Three Hours : A Novel (2020)

by Lupton, Rosamund

  ‘You know not whether it was his wisdom or his fear,’ Ross says and the audience are glued to the stage now, as if it really matters to them, as if a play can make any difference at all.

  ‘Wisdom? To leave his wife, to leave his babes,’ Lady Macduff says. ‘His mansion, and his titles in a place from whence himself does fly?’

  Daphne goes towards the stage. ‘Enough now,’ she says, but Caitlin as Lady Macduff ignores her.

  ‘He loves us not,

  He wants the natural touch, for the poor wren,

  The most diminutive of birds, will fight

  Her young ones in her nest, against the owl.

  All is the fear, and nothing is the love.’

  ‘Please,’ Daphne says, going to Caitlin, and putting her arm around her. ‘Enough.’

  19.

  12.11 p.m.

  A live feed from a police surveillance UAV shows the terrorists’ drone above the pottery room and the police attack drones moving closer. Another police surveillance UAV gives a wider view. Through the snow, Rose can make out lines of police and counterterrorism specialist firearms officers in their grey uniforms. For the first time, she sees how huge an operation the rescue is.

  ‘We stay back till their drone is down,’ Bronze Commander says. ‘Then move in fast and take him out.’

  A police attack drone moves closer. It shoots out a white net, a spider’s web in the sky that’s barely perceptible in the snow; the net wraps round the terrorists’ drone and brings it plummeting to the ground.

  ‘Move in,’ Bronze Commander says.

  Rose knows that Silver Commander, although off site, is linked into the briefing and will be providing leadership and direction to Bronze Commander.

  The first surveillance UAV shows the grey-uniformed armed counterterrorism officers moving swiftly through the snow towards the pottery room.

  It will take four minutes until they’re close enough to shoot accurately. Nine minutes till he starts firing. There’s enough time, Rose says to herself.

  The snowfall has lessened a little and a second UAV shows Jamie Alton in more detail than Rose has seen before, his converted semi-automatic braced against his right shoulder, hand on the trigger, and then the camera turns to the pottery room and for the first time Rose sees Camille Giraud’s face at the window.

  Do your job.

  Rose stands back at the open doorway, her face frozen by the wind and the snow, separating herself physically and mentally from everyone else. She has to focus on the thing that’s been bothering her, examine it.

  It’s not just the question of why Victor, a narcissistic psychopath, would borrow language from other people less intelligent than himself, but another question that arises from it. What is the link between Patrick Stein, a terrorist who hates Muslims, and Eric Harris, a teenager whose agenda was world infamy? Alone in the cold doorway she sees the link.

  She hurries inside, the knowledge brutal and physical.

  ‘I think they have a bomb,’ Rose says.

  ‘Why? What makes you think that?’ Bronze Commander asks, and he sounds angry but he looks appalled.

  ‘Columbine was a failed bombing, so was Patrick Stein’s plot in Kansas. That’s the connection between Harris and Stein. That’s why Victor’s been using their words; like a clue.’

  ‘Stein and The Crusaders had four trucks piled with ammonium nitrate,’ Stuart says. ‘The FBI uncovered the plot in time.’

  ‘The attackers at Columbine had forty pounds of propane tank bombs, strapped to gasoline cans,’ Rose says. ‘Their home-made bombs didn’t go off because of faulty wiring but they didn’t have a terrorist organization behind them.’

  Because now Rose knows why Victor joined 14 Words: not just to get himself a wingman and access to guns – he wanted to get his hands on a bomb.

  ‘The heavily encrypted transactions that we can’t decipher could well be the acquisition of a bomb or bomb-making materials,’ Lysander says. ‘The level of encryption fits with a paramilitary organization.’

  ‘Deakin and Alton would have been trained in bomb-making by 14 Words,’ Stuart says.

  The small home-made bomb at the beginning was like the rifle shots, a misdirection of the vicious, destructive weapons they actually had; toying with them; a joke even.

