The Lords' Day (retail)

  ‘So that’s why you’ve stayed behind.’

  ‘You ever seen anyone die of cancer? Not pretty, is it? Got no stomach for it myself. Won’t be long now, can already feel it. Makes me sick with disgust. I loathe myself, what my life has become. So . . . well, I thought these boys here might even be doing me something of a favour. I’m bored and I’m dying, Celia, and they are two of the worst companions I’ve ever had. Who knows, these little foreign chappies might bring me just the sort of excitement I need.’

  ‘You don’t mean you want to—’

  ‘No, no, I’m not the type to go looking for it, but these guys have done me a favour. Brightened up my week no end. And let’s face it, duchess, I’ve got so little to lose, so much less than almost anyone else in this room. And if, somehow, I can pass on that favour . . .’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Not entirely sure. Wait and see, I guess. So that’s what I’m doing here. Waiting and seeing.’

  ‘But what can you, a . . . a . . .’ She was struggling to find the appropriate words.

  ‘An old hulk with rotting timbers?’

  ‘What can you of all people do, Archie?’

  ‘But that’s it, you see, duchess. I’ve been waiting, and while I’ve been waiting I’ve been watching. And I think I might just have found a use for these old timbers.’

  ‘Surprise me.’

  ‘I’ve got a plan, you see. Not much of a plan, maybe, but buggers can’t be choosers, as they say. It’s just that there’s one little problem. Sounds silly, I know, but it involves the Queen’s lavatory.’

  ‘I’ve always said you were an utterly ridiculous man.’

  ‘Oh, and perhaps a second, very tiny problem,’ he muttered, suddenly a little shame-faced.

  ‘I think I’ve already figured that one out, you old fool.’

  ‘You have?’

  ‘Of course. You’re going to need my help.’

  11.18 p.m.

  Paine found Tricia Willcocks standing in the garden of Number Ten, wrapped up in a man’s borrowed overcoat, her hands thrust deep inside the pockets, looking up at the stars that were splashed like tiny pebbles of light across a dark beach. The moon was almost full and the night unusually still and quiet; there was no rumble of traffic from the streets of London. It seemed as if the entire world was holding its breath.

  ‘When I was a young man I wanted to be an astronaut,’ he said, walking across the grass to join her.

  ‘So why weren’t you?’

  ‘Too much to do down here, I suppose. But right now I’d find the prospect of being somewhere the other side of the galaxy rather appealing.’

  ‘You have come for your answer, Robert.’

  ‘I said I would. And there’s not much time left. Delta Force is on its way.’

  ‘I know.’

  She cast around the sky as though looking for landing lights. Her breath sent up little clouds of smoke in the November sky.

  ‘Home Secretary, the President will not back down. She feels as if she has the weight of history and, if I can put it like this, a thousand generations of Harrisons behind her.’

  ‘Impressive. But I guess there’ve been quite a lot of Willcockses along the way, too. I’m not sure we’ve ever spilled as much blood as the Harrisons, but from what I know of them, they’re as stubborn and as cussed as a haemorrhoidal mule.’

  ‘I hate to be put in this position, to have this conversation with you, but—’

  ‘It’s your job, your duty, Robert.’ She rather liked Paine, fancied him a little. He was good-looking and reeked of loneliness; it appealed to her feminine side.

  ‘As you say, my duty.’

  ‘I think there might be a frost,’ she said, as if she hadn’t a care in the world. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Tonight I think even hell might freeze.’

  ‘It will do before I let in your troops.’

  ‘They’re only here to help. And the President will not be dissuaded.’

  ‘But she has no right. The law, every scrap of it, is on my side.’

  ‘The law?’ Slowly he shook his head. ‘The law is written by those who win.’

  ‘Ah, the Wild West.’

  His voice flooded with emotion and urgency. ‘Tricia, don’t try to call her bluff, I beg you.’

  ‘But it’s folly for a President—’

  ‘She’s not thinking as a President. She’s acting as a mother. That’s why she will not back down.’

  ‘Then I must think for her.’

