Red Crystal

C
LARE
F
RANCIS
is the author of eight internation bestsellers,
Night Sky, Red Crystal, Wolf Winter, Requiem, Deceit, Betrayal, A Dark Devotion
and
Keep Me Close.
She has also written three non-fiction books about her voyages across the oceans of the world.

For my parents

G
ABRIELE
S
CHROEDER CHOSE
her clothes thoughtfully.

What did one need for such an occasion?

Running-shoes certainly. Jeans. A top which wasn’t so bulky that it would impede her arms. At the same time it would be cold waiting outside the hotel. She pulled on a sweater and took a scarf from the hook on the back of the door. With a leather jacket, that should be enough to keep her warm.

She made a half-hearted attempt to tidy the area around her bed, stuffing some clothes into a holdall, and then gave up.

A broken mirror sat on the mantelpiece. She looked at her reflection. Hair dark, shoulder-length, slightly wavy, parted severely in the middle; skin pale; eyes dark and hollow. She still wasn’t used to herself without make-up – she’d worn it for years: the pale white foundation, the thick eye-liner and heavy mascara. A slave to fashion. But who needed make-up? That was for manufactured women who didn’t know who they really were. She could see that now. But it had taken her long enough to realize. She was twenty-five.

Finally, the hat. It was a woollen one that came down over her forehead. After a moment’s thought, she removed it, fastened her hair to the top of her head with a pin and replaced the hat. Better: now her hair wouldn’t get in her eyes.

The complete political activist.

A small tremor of nervousness tugged at her. She’d never done anything like this before. Nor had the others. Nor had anybody. Demonstrations in Britain were usually orderly, good-humoured, well-behaved.
Passive
.

This was going to be different.

She ran downstairs to the kitchen.

The others were there. Eight in all, including Max and Stephie.

They were sitting round the room, drinking and smoking joints. No one looked worried. They seemed to think it was rather a lark. Gabriele relaxed a little.

Someone asked, ‘Do we know who’ll be there, Max?’

Max’s thin, intense face was expressionless behind the wire-rimmed glasses. ‘The American ambassador. A whole collection of dons—’

‘A
disgust
of dons.’ It was a boy with bright red hair. Gabriele recognized him from meetings on the campus at Essex. His name, she remembered, was Paul Reardon.

‘ – and maybe someone from the Foreign Office.’

‘No cabinet ministers?’

Max shook his head. ‘They didn’t say so.’

Gabriele knew that Max’s information came from his friends at Oxford, the organizers of the demonstration. The occasion was the Oxford Anglo-American Society Dinner.

Someone said, ‘Pity.’

As they collected their banners and placards, Reardon came over to Gabriele. ‘Linda, isn’t it?’

She gave it a second to let her annoyance pass, then said firmly, ‘No, it is not. The name is Gabriele, Gabriele Schroeder.’

He stared at her. ‘Sure. Sure …’

To ease the moment along, she added, ‘It’s my
real
name. Linda was … Linda was just something I called myself for a while. Okay?’

‘Okay.’

At five they set off in a single mini-van. It was rush hour and it took half an hour to get from Kentish Town to Paddington and on to the Westway. Gabriele began to worry about being late. But then the traffic improved and they were clear, bowling along the A40 towards Oxford.

There was plenty of time. She should have realized. Max, for all his apparent vagueness, was an efficient organizer. In their undergraduate days at Essex, it was Max who’d arranged transport to Ban the Bomb marches, who’d joined the International Socialists, and made the first demands for student rights. Now he and Stephie were two of the six permanent residents of the house in Kentish Town. It was more of a community than a shared house, really. There were always people coming and going. Every two weeks meetings of the Kentish Town Housing Action Group were held in the living-room, and sometimes homeless people stayed on mattresses on the floor. Victims of oppression, as Max called them. Gabriele was proud of helping the homeless; it showed that one really cared. It was the practical application of one’s beliefs: praxis.

At twilight they came into the centre of Oxford, and turned north on to the Banbury Road. After half a mile, Max pointed to the right. There was a sign: The Linden House Hotel.

They looked in through the gates. Already there was a large crowd outside, chanting loudly. There were also some blue uniforms.

They did a U-turn and parked. Everyone was silent. Gabriele got calmly out of the van and slid her placard out of the back. It read:
US MURDERERS – OUT OF VIETNAM.

Max said, ‘We’ll give it till eight-thirty. Then they’ll all be in the dining-room. And the pigs might have gone away.’

Someone giggled nervously. ‘They won’t even realize what’s happening.’

The tension eased. There was a flutter of conversation, and they walked jauntily through the gates to join the crowd of shouting demonstrators. Gabriele hoisted her placard and took up the chant of the crowd –
Fascist killers!
and
Win
,
win
,
Ho Chi Minh!
She began to feel high, as if she’d been drinking, yet her mind was perfectly clear.

Although the crowd numbered at least two hundred, Gabriele counted only six policemen keeping the doorway to the hotel clear. As the dinner guests arrived, prominent in their evening clothes, the crowd waved their banners and roared abuse. But it was all very good-natured. No one tried to press against the police or jostle the guests.

After ten minutes a large limousine drew up. The American ambassador. A faint mask-like smile on his face, the ambassador walked quickly into the hotel, professionally oblivious to the screams of the crowd. The cool indifference was irritating.

The stream of guests trailed off. The demonstrators looked bored and started talking in groups. Gabriele saw Max slip away, towards the van.

She followed and found him sliding a long metal crowbar from under a seat. ‘To get in with,’ he murmured.

Gabriele viewed it with surprise. She hadn’t thought anything like that would be necessary. The idea of using a weapon-like object made her feel uneasy.

As they walked back towards the hotel she decided not to say anything. After all, a new strategy required new tactics. She wasn’t going to be the one member of the group to be faint-hearted.

Stephie, Reardon and the others were waiting, with about fifteen of the Oxford contingent. Silently, they slipped away from the other demonstrators in ones and twos until they were gathered at the side of the building. Gabriele took a quick look back. The police were hidden from view by the remains of the crowd; they had seen nothing. But then they weren’t really looking.

A high wall with a closed gate barred the way to the floodlit hotel garden beyond. However, the gate was unlocked, and they filed straight through into the garden and hid behind some large shrubs. The dining-room looked out on to the lawn and the diners were clearly visible through the tall french windows. The top table, Gabriele noted, was to the right. She decided to make straight for it when the time came. She gripped the handle of her placard more tightly. She wanted to wave it right under the ambassador’s nose.

Max ran forward, followed by Stephie and Reardon, and pressed himself against the wall to one side of the windows. He seemed to be examining the door locks. He reached out and tried a handle. Clearly it was locked.

He strode out in front of the windows. With a slight shock Gabriele realized what he was going to do. He was swinging the crowbar in a great arc. It came forward and hit the glass with a bang. A small hole appeared in the window with cracks running in several directions.

Max twisted his head to look questioningly at Stephie, as if he couldn’t understand why the glass hadn’t shattered. Then Stephie stepped in front of the window and lobbed something heavy from her shoulder. A brick-like object hit the window with a great crash. Max put his hand through the glass and the next moment the window was open.