The Ocean Dove

by Carlos Luxul

‘Are you really going to resign?’

  ‘I will certainly press my case. But you’ll need help, which I owe you. Perhaps you’ll find something for me, as a consultant, pro bono of course. Free of charge – in the public good,’ he added, anticipating the question.

  They passed through Downing Street’s gates into Whitehall. Ahead of them was the Cenotaph memorial. LaSalle stopped and looked up, whispering the words carved in the stone: ‘The Glorious Dead.’

  He turned to Dan. ‘We have no idea what we are up against. It means years – and this,’ he said, his foot flicking a shard of glass to the gutter, ‘this is merely the beginning. Don’t doubt yourself, just trust your instincts. So, are you ready?’

  ‘I am.’

  Epilogue

  Sunday, 19 June

  Printed in Manchester

  The Sunday Times

  Matt Ritchie, Features Editor.

  Zoe Zalewski, Home Affairs.

  David Rice, Charles Ankomah, Lucy Parsons.

  Additional material: Reuters, AP, AFP, our correspondents.

  Eight days have passed since a terrorist ship sailed into the Thames and wreaked devastation in the United Kingdom’s capital city, eight days that have revealed the scale of horror and devastation.

  As world leaders prepare for a service of remembrance taking place in London next Sunday, tributes continue to flood in from across the globe to those that lost their lives. An internet book of condolence has been signed by over one hundred million amid an outpouring of grief and outrage, the numbers rising daily as the site struggles to cope with unprecedented traffic.

  The death toll continues to rise as legions of survivors battle their injuries. At the time of going to press officials have revealed that the number of dead now stands at 41,523 with a further 236,752 recorded as injured. As time passes rescue workers are acknowledging there is little hope of finding further survivors among collapsed buildings.

  The Sunday Times and its sister newspaper, The Times, have agreed not to individually report the names and identities of those who have died. We will instead publish a separate supplement to be updated each weekend over the next month, where we will pay our own particular tributes to the men, women and children who lost their lives so brutally.

  In this vibrant and diverse city that is so often held as a global beacon of style, creativity and achievement, there is no corner of the community that has not lost leading figures, from politics to industry, public service to the arts, fashion to academia, across science and the media and music and sport. In the Queen’s address to the nation last Saturday, she spoke of ‘The cloud that has descended of such darkness that it threatens to shut out the light forever,’ before defiantly stating that ‘This will never be.’

  The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh were in Windsor at the time of the attack. They swiftly returned to London, surveying the damage to Buckingham Palace and comforting staff before touring the streets in the afternoon. All official engagements were cancelled as the royal family worked tirelessly during the week, visiting stricken areas and lifting morale with their presence. A doctor in Hyde Park’s field hospital choked back tears as he told our staff reporter how the Queen held the hand of a critically injured man who was not expected to last the night, but by morning was showing positive signs of recovery. ‘It was just her,’ he said, ‘just by being there.’ And medical staff have been quick to point out that the Duchess of Cambridge has become a more or less permanent presence in the children’s wards.

  Fire across the city is now under control and buildings have been made safe from immediate collapse. Access to many areas has reopened while the centres of the City financial district and Canary Wharf remain restricted to structural and demolition teams. Gas, electricity and telephone supplies have been reconnected. The underground is now providing a full service and buses are running again with amendments to a large number of routes. Main-line stations are operating with the exception of Charing Cross; the Hungerford Railway Bridge is still out of commission and Tower, Blackfriars and Westminster Bridges remain closed to vehicles but are open to pedestrian traffic.

  Hospitals damaged in the shelling have reopened and Hyde Park, Green Park and Battersea Park are closed to the public amid a sea of tents – field hospitals on an unprecedented scale, with operating theatres, casualty and recovery wings, staffed by military and volunteer staff, many of whom have travelled from across the nation and from around the world. One volunteer is Katje Rasmussen, a twenty-seven-year-old nurse from Aarhus in Denmark. ‘I was to go on two weeks’ holiday on the Saturday, so I came here. What else could I do?’ she said, echoing the stories of so many around her.

