by Alex Scarrow
Clumsy misdirection. Adam was sure that, no matter how much everyone cared passionately about our boys trapped abroad, what they really wanted to know was exactly how screwed are we here in the UK?
Charles Harrison rounded his prepared speech off with some assurances that order was going to be maintained and all possible measures were being put into place to minimise the economic damage done.
Adam was surprised to hear no mention of any ‘safe zones’ being set up, or of the implementation of any sort of martial law. Perhaps that was going to come later? Perhaps what was needed right now were some calming assurances, not the announcement of a raft of specific emergency measures.
He realised the PM was doing his best not to spook the press or the general public. No one’s ready for a stampede, for a mass panic. This is about buying another twenty-four . . . forty-eight hours of prep-time.
Adam looked at his men.
It’s about getting more army boots back on the ground first.
The PM rounded off and then opened the floor to questions.
They came in noisy volleys. The first few he answered calmly with more assurances that this was a blip that the UK was well-placed to ride out. Then Adam heard one of the assembled journalists cut in - a sharp female voice that sounded as if it had already been spoon-fed enough bullshit for one morning - with a question specifically about how much stockpiled oil and food was on UK soil right now.
The Prime Minister blanched.
‘How long, Prime Minister?’ the journalist asked again, the press room silent. ‘How long can we feed ourselves whilst this oil crisis is playing out?’
Harrison froze for too long with a rabbit-in-the-headlights expression on his face.
Shit, that looks bad.
‘Twat,’ one of the gunners muttered. ‘He doesn’t fucking know.’
‘Look . . . th-there really is no need for anyone to panic,’ the Prime Minister replied, his voice wobbling uncertainly. ‘There has been a lot of planning, a lot of forward thinking about a scenario like this.’
A shouted question from the back of the press room. ‘Prime Minister, is the army being brought back to enforce martial law?’
A pause. Another too-long pause. They listened to dead air for nearly ten seconds.
‘All right.’ Despite the small tinny sound of the television’s speaker, Adam could detect that the Prime Minister sounded tired, resigned. ‘All right . . . look, that’s probably enough crap for one day. So, I’m going to tell you how it is.’
Adam and Bushey looked at each other.
Did the PM really just say ‘crap’?
‘The truth is, everyone, the truth is . . . we are in a bit of trouble. Whilst this mess is sorting itself out we’re going to have to make do with the resources we have. I’m afraid nothing is going to be coming into the UK for several weeks. So we’re all going to have to work together. We are going to need to ration the food that is out there in the supermarkets, corner shops, warehouses, grocery stores. Food vendors are going to be asked to cease trading as of now. We’re also locking down the sale of petrol and diesel from this point on. That has to be reserved for key personnel and emergency services.’
The Prime Minister paused for breath. It was silent except for the rustle of an uneasy press audience stirring. Adam noticed a subtle tic in the man’s face. He looked like someone on the very edge of a nervous breakdown.
‘Look, it’s going to be a very difficult few weeks . . . perhaps months. But, if we all pull together, like we did once before, during the Second World War . . . we’re going to be just fine. If we panic, if people start hoarding food and water . . . then . . .’ His voice faded.
Prime Minister Charles Harrison suddenly stepped away from the podium, knocking a microphone clumsily with his arm. He walked quickly to the press room door flanked by his advisor and a bodyguard. The stunned silence was filled a second later with an uproar of questions shouted at the Prime Minister’s back, as the Home Secretary replaced him at the podium and attempted to call the press conference to order.
Adam leant over and snapped the television off. He turned to look at his men, two squadrons of gunners, forty young lads; a good half of them still in their teens and sporting pubescent acne; but all of them silent and anxiously regarding their CO.
He looked across at Sergeant Walfield.
The sergeant shrugged casually. ‘I believe, sir, the shit ‘as just gone an’ hit the fan.’
Adam nodded. ‘I think we had better get on with securing this place.’
Chapter 14
10 years AC
‘LeMan 49/25a’ - ClarenCo Gas Rig Complex, North Sea
The foreign man looked up at Jenny from the steaming bowl of chowder, and around at all the others who had gathered in the mess to get a good look at the new arrival.
‘Valérie Latoc? Is that right?’
He nodded, spooning soup into his mouth. ‘Yes. I am from the south of Belgium, Ardennes region originally.’ He pushed a tress of dark hair out of his eyes; brown eyes that her gaze lingered on longer than she wanted.
‘We don’t get many visitors out here,’ she said.
Which was true. The community had grown over the last five years as a result of the people they’d come across whilst foraging ashore for essentials. People in small numbers; a family here, a couple there. It was an unspoken rule, though, that no one could join them on the rigs until Jenny had sat down and spoken with them. The Jenny Sutherland Entrance Examination, that’s what she’d overheard Alice scathingly call it.
There’d been those she’d turned away, those she considered might cause trouble for them. Those she didn’t trust. Some she simply didn’t like the look of. Unfair, discriminatory, but Jenny didn’t give a damn what was being muttered, the last thing she was going to allow aboard was some schizo who might go off like a firecracker amongst them.
