Fifty-First State (5 page)

Frederick Muldoon had called the meeting knowing it might lack spontaneity. He did not want contention. He did not want brilliant thinking. He did not want a firm conclusion. The downside was that Alan Petherbridge, crisp but informal in chinos and an open-necked blue shirt, had performed with skill. He had established the reluctance of the armed services to play any part in retaking the base and the competence and readiness of the Kent and Metropolitan Police to do so. When Muldoon, in an effort to undermine him, had demanded to know why there had been no intelligence about the plan to take over the base, Petherbridge had adroitly laid the blame in several directions – M15, M16, US military security – and ended by saying there was a full review in hand. The consensus of the men and women sitting round the virtual table in the virtual Cabinet Room was that the Home Secretary, Alan Petherbridge, was the safe pair of hands for the job.

Muldoon, sweating behind his desk, his heavy, fair-complexioned face pouchy with fatigue, understood that although he had succeeded in his primary objective, to make sure nothing too strong came out of the meeting, he had lost ground where Alan Petherbridge was concerned. Petherbridge had come out of it well. Now, dark, lantern-jawed and, as ever, well-shaven, Petherbridge looked fresh and keen. Apparently relaxed, he sat opposite the Prime Minister, his long legs in immaculately creased trousers crossed. He looked blandly at the Prime Minister as he repeated information he had already given to the meeting an hour before.

‘There are nuclear weapons on that base,' said Muldoon.

‘The majority of these demonstrators are CND. They're not going to arm a nuclear warhead.' He wondered if the Prime Minister was breaking up. He looked bad this morning. There were rumours he was drinking more. Or had he been woken at two or three in the morning by the White House, famous for not worrying about any time zones but its own? Someone in Washington – Ray Hollander, perhaps – could have called up Muldoon in the middle of the night and given him a hard time. After the results of the Iraq elections and Al Bactari's threat to nationalize his nation's oil, the US President would be in no mood to accept that an ally had allowed its rag-tag-and-bobtail citizenry to disable one of their bases. Maybe that was why he looked so rough. But whether it was early-morning phone calls or too much whisky or perhaps just the consciousness of ebbing power, it did not pay to underestimate Muldoon. He had astonishing recuperative powers, second-to-none survival instincts and, in a pinch, he'd fight like a cornered rat.

Muldoon stood up and pressed a button on his desk. The wall behind it lit up. ‘There it is then – a crowd of shaggy demonstrators sitting on the runways, encircled by US troops without orders and the whole thing's on TV.'

Petherbridge took in the scene. The sun was shining, the demonstrators were smiling and holding up banners, the armed US troops were standing, looking on and sweating. ‘I see what you see, Prime Minister,' Petherbridge said. ‘I don't like it any more than you do. All I can say is that the police will be in there in approximately half an hour restoring order and making arrests. The Met and Kent police are already mustered there, fine-tuning the dispositions of Armed Response and briefing the hostage negotiators. We shouldn't need them, but it's just as well to be prepared. The base commander's quite happy to let us deal with it. He's got plenty of armed men to deploy and the bases are, de facto, US territory as we know, but he's quite ready to accept the policy of not using US troops to deal with British civilians.'

‘Particularly since you don't seem to have managed to keep the cameras away.'

‘They got there fast,' Petherbridge said. ‘The local police weren't quick enough. It won't happen next time.'

‘There'd better not be a next time.'

The door opened and a lean figure in chinos and a denim shirt walked in springily.

Muldoon said, ‘I've asked Tom here to join us. Fresh input.'

‘Yes, Prime Minister,' agreed Petherbridge, who disliked the rough and crudely intelligent head of Downing Street's Press Department. He thought they needed no fresh input and if they did, he doubted if Tom Canning would have anything to contribute. He was there for only one reason – to lend Muldoon moral support.

‘Coffee, Tom?' asked the Prime Minister, which was, thought Petherbridge, more than he had himself been offered. Canning refused and sat down in a chair opposite the fireplace.

‘When this is resolved, we'll need an inquiry,' Petherbridge said. If anything went wrong – and such situations were unpredictable – he guessed Muldoon would try to make sure he got the blame.

