by Peter Watson
The bag, oily, dirty and now torn, yielded when they all pulled – but it cracked the BMW’s number plate as it came out. Edward threw it to one side. ‘I shunted you rather badly, I’m afraid. You’d better have a look.’ They walked back to begin examining the damage. ‘The man in the Volvo is bleeding,’ said Edward, pointing. The BMW driver set off to look, but Edward tappedVictoria on the shoulder and pointed to the Italian-registered car. She grasped his intention immediately.
As the Italian bent to examine the Volvo driver, Edward and Victoria quickly opened the BMW doors and slid inside. The engine hadn’t even been turned off. Edward put it into gear and accelerated away. The Italian looked up, shouted and started to run towards them. But it was too late. The BMW was badly dented in the rear but it was otherwise undamaged. As Edward accelerated away, they passed the sign which announced they were crossing the mid-point of the tunnel. Just over eight kilometres to Italy, a shade over five miles. Edward accelerated past 50 kilometres per hour, 80, 100. The limit was 70. He reached 130 kph. Now there were tail-lights ahead. Heavy traffic was coming towards them but Edward didn’t slow down. He assumed no one else would take the sort of risks he took.
The BMW closed on the tail-lights fast. As they reached the Mercedes, they saw – in the headlights – Nancy turn and look back. Edward switched the BMW’s headlights fully on so that they dazzled her and Zakros. The bag incident had snapped something inside Edward. Nancy was unnatural, evil. He was at last beginning to hate her. Nancy turned back again and they saw her shouting something at Zakros. Edward drove right up behind the Mercedes, as he had done behind other cars and trucks on the autoroute, but this time he didn’t stop. He shunted the Mercedes, trying to force Zakros to wobble and brake at the same time. That might provoke him into a skid.
Nancy looked back again. Edward shunted the back of the Mercedes a second time. There was a loud clanging but nothing else happened. He cursed the fact that Mercedes were very tough cars.
Suddenly, the Merc swung out into the oncoming lane and accelerated past a long Citroën that was in front. A truck that was bearing down blared its horn and flashed its lights. Edward was forced to stay behind the Citroën.
‘Watch out in case they try the bag trick again,’ said Victoria.
‘You think I’d forget that easily?’
But it didn’t happen.
‘They must have run out of bags,’ said Victoria. ‘Only the Blunt stuff left.’
Seconds later the Merc moved out again, but so did Edward. The Merc overtook a small truck, the BMW overtook the Citroën. Another kilometre sign went by. The Merc moved out and overtook a caravan, the BMW overtook the small truck. A further sign announced that the ‘Dogana’, customs, was six kilometres away. Heavy oncoming traffic kept anyone from overtaking before another two kilometre signs had passed. Four to go; two and a half miles. The Mercedes moved out again, and so did Edward. He passed the caravan but the Merc had passed two trucks and there was no more time – Edward had to dip back in behind the second of the trucks. The cars and buses bearing down on them were blaring their horns and flashing their headlights. The three-kilometre sign went by. Edward changed down. The engine raced but it gave him the acceleration he needed for when the traffic thinned.
If it thinned.
They passed two huge cylindrical fans hanging from the roof of the tunnel, the machinery which kept the air circulating. The Mercedes moved out and Edward hit the floor with his accelerator foot, pulling on the wheel at the same time. As the car surged forward he noticed, out of the corner of his eye, the two-kilometre sign flash past. Just over a mile to daylight and Italy.
The BMW kept going faster – he was catching the Merc.
Edward overtook the first of the trucks. A bus was coming towards them, three hundred yards away. The Merc, seventy yards ahead, swung back on to the proper side of the roadway. Edward held the BMW steady. The forward truck was very long. The bus was blaring its horn, flashing its lights. The BMW was abreast of the cab of the truck. It was ahead. Edward heaved on the wheel and slid the BMW in front of the truck. The bus, its horn still blaring, whistled by.