  Many roads and individual lanes have been prioritised for relief traffic and there are numerous diversions around restricted areas and unstable buildings. But the city is moving and working again, with commuters and workers taking to walking and cycling and many reporting they are able to get to and from work without difficulty.

  In Essex, Stansted airport is closed to passenger and commercial cargo flights and will remain so for an indefinite period as it adjusts to its role as a primary relief centre. Major airlines have diverted to Heathrow, Gatwick, Luton and Birmingham and have assured customers that all pre-booked tickets will be honoured. Across London to the west, RAF Northolt has similarly been adapted to a relief role, as have the seaports of Tilbury and the Isle of Grain where large areas have been set aside for the upcoming reconstruction.

  At 3.30 p.m. on Friday, 10 June, when the Prime Minister declared martial law over central areas of the capital, she also accepted the White House’s offer of American troops to be deployed under British officers. A US government spokesman confirmed on Friday that up to twenty thousand servicemen and women are now on active service across the capital as property is protected, order restored and people begin to go about their daily business once again.

  In the field hospitals and the streets, American voices are heard everywhere, part of the massive aid project immediately sanctioned by the President in Washington. ‘Just clear your airports,’ he was reported to have said. ‘I’m sending everything you need, everything I’ve got.’

  From around the world offers of help continue to pour in at such an overwhelming rate that officials have been swamped and forced to delay acceptance, while global airports report record traffic as expats and relatives rush to return for funerals, to care for the injured and to offer their help. Consular staff in British delegations are working flat out to process applications and fast-track key workers with essential skills. Thousands of other volunteers are arriving daily by plane, by ferry and the Channel Tunnel or by their own ships, like the armada that left the Netherlands. Hundreds of Dutch marine engineering and construction workers loaded specialist machinery and supplies on ships and barges and sailed from Rotterdam last Saturday. ‘The North Sea oil business is dead and I’ve got men sitting at home and equipment doing nothing on my yard,’ said Wouter Den Polder, fifty-two, boss of a specialist offshore contractor. ‘No one asked if they were going to get paid,’ he added. His company is just one of the many Dutch specialists who took it upon themselves to come, while their fuel bills were waived by Royal Dutch Shell who filled their vessels shortly before departure.

  Engineering staff at the Thames Barrier said they are working round the clock in a race to repair the barrage before a high tide on Thursday that is threatening to swamp large tracts of the city.

  On Monday the Prime Minister moved swiftly to announce a new cabinet position – Minister for Capital Rehabilitation. The post has gone to Geoff Bates, a rising backbench MP who was a construction engineer and project director in the private sector before entering politics. The role carries wide-ranging executive powers across the entire spectrum of government and public service as the nation seeks to deal with the aftermath of the atrocity. It has set up operations in Victoria and formed a steering committee across the military, police and emergency services, NHS and key public services and private contr
actors.

  This is a government without a home, temporarily housed in London’s Olympia exhibition halls after the Palace of Westminster, parts of Downing Street and various Whitehall buildings were severely damaged. The spaces have been partitioned and communications installed, with a debating chamber, executive meeting rooms and a press facility. Early indications suggest it is working efficiently and internally it is still intentionally referred to as ‘Westminster’.

  In Westminster and throughout the capital, work has continued non-stop since noon on Friday the 10th. Emergency workers have toiled around the clock to restore services, shore up buildings, clear rubble and deal with unexploded shells. All leave across the public sector has been cancelled, with the numbers boosted by retired workers volunteering their services.

