‘Thank you so much,’ said Jones, indicating with a sweep that it was rather Dean who should come this way.
And Dean was unlocking his haunches to move, when a voice behind him said, ‘I am sorry, sir, would you mind just staying there while I check your pass.’ It was the first policeman, the other a few paces behind. He had observed Dean’s difficulties with the swipe card.
‘It’s all right, officer,’ oozed the young minister, passing through and holding the door open. ‘I’m letting him through.’
‘That’s right, sir, but I can’t let anyone through who doesn’t have a valid pass.’
‘I’ve got a valid pass. That’s the whole point.’ He nodded brightly at Dean. Dean stayed still.
The minister directed a quick but irrefutable wink at the terrorist conscript. Dean was rooted to the spot.
‘Frankly, sir, I hope you won’t mind my saying this, but I think it would be more appropriate from every point of view if we played this by the book. I am sure the young man won’t mind coming to the office with me to revalidate his pass.’
The minister turned to the policeman. His smile burst out like the sun over a meadow of alpine flowers. ‘Look, I know you are only doing your job, and if I may say so doing it very well. But we have here a distinguished foreign news crew, and I think we should treat everyone the same, without the slightest suggestion of discrimination.’
Invisibly, behind the door, Haroun began to detach the still virgin thorax draining kit from its place of concealment in his sock.
At the mention of the word ‘discrimination’, the policeman stiffened. Jesus, but he hated that word.
‘I have been working here for twelve years, sir,’ he said, ‘and I can assure you that I treat everyone the same . .
‘I know that, officer,’ said the politician, and his voice was like ginger beer, as it might trickle from an earthenware cruse on a hot summer’s day, to quench a thirsty shepherd boy. ‘I would not presume to tell you what to do.’
Haroun began steadily to draw the spike out of his trouser leg. Habib said something in Arabic.
‘As you know, sir, my duty is to prevent access to the Palace of Westminster to any person or persons I see fit. I am not saying you are a security risk, by the way,’ he said to Dean, ‘but ..
‘Now look here,’ said the minister, and a frown had clouded his pallid brow, ‘I really think . .
And so he might have continued, with one of those don’t-you-know-who-I-am speeches he had given at perhaps a dozen check-in counters, when he had turned up late for a flight, with no better excuse than his own laziness and conceit. Matters might have seriously deteriorated. The puncture kit was now fully extracted from the sock, and was scintillating in the gloom.
Jones saw it, rested his fingers on Haroun’s shoulder, and transmitted a message of calm and control. ‘My dear sir,’ he said to the politician, ‘I am most terribly grateful for your help. But it is clear we have reached an impasse, and the last thing I want to do is cause any difficulties for our friend here.’ He smiled at the policeman. Haroun smiled, and so did Habib.
They all beamed, like a bunch of Lebanese waiters who have been told to provide a birthday cake, gratis, for an orphan.
‘So let us go back,’ he said, coming out through the door, ‘and see if we can find the document you have rightly requested,’ he said, as the party straggled upwards and backwards to the car park in Norman Shaw North. Jones the Bomb set a brisk pace, conversing ceremoniously with the copper.
The politician fell in with Habib. ‘Good Lord,’ he said, looking at the terrorist’s T-shirt, ‘isn’t that extraordinary!’ Habib tried to hunch together the flaps of the suicide bomber jacket. There, smudged over the chest slogan, was a bloodstain. It was hand-shaped, presumably came from the blood of Eric the parkie, and had been made in the course of their bags-I-not struggle over the bomber jackets. ‘Llangollen 3rd VIII University,’ he read out. ‘Isn’t that a coincidence? Do you know that I am the MP for Llangollen?’
Habib gave a soft smile. Behind them walked Dean, who was trying to avoid the gaze of Haroun, while whistling ‘Colonel Bogey’.
As soon as they emerged from the tunnel, they could hear the football-terrace roar from the square. It was now the middle of the passion of Raimondo Charles. As the Yankee fists pounded the glossy head of that innocent but irritating man, the wails of his supporters carried round the corner from Whitehall. It was quite frightening.
The minister decided to spend no more political capital on this incompetent TV crew, and with a final leer at Dean, he tootled off. He was going to watch the President’s speech on television. Having been almost excessive in his gratitude to the emanations of the British state, Jones the Bomb turned to his underlings.
‘Dean, you know how much I value you. You know how crucial you are to this operation, and how much the Sheikh, may Allah be with him, esteems the contribution you make. But I must confess that there are times when I wonder whether you do justice to your natural abilities.’ Haroun spat at Dean’s feet.
‘Luckily,’ continued Jones, ‘I have already made plans for this contingency.’ He took out the car key. ‘This is why we are using an ambulance.’
Dean looked at him with the hunger of an eight-year-old being offered a ride on Disney’s space mountain. ‘Hey man,’ he said, ‘I know what. It’s time for a bit of the old
Westminster Hall was now crowded to capacity, and here and there a terse dispute was taking place over the few unbagged seats, and the ethics of ‘reserving’ the chairs with scrawled bits of paper. Corpulent young MPs of all parties looked stonily into the distance, shifted their bottoms, and refused to meet the eyes of the peeresses who hobbled around in the hope of chivalry. Cameron was getting on famously with the French Ambassador and his girlfriend. She saw Adam walk up past her on her right, picking his way through the crowds against the wall. She waved, but he did not seem to see her. It was growing hotter and hotter under the klieg lights, and people were beginning to bend the programme, with its twin emblems, the Portcullis of the Commons and the Presidential Seal, and to fan their wide-pored faces. There was a sennet or a tucket or a fanfare and suddenly here they were.
First a group of trumpeters came on, in red and yellow tunics, white stockings, and odd little jockey caps. They lifted their long, valveless instruments, each with a heraldic flag suspended beneath it, and standing half a dozen on either side of the top dais, they parped a deafening salute.
Then came an assortment of dignified office-holders, mainly in tights, and all men. Then came a man walking backwards carrying a cushion with something on it, then the man carrying the Mace of the House of Commons, and then the Speaker of the House of Commons, and then there he was all this for one man in a plain blue suit.
Cameron was surprised — since she had never seen her country’s leader before, not in the flesh — by how tall he was. She felt herself flushing with simple patriotic pleasure and savoured the contrast between English flummery and the republican simplicity of America. He came down the steps from Central Lobby, shooting his cuffs and waiting until he and the First Lady could be escorted, with maximum pomp, to their chairs by the dais. Then the last echo of brass died away.
They stopped whispering and sniffing and bickering. In the silence that followed — and it seemed like silence, because the listeners automatically bleached out the quotidian noise of the emergency vehicle — the Speaker stood forward to speak.
CHAPTER THIRTY
0958 HRS
Roger Barlow and the man from Stogumber heard the siren and ran out of the Pass Office. Barlow established with a glance that it was the suspect ambulance. Blooming Bilston and Willenhall Primary Care Trust.
In the police booth they saw the machine hurtling towards them, flashing and wailing so loudly that it drowned out the noise of the telephone. Without a second’s hesitation, the first policeman brought the palm of his hand down flat and hard on the big red button which lifted the boom.
Roger ran after it. He waved. He shouted inaudibly at the men in the booth. No good. It is one thing to clamp