The road behind the bus was clear and Edward heaved the wheel to the left again. The Merc was overtaking too. But Edward’s car still had its revs and momentum from the near escape and he was gaining on the Merc. The one-kilometre sign went by and daylight could be seen at the end of the tunnel. An articulated tanker was coming towards them but it was two or three hundred yards away. The Merc was overtaking a coach while the BMW was abreast of yet another caravan. The Mercedes was now about thirty yards in front of the BMW but Edward and Victoria were no longer closing on Zakros. If anything, he was pulling away.
Edward hit his headlamp switch and they shot on again, dazzling Zakros and Nancy. They also must have annoyed the tanker driver for he put his on too. Now the Merc was surrounded on both sides with light. In the light Edward saw something that made his heart lurch and he hauled the wheel to the right. He made it just in time.
To mark the end of the tunnel, as at the French end, a continuous row of heavy-duty, red and white metal poles had been inserted into the central gully of the roadway. There was little space – a few inches maybe – between the poles. The Merc was now on the wrong side of the road, with the poles between it and safety. The tanker was seventy yards away.
Zakros drove into the poles. They buckled under the force of the Mercedes and one or two snapped off and shot into the air. Still others, however, wedged themselves between the tyres of the car and the bodywork or the chassis. One must have interfered with the steering mechanism for Zakros found that he could not correct the wheel. The Merc broached the row of poles but then hit the nearside wall of the tunnel. The rear end slewed round and the car bounced back into the middle of the roadway.
‘Brake!’ screamed Victoria. ‘For God’s sake!’
But Edward was already braking. He had also punched the hazard warning lights, so that the car behind him would also stop, or try to. The Mercedes was about seventy yards ahead of them now but moving backwards on the other side of the tunnel roadway.
The BMW had slowed to about 15 kilometres per hour when the tanker hit the Merc. The tanker driver was doing his level best to stop but he didn’t have the space. The cab of the truck rose up above the Mercedes’ boot. The first half of the articulated section slewed across the road, propelled by the back half. The metal tank slammed into the Merc a second time and Victoria saw petrol seeping from a crack that had formed.
‘Out!’ she yelled.
Edward wasn’t much behind her. Behind the BMW the traffic was screeching to a halt and they heard two collisions. But the collisions didn’t register, for the pair of them were running down the tunnel, away from the tanker but on the tanker’s side of the road. They had gone perhaps thirty yards when the felt a warm blast of air sweep over them. They kept running. A klaxon sounded as the smoke detectors went off and the big fans above them in the roof of the tunnel suddenly switched into double time. Sweeping the air towards the fire so that it blew out of the tunnel.
Edward and Victoria kept running, but less and less fast as they felt they were escaping the fire and the asphyxiation that went with it. Suddenly a cooler draft of air hit them and Victoria gasped, ‘This will do. The fresh air comes in here.’
Only now did they stop, breathing heavily. They looked back. A fire was burning fiercely. They could hear the whoosh of flames, the crackle of burning, the screams of dying. They had been closer than anybody and so they knew what was happening. They waited five minutes, ten, fifteen minutes. Every so often there was a fresh explosion, a soft whoosh! as another compartment in the tanker went up.
Other drivers left their cars and joined them, asking what had happened. They both just shook their heads, as if in shock. No ‘as if’ about it. They heard the klaxon of the fire service, and the machine which was kept at the end of the tunnel for emergencies raced down the wrong side of the road. By now the smell of burning petrol
, burning paint and burning flesh had reached their nostrils. It made everyone cough.
The flames disappeared, to be replaced by dense black smoke. This made the coughing worse but the fans still kept the air flowing out of the tunnel so that there was no serious hazard of asphyxiation. Edward looked at his watch: 12.50, ten to noon in London. It was now half an hour since the collision. ‘Come on,’ he said.
They walked back to the BMW, and then on past it. The stench, and the heat, got worse, but the smoke was beginning to clear. Water ran everywhere.
The forward section of the tanker, they could now see, had fallen on the Mercedes. They bent to peer inside.
‘Don’t look!’ said a fireman from behind a plume of smoke. ‘It will horrify you for the rest of your lives.’
