Frig me spastic, thought Jason Pickel, as the bullets ate into the main collar beam, just ten feet below him. That could have been a serious inguinal injury.
He squinted below, to check whether the mad A-rab bitch might fire again. Then slowly he looped the nylon rope round the crown post, tied it tight, and then began to slide it through two carabiners at his belt.
When he had finished, he crouched once again over the gathering, his big shoulders hunched, rifle ready, like an eagle as it waits for its moment.
Adam was still saying nothing, and Cameron was looking at the TV, trying not to hurt.
The BBC had a ‘Russian expert’, who was casting doubt on the oddly pro-American numbers from Russian TV.
She had to know about his theft. ‘So how did you take it?’
‘I am afraid I just put my newspapers and stuff on top of it, and then scooped it all up when we all left.’
‘So what are you, a spy?’
He groaned. ‘Yes, I suppose I am. But it’s got nothing to do with this business.’
‘And who are you supposed to be spying for?’
Dean watched their conversation. In particular, he watched Cameron, and noticed more detail: the tilt of her nose, the bangle on her wrist, the little white scar on her slender left arm. He shivered, and listened to the rattle of the rain. Not only had the temperature fallen, but the adrenalin was turning sour in his veins, leaving a hangover of fear.
Jones the Bomb spoke. ‘The door is open, Dean, my young friend.’
Dean looked at the door. On the contrary, it was shut.
‘But if you go through that door now, remember that you will lose all chance of bliss. You have a chance now’ — he stared with his mongoose intensity — ‘to obtain the stone that is more precious than the world and anything that is in it. Remember, my dear Dean, that when the first drop of blood is spilled, the shahid does not feel the pain of his wounds, and all his sins are forgiven. He sees his seat in Paradise, and he is saved from the torment of the grave—’
‘Mr Jones, sir, I just don’t believe in paradise.’
The President looked keenly at him. No one ever got elected President of the United States without believing in paradise.
Jones made a sad face: ‘I know it is difficult, and I know it is frightening, and I know we all have moments when we feel we have lost our faith . .
‘You bet your sweet ass,’ said the President.
‘But I hope you still have faith in me, Dean. Do you?’
‘Do I what?’
‘Have faith in the person who has liberated you from the false values of Western decadence?’
Dean rose. He moved towards the door. ‘Mr Jones, I. No. Yes. I … No.’
That’s it, thought Roger Barlow, when Benedicte fired at the roof-beams. Get me out of this thing, dear Lord, and I promise I’ll be good. I’m fed up with being bad.
Here are all the good things I am going to do. I’m going to pick up my towels from the bathroom floor. I’m going to start listening properly when she talks to me. I’m going to communicate. I’m going to stay awake after lights out, because it’s always worth it in the end. I’m going to understand that the important thing is not to solve problems, but to discuss them. After fifteen years, I’m going to get the point that marriage is not a final act; it’s like a meeting of the European agricultural ministers, an endless negotiation of insolubles.
I won’t pick the corner of my toenails with a Bic biro lid. Ditto ears, or at least not at dinner parties.
I won’t open tins of tuna and then leave them under the bed. I won’t go to the fridge, take out a Waitrose raspberry trifle, eat it all, and then put back the licked-out plastic container.
I won’t lose my temper when we get lost, and then refuse to ask the way. I’ll stop farting under the duvet .
His eyes met the twitchy glare of Habib, who was walking down the aisle, swinging his gun like a sadistic maths master invigilating an exam.
It occurred to Roger that if he wanted divine intervention, he had better make some real concessions.
The noise from Benedicte’s gun carried out into New Palace Yard. It penetrated the ambulance, and entered the ears of William Eric Kinloch Onyeama. One lung was half-full of blood.
The pericardial puncture unit had made a neat hole in his chest. His thoracic diaphragm had been punctured, his pencardial membrane was in a bad way and his sternum was severely scraped.
But Eric Onyeama was alive, and he owed his life to the Huskie.
It was the tough little computer which had served as his breastplate, and which had borne the brunt of Haroun’s attack.
He had lost about four pints of blood; but the haemorrhage had slowed, and now he was coming out of his faint. He flapped an arm, and knocked a non-glass urine bottle to the floor.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
1105 HRS
‘Jesus H. Christ,’ said one of the Swat team that surrounded the ambulance. ‘There’s someone moving in there.’
‘Somebody open the doors.’
‘Cover me.’
With infinite care, and strictly according to the manuals, the Swat team inched towards the handle. Slowly, slowly, in the hope of not setting off some Vietcong-style booby trap, both the rear doors were swung wide. The Swat team stared within, their expressions full of the semi-sacred awe with which a man will look at the bottom of a woman’s handbag.
‘Strewth,’ said one. ‘It looks like a flaming abattoir in there.’
Eric the parkie was almost invisible in the tangle of medical equipment. His lower body was covered in a long spinal board, complete with head immobilizer and securing straps. His upper half was buried in a midden of oximeters, stethoscopes, thermometers, resuscitation masks, vomiting bags, gastric tubes, sterile surgical gloves and defibrillators. The whole assemblage was richly spattered with gore.
‘I think there’s someone there.’
‘Sweet Mary mother of God.’
‘Or part of someone, anyway. That’s definitely a foot.’
‘We’ve got to get him out.’
The Swat team leader looked at the ambulance man. ‘You’d better lead the way.’
‘Whoa,’ said the ambulance man. ‘This is an armed response situation. The rules clearly state that in armed response situations, it’s down to you boys.’
‘Hey, we don’t want to kill him.’
‘Yeah, and we don’t want him to kill us.’
‘Oh come off it.’
‘You come off it.’
So Britain’s emergency services began the now traditional act of worship before the altar of Phobia, the many-headed multiple-bosomed goddess of health and safety. With every pump of Eric Onyeama’s good and loyal heart the puddle of blood beneath him grew, and with every pump the beat grew fainter.
‘Help me you idiots,’ he said. But only his lips moved.
Adam took Cameron’s hand and led her away from the blare of the TV, to the back of room W6. As she felt those long, dark-haired pianist’s fingers, she tried to remember that this was a hand she thrilled to touch.
‘I’ll tell you who I’m spying for,’ he said, ‘of course I will. I’ll tell you in a minute. But I want you to believe me about something. I am not a terrorist.’
‘Then why did you make me do this?’
She still loved the intensity of his intellect; she loved his broad shoulders and thick curly black hair. Despite
