other.”
They walked with her for another dozen meters or so, until she headed off down a little side street. She gave them a halfhearted wave as she left, still not sure if they weren’t hooligans like everyone else. Almost everyone on the street now was a protestor. All the shops were shut.
“Come on,” Simon said. “Let’s go with the flow.” It sounded like the last thing he wanted to be doing.
Tim’s PCglasses threw up an incoming call icon. It was Jeff.
“Hello, Dad,” he said cautiously.
“Tim, where are you?”
“Uh…just outside Brampton Park. We should be there in twenty minutes or so.”
“Son, please, don’t. It’s getting nasty outside.”
“So?”
“I don’t want you to be part of it.”
“We’re not going to accomplish anything by sitting at home doing nothing.”
“Believe me, your side is achieving quite a lot without you.”
Tim came to a halt in the middle of the pavement, and put his hands on his hips. “That’s so typical of you to patronize me like that.”
“I am not patronizing you. I’m concerned about you, actually. Very concerned.”
“Look, I don’t want to walk into any kind of trouble. But this is all we’ve got left to us. You people just won’t listen.” Shouts broke out up ahead. Tim peered through the graphic icons to see a fight, nothing like the pushing and shoving when tempers got lost at school. These men were trying to kill each other. Fists flew, and boots kicked. A bottle smashed, glass flying in wild arcs. Then they were wrapped together, rolling over and over along the road as they mauled at each other like a pair of dogs. Blood began to flow over their clothes. He could see one biting at the other’s ear, jerking his head back to try to rip it off. A gang of men formed a circle around them, cheering them on and pouring beer over them.
“Don’t include me in this,” Jeff’s voice said in his ear, a sound now so remote it could have come from New Zealand.
“You’re there, aren’t you? You’re going to decide our future for us.” The brutal fight was over. One of the men climbed to his feet, swaying badly. Blood was pouring down his face. He aimed a kick at the head of his unconscious rival. It connected with a sickening
“I’m presenting a physics paper, for Christ’s sake. There’s only thirty people in the world who really understand the math involved.”
“Then you don’t need to be there, do you? You’re just helping Brussels.”
There was such a long pause before Jeff answered that Tim wasn’t sure if the connection had failed. The gang of fight spectators was breaking up, leaving the body sprawled on the road, soaked in blood and beer. Eventually his father said: “I’m not helping Brussels, Tim. I had no idea this summit had become such a symbol, nor that it meant so much to you. You know damn well I don’t want to make things worse between us.”
“Then leave.”
“What?”
“I’ll do you a deal. I won’t go, I won’t take another step forward if you leave; today, now.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Then look down, I’ll be there waving at you. Click, end call.”
“You did the right thing,” Colin said. He kept glancing at the motionless fight victim. “We can’t show any weakness.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s just…” Tim gave Vanessa a quick squeeze; she was shivering as she pressed up against him. “He did sound worried.”
50. FREE SPEECH
ROB LACEY ARRIVED at the Marshall Centre by EuroAir Defence Force helicopter at half past five that afternoon. He was due to make the key welcoming speech at the opening ceremony. When he alighted, the numbers of the Million Citizen Voices laying siege to the Centre had begun to grow to alarming levels. The first eight columns of marchers had wound their way through central London from mainline and tube stations to bolster the mass of protestors who were already there. By four o’clock the police squads on the security cordon enforcement duty were having trouble holding the line at the end of the Connaught Bridge circle. The senior district officer gave the order to fall back, and form a new line on the middle of the bridge itself. The concrete dual carriageway was narrow enough for his officers to hold indefinitely.
With estimates of the number of protestors already at Docklands now nudging the eighty thousand mark, the Metropolitan Police Chief ordered the remaining eleven marches currently converging on the Marshall Centre to halt and disperse. Police on escort duty weren’t prepared to enforce that kind of order, even if they’d had enough officers to implement it successfully. When they tried to stop the marchers, scuffles broke out, quickly evolving into fights. Most of the marchers were able to break through and rampage along their route. Shop windows were smashed. Looting distracted large gangs, who then set about beating up camera crews and local bystanders. Police retreated quickly from a barrage of missiles. Parked vehicles were overturned and set on fire. The lines of conflict began to snake their way across the city, converging on Docklands.
News of the attempted restrictions against the marchers flashed through the protestors already swarming through the university campus, and they began to get angry. Smoke bombs were fired from homemade launchers, arching out over the calm dark water. The entire length of the Albert Dock was soon smothered in a haze of red smog. Real fireworks were set off, big rockets angled low to burst against the Marshall Centre’s sturdy glass cliff face. None actually penetrated, but the vividly colorful explosions writhing against the reinforced windows frightened the hell out of the delegates inside.
Wavelike surges among the agitated crowds sent people tumbling over the side of the dock to splash into the water, where they started frantically yelling for help. Inflatable dinghies were quickly lowered, although the small crews ignored those thrashing about in distress, and eagerly paddled their way toward the Centre. Fast police launches raced in from the Thames to intercept them.
That was when Rob Lacey’s helicopter drifted down out of the cloudless sky to settle on the Marshall Centre’s rooftop landing pad just above the layers of red smoke. The protestors knew exactly who it was carrying. His arrival was the final act of provocation. What until then had been a perilously wild demonstration detonated into a full- blown riot.
London became the principal topic on all of the primary European news streams, and a majority of the big internationals. For Jeff and Annabelle, sitting up in their hotel room, it didn’t matter which company they called up from the datasphere, every grid on every news stream had a different camera shot of the same thing. Helicopters hovered over the Royal Albert Docks, showing cloying strands of smoke and tear gas mingling before flowing like mercury around the roads and buildings on either side of the water. Every now and then Jeff would sneak over to the window and get a different perspective on the same scene, almost as if he didn’t believe the camera coverage. It was very strange having such an event unfolding a few hundred meters away, yet remain totally insulated from it. Half the time he imagined he actually did catch sight of Tim down there amid the chaos.
The marches that had turned to pandemonium and violence were covered by camera crews on the tops of buildings, who focused on the people rampaging along the streets below. Balaclava-clad anarchists flung Molotovs, creating avenues of fire down the city’s broader thoroughfares. Meandering contrails of black smoke began to rise above the rooftops, marking their progress. On-the-ground reporters tried to follow the fire engines, but the police were dangerously overstretched and unable to guarantee the safety of the emergency crews. Fires were left to burn unchecked in several areas as the engines waited impotently in side roads hundreds of meters back from the roaring flames.
Blurred, shaky camera shots from inside the packs of marchers showed canisters of tear gas twirling through