But Edward and Victoria had to look. They stared at what they saw, the remains of Nancy and Zakros, of the holdalls and the tubes and what had once been magnificent pictures.
There was really nothing to see, for nothing was left, the heat had been too intense. But no, they wouldn’t forget.
The steward leaned forward and filled Lockwood’s glass with wine. It was a deep-gold colour.
‘My father bought this, Mr Lockwood. I am not a wine authority – or an authority on very much.’ The Queen smiled a very relaxed smile. ‘But I’m told this is one of the best there is.’
Indeed it was. It was a 1928 Château d’Yquem.
Lunch was being served in a part of the palace that neither Lockwood nor any Prime Minister had been admitted to before: the royal family’s private quarters. The Duke of Edinburgh was there and the Princess Royal. Princess Margaret was still in Mustique, still ill apparently.
‘I want to hear what happened this morning, Mr Lockwood. But first … how is your grandson? What is the latest news?’
‘Slightly better, ma’am, thank you. The clot has not re-formed and the pressure has been relieved. Touch wood … the operation was a success.’
The Queen smiled.
‘This morning … what happened was not very pleasant, I am afraid.’
‘This is not a time to be squeamish.’
Lockwood told them about the ‘accident’ in the Mont Blanc tunnel. Some of the details he didn’t know himself. But when he had finished the Queen said, ‘The tanker driver … do we know his name?’
‘He was Italian … I can find out.’
‘I think we should offer discreet help to his family – and to the family of the pilot killed in Greece … I’m sorry for what happened.’ There was a silence around the table. There was no escaping the fact that, in order to preserve the good name of the British royal family, innocent people had suffered and been killed.
‘And …’ The Queen looked embarrassed. ‘The pictures? … The documents?’
‘All destroyed, ma’am. There was an almighty fire, fanned by the extractors inside the tunnel. The cardboard tubes and the canvases rolled up in them, the holdalls with other pictures and the documents, the portfolio case – all were engulfed in the explosion. Andover and Tatton both checked. Dr Shelby, who is the only member of the Apollo Brigade to survive, is the most junior of all. She knew the aims of the plot, but she had never seen the Blunt pictures and did not know the details. She’s no threat.’
There was silence around the table. Then the Queen said, ‘As for yourself, Mr Lockwood, you face a difficult afternoon in the House of Commons.’
‘Not as difficult as last evening, ma’am.’
The Queen smiled. ‘Perhaps … but this time I think I can help.’ She told him two things, both of which caused him to smile. He looked at the Princess Royal and then back to her mother.
‘Thank you, ma’am. Thank you, very much.’
‘The Prime Minister.’ The Speaker pulled his gown around him and sat back in his seat. He crossed his legs. The House was again overflowing – with MPs, with distinguished strangers, with the general public in the gallery, with more than a hundred peers from the House of Lords.
Lockwood stood up and stepped forward. He looked up at the clock. It had just gone three-fifteen. He was wearing a double-breasted navy suit, a pale-blue shirt and a silk tie with a light-blue paisley pattern. He carried no notes. He turned to survey the House. He allowed his gaze to linger on George Keld, and then on Arthur Page. He looked up and found Francis Mordaunt in the Distinguished Strangers’ Gallery.
‘Mr Speaker,’ he said loudly. ‘I must begin by offering the House an apology.’ A murmur, a rustle of movement, exploded softly along the Commons benches. This was not the Lockwood they expected. Hadn’t the man just been to Buckingham Palace to see the Queen? Wasn’t he about to resign? Silence again took over. ‘I offer the House an apology because, in the debate yesterday, I misled honourable members. I misled them not because I wanted to but because I was forced to. I can explain best what I mean if I give the House an account of certain events which have taken place in the last days and weeks and of which this House had no cognisance. By the time I have finished I hope that the House will accept that I acted correctly in not divulging certain … secrets before today.’ Lockwood paused and looked again at Keld and Page. Both men returned his stare.
