Seventy-Two Virgins Read online

  ‘We need that Black Hawk in the aerial vicinity at all times, and neither of us wants a mid-air collision.’

  Purnell found his eyes closing, and he listened some more.

  ‘Unbelievable,’ he told Grover, when the conversation was over. ‘We’ve got just over an hour till the President starts speaking, and the Americans are fussing about the French Ambassador’s girlfriend. They say they don’t want her in the hall.

  ‘And tell the boys in the chopper to clear out of the way, would you?’

  The trouble with today, thought Purnell, was that if something did go wrong, no one could say they hadn’t been warned.

  BOMB SCARE HITS LONDON read Roger Barlow, continuing to steal shifty looks at Ziggy’s Standard; and then page after page about the state visit.

  Of course there was nothing about him. He felt like laughing at his own egocentricity.

  There was something prurient about the way he wanted to read about his own destruction, just as there was something weird about the way he had been impelled down the course he had followed. Maybe he wasn’t a genuine akratic. Maybe it would be more accurate to say he had a thanatos urge. By this time next week, he thought, there would be nothing left for him to do but go on daytime TV shows. Perhaps in ten years’ time he might be sufficiently rehabilitated to be offered the part of Widow Twanky at the Salvation Army hall in Horsham.

  ‘Catch you round, then,’ said Barlow to Ziggy.

  ‘Ciao-ciao,’ called Ziggy, the man of efficiency and ambition. He flashed his pink ‘P’ form, and was admitted to the security bubble.

  For the eighth time that morning, Barlow presented his bike for inspection by the authorities.

  Roadblock was too modest a word for the Atlantic wall of concrete that the anti-terrorist mob had put in Parliament Square. Each lithon of black-painted aggregate was packed with steel and designed to withstand 83 newtons of force, or a suicide ram-raid with a Chieftain tank.

  There was a gap through which cars were being admitted in drips, but all cycles were being stopped.

  ‘Whoa there, sir,’ said a sixteen-and-a-half-stone American man with a kind of transparent plastic Curly-Wurly coming out of his ear and disappearing into his collar. ‘How are we today?’

  ‘We’re fine,’ said Barlow shortly.

  ‘I can’t let you through without a pink pass with the letter P.’ Barlow had grown up in the Cold War, and when at school he had read Thucydides. It had been obvious to him that America was the modern Athens — energetic, pluralistic, the guarantor of democracy and freedom; and therefore infinitely to be preferred to the Soviet Union, closed, nasty, militaristic, the modern Sparta. But now, on being intercepted by an enormous Kansan, just feet away from the statue of Winston Churchill, he felt his gorge rise. His eyes prickled with irritation. ‘I am a Member of Parliament.

  ‘Oh, damn it all,’ he added; though as luck would have it his curse was lost in the noise of the Metropolitan Police Twin Squirrel swinging high and away towards Victoria.

  Had he looked 200 feet behind him, he would have seen the ambulance come to a halt in the queue for the very same traffic lights-cum-checkpoint.

  Sitting at the wheel, Jones swore. Any minute now the cavalcade would be upon them. He looked at the Americans, checking each vehicle with glacial deliberation, and checked his watch.

  ‘A ire fe Mabda ‘ak,’ he said, which means ‘My cock in your principles’.

  The cavalcade was now approximately twenty-seven minutes away from Parliament Square. Apart from the outriders, it consisted of thirty black vehicles, a mobile operating theatre complete with the appropriate blood supplies and a specially adapted Black Hawk helicopter in a continuous hover, intended to snatch the principals in the event of an ambush. The two ‘permanent protectees’, as they were known to the 950 American agents in London, were in a Cadillac De Ville so fortified it was a wonder it could move. The armour plating was five inches thick and designed to withstand direct fire from a bazooka or a mine placed beneath it. There was a tea-cosy of armour around the battery, the radiator and the engine block, to minimize the risk of the fuel catching fire. The glass was three inches of polycarbonate laminate and instead of allowing the driver simply to look through the windshield, an infra-red camera scanned the heat signature of all the objects in the path of the car, and projected an image on the inside of the windscreen. But move the Cadillac did, though at something less than the US speed limit.

