My apologies for the long delay in posting this chapter - lots of summer travelling and a very stubborn bout of jet-lag. Thank you for your patience!
Chapter Three
"Hell." Lucas switched his bedside lamp on. Those last few words had brought him as nerve-janglingly wide awake as the bucket of cold water that had frequently served as his alarm clock in Leshanko. "Is he - "
"In the prison infirmary. Under guard." After that second of audible weakness, Ros's voice had reverted to its usual unemotional hardness. "I'm going over there."
Lucas's every professional instinct protested against that idea, but with an effort, he kept his objections silent and said briskly, "All right. Pick me up in what – fifteen minutes?"
"No. I'm going alone." She spoke swiftly, pre-empting any argument he might have put up. " Red-flash the team and get to the Grid. Conference as soon as I get there."
Lucas sensed she was about to end the call. "Ros, wait. You said you wanted me with you."
"We can't interview him yet. He's unconscious." Again there was the tiniest of quivers in her voice. "But we need to know exactly what happened and who was involved. I have to talk to Phelps. Securely. Face to face."
It made sense, Lucas thought, though he knew that eliciting the information wasn't Ros's only motivation. Before he could find any appropriate words, she added: "Meanwhile, I want a list of every demo and protest, every disruptive incident we've had over the last three months, broken down by region, type, and scale. Get Callum onto CCTV and pull up any footage we've got where we've identified Crisis Crusade involvement. I want every face that appears more than once identified. And bring Lizzie Sandell in as well."
"Right." Lucas knew when resistance was futile, but he also knew there was one question he couldn't avoid asking, however dangerous. He took a deep breath. "What do you want me to tell the team?"
"Exactly what I've just told you. What to do." Lucas could almost hear the line crackling from the pent-up tension in her. "Nothing more until I know more. I'll brief them about … the rest … when I get there."
Lucas shook his head dubiously. No-one would believe that even Ros would issue a red-flash summons at dawn just for a routine brainstorming session. Everyone's first reaction would be to check the breaking news for the real reason behind it, and he wondered just how long information about the attack on Sir Jocelyn could be contained behind the Victorian brickwork of the Scrubs.
"Has anything leaked?" he asked.
"I don't know." Impatience was tautening Ros's voice now. "And I won't find out sitting here, Lucas. Get going."
"Are you sure you - " Lucas began, and then realised that he was speaking into an electronic void. Probably just as well. His last three words – can manage alone? – would likely have been just the spark required to ignite the tinderbox of her temper.
He had been staring at his silent mobile as if he expected her to materialise out of it like Aladdin's genie; now he pulled himself together and headed for the shower. Since the Olympics, Ros had again cajoled him into swimming with her. When he had tried to demur, she had confided in him about her battle to master her own tendency to panic in water after almost drowning on the Thames Barrier. Impressed by her courage, and shamed by it at the same time, Lucas had reluctantly returned to the pool. He would never like being in or under water, but her support was at least helping him to face his terror without being totally paralysed by it. In gratitude, he had ventured to suggest that she might try Pilates classes to improve her lung function. He had pretended not to hear her perfectly audible, sarcastic comments about New Age nonsense, and eventually Ros had grudgingly conceded that it might help. Once her strength and stamina began to improve, she started to join him on the more gentle of his runs around Clapham Common. Her triumphant, mocking smile on the day she beat him by a very short head on an impromptu sprint to the café there was all the thanks Lucas had needed.
He switched the radio on as he was dressing, and was just checking his pockets for his keys when the news broadcast began. There was no mention of any incident at Wormwood Scrubs - yet - but Lucas's relief was short-lived as the local round-up reported a burst water main in South Lambeth Road.
K chortu. The rush hour started early, and that would back the traffic up in a matter of minutes. He shuddered at the thought of getting a Northern Line tube. The alternative was to walk across the Common and take the train from Clapham Junction. Lucas made a mental calculation and reckoned he could still beat Ros to the office, but first he had to red-flash the team. He began with Chen Liu. The young man's startled response was accompanied by a scrabbling sound and a thud that suggested Chen had fallen out of bed in the process of answering the call, and Lucas repeated Ros's orders twice to make quite sure he'd understood them before moving to his next call. Khalida was much more alert – she had been saying her morning prayers, she explained. Lucas refrained from suggesting that in the circumstances she might feel like adding a few extra ones, and rang Callum. It was the technician who asked the question that Lucas hadn't dared put to Ros.
"Boss doesn't exaggerate," he said tersely. "So if she's that worried, shouldn't we be phoning Gay Paree?"