‘Better get them out first, before thinking about the inquiry,' Canning said easily, implying for Muldoon's benefit that Alan Petherbridge was always the same, uptight, nit-picking and legalistic.

Edmund Jones was shown in. He was Petherbridge's Permanent Secretary at the Home Office. The Prime Minister had not invited him to the meeting. Petherbridge had. He needed a witness.

The PM did not comment on Jones's intrusion. He did not ask him to sit.

‘I was just saying, Ed,' Petherbridge remarked, ‘that after this bit of trouble is ended we'll need an inquiry.'

Edmund Jones was a short, fair, angry man who found it hard to conceal his irritation. He had been standing beside Petherbridge and now
went to the window and picked up the second gilt chair. He put it down, rather noisily, beside the Home Secretary and sat.

‘But when will that be?' wondered Tom Canning, cueing Muldoon.

Petherbridge put on small headphones and listened. He said, ‘Half an hour.'

‘The retaking of the base has been half an hour away for an hour now,' said Muldoon.

Petherbridge controlled his impatience. ‘The Metropolitan and Kent police aren't trained to clear air force bases. Our armed response teams are trained on the basis that their targets will be one, or just a few, armed civilians. I take it we want to clear the bases without causing casualties. It's prudent to take time for proper planning and briefings. And let's not forget the cameras will be on the action.'

Canning threw up his eyes and groaned noisily. ‘Softly, softly,' he deplored.

Petherbridge said, ‘You and I, Tom, might be only too delighted to see an armed-response team gun down two dissident nuns and the Red Vicar. But it wouldn't look good on TV.' He glanced at the face of the Prime Minister, which suddenly looked to him like the face of an old, angry defiant boy.

‘There are nuclear weapons there,' Canning added. ‘As an adviser, I ask, why don't we let the British Army sort it? After Northern Ireland they know how to deal with civilians. Send them in – these buggers would soon fold.'

‘Thank you for the advice, Tom. That was considered. But,' Petherbridge pointed out, ‘problems emerged at this morning's meeting.' Which, Tom Canning, you were not at, he thought. ‘One is that a sizeable proportion of the public might resent the British Army being deployed against civilians. Another is that Ian Noakes has quietly sounded out the Army. They told him they'd need precise orders, and that if those orders covered firing on civilians the men could be reluctant.'

‘First time I've heard of the Defence Secretary going cap in hand to the Army; first time, for that matter, I've heard of the Army being a democracy. I thought the Secretary for Defence tells the Army what to do, and the Army does it,' Canning said.

He'd gone too far and Muldoon said, ‘Well, Tom, there are legalities involved.'

Petherbridge would not have objected to Muldoon ordering out the Army (far more reluctant to be involved than the PM knew) and making a real pig's ear of the whole affair, including later lawsuits against HM Forces for undue force and injuries sustained. He said, though, ‘I'm sure you're right, Prime Minister, that a firm but not aggressive stance is indicated.'

‘Thank you, Alan. I'll convey all that to Washington,' Muldoon said.

Petherbridge left, knowing that once his restraining presence was gone the PM and his adviser would be boys together, enjoying a reviving conversation about the Yanks, the lads of the British Army versus Petherbridge's softy elite force of coppers, showing who was boss, bloody noses and all the rest. Canning was smart and would be playing along. Petherbridge didn't care what they did. They could get out a bottle of whisky and play poker with their sleeves rolled up if they liked.

As his car went through the Downing Street gates there was a small crowd of 200 demonstrators outside, bearing placards – NO WAR ON IRAQ, END THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN, END THE CRUSADES.

‘I'd like to send the SAS in, just to clear away that mob,' he said.

Edmund Jones, beside Petherbridge in the car, suddenly realized how much proximity to his boss repelled him. He feared him, also. He said, ‘I think that, and COBRA, went well enough, Alan.'

Petherbridge said, ‘So it seems. But we don't know what Washington is saying to Muldoon. That could change everything. When you get back to your office, will you dictate a detailed memorandum about everything you've seen and heard today? I'll do the same.'

‘Right,' said Jones. Little wonder Petherbridge was watching his back. He was after Muldoon's job. Everybody knew it, especially Muldoon.

