sir Roger here rather than yourself, and it nearly worked – I nearly killed the wrong man. Ted told me that he had written no such letter, and that’s when I knew that it had to be you, Alec.’

  ‘You mean Frost is alive?’

  ‘Quite so,’ said Armstrong. ‘Prospering, in fact.’

  ‘Where is he?’ snapped Ousby.

  ‘I’ll come to that, Sir Roger,’ said Armstrong. ‘In the meantime I think it’s best that you listen.’

  Ousby stepped up to Armstrong and looked him in the eye. Armstrong could detect some uncertainty in that gaze, an uncertainty that he had to take advantage of.

  ‘Especially,’ he continued, ‘as your friend Otto – sorry, I believe you call him Stefan – is being held by my friend General Galwey.’

  Armstrong watched as Ousby’s eyes scanned his face, desperately seeking some kind of uncertainty in his captive.

  ‘That’s right, Top Hat,’ said Armstrong. ‘It all went wrong for you when Krivitsky defected, didn’t it? But what made matters even worse was your bad luck that Lucy ran into Henry Allen, who told us what was going on. And not only that, it must have been a real pain to discover that one of your men had mistakenly arrested me at Claridge’s. In fact, it was something that nearly happened again, after Alec and I met your stooge Lord Wilson. Alec kept referring to the police as idiots, which I initially found surprising considering that chasing fugitives is their job. Of course, he was quite right, the police were being idiotic in chasing those you were allowing to run free. Alec was calling them idiots because they were about to repeat the same mistake – that of arresting me.

  ‘Still, you certainly took advantage of my arrest. Locking me up in the Tower was an ideal opportunity to reinsert Alec. I must say, Alec, did you really allow them to beat you up in order to convince me? That was very impressive – I might even say brave.’

  ‘Shut up!’ Alec shouted. ‘Just shut up!’

  ‘No, Alec, I won’t shut up. I don’t think you’ve met this Otto creature, but the other night Lucy and I found him most communicative, especially with his trousers down and my gun pointing at his head. It was the good Mr Frost and his journalist’s nose that sniffed him out. Otto told us all about your recruitment in the twenties, how you turned Communist after the war. Apparently there are lots more like you from Cambridge, though I think Otto was boasting a little bit. And of course you, Sir Roger – well, you’re his real star pupil, aren’t you? You’ve been biding your time all these years, and now look where you are! The chief of the secret police and an agent for the Russians no less! Quite an achievement – I expect Stalin has given you a medal, ready for you to pick up from the Kremlin. The bad news, of course, is that it’s over for the both of you.’

  ‘Really?’ said Ousby. ‘There are two small details that you’re overlooking. One, you’re the man in handcuffs, not me, and two, your brave army officers will soon be arrested by members of my police force. Your bomb will go off all right, and Mosley will be killed, but I’m afraid that it’s me who will seize power, not you and the worthy General Galwey.’

  Armstrong smiled.

  ‘Goddammit!’ shouted Alec. ‘I don’t see what’s so bloody funny!’

  ‘What’s the time?’ Armstrong asked. ‘I’m afraid my hands are . . .’

  Alec snatched a look at his watch.

  ‘Half past ten – why?’

  ‘Well, right about now, Galwey’s men are seizing nearly every police station – including all your secret police HQs, Sir Roger – as well as every Blackshirt office and radio station in the country.’

  ‘That’s not possible!’ yelled Alec. ‘I was there when you wrote those final orders. Don’t believe him, Sir Roger, it’s all a bluff.’

  ‘I’m afraid you weren’t there,’ said Armstrong. ‘The orders I wrote out in front of you were merely for your benefit. As soon as you left, I simply brought everything forward.’

  Before either Alec or Ousby could reply, there was a loud knocking on the door.

  ‘Yes!’ Ousby shouted.

  A breathless secret policeman burst into the room.

  ‘Sir! There are soldiers everywhere outside! They’re demanding that we give ourselves up! They say that if we don’t they’ll storm the building in two minutes. What shall we do, sir?’

  Ousby managed a weak smile before waving the man away.

&nb
sp; ‘Sir?’

  ‘Get out!’ Ousby yelled.

  There was a brief silence, which Armstrong was tempted to break. But there was no point – he knew that Ousby could work things out for himself. Alec had turned pale, his face reflecting the realisation that he had lost, and had done so comprehensively.

  ‘So it’s all true,’ Ousby said quietly. ‘Well done, very well done.’

  Armstrong didn’t reply.

  ‘You . . . you bastard,’ said Alec.

  Once more, Armstrong held his tongue.

  More knocking on the door.

  ‘Sir! They’re saying that we’ve only got one more minute!’

  Ousby ignored the knocking, and instead pulled open a drawer and extracted a large revolver.

  ‘Killing us won’t achieve anything,’ Armstrong said.

  ‘I know that,’ said Ousby.

  He calmly checked the chamber and snapped it back into place, then cocked the revolver with a series of clicks that filled the room.

  ‘Captain Scott?’ said Ousby.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m much obliged to you. At least we can say that we did our best.’

  ‘But Sir Roger, we can still—’

  Alec’s words were cut short by the fact that Ousby was aiming the revolver straight at his chest. Without another word, he fired. The bullet went through Alec’s heart, out through his back and buried itself in the wall behind him. The look of surprise remained on his face as he fell to the floor.

  Before Armstrong and Lucy had fully appreciated what had happened, Ousby had placed the smoking muzzle of the revolver in his own mouth and pulled the trigger.

  * * *

  The King had required two large whiskies to steady his nerves. The Queen had chastised him for being so weak, although naturally she would not admit to her own imbibing of copious amounts of vodka just after ten o’clock.

  ‘David,’ she said, ‘you shouldn’t drink so much. Can’t you just get through one day without your darn Scotch?’

  ‘I’m sorry, dear,’ the King replied, ‘but it’s not exactly a normal day, is it?’

  ‘Huh!’

  It was quarter to eleven, and the royal couple were about to depart. The golden state carriage was waiting for them in the courtyard of Buckingham Palace. Valets and footmen were fussing around, adjusting their dress, ensuring that they looked perfect. Their route to the Abbey would take them down the Mall, right on to Horse Guards Parade, and then left on to Birdcage Walk, which led into Parliament Square.