‘I don’t know any more than you do – or Carl Chatterton does,’ Gott told him staunchly. ‘I believe the pressure from the Labour voters in the country will make Chatterton oppose the bill.’ Field raised his pointed eyebrows. ‘Yes?’ he said.
‘The latest MORI poll says that seventy-five per cent of Labour supporters are against the sell-off,’ Joshua said. ‘It’ll be published the day after tomorrow.’
‘You don’t need to tell me,’ said Field.
‘Then you’ll see Chatterton has every reason to vote against the bill.’
‘At worst he’ll allow a free vote,’ Amelia Strange said confidently. ‘Actually, Edward, I wondered if, as the party treasurer, you have any comment to make about the increasingly loud rumours about the party funding for the last election.’
‘I’ll be making a statement about that closer to the time,’ Gott said.
‘What do you mean?’ Field asked.
‘What I say – I’ll make a statement within weeks.’
‘Come on,’ demanded Field.
Amelia Strange’s phone rang. She would not have been interrupted except in an emergency. Everyone in the room listened. ‘My God,’ she said. Then Field’s phone rang, and Douglas Clare’s. And then Gott’s.
They all had the same news. A gang of unidentified, armed men had taken over the base at Hamscott Common. A US serviceman had been killed and another injured. The base was in darkness.
Amelia Strange and Rod Field left immediately. The caucus remained.
Gott broke the silence. ‘Well – that’s our story on radio and in the press fucked.’
He was only saying what everyone else in the room was thinking.
19 Claremont Road, Whitechapel, London E1. January 25th, 2016. 8 p.m.
Julia accepted another cup of tea from Mrs Suleima Zulani, who then retreated to the kitchen, where she was sitting with her sister. Julia and her local Party Chairman sat in easy chairs, part of a comfortable suite, in the Zulanis’ immaculate living room. At the back of the room, visible to Julia from her chair, young Aziz sat at the table, looking at a page of the textbook in front of him, and following the conversation while pretending not to. Intermittently he shot an unfriendly glance at Julia. Opposite him at the table his sister, a science student, was working at her books.
Six men and a woman, all Muslims, had been taken during the massive sweep following the TV Centre bombing. And Julia had only discovered the whereabouts of one of the three young detainees arrested at Christmas. Nine of her constituents were missing and she, their elected representative, could not find them. The police, under the new provisions of the Civil Contingency Act, had no obligation to give her or their families any information. She had a civil rights lawyer involved, and a second lawyer who specialized in European law. But all civil liberties organizations were working at full stretch now and lawyers for the disappeared were being blocked, obviously as a result of orders from high up in the chain of command.
‘I and several others have asked for a personal meeting with the Home Secretary. He’ll see us on the first of February,’ she reported. ‘A lot of questions have been put down—’
Zulfeikar’s face told her that he had little hope of a good outcome from the meeting, or the Parliamentary questions. ‘These actions are legal,’ he told her. ‘The only questions will be about whether the powers are being used rightly. And while that goes on these men will be in custody, with the US authorities using pressure to get them extradited to the US. It is the law that is wrong. The law of the land. The law I have obeyed all my life. There is not even any evidence that this bombing was carried out by Muslims. Those who did it have not been found. What can we do, Mrs Baskerville? These young men who see their friends and their brothers pulled off the street in police round-ups will not stay quiet for ever.’
‘I understand, Mr Zulani. You know I do. I will keep on working. And I hope we can overturn this bill about selling the bases to the Americans. That would send a signal to everybody that we aren’t passive about US policy.’
‘I agree,’ said Zulfeikar, ‘but what are we going to do about what’s happening on our streets?’
‘Keep on trying,’ Julia said. It was all she could say but in her heart she knew both she and Zulfeikar Zulani were likely to be turned out by a local party unable to bear the slow, shaky and often ineffective operation of the system any longer. The appeals not heard, the peaceful demonstrations ignored, the admonishments from Europe overlooked and mocked.
‘One law is bigger than ours now,’ said Mr Zulani. ‘American law. That is what we all must obey.’
‘What are people thinking?’
