we’ve done enough now: can we stop?’
Again and again Dean saw the mysterious round weapon drop from the roof. In his imagination it portended the inevitable retaliation of the superpower and its lieutenants. He saw men with guns dropping from the ceiling on ropes. Violent men, who shot without questions, and then kicked their corpses.
‘What do you mean, stop?’ said Jones impatiently.
‘Well, I think we’ve made our point.’
Jones glanced at the President and the others, as though to confirm that they had heard this impertinence. ‘Dean,’ he said in his softest and most murderous tones. ‘Shut up.’
‘They’re going to kill us, Mr Jones, and they’ll never let us out of here alive.’ Dean was aware that this was a paradoxical complaint, given what he had nominally undertaken to do.
‘But we’ve discussed this.’
‘I’ve been thinking, and I agree with yow, Mr Jones, sir. I agree with yow about everything, but I’m not sure .
‘You’re not sure what?’
‘I’m not sure that I, like, really want to die.’
‘Assuredly, Dean, if we die, angels will accompany us to our rest, and we will lay our heads on pillowy bowers, and we will live in the tabernacle of the blessed, where no rain falls, neither is there any snow, and the warm breezes play…’
Dean shouted: ‘I don’t care. Anyway, I like snow.’ For the first time that day Jones the Bomb looked taken aback. It was if a snake had been hypnotizing a rabbit and the rabbit had suddenly stuck its tongue out.
He glared. Dean bit his lower lip. He had been on the wrong side of the law before. Ever since the cremation of the neighbouring cheese laboratory, he had felt a fugitive, an alien, but never had he felt so lost in a jungle of fear, and now the great white hunters were coming for him, and he was among the rabid beasts that must be put down. Cameron stood up and moved towards him.
Dean resumed. ‘I’m just saying that I wanna …’
‘You want to surrender? Will you do nothing to help our brothers who are fighting and dying in Palestine?’
‘Well, I think I have helped you know, so I honestly think we’ve done our bit.’
‘Do you want to give into this world of pornography and decadence, and the abuse of womankind…?’
‘And freedom and democracy and the rule of law,’ said the President.
‘Quiet,’ said Jones the Bomb, yanking his chain. ‘Dean,’ said Jones, ‘you took a holy oath that you would join the ranks of the Shahid, that you would be a martyr.’ On the way down the corridor to room W6, Dean had looked quickly out of one of the leaded windows. He saw that the crowd was being dispersed from Parliament Square, and that the men in blue were being joined by men in green.
‘Listen, mister,’ said Cameron. ‘I think he made it pretty clear that he doesn’t want to be a suicide bomber.’
‘What is it to you, woman?’
‘Don’t you woman me.’
‘Adam,’ snapped Jones at Dr Swallow, who stared levelly back. ‘She is your responsibility; kindly take charge of her.’
‘No one takes responsibility for me,’ said Cameron.
‘Yeah, Mr Jones, sir,’ said the President. ‘Welcome to Western civilization, buddy. Get with the programme.’
‘Hold your tongues the lot of you.’ He shoved his automatic into the President’s temple so hard that he winced. Then Jones pulled the gun away and pointed it at Cameron and then at Dean. There was a silence.
‘Well,’ said Cameron to Adam. ‘Aren’t you going to say anything?’
‘There’s nothing I can say,’ he told the girl he loved.
‘I’ve been a fool, and I’ve been cheated. Cameron, I’m sorry.’
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
1103 HRS
There was something amiss with Haroun, thought Benedicte. She knew the man craved martyrdom, but he was red-faced with impatience. He walked towards her with tiny steps, as though trying to keep a walnut between his knees.
‘Quickly,’ he said.
‘What is thees queeckly?’ she whispered. ‘It is time to blast these sons of goats and monkeys.’ ‘We must wait for Monsieur Jones to come back.’ ‘No! If I wait any more, something will happen.’ ‘What ees something?’
‘Something bad. To me.’
The Palestinian girl looked closely at Haroun.
Haroun didn’t like Benedicte. Her chic white T-shirt unambiguously revealed the location of her nipples. She was not attired like a black-eyed one.
He jerked his chin.
‘But go on then,’ she chuckled, waving the muzzle of the Uzi at the swing doors. ‘We can manage.’
And if anybody laughs at me now, thought Haroun as he minced out, I will shoot them in the bladder.
‘Tootle pip,’ called Lady Hovell to his smouldering back, ‘you clear off, and take Ulrika Meinhof here while you are at it.’
The acting terrorist leader walked towards her down the aisle, noiseless in her Nike Airs.
‘I think I should warn you that you don’t scare me, young lady.’
‘Then you are brave but you are not smart.’
‘In fact, there is only one thing that really frightens me.’
‘And what is that?’
‘I am frightened of the disapproval of God.’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘Shut you the fat gob.’
‘My advice is to follow that young man, find the nearest policeman, and hand over that gun.’
As the two women stood next to each other, the rain outside deepened in tone. The drops swelled and thickened to the size of currants, or even gulls’ eggs, and a great drumming came from the roof. A cloud of Turneresque blackness rolled across the London sky, and as the light died in the windows, strange shadows formed on the women’s faces.
‘Go home, dear,’ said the Baroness.
Benedicte stuck her snout right next to the ancient map.
‘Now is the time for the beeg silence.’ She raised the Uzi to her ear. ‘Or else the silence will be the long one.’
‘What you need, if you ask my opinion, is a nice husband.’
‘Shut your face,
‘I’m no—’
Benedicte pulled the trigger. Even as far back as Barlow and de Peverill, the shots buffeted their eustachian tubes, as though someone was ripping calico just by their ears.
Lady Hovell clapped her hand to her heart. She sat down. Her eyes fell away from Benedicte, and at once she looked like anyone’s old grandma, just told a piece of bad news by the docs.
A noise went up from the audience, a small but unanimous exhalation. They knew that they had sustained a defeat.
Was Lady Hovell’s chin wobbling? Was that a crinkle on the jaw that had never trembled in forty years of sneering from men who weren’t fit to lick her boots? It was hard to tell. But as Silver Stick gazed at her from afar, tears formed in his ducts, of love and fright.
