would do next. The insight had been granted to another part of her brain, just as she watched Jones clicking on the handcuff. She was more interested in the behaviour of the French Ambassador. With what seemed now to be utter predictability, the man in the djelabah reached down under his seat in the movement she had seen him rehearse. He flipped off the brass plaque. It clacked backwards on to her toes, chipping the varnish.
‘Hey,’ said Cameron, and then regretted the incongruous pettiness of her complaint.
Here, the plaque reminded her, was the spot where Thomas More, patron saint of politicians, had been condemned to death. There was a point there somewhere, thought Cameron as she looked at the wrenched-off memorial, screws awry. The man’s hairy wrist shot down into the darkness to produce a plastic bag marked ‘RitePrice’ out of which he removed two Schmidt MP rapid fire submachine guns, and gave one to his neighbour, and then produced another bag.
Out of the corner of her eye Cameron became suddenly aware that the Dutch Ambassador was on the verge of heroism. His father had fought the Nazis. His uncle had been present as one of the negotiators when South Moluccan terrorists had hijacked a Dutch train and started to massacre the passengers. He knew that violence sometimes had to be matched with violence for the salvation of society; and anyway he was full of the battle adrenalin and suppressed fury of one who has been freshly bombed by an ostrich egg.
He made a nostril noise like a kettle coming to the boil, and was on the point of hurling himself upon Benedicte when she whipped round and poked him in the chest with her gun. ‘You shut up too, bald man,’ she said. He slumped back.
When Cameron looked at him, with his morning dress streaked with the embryo of a flightless bird, with his expression of a stunned mullet, she felt instantly overcome. It was the shocking inversion of feminine aggression, it was the sight of the President, her President, handcuffed and humiliated. It was the gross impropriety of the submachine guns in this place to which even Parliamentarians were not allowed to bring their swords.
Along the bottom of her lashes brimmed tears as big as planets. She blinked. They splashed to the floor, on the plaque and on her feet. She looked up through the blur and saw someone walking through the rows towards her, unchecked by the gunmen.
He was someone she wanted to see, the man who would explain everything or at least provide her with a theory. ‘Oh Adam,’ she said, ‘thank God.’
In the Scotland Yard Ops Room there was a moment of hush. Like all men in such positions, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Purnell and Colonel Bluett of the USSS were contemplating not just the imminence of carnage in Westminster Hall and the assassination of a president. They foresaw clearly the immolation of their own careers.
‘Jesus Christ, what are we waiting for? I’ve got twenty-one guns in that hall.’
Without consulting Purnell, the American flipped open the switch that connected him to the earpieces of the men in the hall.
‘Boys, this is Bluett. Who has got a line on these guys?’
From their vantage points around the hall, the lynx-eyed USSS men started to whisper their options into the Smarties on their lapels.
‘Negative, sir: I’ve got a man with an Uzi at my gut.’
‘Negative, sir: I’m way back here.’
‘I got him, sir. I got that sucker whenever you want.’ It was Lieutenant Alan Cabache.
High up and recessed into the east wall of Westminster Hall, just under the corbels of the hammerbeams, is a series of huge murky alcoves; hard to make out at any time, and almost invisible now in the overhead glow of the TV lights. In one of these alcoves Lieutenant Cabache had been waiting for an hour, hidden by the ancient friable skirts of Philippa of Hainault. He was covered with soot, and his legs ached from being braced against Philippa’s rump. But it was all about to pay off.
Now he secretly slid his Glock barrel under Philippa’s left breast and drew a bead on Jones, just fifty feet away, down and to his right.
‘I got him, sir,’ he repeated.
‘Then whack him!’ said Bluett.
‘NO,’ said Purnell. ‘For God’s sake, man, you heard what he said!’
‘What’s that, Stephen? Are you countermanding me here?’
‘Too damn right, I am. You heard what he said. As soon as he dies, his fucking bomb goes off.’
‘You believe that?’
Across the hall, the USSS men listened in despair. Who the hell was in charge here?
‘I do believe it until we somehow find evidence to the contrary.’
‘You do believe it.’ A note of doubt had crept into Bluett’s voice.
‘Shall I shoot, sir?’ asked Cabache, as quietly as he could.
‘NO,’ said Purnell.
‘Uh, wait up, Cabache. Well, what do you frigging propose, Mr Commissioner?’
‘Sir, I’ve got Downing Street on the line.’ The Prime Minister, the head of MIS, the Cabinet Secretary, the Defence Secretary, the head of Counter-Intelligence and a new minister for Homeland Security were being hustled into Cabinet Office Briefing Room A, or Cobra. Normally, their number would have included the Home Secretary, but the Home Secretary was in Westminster Hall.
Now Purnell spoke to the British Prime Minister, on a secure’ mobile, as he was jogged by his own agents towards the electronic nerve centre of Downing Street.
Like Purnell and Bluett, the Prime Minister had instantly seen that these events could be fatal to his career. So there was one point he stressed in his brief conversation with Purnell, namely that he, the Prime Minister, was taking political responsibility, of course, but no ‘operational’ responsibility. It would be quite wrong, the Prime Minister said, for him to second-guess the split-second decisions of the experts. That was why he, the Prime Minister, was going to leave such decisions to Purnell.
‘With full cooperation, of course, with the Americans,’ said the Prime Minister.
‘Cooperation, sir?’ said Purnell.
‘And consultation.’ Then the line went dead as the British leader was patched through to Washington.
‘The first thing we do,’ said Purnell, ‘is find out about this business with the sensors. Is it possible to make a suicide bomb jacket like that?’
‘I dunno, sir,’ said Grover.
‘Well don’t hang around,’ said Bluett. He didn’t know whether he was entitled to give orders to Grover, but he was damn well going to give orders to someone.
The President and Jones the Bomb stood at the head of the congregation like a shackled pair of slaves about to be auctioned. As he waited for his yokemate to outline his demands the President looked and was not reassured. He saw a nose so hooked that Jones could easily touch it — and sometimes did, to the horror of anyone sitting opposite him in the Tube — with the tip of his tongue. He saw the bags under his eyes, shiny and dark as plum sauce; and now the eyes with their odd vibration were upon him.
‘Out of the way,’ hissed Jones.
The President was taken aback. ‘Say what?’
‘Move,’ said Jones, shoving on the handcuff.
‘Listen buddy, we’re kind of hooked up here. If you want to let me go you’ll be doing the right thing.’
‘Shut up and move and say nothing more or else you’ll be shot.’ The President understood. So far they had been sharing the lectern, like a couple of pop stars crooning into the same microphone, and now Jones wanted to take charge. The President shuffled to the left and Jones began. He had been here a couple of times to case the joint and had picked up some of the essential history.
