The sun came up cold and colourless in a sky so polished by the night's rain and wind that you would still be able to feel the stars at midday. That gave the DDCR an uneasy naked feeling as he was driven through the fenced-off streets of central London, already buzzing with police and Army vehicles and dotted with TV trucks, surrounded by early spectators who would gawp at their equipment until the real procession passed. So clear a sky meant enemy aircraft, at least when you were in defence, and the DDCR was feeling defensive and jittery with old memories of doing the rounds of his outposts at dawn.
That was silly, because if the enemy came it would be in eyeless missiles that cared nothing for weather. And even the thought that it was perfect for helicopters didn't cheer him, because it was also perfect for shooting them down. His determined gloom only lifted when they turned through the archway to Dean's Yard behind the Abbey, and into the bustle of the workaday Army. The tall buildings enclosing the Yard had held back the dawn and the blaze of headlights-the Army was being as spendthrift as usual with its batteries-darkened the sky again. Parked just to his left against the glowing red-gold creeper on the old walls were three Saracen armoured personnel carriers. Squat and blunt-headed like wheeled elephants, they were a familiar and comforting sight. Less comforting were the patches of white with bright red crosses on each carrier.
The DDCR erupted out of his car. "Who the bloody hell authorised those crosses? Who's in command here?" His voice had forgotten his retirement.
A soldier stepped forward from a group around the nearest Saracen and saluted. "I wouldn't touch the paint, sir: it's still wet."
"Maxim?"
"Sir."
"Arethose blasted crosses your idea?"
"Sir."
The DDCR glared through the headlights. Harry Maxim was not-quite-tall and, from the way he moved, slim under the loose combat dress and unbuttoned flak jacket. The DDCR should know his age-thirty-seven, was it? The thin almost concave face looked older in the harsh light, with deep lines running down from the nose past the polite, deferential, smile.
The deference wasn't appeasing. "You can't go putting red crosses on armed vehicles, man! You know the rules!"
"Ambulances have an easier job through crowds, sir. And it might muddle somebody who was going to shoot."
The DDCR made a growling noise, but Maxim had a point there. And he must remember that the Americans weren't going to stampede without very good reason. If the missiles were being primed now, who would read the Geneva Convention over the rubble?
"Oh, all right, then. If anybody else asks, tell 'em we ordered it." Still disgruntled, he noticed the unfamiliar submachine-gun slung from Maxim's shoulder. "And where did you get that thing?"
"Friends, sir."
The DDCR growled again. When soldiers were readied for action they always put on non-regulation boots or adjusted their equipment in personal ways. The wise commander didn't nit-pick; you just had to trust to their experience, common sense-and even 'friends' at, he guessed, the SASdepot off Sloane Square.
"All right. Is everything set up here?"
"Their Secret Service have got a CP established in the Deanery. That's just through the arch there and to the left." Beyond the Saracens a tall archway, mostly filled in with ornamental ironwork, led to a tunnel ending, after thirty yards, in the gloomy light of the Abbey Cloisters. "If they get the word to go, they'll hustle the President out through the Cloisters and up here, we shove him into the number 2 vehicle and take off."
"Where are you going to be?"
"Rear, sir, in number 3. With just a couple of chaps; we'll act as pickup in case the number 2 gets stopped."
"Good. Make sure the drivers wear respirators; if this actually happens God knows what they'll throw at you. Smoke, gas, I don't know. You might try to make the President put one on, too…"
The Platoon Sergeant came up with a crisp salute and a mug of tea. Normally the DDCR would have drunk coffee at this time of day, but it would have tasted quite wrong in this scene. He sipped and talked; the sunlight crept down the wall behind him and the headlights were switched off. Radios crackled as they were netted and signallers grumbled at the buildings around them; men tossed down cigarette ends and were told by indignant corporals to pick them up, because this was Holy Ground.
"… and you'd better run up the engines every half-hour to-oh blast it! I'm getting as bad as your friend George Harbinger, meddling in details that aren't my business. Have you heard anything from him recently?"
