State Of Emergency: (Tom Buckingham Thriller 3) (35 page)

‘OK. I’m not going to tell you what the situation is, for your own protection. But you must do as I ask or we’ll all be in a world of shit.’

Tom sensed her hesitation. He needed to climb aboard her now and get control of her. He lifted his hands and gripped her shoulders to be sure she didn’t decide to make a run for it. ‘Gemma, all I need you to do is get the PM to step out of the dining room. Nothing else.’

Her eyes drilled into his, demanding more.

‘I need to get him away from the rest so he hears it first. No other cabinet, no security, just him.’

He gave her a cold stare to drive the words home, but at the same time leaving her with the sense that it was her choice, that he was asking, not ordering, so she still had some sense of control. Since she looked like the sort of woman who didn’t take shit from anyone it helped that these were times of heightened tension and unprecedented events.

Her eyes narrowed. ‘If it’s so fucking important, Tom, why are you bothering with me? Why don’t I just get security and you get them to sort it out? Eh?’

She moved her head from left to right, looking at nothing in particular, and put her hands on her hips. She exhaled hard and her vapour mixed with all the others gushing from the wall pipes.

‘Gemma, I can’t tell you anything else. I’m trying to keep this as low key as it needs to be. The PM’s got to know about it first so it can’t be filtered through security. There’s about to be some shit and he needs to know so he can make his decisions. I’m asking you to help me do that.’

And because she had to be thinking it, he added, ‘If I was here to kill him, I would have just gone for it.’

Tom took a step back, but he had to keep the momentum going. ‘I need an answer, Gemma.’

She took a deep breath and looked back up at him. ‘Fuck it – all right.’

She turned to move, then stopped. ‘What if I don’t?’ Her face suggested she’d known the answer before she’d even asked.

‘Just do it, Gemma. OK?’

She stared hard at him with a mixture of anger and disgust. ‘You fucking people.’

She stepped forward, so he had to move out of her way, and headed back towards the kitchen door.

73

None of the kitchen staff looked up as the two of them re-entered: a good sign. Gemma wasn’t letting any pressure show as she carved her way through the chefs and the boiling stoves.

She reached the serving counter. A line of stewards was preparing to go into the dining room, each in the process of collecting a dessert plate in each hand. One frowned at Tom. Gemma gave him a look and he turned away. ‘Don’t worry about him, worry about me. Whose turn is it to serve the PM?’

‘Ma’am.’ A young blond man who could have been a teenager stepped forward.

Gemma took the dessert from him, an enticing apple tart. Tom’s mouth watered.
Not tonight
.

She had to get a move on. He needed to make contact with the PM immediately. He had no idea – and no means of finding out – when Invicta were going to start screaming across the grounds to put in the cordon. But he couldn’t rush her. She was the boss of her domain and he had to respect that.

Her crew were all waiting for her to give the word.

‘OK, everybody into the corridor. I’ll follow you in.’

As the stewards shuffled to the far right-hand corner of the kitchen and the double doors with their faded In and Out signs, Gemma turned to Tom. ‘Right, you come with me.’

He did as instructed, but she wasn’t heading for the swing doors. Instead she turned towards a service corridor. At the end of it there was an open door into the main entrance hall.

‘Wait here while I tell him.
If
he agrees, you’ll see him coming out of those doors to the right, in the hall.’

She turned and went back the way she had come. He scanned the hallway, his head the only part of him exposed beyond the semi-opened door. The hall was inviting, like that of an old country-house hotel, with an ancient flagstone floor and the whiff of woodsmoke coming from a fireplace the size of a goal mouth. A chandelier sparkled in the mirror. Mum would like this, he found himself thinking, and quickly doused the thought before it led on to his father.

There was a resonant, ponderous ticking from a tall grandfather clock against the opposite wall that seemed to be getting louder – something he recognized as a trick of the mind.

Below the sound of the clock he could hear a gentle hubbub of chatter echoing along the hall, the clink of cutlery on china and the odd guffaw, coming from the double-height oak doors down to the right. In another mirror opposite the doors he could see a section of the table. He was tempted to step further out to get a glimpse of how it was going with the PM but he resisted.

