by Julian Beale
David was also pondering as he went to his office. It really did frustrate him. Things were going better than he had dared hope. The infrastructure of the city had improved dramatically and they had pushed out into the provinces with all possible speed, so that the reports which he received daily from Felix Maas were telling the tale of people now choosing to leave Century to resettle in their home towns and villages. The newly constituted National police force was making flying progress under the Inspector General who had come to them from Ethiopia, the healthcare benefits to all were spectacularly apparent and they had built and/or renovated no less than forty-three schools — all in less than five months. Best of all, a mere five per cent of the artisans and experts who had arrived on the ‘Angel’ had chosen to leave. Why did the bloody Europeans have to be so blind and mealy mouthed?
King lost no time in getting on with it. He returned straight to his apartment and called Bill Evans at The Mansion House. It was a simple conversation because he’d been through the detail with Bill before leaving London. They talked for an evening in a quiet pub and King had been impressed by the range of Bill Evans’ contacts. As his final word to conclude this phone call, King said to Bill ‘housemartin’, this being the prearranged code that he should now go to Martin Kirchoff to access the £50,000 in cash which he would need to deliver the goods.
Bill Evans went to work. At 0233 in the morning of Wednesday 10th May, a large Scania truck with a 40 foot box trailer made its quiet way around London’s Embankment past the Tate Gallery, heading for the Houses of Parliament. It bore Dutch registration plates and was identified by graphics and logo as an intercontinental transporter. One of the leviathan travellers which operate at all times of the clock, it carried a full load, but with a single occupant of the cab. He was English, a character and a bit of a rogue with a record of making mischief. He answered to the sobriquet of Shorty Driver, but he was born with neither name. He was ‘Shorty’ because he stood only just over 5’2” and ‘Driver’ because he was outstandingly good at that function.
Shorty was well known to Bill Evans who had felt his collar more than once during his policing years. Bill had no difficulty in recruiting Shorty for this mission. The whole idea appealed to the little man’s sense of fun and then there was the reward — £10,000 paid in cash and up front. Shorty had wondered about the end objective but he knew better then to ask and much better than to take the money and run. Nobody risked that with Bill Evans. Shorty had good contacts in the international trucking community and quickly found his mark in a Turk who drove for a haulage company in Rotterdam which carried machined goods between the UK and the Balkans. For some serious money, the Turk had agreed to be sandbagged in a layby outside Ramsgate on the Monday evening and he was still lodged in a dingy B&B making reports to his employers and the Kent Police. Meanwhile, Shorty had taken over the vehicle and made his untroubled way to a warehouse in the London suburb of Mitcham where the trailer was repacked and he had time to ensure that the Scania was set up to his liking. Shorty seemed childlike in his stature beside the towering cab of the vehicle, but once inside it and behind the wheel, his legs helpfully stretched by his Cuban heeled boots, Shorty was in his element and a virtuoso with the controls of any truck, whether they be set to the left or to the right.
He didn’t need to check his watch to know that he was bang on time as he slipped idly around Parliament Square and turned left into Whitehall, heading towards Trafalgar Square. There was no one around at that hour to confirm that his vehicle was authorised to be in the heart of London, and he drew scarcely a glance from the duty police officers watching over the closed gates from Whitehall into Downing Street, from within which the lights of the Prime Minister’s Office at Number 10 burned constantly. Shorty let the huge Scania potter past on low revs and with minimum engine noise. The whole rig felt balanced and poised, precisely to his exacting standards. He slid closer to the kerb and stopped. He released his seat belt, lit a cigarette and let it dangle from the corner of his mouth.
A few minutes later, at 0246, the policemen at the Downing Street Gate heard the throaty bellow of a heavy engine powering up. By then, Shorty had engaged reverse and was on the move. His hands on the steering wheel and his right foot on the accelerator were moving in a coordinated blur, his head remained fixed forward but his eyes flicked constantly from mirror to mirror. He built up his speed as he moved his vehicle much further out into the middle of this prime London thoroughfare, dominated by the Cenotaph. Shorty was changing his lock, changing his direction, maintaining his engine revs and further increasing his speed.
The astonished guardians at the gates could do more than shout a warning to each other as the massive trailer back swung in at them and Shorty gave himself a snort of satisfaction at the precision of his manoeuvre. With tyres screaming their protest, the tail of his trailer, so far behind his seat in the cab, was only a degree or so off square as it met the low pedestrian railing across the entrance to Downing Street and it punched straight through. Immediately behind the railing, shut firm and bolted, stood the infinitely stronger construction of heavy, wrought iron gates. Shorty Driver was as prepared for them as he could be. A last glance in his mirrors told him that he was on target. He whipped his steering back from full lock to dead centre. He lifted himself slightly from his seat back as the shock of collision travelled up the length of his trailer and through the fifth wheel coupling into his cab. The noise of the impact was shocking in the still of the summer night. His entire rig was brought to an instant halt but he kept his foot to the floor for a final couple more seconds and swung the steering wheel from one extreme lock to the other. There was renewed crunching as the trailer skewed a further inch or so through the gates to stick finally and firm.