"He gave me a ring a couple of weeks ago, to ask how I was getting on."
"What did you tell him?"
"I said I was getting on fine, sir."
"And how was life at Number 10?"
"Very interesting, sir."
The DDCR looked at Maxim carefully. "All right, Harry, I don't have to know everything." He sighed and took a last look at the reassuring sight of camouflaged figures crumpled comfortably as cats on impossible niches of the steel Saracens, then turned to his car and the huge lonely possibilities that waited in his office.
"I would it were bed-time, Hal, and all well. Haven't had a chance to say that since I had a sergeant called Harry at the Rhine. Henry the fourth Part One, just before the battle of Shrewsbury." From the extra politeness in Maxim's smile he saw the explanation had been unnecessary. "But I bet you don't remember the line that comes next: 'Why, thou owest God a death.' Put like that, it doesn't seem too much of a debt… You'll have to keep the vehicles here until around 2400: we'll let you know. And I expect the Yeomanry would like them back without the fancy paintwork. I'm sure yourfriends can rustle up a few pints of turps. Good luck, Major."
As the morning wore on a mutter like surf drifted in through Dean's Arch from the growing crowds. The Yard itself became busy with policemen, American Secret Servicemen and occasional clerics. This aspect of security was nothing to do with Maxim, but he soon realised that it was his job to fend off such people with a salute and some reassuring small-talk, leaving the platoon undisturbed. After one churchman had stopped and goggled openly at his submachine-gun, he told Lieutenant Forrest -OCthe platoon-to get all weapons out of sight and drape something over the machine-guns that had been mounted in the Saracens' little turrets.
At ien o'clock the Abbey bells, half muffled, began a slow peal. A Secret Serviceman had attached himself to them, wearing an earplug for his walkie-talkie, and reported to Maxim: "Lawman is airborne." A moment later he got the same message from a radio operator in the third Saracen. Forrest, who obviously had more money than responsibilities, had brought along a tiny colour TV set that one of the signallers had set up on the bonnet of a Land-Roverand was constantly tuning. Abruptly it cut to show the wavery shapes of two helicopters grazing the London skyline.
"Always four pressmen in the back-uphelio,"the Secret Serviceman explained. "Call the bastards the Death Watch. You can figure out why." He smiled without humour. Younger than Maxim, he wore a thin fawn suit and open raincoat in the cool air, but there was a stipple of sweat on his forehead and Maxim could guess at why the hairline had already receded so far. He knew the stress of bodyguard work himself, but nothing like the months and years of watching over the world's most likely target. I wonder if they last for years? he thought, and tried to make his own smile an encouraging one.
"Lawman is on the ground." And very soon after: "Lawman is in thelimoand moving."
"Drivers and gunners," Forrest ordered, and they climbed nimbly into the Saracens. Then: "Ready!" and there was a rattle as weapons were cocked. Suddenly they seemed to have the wide Yard to themselves; outside, the cheering came in bursts, drowning the steady thump of the marching bands. It gave a sense of being in the back kitchen while the Grand Ball went on upstairs, but something in Maxim's character made him enjoy that. He would always prefer to stand in the shadows backstage watching how the scenery was shifted and the actors braced themselves for an entrance than sit out front and see nothing but the play.
Forrest made conducting movements with his hands, spreading those who wouldn't be in the Saracens to cover the Arch and windows around the Yard, in case some sabotage squad knew about the getaway plan. It was an experienced, well-drilled platoon, and Maxim would only have spoiled their rhythm by trying to help.
"Lawman is at the Abbey… getting out of the limo…" The Secret Serviceman's gaze roved the rooftops and his left hand brushed his mouth nervously, but he seemed pleased at the loudest cheer yet.
"Lawman is in the Abbey…" The Secret Serviceman relaxed as the responsibility shifted to the soldiers. They waited, very still in the cool shadow of their corner of the Yard, through the roar and music as the Royal Family arrived and the hush when the service began.
