by Ted Bell
Ambrose still recalled hearing her on the BBC Children’s Hour radio program when he was a young boy. Addressing the children of the nation in the darkest hours of World War II, the fourteen-year-old Princess Elizabeth had said, “We are trying to do all we can to help our gallant sailors, soldiers, and airmen, and we are trying, too, to bear our share of the danger and sadness of war. We know, every one of us, that in the end all will be well.”
“DO YOU THINK YOU CAN SLEEP, darling?” Diana asked him some time later, maybe hours, her voice barely above a whisper.
“No, but I want you to,” he said, putting a small velvet pillow in his lap for her to rest her head upon. He removed his dinner jacket and placed it round her shoulders, as she lay her head upon the pillow. A few minutes later, she was snoring softly as he gently stroked the hair at her temples.
Looking about, he saw that many of his fellow guests had been able to find their way to slumber. He could only attribute it to the reassuring presence of the Queen. One look at her and they seemed to believe, every one of them, that in the end all would be well. A few moments later, Ambrose himself drifted off, his arm draped protectively around the woman he loved.
NEXT MORNING, AMBROSE AWOKE WITH A START. The noise nearby had not woken Diana and he decided to let her sleep for as long as she could. Some of the others around him were awake, red-eyed, and still in a state of shock. The sight they’d awoken to didn’t help matters much.
Colonel Zazi had cleared a space along one wall. It was an all-too-familiar scene. A banner now hung on the wall, white with Arabic script in red surrounding the depiction of a large red sword, dripping blood. A professional-grade video camera on a tripod had been erected, and many heavy cables ran across the floor and toward the staircase. Congreve had to believe they were going to do a live broadcast on British television.
There were a number of very bright lights, all on tall standards. A large, ornate, and heavily gilded chair with a crimson cushion had been placed before the banner.
Colonel Zazi was at this very moment escorting the Queen onto this bizarre “set.” Three of his men kept their weapons trained on the Queen’s family who remained seated in their alcove, and all of whom were plainly enraged by this treatment of the Sovereign. Once she was seated, Zazi handed her a handwritten sheet of paper. She put on her glasses, read it silently, and nodded at the colonel. Two of the young terrorists, now with hoods covering their heads, stood to either side of her thronelike chair, AKs cradled in their arms.
Zazi stepped to one side and told the cameraman to focus on him alone. He looked into the lens and began speaking in his deep baritone.
“My name is Colonel Zazi. I am a soldier in the greatest army on earth, the Sword of Allah. I am speaking to you this morning from Balmoral, Scotland. Last night, my soldiers and I took over the Royal residence—the house and grounds are now wholly under my control. We have also taken hostages, who are watching and listening to me at this moment. They include ministers and Members of Parliament, the heads of both MI5 and MI6, and many members of the Royal Family. I have drafted a list of demands that I wish to deliver to the prime minister, Mr. Edward Weed. You will hear those demands in a moment. If they sound familiar, it is because they were issued over a year ago by my martyred brother Abu Mahmood at Heathrow airport. Much blood was shed and yet still our just and righteous demands went unmet.
“So now I have raised the stakes considerably. Should you not heed our call, Mr. Prime Minister, I will begin taking the lives of not only your highest-ranking government officials, but members of your beloved Royal Family. These executions, beheadings, will take place in this room, televised daily, until I hear directly from the prime minister. Once he accedes to our demands and demonstrates convincingly that he is removing every member of British armed forces from sacred Arab soil, I will halt the executions and release the remaining hostages.
“I have asked a member of the Royal Family to read my complete statement and list of demands. You have shown in the past that you will not listen to us. But perhaps you will listen to your beloved Sovereign.”
The cameraman panned the camera around and moved in for a tight close-up of Her Majesty the Queen. Ambrose was astounded to see that she looked every bit as composed as she did every twenty-fifth of December when she delivered her annual Christmas message to the nation on television.
“Good morning,” she said calmly, holding up the single sheet of paper given her by the colonel. “I have been asked by Colonel Zazi to read to you his statement. However, I have chosen instead to make a statement of my own.”
