He motioned me away from the car. I took two slow steps forward. ‘There are no weapons in the car,’ I said.
‘We know.’ He swung his rifle away from me, towards the car. For the first time his face showed an emotion, something so primal it was hard to tell whether it was fear or rage.
‘Go!’ he screamed.
I could hear Annette’s dry sobs, Eleanor crying, Colin arguing. I dared not turn around, or even make a gesture.
The engine started, and slowly the car pulled away.
Streetlights and fog. Aircraft landing-lights and fog. Night and fog. They had never looked so beautiful. I raised my eyes for a look at the stars I thought I’d never reach, not now. I couldn’t see them. Ah well.
They walked me a few hundred metres to a patch of waste ground. I was actually relieved to see a black helicopter, its matt angular surfaces gleaming with condensation in the shadows. They bundled me aboard and sat me down facing the open doorway as the craft took off. It made surprisingly little noise. The soldiers watched me with silent malice and dirty-secret smiles.
I wondered why I’d kept walking, when I could have run. It looked like I was for one of the classic US-client execution styles, the Saigon sky-dive. I should have run, I thought, and not given them this satisfaction. There’s an Arab proverb, something along the lines that hope is the enemy of freedom, or despair is the liberator of the slave. It explains a lot, including why I climbed into that helicopter.
I hope it doesn’t explain what I did after I got out.
‘Come in, Mr Wilde.’
The polite invitation, from one of a dozen men in suits around a table, was accompanied by a shove in the back from the UN trooper that sent me stumbling into the room and left no-one in any doubt who was really in charge here. The door behind me was too heavy to slam, but it closed with a muffled thud, as if the soldier had at least made the attempt.
I straightened, mustering my dignity, and glanced around the room. Somewhere in Westminster – the helicopter had landed in St James’s Park, and I’d been bundled into the back of an APC and driven a short distance – but it was impossible to tell if it was a private or a public building. Big mahogany table with lights above it, oak-panelled walls, portraits of distinguished ancestors or predecessors in the gloom. The men who looked up at me from the table had something of that same air of inherited or acquired assurance, despite being more dishevelled than I was: their jackets crumpled or hung over tall chair-backs, ties loosened, eyes red and cheeks unshaven.
The table was spread with laminated maps, on which lines had been drawn and wiped and redrawn in fluorescent inks from the marker-pens that lay scattered among coffee-cups and overflowing cut-glass ashtrays the size of dinner-plates. Rising smoke curled up through the cones of light to be sucked away by powerful air-conditioning that gave the atmosphere a stale chill.
The man who’d spoken stood and motioned me towards a vacant seat at the nearest corner of the table. A freshly filled cup of coffee steamed in front of it.
‘Good evening, Mr Wilde,’ he said. ‘I must apologise for the rather brusque manner in which you’ve been brought here.’ He gave a self-deprecating smile, a slight shrug as if to disavow responsibility. He was old, older than I – though he’d had better treatment – and his wavy yellow-grey hair, shoulder-length, made him look like a judge or one of those eighteenth-century dignitaries in the portraits. ‘I trust you have not been otherwise ill-treated?’
I stood where I was and said, ‘I call kidnapping ill-treatment, sir. I demand an explanation, and an immediate contact with my family and my lawyer.’
Another man spoke up, leaning forward on his elbows into the light. ‘None of that applies. This country’s under martial law, and anyway, you’re not under arrest.’
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Then I’ll go now.’
I turned away and made for the door.
‘Stop!’ The first man’s voice sounded more like an urgent warning than a command. ‘A moment, please.’
This was more like it. I turned back.
‘Of course you’re free to leave,’ the man continued, ‘but if you do, only we can guarantee your safety. All we ask is that you hear us out.’
I doubted this, but decided it would be foolhardy to try anything else. Besides, I needed that coffee.
They were a committee of what was already being called the Restoration Government. Members of Parliament, civil servants…they didn’t give their names, and I never subsequently tried to find out. They told me they were trying to restore order and a civilian administration.
‘The Republic is dead, Mr Wilde. Our only choices are a prolonged and futile resistance, with a prolonged and painful occupation – or an an attempt at a workable settlement.’
‘I don’t see the US keeping up a prolonged occupation,’ I said. ‘Given their notorious sensitivity to body-bags.’
‘How many US troops have you seen?’ snapped the second man. ‘They’re all in bunkers operating telepresence rigs. Believe me, America’s Third World clients have troops and to spare for the UN. Internal security is what they’re raised for and paid for. They’ll laugh off the pathetic efforts of our home-grown Guevaras. Make no mistake – the United States – the United Nations – means it this time. No nation will ever again be allowed to start a war. Nuclear disarmament will be enforced.’
Saliva droplets from his speech were spotting the maps. I was half-expecting his right arm to twitch up. I must have recoiled slightly. The long-haired man raised a hand, soft cop to the hard cop.
‘We know as well as you do that a power such as the US must become cannot possibly administer the world. Police it, at a very high level, yes. But as some powers move up from the nation, others devolve to the local community. We have the opportunity to encourage autonomy and diversity. Let us take it, and spare our country years of agony.’
‘“Us”?’ I looked around. ‘I have nothing in common with you. What do you want from me?’
‘The possibility of a deal, Mr Wilde. A settlement. We’re pulling in all the regional and factional and community leaders we can reach. You happen to be the first.’
‘And what d’you intend to offer them?’
‘Accept the Kingdom – in practice – as the national authority, and you can have autonomy in the areas your supporters control.’
‘I have no authority to negotiate –’
‘Oh, but you have. You have influence. We know that without it some younger and hotter heads would be calling the shots. And we know you’re up to more than your public statements indicate –’
‘What makes you say that?’
He smiled. ‘The volume of encrypted traffic from your safe houses.’
Damn. I tried to remain poker-faced.
‘What you see is what you get. I’ve done nothing secretly that goes against what I’ve said openly.’
‘Of course. Then you can have no objection. Take a look at these…’
Agreements, ready to sign. Maps. London, for a start, was to be carved up. The part conceded to the space movement encompassed the Greenbelt and an arc of suburbs in which we had free trade zones. They’d even given it a name: North London Town, which on the map some military hand had clipped to NORLONTO.
It was a lot. Frankly, I’d have settled for less.
‘And in return?’
‘No armed actions to be launched from the territory. And one other thing…’
‘Yes?’
‘Ah…the nuclear deterrence contract, Mr Wilde.’
‘You want me to end it?’
‘Good God, no!’ He looked shocked. ‘We want you to transfer the policy to us.’
‘To the government? But you’ve got –’ I stopped, and looked at their ever-so-slightly-embarrassed faces.
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I see.’ I turned again to the map, and picked up a pen. By the end of the night we had something I could take back to my committee.