the walk-out. But no, he appeared to have got away with it. He had a feeling that someone was heckling him, but the guy was too British or too cowardly to do it properly. What he noticed again as he flickered his gaze around the mediaeval hall, was the odd progress of that film crew.
You know how you spot a gecko on a wall and one moment it is in spot A and the next moment, when you glance again, it has somehow moved undetected to spot B. So the four characters were moving up towards him, hugging the grey cliff of stone, waggling their cameras at him. Had he looked harder, the President might have noticed that they had changed the order of march, so that the mixed-race-looking guy was being chivvied along by one of the darker-skinned fellows.
The President was more interested in finishing the text on his lectern. ‘And never forget that among those who died on 9/11 were 58 entirely innocent Muslims. It cannot be repeated too often that this war on terrorism is not a war on Islam. We do not have any quarrel with any people in the Muslim world, and I want to say on a personal level as a Christian, how much I admire and respect their great religion.’ There was some uncertain clapping at this point. People could see that there was much to respect in Islamic culture. It was not obvious why this should be particularly moving to a Christian unless the President was somehow asserting his approval of mutually antagonistic and fundamentalist creeds of all kinds.
‘It is not Islam which drives young men and women brutally to take their lives and the lives of others.’
‘No,’ said Barry White in his irritating voice, much like Muttley, the dog that accompanies Dick Dastardly in the Wacky Races. ‘It’s the Israeli Defence Force.’
For some reason this sally was loud enough to reach a much larger section of the audience, and the President’s own ears caught the word Israel.
He scowled. He didn’t like it at all. He began to wonder whether indeed he would get to the end without some audience reaction so unacceptable that the US networks would be obliged to report it.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
1021 HRS
‘It is not Islam that turns these sad and impressionable young men and women to terror. It is those who knowingly pervert the teachings of that great value system, and who corrupt these young people, and who lead them into the path of evil.’ He looked up again and holy mackerel, the four Arab geckos had scooted a long way up the wall, they were there just off to his right, there where the skirt of grey stone steps began to rise from the floor to the dais from which he was speaking.
The President momentarily caught the eye of the leader. He was glancing up from his camera viewfinder and there was something in his manner that was, yes, reptilian.
‘Our struggle and our fight is with those who would turn a religion of peace into a utensil of torture and killing . .
The word ‘torture’ produced a predictable heckle.
‘… And I tell you all now, and I tell all those who may now be following this speech across the world, that as long as I am Commander in Chief, the United States will pay any price, we will bear any burden, we will travel any distance to track down those who would kill or harm our citizens or other innocents of the earths. My Lords, Ladies, Members of the House of Commons, Honourable and Esteemed Friends and Members of the British Cabinet …’
‘Hey!’ exclaimed Roger, quite loudly this time, as he saw Jones the Bomb begin his final scuttle towards the sweep of steps.
From his vantage point leaning against the far wall, Adam Swallow looked with amazement at the group. But where was the cripple? Where was the man from Abu Ghraib? He wheeled around to find Benedicte, and she refused to meet his eyes.
In the Ops Room, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Purnell was filled with sudden and evanescent satisfaction. ‘Quiet!’ he yelled at Bluett and the rest of the room. ‘I’m getting something about fatalities in New Palace Yard. What’s that? A dark-skinned man has been shot, in the ambulance .
What’s that? A traffic warden? Oh Jesus, we know about him. What about the others?. . . The others, for Christ’s sake. No, not the man on the roof. The man on the roof is on our side, you idiots. What happened to the four TV crew? What do you mean you thought they were just TV crew? You mean they aren’t dead? Then where the hell are they? Oh sweet Mary mother of God, don’t tell me you just let them in the frigging hall.’
‘Where,’ said Bluett, ‘in the name of God is Pickel?’
The President glanced down at a group of the most senior British politicians from the Government and the Opposition who were sitting in the first three ranks. To his very slight surprise he saw that between him and the higher echelons of British politics, crawling towards him up the steps, was that Arab film crew. It seemed that the game of gecko grandmother’s footsteps was about to come to an end.
The President had no time to pause, no time to think, but he thrust out his chin and filled his lungs.
‘I thank you from the bottom of my heart and on behalf of all the people of my country for your steadfastness, your courage and the clarity with which you have seen the risk we all face and the readiness with which you have responded and I believe that future generations will look back on this alliance of ours and ponder the marvel that once again we too, Britain and America, stood firm against evil. Because I am certain that no matter how bitter the struggle may be, no matter how irksome the security precautions we must take, the time will surely come when we will overcome the — what the hell?’
Whatever abstract noun was fated, in the view of the President, to be overcome by the Atlantic Alliance, that audience would never know.
Part Three
I COME TO BURY CAESAR
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
1024 HRS
Across the hall, behind pillars, behind doors, at strategic points in the audience, in helicopters overhead and wherever the speech was being monitored on television, American security men gasped or swore or howled and pulled out their weapons, just as the news was breaking in their Curly-Wurlies.
They were too late. ‘That will do, Mr President,’ said Jones the Bomb, clicking the handcuff over the President’s limp wrist. Then he held their hands up together, as the umpire raises the hand of a boxer to show that their fates are now conjoined.
That was it, thought Jones. He had done it. Whatever happened now, he would join the ranks of the immortals for this action. In Mecca, in Medina, in all the holy places of Islam, babes unborn would lisp the name of Jones. He was also aware that he was very likely to be shot dead in the next ten seconds, unless he could explain to the shooters that this was a bad idea.
‘If you don’t mind,’ he said, taking the microphone, ‘it will be simplest if I do the talking from now on. I should like to begin by pointing out to anyone who is thinking of shooting me that the bomb I am wearing is connected by electronic sensors to my heart and will detonate as soon as it senses that there is no pulse.
‘If that happens, America will lose a president, Britain will lose much of its government and the rest of you will be in a very bad way. So here, as they say in the movies, are my demands.’
Cameron had already worked out what Benedicte and the two other Arabs, the ones sitting in front of her,
