by Andy McNab
‘What does your dad really know about you and your courage, Jamal? What’s he ever going to know about how you risked your life to get those pictures? Detonate your device now and, yes, you rid the country of the man who’s doing the most to break our society apart. But, then, your father’s never going to know what you sacrificed. You know why? Because if you choose to do that, for the rest of his life and for generations to come you will be the Butcher of Aleppo who supposedly massacred those poor girls, then blew himself up in a fit of revenge. That lie will outlive you.’
Jamal was shaking now, struggling to control the rage and anticipation boiling inside him. Tom saw his hand twitch again.
‘You went to Syria to show your father what you were made of. You wanted him to be proud of you, to understand you. And it didn’t turn out that way. But you can change that, Jamal. If we were to explain to him what you did, your courage in Syria, how you risked everything to get those pictures, then he would not only understand, he would be proud.’
Was this working? Tom could only hold on to the fact that they were all still breathing. But how long could he keep it up? He needed an outcome. And as he pressed on with his speech, he started to craft one.
‘And your sister, Jamal. Adila, God rest her soul.’
Jamal flinched at the mention of her name as Tom took a step towards him, still speaking, his hands passive.
‘What would Adila want most for you now? Vengeance? I don’t think so. She died for you, died wanting to clear your name, because she believed in you, knew the truth in your heart.’
Tom pointed at Rolt. ‘But because of all the noise coming from this man, no one could hear it.’
The genie was out of the bottle now, Tom’s own feelings laid bare after all the months of dissembling. The brakes were off. The relief was immense, mixed into a toxic fuel of raw anger on behalf of the man facing him who now held their lives in his hands.
Tom saw on Rolt’s face a mixture of indignation and terror as the full reality of his predicament became clear to him. He glanced back at Jamal, who was still standing there, tense and sweating. All this time one compartment of his brain had been evaluating the other option, whether as a last desperate measure he could get a head shot in time, if he could distract Jamal long enough to draw down. It had to be a head shot because for all Tom knew the explosives could be detonated by a high-velocity round passing through it. He would have to get closer to guarantee one round one kill. But he also knew that the person he felt closest to in the room right now was Jamal. They’d both tried to do the right thing, both been fucked around, abandoned and left out in the cold. Tears were running down Jamal’s face now. At least Tom knew his words were getting through. But it wasn’t a guarantee that he could save the day.
It was as if nothing else existed outside what Tom could see in front of him. If there were any noises coming from anyone to either side of him he couldn’t hear them. The only thing registering in his brain was Jamal.
‘You’ve sacrificed so much, Jamal. You went to Syria for the best of reasons. And once you’d discovered what was going on there, you did the best and most courageous thing you could. You risked your life trying to get the truth out. Only these people,’ Tom indicated Umarov who had stepped behind Rolt, as if for some kind of cover, ‘made sure the truth didn’t get out. They wanted you as public enemy number one to justify their own evil agenda.’
Umarov now had his phone in his hand, as if he could summon up his security to take control – or maybe it comforted him to hold it, to maintain the illusion that he had some choice left. Tom turned back to Jamal.
‘So detonate, take your revenge. This is your opportunity. The key perpetrators of your downfall are right here in the room. They’ll be vaporized. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. But before you do it, I ask you this. Remember your sister. She wanted your name cleared, so the world could know your courage. She wanted you to live, to be free. I don’t know if there’s an afterlife, but I do know that if I live, as long as I’m alive, I’m going to remember what I know you did and what Adila did for you. You die now, you will always be the Butcher of Aleppo, who blew up his own sister to get out of jail – the truth will never come out. But if you walk out of here tonight, alive, your sister’s dream can come true.’
Jamal was shaking his head as Tom took another step and now was alone, in front of everyone and closer to Jamal.
‘I can’t do that. I can’t.’
‘You can. You have the choice. Your life. Your name. Your father.’
