Time of Lies

by Douglas Board

  He holds a torch as I struggle into black over-trousers with elasticated cuffs. The leather jacket is large across the shoulders. The black gloves have visibility flashes. I struggle to fit my head into the helmet’s padding until I take the wig off. This prompts an up-and-down from the torch on my face.

  ‘Nice job,’ he says, surveying his imitation prime minister. ‘You’re better off without the wig anyway – they burn something horrid in a crash. Not that we’ll have one of those. Here, let me.’ He fishes out a crumpled Tesco shopping bag, wraps the curls and pops them in the pannier, before checking the helmet strap is snug and the visor two-thirds down. ‘The best,’ he opines, tapping the top of my skull through the helmet. ‘Good airflow. But nudge the visor up a notch if you want more.’

  He climbs on and eases the bike off its stand. I step onto a foot-peg and swing myself onto something which is more an indentation than a seat. We’re hydraulically propped above four cylinders with more capacity than my car engine. The motor purrs into life and my hands grab the rail which cradles my bum. In less than two minutes we’re London-bound on the M3 doing eighty miles an hour. I’d swear it was more but over Frank’s shoulder the display is clear enough.

  The bike’s twin headlights angle through the darkness towards hesitant pink on the horizon. By the time we turn north onto the M25 and then east again onto the M4, a third of the celestial bowl is lighting up. Approaching aircraft hang in front of us, jewels on a necklace tethered to the heavens at one end and to runway 27R at the other.

  I tuck in behind Frank and try to breathe slowly. This means ignoring the eighty-mile-an-hour wind, the tarmac inches from my feet and the traffic already clogging London’s aorta. I still don’t have a script, although some joker did send me a pictorial history of No 10. I’ve seen enough up-to-the-minute video footage to last several lifetimes. Surely to God they’ve not forgotten? I imagine a handful of double-spaced pages to be signed for on delivery, lost to the world inside a back room at Brixham post office.

  To calm my nerves I’ve settled on a couple of mental drills. The one I’m practising as the bike flashes left, slows and turns into Heston services, is chairing a meeting of the Cabinet. I know the room; I know my chair – the one with armrests in front of the mantelpiece; I know the Bills and my Cabinet members and how I’ll greet them; I know there will be other civil servants who I won’t recognise. I’ve got something up my sleeve to tease Annabel Wale, who will be sitting on one side of me. Shima Patterson will be on the other side; I’ll give her a pat on the back, which she hates but Bob does without fail. And then I punch the stop button in my head and rewind, because what the fuck happens next?

  At Heston services we wait. I’m hoping for a Costa coffee or even – rash thought – a Krispy Kreme but Frank tells me to keep the helmet on to avoid identification. So we stand in the car park. After fifteen minutes of dawn I’m twitchy. After twenty-five the solar orb is bright. I’m tempted to chuck the helmet and ask Frank for a cigarette – I saw him have one at Camberley – but then a message comes through his ear-piece. He gestures me to follow. We head towards the lorry park and make for a ten-tonne DAF Aerobody painted ‘Swansea Removals Abertawe’, sitting next to a blacked-out people carrier.

  I’m grabbing human contact where I can get it, so I take Frank’s hand warmly and say thank you and good-bye.

  ‘You’re not shot of me yet. Now this truck – Britain may not be able to afford Air Force One but this is the next best thing – Wardrobe One.’ He holds up the Tesco bag with my wig. ‘All right if I keep this safe for you, for after?’

  After whatever is about to happen.

  The back of the truck opens up and a middle-aged man of Indian appearance leads me up the ramp into a dimly lit backstage interior. However once the back door closes, lights blaze – we’re lit up as if in a mobile studio. This one comes complete with a shower and five racks of suits, shirts and casual clothes – a reproduction, I realise, of my brother’s wardrobe. My guide has an assistant, perhaps his nephew.

  I scrub myself down, have a shave and sit in a dressing gown for twenty minutes of make-up by the possible nephew, who hovers between me and a lap-top bulging with pictures of Bob. He uses very fine clippers to flatten my eyebrows. Then they dress me in a suit, something Italian in merino wool, very elegant in a shade between black and blue which I haven’t seen before. I’m wearing a white shirt with gold BG cufflinks. I reach to tie a tie around my neck – also black and blue but with BG’s red and white lion. The older man shakes his head, and I realise I haven’t practised tying ties Bob’s way. I’ve chosen my talisman, a torn sheet of paper; I slip it folded into my breast pocket.