His heart sank as the clock ticked on. What if this didn’t work? He didn’t have a plan B or a plan C. In fact, he was pretty much making up plan A as he went along. He decided to move. He wanted to see for himself, have an early warning, if Gemma was going to help him or not.

There was movement in the dining room as the stewards glided in with the dessert and took up their positions behind the diners. Gemma must have given them a signal, as they all stepped forward at the same moment.

He heard nothing from her but after another agonizing ten seconds the PM’s voice wafted towards him.

‘Carry on. Back in a sec.’

Success?

Gemma appeared first, followed by the PM brushing crumbs off his chest. He frowned at the sight of Tom’s damp and torn clothing. Gemma lingered, watching.

‘Sir, Tom Buckingham. I work for Stephen Mandler. Is there somewhere we can speak in private?’

74

‘What did you say your name was again?’

The documents were still in Tom’s outstretched hand. The prime minister was ignoring them. His eyes bulged, as if they were about to launch themselves clean out of his reddened face. Evidently he’d had a few and was not focusing the way Tom needed him to. Gemma had disappeared back into the dining room. They were alone in the hall. Tom repeated his warning.

‘You are about to be surrounded by Invicta troops, sir. They think they’re staging a coup to replace you with Rolt. They’re going to force you to resign. I need to take you to the panic room now. With you safe there, nothing can happen.’

The prime minister seemed to be taking his time to absorb what he was saying. Tom had seen this sort of reaction before, that rabbit-in-the-headlights look, the denial people could slip into when confronted with immediate danger. There were a thousand ways this was going to go tits up, but he knew that if he stopped to consider any of them it would be a waste of precious seconds – and, in any case, the way it would go wrong would be the thousand and first. He had staked everything on working the same magic he had done with Gemma. He tried to put the documents into the PM’s hand but he took a step back. Tom grabbed his arm to try to force him to take them.

There was more movement at either end of the hallway. Not wanting to look shifty, Tom kept all his attention on the prime minister. Finally he spoke.

‘There’s only one flaw in your story, though, Tom.’

‘Sir?’

From the corridor where Tom had followed Gemma, two men in suits appeared, pistols drawn, while a third came from the dining room. The prime minister’s face relaxed into a look of mild disgust.

‘Stephen Mandler was relieved of his duties earlier today. With immediate effect.’

Tom dropped the documents and stood exactly where he was. He’d figured Gemma would speak to security but had hoped that the PM would have got the message.

The third suit had his Taser up. Tom knew this wouldn’t be the time to do or say anything. One movement, one word or combination thereof would be taken as a threat, and he would be shot. He knew all too well that these situations were very black and white. If the life of their principal was in any way at risk they were entitled to shoot.

He kept still and prepared to accept what was about to happen as the third man advanced between the two with the pistols, and fired the Taser.

75

Tom glimpsed a streak of yellow arc through his peripheral vision heading towards his thigh, closely followed by fifty thousand volts.

Then his whole being shuddered as if having its own private earthquake: the shock vibrated through all the cells in his body, short-circuiting his nervous system, and he dropped in a helpless heap. He knew he was face down on the carpet – his face was buried in it – but he couldn’t remember getting there.

He tried to lift his head up off the carpet. In the haze of his brain he knew he must establish whether or not the PM had seen the documents. They would prove he was telling the truth.

‘Read them, Sir, please.’

His voice sounded thick and blurred, as if he was speaking through a wet flannel. He felt a large foot bearing down on his back as his arms were straightened out behind him, then heard the ratchet sound as he was plasticuffed. Two hands roughly patted him down, more with anger than efficiency. They would be seriously in the shit for letting him anywhere near the boss, and were evidently making up for their carelessness by being extra hard.

More security now appeared on the scene. One reached down, picked up the documents and escorted the prime minister away.

‘This is a bad idea, guys. You’re going to be in even more shit in a few minutes. Will you just hear me out?’

‘Shut up, cunt.’

He took that as a no.