Tom could feel himself running out of words. He could sense something inside him trying to get his attention. His reason was exhausted and with that came anger – just a hint of what lay inside him, unadulterated uncontrollable rage, almost too unmanageable to channel. He had been trained for situations like this, to be at his calmest, most measured, most focused, only they didn’t usually involve his own father.
Jamal was looking at Rolt and Umarov. ‘I can’t let them …’
Tom was almost in a state of hypnosis as he looked into Jamal’s eyes. ‘Jamal, you don’t have to.’ He turned to face the way he had come, sucked in his stomach and brought up the Glock with his right hand. Without using his left for support, he raised the weapon so the only thing between his vision of Rolt was the pistol’s rear and foresight. Rolt’s image blurred as he focused on the foresight and squeezed.
Time had slowed, so even as he shifted his position, he saw Rolt’s right cheek open up and the eye immediately above disappear into its socket. The impact snapped his head with sufficient force to send the rest of him toppling over on to a desk.
Without waiting to see the result, Tom swung left, took two steps and focused on what he could see of Umarov as he tried to take cover. He fired twice into the top of his head. It was all over in less than two seconds.
Xenia swayed, steadying herself against the wall, but she didn’t look away. Her eyes never left Umarov as the last of his life seeped out of him.
Tom tucked the weapon into his belt and turned back towards Jamal. His hands had dropped to his sides and his chin had lowered itself into his chest. Tom went up to him, took his hand and gently lifted the detonator out of his palm.
EPILOGUE
Luckily for Derek Farmer, the first tweets about explosions at Chequers had sounded so hysterical and outlandish that the rest of the Twittersphere didn’t pay them much attention. They had given him just enough time to get to his bunker at Number Ten where he had remained for the rest of the night, his phone pressed continuously to his left ear until the whole side of his face was blotched red from the heat coming off it. His fingers scuttled across his keyboard, banging out a deluge of releases and updates. His rule: when the shit hits the fan, chuck back as much as you can. By four a.m. he had done the rounds of all the key media outlets until he’d had them singing from his hymn sheet.
Yes, he had conceded, there had been an assault on the prime minister’s country seat, not by rabid Islamists but, get this, by white British men from Rolt’s own organization, apparently a rogue group with delusions about their leader taking over. Yeah, yeah, he agreed with one editor. You couldn’t make it up! What a story, they exclaimed, and all the time his fingers were tightly crossed that the rest of this God-almighty clusterfuck would never see the light of day.
Getting Geoff to broadcast live down the DSL line from the Chequers panic room he had to admit had been a master stroke on his part. He came over nice and clear, just as if he was at Number Ten or Broadcasting House. That pretty much skewered the wild tales circulating that he really had handed the country over to Rolt at gunpoint.
Quite how it had actually played out at Chequers, Farmer had yet to discover; maybe he never would. After the PM’s triumphant return to Number Ten at around six a.m., all Farmer could get out of him was that he had ‘pulled a blinder’, having fooled Rolt into thinking he had surrendered so the fucker would clear off back to London and, as it turned out, to his doom, while the Invicta h
eavies dispersed, thinking ‘job done’. The deep sceptic lurking in Farmer suspected a heavy helping of post-rationalization had been smothered over the bare facts but, hey, if it had put his boss in a good mood then what the fuck? Politics was all about making a virtue out of a load of shite.
Rolt’s demise? Well, that would always be a mystery, and probably one so hot it would be subject to the hundred-year gagging rule. The Security Services had that one buttoned up good and proper, so fast Farmer suspected they must have had a hand in it. Someone was trying to put it about that an MI5 operator had assassinated Rolt and his shadowy Crimean backer, but that was too far-fetched to get any traction. The location – a fortified oligarch’s lair with more security than Downing Street – never mind for now that it was also the home of a newspaper proprietor, did the trick perfectly. All that paranoia and bulletproof security convinced the media to do a quick U-turn on Rolt and go big on lurid tales of his dodgy Russky associates. Home Secretary Bought By Terror Banker! screamed one headline. Strangely, the spooks were only too willing to dish the dirt on Oleg Umarov, strictly off the record, of course, to help paint him as a man for whom few tears would be shed.