Shorty was instantly on the move. Like a whippet, he was out of his cab, door left open, engine running, lights on. He slithered down the handholds, hitting the tarmac of Whitehall and scuttering across to the shadows of the far pavement, his little boots ringing as he ran. And ran. Shorty was clean away up Whitehall before anyone could see him, much less lay hands on him. He skipped across Trafalgar Square, running up past St Martin in the Fields and on eventually to a safe burrow somewhere in Soho.
He left pandemonium behind him. To supplement the police on duty, night workers from buildings in Whitehall and Downing Street started to gather on either side of the cork, stuck in its bottle. The few residents of the locality, amongst them the most influential in the land, were startled from their sleep by the noise and the shouting which followed. Successively senior national security figures were alerted and summoned by urgent call. There was one concern on the minds of all.
Bomb.
By 0330 an avalanche of emergency vehicles had descended on Whitehall — fire engines, ambulances, innumerable police cars and vans, one or two with dogs and handlers. Leading them all was a bomb disposal team which left their colleagues to clear the area, evacuate the buildings and close the roads while they went methodically to work on Shorty’s Scania and trailer.
It took them until midday to find what was not there. The commander of the team had started with the truck, suspicious that engine shut down would trigger whatever lay in the box container behind. But they could find nothing, and after an hour of painstaking investigation, the vehicle lay silent. By then, they had daylight to help them as they moved to the trailer, the team still convinced that they were to be challenged by an explosive device of some sort. Why else would someone perpetrate this outrage?
In nearby Police Headquarters at Scotland Yard, significant figures had gathered, The Commissioner, Head of Counter Terrorism, senior heads from both MI5 and MI6, scientists from Aldershot, communications experts from GCHQ Cheltenham: all powerless to act without further information.
Then came the news that the disposal team had the trailer loading doors open and were confronted by a solid wall of breeze blocks, neatly arranged from side to side and from top to bottom. It was 9 am before they had removed them all wi
thout incident, to find a second wall of the same behind. And then another. And another.
As the morning wore on and the waiting became more irksome, the mystery was intensified by the absolute absence of demand or threat or communication of any sort. And the pile of discarded breeze blocks on Downing Street grew ever larger.
At 12 noon precisely, the disposal team commander had worked his way to the very front of the trailer and there at last, he found something different. He checked it over with infinite care before he decided. This might be a message of some sort, but it was not going to explode. He removed his protective headgear and studied the plain square clock, set into a wooden frame which was secured dead centre in the final wall of blocks. The hands now stood at 1232 and ticked over to 1233 beneath his gaze. The face of the clock was plain and unmarked by numerals or symbols. Its colour was the azure blue of a cloudless sky, overlaid with the thin white outline of a rising crescent moon.
Since the early hours, there had been a media frenzy which went on mounting during the day. Parliament Square and all Whitehall was cordoned off behind police barricades, Westminster Bridge was accessible only from the Embankment. There were endless radio interviews with the informed and the less so, television crews demonstrated their ingenuity in finding even a remote vantage point from which they could present the scene. Such pictures were immediately beamed around the world, and King Offenbach enjoyed seeing them in his Century apartment. He sent a one word text to Bill Evans, but Bill was too busy to read it, being at the time engaged in passing another hefty sized briefcase stuffed with cash to his second contractor.
The first Millennium message and flag was delivered by buffalo. The second was as subtle as silk. Since it was a Wednesday, Prime Minister’s Questions were to take place in the House of Commons, and the PM was not prepared to cry off this commitment. He and his family had been spirited out of Downing Street into St James’s Park and he had gone from there to his office in the House. He had no comment for the Press on what was happening in Whitehall. That would follow when the Security Services had completed their work and their assessment. For himself, he wanted somebody, somewhere to have the gumption to explain what the hell as going on. All he knew so far was that an audacious and irritating effort had been made to wave the National flag of this tin pot regime right under his nose. The buggers down there deserved to get poleaxed if only for that effrontery, but London definitely needed to keep this quiet. It would not make them look too clever to the moaners in Europe who were dragging their feet over setting up the task force to go in there. Quite how they were going to make a public explanation of the truck was something else. That would take vivid imagination and some lively work with the Press, but they were well equipped to do that.
When it was time for PMQ’s, the Prime Minister went into the Chamber with his briefing book under his arm. His staff had put together some suggestions as well as background on those questions which he knew to expect that day. The first was from a Birmingham MP, Richard Burden, who wanted to pose something random but designed to shine a glowing spotlight on the efforts of the newly formed MG Rover car company. The Prime Minister heard him out and then rose to approach the Despatch Box to provide his reply and he opened the folder to have the relevant briefing note in front of him.
The PM was too accomplished a performer to be thrown off course, nevertheless those present who knew him best did note an untypical delay before he turned a page in his folder and commenced a fluent comment. He carried this off well, whilst simultaneously asking himself how a sheet displaying in full colour the flag of Millennium had been placed at the front of his briefing book.
