Seventy-Two Virgins

by Boris Johnson

  Purnell looked at his counterpart, and behind the braggart mask he saw the worry and the fear in those flickering blue eyes. There were several obvious points he could have made.

  ‘Yeah, Pickel,’ repeated Bluett, his voice fading to bleakness. ‘He’s our only hope.’

  ‘My dear Dean,’ said Jones, without skipping a beat. ‘My dear, dear Dean. I am glad you decided to come back. Perhaps you will come with us now and finish the job.’

  The young Wulfrunian stepped through the doorway and back into room W6.

  ‘What happened, man?’ asked the President. ‘What was the bang?’

  ‘Someone died, I expect,’ said Dean.

  He stared at Jones the Bomb. Somehow he seemed bigger, older, at least to Cameron’s eyes.

  ‘Well,’ she said brightly. ‘Now what happens?’

  ‘Ask the boss,’ said Dean evenly, staring at Jones.

  A kidney bowl fell with a clang to the floor of the ambulance. Then a head brace, and a defibrillator. There was definitely something moving in there.

  The police and paramedics had found a periscope for use in armed sieges, and they were peering into the dimness, one of the paramedics lying flat on the cobbles beneath the running board.

  ‘He’s alive,’ said the scout.

  ‘Can you see a gun?’ said another.

  ‘I can’t see a gun, though it’s hard to tell with all this mess. There’s blood everywhere.’

  ‘Of course there’s blood everywhere,’ said one of the nurses. ‘The guy’s been bleeding to death. I think we should just take a chance and go in.’

  ‘The rules are the rules. We’ve got armed and dangerous here.

  ‘I think we’re all being pathetic,’ said the nurse.

  ‘You go if you want to,’ said the paramedic, ‘but we won’t be insured and it’s ten to one he’s a fruitcake who wants to take one of us with him on the way to the seventy-two virgins of Paradise.’

  ‘I’m going in,’ said the nurse.

  ‘Well, at least wait until they bring the protective gloves.’

  Jones was about to tell room W6 what to do, when the television said something that made Dean jump out of his skin.

  ‘I want to appeal now to my son, Dean,’ said a voice he had never heard before. He looked at the screen, and saw a curious middle-aged man, with a proud nose and curly hair, sitting in a lilac tracksuit on a beige sofa.

  ‘Who is that?’ asked Cameron, coming up and standing next to him.

  ‘Bogged if I know,’ said Dean. It was Sammy Katz.

  As the feature writers would discover, to their immense pleasure, the former wiper manufacturer had known about Dean all his life. Five months after the night of his conception, Katz had come across the same girl, again, in the same godforsaken spot on the Bilston Road, plying the same miserable trade.

  But now she was pregnant, and she had recognized Sammy Katz as a man who might well be the father of her child. We do not need to know the details of the subsequent desultory relationship (the embarrassed letters to Dennis Faulkner, Faulkner’s attempts to shrug him off, the pathetic presents, every five years, of low-denomination bills). All we need accept is that at this critical point in his life, Dean’s biological father had sprung from nowhere, and was sitting slumped before the cameras on the oatmeal settee of his lounge, and moaning about his feelings. ‘I feel I let yow down, Dean,’ he said. He looked fittingly weepy, since he was in TV’s traditional defeated sofa-ridden posture in which parents announce some terrible fact about their children. ‘I appeal to yow, Dean,’ he said, again. He didn’t care much what he said, since his overriding feeling was pleasure, after all these years, at appearing on TV.

  ‘You hear that, Dean, old pal,’ said the President. ‘He’s appealing to you.’

  ‘He doesn’t look much like you,’ said Cameron.