‘Just under three weeks ago, it was briefly noted in the “Court & Social” page of The Times that Princess Margaret was confined to her bed on the Caribbean island of Mustique, suffering from food poisoning. Members may not remember this item of information since it was overshadowed by the news that, on the very same day, Her Majesty herself was confined to bed through influenza. I have to tell the House that neither of these illnesses occurred. The day before, a group of seven terrorists, most of them Greek and calling themselves the Apollo Brigade had kidnapped the princess and were holding her hostage –’
There was another burst of movement along the benches of the Commons. It began to dawn on people that the game they had come to watch had changed. The Prime Minister, who should have been out cold by this stage, still had plenty of life left in him.
‘The Queen’s “influenza” was in fact a public sign to the kidnappers that we – the British government – were willing to negotiate with them.’ Lockwood stared intently at Page. ‘I need hardly add that the demands of this Apollo Brigade were … the return to Athens of the so-called Elgin Marbles. So began a very dangerous time. Days and weeks in which only I and a few very trusted aides knew the complete picture. Days and weeks in which the Queen was most anxious for the safety of her sister.’ Lockwood looked up at Mordaunt again. The Princess Margaret idea had been the Queen’s own – one of the two things she had broached at lunch. ‘Days and weeks in which it appeared, as I was told several times in this House yesterday, that I was behaving in an unconstitutional and authoritarian way. Days and weeks during which it appeared that the government was losing its grip – “shilly-shallying” as it was described.’ Lockwood beamed. ‘None of that was true, of course. But I – we – could not tell the House any of what we knew. It was a condition of the kidnappers that nothing was made public. They had their own plans for announcing their end of the “deal” when the Marbles reached Greece.
‘Naturally, the government did not sit idly by as these demands were made. The House will not expect me to go into details which might compromise our security forces in future operations. Likewise, I am sure the House will expect me to convey its good wishes to Her Royal Highness now that she has come through this ordeal successfully. As I say, the amount I can disclose publicly about this issue is limited, for the moment anyway, by security. However, I can say that we established fairly quickly that the Brigade, as it called itself, was composed of six Greeks and one American. One of the Brigade was a Greek based in Switzerland and the others all lived in Greece.’ Lockwood had decided to leave out any reference to Shelby – it was safer for the Queen not to have it known that the conservator was on Fleet Street’s doorstep. ‘I say “was” and “were” because I can report to the House that the operation was brought to a successful conclusion at around noon today. Princess M
argaret, as I have said, is safe – though all members of the Apollo Brigade are dead. A fuller statement will be issued from Downing Street later today, after the security services have examined what happened in detail and they have vetted the details that can be released without jeopardizing future operations of a similar nature. What I can tell the House is that HMS Anglesey, which was carrying the Elgin Marbles to Greece, has now changed course and is returning to Britain –’
A cheer erupted from the public gallery as Lockwood said this, soon taken up on the government benches. On the opposition’s side of the House, members sat as if stunned. Lockwood waited for the noise to die down before even attempting to go on. He knew the House was hanging on his every word, that it was a complete reversal of the day before, and he did not intend to throw this moment away.
Eventually he felt able to make himself heard. ‘I hope honourable members will concede that this news I bring casts a different light on the events of the past weeks –’
Cheering again now from the government benches.
‘Far from being a “shilly-shallying” government, this has been one which has handled an unprecedented situation with determination, intelligence, tact – and has emerged successful. I need hardly add that both Her Majesty and Princess Margaret have been through a very difficult time. As honourable members may know, I have just returned from Buckingham Palace, where I had the good fortune to lunch with the Queen in her private apartments. She is naturally very relieved, but the Queen was also anxious to show her gratitude to the government. She has therefore told me she intends to honour it by bestowing personal knighthoods on Mr Bernard Midwinter, Press Secretary at Downing Street, on Mr Jocelyn Hatfield, Chief Whip, on Mr Tom Lessor, Home Secretary, and on Mr Eric Slocombe, my personal political adviser. I, too, am to receive a similar honour. I need hardly remind members that this honour enables a Commoner to still remain a member of this House.’ Lockwood beamed at Page, now cowering on the opposition front bench. The knighthoods had been the second of the Queen’s own ideas.