  It has been the same in the private sector, where there is a mood of quiet determination to bring normality back to the city. Shops struggled to open on Saturday the 11th, but some did, with evident pride, and many more were doing business again on Monday. It was the same in offices, as employers reported staff arriving early for work, often when there was no office to go to. And due to safety concerns many were unable to get close to their buildings. In the City and Canary Wharf it was particularly painful for those who had survived. One who did make it in, only to find his building cordoned off, was Lee Wickens, twenty-three, a money broker from Ilford. ‘They sent me out to the sandwich bar a minute before it all happened,’ he said, looking nervously across Canada Square. A few metres from him a senior manager was standing by a placard with his company’s name and logo, trying to take a roll call and trying to console, in a scene repeated across the open space, where thousands of people were gathered in huddles around makeshift signs.

  It was a typical Friday in June, a day bathed in warm sunshine as people went about their daily business, at work, with friends and with family, making plans for the weekend. The offices and shops were full, the windows open or the air conditioning working overtime, and the prospect of an early or extended lunch break must have been appealing. At noon some had left already, lingering for a breath of fresh air or hurrying to meet friends or business associates.

  And at noon the terrorist ship opened fire. At first it concentrated on targets close to where it had moored at the former Moritz Chemical Company’s south bank wharf, located a mile upriver from the Thames Barrier. Fire was directed at BP’s Westley Farm fuel depot, the 02 Dome, Excel Centre and London City Airport. Then it turned to Canary Wharf and its financial centre before switching to downriver targets, Tate & Lyle’s Silvertown sugar works, military barracks in Woolwich, the Purfleet commercial port, a Silvertown electricity substation and the Thames Barrier.

  At 12.07 it turned again, this time concentrating fire on the City business district before extending across London, up to Regent’s Park and Lord’s cricket ground, the main-line stations of King’s Cross, St Pancras and Euston, sweeping west up Fleet Street, through Covent Garden, Soho, Piccadilly, Mayfair, Kensington and Chelsea and along the south bank from Tower Bridge to Lambeth. And this was just the first wave, which ended at 12.12, the first of three.

  From information The Sunday Times has been able to piece together, it is clear that targets were assiduously researched and no single facet of London’s life, commerce or culture was overlooked or spared. In the financial centres of the City and Canary Wharf, most of the major banks have been critically wounded, along with the Bank of England and the FCA regulatory body. Both Lloyd’s and the Stock Exchange expect to be closed for a minimum of three months. Across the visual media, the BBC, ITN, ITV, Sky, Fox and CNN were all hit during the bombardment, with the comprehensive assault continuing in the written media, where The Sunday Times, The Times, The Sun, Financial Times, Daily Mirror, The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph were all hit, along with the commercial radio hub centred around Leicester Square.

  Places of worship across the Christian and Jewish faiths were singled out. Five Central London synagogues were attacked, including the Westminster and West London synagogues and the UK’s oldest located on Bevis Marks in the City financial district. Westminster Abbey, St Paul’s, and all the historic Hawksmoor churches were hit with varying degrees of damage.

  Public bodies and public services were targeted, with both the Royal Courts of Justice and Lincoln’s Inn suffering damage, along with every London hospital within the guns’ infernal range. City Hall was damaged so severely that engineers have closed it completely and hopes are fading that the building will ever be reopened. The Palace of Westminster suffered serious damage, which has caused both houses to seek temporary homes elsewhere, with the House of Commons relocating to Olympia and the House of Lords to the Earl’s Court exhibition centre.

  London’s infrastructure, transport network and essential services and utilities were all separately picked out in the bombardment along with close to fifty city centre petrol stations, from where fire spread rapidly and was a severe challenge to the already stretched emergency services. All the city centre river bridges were damaged, together with overpasses on major traffic routes, the Central London traffic-light control centre, and main-line stations with their associated maintenance depots and control rooms. Essential gas and electricity supplies were severely disrupted with damage reported to distribution facilities, pipelines, and phone masts and relay centres in the telecoms sector. Engineers struggled initially to shut off supply and subsequently to reopen it safely, but at the time of going to press all the leading utility companies are reporting a full resumption of service. Reports suggest that ambulance depots and police and fire stations were priority targets during the initial phases of the onslaught, as part of the terrorists’ bid to hamper their response and effectiveness.