Even so, a few awkward bastards like those bra-less muesli eaters at the Guardian would be determined to keep poking the embers in search of a conspiracy, and in time more would come out; it was inevitable. Perhaps they could be stalled with an inquiry or even just the promise of one, something like Chilcot, which would go on and on for years and years, so that when it finally did report no one would remember who Rolt was or give a shit. By then he would have receded into history, an aberration who had flown too close to the sun.
When Farmer finally closed his laptop for the night and stepped out for a well-earned fag, Alec Clements, the cabinet secretary, was in the corridor, waiting to congratulate him on a job well done.
‘But wasn’t it you who first suggested Rolt to the PM as his ticket back into Downing Street?’ Farmer took no small pleasure in reminding him.
But Clements gazed past him with the slightly out-of-focus look he had when his mind had moved on to other matters. ‘As Harold Wilson said, Derek, a week is a long time in politics.’
Barely an hour after the prime minister’s call, Sarah Garvey strode triumphantly into the Home Office in Marsham Street, to reclaim her old office, like de Gaulle liberating Paris, albeit with a teensy hangover. First to congratulate her on her rehabilitation was überspook Stephen Mandler.
‘Buckingham said you went off message. What happened?’
Mandler’s face was in sphinx-mode.
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, Stephen.’
He sighed. She knew he was a gossip at heart.
‘Someone wanted me out of the way in case I got wind of the Rolt plan and tried to foil it. One condition of my being reinstated is that it will never come to light.’
Garvey couldn’t be doing with this. ‘Clements.’
He became even more opaque, as if he were trying to blend in at Madame Tussaud’s. ‘I couldn’t possibly comment.’ He sipped the celebratory single malt he had brought along to toast their rehabilitation.
‘So what about the man we have to thank for saving us all from oblivion?’
Mandler allowed himself a smirk. ‘You’ll like this. The PM wanted to apologize to him in person for handing him over to the heavy mob in Chequers. And you know what Buckingham said? “Tell him I’m helping my mother wash the dogs.”’
‘Nice. What’ll he do now? Are you going to give him a proper job?’
Mandler gave her a wry look. ‘I don’t think he does proper jobs.’
They moved on to Jamal. In exchange for her constituent’s silence about that night, the matter of his possession – and, indeed, very near deployment of Isham al Aziz’s IED – would not be disclosed at any trial on grounds of national security. Mandler would see to it. If nothing else, Garvey felt she owed it to the memory of Adila that, after all he had been through, the lad should finally get a fair deal. The truth about his bravery in Aleppo, his hounding by Rolt and his virtual abduction by the bomb-maker Isham al Aziz should ensure, with a following wind, that he would soon be a free man and the ideal candidate for Garvey’s returnee rehab programme.
She detected Mandler’s eyes twinkling, as they always did when he was about to throw her a particularly choice morsel of intelligence.
‘Something else that might be grist to your mill: Jamal’s commander, Abukhan, fought in Chechnya before he decamped to Syria. And guess who bankrolled him when he was fighting the Russkies?’
‘Motherfucker.’
‘So in all probability it was Umarov who tipped him off about Emma Warner.’
‘To fuck up Xenia, the crusading stepdaughter. No one’s going to want to put Jamal away after that.’
And they drained their glasses in something almost like a toast.
‘Another?’
Mandler frowned at her over his half-glasses. ‘Sarah, it’s not even elevenses.’
After it was over, Tom had taken his father straight home and stayed close by his side for the next forty-eight hours. No phone calls or emails, just backgammon, reading and gentle walks. A lot of the time neither of them spoke, but Tom wanted to be sure that he was coping, especially since the effects of trauma like that could be delayed. His own work had never crashed into his family life before and it had shaken his father badly. His mother, they had agreed, would be spared the details. The version Tom gave her, which wasn’t all that far from the truth, was that Umarov’s people had taken Hugh hostage – without harming him at all – and that Tom had freed him. Enough said.