  He wrung his hands in despair, his pain evident. ‘I fear for the consequences of what we’re doing tonight. You know, tomorrow the stars will still be up in their places, but our world may never be the same.’

  ‘That’s the trouble with the Willcockses, we just don’t know our place.’

  11.32 p.m.

  The slow American voice flooded into the ears of the air traffic controller. ‘Heathrow Tower, this is Shadow Six Zero. We are fifteen, I say one-five, miles south for a straight-in approach to land on runway zero-nine. Request permission to land.’

  The silence that greeted the message had a life span no longer than that of a mayfly, but it was enough to holler confusion. Then a crisp, bitten-off English voice: ‘Shadow Six Zero, Heathrow Tower. Er, say again.’

  The American repeated the message.

  Another screaming silence before: ‘Shadow Six Zero, Heathrow Tower. Confirm aircraft type, number of people on board and airfield of departure.’

  ‘Well, Heathrow Tower, we’re a big bird with two wings and a whole lot of hungry guys on board. Is the Ritz still serving dinner?’

  ‘Shadow Six Zero, Heath—’

  ‘OK, OK,’ the American came back. ‘We’re a Charlie one-thirty, forty-eight souls on board and we’re inbound from Ramstein.’

  ‘Shadow Six Zero, Heathrow Tower. A moment, please.’ That was the point when, with ever increasing velocity, it began to hit the fan. The controller turned to his assistant, who called downstairs to the supervisor, who was soon trying to contact the military air defence authorities, but by the time they’d reached agreement that none of them had the slightest idea what was going on and they should scramble RAF interceptors, it was too late.

  ‘Heathrow Tower, Shadow Six Zero,’ the American was calling. ‘Now eight miles, finals on runway. Request permission to land.’

  ‘Shadow Six Zero, Heathrow Tower. Negative. Negative! You are not, repeat not, cleared to land. Orbit in your present position.’

  ‘Heathrow Tower, Shadow Six Zero. I’m getting interference on reception. Say again, say again.’

  But the message, even when repeated, made no difference.

  ‘Heathrow Tower, Shadow Six Zero,’ the American came back. ‘Continuing the approach. Now five miles finals. Gear down. Clear to land.’

  By this time several layers of decision makers were trying to control the situation. They discussed whether to switch off the landing lights, or block the runway with fire trucks, but even as they did so the realisation dawned that it was already too late. The aircraft was four miles away, almost at the point of no return. The Americans had called their bluff. Thank God it was almost midnight and the airport winding down.

  ‘Shadow Six Zero, this is Heathrow Tower. Clear to land. I repeat, clear to land. Surface wind 270. Fifteen knots, with the likelihood of severe local disturbances. I think you can expect a warm reception.’

  ‘Heathrow Tower, Shadow Six Zero. Copy that. Could you get them to hold my reservation at the Ritz?’

  11.48 p.m.

  Harry made the last trip of the day with his trolley. Only bottles of water, there was little appetite for more sandwiches. He was feeling drained, his mind distracted with Mel, his spirit still squatting on his doorstep. He recognised this as a danger sign, it was getting towards the time of night when body and mind begin playing tricks, slowing down, blurring reactions, yet he could see that Masood and his men were up to the challenge. Two were lying down, resting for the night ahead,
while the one behind the throne and guarding the Queen had also been changed. Staying alert.

  Many of the hostages appeared drowsy, exhausted by their ordeal. Some managed to doze despite their difficult circumstances, a couple were bleary-eyed, dabbing distractedly at their cheeks with handkerchiefs, while the Prime Minister stared ahead, his eyes hollow and his mind seemingly elsewhere. Others watched Harry with ferocious intent, looking for a sign, but when none came they diverted their eyes as though he had betrayed them. Yet as Harry walked through the chamber delivering the water, he became aware that one of the peers was continuing to stare at him, his brow creased, his body tense. It was Archie Wakefield. Harry knew him only by sight, and as he returned the stare, the peer began tapping agitatedly at his forehead with his finger, as though trying to convey some important message by telepathy. Harry could sense the other man’s anxiety and he looked cautiously around, trying to see what might be the cause, but he saw nothing out of the ordinary, or what had become ordinary on this most extraordinary of days. A stillness, even lethargy, had descended upon most of the captives as they waited.

