The Lords' Day (retail)

by Michael Dobbs

  Bloody Mel. Where was she? With a girlfriend, he assumed, or was that merely what he hoped because he couldn’t deal with his fear of the alternative? Come on, Harry, relax! Yes, she would have been deeply hacked off by his no-show at the restaurant and in turmoil over her predicament with the baby, so for sure she would have sought comfort on the shoulder of a girlfriend, and that’s where he’d find her, later this afternoon, after . . .

  Fuck it, there was no point in pretending. This was his fault, too; he’d neglected her, given more time to other people than he had to Mel. Little wonder she had grown so distracted. He should put aside all the harsh words and do a little grovelling, tell her he was sorry, give themselves at least a chance of putting things back together again. And he should do that right now, this minute, before he went back inside, just in case. He stopped fumbling with the shirt and reached for his phone. He dialled; still no answer. Voicemail. He hesitated. With a pang of anguish he realised this might be the last message he ever left her. What should he say? Where the hell was she? Yet the more he tried to put aside his suspicions, the more insistent and hurtful they became. He ended up punching the red button.

  He scolded himself, he was distracted, confused. He had to concentrate, focus on the task that lay ahead, clear himself of the clutter. He was about to walk back into the chamber on the most important mission of his life and he knew he might not be walking out again. The danger would only deepen if his mind were caught on thorns, yet the more he struggled to set his thoughts free the more they became hopelessly entangled. He wasn’t ready for this, none of it. In frustration he snatched at his shirt; there was a tearing sound, a dozen sharp-toothed weasels seemed to rip at his left hand and the buttons raced mockingly away across the tiled floor of the parliamentary post office. Suddenly, Harry realised he was afraid, not just of the danger that lay ahead but about many things. No, he really wasn’t ready for this.

  11.35 a.m.

  Other people, too, were lost in their private thoughts. John Eaton kept glancing at his son, trying to make eye contact, but Magnus seemed determined not to oblige. Even if Eaton hadn’t known it before, he did now; there was nothing he wouldn’t do to save his son. Years of guilt and fatherly pride – and, yes, love – weighed heavily on him and had forced him into humiliating capitulation in front of the terrorists. That would cost him dear, no doubt. He had probably lost the respect of his son and certainly that of others, and he would lose his job, too, after this, but that seemed of little consequence so long as Magnus survived. He would prefer to live with his son in torment than not to live with him at all.

  Robert Paine was another who knew that the world around him had changed for ever. Whatever the outcome of this siege, it would leave all sorts of wreckage in its wake. Leaders would be called to account and found wanting. Oh, they would spin themselves to dizzy heights and vow that such appalling failures would never be repeated, but it would take more than the head of that poor, broken fool Eaton to appease the cries for retribution. Windows would be broken not just in Downing Street but in the White House, too. Yet at least the Prime Minister and President might have the privilege of watching their sons grow to manhood; it was far, far more than they deserved.

  By contrast, Tricia Willcocks was in less pessimistic mood. She had showered and undertaken running repairs in order to prepare for the outcome, and whatever that might be, she believed she could embrace it. If it were all to end in bloody disaster, she knew she’d left enough of her misgivings littered around the floor of COBRA to be able to wash her hands of those medding Boy Scouts. Yet – and she had been so careful about this – she had not vetoed the operation, as she might have tried to do, and if through some process of divine intervention their efforts succeeded in saving the day, she would be the first to applaud, and be sure to do so very publicly. Why, she’d been in charge, had counselled them, cautioned them where necessary, and wished them God’s guidance even as the decision to attack had been made. She’d be suitably modest, of course, but the truth was she was responsible for the entire thing. Rejoice! Rejoice! Anyway, so great would be the outbreak of public rejoicing that no one would have patience for any cockroaches and critics who might crawl out with complaints after the event. She’d shown she could take the pressure, handle the responsibility, and even though her name had been marked as the first victim she had been lucky enough to survive. The media liked lucky leaders. All in all, she thought she’d done rather well.