As he knew she would, Mary Buckingham took the explanation at face value and did a good job of conveying her gratitude and admiration to her son for getting his father out of trouble. But Tom could tell by the look in her eyes that she suspected she was being given a varnished version of the truth. She deserved better. And she would get it, one day, maybe, but not yet.
When he wasn’t with Hugh, who didn’t want to go near the TV, Tom sat with her watching the BBC to try to make sense of the last few days. Also, he was curious to see which version would be aired.
Number Ten, you had to hand it to them, had done a pretty good job of spinning it their way. According to them, elements within Invicta had indeed attempted to take the cabinet hostage at Chequers, but had been thwarted by the Security Service. The fact that the prime minister had wasted no time in taking the credit, going on air so soon after it had all kicked off to say that order had been restored, had helped put a lid on it. Never had people been so relieved to see their prime minister’s bland features on their screens.
‘Will we ever know what happened to Vernon Rolt?’ Mary asked Tom, with feigned casualness.
He sighed. ‘Well, I think it was as they said. It turned out he was mixing with the wrong crowd – he’d mortgaged himself to Umarov and it all got out of hand.’
She moved slightly so she was directly in his gaze. ‘And he got shot?’
Tom looked at her steadily. ‘So it would appear.’
His mother’s gaze lingered on him a moment longer than was comfortable. ‘Well, good riddance.’
On the second morning, Hugh had appeared by Tom’s bedside and said he wanted him to know that he understood Jamal had left him with no real choice: frankly, Rolt and Umarov had been as bad as each other and the world would be a better place without them.
‘Guess that sums it up pretty well,’ Tom replied, relieved.
Later, when he was seeing him off, the old man looked hard into his eyes. ‘I’ve often been rather unforgiving about your choice of work, imagined there was something better for you. Well, I’m sorry, Tom. I was wrong. And I was a fool to get involved with Umarov. I should have known better.’
‘You and half of London. Don’t beat yourself up too much, Dad.’
‘I won’t forget this, ever. Even when dementia has set in!’
‘Will you be all right financially?’
‘Oh
, yes, fine. We’re going to hang on here for a bit, then we’ll see. Don’t worry – we won’t move without telling you.’
It was only just getting light. Westminster Bridge had been closed since midnight, armed police guarding each end. Floodlights had been erected that lit up the seaward side, and two police launches bobbed on the icy water beside the platform the divers were working from. Several unmarked vans were parked along the bridge and an ambulance was on standby.
‘Shouldn’t be long now,’ murmured Woolf, as he clapped his ski-mitts together for warmth and gazed at the river. Overhead, a milky sun was trying to penetrate the cloud which seemed to have taken up permanent residence over the city. ‘You don’t have to wait.’
‘I’ll wait,’ said Tom.
Woolf nodded. ‘Good job Garvey bent your ear about Jamal.’
Tom shrugged. ‘I’d have had to improvise otherwise. But with guys like him, sadly, it’s so often the same story.’
His gaze fell on the cops guarding the bridge, in full kit with their MP5s. Quite who or what they were expecting was anyone’s guess. He wondered when things would ever return to normal – or, indeed, if there would ever be a ‘normal’ any more. Maybe with Rolt gone there might be.
‘I’m sorry you were left out there on your own.’ Woolf’s embarrassment was leaking out from behind the poker face.
‘It’s not the first time.’
‘You sure you want to wait? Could be a while.’
Tom nodded.
The night before, Tom told Phoebe to meet him at Invicta. It was strange going back in. Rolt had been a stickler for tidiness and the place had been trashed. The police and Security Service had been all over it. All the computer hard drives were gone; filing cabinets yawned open. No cupboard had been left unrummaged. And every surface had been dusted for prints as if it were a crime scene. Strangely, the only item that had been overlooked was the Ordynka, still resting in its wooden box.
