The Lords' Day (retail)

by Michael Dobbs

  They were American bombers, but Eaton didn’t think he was in much of a position to draw semantic distinctions.

  ‘Your bombers brought us death, Mr Eaton. They broke our women, our children, our villages. And when we crawled out from under the rubble to bury our dead, you sent the bombers back to strip the meagre plots of land that the mountains give us to grow crops. You tried to starve us into submission.’

  ‘Not you – the Islamics!’ Eaton protested.

  ‘You see Mukhtar there?’ Masood said, pointing to a colleague. ‘Your bombers murdered his crippled mother in her bed. He had nursed her for three years, but did you stop for one moment to ask if she was a zealot?’

  The Prime Minister blinked, unable to hold Masood’s eye. ‘Why are you here?’ he muttered.

  ‘Ghulam’ – Masood indicated one of the others – ‘he is here because in one of your raids you hit a home in which his father was having dinner with three of his brothers. After the smoke had cleared, they found only small bits of those who had been inside. The next day, his mother threw herself to her death in a ravine. And Jehanzeb over there, he is here because three of his brothers fell into the hands of the Taliban. They were tortured because it was thought they had co-operated with you, and the Taliban do not shrink from their task, Mr Eaton, I assure you. When at last two of them had their throats slit and their heads cut from their bodies, it was said they cried out with relief. That is what the third brother told us, when at last they let him go.’

  ‘And you?’ Eaton whispered.

  Masood raised his palms; they were pale, much softer than the rest of him. His voice grew very quiet. ‘I pulled my wife’s body from beneath the rubble with my own hands. The bombs had hit her so cruelly that at first I couldn’t recognise her. I only knew it was she when I found the body of my baby son beneath her. She had been trying to protect him.’

  ‘I am sorry,’ Eaton said in despair.

  ‘I think you will be.’

  ‘I wish—’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure you do. So you will give us Daud Gul.’

  ‘How can I do that? What do you expect while I am held prisoner? I can do nothing while I’m here.’

  ‘Of course you can. Look!’ Masood exclaimed, pointing at the screens. ‘The entire country is watching, perhaps the whole world. All you have to do is to give the order and the matter is done.’

  Eaton looked up and found himself staring at a picture of the scene given by a camera in the distant public gallery. He felt like a puppet on a stage, looking so small and insignificant. ‘No one will listen to the word of a prisoner given under duress,’ he insisted.

  Masood’s eyes grew darker. ‘And all of a sudden you sound like a campaigner for human rights,’ he mocked.

  ‘But what you ask is impossible.’

  ‘Then, because of you, in a little less than twenty-four hours now, someone will die.’ He turned towards Magnus and William-Henry. ‘No, not just someone. Allow me to bring the reality of occupation and terror home to you, Mr Eaton. If Daud Gul is not released, we will start with your son. This time tomorrow he will die. And alongside him, the son of the American President.’ He laughed, a cold, dry sound as he stared into the eyes of Eaton and saw the volcanic rush of fear. ‘Welcome to the occupation, Prime Minister.’

  12.35 p.m.

  Tibbetts stood frozen as he stared at the screen. ‘You dream about things,’ he whispered. ‘Nightmares. When it’s just you against the Devil and you have nowhere to hide. But I never thought it would come to this.’

  ‘You’re not alone, Mike,’ Harry responded.

  ‘It’s my decision, and mine alone, whether we send armed units in there right now and get the siege over and done with.’

  ‘I don’t envy you, my friend.’

  ‘What to do, Harry?’ the policeman asked, tearing himself away from the screen.

  ‘Me – I’d get some help. It’s too big for you to go in there unprepared.’

  ‘But if I delay, hesitate even for a few minutes, it might only get worse.’

  Tibbetts was a man who typically didn’t rush things; in his spare time he bred budgerigars, and like every part of nature the birds did things in their own time, nesting, mating, breeding, and dying, too. The police commander was used to being patient, but this situation screamed for Executive Action, sending in his armed officers to storm the place before anything worse happened. Yet if they did that, they would never know if there might have been a better, less bloody way.