  Nothing more was required of her, except to wait.

  11.48 a.m.

  Daud Gul had never known such terror. The Americans had promised that he was going home, but they had surely lied. Instead they were trying to terrify him to death. It was a tactic he knew they used, like waterboarding, when they strapped you to a plank of wood with your head below your feet and your mouth and nose covered while they poured water over your face, so you thought you were drowning. Sometimes you did, choked to death, or broke bones in the desperate struggle to free yourself from the restraints. Yet now he didn’t even have time to prepare himself. He’d been thinking of his mountains, lost in a world of dreams, when without warning his inner calm had been shattered by a loud female voice. ‘Bingo Fuel!’ it shouted at him. ‘Bingo Fuel!’ it repeated. He opened his eyes in time to see the indicators in front of him changing from green to yellow and beginning to flash. ‘Bitching Betty’, as the voice was known, was announcing that they were running short of fuel. He glanced anxiously out of the window but could see nothing except a haze where sky and sea seemed to melt into each other, and he couldn’t even be sure which way was up or down. He knew he was far, far from his home still; outside the cockpit there were no mountains, no land of any kind, and now the plane was dropping from the sky, falling lower and lower, the instrumentation changing all the time. He had been prepared to meet his death ever since they had captured him, but he had hoped for a warrior’s death, a bullet or a blade; he hadn’t counted on this.

  Only at the last moment, as he knew they were about to crash, did he see the carrier beneath them, a tail of tortured water stretching out behind. And no sooner had he seen it than they were upon it, hitting it hard, his entire being shaken like a lamb in the jaws of a lion. It took him some time to realise that he was unhurt; now he understood why they had strapped him in so tight. And as they opened the cockpit he was assailed by noise, men shouting, machines pounding, everything around him was moving, his head was spinning. That was when he threw up. All over their bright and shining airplane. No time for the barf bag. The American engineers cursed, and he might have been proud of himself had he not taken it for a sign of his own weakness.

  They dragged him from his seat, shouting in his ear, but he under stood little of it, his attention focused on the mayhem of machinery that whizzed past and around him, all seemingly intent on killing him. But then he was inside the ship, they were stripping his soiled flight suit from him and telling him to use the head. Then they began hauling him back into another set of their tight, chest-crushing flight clothing. Oh, God, he cried, they were going to start with torture all over again.

  11.50 a.m.

  The mess at Wellington Barracks, in the lee of Buckingham Palace, was an unusual sight. The forty-odd men of Colonel Topolski’s Delta Force detachment appeared to be relaxing in whatever way they wished; some ate, drank water, coffee, nothing hard, while others played cards or sat propped against walls and dozed. Some even smoked, although that was against the law, but no one seemed interested in interfering. They even had their weapons at their sides. Only the presence of armed guards standing on the other side of the mess doors gave any hint that they were not entirely at their ease.

  When the door opened to admit two men, Topolski was relieved to see that one of them was Braithewaite. He liked and respected the man, and the fact that they had ended up at opposite ends of the barrel could only be explained by the outbreak of some virulent form of swamp fever. The man accompanying the British captain was considerably older and more s
enior, but the American was fighting the fog of fatigue and was too disorientated to recognise him or immediately identify the salad bowl of ribbons that hung from his chest. Topolski stubbed out the remnants of his cigar – one of a fresh supply provided by his British captor – and stood. The older man saluted and extended a hand.

  ‘Colonel Topolski,’ he said, ‘I hope we’ve been taking care of you. But I’m afraid I must ask you and your men to move out. Right now.’

  ‘You’re just in time,’ Topolski muttered. ‘We were about to tunnel our way under the wire.’

  ‘We need you at Westminster,’ the other man continued, undeterred by the American’s flippancy. ‘You see, we’re just about to go in, colonel. And you’re part of this operation. We very much want you to be flying the flag beside us, as usual.’