With that, she ripped the sheet of paper into shreds and let the pieces flutter to the floor. Ambrose felt like leaping to his feet and cheering. Clearly she knew her very life was at stake, and she was prepared to lay it down for her country.
“Do you want me to cut, sir?” the cameraman whispered to Zazi, standing right beside him.
“No,” he whispered back. “Keep rolling. It’ll make good television.”
“Today,” she continued, “it is self-evident that a special kind of courage is required of all of us. The courage to stand up for all that is good and right. True and honest. The kind of courage that will show the world that we in Britain are not afraid of the future…not afraid of tyrants and religious despots whose evangelism is expressed through the wanton murder of innocent men, women, and children around the world. It has always been easy to hate and destroy. To build and cherish is far more difficult.
“I know that I cannot lead you into battle as did monarchs of old. I can only give you my heart and my sincere devotion to these old islands and all our people. I still believe in our great qualities and strengths. Our marks and our scars we carry with us—and remind us of this—that no matter how dark the night, nor how wicked the storm, we have always come through. And we always shall.”
The room fell into shocked silence.
Everyone looked at the enraged Zazi to see what he would do. His face was empurpled with rage, and he had his hand quivering on the hilt of his sword. He stared at the Queen and she returned his stare with unbending courage. After a few moments of this standoff, it was clear who had won the first round.
At first there was only a slight ripple of applause from a distant corner of the room. But it grew louder with each passing second. More and more joined in, clapping loudly now, the applause resounding and reverberating, and soon they were getting to their feet, all of them, and giving their Queen the tribute she deserved.
“Silence! All of you! Silence!”
An angry Zazi stepped in front of the camera and shouted orders for silence, which went unheard in the thunderous applause. It was not until one of the young terrorists fired his AK-47 continuously into the ceiling, raining plaster down on their heads that, slowly, the applause abated and the hostages returned to their seats. Zazi looked at his cameraman. “Are we still rolling?” he asked.
“Yes, sir.”
Zazi stepped back onto the “set,” standing directly in front of the Queen.
“There is a price to be paid for defiance,” Zazi said into the lens, barely able to keep himself under control. Motioning to one of the terrorists, he pulled his pistol from his holster and chambered a round.
“That one there,” he said. “In the green dress and the emeralds. Bring her to me.”
There was a noisy struggle off camera. An angry man shouting, then pleading. A moment later a hysterical elderly woman, begging for her life, was dragged by the wrists by two of the bearded killers. She was dropped to the stone floor at Zazi’s feet.
“Up on your knees, woman!” he shouted into the poor woman’s face.
Sobbing, she struggled to get to her knees. Pressing her palms together as if in prayer, tears coursing down her cheeks, she looked up into Zazi’s eyes, pleading for her life.
Zazi turned his head toward the Queen.
“That price, Your Royal Majesty, is a bullet to this old woman’s head.”
He pulled the
trigger.
Then he looked into the camera and said, “Cut.”
A THOUSAND MILES TO THE EAST, flying at maximum altitude, thirty-two thousand feet, Alex Hawke was sound asleep in his seat aboard the RAF Hercules C-130J transport plane that carried Stokely and him back to England. It was freezing inside the fuselage of the giant aircraft and they had wrapped themselves in the Afghan blankets they’d strapped to the back of their saddles on the journey up into the Hindu Kush mountains.
Sahira had returned to Islamabad after the Wazizabad Mountain incident. She’d been assigned by MI5 to spend a month assisting the Pakistani government in finding out how and why a nuclear device had been removed from Pakistan’s heavily guarded arsenal. And how they could prevent a recurrence from ever happening.
A young airman was bending over Hawke, squeezing his shoulder and repeating his name. Somehow, Alex dredged himself up from the depths of his exhaustion, opened his eyes and stared, bewildered, at the face looming over him.
“Yes?” he said, not fully aware of where he was.
“Sir, Captain Davies has asked that you come forward to the cockpit. He has an urgent message for you.”