  Permanent Protectee number one shuffled the papers of his speech and touched the hand of Permanent Protectee number two. It was an insane way to travel, but kind of fun. The cavalcade mounted the ramparted expressway at the end of the M4, and West London was spread out beneath them in the morning sun, like a beautiful woman surprised in bed without her make-up.

  ‘Gee,’ said the second Permanent Protectee, ‘ain’t that something?’

  She smiled at her husband, but secretly she was worried.

  She had been reading the papers; she knew about the abortive raids on the Islamist cells. That was why she had furtively telephoned Colonel Bluett and begged him to take extra precautions.

  Bluett had been frankly amazed, but also pleased to be made her confidant.

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said. ‘Never mind what the Brits say: that place is gonna be full of my people. I mean some of our top men.’

  As the cavalcade began to crawl the last nine miles of its journey, a hatch was opening on the roof of the east wing of the Palace of Westminster, in the cool shadow of Big Ben. Out scrambled the sizeable figure of Lieutenant Jason Pickel.

  He stood for a moment on the duckboards, 120 feet above New Palace Yard, listening to the honking of horns down the Embankment, the protesters bleating to each other, like ewes in some distant fold. He held out his hand and squinted at it.

  ‘Man oh man,’ he said to himself. He stopped the tremor by gripping his sniper’s rifle, and walked on down the duck-board until he found a point of vantage.

  ‘Are you all right, Jason?’ asked Sergeant Indira Natu, who had followed him up. Indira had been specifically deputed to stay with Pickel, on the orders of Deputy Assistant Commissioner Stephen Purnell.

  Not that the British cops had any reason to think of Pickel as a risk. It was just that if they were going to have a Yank sharpshooter on the east wing roof — and Bluett was very keen — then there was damn well going to be a Brit to accompany him.

  Indira was from the SO19 Firearms Unit. She had huge eyes, rosy lips, and tiny, delicate hands, in which she now toted an Arctic Warfare sniper rifle, built by Accuracy International of Portsmouth, capable in the hands of an average marksman of bunching bullets within a couple of inches at more than 600 yards. In the hands of Indira, the gun could shoot the horns off a snail.

  ‘You OK?’ she repeated.

  ‘It’s just that something gave me goosebumps here. I guess you could call it Dad flashbacks.’

  Dad flashbacks? wondered Indira. It sounded like something worrying from Sheila Kitzinger’s Baby and Child Care. She looked at her neighbour on the roof. He was big and blond, with a proud nose and heavy brow, and hands that made his rifle-barrel look like a pencil. He was dressed in olive drab fatigues, and had the name Pickel sewn in black capitals on his chest, as well as the American flag. She hoped he wasn’t going to blab about some deathbed reconciliation with the father who never loved him.

  ‘Yeah, honey, it’s like a Nam flashback, ‘cept it’s about Baghdad.’

  ‘Tell me about it, Jason,’ said Indira as they settled down together. ‘Were you scared?’

  ‘Scared? Did you say scared? Jeez, I was—What the hell was that?’

  The American went rigid as percussive waves filled the air. He instinctively eased off the safety catch and now BONG the second explosion assailed his eardrums.

  The whole roof vibrated as Big Ben sounded the opening carillon of a quarter to nine.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  0845 HRS

  The great clock struck, and Jon
es cursed (something about a dog, again). The longer they stayed in this traffic jam, the higher their chances of being spotted. Surely the tow-truck man would by now have raised the alarm?

  ‘But why did he clamp us, sir?’ asked Dean.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Isn’t that why we got an ambulance, so this couldn’t happen?’

  ‘Have faith, Dean. Has not Allah looked after us? Think of the prophet in his youth, how he became a warrior for God.’

  An electronic voice interrupted them. It was female, and spoke in an American accent.

  ‘Turn left now,’ she said. Haroun cursed. It was the satnav, determined to take the vehicle back to Wolverhampton. Much to the irritation of Jones and his team, they could find no way of silencing her.

  ‘Soon we will be in the belly of the beast,’ said Jones.

  ‘Make a U-turn,’ said the satnav, ‘and then turn right in 100 yards.’

