CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
1038 HRS
It was Chester de Peverill who had risen a millisecond after him, and whose desire to star in the world’s biggest televised balloon debate was now a hormonal imperative. ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ said Roger, ‘I thought he—’
‘Don’t worry, mate,’ said Chester, placing his hand on Roger’s shoulder and applying no uncertain pressure. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen,’ he continued, puffing his chest and seeking out the cameras as though he was about to explain the secret of a really good lamb casserole. ‘My name is Chester and I’ — he paused — ‘am a humble cook.’ He waited again, as though this assertion might provoke cries of ‘no, no, no’ or applause.
The President stared uneasily at him. So did Jones the Bomb. Roger sat back, folded his arms and gave way to the blackness of ungovernable shame.
‘I am not a politician. I’m not a world statesman. All I really know about is eating and drinking and that gives me what you might call a gut instinct for things. What’s the problem we’ve got here, folks? We’ve got a global phenomenon which is called anti-Americanism. It’s people everywhere hating America, innit? That’s the trouble and before we sort it out we’ve got to understand why people hate America and from my perspective, from where I sit, there’s a lot of factors that have to be taken into account.’
‘Shut up!’ shrieked Jones. ‘What are you trying to say? Are you an imbecile?’
Chester de Peverill looked stunned. ‘I thought you wanted someone to speak, you know for or against America.’
‘You must speak to the motion,’ said Jones, who had studied Erskine May on parliamentary procedure, along with everything else, at Llangollen.
‘The motion?’
‘Yes: that this house calls for the immediate repatriation of the Guantanamo prisoners.’
‘For trial,’ said the President.
‘Silence,’ said Jones, who had the air of a rattled bus conductor about to turn vicious with a bilker. ‘Do you believe the American illegally held prisoners should be sent back for trial in the place of their alleged crimes?’
Chester de Peverill went white. Like all the folksiest and most whimsical TV characters, he tended to duck hard political questions and it struck him that the stakes here were probably quite high. If only he had known. In the seventeen minutes since Jones the Bomb had first handcuffed the President, the TV audience had been growing like bacteria in a Petri dish. There were two cameras in the hall for the live coverage, going out on Sky and BBC News 24. One was trained on the President, and one on the crowd, and their terrified cameramen were feeding pictures across the world. Millions were ringing up other millions and telling them to get to a box and watch the most sensational daytime chat show ever produced anywhere. With every minute that passed the millions were turning into hundreds of millions. Within twenty minutes it is estimated that a billion people were aware by means of some electronic transmission — radio, TV or the internet — of the events in Westminster Hall. Only a small proportion had grasped Jones’s idea in all its sophistication, but that small proportion was numerically huge.
They understood the concept of interactive TV and that they were in some sense the jury. From Berlin to Baghdad, from Manchester to Manila, from Sidcup to Sydney, there were already myriads who had no principled objection to the wheeze. Of course, they were in many cases sickened and horrified by what was going on. Good people across the planet were full of loathing for Jones and his barbarous treatment of the President, and his shooting of the Dutch Ambassador; but there was also a large number of people, good people, who thought America had a case to answer, not just on the narrow question of Guantanamo Bay, but more generally.
As they prepared to ring their TV stations and record their votes, they were fascinated by this strange, long-haired, rubbery-lipped Englishman who said he was a cook. Much as their consciences warned them not to gratify the terrorists, there were millions who were also yearning to give the Americans a lesson and in the sheep- like way of all human beings, they wanted to see which way this cook would go.
Chester de Peverill goggled. Across the planet, audiences in sports bars went silent and trembling fingers turned up the volume on the zapper.
‘Right,’ said Chester.
‘Yes or no?’ said Jones.
‘What? You mean, yes they should be sent back?’
‘Of course that is the question: what do you think?’
‘Or no they should stay in Guantanamo Bay?’
‘Idiot!’ barked Jones. ‘Just answer the question.’
‘Of course I’m going to answer the question.’ The TV chef stared hopelessly around the chamber, as out of his depth as a soup-soaked crouton. Like all despairing examination candidates, he tried to get some extra purchase on the phrasing of the question.
‘Should the ILLEGALLY HELD prisoners go back FOR TRIAL?’ He stopped histrionically, hoping that he would give the impression that he was a man who knew exactly what he was about to say.
‘Spit it out, pal,’ said the President.
‘Well,’ said Chester, ‘if you want my honest opinion . .
‘That’s right,’ said Jones, flashing his teeth. ‘That’s the one we want. The honest one.’
‘My honest opinion is, er, yes. Yes, of course the prisoners should go back and I say that without having an anti-American bone in my body. In fact some of my best friends are Americans.’
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
1040 HRS
It was the tipping point. Chester’s moronic answer, arrived at with all the ratiocination of a donkey hesitating between two equal piles of hay, was colossally influential. Across the word this mere cook, this faux-naive student of onions and gravy, had given cover and legitimation to the millions who wanted to vote to give America a bloody nose.
As the calls poured in, TV bosses started opportunistically whacking up the cost per minute and even though the higher prices were flashed on the screen, the viewers kept on calling.
In the upper reaches of the BBC, the hierarchs were in semi-continuous delirium of self-importance as they wondered what to do with the data. Could they responsibly publish the news? Could they not?
‘Basically this is a devil and the deep blue sea job,’ said the Political Director (Editorial) to the Director of Political Editorial. ‘I mean, we’re stuffed if we do and stuffed if we don’t. If we suppress what’s coming in, everyone will say we’ve been leant on by the government, and if we just go ahead and publish the news, everyone will start screaming about anti-American bias of the BBC.’
‘Yeah,’ said the Director of Political Editorial with a look of joy. He knew, they all knew, everyone who cared to look up the internet political wonk sites knew that the news was bad for America. China had recently seen a prodigious growth in the number of TVs and telephones of all kinds, not that the Chinese saw any particular need to thank America for the benefits of capitalism.
‘Yes,’ cried liberated young Chinese girls in pencil skirts as they dialled the TV stations. ‘Yes,’ said Chinese Human Rights activists into their snazzy new Sony Ericssons. Never mind all that American think tanks had done to campaign against the Laogai, the Chinese gulags.
Yes, now was the time to hold America to account. They wanted those guys sent back from Cuba. Slowly, like some storm being incubated in the armpit of Africa before it starts swirling round and round, gaining speed as it moves over the Atlantic, drenching Bermuda, then breaking out with hurricane force over the coast of North Carolina, the unthinkable was starting to become the politically correct. A global conviction was being born, that it was forgivable, this once, to comply with a terrorist stunt.
‘But just because I love America,’ said Chester de Peverill, ‘that does not mean I support American foreign policy or American farm policy. They fill their beef with hormones and then they dump it on the markets of developing countries and destroy the livelihood of those farmers. Do you know what happened to the Vietnamese catfish industry?’ he demanded.