  A squeaking in their ear-pieces calls both men back to the screen for a hurried consultation, before the nephew returns with a tube of yellow acrylic paint. He gives me a smear below the third button of my shirt. ‘Sir was a little careless at breakfast,’ he explains, and gives me my first look at myself in a full-length mirror. Bob – end of.

  The only person in the back of the blacked-out people carrier is Frank, now changed into sweatshirt and jeans. Next to my Tesco bag is a Heckler and Koch MP7 machine pistol with a suppressor. From recessed speakers Karen and Richard Carpenter sing ‘We’ve Only Just Begun’ at a low volume. I laugh – I assume it’s Patrick’s sense of humour. We join the motorway and drift at considerably less than eighty miles an hour towards central London. When I say to Frank, ‘I don’t suppose they gave you a script,’ the answer is predictable.

  We take the Hammersmith crawl-over and filter our way along the Cromwell Road and Earl’s Court, cutting down through Edith Grove to the Chelsea riverfront. I count the bridges – Battersea, Albert, Chelsea and Vauxhall – before the Thames swings north, taking us with it. Passing Lambeth Bridge we cross over from the land of London Spy to that part of the capital where history is part of the day job – Lambeth Palace, the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey. We go round Parliament Square, navigate a barrier and are admitted into a courtyard of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. It’s mid-renovation and looks like a builder’s yard. We pull up ten yards behind another people carrier, stopped underneath improvised PVC sheeting with its tail lights glowing. The carrier is next to a doorway.

  ‘How long?’ I ask.

  Frank shrugs.

  There’ll be no cosmetic surgery in Canada, I’ve decided. The hair’s coming back, obviously, but the Tony Mortimer eyebrows are staying.

  45

  London, Tuesday 30 June 2020

  At ten minutes to nine on Tuesday Kathy followed Patrick and Shima Patterson into the Pillared Room at 10 Downing Street where a firing squad of cameras had been set up. All the seats were taken. The assembled mass was like a cryogenically-sealed crème brûlée: in the first two rows the ambassadors of the European Union with expressions frozen with liquid nitrogen; behind that crust, a seething lava of media vultures.

  Two rows of officials stood behind the lectern to the left. Kathy was in the second row behind Patrick, with Patrick next to Shima, and Shima next to the lectern. On the other side were Ministers, including Zaf’s replacement. Annabel and Jennifer were deep beneath the MOD. Citing national security, Patrick had insisted they take their places in PINDAR, protected by a thick blanket of steel and concrete. It was now too risky to have all the nation’s leadership in one place. Besides, the whole show was screening live.

  Sixty seconds before the man they were all waiting for strode to the lectern, Kathy practically wet herself. Had she told Patrick that she and Bob had met once, at Bob’s housewarming party? It was too late to do anything but stare at the floor. Bob passed in front of her without a flicker of recognition. The figure was the same height as the man she had kissed at Totnes station but the smell was unmistakably Bob. In addition to the scents of sweat and power, she thought she detected fear.

  Bob’s suit was charcoal with a blue steel wash, the colour of twenty minutes befo
re nightfall on a mountain lake. The white shirt with gold BG cufflinks and a BG tie were let down by a smudge of egg yolk below the third button. He laid a single sheet of double-spaced A4 on the lectern.

  Normally Bob had no use for speeches from paper or autocue, but today for a full minute his eyes were glued to his script and not to any of the cameras. Kathy’s stomach wobbled briefly – could it be Zack, fluffing things? No, this was the real deal. For once the Bermondsey swagger had buckled.

  Then a line arrived – ‘No-one mocks Britain, our proud country, our decency and our generosity’ – which brought a roar of support from the crowd half a mile away, gathered in Trafalgar Square since the evening before. The cheers were audible through Number Ten’s open windows. Bob found his groove. His shoulders came back and forty camera lenses saw his eyes blaze.