Clay Culliman and a USAF Colonel in uniform, carrying a slim briefcase, walked through the Arch and quickly past towards the Deanery. Culliman's face seemed vaguely familiar to Maxim, though he couldn't recall the name, but he recognised what was in the briefcase: the 'codes', whatever that meant, that enabled the President to trigger the USA's own nuclear forces. He realised with a jolt that he was within yards of one of the two great power centres of the world; for this hour, it wasn't the Kremlin and the White House, it was the Kremlin andhere.
Instinctively he began watching the sky. If it came, would he see anything? One plunging spark, one rip of vapour trail, before the flash dissolved him?
"I just hopesomething bleeding happens," one of the soldiers said, and was told toshut up by his mates beforeanybody more senior could say it. Maxim woke up to the Abbey choir, chanting unsyqchronised from the TV and the loudspeakers relaying the service to the streets outside, and knew the men were getting over-tense. They were taking their mood from him, as they were supposed to, and he scowled at his idiocy in gazing at the sky; hadn't he learntanything in the last nineteen years? If only he still smoked he could hand round cigarettes, try to wind down the atmosphere.
Forrest did it for him. "Right-half of you out for a stretch and a drag. Corporal Monro, Clarke, Higgs…" The soldiers moved and Forrest glanced a reproof at Maxim, who accepted it with a sad nod and forced himself to stand relaxed, watching the TV.
"Clever little things, these," the signaller said, doggedly twiddling to cure the unstable picture, "but it don't stand a chance, not really. The high-frequency stuff that's being pumped out round here… Not just TV, but did you see what the Yanks have got next door?" He jerked his head at the Deanery. "The kit they've got… You can pick up the handset in there and a voice comes right on: 'White House, Washington,' and you say: 'White House, London here' -wherever the President goes, that's the White House as well-when they open the door of his plane, first thing a bloke runs down the steps with a white handset and sticks it on a little stand thing, so the President's always supposed to be-"
Forrest said: "If you'd shut up, we might be able to hear something even if you have screwed up the picture. And if it doesn't work back in my room I'll have your bollocks."
"It's all satellites," the signaller went on. "He's just narked at me because I could've got him one of these half the price he paid. "
"Fell off the back of a rickshaw," Forrest said sourly.
Culliman came out from the archway, peeling the cellophane from a small cigar, and Maxim drifted to head him off from the platoon.
Culliman introduced himself, adding: "One of the President's aides. We do appreciate you arranging all of this"-he gestured at the Saracens-"and the red crosses, that's a nice touch."
"Thank you."
"Think they'll come?" Culliman glanced at the sky, too.
"You've got all the comm. kit."
"Yeh… we're in contact with everybody and everything, and we still stand around and smoke too much. No-they won't come. But don't quote me. The Soviets don't move when we're watching. When we blink, they move. May I see where the President will be travelling, if…?"
"Certainly."
Maxim introduced Forrest and they all went and gazed solemnly in through the rear doors of the second Saracen at two soldiers who stared back with truculent smiles. The sill was nearly three feet off the ground and the inside was just high enough for a man to sit upright on the hard seats running down each side. They had cleared out some of the less relevant equipment, including the girlie magazines normally stored in the seat lockers, but nothing could change the Saracen's very basic nature. Like every armoured vehicle, it was a simple idea built of gritty armour plate and rough welds that had then been doodled over with fire ports, escape hatches, observation slits, smoke dischargers and periscopes, each item with its own crude strength and adding to the final look of detailed brutality.
Culliman slapped one of the heavy doors and seemed to find it reassuring. "It won't do the President's back any good, but I guess some of the airplanes he flew fitted closer."
Hovering in his motherly role, the Platoon Sergeant ventured: "Good to have a military man as President again, sir."
Culliman looked at him. "I guess so, Sergeant. Thank you." But as he walked away, he added to Maxim: "But in my book, it's a lot better that we've got one who reads European history. This is sure as hell where it all starts -whatever it is."
"Is the President going to Bonn?" Maxim asked politely.
"Probably not. Paris, sure. But we're advancing Bonn."
After a blank moment, Maxim realised that an advance party was looking at the problems of a German visit.