  ‘I don’t—’

  ‘What? You didn’t think for one moment we’d try to keep you away from the fun, did you? Not after you’ve come all this way.’ The older man offered a clipped smile. ‘I can’t promise that we’ll need your men for the operation itself, but I wanted to come down here personally to say how extremely grateful we are for your support – as always, eh? So if you and your men are ready, I’ll leave it to Captain Braithewaite to take care of the arrangements. You’ll forgive me, but I have to be elsewhere. I hope we’ll meet again later, colonel, after this little dance has been done. In the meantime . . .’ And with the crispest of salutes, he was gone.

  ‘Who . . . ?’

  ‘That,’ Braithewaite responded, ‘was the Chief of the Defence Staff.’

  ‘So why . . . ?’

  ‘I think he wanted to ensure there had been no misunderstanding.’

  ‘And this . . . ?’ The American cast around him at his men in their informal but unambiguous confinement.

  ‘Never happened.’

  12 noon.

  They made their final preparations under cover of Big Ben as it tolled the hour. The clatter of the helicopter overhead had become so much part of the scene that those inside the chamber had long ago discounted it, blocking out the pounding on their ears, and they failed to notice as it dropped just a little lower still. It was much the same with the clatter of the light tanks outside as they shifted positions yet again. Like a flood tide that laps around the unsuspecting, spaces that only moments beforehand had been empty were occupied by whispering men, waiting to strike.

  Most of the members of COBRA were still around the table, watching screens, waiting. Tibbetts, however, had retreated to his Ops Room. He wanted to be with his men. He sat in the corner, reading once more his copy of the letter he had signed handing responsibility to the SAS. By this letter I formally pass over responsibility for the siege taking place within the House of Lords to military authorities . . . It made Tibbetts redundant, for the while, but he knew that it would not absolve him from what was to come. The letter was a prescription for legal murder, and his signature was on it. He ran his forefinger over it, time and again, mechanically trying to smooth away the folds in the paper, and drank more coffee.

  Brigadier Hastie also wished to be with his men. The SAS had set up their headquarters on the committee corridor in the Palace of Westminster, a floor above the entrance to the Lords. The final briefing had already been delivered. On the wall, pinned across sumptuous Pugin wallpaper, were photographs taken from television cameras of each one of the gunmen, and across a table was spread a large hand-crafted diagram of the chamber and its entrances. On it was marked the location of every single person, both captives and captors, all numbered or named. Hastie said little as his squadron commander set about the task, occupying his time by listening intently as the various SAS sticks reported in, counting them off as they verified their locations and states of readiness.

  A million miles away in Washington DC, President Blythe Edwards had just received news of the impending attack and was going through moments of torment that there was no chapel in the White House. A hundred and thirty-two rooms, but not a single place to get down on her knees and pray. She knew she needed God to help her face the coming trial; she had interfered, meddled in the affairs of others, been arrogant, and it had all gone wrong. The American sin. She sat on the edge of her bed, looking out across the dawn that was emerging feebly above the Potomac and watching grey skies weep. Slowly, like the raindrops that were trickling down the windowpane, she fell to her knees. She clasped her hands together and prayed to her Lord that she would find the strength to get through this day, and that her son would find protection. And when she had finished with that, she asked for forgiveness, not just for herself but for those who were about to commit this ludicrous, insane act of carnage at the moment when Daud Gul was almost home. They would need God’s forgiveness, those people, for they’d never receive a crumb of forgiveness from anyone else.

  Meanwhile, back in London, Tricia Willcocks climbed into a fresh set of clothes and began toying with the phrases she would use to mark the end of the siege. Unrestrained joy or the most sombre sadness. Whatever the outcome, she would be prepared.

  12.15 p.m.