Much later, right at the end of a very long day, there was a well attended conference at No 10 under the chairmanship of the Prime Minister. By then, the truck had been towed away, the mangled gates had been removed for repair or replacement and a tripled strength police detachment installed in their place. The Home Secretary had appeared on television to explain that a displaced and disgruntled Armenian had been responsible for this morning’s incident. The authorities had a name, but had not yet managed an arrest.
The PM demanded the views of his phalanx of advisors. What were the day’s strange events intended to signify, and how should they respond? Of the twenty or so of the great and the good sitting round the table, it was Jonathon Powell, the Prime Minister’s aide and Chief of Staff who produced a succinct reply which he knew to be the clear majority view of those attending. He had taken trouble to ask them.
‘Prime Minister. We should take these incidents as a single message. The people managing Millennium have delivered their calling cards which are intended to inform us that they are neither fools nor incompetents and that they have capabilities greater than we have assumed. There is no commentary here on the political element and neither do I wish to address that now. We have an abundantly clear British Government position that a former sovereign state has been illegally annexed and that in consequence, the correct international policy should be a restoration of the status quo. The only issue which I put before you now is the question of timing. As has been already agreed, we need an initiative, and critically one which calls for a military force of intervention, to be multilateral and thus to enjoy the unequivocal support of our partners in Europe. I believe that requirement may now be seen to be all the greater because these people in Millennium are better resourced and equipped than we had supposed them to be. My advice is therefore that we should make haste more slowly. Let’s back off a little and give ourselves a break during this summer season. We can afford to move Millennium back up our agenda after the recess as we move into autumn.’
‘And what happens meanwhile? We allow them to take advantage of the respite?’
Powell raised his hands from the table in an expressive gesture.
‘That may be so, Prime Minister, but whatever. I still say that we have greater fish to fry.’
The PM looked around the table.
‘And this is the view of you all?’
There was no vote, of course, but a general murmur of assent. The PM looked suddenly weary of the subject.
‘OK,’ he said with a sigh, ‘put Millennium on the back burner for now. But there is one thing we can do right now, Jonathon. Cancel the passport of that bastard Heaven. He’s persona non grata here now.
PENTE BROKE SMITH — December 2000
Pente was standing in the warm mid morning sunshine at Acacia Grove, his own choice of a new name for Panje. The prolific trees all around supplied a little shade as they rustled in the light breeze of an exceptionally beautiful day. Behind him rose tall and straight the recently finished National Monument and before him was gathered a large crowd, standing silent and patient all over the killing field which had followed their arrival a little less than a year ago. Pente was leading a simple service which he had created to mark the Day of Gratitude, a name he had chosen to devote to the memory of all those, without discrimination, who had died to bring Millennium into being.
He finished a closing prayer which he had composed for the occasion and then the Combined Services band, supported by two choirs from Century City, struck up the newly created National Anthem. Out on his own at the front of this great assembly, Pente felt his heart lift and as the stirring music rang out, he felt a tear escape from one eye and run down into the cover of his copious beard. ‘Sloppy old fool’, he told himself, ‘but this is a great day’.
The congregation started to break up, a few slipping away but the majority in their various groups wandering to find a spot to set up a picnic. Pente meandered through the crowd, stopping for a word here and a handshake there. As he made progress, he had an eye for the surroundings and was well pleased with how Acacia Grove was developing. It still looked raw of course, but so much work had been done. A handsome wrought iron railing fence enclosed the entire site and within it, their arboreal specialists, one of whom had come to Millennium from Kew Gardens in London, had been busy with felling, lopping, pruning a
nd planting. Meanwhile, a master stonemason of Russian descent had crafted the elegantly simple monument from locally quarried material. Acacia Grove was a fitting symbol of progress which looked good now, and would weather and settle to become superb.
Pente gave himself a moment to wonder how other things and people would settle. At the top of his list were David and Aischa. David had stepped down from his position as President of Millennium at the end of November, handing over to Hugh Dundas who was to take them through to June 2001, during which, it had been announced, there would be an election, with international observers invited, to seek consensus on a Constitution for the country. David had taken the toothless title of ‘Father of the Nation’ which was fair enough but a bit overblown for Pente’s taste. He’d been given a life tenancy to the former Presidential Palace, now renamed Founder’s Hill. He and Aischa were settled there with her now busier than he was.
Pente knew that David would never have agreed to this demotion without the influence of Aischa. He’d discussed it with King who agreed that she had been the power to reallocate the throne. She had told him that he had to give up. Millennium’s future depended on being accepted into the international community and he, David Heaven personally, was standing in the way of that accomplishment. Pente and King had been present when Aischa had delivered the firm, gently expressed lecture to her husband.
‘Millennium would not have happened without you, David. It has been your dream, your drive, your determination. Don’t spoil that now by refusing to allow your baby to grow in its own way. I know this is happening sooner than any of us wanted, but you know Darling, that’s because of your success and not in spite of it. The major powers around the world, especially the States and in Europe, are about ready to recognise us as a new, legitimate country but they won’t do that with you in charge. You’re the bogeyman and you’ve just got to go. But if you concentrate hard and let your logic rule your heart, you’ll see it as I do: it’s a compliment.’