  ‘Victor’s sent a text,’ Dannisha says.

  Watch and learn motherfuckers

  A taunt to Eric Harris and to Patrick Stein, Rose thinks. To all of them.

  ‘The bomb is most likely to be in Old School, isn’t it?’ Bronze Commander says, and maybe he’s right. Matthew Marr and Neil Forbright are still there, but everyone else has escaped to the theatre; in a coldly dispassionate numbers game, this isn’t the carnage it would be otherwise.

  ‘Victor Deakin must’ve brought the bomb into Old School with him when he swapped places with Jamie Alton,’ Bronze Commander continues. ‘Or Alton brought it in this morning as well as the gun, left it in an empty room.’

  ‘The Columbine bombers had duffel bags that they carried into the school dining room,’ Rose says. ‘It needed two of them. And they also packed their cars with explosives. The Crusader bombers planned on trucks packed with explosives. It’s bigger than something one man could carry on his own. I think he’s boasting about it being bigger as well as succeeding.’

  She has to get into Victor’s head, predict what he would want, then how he’d accomplish it.

  He’d want to bomb the place that was the most crowded, because he’d want maximum carnage and spectacle. That means he’d choose the place least likely to be evacuated.

  Come on, Rose, think. Do better. This is Victor’s masterstroke, his end game, unleashing hell.

  He’d think of the place that would be safest.

  The safest place in the school is the theatre.

  And Jamie Alton, his pal on the inside, his wingman, is responsible for props.

  ‘It’s in the theatre,’ she says. ‘In a props room. Jamie Alton could have ferried explosives inside for weeks.’

  ‘Tell them to evacuate,’ Bronze Commander says. ‘Tell them to run in all directions. We risk them being shot in the woods, but just get them out.’

  It’s against all rules of hostage evacuation but there are no other choices; again the devil driving.

  Amaal is hurriedly phoning Daphne, Thandie phones Jacintha, George phones Sally-Anne, white-faced and shaking; other officers are phoning Donna and Tonya and the kids, they have all their numbers.

  But nobody answers.

  They try again and again.

  Why’ve they switched their phones off? Because they’re performing and watching a play? Jesus.

  Officers are leaving messages to evacuate, but when will they hear their messages?

  Again and again they try but still nobody answers.

  ‘Victor’s texted,’ Dannisha says.

  Columbine and Kansas – Amateur Hour

  Breaking with all protocol and rules, emergency vehicles are racing along the snowy drive towards the theatre despite the danger and the site not being secured; the devil driving but brave people trying to stop him. Rose cannot bear to look at the faces of her young team; to be responsible for what they may have to live with.

  Police officers are getting out of their cars and jeeps and running towards the theatre to warn them. They’ll be using megaphones but the theatre walls are thick and they are still too far away to be heard.

  Another text from Victor:

  B O O M !

  Live footage from a police surveillance UAV shows the theatre, a sturdy building in the trees. For a few seconds it is peaceful, snow falling on to the trees and the simple cedar-clad building.

  The bomb rips apart the theatre, the percussive force exploding the walls and roof, hurling everything upwards past the treeline into the sky; then a fireball engulfs the whole of the remaining building, flames shooting up, the winter trees alight as the building collapses in on itself.

  Part Three

&nbs
p; * * *

  To be conscious is not to be in time

  But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,

  The moment in the arbour when the rain beat,

  The moment in the draughty church at smokefall

  Be remembered; involved with past and future.

  Only through time time is conquered.

  T. S. Eliot, ‘Burnt Norton’, Four Quartets (1936)

  20.

  12.15 p.m.

  Around Rose people stand in silent paralysis; shocked into stillness. She is no longer thinking or feeling, numbed, so that she is aware only of the plastic smell of the inside of the vehicle, as if they should be driving somewhere, instead of this terrible inert uselessness.

  Bronze Commander comes on screen, his ruddy face ashen.

  ‘We all face this, deal with this, later, we have no time now. No time. There are still children in the pottery room. We have young children in the pottery room. We move in now.’