  The voice of the bossy little robot carried through the driver’s window, and might have reached the ears of Roger Barlow, who was now only a matter of a few feet away; except that he was turned away and bent over.

  He was trying to lock up his bike against the railings of St Margaret’s, just until they sorted out this business with the pass.

  ‘Not there, sir,’ said an American.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Not there, either, sir. I am afraid you will have to take it with you.’

  ‘But I can’t get into the Commons without a pass, can I?’ The USSS man shrugged.

  Barlow stood on the pavement with his bike, like some washed-up crab, as the tide of traffic lapped through the gap and continued around Parliament Square. As he approached his fifty-second year, Roger was conscious that his temper was decreasingly frenetic. He had long since ceased to rave at airport check-ins. If his train was delayed for two hours, it no longer occurred to him to sob and squeal into his mobile. But there was something about being told what to do by this gigantic gone-to-seed quarterback that got, frankly, on his tits.

  The Yank was wearing those clodhopping American lace-ups with Cornish pasty welts, a Brooks Brothers button-down shirt, and a large blue blazer. He had the Kevin Costner-ish Germanic looks that you see in so many members of the American military.

  ‘Well, can I borrow your mobile? I need to get this blasted pass from my assistant.’

  ‘That’s not allowed, sir.’

  Barlow was fed up with the moronic anti-American protesters who were fringing the square and bawling their questions about oil and how many kids Nestlé had killed that day. But he was also fed up with being treated like a terrorist, when he was a bleeding Parliamentarian, and the people of Cirencester had sent him to this place, and it was frankly frigging outrageous that he should be denied access by this Yank. Not that he wanted to be anti-American, of course.

  ‘They’ll vouch for me,’ he said, pointing to a trio of shirt-sleeved, flak-jacketed Heckler and Koch MP5-toting members of the Met.

  No they wouldn’t.

  ‘Sorry, Mr Barlow, sir,’ said one of them, ‘I am afraid you’ve got to have a pink form today. It’s all been agreed with the White House.’

  ‘Well, can I use your phone, then?’

  ‘They’ll have my guts for garters, sir, but there you go.’

  Cameron had just reached the office, and was tackling the mail. ‘I’ll come now,’ she said, when he explained the problem.

  Roger handed back the phone to the Metropolitan Policeman, and stared again at the American.

  ‘Is it true that there are a thousand American Secret Service men here?’

  ‘That’s what I read, sir.’

  Barlow couldn’t help himself. He went back to Joe of the USSS.

  ‘Excuse me. I think you really ought to let me through, because I was elected to serve in this building, and you have absolutely no jurisdiction here.’

  ‘I know, sir,’ said the human refrigerator, and he touched the Curly-Wurly tube in his ear and mumbled into the Smartie on his lapel. ‘I’m not disagreeing with you, sir, not at all. I have no doubt that you are who you say you are, and I really apologize for this procedure. But my orders say clearly that I don’t let anyone through today without a pink P form, and if anyone gets through today who shouldn’t get through today, then my ass is grass. I’m not history, I’m not biology, I’m physics. Wait, Joe, who are those guys?’

  Everything without a pass was being sent up Victoria Street, but now an ambulance had drawn up at the checkpoint. The linebacker was staring at it, but Roger wanted his attention.

  ‘May I see your ID?’ he said. He knew he was being a pompous twit, but honestly, this was London .

  With great courtesy, considering what a nuisance the Brit MP was being, the American Secret Service man opened his wallet and produced a badge. It had a blue and red shield within a five-pointed gold star, and on the roundel was inscribed ‘United States Secret Service’.

  ‘There you go, sir. Is that OK?’

  Roger couldn’t help it. These credentials should mean nothing to him, not on the streets of London. But he felt a childish sense of reverence.

  ‘Er, yes, that is … OK.’

  ‘Just wait here, sir,’ said the American, and he strolled towards the ambulance driven by the man whose passport said he was called Jones.

  ‘How are you guys today?’ he enquired, removing his shades, the ones with the little nick in the corner, and holding out his hand for their papers.

  ‘At the next junction, turn left,’ said the female Dalek of the ambulance satnav.

