The Aachen Memorandum

by Andrew Roberts

  Horatio could see no more because Cleo was hugging his head to her breast.

  ‘I’ll never be able to forgive myself for letting that psycho kill Riley and those poor New Zealanders. It was never supposed to be like that. If only I’d driven slower, or swerved more, or …’ She looked across at Upham’s corpse lying by the lift door. ‘I told that bastard Alex to leave it on “Stun”.’

  Horatio sucked hard on his inhaler. He was barely taking it all in. Cleo looked deep into his eyes as she pressed ‘Lift Call’.

  ‘You were magnificent. Taking out Marty was crucial. I honestly didn’t think you had it in you.’

  ‘Neither did I.’ Modesty came more easily now. Now they had won.

  ‘Try to stay hidden for at least a day.’ She kissed him on the lips.

  ‘There are so many loose ends, Cleo, so many …’

  She kissed him again.

  ‘Just like in the power cut at Marty’s party? Do you remember?’ He smiled. Was this what they said love felt like?

  The Admiral’s aggrieved, compelling, self-denunciatory voice rose in pitch as it filled the Park.

  ‘I well remember him saying he wanted to ensure that those responsible for this titanic fraud on the British people were brought to book. I suppose that after a lifetime …’

  Longman, headphones on, was staring out towards the stage towards the King and speaking softly into a mic.

  The lift was on its way. Cleo, Horatio and the soundman stood by it. Just as it arrived, Horatio kissed Cleo goodbye. The doors opened and all three found themselves staring into the barrel of a gun.

  A gun held by …

  A ghost.

  CHAPTER 30

  11.22 SATURDAY 8 MAY

  ‘Hands up all of you! Drop it!’

  Cleo let her gun fall to the ground. As Longman looked around to see what was going on, Gemma shot him in the left shoulder. He swirled right round in his chair and hit the control panel, face first, before falling off and onto the floor.

  ‘You!’ Gemma pointed to the soundman. ‘Get to the controls. Schnell!’

  It was definitely Gemma, but with an accent as German as the Central Bank.

  ‘I wondered then, as I often do today, whether the same organisation might have been at work in those countries too.’ The Admiral’s voice blared over the loudspeakers and to the watching millions at home.

  ‘Everything must be just like normal,’ Gemma told the technician as she jabbed a number on her watch-phone. Horatio recognised the telltale digits. ‘Ja, I’ve cleared up here. Just in time, it looks like. They were just getting out. Frobisher, Ms Lestoq and Tallboys are all stunned. There’s a dead man here too. From N.Z. Security … ja … I’ve also stunned one of the electricians. What should we do? … Nein … Ach, it’s far too late to cut it now. The political damage is done. We have to up the stakes. I’ve seen the laser. It’s fitted … Jawohl!’ She replaced the receiver and smiled.

  Covering Cleo and Horatio with the gun in her left hand, Gemma heaved the laser, which the soundman had carried over for Heather, up onto the control panel with her other hand.

  ‘Open the window.’ The technician did as he was told. She pointed the barrel out towards the stage. Straight at the King.

  He was standing holding the tape recorder up to the microphone, his image amplified fifty times on the two huge T.V. screens on either side of the stage. The crowd, which covered the whole of the northern end of the Park, seemed to have undergone a Damascene conversion. The solid, commonsensical, undemonstrative English had at first been curious about what the King was like and what he was going to say. But the steady, clear, self-critical tone of the Admiral’s voice left no room for doubt as to the tape’s authenticity. Now they were in a state of restrained but profound fury. There were no cheers or applause, just an angry people listening, thinking, evaluating. Deciding.

  Most of the riot policemen stationed around the Park had taken off their helmets so that they, too, could hear it. Many hung their heads. Horatio saw one fellow in tears and another, close to the stage, rip off his blue and gold riot jacket and fling it to the ground. A cheated nation was in the act of rediscovering itself. And its honour.

  ‘Great Britain, the country my friends and I had fought for, was disintegrating before my eyes. On a fraudulent result.’

  ‘Thank you for directing me to Frau Dodson, Herr Doktor,’ Gemma taunted Horatio. ‘And you are quite right, you know, we do call it the Reich when we think no one’s listening.’ As she grinned her gums showed, hyena-like. ‘I much enjoyed our little journey. We have you on tape now, you see, saying how proud you are of your football hooligans, and talking about the historic error you British made ever allowing the European trading system to get political. We knew you’d confide in a flirtatious Yankee if you were left alone in a car with her for long enough. Suitably edited, it will make excellent copy for the newsagencies tonight.’

  How could he have fallen for the absurd Southern accent? Oliver had called her ‘Mutti’, she’d known all the verses of ‘Workers of Europe’ at the party and the Union Anthem at the class, she called it ‘maths’, said sixteen-thirty not half past four; she’d never heard of the Indy 500. They hadn’t heard of Oliver at the embassy. Of course she wasn’t American. Horatio heard himself say, ‘You’ll never get away with it.’

  He wondered why such highly charged moments produced clichés. Perhaps because everyone reverts to type, to instinct, during crises.

  ‘Me? Oh I’m not here. You lasered me at the Entente Bridge, remember? Gemma Reegan’s dead. It’s you who are not going to get away. You see, Herr Doktor, posing as JACOBITE, Frobisher left the stolen car at the New Zealand Embassy. It was a fine day last Sunday. The roof number was clearly visible. Heather parked at the Rectory and made sure to speed away back to London after killing the Admiral, as you discovered almost to your cost. The Europol satellite pictures therefore connect the car to Ratcliffe’s death which, especially since your crazy little journey here earlier, safely connects the New Zealand security apparatus to the King’s death. The Asian-Pacific Zone will believe the Information Commission tomorrow when they show the pictures and say it was an inside job.’