  But Sammy Katz could not expect to last long at the epicentre of the biggest ever global media event; and after thirty-five seconds the moaning man on the Wolverhampton settee was banished by the schedulers in favour of news — amazing news — from the TV stations across the planet. Perhaps it was the explosion, muffled but audible on screen; perhaps it was more than an hour of being exposed to Jones & Co., but the peoples of the earth were beginning to change their collective mind. It might be that the global consciousness of our species — as Blake or Rousseau understood it — was being affected by considerations of right and wrong. It might have been a statistical error. But at the bottom of the screen was a big bi-coloured bar, rather like that used in televised rugby internationals to show which side has had the higher percentage of ball possession. For the first time the right-hand, blue side of the bar was bigger than the left-hand, red side of the bar. By 51 to 49 per cent, people appeared to be voting for America — even if it meant the retention of the prisoners in Cuba.

  ‘It is bullshit,’ said Jones. ‘It is the Jewish cabal who run the American media complex.’

  ‘Too bad, buddy. You lose,’ said the President. ‘If I were you I’d stick to your promise and let us all out of here.’

  ‘Shut up!’ said Jones the Bomb. He stuffed his Browning into his trousers and started waving his Nokia under the President’s nose.

  ‘See this?’ he said, wielding it like a TV zapper. ‘If I want, I kill you with this. If I want I kill us all.’

  ‘I don’t want,’ said the President. ‘Fact is, you sure as hell misunderestimated the great world public.’

  ‘You come with me, stinky pig,’ said Jones the Bomb, and yanked the presidential handcuffs in the direction of the door. ‘Follow me!’ he yelled at the others. Adam wearily obeyed, and Cameron and Dean brought up the rear.

  “Ere,’ said Dean, as they moved down the subterranean green-carpeted corridor, with its old yellowy electric light, in the direction of Westminster Hall. ‘Is your name Cameron?’

  ‘And you’re Dean, right?’

  ‘Is he your boyfriend?’ said Dean, pointing at Adam, who was striding after Jones the Bomb.

  Cameron chose not to answer this question, and asked:

  ‘That man on the TV, was he really your father?’

  ‘The hell should I know? What was his name again?’

  ‘I think it was Katz.’

  ‘Is that like the animals?’

  ‘It was with a K, I think.’

  Dean pondered the ethnic implications of this. They passed the small window that gave on to Parliament Square, whose mullions were now treacly with water; and once again Dean snatched a glimpse of the hundreds — thousands? — of running, booted men, the APCs, the helicopters. It was almost twilit in the square, and there was something orange and thundery in the light.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  1123 HRS

  In the hall, Benedicte had once more subdued the crowd, and now she handed over to Jones. ‘We’re back, my friends.’ As announcements go, this one was less popular than Gary Glitter announcing his comeback to a thousand skinheads at the Slough Apollo. But this audience had neither the energy nor the courage to boo. There had been death in this building, and they knew there would be more before the day was done.

  ‘I know some of you have just heard a noise, a bang, and you may be worried. Let me reassure you that it was the American imperialists, who tried to recapture this ancient British Parliament, and who have been violently repelled, with great loss of American life.’

  The President was about to speak, and then said nothing. Jones could tell that many of them didn’t believe him; but some of them did.

  ‘So let us show we are not afraid, by continuing our debate. I know it is the custom to speak for many hours here. Who would like the floor?’

  Up in the rafters, beneath the flèche, Pickel now prepared his shot. He lined up the lead terrorist in his sights, and began to sing his executioner’s song, the moaning hymn to his own calvary.

  ‘Were the whole realm of nature mine, That were an offering far too small. Love so amazing, so divine, Demands my soul, my lif
e, my all.’

  He’d missed in the yard, but there were extenuating circumstances there, with that pisser Barry White. This time he would do the business.

  The neck was presenting itself to the cross-hairs, a stretch of stringy brown neck, with the muscles and veins standing out, there where the drug had to go in. It was a tough shot, but it was doable, and it had to be done now.

  Well stuff this for a game of soldiers, thought Roger Barlow. He’d been waiting to speak for ages, and it was just like the Commons: you stood up and walked to the end of the diving board; you girded your Speedos and stared at the terrors below; and then someone else was called, and you sat back down again, and the adrenalin turned all manky and stale in your system. There was only one thing to be said for his terror of making his speech — every phrase of which was now supermasticated in his mind — and that was that it obscured his terror of being shot.