It was men mostly. Men she didn’t trust; males of a certain age. Young boys and old men she felt comfortable with. But men, particularly very masculine men, who oozed testosterone and smelled of hunger; who looked upon her female-heavy community with hungry eyes like a child in a candy store . . . they had no place here.
‘I want you to tell us about yourself,’ she said.
Valérie spooned another mouthful of chowder, wiped the hot liquid from the bristles of his beard. ‘From the beginning?’
‘From the beginning.’
He shrugged wearily. ‘I was living in Bastogne in Belgium when it happened. The second day, the Tuesday, you remember your Prime Minister’s television appearance?’
She nodded. Everyone behind her nodded.
Valérie shook his head. ‘A big can of snakes he opened. No . . . worms, is it not? Can of worms?’
Jenny nodded for him to continue.
‘It was on TV5 Monde only minutes after. Your leader was the first one to come out and tell the people how bad things were. Then our President Molyneux had to do the same, and then every other leader. It was the significatif word, you know? The trigger words that people heard; ration, curfew, martial law . . . words like this that made people panic and riot.’
He sat back in the chair. ‘Le jour de desastre. Like a modern day Kristallnacht, you see? Every shop window in Bastogne was broken that night.’ He sighed. ‘We had power in Belgium at the time, you know - nuclear power from France, not like you British needing the Russian gas and oil. But even so, we also lost our power on the Wednesday. There was the complete black-out. The French stopped the power to us . . . or their generators had problems. But we had better order in our country. No riots yet. Our government had made much emergency preparations for this kind of thing. Much more than yours, I think?’
He was right. Jenny recalled the appalling state of panic the British authorities went into during the first few days. A complete lack of communication from the Cabinet Office during the first twenty-four hours, the Prime Minister’s disastrous performance on the second day, then there was nothing else from them e
xcept one or two junior members of government wheeled out to broadcast calls for calm.
‘But then things became much more worse for us in Belgium in the second and third week. There were millions of people who come up into northern Europe. They were coming from the east, from Poland, from Czech Republic, from Croatia, from Bosnia. We had much, much many more come north, up through Spain, from Morocco, from Algeria, Tunisia. Even from further south; Zimbabwe, Uganda, because of tribal problems in these places. You know?’
He hungrily spooned some more soup, then continued. ‘In week three we became like you people in England. Fighting in the street; my city, Bastogne, on fire. No control by the leaders. Soldiers without clear orders.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘And many, many people dying when the water stopped pumping. You remember? It was very warm that summer?’
She remembered all right. The UK hadn’t been particularly hot, but it had been very dry. When the oil stopped, the power stations, without adequate oil reserves, had soon ceased functioning, and with that so did the flow of water through pumping stations and purification plants. In London, bottles of unopened drinking water became like gold dust; vending machines were wrenched to pieces to reclaim cans of Coke buried inside them.
‘I suppose, I guess a month after the oil stopped, most people not killed in the riots and fighting were sick with the water diseases in my country. You know, cholera, typhoid.’
‘So, Mr Latoc, how did you manage to make it through the early days?’
It was a question Jenny always asked. The answer given to this question was, more often than not, the answer that decided her. The type of person she didn’t want on the rigs with her family was the type who boasted about their survival skills; their ability to fight off others for what they needed. They didn’t need fighters. Not out here. What they needed were people prepared to muck in and work a long day, prepared to share, to compromise.
‘I wandered,’ he said. ‘I stayed away from cities and towns and prayed like crazy I get through this nightmare. After many months I found some good people who took me in.’ His eyes drifted off her, down to the steaming bowl of soup in front of him. ‘Good people who let me - a stranger - join them during the time when charognard meant danger. You understand what I mean, yes? The people who take your food?’
‘Scavengers,’ said Jenny, nodding.
‘Yes, scavengers. On the continent there were many, many . . . perhaps even still.’
She had hoped that those desperate people content to endlessly drift and live off what could still be foraged from mouldering shops would surely be scarce now. Isolated loners, unbalanced, dangerous and best avoided. What she’d been hoping to hear was that the only people alive now were communities likes theirs, people like themselves knuckling down to the business of making-do.
‘I lived with these people for seven years. Then strangers came.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘Men and guns.’ The expression on his face told her more than his fading words. ‘They came. Smoke brought them . . . they came for food, but then they wanted much more,’ he said.
Jenny felt her heart race, memories of a winter morning.
‘Children, women,’ Valérie shook his head, his voice failing for a moment. ‘They,’ he took a deep breath, ‘they shoot the men first. The others, they play with.’ He looked up at her. ‘You understand?’
‘Yes,’ she nodded. ‘But you . . . ?’
‘How come they did not shoot me?’
That was her question.
He dropped his gaze, clearly ashamed. ‘I hid and saw these things. Then I ran away.’ He placed his spoon back in the bowl and pushed the bowl away; his appetite understandably seemed to have gone. He dropped his head and a moment later Jenny realised from the subtle heave of his shoulders that he was crying.
She reached across the table and rested a hand on his forearm. ‘It’s okay, Mr Latoc.’