  Specialist areas of the police and security services received concentrated attacks, to New Scotland Yard, Special Branch and the Counter Terrorism Command – or SO15. On the south bank of the Thames, MI6 and its sister security service, MI5, on the opposite bank a few hundred metres from Westminster, both came under sustained attack. More generalised military units, including the MOD in Whitehall and Central London barracks for the many Guards’ regiments, also came under concentrated fire.

  Completing the already harrowing circle and further evidencing the clear strategy of the terrorists to wound mind, body and soul, London’s great cultural icons fell victim to the onslaught. The Tower of London, the Royal Opera House and Sadler’s Wells, the Royal Albert Hall, the Globe Theatre, the Royal Festival and Queen Elizabeth Halls, the great galleries of the Tate Modern, the National Gallery and National Portrait Gallery, the Royal Academy and Courtauld, together with the great museums of Science and Natural History, the British Museum, the Planetarium and Victoria and Albert, all suffered structural damage and untold loss to precious works of art, relics and artefacts.

  The pattern was repeated across the sporting fields: at Lord’s Cricket Ground and the Oval; the Crystal Palace National Sports Centre; at Chelsea Football Club’s Stamford Bridge and West Ham’s London Stadium; and at London’s visible symbols: the Statue of Eros and the Albert Memorial; the Millennium Wheel, still partially submerged in the Thames; Nelson’s Column, still stretched out across the pavements of Trafalgar Square; the Monument – to the Great Fire – toppled into neighbouring buildings and blocking Fish Street Hill in London’s EC3 district.

  And everywhere the shells fell, there were people. They were ordinary Londoners and they were visitors, our guests. They were also politicians and public servants, Nobel Prize winners, best-selling authors, Premier League footballers, Oscar winners, platinum-selling musicians, international cricketers, television and radio presenters, prima ballerinas, virtuoso instrumentalists, Bafta winners, industry leaders, Grand-Prix drivers, Pulitzer Prize winners, diplomats, Olympic medallists, fashion designers, film directors, artists and poets.

  From eye witness accounts, CCTV footage and mobile phone videos, it is clear that as the shelling advanced across London it paused and concentrated its
wrath on specific targets. As it marched up Fleet Street and the Strand, shells dropped singly before twenty-five were delivered with pinpoint accuracy to Goldman Sachs’ headquarters, ten to St Bride’s church and twenty-five to the Savoy Hotel. Elsewhere, the pattern was repeated, the shelling evenly spaced in generalised areas and heavily concentrated on preselected targets, all of which were chosen with chilling precision. In the financial districts the leading banks and trading institutions were singled out. The American, Israeli and French embassies suffered varying levels of damage, with the US facility in Grosvenor Square receiving the heaviest onslaught. The French residential community in South Kensington appears to have been a priority target, with comprehensive damage to its streets, shops and services. The Jewish residential community, concentrated mainly in more northerly regions of the city, escaped serious attack as a result of what appears to be no more than the consequence of being out of range of the guns, though synagogues within range were targeted along with the diamond and jewel trading centre of Hatton Garden. Flagship stores – Harrods, Harvey Nichols, Fortnum and Mason, Liberty, Selfridges and couture centres in South Molton Street, Knightsbridge and Sloane Street, were similarly picked out.

  In their analysis of the patterns, leading sociologists have identified the specific levels of research that were employed in the selection of targets. ‘It’s profoundly chilling to think how they studied us, learned our habits and knew our whereabouts,’ said Dame Mary Drummond, Director of Sociology at the London School of Economics. ‘Not only did they target our economy, our culture and our national psyche, they knew in precise detail where our leading figures might be, in the hotels favoured by celebrities, restaurants like the Ivy, the arts and media clubs – Soho House and The Groucho Club and the establishment clubs of Pall Mall.’ And as another leading commentator added, ‘It is one thing to know the financial centres of Canary Wharf and the City, but is something else again to pick out individual companies and office buildings of the hedge fund and investment community clustered around Berkeley Square.’