  And if he spoke well, they might just knock that story on the head.

  Listen, the editors would say to the sadistic girl who was persecuting him, we can’t do down Roger Barlow any more. Did you hear his speech on America? Did you hear him speak up for the President, and the transatlantic alliance?

  Bad luck, they’d say to the vicious wheedling little Debbie Gujaratne. We don’t want any anti-Barlow stuff. Barlow is in, they’d say; Barlow is cool. And Debbie would gnash and spike her rotten little story.

  Oh God, oh Gawd, thought Roger Barlow: why had he done it? Why had he put himself in this ludicrous position? And he thought back to the moment of failure, the woman with her shirt seemingly open to the waist, with her lip gloss, her black hair, her busy little fingers on his arm.

  ‘Oh Roger,’ she’d droned, ‘oh please. You promised,’ and he’d touched her cheek — Oh strewth, had they been snapped? — and reached for his wallet.

  Oh Eulalie, Eulalie, he moaned. Unless he spoke up forcefully now, Eulalie was going to be his ruin.

  He rose to his feet and tried to catch the eye of Jones the Bomb; and as he did so he tried to envisage the reaction of the Oedipal four-year-old, when the news of his folly broke over London like a thunderclap, and he was the butt of a thousand jokes.

  ‘Who is that man, Mummy?’

  ‘You are not necessary. Goodbye.’

  ‘Mr Chairman terrorist,’ he said firmly, causing a bit of a gasp in the back rows. ‘Ahoy there.’

  Gently, gently, said Pickel the ace marksman to himself, drawing a bead on that hectic pockmarked neck.

  Jones bowed his head, shaded his eyes, and squinted in the TV lights. Who was that at the back? He jerked his head forward again for a better view .

  Keep still, you pisser, muttered Pickel. The neck was big in his scope; he could see the grime around the white neck of the T-shirt; he could see the pulse.

  But it was no goddamn use if the sucker kept jigging, because the neck would just pass out of view, and he would be focusing on stone again.

  ‘My dear sir,’ said Jones the Bomb to Roger, thinking that whatever happened, this was the last speech. ‘The world awaits!’ And he stepped back to the lectern, and almost eighty-five feet above him Pickel cursed and felt the ache begin in his fingers.

  Standing in a clot of embarrassment next to Jones and the President were Cameron, Adam and Dean. Cameron had started to cry, big tears chasing each other down her cheeks: not because she was terrified — though she was — but because the whole thing seemed so mad, and so interminable.

  Dean felt at once overcome with sadness to see her tears, and appalled at the thought that he might be responsible. He was about to touch her arm, and comfort her, when Habib approached him.

  ‘It should have been you to die, not Haroun,’ said the Arab quietly, and Dean dropped his hand and stared out in misery once more at the audience, who stared in misery back.

  And then he saw her. Yes it was. There could be no question. Five rows back. He looked straight into her beseeching eyes.

  ‘Mr Chairman terrorist, my lords, honourable members, ladies and gentlemen,’ said Barlow, ‘I really don’t have much to add to what speakers today have already said . .

  ‘Then shut up,’ said Jones the Bomb, bending to reach for the Nokia in his jacket pouch.

  ‘Damn,’ said Pickel.

  ‘… . but on behalf of all the electorate of Cirencester, whom it is my privilege to represent, I believe I would be remiss if I…’

  ‘Get on with it!’ said Jones the Bomb, and looked down again at the green liquid crystal display of the Nokia, as he prepared to bring the operation to its predestined end.

  ‘Pisser,’ hissed Pickel, squinting again through the sight.

  ‘…did not say a few words on a subject which…’

  In the ambulance in New Palace Yard, William Eric Kinloch Onyeama had fully regained consciousness, with no assistance from the emergency services, and was struggling to get up. His chest hurt like hell, as though he had been involved in a car crash.

  His long brown fingers reached for something to help him upright, and wrapped themselves round some wires which were protruding from a box.