He raised his face, cheeks glistening with tears. ‘I did nothing . . . I was frightened. I ran.’ He shook his head angrily. ‘I did nothing.’
‘There isn’t much you can do,’ said Jenny softly, ‘not against armed men. It’s just the way it is. That’s why we stay out here.’
He accepted that with a hasty nod.
‘So what happened after that?’
‘I ran. I keep moving.’ He composed himself, wiped the tears from his face and took a deep breath. ‘I went south-east for some time, towards the Mediterranean.’
‘Tell me, is it as bad over there?’
His eyes met hers. ‘Yes. I will tell you . . . I saw tanks, some burned. Many abandoned tanks.’
‘Did you say tanks?’ cut in Walter.
‘Yes. Russian ones.’
‘My God! You remember, Jenny?’ said Walter. ‘Remember the rumours we kept hearing on the radio a few years after?’
She nodded. They’d heard garbled reports of short and frantic wars in Asia; resource grabs around the Caspian and several months of fighting in Kazakhstan. ‘Let him continue, Walter.’
‘I travel down to Croatia. And then I find a sailing boat in Rijeka. I know a little sailing so I went across Adriatic, along the Italian coast. It is all much like the UK, some small communities making food. But small, you understand? Several dozen, no more. But one group tell me that they hear Britain survived much better. That they have built these big safe zones. So then I sail to Montpellier, and I cross France. Head north up to Calais.’
‘Why not just sail around?’
He shrugged. ‘I am not so confident with a boat - not to go out of the Mediterranean into rough sea.’ He grimaced like a naughty child. ‘I cannot swim. So, I go through France instead. And then I find another boat at Calais. I sailed across the Channel this last summer. To Dover. I walk towards London hoping to find one of these safe places. Order, you know?’
She nodded sympathetically.
He scratched at his thick dark beard. ‘But I soon see that this country is no better; just like Belgium, like France. Empty towns, burned homes, abandoned car and trucks.’
She leant forward, almost tempted to reach out and comfort him. ‘Tell me, did you see any signs of rebuilding going on? Did you see anything like that?’
He shook his head. ‘I saw . . . very little. Smoke a few times. I saw horse . . .’ he looked up at Walter standing just behind him.
‘Shit?’
‘Oui, horse shit, on some roads. You know? There are some people, like yours, surviving. But nowhere as big as this place.’
‘And no lights?’
He shook his head. ‘I saw no lights. There were no safe zones.’
There was a sombre stirring amongst the crowd gathered behind Jenny. A long silence punctuated by the soft rumple and languid thump of the sea below, and the steady patter of rain on the plexiglass windows of the mess.
‘Those men that were after you at the harbour,’ said Jenny after a while, ‘why did they want you dead?’
He shrugged. ‘I do not know.’
‘There must have been a reason, Mr Latoc.’
‘Really?’ He glanced up at her, his tired voice pulled taut with irritation. ‘I have come across too many men who kill you for a . . . for a fresh egg . . . or a rusty tin of food. Or just because you are a stranger to them, look different. Or because for fun.’
‘I want you to tell me what that was about,’ she insisted, feeling the slightest pang of guilt for pressing him.
‘Okay, so, I found a settlement. They let me stay for a while. But then . . .’ He looked up at the sea of faces standing behind Jenny. Eyes judging him silently, waiting for him to give them a reason to ask him to leave.
‘Please go on,’ urged Jenny.
‘But then a woman was . . . was killed.’ He lowered his voice slightly. ‘You understand before she was killed she was . . .’ He paused and Jenny knew he was omitting the word raped. She nodded silently. ‘Go on.’
‘They pull me out of my bed at night and did a . . . a trial. They decided I am guilty—’
�
��Why would they do that?’
He shook his head, genuinely exasperated. ‘Why do you think?’ He laughed. ‘Maybe it is because I support the wrong football team, uh?’
Jenny acknowledged the naivety in her question. The dark ringlets of his hair and a black beard long enough to lose a fist in reminded her vaguely of the sort of firebrand mullahs who once preached outside the overcrowded mosques in Shepherd’s Bush. She could easily imagine how that made him a target.
‘They take me in a truck, away to be killed. To the town where your people found me . . . to Beckton?’
‘Bracton.’
‘Yes. The men said if I manage to get to the water and jump in and start swimming back to Paki-land, they will let me live.’ Valérie sighed. ‘I tell them I am actually Belgian. But do they listen to that? Of course not.’
‘Mum,’ called out Jacob. He was standing at the back of the small crowd. He squeezed his way forward until he was standing beside Walter. ‘Mum, it was just like he said. Those men were hunting him, you know? Like it was a sort of game.’
Valérie nodded; he recognised Jacob from the quayside and offered him a hesitant smile. ‘Hunting, yes . . . I suppose. Like your fox and hounds hunting.’
Jacob nodded. ‘Yeah . . . that’s what it looked like.’
‘I would be dead now,’ Valérie added, looking up at Jacob and Walter, ‘if not for you. Thank you.’
Walter shrugged. ‘That’s okay.’