‘Some of us want to go home. Some are going. Some want separate communities – schools, hospital, everything.’
‘Ghettoes,’ Julia said.
‘A name means nothing.’
‘And illegal action?’ she prompted.
‘Of course,’ said Zulfeikar. Then his phone rang. His son answered it. There was a long conversation to which Zulfeikar listened. His wife opened the kitchen door and she and her sister came into the room and stood in the doorway, the beginnings of alarm on their faces. Aziz was talking in a torrent, Zulfeikar himself had risen and was putting out his hand for the phone, which his son would not relinquish.
Finally he shouted something angry and at that point the young man slammed the phone back in its cradle, stood up and began to talk aggressively at his father. His aunt let out a soft cry, his mother put her hand to her mouth. Zulfeikar’s daughter remained perfectly still, watching. Julia, believing there might be some serious family issue involved, stood up to leave. Zulfeikar did not try to prevent her.
He said coldly, ‘You should know. A group of men has invaded the Hamscott Common base. They have taken the soldiers at the base prisoner.’
‘Who are they? Do they want something – what is it?’ she asked.
‘That is not clear,’ said Zulfeikar. Julia thought, judging by young Aziz’s reaction, more was clear than her Party Chairman was ready to tell her.
Leaving the house she said to Zulfeikar, ‘This is very bad news. If there are Muslims involved it won’t help us here.’
He replied, ‘Julia – I don’t know what will help us.’
16 Hamscott Crescent, Hamscott Common, Kent. January 25th, 2016. 8 p.m.
When the phone rang in the Aliens’ house at Hamscott Common, Rob Allen was watching floodlit football from Prague while his wife, flowered cotton pooling round her feet, pushed material through her whizzing sewing machine. ‘Answer it, Lilian,’ said Rob. His wife, concentrating on a seam, muttered, ‘Rosie?’ Rosie, who had protested in the pub a few months before, was at the dining room table, painting the corner of her slightly misshapen thumbnail a lighter colour, to disguise the flaw and replied, ‘Can’t somebody else?’ But no one moved and the phone in the hall went on ringing so Rosie got up and walked slowly from the room, waving her hand about to dry her nail varnish.
‘Hello,’ she said without enthusiasm, knowing that it would not be her boyfriend, Kevin.
‘Rosie – it’s Uncle Don,’ came an urgent voice. ‘Get your father, will you? It’s important.’
‘He’s watching the football, Uncle Don,’ she told him.
‘Never mind the football. This can’t wait,’ he said.
Rosie went back into the living room and said to her father, ‘Uncle Don. He says it can’t wait.’
Her father groaned and rose reluctantly from the chair. The match went on. Lilian Allen’s sewing machine continued to whirr and Rosie uncapped the nail varnish again; both women heard Rob’s voice rising. Lilian pulled the fabric from the sewing machine and turned it off. Rosie put the cap back on the bottle of nail varnish. By the time they reached the hall Rob had put the phone down.
‘Some nutters have taken over the base,’ he told them. ‘Apparently they’ve taken the troops there hostage. They’re armed.’
Lilian, who had paled, said, ‘They have nuclear weapons t
here.’
‘Don’s piling the whole family in the car and going to his brother’s in Dorset,’ her father reported.
‘He’s what?’ said Rosie. Uncle Don was not her uncle, just an old friend of her parents, whom she had known all her life. Don never did anything on impulse. It could take him a month to decide on a family holiday in exactly the same place they’d visited for the past three years.
Her mother was less taken aback. ‘It’s because of the nuclear weapons,’ she said clearly, then put her back to the wall and slid down, slowly, to the carpet.
This, and the sound of police cars suddenly screaming past the house, made Rosie understand, suddenly, that something very frightening was taking place. Her father went quickly to his wife and pulled her to her feet. ‘Come and sit down, love. Rosie, put the kettle on and make your mum a cup of tea.’
Standing in the kitchen, Rosie waited for the kettle to boil. She heard the sound of a helicopter overhead. A beam raked the garden, as if looking for something on the lawn, or, perhaps, behind the garden shed. What was going on at the base – the base she had secretly detested since Kim had died?