  When they strapped him in for the second time, Daud Gul simply closed his eyes, ready for whatever might come. He had gone limp, couldn’t obstruct them but wouldn’t cooperate, so they had treated him like a sack of rice and dumped him in the rear hard seat, tightening his restraints more fiercely than ever. This was a new plane, no vomit, just the stench of fuel once more, and a different pilot, more talkative, not filled with sullen hatred like the last American. Daud Gul looked out from the cockpit and saw nothing but water. Despite himself, he felt panic rising once more in his throat.

  When the steam catapult of the Abraham Lincoln threw the plane into the air he was thrown back against his headrest and he hit nearly 4 Gs, but it didn’t last. Soon they were climbing once more up the side of a sky mountain, heading for the stars. He couldn’t see properly, grey patches had formed at the edges of his vision, and he shook his head trying to regain his senses.

  ‘If you’re gonna throw up again, don’t do it in your helmet,’ the voice of the pilot interrupted. ‘You do that and you’ll choke.’

  But even as he spoke, the plane was easing back, levelling out, no longer pointing vertically. And as they flew on, one of the screens embedded in the instrument board in front of him began to change. Instead of showing nothing but emptiness, it began to give way to something that appeared harder, more substantial.

  For the first time, Daud Gul spoke. ‘What is that?’

  ‘That?’ the pilot responded. ‘Why, that’s land, Mr Gul. The coastline of Pakistan. You’re practically home.’

  12.25 p.m.

  At a signal that was relayed to him from Hastie’s squadron commander, Harry re-entered the chamber, pushing his trolley. He was needed; the hostages were growing impatient in expectation of imminent release, and with their impatience had come appetite. Masood’s men stared at the battered figure, his bloodied face, his broken hand, his now badly stained shirt, but he had become familiar and they paid him no special attention. Around the chamber hung an air of quiet anticipation that had raised the humour and resilience of most of those there, but the mood hadn’t infected everyone. Elizabeth sat, impassive as always, inspecting Harry as though seeking some sign, as if doubting the face value of what she saw; did she know, or sense, that all was not as it seemed? The American ambassador was dark-eyed and sombre, the Prime Minister carried a haunted expression as if he was searching for something that lay a thousand miles in the distance, while nearby the two sons had faces bathed white in pain.

  Yet Archie Wakefield’s eyes were bright, searching. Harry nodded. Slowly, cautiously so that the gunmen could read nothing into the gesture, Archie pulled his ear.

  And as Harry pushed his pile of food and drink still further into the chamber, he snagged the attention of the royal protection officer by staring at him with an intensity that screamed in warning. The officer didn’t understand but he wasn’t required to understand; he needed only to be a
lert. He sat up, braced his shoulders, stretched his arms, more in curiosity than expectation, but that was enough. He was back in the picture.

  Harry went about his task of distributing the supplies with woeful slowness but he had a ready excuse in his physical condition and the fatigue that was running through them all, yet he couldn’t stretch it out for ever. He couldn’t afford to raise suspicions. He grew anxious. He looked once more across at Archie, willing him on, begging him to make his move – everything was hanging on him, surely he knew that? The bomb must be dealt with first. But Archie sat there, impassive, and when Harry’s despairing eyes hit him he did nothing but tug at his bloody ear once more.

  Oh, God, it wasn’t going to happen. Archie had frozen, wasn’t up for it. The attack would have to start with the bomb still in place. And one of the terrorists was now eyeing Harry with more than idle mistrust, waving him on with the muzzle of his gun. This wasn’t going to work.

  12.42 p.m.

  As Harry began to feel despair biting at his heels, half a world away and for the first time, Daud Gul was sensing that surge of excitement that told him he had won. His plane grew lighter as it burned up its fuel, flying ever faster towards its destination, at almost twelve miles a minute, and although Daud Gul knew none of this he could see far below him the shapes and shadows of land, and knew it was Pakistan.

  ‘How much longer?’ he asked.

  ‘If we maintain this tail wind, thirty-six minutes,’ came the reply.