“What is it?” Hawke asked, struggling to come fully awake.
“He didn’t say, sir. Just that he needed to speak with you immediately.”
“I’m right behind you,” Hawke said, getting to his feet and following the airman as he made his way forward. When he entered the cockpit, he saw the pilot turn to face him in the red glow of his instruments.
“Commander, sorry to disturb your sleep but I’m afraid it’s most urgent.”
“Not at all. What is it?”
“You’re not going to believe it, sir. I’ve just been on the radio with my commanding officer. It seems that an armed wing of the Taliban called the Sword of Allah has stormed Balmoral Castle and taken everyone inside hostage.”
“Everyone? Good Lord.”
“Yes, sir. All the guests, and the entire Royal Family. The Queen herself, sir. Prince Philip, Prince Charles, and his two sons…all of them.”
Hawke was stunned.
“It’s not possible.”
“I’m afraid it is. They’ve already killed one hostage, a much loved lady-in-waiting to Her Majesty, Lady Fiona Hicks. The Queen, with Pakistani gunmen to either side, gave a statement on the BBC. It is a hostage situation and the terrorists are threatening to keep killing one a day on live television until Prime Minister Weed agrees to their demands. The first deadline is tomorrow at midnight, Greenwich Mean Time.”
“And our response?”
“Forces are mobilizing and disembarking for Scotland as we speak, sir.”
“Captain, listen. There is no time to waste. I need to be put in immediate contact with MI6 to organize a hostage rescue team. And, most importantly, I need to see that BBC video of the Queen. Perhaps I can visually identify exactly where she’s being held inside the castle. I need to speak with Sir David Trulove. Tell him exactly what I will need to—”
“Sorry, sir. Sir David is one of the hostages. As well as Lord Malmsey of MI5.”
“All right,” Hawke said, thinking rapidly, “what is the RAF station nearest to Balmoral?”
“RAF Aberdeenshire, I believe, sir.”
“Can we divert there?”
“In this case? Certainly. I’d set this behemoth down right outside Balmoral’s front gates if I could.”
“Get the SAS director of special forces on the radio. Tell him we need him now. And we need that BBC video ready to screen as soon as we touch down. He needs to start putting an SAS paratroop squadron together at RAF Aberdeenshire immediately. What’s our ETA there?”
“I could have you on the ground in less than two hours, Commander.”
“It’ll have to do. If you’ve got any extra horses under those wings, now would be a good time to use them. When someone’s holding a gun to your Sovereign’s head, every minute counts.”
SIXTY-THREE
HE TRIED TO GO BACK TO SLEEP, but it was useless. In the dim light of the cellar he could see that most of the hostages were asleep, or pretending to be. He looked at his watch. Three in the morning. His nerves were shot and he needed sleep badly. He put his head back down on the sofa cushion and tried to will away the boyhood images that kept flooding into his fevered brain. Since he could not stop them, he let them come. Perhaps with them would come sleep….
TABU BABAR RUSHED ACROSS THE TREE-SHADED courtyard, already thronged with teeming crowds straining forward. The ten-year-old student had traveled by rail from his school to Delhi, and his country’s trains were notoriously late. The streets surrounding the Viceroy’s House were already jammed to overflowing with hundreds of thousands come out to have a look at the latest gentleman arrived from England to lord it over them, Lord Louis Mountbatten.
Were it not for Tabu’s honey-toned skin, you could easily have mistaken him for a young Etonian. In his heart of hearts, that is exactly who he was. He certainly dressed the part: starched white shirt and striped bow tie, trousers held aloft with matching braces. He had gleaming black hair, slicked back in waves, thick black brows, and a long, straight nose between two penetrating black eyes.
His school, Mayo, was the “Eton of India.” But, even in this rarefied air, Tabu was something of a rare bird. He was a devout Moslem, from the overwhelmingly Moslem town of Lahore, and yet his every mannerism, his every word and gesture, bespoke an English sensibility so convincing his classmates called him “Sahib,” or even “your lordship,” or “your grace,” bowing from the waist with a feigned deference that evoked howls of laughter once he was safely out of earshot.