If a nuclear weapon went off at the base, would they live? Probably not. And what about Kevin? And why, for God’s sake, was she standing here, making tea? Leaving the kettle to itself she ran upstairs quietly and got her mobile phone. Back in the kitchen she pressed Kevin’s number.
‘Tea!’ her father called as she listened to the phone ringing. Rosie put some tea bags in the cups and waited for Kevin to answer.
When he did, he looked anxious. He tried to sound normal. ‘It’s probably nothing – probably all over by now. All I know is what’s on the radio and they don’t seem to know much either. If they did they’d probably be stopped from telling. The story is, a gang of about twenty men took over the base a couple of hours ago. Some of them may be ex-army. They’ve killed a Yank and wounded another one. They put them down by the gates and opened up for them to get taken away. How the fuck could they do that – that place is guarded up to the back teeth. And guess what – my mum’s hysterical. She wants me to pick her up and take her to London. She’s already packed.’
‘Are you going?’ asked Rosie.
‘Not without you, Rosie. What do you take me for? Anyway, I’m literally at a standstill here – oh, shit. Just a minute Rosie – roadblock.’ He had a shouted conversation through his car window, then said hurriedly, ‘Rosie – there’s soldiers here checking everybody’s ID. I’ll ring you back.’
‘Where’s that tea?’ called Rosie’s father.
She put the mugs on a tray and went into the sitting room, looking only at the TV. There were views taken from a helicopter, showing the darkened base encircled by soldiers and military vehicles. Inside the ring there were floodlit ambulances and police vehicles. Figures reminding Rosie of her cousin’s old Star Wars figures stood about in white protective suits and helmets. Then the picture changed and there were three men in the studio discussing the implications of the base seizure.
‘The ring road’s got a roadblock. Soldiers are looking at all the drivers’ ID,’ Rosie reported.
‘I wouldn’t have thought anybody outside the base was worth worrying about,’ said Rob Allen. ‘They sent a note out on the dead Yank. They’re a group who doesn’t want the bases handed over to Americans. It was signed by a gang called the Jihad, and some British blokes, with their old regiment’s name. The Prime Minister’s calling them terrorists trying to hold the government to ransom. They might send the Army in.’
‘That’s obvious,’ said Rosie’s mother, and ignoring her tea left the room. They heard her going upstairs. From the bottom of the staircase Rosie called out, ‘What are you doing, Mum?’
‘Shutting the curtains, in case the windows get broken,’ called Lilian.
‘I think I’ll get the cat in for the night,’ Rob said. Rosie sat still on the couch, watching the flickering TV and holding her mobile phone. In the distance she heard the howl of emergency vehicles; from the garden she heard her father calling the cat, over the sound of circling helicopters.
Eight
The War Rooms, The Mall, London SW1. January 25th, 2016. 9.30 p.m.
The Emergency Council met in the extensive underground bunkers stretching from Admiralty Arch, under the Mall, to Buckingham Palace. The installation contained bedrooms, computer rooms, dining rooms, a radio station – even an operating theatre in case of need. Twenty men and women sat round the polished table, waiting for the Prime Minister.
John Stafford leaned forward and in a low voice asked Field Marshall Roger Burns, ‘Orders?’
Burns said to his trusty lieutenant, ‘General, in fact no change. Two regiments ready to deploy. No orders.’
General Stafford frowned.
Burns dropped his voice even lower and said, ‘Sorry about Carter and Reid, John.’ Bob Carter and Splash Reid had served under the young Lieutenant Stafford long ago, at the start of his career, in the Falklands War. Afterwards, Stafford had said that Carter had saved his life; Carter had countered by saying that Stafford saved his. A soldier’s joke. Fifteen years later, with Lieutenant Stafford now a colonel, Carter and Reid, their time up, had left and taken themselves off to a security firm specializing in sending hand-picked military advisers – or, in old-fashioned language, mercenaries – to anyone, anywhere, who wanted them and was prepared to pay. Now they’d signed the note sent out from Hamscott Common on the body of a US sergeant. Burns muttered, ‘Why’d they get mixed up in something like this?’