  ‘Why haven’t you killed us?’ asked Cleo.

  ‘I’m obeying orders,’ said Gemma regretfully, seemingly unconscious of the phrase’s historical echoes. ‘Once Herr Evans has blown this place, after we’ve put Lestoq, Frobisher and Tallboys in the lift, it’ll look very strange if they find bodies with bullets in them. One or two, of course, to explain what ruthless terrorists you both were, but you two must not have predeceased the explosion. No one will be able to tell if you were stunned or conscious at the moment of death however,’ said Gemma, raising her pulse gun at Cleo, ‘so, as you English say, night-night.’

  Cleo tried to rush her, but took the full punch of the stun on her chest. It stopped her dead. For a moment she balanced on her heels, but then she toppled back, unconscious.

  Was it that shot, or had Horatio heard a tremendous crash from behind him? Gemma certainly looked surprised. She seemed undecided as to whether she should deal with the intrusion, turn to the laser, or shoot Horatio. Like Fraser at parties, she seemed to be looking over his shoulder for more important people.

  To his horror, she ignored him, turned to the laser, took aim at the King, and squeezed the trigger.

  THE TIMES MONDAY 10 MAY 2045 9 P.M. UPDATE

  The S.W.A.T. team which stormed the Hyde Park Millennium Tower and shot Ms Inga Hagendorf had been alerted by Ms Penelope Aldritt of this newsagency. She had seen Dr Lestoq, the Oxford don who at the time was believed to be a terrorist suspect, entering the tower with two other men just before His Majesty the King was about to speak. It is largely down to her sharp-sightedness and quick thinking that the entire assassination conspiracy was uncovered in this dramatic way.

  Ms Hagendorf, better known as the American popular historian Gemma Keegan, had already attempted to fire a laser beam at the King. Had Mr Jam
es Longman not decommissioned it moments before, on the orders of Ms Cleopatra Tallboys, there can be no doubt that His Majesty and very many others would have perished.

  The only person left conscious after the S.W.A.T. team attacked the transmission control tower, apart from the Park’s junior sound technician, Mr Joseph Jacomb, was Lestoq himself. Together they were able to explain to the authorities the sequence of events over the previous three hours. We understand that a tape recording made by Ms Tallboys of all the conspirators’ regicidal discussions with Commission Secretary Percival is also being treated as Grade One evidence.

  As well as out-taking Ms Hagendorf, the team arrested two members of the (now-disbanded) Political Intelligence Department. Mr Alexander Tallboys, 30, and Mr Martin Frobisher, 29, were read the multiple murder charges when they came round from their four-hour stuns in the hospital wing of Paddington Green Anti-Terrorist Centre.

  Mr Francis Evans, 52, was also taken into custody to be charged with the murder of Judge Jonathan Minter in May 2015 and of Mr Jacob Dodson four years later. It is understood he will also stand trial for the forgery of the Judge’s signature on the Chief Regional Scrutineer’s Report of the Aachen Referendum, and for conspiracy to endanger lives with an explosive device he was attaching to one of the Tower’s stilts when the S.W.A.T. team arrived.

  Arrested at the same time was Ms Heather Lestoq, 65, who has been charged with the murder of the late Admiral Michael Ratcliffe at his Hampshire home on Sunday 2 May. It is believed she will also be charged later today with the murder in April 2016 of her late husband Commander Robert Lestoq, as well as those of her sister and brother-in-law. The killing of Ms Jean Dodson has been attributed to Ms Hagendorf, according to information supplied by Dr Sir Horatio Lestoq, who is at present recuperating in Oxford, nursed by his fiancée, Ms Tallboys. On completion of her forty-eight-hour divorce tomorrow she will revert to her maiden name of Ratcliffe.

  She is currently considering a proposal by the E.R.M. Provisional Government to act as one of the negotiators presently being so warmly welcomed in Edinburgh, Cardiff, York and Belfast, prior to their discussions on the reunification of the United Kingdom.

  It is understood that investigations into the validity of the Aachen result are now under way in the Greek, Danish, Swedish and Portuguese regions of the U.S.E. Should fraud be discovered there also, it is widely believed that the same expression of ‘People Power’ which brought half a million protestors out onto the streets in London on Saturday and Sunday, might topple the Commission governments in Athens, Copenhagen, Stockholm and Lisbon, just as it did in London.

  A warrant for the arrest of Commission Secretary Gregory Percival has been issued. He was last sighted boarding a Europair flight to Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan.

  Sir Horatio, the first Englishman to be created a baronet this century, has accepted the Deputy Editorship of The Times newsagency at a reported starting salary of 50,000 New Pounds Sterling. The post was recently vacated by Mr Roderick Weaning, whose failure to warn a colleague of the impending attack on the Entente Bridge led to his summary dismissal.

  Sir Horatio, as he can now he called after the repeal of the Classlessness Directive announced yesterday, is understood to be in negotiation with publishers for a book about his experiences of the last ten days. Its working title is rumoured to be The Aachen Memorandum.

  Copyright

  First published in Great Britain in 1995 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, The Orion Publishing

  Group Ltd, Orion House, 5 Upper St Martin’s Lane, London WC2H 9EA.

  This edition published in Great Britain in 2012 by

  Biteback Publishing Ltd

  Westminster Tower

  3 Albert Embankment

  London

  SE1 7SP

  Copyright © Andrew Roberts 1995

  Andrew Roberts has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the publisher’s prior permission in writing.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Every reasonable effort has been made to trace copyright holders of material reproduced in this book, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers would be glad to hear from them.

  Cover photograph © Getty Images Ltd

  Author photograph © Nancy Ellison

  ISBN 978–184954–428–3

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.