  ‘…is evidently controversial, and which arouses strong opinions across the globe . .

  ‘Say something interesting, you silly man!’ yelled Jones the Bomb, who was fed up to the back teeth with British parliamentary procedure. He stood still and pressed the button to activate the automatic dialling system.

  Pickel had the vein in his sights. He began the squeeze on the trigger, so delicately that he could not possibly disturb the barrel.

  ‘All right, you tosser,’ said Roger Barlow. ‘I say to hell with you and the rest of you chippy, pathetic, pretentious, evil, envious, Islamic nutcases. I say vote for America!’

  ‘Sit down!’ screamed Jones the Bomb. ‘Sit down and shut up.’

  And just as Pickel pulled the trigger, Jones jerked the President forward a foot and a half, and placed the crown of the presidential head in the path of the thyapentine sodium dart as it was dispatched with a muzzle velocity of 3,100 feet per second.

  ‘Ow,’ said the President. ‘What the fuuurggghh …’

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  1125 HRS

  ‘You fools,’ said Jones. The Yanks were attacking. He pushed again at the mobile, and the number flashed on the screen.

  DIALLING, said the mobile.

  It took only a second for the stuff to begin to work on the President, who weighed less than a sixth of the average white rhino. He toppled forward. The dart was sticking out of the top of his head. It looked terrible on TV.

  DIALLING, said the mobile.

  And as the President went down he dragged Jones down with him. The mobile spilled out of his hand.

  DIALLING, said the screen as the mobile spun across the flags.

  Pickel knew what he had to do. With what the citations would call a characteristic disregard for his own safety, he flung his seventeen stone off the little wooden platform beneath the flèche, and abseiled from the ceiling. He aimed at the form of Jones, and in order to hit him he threw himself forward. He went too far and too fast.

  ENGAGED, said the mobile.

  Pickel landed awkwardly, at 34 miles an hour, on the fifth step, twelve away from Jones the Bomb. Oxlike though it was in dimension and construction, his left tibia was cleanly snapped by the violence of his arrival.

  Jones was now crawling towards the mobile, and thinking what an idiot he had been. He had dialled himself! He panted as he tried to lug the inert mass of the President across the old striated shale. All he had to do was dial Dean or Habib, he thought; and it may or may not be an indication of some ultimate failure of his character that he did not think to activate by hand the detonator on his own jacket.

  ENGAGED, said the mobile. RETRY?

  As Jones crawled towards the mobile the broken-limbed Pickel crawled up the steps towards Jones. His gun was gone, but he had his knife, and he had the courage of a wounded lion as it charges down the rifle of some mock-brave white hunter.
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br />   Hardly bothering to look, Jones turned his Browning round and shot Pickel in the chest. The 9 mm bullet ripped through the trapezius of his right breast, scraped a rib and a scapula, and lodged in his vast sternocleidomastoid withers. The damage was very severe. And still that great heart beat on. Army knife to the fore, he slithered on up the stairs to save his Head of State and Commander in Chief.

  In his shame and rage, Adam made forward, to help the injured man. But Cameron held him back.

  Five steps to go, reckoned Pickel, now in tremendous pain from both his chest and his leg. Four more agonizing tiger-crawling steps, and he would give Wanda and Jason Jr something they could be eternally proud of.

  Three more steps and he would expunge any guilty memory of the incinerated car in Baghdad.

  Two more steps and he would wash away the stain that had been left on his name by that pisser Barry White.

  If he had managed one more step, he would have been upon Jones the Bomb and the President, as they advanced in a crumpled pushme-pullyou across the floor.

  ENGAGED, said the mobile. RETRY?

  But Jones did not wait for Pickel’s arms to come within swinging distance. He aimed the Browning at Pickel’s head and shot at him again.

  And that might have been the end of Jason Pickel. By the laws of ballistics the bullet should have entered his brain and killed him instantly. He would have died far from home, fighting on a foreign flagstone, in the protection not just of the President, but of British citizens, as many brave Americans have died before.