In Mayo’s hallowed halls and paneled libraries, an extremely wealthy Moslem boy like Tabu could easily indulge himself in Anglophile fantasies of Elizabethan castles, of knights of old and Coldstream Guards, the grandeur of royalty, and a small boy’s noble ideal of a manly English aristocrat. All of these idealistic notions Tabu had invested in the singular person of his great hero. This was the man who, in a short while, would become the new Viceroy of India, Lord Louis Mountbatten, the man who would save his beloved country from self-destruction.
India’s countless millions of Hindus, Sikhs, and Moslems were on the brink of a religious war that would dwarf anything since the Crusades. Even isolated within the high walls of his small school, inflamed religious fervor brewing outside could pit schoolmate against schoolmate. There had been fights at school and many boys had been hospitalized.
A half million already stood in the broiling sun. Above the crowds atop his lamppost perch, he now had a bird’s-eye view of the very spot where the new Viceroy’s coach would soon arrive. The crowd was shouting now, and surging forward, a near riot, but Tabu was safely perched above it all.
And there he was at last.
He looked like a Hollywood film star in his immaculate white naval uniform. Serene, smiling, his adoring wife, Edwina, beside him, Louis Mountbatten, Earl of Burma, rode up to the foot of the grand palace steps to lay claim to Viceroy House. Tabu’s eyes were riveted on the man who had come at last to preserve the peace. To save his beloved country from becoming one vast boiling cauldron of hatred and blood.
Long after the Mountbattens had mounted the marble steps and disappeared inside the palace, and the cheering crowds had dissipated, Tabu clung to his precarious spot, prolonging this historic moment of hope for as long as he could…here, finally, was a powerful man who could save India. A great diplomat who could bring Nehru, Gandhi, and Jinnah to their senses. Who could prevent his beloved India from tearing itself to shreds.
ONE NIGHT, MANY LONG MONTHS later at Mayo, Tabu had felt a rough hand on his shoulder, shaking him violently awake.
“What is it?” he said, rubbing sleep from his eyes.
“You must go, get out of here at once,” Sindhu, his only Hindu friend, said. “Grab what you can, Tabu, and run! For your life, my dear boy.”
“What is happening?”
“The English. They
have left us. As of the stroke of midnight tonight, India is free! And all hell has broken loose, believe me.”
“Mountbatten has left us? Abandoned India? Impossible.”
“Yes, stealing away like a thief in the night is your great hero, and already the angry mobs are turning the streets red with blood. It is open religious warfare now, Tabu, everywhere. Moslem against Hindu against Sikh. A religious slaughter tearing the country apart.”
“He’s done nothing to stop it, has he, Sindhu? Mountbatten was our last hope. And now he’s left India to drown in a sea of blood!”
“Tabu, listen! There is no time for this now. One floor below us, a group of fifth-form Hindu boys are going from room to room, hacking Moslem students to death in their beds with swords. I heard your name mentioned. They won’t be so kind to you, I fear, Little Sahib.”
Tabu leaped out of bed and started throwing his beloved books and clothing into his old leather portmanteau.
“How long have I got, Sindhu?”
“Ten minutes if you’re lucky. They are still killing boys on the floor below. You’ll have to go out the window. It’s a ten-foot drop from the roof to the wall, five feet to the ground. Be careful not to break anything when you leap, my dear friend, or you’re surely dead.”
“But where shall I go, Sindhu? I’ve nowhere to go!”
“Home! Your newly created homeland of Pakistan. Make your way to the central train station. There is a train for Lahore at midnight. You’re the fastest boy at school. If you run as fast as ever you can, you just might make it before the clock strikes twelve.”
Tabu heaved his bulging bag out the window and, with a farewell wave to his friend, followed it. When he hit the ground, he tucked and rolled into a crouch and managed not to break any bones. He jumped to his feet and ran for his life. There were fires everywhere, flames licking into the black skies. His fury knew no bounds now. Betrayal and shame and fear were indistinguishable in his mind.