Hamscott Common, Kent. June 3rd, 2015. 8.15 a.m.

Kim Durham, with Rory strapped in his seat beside her, set out to work on a bright June morning. She and Rory had argued. Outside the house, holding his book bag in one hand a bright blue bird's egg in the other – miraculously almost intact, although a chick had hatched through the broken hole at the top – Rory had urged, as usual, ‘Let's go past the base.' And Kim, who had seen pictures of the demonstrators inside the base, said no. She did not want him to see a band of people, grubby and dishevelled, marching about the base behind the wire with their banners, singing and shouting slogans and watched by the groups of resentful armed soldiers. She did not want to pass the line-up of stationary bombers on the runway or drive directly under the circling helicopters. They might pass just as the demonstrators were struggling with those sent to arrest them. Even more, she did not want to answer Rory's questions about what was happening, and why. All her instincts told her that she should keep her child away from this scene.

Half the children at the school would have seen the morning's news. There would be ferocious playground games involving the invading demonstrators being attacked by soldiers. The situation would revive all the other games – swooping, arms outstretched, across the playground, dropping imaginary bombs.

Outside the house, Kim had argued with Rory. ‘I don't want to go past the base,' she'd said. ‘We'll probably get held up. Anyway, I don't like it.'

‘Why not?' he'd cried. ‘Everybody else goes there. Everybody goes.'

He'd thrown his school bag down on the ground in the front garden.

‘Don't break your egg,' she'd said. And then Rory had crushed the frail eggshell in his fist and thrown it over the garden fence on to the pavement outside, crying out, ‘I don't want a stupid bird's egg! I want to see the soldiers.'

Kim, holding her own heavy bag, stood and looked at him and Rory, defiantly, looked back. His mother knew very well that if Rory, normally a reasonable child, had gone into one of his rare, stubborn rages, it would be hours before he would budge. Shouts and yells, even slaps, would not get him willingly into the car. They would be late, very late, for school and she was supposed, that day, to be taking assembly.
She gave in, saying, ‘Come on then. Get in the car and we'll go past the base.'

They drove from the house to the farmland in sulky silence until, as they reached the bend in Templesfield Road which would lead them beside the base, Rory began to brighten. He'd already seen the helicopters circling above and now, spotting police cars and military vehicles on the road ahead, craned to see what other excitements the scene had to offer. Then he looked up and gave a scream of delight so loud that Kim almost lost control of the car.

‘What?' she asked in alarm, and risking following her son's eyes upwards saw an extraordinary sight. Floating down over the base, like strange drifting birds, were twenty white parachutes, each with the figure of a soldier attached to it, swaying. Some were low enough down over the base, now, for Kim to able to see faces beneath helmets, camouflage uniforms, boots and heavy weapons. Others were still high up, the soldiers swinging like puppets from their harnesses. She stopped the car.

A red-faced, helmeted young soldier appeared beside her open car window. ‘Excuse me, ma'am,' he said. ‘Will you turn round and go back?' But as he spoke a truck with a dozen soldiers in the back pulled up short beside her. With that vehicle, which had come from her direction, beside her and the other vehicles ahead, she had no way through. Worse, she could see a car behind her and knew that traffic must be piling up behind. Templesfield Road was heavily used by commuters as a short cut to the ring road. She could not move back or forward. Rory was taking no notice of the standstill. As if seeing a vision, he was taking in the slow descent of the parachutes. The first soldiers were landing in billows of white near the runway.

Kim gestured at the truck. ‘I can't turn,' she pointed out. The young soldier beckoned the truck on, yelling at the driver, ‘Come forward.' The driver yelled something back, and did not move. ‘Come on, buddy! Move!' shouted the soldier beside Kim. She began to feel nervous.

Inside the base the landed soldiers, weapons at the ready, were encircling the demonstrators clustered between the big, stationary jets. The demonstrators were haranguing them.

‘They're going to shoot the demonstrators!' Rory cried out.

‘Of course they're not,' she replied automatically. Trying for calm she said to the soldier, ‘If the truck driver won't move you'll have to let us through.'