  ‘You think we should negotiate, Harry?’

  ‘Sure. Talk as much as you want. But when the talking’s all done with, get ready to blow Masood and his chums apart. And to do that, you’ll need help.’

  Tibbetts knew what Harry was suggesting: sending for the SAS. The stuff of heroics and blood, everything that went against his instincts. That wasn’t why he had joined the force. ‘Is there no peaceful way out?’ he asked.

  Harry shook his head.

  ‘You seem quite certain about these men.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘You ever seen what a two-thousand-pound thermobaric bomb can do?’

  It was Tibbetts’s turn to shake his head.

  ‘It explodes, it burns, it sucks the oxygen out of the air. It leaves nothing behind, not even a sense of justice. That’s what the Americans use on caves, Mike, and that’s why I know these men. I know what they’ve been through. If I were them, I’d probably be doing the same thing myself.’

  ‘What? The same as terrorists?’ the policeman demanded, looking up sharply.

  ‘Men we once called terrorists are now running the Northern Ireland parliament and sitting in almost every presidential palace in Africa growing fat on huge amounts of Western aid. So when does a terrorist stop being a terrorist?’

  ‘When politicians forget.’

  ‘You know, Mike, I suspect at the root of it all, these people simply wanted to be left alone in their caves to slit each other’s throats and screw each other’s sheep, but then the whole world and its wicked mothers spilled in looking for hiding places from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, only for the wars to follow them there. Their homeland became a battleground between different groups of foreign bloodletters that didn’t leave many sharp distinctions between terrorists and the rest.’

  ‘They’re still terrorists in my book.’

  ‘Of course, but what’s in a name? Better to deal with the facts.’

  ‘You’ll at least grant that they are murderers,’ Tibbetts said through gritted teeth.

  ‘So, they believe, are we.’

  ‘You sound as if you sympathise with them!’

  ‘I understand them, that’s different. They’re highly motivated and exceedingly well armed. That’s why I don’t think there’ll be a thing you can do to stop them, except to blow them away.’

  ‘We could give them Daud Gul.’

  ‘Not your choice. That’s high politics. An even messier game.’

  ‘So . . . ?’

  ‘So, as you said, it’s down to you.’

  Tibbetts stiffened, delayed for a few seconds more, hoping they might last for ever, praying that some miracle would happen or that he might yet wake up from this hideous dream. His fingers went to the knot of his black tie, then strayed to the place above his heart, agitated, unsure. He was blinking rapidly, as though blinded by the sun.

  ‘OK, Harry, you win,’ he sighed eventually. ‘I’ll call in the Boys.’

  12.43 p.m.

  A transformation had taken hold of Tricia Willcocks. She had come round from her stupor to discover that the hooded attackers who had blasted their way into her house were officers of the Metropolitan Police. For a while she flapped around like a pigeon with a broken wing, unable to concentrate, not understanding. She hadn’t seen the siege, knew nothing of it, and even when they told her she didn’t believe it. Not until someone turned the television on.

  ‘Don’t you understand, Mrs Willcocks?’ a policeman w
as shouting at her, trying to barge his way past the incomprehension. ‘You’re in charge.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes, you.’

  ‘But why me?’

  ‘Because you’re the only one left.’

  She sat on her sofa, head in hands, hair like a besom broom, her robe pulled tight for modesty. She seemed in another world.

  ‘You know what this means?’ a policeman turned to his colleague in despair.

  He was answered with a dull shake of the head.

  ‘Means we go for the first substitute. The Industry Minister. Little plonker.’

  Then her head was up. ‘Oh, no you don’t! I’m in charge of this so you do as I tell you. Give me five minutes to put on some clothes. Then we start sorting out this mess of yours.’ Already she was on her feet and running for the stairs, but halfway up she paused and turned. ‘And while you’re waiting, get someone to fix my bloody door. Idiots!’