  A feed from a police UAV shows counterterrorism specialist firearms officers in their grey uniforms closing in through the woods on the pottery room, the black smoke from the burning theatre a quarter of a mile away hazing around them.

  A second police UAV, close to the pottery room, shows Jamie Alton in the same position; converted semi-automatic pointed at the children, finger on the trigger. The UAV’s camera turns towards the pottery-room windows.

  ‘Stop moving!’ Bronze Commander tells the counterterrorism firearms officers.

  Victor Deakin is inside the pottery room.

  He’s looking out of the window, dressed in grey. He must have predicted that CTSFOs would be deployed; so even if he was spotted people would assume he was one of them. But he wasn’t spotted. He left Old School as soon as the children and teachers ran to the theatre, went through the woods and then used the cover of the bomb – the noise and flames and shock, everybody’s eyes turned towards the explosion – to get inside the pottery room.

  Rose is explaining what he did to try to deflect her mind from what she’s seeing, but her body shakes violently with the horror of it. Because what chance do they have to save any of the children now? Two men with guns that fire fifty bullets in three seconds; what chance for the children and their brave, indefatigable teacher?

  ‘There’s something moving,’ Amaal says, looking at the feed from the first police UAV. ‘Look …’

  Through the snow and black smoke from the burning theatre, trees in the woods seem to be moving.

  ‘Jesus, it’s kids with trees …’ Rose says.

  ‘How many?’ Thandie asks.

  ‘Fifty? More? Must be all of them. Must be.’

  * * *

  There’s a long line of them, students and teachers, and another line behind them, and Daphne feels tremendously, wonderfully proud of them all.

  Whose idea was it? Daphne can’t remember. It feels like it was everyone’s idea, or at least when whoever it was suggested it everybody had grabbed hold of the idea and made it their own. They’d gone backstage and taken the saplings that were Birnam Wood. And then they’d left the theatre, holding their trees in front of them, walking through the snow to try to help the children in the pottery room. A minute later, a huge explosion behind them and they’d carried on walking, their ears ringing, the force of the blast rippling the trees; black smoke billowing around them, stinging their eyes and throats.

  She tries to resist quoting from Shakespeare, that really wouldn’t be helpful right now, Daphne. The last thing Frank needs, walking next to her, is a dose of Shakespeare at this point. Luisa is the other side of him and next to her is Benny and then Zac, and on the line goes, child after child; Tobias at the back, headphones on, marching too. She thinks about it though, the soldiers marching at the end of Macbeth, camouflaged with branches, Birnam Wood marching to Dunsinane Hill: good triumphing over evil. And really, is there any better image of goodness and courage than kids carrying saplings against bullets?

  * * *

  Up until a few minutes ago the children in the pottery room hadn’t questioned Camille’s game of house because for seven-year-olds playing is totally natural, pretending interchangeable with reality.

  But then a man with a gun came in.

  He is sitting, lolling almost, on one of the tables, their roof, and underneath Camille can hear them crying and whimpering and she’s livid with an anger she’s never felt before, white-hot rage, that this man can frighten children who have just made clay cats, dogs and a guinea pig for a make-believe house. This rage burns everything else away, so that all she is left with is love for the children and that is all that matters.

  She has asked him, begged him, to let the children go. He didn’t even look at her, let alone reply; as if he has nothing human at all inside him.

  She looks out of the window to the man outside with the balaclava, his gun pointed at them. She’s done this so many times, hoping to see police running to their rescue, but even if they are coming it’s too late now.

  Through the thick snow and smoke, she can see the flames from the theatre, far away.

  The woods are moving through the snow and smoke. She blinks.

  Trees are moving.

  It can’t be. The gunman lolling on the table has noticed because he gets up and shouts something at the gunman in the balaclava.