  ‘When the bedlam starts, stick to me like a leech,’ Patrick had said on the walk over. ‘When I disappear, stick with Shima.’ So Kathy stuck to Patrick as the crust of normality shattered and lava erupted in every direction. Two Royal Marines stepped from behind pillars. Patrick had his hand on Bob’s elbow, piloting him towards the door.

  Shima took the lectern for a scant four seconds, shouting, ‘The Prime Minister will answer the questions of the British people in Prime Minister’s Questions tomorrow,’ but the attempt was pointless so she plunged after Patrick. The French Ambassador foamed at the mouth, ‘Anglo-Saxon madness – force de frappe – Birmingham in cinders – ’

  46

  London, Tuesday 30 June 2020 (2)

  You know I don’t read statements but we’re shooting for ‘statesmanlike’. That’s the first reason I struggle with the first few lines. The second is, I’m suddenly queasy – not like me at all. I go to the lectern head down, catching no-one’s eye.

  What’s deserted me, like a lifelong buddy abruptly missing, is my innate belief in how it’s going to turn out. Not the details, of course, but the big picture. The kind of confidence I took for granted when I packed in school, set up my business, or did the Millwall rally. It’s as if, as I place this piece of paper on the lectern, some time ago my confidence bucket sprang a leak and I didn’t notice. Shit timing, eh? Still, the bucket’s not empty. And whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.

  STATEMENT BY THE RT HON BOB GRANT MP, PRIME MINISTER, AT 09:00 ON TUESDAY 30 JUNE 2020 (CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY)

  Fellow Britons:

  On Saturday the European Commission and the Government of France treated six thousand immigrants as pawns in a game. The game’s point was to make fun of Britain. The first thing for me to say is that all those individuals, whether they are migrants or refugees, are safely in our care. A big thank you to the Vigilance, the police and all the great people of Kent, for rising to that challenge. But the immigrants, and all of you, want to know – what’s next?

  No-one mocks Britain, our proud country, our decency and our generosity without paying big time. The British people already spoke on Sunday night. They punished the game-players with their own hands, but rightly they expect more.

  The resignation of the President of the Commission? – let’s save our breath. Where there’s one cockroach, there are always more. It’s the nest we have to deal with.

  In our time the Berlaymont has become Nero’s palace – an obscene statement of arrogance and decadence. Britain gives the Commission until 9am GMT this Friday, 3 July to vacate this space permanently. Having accommodated three thousand bureaucrats in style, the building will in time house more deserving occupants – six thousand homeless people from France.

  If this demand is not accepted, the building will be pulverised at noon on Friday with an airburst of a nuclear warhead. The altitude of the burst will be sufficient to leave minimal radioactivity at ground level. Some surrounding buildings will also turn to rubble, but by Saturday the ground will be safe to walk on. In either case, the nest of cockroaches will have come to an end.

  Britain’s Great! End of!

  Organising a couple of Marines to help me make a fast exit is good thinking on Patrick’s part. The crowds outside are wild so I follow them into the damp tunnels which join Downing Street and Whitehall. We’re going at a brisk jog. The more bedlam, the merrier: I’m thinking about the next move, about making sure Jennifer delivers pictures for the evening news of the refugees being embarked (very nicely) onto Naval auxiliary ships in Dover harbour. Of course, I need Annabel...

  ‘Where’s Annabel?’ I ask Patrick. He’s beside me. Shima’s following, with a junior naval officer.

  You know times on the playing field when your blood is up – when everyone’s blood is up – when it’s a knife-edge game? Today’s like that in spades. Some times like that you don’t hear the ref’s whistle. People swear he whistled, but you don’t hear it.

  So here’s the first whistle I don’t hear – the navy bird. She rings a bell but I’ve no time to figure it out. To be fair, it was just the once, thirteen years ago; she was out of her uniform and I was out of my tree.

  Patrick’s got his in-charge voice on. ‘General Wale and CDS are in PINDAR already. I’m taking you to the Alternate National Command Headquarters. Standard procedure for the transition to war, Prime Minister – you have just threatened to nuke a NATO ally.’

  We climb a flight of stone steps back to ground level. ‘What Alternate Headquarters?’ I say.