  Outside the House of Lords the tanks had begun to manoeuvre once again, their engines screaming, their tracks clattering on the pavement, the sound mingling with the throbbing of the helicopter from above. Harry knew this was when the armed police of CO-19 would be infiltrating further into the parliament building, creeping forward to take up positions, climbing into ventilation chambers and crawling into sewers, trying to make sure that however the gunmen had got in, they would never get out. Yet Tibbetts’s men took care not to get too close to the chamber; they had to avoid at all costs arousing suspicion or raising the alarm.

  But they failed, the plan didn’t work. As Harry bent down over his trolley to retrieve another water bottle, he sensed a movement behind him and felt the muzzle of a gun, the prick of death, nestling against the nape of his neck.

  11.50 p.m.

  The captain who commanded the detachment of the Household Cavalry knew his task. He had deployed his men at the exit of the road tunnel that led from the airport to the complex of motorways beyond, just as, elsewhere around Heathrow, he knew that other units were doing much the same. They had been ordered to make sure the cork was pushed so tight into the bottle that the mischievous genie called Delta Force could never escape.

  The Household Cavalry had a history that stretched back 350 years, the oldest and most senior regiment in the British army with battle honours that stretched back through Overlord, El Alamein, the blood-soaked fields of Flanders, the Boer War, and all the way to Waterloo, yet this day it had screwed up, monumentally. They’d been the only front-line military unit guarding the monarch and in this simple duty they had failed. So what if they had been armed with nothing more than ceremonial swords and horsehair plumes? The responsibility had been theirs and they had failed. Their shining breastplates were now smeared with humiliation, and it was the mark of Cain that would be passed down through generations of brother officers.

  Yet now they were back where they belonged, in battle gear behind the machine guns and thirty-millimetre cannons of their Scimitars. A chance to put things right and redeem the history of an entire regiment, that’s what the captain had been told.

  His orders had been specific. Establish a checkpoint and a chicane at the end of the tunnel that would bring any American convoy to a halt. Prevent them from progressing any further. Hold them, persuade the men of Delta Force to accompany them to a holding point inside the airport perimeter where an SAS officer would be happy to brief them on what the British were up to. Just like any other training exercise. It couldn’t be long now, he had been advised that the C-130 carrying the American troops had landed more than ten minutes ago, but as he waited, the captain knew that this was not to be the Household Cavalry’s day. His orders had seemed specific in the briefing room; intercept and interdict. But what did that mean here on the ground? Stop them, sure, but what if they chose not to co-operate and kept coming? The men of Delta Force were well-known Neanderthals who had got themselves into any number of scrapes. What if they refused to co-operate, what if he were forced to offer them something more persuasive than a cheerful wave, what if he had not only to stop but also to seize? He would have to judge the situation, use his initiative, but this wasn’t like hunting down the Sadr militia or the Taliban. These were Americans, for God’s sake. He’d trained with them, got himself drunk with them; why, his brother the investment banker had even married a couple of them, not very successfully, it had to be admitted, but that was no reason to start a shooting war against them. Could he really do that, if that’s what it would take?

  As he gazed at the mouth of the tunnel, he knew there could be no honour for him here. The Americans were faced with devastating firepower – but only if he gave the order to fire. And he really didn’t want to do that. What the hell was all this about, putting up against the Americans – allies, friends – when there were so many other bad guys out there?

  This wasn’t any fun, and was growing ever less fulfilling with every minute that passed. It was only as he stood and began to grow cold with the waiting that he realised it wasn’t going to happen. They should have been here long ago. The Americans weren’t coming, not this way, at least. He wouldn’t have to shoot them after all. As he realised this, the young captain was overcome with relief.

  11.53 p.m.