  ‘What’s that?’ said Matt the USSS man.

  ‘She is a machine,’ said Jones. ‘She is stupid. She is nothing.’ As Roger Barlow saw the Levantine-featured fellow hand over a pink P form, a thought penetrated his mental fog of guilt, depression and self-obsession.

  ‘Oi,’ he said to the American, but so feebly that he could scarcely be heard above the chanting. ‘Hang on a mo,’ he said, almost to himself.

  ‘Joe,’ called the vast American to one of his colleagues, ‘would you mind checking in the back of the van here? You don’t mind, sir,’ he said to Jones, ‘if we check in the back of your ambulance?’

  ‘It’s an ambulance, Matt,’ said Joe.

  ‘I know, but we gotta check.’

  The queue behind set up a parping, and down the Embankment the noise of the protesters reached an aero engine howl.

  All the Americans were now touching their trembling ears, and the men from the Met were listening on their walkietalkies.

  ‘Joe,’ called Matt, as his colleague approached the rear of the ambulance, ‘we gotta clear this stretch of road more quickly. We got the cavalcade in around twenty minutes. We’ve got POTUS coming through.’

  ‘POTUS coming through,’ said Joe, and slapped the flank of the ambulance as if it were a steer. ‘You boys better git out of the way.

  ‘Hang on a tick,’ said Roger Barlow, a little more assertively. ‘You know it really isn’t possible,’ he murmured, as the ambulance went slowly round the back of the green and came to a halt at the traffic lights. ‘I saw those guys a few moments ago.’ Another thought half-formed in his depleted brain.

  Jones stowed the forged pink P form on the dashboard and touched the accelerator.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  0851 HRS

  Six miles away the cavalcade circled the Hogarth roundabout, and the first Permanent Protectee shifted in the bullet-proof undershirt he had been forced to wear. He looked out of the window and was startled to see a trio of English children, aged no more than eleven or twelve, leering in at him from the side of the road. They were ‘thugged up’ in their grey tracksuit hoods. They were spotty. They were giving him an enthusiastic two-fingered salute.

  ‘I guess those guys would rather Saddam was still in power,’ said the second Permanent Protectee indignantly, and took her husband’s hand.

  And now Bluett’s top man, the sharpest sharpshooter in the US Army, was looking out from his ey
rie across Parliament Square and trying to wish the bad feeling away.

  Here and there across the crowd, the bleats were turning into an anti-American chorus; and it took Jason Pickel back to the rhythms of the cretinous song the Iraqis sang, the song of adulation of a man who had tortured and killed thousands, some said hundreds of thousands, of his own people.

  ‘Yefto, bildam! Eftikia Saddam!’

  After that statue had been pulled down, on the day of the ‘liberation’, they had briefly and obligingly changed the lyric.

  ‘Yefto, bildam! Eftikia — Bush!’ they sang, ingratiatingly. But it didn’t have the same swing. It didn’t last.

  The trouble with Baghdad was that the fear never let up. You couldn’t sleep at night because it was so hot, and they couldn’t fix the air con in the Al-Mansouria Palace, one of Uday’s little pied-à-terres, a hideous place constructed of marble, crystal and medium-density fibreboard. And even if they had been able to fix the air con, they wouldn’t have gotten no electricity, because no one seemed able to get the generators to work; and even if the generators had worked, the juice wouldn’t have made it across town, seeing as people kept ripping up the copper cables, and barbecuing off the plastic, and melting down the metal. And then the self-same looters, or their relatives, came and screamed outside your compound, and cursed America.

  And when you had to go on patrol, in your Humvee, the crowds of protesters would part sullenly, and the sweat would run so badly down your legs that you would get nappy rash, even if you never got off the Humvee, and no one, to be honest, was very keen to get off the Humvee.

  ‘We’re going into the Garden of Eden, boys,’ his commanding officer had told them as they flew over Turkey in the C-130s. ‘It’s the cradle of mankind, so I want you to treat the place with respect, and remember that these are an ancient people, and they want our help.’

  Garden of Eden? thought Jason after he had been there for three weeks. Call it hell on earth.