  * * *

  Watching the feed from the police UAV, Rose and her team see Victor Deakin coming out of the pottery room and he must say something to Jamie Alton because Jamie Alton turns. For a moment both men, holding their guns, are turned away from the children in the pottery room and towards the woods, looking through the snow and smoke at the kids and teachers they think are dead. The armed counterterrorism officers fire, killing them both.

  * * *

  Camille bends down and looks at the terrified children under the tables, her knees shaking as she crouches.

  ‘You can come out of your house now. You’re safe.’

  She opens the door of the pottery room, with children clustered around her; all of them seem to be holding on to a part of her – her hands, her cardigan sleeves, her gilet. Anna is holding tightly to her skirt. Davy, his face tear-streaked, holds on to her wrist because her hands are already taken.

  Police and men in grey uniforms are running towards the children, their hair and uniforms covered in snow and ash, and she sees that one of the men in grey is crying.

  Beyond them in the woods, students and teachers are putting down small trees. She recognizes children that she’s taught, Hannah and Frank and Tobias, and more police are with them; she spots Daphne and Matthew’s secretary and Old School’s receptionist.

  The ambulance people have blankets that they wrap around the children and someone puts a blanket around her too, and she thinks it’s not so much that she’s cold, although she is suddenly terribly, terribly cold, but that it’s symbolic of something good but she doesn’t have the energy any more to think or even to stand.

  * * *

  Rafi has crawled halfway across the car park towards the boatshed. He cannot feel his hands or his knees in the snow as he crawls, just the pain in his leg from the shrapnel. As he gets close to the shed, he thinks someone is watching him, following him to Basi; hatred wearing an anorak and cracking twigs, hunting them down.

  He waits for the heavy snow to fill in his tracks, so that he won’t bring danger to Basi.

  A little while ago, he got a text from Hannah.

  We have left theatre. We r Birnam wood marching 2 Dunsinane. U were right about trees. Love u

  A few minutes later he heard a huge explosion in the distance. But they were all out, they were in the woods. Safe. And then he heard shots. The police. Surely the police.

  He looks around the car park, but the snow is too thick to see anything further than a foot away and the gusting wind camouflages all other sounds with its own.

  * * *

  He’s crying and his legs are shaking and he just wants Rafi. He can’t ever have Baba a
nd Karam and maybe not Mama, not ever again, so he just wants Rafi; wants his arms around him, holding him tightly. But he fed his animals in his phone and he didn’t tell Rafi where he is. He’s stupid and he wees himself at night and Rafi’s wrong, he’s not brave as Basi Bukhari because Basi Bukhari isn’t brave at all.

  He hears a quiet rat-a-TAT-tat, rat-a-TAT-tat; so quiet he thinks he’s imagining it. Then he hears it again rat-a-TAT-tat, rat-a-TAT-tat.

  He gets out of the boat, feeling his way towards the door. He’s bumping into things and once he trips but he gets to the door; he feels on the door for the rusty, creaky bolt and he finds it and then he pulls it back and opens the door.

  Rafi’s here!

  Rafi comes inside and shuts the door and it’s dark again; and in the dark he can feel Rafi’s arms around him and he’s all covered in snow.

  He’s really here!

  Rafi puts on his phone and shines it as a torch around the shed and it’s not dark any more. Rafi pushes the bolt across the door again.

  ‘Are you all right, Little Monkey?’

  ‘I thought you wouldn’t find me.’

  ‘Course I did.’

  ‘There’s a boat at the back, that’s where I’ve been hiding.’

  They go to the back of the shed together and they get in the boat. He has to help Rafi because of his poor leg, it’s all bleeding and hurt, and his face is bleeding too but he’s got a really big smile.

  They’re in the boat together and he hugs Rafi and hugs him, even though he’s covered in snow, and Rafi hugs him tightly back. The light suddenly goes off.

  ‘My mobile’s out of juice,’ Rafi says and it’s like his phone is magic, like it knew it had to last just long enough till Rafi got here. Though Rafi has probably been careful, because he always makes sure he has enough juice to speak to Basi.