  Diego Garcia. A coral island stuck about as close to the middle of the Indian Ocean as one could care to get, more than a thousand miles from the nearest land mass. It’s covered in tropical vegetation that goes largely untended since the inhabitants were forcibly moved out. Its average height is four feet and north to south it’s only fifteen miles long, a good chunk of which is taken up by a runway that runs for more than two miles. This is a US runway, for although the island belongs to the British, in 1966 they leased the place to the Americans. Since then it has become one of the most important – and most remote – strategic military bases in the world. Its main non-human population are warrior crabs and coconut rats. And it rains a lot.

  Diego Garcia is a temporary home to around two thousand US military personnel plus many more support staff. There are also usually forty Brits based there, too, mostly Royal Navy and Royal Marines, to fly the flag and remind the world that, despite all appearances, the place is technically British.

  It’s a little like St Helena, that other ocean island, where Napoleon had been sent into exile. A million miles from anywhere. Escape impossible.

  And that is where they had sent Daud Gul.

  1.25 p.m.

  She had insisted on sitting in the Prime Minister’s chair, the only one around the Cabinet table with arms. The private secretary had tried to dissuade her – ‘it might not look seemly, Home Secretary’ – but she’d asserted that it would be unseemly to sit anywhere else. After all, she was in charge and they needed to know it. Who they might be was left undefined, but the implication was that its definition ran far wider than simply the gunmen.

  They began to assemble in the Cabinet Room like penguins sheltering from an Arctic gale, looking downtrodden, settling in corners, waiting quietly for the rest to arrive: the representatives from the security services, the armed forces, with appropriate deputies and secretaries in tow, and accompanying them the most senior Ministers left in post at Foreign & Commonwealth, Defence, Transport and Health, the latter in case of a chemical or biological attack. Some brought with them slim files, others merely their wits, and they sat around the coffin-shaped table muttering in low tones. Outside the sun was shining in a clear sky, a wonderful day for a walk in the park. If only.

  The last to arrive was Tibbetts. Harry was with him.

  ‘Good afternoon, Home Secretary.’ Harry offered a wan smile. It was the first time they had spoken in two years, since Harry had carved her speech on multiculturalism to the bone.

  ‘Who brought him in?’

  ‘I did, Home Secretary,’ Tibbetts began. ‘Mr Jones has a wealth of experience that has already proved invaluable.’

  She glowered, clearly unconvinced. She cast her eye around the table – all men, every one of them. Condescending bastards. All thinking they were superior, belittling her because she was a woman. Well, enough of that. There had been a time when she’d been forced to play their game, but that was in the past. She’d stood on the doorstep of ambition long enough, now it was time to join the feast.

  ‘I think we’d better start with a situation report,’ she said.

  Through the thickness of the reinforced window glass, Tibbetts could see a seagull soaring above the parade ground of Horse Guards, playing lazily in the cross winds, lifting, soaring free, and at that moment he would have swapped everything he had with that one bird. Perhaps in another life . . . He cleared his throat and began his tale, of how the parliament building had been evacuated, and how all those inside were now sequestered in the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre for debriefing and exclusion as suspects.

  ‘I hear the BBC is screaming blue murder,’ she interrupted. ‘Apparently their entire presentation team was in the palace, and now you’re holding them. They want them back.’

  Tibbetts scratched his heads in irritation. ‘I think even the BBC might realise that there are other priorities right now than television. They can wait their turn.’

  ‘Really? Can you seriously think that wise, Commander? To antagonise the media right from the start? This is a battle for hearts and minds as much as anything else.’

  ‘I thought it was a battle for the lives of the most important group of hostages the world has ever seen,’ Tibbetts replied, a little too starchily.

  ‘Precisely. History will be our judge. And for better or worse, history is usually written by the media. So I’m sure you’ll consider releasing them. Very promptly.’