‘Money, probably,’ said Stafford. ‘They’re terrorists now. It’s official.’
‘I have word they’ve broken open the silo containing the nuclear weapons,’ Burns said steadily, in a low voice.
Stafford breathed out, hard, then put his hand to his brow and did not realize he had done so. ‘Satellite surveillance?’ he asked. Burns nodded. ‘The question’s still, how did they get through the perimeter?’
‘From the back, where the perimeter fences run hard up against the woods. Apparently it’s been a hot topic for years – the proximity of the rear of the base to Hamscott Common. But they had motion sensors in the ground, closed-circuit camera surveillance, a patrol. They can’t work out how they disabled the patrol. And not one motion sensor was disturbed, setting off all the bells and whistles—’
‘Swung through the trees,’ Stafford said glumly. ‘Dropped down on the patrol then swung back up again.’
Burns looked at him sharply. ‘Your guys?’
Stafford lowered his voice further, ‘The first ones over rig a rope to bring the others across. I saw Reid do it in Armagh, before he parted company with the army.’ Burns’ gaze went to Ian Noakes, the Minister of Defence, sitting opposite with two of his staff behind him. Noakes’ bespectacled eyes met his, then moved away. ‘Reid looked like a giant ape,’ Stafford reported.
‘I spoke to the Chief of General Staff before this meeting,’ said Burns. ‘He wasn’t a happy man. He’d had a word with our friend Noakes earlier. All Noakes said was, “It’s up to the PM; wait for the results of the meeting.”’
‘I think we’re all beginning to see where we’re going with this one,’ Stafford said.
‘Sky high, if we don’t do something.’
They were now two hours into an episode involving twenty fighter planes and an as-yet-unspecified number of nuclear warheads designed to be carried and dropped by those planes. They still had no plan of action.
The Chief of General Staff, Sir Hugo Lake, had seen the PM immediately after the taking of the base and urged him to use the emergency plan formulated to cover such a contingency. It was crude enough. Special forces would be put into the area by land or air, or both, while the perimeter of the battleground was secured by regular troops. It was a strategy that might fail for any number of reasons, but it had the merit of speed. The plan had been designed to take the occupying force by surprise.
However, the PM had refused to authorize a counter-attack
, calling it overhasty and risky. He and the Defence Minister had, he told Lake, decided that the strategy stood little chance of success and could endanger the lives of the civilian and military hostages. Lake had argued; Petherbridge had been immovable. Now, it seemed, the invaders had accessed the nuclear warheads. Whether the occupiers were capable of arming them, mounting them in planes and then flying the planes was uncertain. What was certain was that, if they could arm and fly the weapons, nowhere within a 3,000 mile radius from Hamscott was safe from nuclear attack.
Twenty men and women waited for Alan Petherbridge, who was now five minutes late. Which, Burns thought, meant that he was probably on the phone to the White House or the Pentagon, or on his knees, praying.
The silence in the room was profound, as if everyone there was waiting for the boom and tremble of a massive above-ground explosion. The missile ore a three kiloton, a seventh of the size of the bomb which struck Hiroshima, was capable of killing 30,000 people immediately and 50,000 later. Dropped in a city, there would be more immediate casualties at ground zero, tens of thousands, perhaps. Wherever the missile detonated, though, there would be the residual casualties caused by fallout. In a city area it would be easier to muster radiation suits and decontamination units and to provide hospital space, but harder to control a fleeing population blocking the roads. In a country area there would be fewer casualties but it would take longer to bring in help. Judith Woodward, the Health Minister, quantified what she could quantify, organized her own statement, her own arguments, and then, being human, thought of the loss of her career when the provisional plans for such an event went wrong. And then of her impending divorce and her son and daughter, who were living temporarily with her parents in St Albans. After that, like everyone else in the room, she wondered – where was the Prime Minister?
Adam Simcox, from the British Nuclear Agency, mechanically answered a question from a senior civil servant at the Department of Defence. In return he asked if the military were being held back from making an assault on the base and was told they were not. He looked at Field Marshal Burns and at Sir Hugo Lake, and wondered if he was hearing the truth.
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