  Duncan had been the awkward one in the FSA’s market monitoring unit, the one who’d raised most resistance and heaped most gloom upon Sloppy’s proposal. Even a double helping of curry hadn’t lightened his mood, but he was from the Western Isles and about as much fun as a bootful of seaweed when he was without a drink, and his had been left in the lounge of some pub hours ago along with a seat in front of a televised football game. Duncan was not a happy man. Now he sidled over to Sloppy. ‘Thought you’d like to know.’

  ‘Remember that I’m no economic Einstein so make it clear and concise, otherwise you’ll lose me.’

  The Scot gave his colleague a look of disdain; he’d never quite figured out whether Sloppy was always taking the piss or genuinely congenitally backward. He perched cautiously on the end of Sloppy’s desk. ‘OK. This is it. You get a disaster, but it’s still all swings and roundabouts. Even when the market’s crashing there are always some winners, people who have made money by selling something short, but what we’re looking for is a pattern, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘So, what have we got? A siege. A catastrophe. A situation in which you can pretty much guarantee that equities will head south and sterling will get butchered while the price of gold goes up. Those are the areas we’ve been looking at most closely. Now, because of the swings and roundabouts, literally thousands of punters have made a paper profit, but that’s not enough. What we’ve been trying to figure out is what you would do if you had planned all this.’

  Sloppy was nodding his head in approval.

  ‘If you were behind it,’ Duncan continued, ‘you’d know when the chaos was about to start, of course, but the thing you couldn’t guarantee is when it would finish. That’s not up to you. So you’d be in and out as quickly as you could, right? We’ve been sniffing out those who’ve been closing their positions and running off with the cash – and all within that tight window between the time the siege began around noon and when the Stock Exchange closed early.’

  ‘Makes sense, even to me.’

  ‘So we think we’ve found a pattern. An unusual number of relatively small placings in derivatives but which in the circumstances have reaped huge returns.’

  ‘Errr . . .’ Sloppy interrupted, waving his hands in confusion.

  ‘OK. You don’t buy individual shares outright but you place a bet on the Stock Market Index. And if you gamble on it going down, you’ve just made a killing. Now, there have been a number of investments – bets – that in normal circumstances wouldn’t have come up on our computer scans because they’d be regarded as too small, but in today??
?s conditions, they’ve been about the only lifeboats around. And quite a number of lifeboats were hauled out of the water before the Stock Exchange closed this afternoon.’

  ‘You mean—’

  ‘It looks like someone took the money and ran. Now either they were smiled on by the good luck fairy – and that’s possible – or they had a direct line to God.’

  ‘Or those guys with the guns.’

  ‘Anyway, thought you might be interested.’ He glanced at his wristwatch and rose from the end of the desk. ‘Can I go now? I’m still in time to catch the highlights.’

  ‘So who’s been sailing in these lifeboats?’

  ‘Impossible to say, of course. We could only find that out through the brokers and they’re away with the fairies until opening hours tomorrow morning.’

  Duncan looked hard at Sloppy, but found the other man returning the stare with even more resolve.

  ‘No, you’re kidding me,’ Duncan protested. ‘You expect us to kick down the doors of the brokers and drag them into their offices at this hour? It’s almost midnight!’

  ‘England expects.’

  ‘I’m a Scot!’

  ‘Which therefore makes you determined, irrepressible and extraordinarily resourceful.’

  ‘You bag of English wind.’

  ‘I’ll get the coffee, then, shall I?’ Sloppy suggested, reaching for his mug.

  11.53 p.m.

  The scene inside the chamber was displayed on the video wall in the Ops Room in terrifying high definition. Harry was on his knees, his chin on his chest, with his head being forced down by the barrel of the gun that was at his neck. A little way off, Masood was shouting into the mouthpiece of the phone.

  ‘What is going on? What are you trying to do?’ he demanded. ‘Get rid of the noise or he dies!’ He made a violent chopping motion with his hand. It was the first time since the siege had begun that he had appeared stressed.

  In the Ops Room a police negotiator was attempting to calm him with words of reassurance, but Masood was having none of it. ‘What are tanks doing out there? Why do you need tanks? You are fools to think you can mess with me, so it is entirely your fault that another one dies!’