"Did you ever serve in Berlin, Major?"
"I've been there, but never on a posting."
"So you've seen their Wall? Sounds good, offering to tear it down, doesn't it? Demilitarise, get the tanks off the streets. I'd have liked it better if the bastards hadn't played the usual game plan, put the message in on a Saturday morning. So we have to start running all over, getting a real translation, hauling guys off golf courses-so the Soviets get the whole weekend to themselves, all of the Sunday papers, and we can't say one official damn thing until Monday. Yes, I'd like it better if they didn't piss on your shoes when they give an invitation to a party. Have you ever met a guy called George Harbinger?"
"I worked with him at Number 10 for a while."
"Oh yeah." A long-drawn sound. "Yes. You moved on, too. George talked about you, I'm sorry I didn't make the connection. Yes, glad to have you running things; I'd better…"
He grinned, shook hands warmly, but only moved as far as the Secret Serviceman by the archway. The faint roar of 'God Save the Queen' filtered from the TV set and the signaller finally stopped trying to tune it and stood to attention. Giving one last, pointless, glance at the sky, Maxim did much the same but was glad to see that most of the soldiers didn't.
The anthem ended, and a bugler from the Duke's old regiment sounded the Last Post-a reminder that it was a soldier, no matter how Royal, that was being commemorated. Maxim caught Forrest's eye, willing him Wait, don't relax, above all, don't blink.
The Air Force Colonel and briefcase came out from the Deanery and joined Culliman, waiting for the Secret Serviceman's message. The choir sang 'O God, Our Help in Ages Past' as the Queen and Royal Family led the way out.
"Lawman is moving…"
Shots.
The soldiers froze for an instant, then shattered into action, clattering aboard the Saracens, crouching with raised weapons and drowning Forrest's unnecessary orders. The TV commentator shouted but was lost in the uproar from the Abbey and the picture blurred as the cameraswung wildly. Then somebody's equipment snagged the aerial and the set smashed to the ground.
The Saracens' engines blared (one, two, three, Maxim counted; all started first time. Good). He waited until the scene had stabilised, then picked up the submachine-gun and walked over to Culliman, the Colonel and the Secret Serviceman, who had their heads together and were shouting at each other through the engines' rumble.
"Lawman's okay, okay… not hit… he's holding there…"
Maxim leant in. "The Queen?"
The Secret Serviceman stared at him blankly, then bent his head and squinted as he listened on his earplug. "No… I don't know who got it… not her…"
Maxim looked back at the platoon, then stepped into the cool dim archway abruptly cutting out much of the rumble and shouting. He looked back again and the three Americans were running-but past the Saracens, to Dean's Arch and the President's waiting cars. Maxim walked on, across the entrance to the Deanery and its little quadrangle. Ahead, somebody moved in the far Cloister. Just a dark, skirted figure hurrying to the right, away from the Abbey. Maxim pulled out the telescoping butt-stock of his gun, cocked it, and ran.
His rubber-soled boots gave just a faint echo from the vaulted Cloister roof. At the end, the Dark Cloister led off to the right; crouching, Maxim peeked round. It was a rough, whitewashed tunnel with feeble iron-framed lamps glowing on the walls. The far end was blocked by a solid but temporary-looking barrier, cutting off the Abbey buildings from the school.
To his left, near the entrance to the Chapter House, a policeman, an inspector, appeared. "Did anybody come past you?" Maxim called.
"No, the shooting was in…" The inspector gestured at the Abbey. He was fairly elderly and seemed rather uncertain. Maxim waved him back and jumped to the far side of the tunnel, then started along it.
A door on his side, locked. Again on his side, grey reflected light from a short archway that led into the tiny Infirmary Court, a miniature of the Cloisters. He had explored this far before the DDCR came visiting. Now he had to turn that corner again.
He braced for the breath-stopping shock of a bullet as he stepped quickly across the archway, saw the figure again and brought down the gun to the aim, knowing once more the forgotten sense of being two men, one with trigger finger tensed, the other standing aside, assessing and giving orders. He hoped to hell he both got it right.