They grabbed him and pulled him back onto his feet, then half dragged, half frogmarched him through a narrow door and down a stone spiral staircase to a basement passage. No one spoke. All he could hear was their laboured breathing as they manhandled their prisoner.

‘Please listen to me. It’s all going to kick off outside and they’re going to need every one of you.’

For that he got a fist in the temple and nearly dropped again as they came out into a yard where a people-carrier was waiting, the engine running. One of the suits was shouting at the driver: ‘Fantasist! Only got right into the fucking house, didn’t he?’

‘All right, load him in.’

They had a job to do, and listening to reason wasn’t in the brief. Tom’s body was still quivering from the shock of the Taser. He knew better than to fight it. Give in to it and the body had a better chance of recovering faster, so the opportunity to escape would come sooner. Except that sooner was still too late.

76

22.00
Soho, London

Jamal had remained in Pret A Manger after Latimer had gone, his mind a cauldron of remorse and rage. He had heard suicide bombers being prepared in Syria, having it drilled into them that their lives were over, there was nothing to live for but the act of war. Now he knew how they’d felt. But he wasn’t going to squander his last opportunity. He needed to focus again. Use the resources he had. He followed Latimer’s instructions. He made his way to the street in Soho where he had been told to wait. The BMW was there, lights on, the engine ticking over. As he came up alongside the driver’s door the window opened a couple of inches.

‘Get in.’ A woman’s voice.

He opened the door and entered the warm, leathery cocoon. The woman at the wheel was pale, almost ghost-like. ‘Hello, Jamal.’ She offered him her hand. ‘I’m Xenia. Emma’s friend.’

The car glided forward and out into the evening traffic. Jamal clutched his bag to him with its combustible contents inside and said nothing.

He saw the Mall and Buckingham Palace, just a ghostly shape without any floodlights. Parked outside the gates were Husky and Pathfinder armoured vehicles and a line of police minibuses with riot grilles over the steamed-up windows.

‘Quite a lot has changed while you’ve been away.’

‘Was I the last person to see Emma?’ Jamal asked.

She nodded. ‘I financed her assignment in Syria. She was very committed to her work.’

‘I’m so sorry she died. I don’t know how it happened.’

‘It’s okay. We know it wasn’t your fault.’

He looked over his shoulder, checking to see if anyone was following.

‘You can relax for now. It’s not likely anyone will bother us.’ She accelerated away from Hyde Park Corner towards Knightsbridge. ‘There’ll be a police cordon at the end of my street, but they know me. Don’t be alarmed.’ She handed him some dark glasses.

‘Really?’

She nodded. ‘They’ll make you look more like my bodyguard.’

They travelled in silence until she made a left turn and slowed as two armed police came into view.

‘Sit up. Don’t cower and don’t try to avoid their gaze.’

Miraculously, the police waved them through.

The residence was surrounded by a wall and tall gates, which opened automatically as they approached. Jamal had never been in a building anything like it before. It looked more like a fortress than a house, bristling with security devices.

‘You should be safe here.’

They descended to the underground car park where they left the car, and travelled to the fifth floor in a lift that was all mirrors. Jamal saw himself standing beside this impossibly beautiful woman clutching a bag with Isham’s bomb in it, as if he was in a dream.

She showed him to a room with a large double bed, and an adjoining bathroom almost as big that was all white marble. It was as if he had died and gone to some other place, not necessarily Heaven. A servant came and offered to take his bag but he refused to let it out of his hands. He looked out of the window at the rooftops and the street below. He was safe, which he had not felt in a long time.

77

22.30
M40 motorway

Tom examined his options: there weren’t very many. Basically he was limited as long as he was surrounded by the four with him in the Ford Galaxy people-carrier, one each side of him and two in the front. It wasn’t clear where they were going. No one answered when he asked. But they were on the M40 heading for London. He had put up no resistance after the Tasering, partly because he couldn’t – his muscle tissue had contracted. After that subsided, he remained limp, to fool his escorts into lowering their guard sufficiently to give him something to work with: if an opportunity presented itself there would be maximum surprise.