'That price, Your Royal Majesty, is a bullet to this old woman's head.'
He pulled the trigger.
Then he looked into the camera and said, 'Cut.'
A THOUSAND MILES TO THE EAST, flying at maximum altitude, thirty-two thousand feet, Alex Hawke was sound asleep in his seat aboard the RAF Hercules C-130J transport plane that carried Stokely and him back to England. It was freezing inside the fuselage of the giant aircraft and they had wrapped themselves in the Afghan blankets they'd strapped to the back of their saddles on the journey up into the Hindu Kush mountains.
Sahira had returned to Islamabad after the Wazizabad Mountain incident. She'd been assigned by MI5 to spend a month assisting the Pakistani government in finding out how and why a nuclear device had been removed from Pakistan's heavily guarded arsenal. And how they could prevent a recurrence from ever happening.
A young airman was bending over Hawke, squeezing his shoulder and repeating his name. Somehow, Alex dredged himself up from the depths of his exhaustion, opened his eyes and stared, bewildered, at the face looming over him.
'Yes?' he said, not fully aware of where he was.
'Sir, Captain Davies has asked that you come forward to the cockpit. He has an urgent message for you.'
'What is it?' Hawke asked, struggling to come fully awake.
'He didn't say, sir. Just that he needed to speak with you immediately.'
'I'm right behind you,' Hawke said, getting to his feet and following the airman as he made his way forward. When he entered the cockpit, he saw the pilot turn to face him in the red glow of his instruments.
'Commander, sorry to disturb your sleep but I'm afraid it's most urgent.'
'Not at all. What is it?'
'You're not going to believe it, sir. I've just been on the radio with my commanding officer. It seems that an armed wing of the Taliban called the Sword of Allah has stormed Balmoral Castle and taken everyone inside hostage.'
'Everyone? Good Lord.'
'Yes, sir. All the guests, and the entire Royal Family. The Queen herself, sir. Prince Philip, Prince Charles, and his two sons…all of them.'
Hawke was stunned.
'It's not possible.'
'I'm afraid it is. They've already killed one hostage, a much loved lady-in-waiting to Her Majesty, Lady Fiona Hicks. The Queen, with Pakistani gunmen to either side, gave a statement on the BBC. It is a hostage situation and the terrorists are threatening to keep killing one a day on live television until Prime Minister Weed agrees to their demands. The first deadline is tomorrow at midnight, Greenwich Mean Time.'
'And our response?'
'Forces are mobilizing and disembarking for Scotland as we speak, sir.'
'Captain, listen. There is no time to waste. I need to be put in immediate contact with MI6 to organize a hostage rescue team. And, most importantly, I need to see that BBC video of the Queen. Perhaps I can visually identify exactly where she's being held inside the castle. I need to speak with Sir David Trulove. Tell him exactly what I will need to-'
'Sorry, sir. Sir David is one of the hostages. As well as Lord Malmsey of MI5.'
'All right,' Hawke said, thinking rapidly, 'what is the RAF station nearest to Balmoral?'
'RAF Aberdeenshire, I believe, sir.'
'Can we divert there?'
'In this case? Certainly. I'd set this behemoth down right outside Balmoral's front gates if I could.'
'Get the SAS director of special forces on the radio. Tell him we need him now. And we need that BBC video ready to screen as soon as we touch down. He needs to start putting an SAS paratroop squadron together at RAF Aberdeenshire immediately. What's our ETA there?'
'I could have you on the ground in less than two hours, Commander.'
'It'll have to do. If you've got any extra horses under those wings, now would be a good time to use them. When someone's holding a gun to your Sovereign's head, every minute counts.'
SIXTY-THREE
HE TRIED TO GO BACK TO SLEEP, but it was useless. In the dim light of the cellar he could see that most of the hostages were asleep, or pretending to be. He looked at his watch. Three in the morning. His nerves were shot and he needed sleep badly. He put his head back down on the sofa cushion and tried to will away the boyhood images that kept flooding into his fevered brain. Since he could not stop them, he let them come. Perhaps with them would come sleep…
TABU BABAR RUSHED ACROSS THE TREE-SHADED courtyard, already thronged with teeming crowds straining forward. The ten-year-old student had traveled by rail from his school to Delhi, and his country's trains were notoriously late. The streets surrounding the Viceroy's House were already jammed to overflowing with hundreds of thousands come out to have a look at the latest gentleman arrived from England to lord it over them, Lord Louis Mountbatten.
Were it not for Tabu's honey-toned skin, you could easily have mistaken him for a young Etonian. In his heart of hearts, that is exactly who he was. He certainly dressed the part: starched white shirt and striped bow tie, trousers held aloft with matching braces. He had gleaming black hair, slicked back in waves, thick black brows, and a long, straight nose between two penetrating black eyes.
His school, Mayo, was the 'Eton of India.' But, even in this rarefied air, Tabu was something of a rare bird. He was a devout Moslem, from the overwhelmingly Moslem town of Lahore, and yet his every mannerism, his every word and gesture, bespoke an English sensibility so convincing his classmates called him 'Sahib,' or even 'your lordship,' or 'your grace,' bowing from the waist with a feigned deference that evoked howls of laughter once he was safely out of earshot.
In Mayo's hallowed halls and paneled libraries, an extremely wealthy Moslem boy like Tabu could easily indulge himself in Anglophile fantasies of Elizabethan castles, of knights of old and Coldstream Guards, the grandeur of royalty, and a small boy's noble ideal of a manly English aristocrat. All of these idealistic notions Tabu had invested in the singular person of his great hero. This was the man who, in a short while, would become the new Viceroy of India, Lord Louis Mountbatten, the man who would save his beloved country from self-destruction.
India's countless millions of Hindus, Sikhs, and Moslems were on the brink of a religious war that would dwarf anything since the Crusades. Even isolated within the high walls of his small school, inflamed religious fervor brewing outside could pit schoolmate against schoolmate. There had been fights at school and many boys had been hospitalized.
A half million already stood in the broiling sun. Above the crowds atop his lamppost perch, he now had a bird's-eye view of the very spot where the new Viceroy's coach would soon arrive. The crowd was shouting now, and surging forward, a near riot, but Tabu was safely perched above it all.
And there he was at last.
He looked like a Hollywood film star in his immaculate white naval uniform. Serene, smiling, his adoring wife, Edwina, beside him, Louis Mountbatten, Earl of Burma, rode up to the foot of the grand palace steps to lay claim to Viceroy House. Tabu's eyes were riveted on the man who had come at last to preserve the peace. To save his beloved country from becoming one vast boiling cauldron of hatred and blood.
Long after the Mountbattens had mounted the marble steps and disappeared inside the palace, and the cheering crowds had dissipated, Tabu clung to his precarious spot, prolonging this historic moment of hope for as long as he could…here, finally, was a powerful man who could save India. A great diplomat who could bring Nehru, Gandhi, and Jinnah to their senses. Who could prevent his beloved India from tearing itself to shreds.
ONE NIGHT, MANY LONG MONTHS later at Mayo, Tabu had felt a rough hand on his shoulder, shaking him violently awake.
'What is it?' he said, rubbing sleep from his eyes.
'You must go, get out of here at once,' Sindhu, his only Hindu friend, said. 'Grab what you can, Tabu, and run!