  Patrick grins. ‘We have to have something in our bag of goodies that we haven’t shown Peter Hennessy. How embarrassing if we didn’t! Shall I go first?’

  There’s the second whistle, right there. The grin reminds me that what punched a leak in my confidence bucket was ACERBIC. ACERBIC blew my mind! But what I miss about the grin, during the briefing and now, is that Patrick is far happier than he ought to be with what’s going down.

  The Marines stand on either side as Patrick opens a wooden door. A people carrier is waiting, door slid back. Two soldiers with automatic rifles, covered in black and green goo, sit facing the back seat, black taxi-style. That’s the third whistle I don’t hear. Another time, this could be my Birnam Wood moment: in command headquarters in Britain, even alternate ones, we’re not big on jungle foliage. Instead my blood’s up, the jog has got my adrenaline pumping, and by God those soldiers look like they’re ready for war.

  Patrick dives in. I follow. I don’t see who slams the door, probably one of the Marines. I’m thrown against the back seat by the vehicle’s acceleration and the soldier opposite me leaning towards my right shoulder.

  ‘Seatbelt, sir?’ he says. He thumps me on my right chest. I feel an electric shock and black out.

  47

  London, Tuesday 30 June 2020 (3)

  Frank holds three fingers up and taps his watch. I flex my neck and start the breathing exercises I always do, counting down to on stage. With no opening line to focus on it’s harder. He opens the door a couple of inches so I can see.

  Patrick is first out of the entrance, followed by Bob: the silver fox leading Bob with the same assurance which brought me to where I am now. Shima Patterson and Kathy follow but remain on the pavement. Kathy sneaks a glance at our vehicle even though she can see nothing inside. She looks sombre in her blue dress jacket with gold sleeve lace and Navy tricorn. A Marine slams the vehicle’s door shut. She salutes as Bob and Patrick accelerate away sharpish.

  We pull forward and Kathy remains at the salute. Frank says, ‘Break a leg,’ and slides the door fully open. He waves the Tesco bag with my wig. ‘I’ll see this gets back to you.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I reply, climbing out.

  Shima steps forward. When I pat her on the back she flinches, and then smiles. ‘Welcome, Prime Minister. Don’t smile, don’t wave, don’t crack jokes – you’ve just threatened to nuke Brussels.’

  ‘What?!’

  ‘Nuke Brussels. This Friday. If you didn’t think this was deadly serious before, think it now. Follow me through Number Te
n, out of the front door and into the car. Look like death and say nothing to anybody – literally anybody. Ready?’

  What saves me is there’s no time to think. I oscillate between a scowl and a frown, and settle for grim determination. Two Marines are in front, I follow Shima and Kathy follows behind me. We go down stone steps and stoop to enter an underground passage before surging upwards into a corridor at Number Ten, which I recognise from the videos. Everything is shouting and hysteria, like a Hallowe’en party at which several people have died. The volume is unbelievable. The Marines act as our ice-breaker.

  Do the weeks of training pay off? I haven’t a clue – I recognise faces but don’t consciously exchange glances with any of them, even Aude. I doubt they notice – I’ve never seen so many frightened people in my life. After two long minutes of forced slow breaths I’m through the front door of Number Ten. The Jaguar and driver are waiting. Shima holds the rear door for me and steers Kathy towards the front passenger seat.

  ‘Nuke Brussels,’ I say as the Jaguar noses into Whitehall, followed by a police Land Rover. ‘So where’s my script? I was promised.’

  ‘You don’t need one,’ Shima replies. From her jacket pocket she takes out a card on which someone has written Europe – falling £ – global warming. ‘Here’s what you discussed with the Prince Regent last week – as far as we can piece it together. What you tell him now is that you are tendering the resignation of the Cabinet. Please repeat that back to me.’

  I do and follow it with, ‘And when he says why?’

  The Jaguar turns left half-way down Whitehall. Shima Patterson fixes me with brown eyes whose batteries have died. ‘Because you talked to a mulberry bush. Because Ant and Dec appeared to you in a dream. Trust me, he won’t be that interested. Ever since the election he’s been itching to ask the Labour and Conservative parties to form a national coalition. If he asks, tell him that’s a top-hole idea.’ After showing a pass we drive through the arch and cross Horse Guards Parade.