  And she had won the first battle. It was a purely symbolic victory, for in truth she didn’t give a stuff about any of the BBC crowd, but it was important that she show those around her how she liked to work. So Tibbetts sighed, and carried on with his report. Of how he had stood to the armed police units of CO-19 and put on stand-by the SAS, who were en route from their base at Credenhill, near Hereford, along with the Special Boat Service, who, within the hour, would be patrolling the Thames in the stretches beside the parliament buildings. Helicopter surveillance was already in the air, and they had pushed back the security cordon to establish a stronghold around the Palace of Westminster.

  ‘A case of the horse having bolted, surely,’ she muttered loudly to no one in particular. ‘Or, rather, kicked his way in,’ she added, muddling the metaphor.

  It had started. The recriminations. The blame game. Tibbetts was going to need his broad shoulders to accommodate the collection of knives that were likely to be buried in him, up to the hilt.

  ‘Anyway, who are these particular horses?’ she asked.

  ‘All of us around this table are digging to find out what we can about the High Commissioner, of course, but if you don’t mind, Home Secretary, I’d like Mr Jones to take this one. I think he has some ideas that are well worth listening to.’

  Her eyebrows arched; Harry took that as his invitation.

  ‘There’s a range of mountains on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan that is home to some of the most ferocious warrior tribes in the world,’ he began. ‘It’s where many of the al-Qaeda leaders have been hiding out for years, or so we think. The tribes in these mountains go by a host of different names – Pashtun, Baluchi and so on, all stuff out of the Kipling legends, tales of the North West Frontier and Shangri-la – but the bunch I think we’re looking for are the Mehsuds – the most fearsome of the lot. They live in an area called Waziristan. It’s never been conquered or controlled, not even by the Soviets when they tried, and least of all by the local authorities.’

  ‘It must surely have been part of the British Empire,’ she suggested.

  ‘And when our first units went in to do battle with them in the eighteenth century, only one man came back alive.’

  ‘So what makes you think they have decided to come down from the hills and invade Westminster? Why couldn’t they be al-Qaeda or some of the other Islamics?’

  ‘I saw one of these men up very close, almost eye to eye. It’s the way they present themselves. Long Semitic noses and hair that’s surprisingly straight – not wavy, like many of the Pakistanis and some of the other tribes, for instance, certainly not crinkled
like Arabs. They also traditionally part it down the middle.’ They all stared for confirmation at the television screen, on mute, standing in the corner.

  ‘The Leader of the Opposition parts his hair in the middle,’ she said, but Harry ignored the political insight and continued.

  ‘It’s not just the one thing – I saw several little signs, perhaps insignificant in themselves. Like his teeth are green. They use a type of chewing tobacco – I think they call it nasvar or something like that’ – the man from MI6 was nodding – ‘that leaves deep stains.’

  ‘You were close enough to see his teeth? And you didn’t think to do something about him? I thought you had a particularly . . .’ she stretched for the right words – ‘complicated background in violence.’

  ‘Even if I had succeeded in taking out one, that would still have left seven – and your guess is as good as mine about how they might have reacted. These people are remorseless, hold to Mosaic law.’

  Her eyebrow levitated again.

  ‘An eye for an eye,’ he explained.

  ‘You seem remarkably well informed.’ Somehow it didn’t sound like praise.

  He didn’t explain that he had written a thesis on Islamic terrorist networks for his MLitt at Oxford after he had walked out of the SAS. That had been another stroke of independence that had brassed off his superiors – they’d had plans to send him elsewhere. He could see he was having the same effect on the Home Secretary.

  ‘And I suspect that if we dig into the background of Daud Gul, we will find a blood line leading straight back to the caves of Waziristan.’

  The MI6 man was nodding again, more vigorously.

  ‘An eye for an eye,’ Harry repeated.

  ‘Well, perhaps his ancestry might be of interest to academics, but for the moment we’ve rather more pressing matters on our hands.’ And, as the portrait of Robert Walpole gazed down from above the fireplace, she led the conversation away from Harry. Soon the man from MI5 was suggesting that Masood must have studied in this country. His accent, his command of the language, was all too good to have come from some correspondence course, wasn’t it? Computers located in the darkest places within the government system were already scrabbling to find a match for everything they knew and could see of him.