Lucas's first instinct when Ros hung up had been to do precisely that, but he knew that it would be tantamount to professional hara-kiri.
"Her call," he said curtly. "Just make sure we're ready. And that includes Lizzie – Ros wants everything she's got ready to feed in."
He heard Callum mutter something about being on a starvation diet then, and gave a sympathetic smile. Lizzie Sandell was a good analyst – when she concentrated on doing her job rather than engaging in office gossip. When she didn't, she could be a liability, as Lucas knew to his cost after nearly being lynched from an obs van in Brixton. Ruth had been trying to move her on to another Section for months – the issue was one of the few on which harmony reigned between herself and the Section Chief – without success. But the analyst had better be at the top of her game this time; today, the only slack Ros was likely to cut any shirker would come from the end of the noose she hanged them with.
He told Callum to contact Lizzie, unwilling to spend time dragging her out of sleep himself, and then hurried out of the flat. Traffic on the main road already looked heavier than usual, the engines of slow-moving cars emitting the frustrated growl of a caged lion dreaming of the wide-open spaces of the veld. Lucas threaded his way between them and set off at a brisk pace across the common. At this hour, he had the place to himself save for a few early-bird joggers and their feathered counterparts. 'Liam Newton', middle-ranking civil servant in the Ministry of Agriculture, called a cheerful 'Morning!' to the runners he recognised as he cut diagonally past the restored Victorian bandstand and emerged in Battersea Rise.
The illusion of bucolic peace splintered into a crazy-paving mosaic of pounding feet, jabbing elbows and extended Oyster cards as he was swept up in the rising tide of commuters battling their way into the station. Lucas silently cursed the ineptitude of Thames Water as he was picked up and carried into a train like a piece of helpless flotsam by the tsunami of bodies. Several 'sorry's and a brace of 'excuse me's later, he managed to find two fingers-width of unoccupied space to cling to on the back of a seat as the train moved off. Mobile phone conversations, all conducted with a febrile intensity that belied the mundane triviality of their content, twittered and chirped around him in a babble of half a dozen languages, none of which seemed to be English. Lucas's free arm was pinned to his side by the pressure of bodies, so he read the time from the watch of a massive turbaned Sikh whose arm was an inch from his nose. It would take Ros at least half an hour to get back from the prison to Milbank, possibly more in the rush hour. Good. He should be able to to ensure that the team was ready before she arrived.
He had barely had time to feel satisfaction at the prospect when the train began to slow. Lucas craned towards the window and got hit in the face by a vigorously adjusted woman's scarf for his pains. He released his grip to wipe a stray thread from his eye just as the train came to a shuddering, clanking halt, lost his balance and was thrown against the scarf's owner by the impact of stumbling bodies behind him.
"Bloody hell." A male voice carried over the buzz of muttered apologies. "Perfect time to practice an emergency stop."
"Thank your lucky stars it wasn't a sodding three-point turn," another voice chimed in amid a ripple of rueful laughter. Lucas smiled wryly as a stoical, resigned silence settled on the packed carriage. If they'd been on the Parisian RER, revolution would have been brewing. The thought made him think of Harry and Ruth, and that reminded him of why he was jammed in here like an over-dressed sardine. With difficulty, he worked his mobile from his jacket pocket. His heart sank as he read the text timed some fifteen minutes earlier. En route. R. If he didn't beat her to the Grid there'd be merry hell to pay.
'Ladies and gentlemen, this is your guard speaking.' Simultaneously, every head in the carriage turned towards the intercom. 'South West trains apologise for the delay to your service, which has been caused by overcrowding in Waterloo Station. We should be moving again in five to ten minutes. Thank you for your patience and understanding.'
Lucas fixed his gaze on the shabby houses lining the track and wished he could feel any of either. He wondered what Ros had discovered in Wormwood Scrubs – and how she would cope with it. He had always assumed that her estrangement from Sir Jocelyn was both total and deliberate; it had been a real shock to learn about her letters to him, and to realise just how long and hard she had persisted in trying to bring about reconciliation between them. Carefully, not wanting to leave either a paper trail or an electronic footprint, he had probed Ruth for more details about the attempted coup and about the relationship between Sir Jocelyn and his daughter. Ruth had been very unwilling to discuss either matter, but nonetheless, she had left him in no doubt about the depth of Ros's affection and – pre-coup, at least – admiration, for her father.
Without warning, the train lurched forward, the movement greeted by a spattering of ironic applause. A large advertisement for a funeral parlour jerked past the window, and Lucas winced. He had to agree with Ros that the attack on her father didn't seem likely to be coincidental. So perhaps her concern about Crisis Crusade wasn't so misplaced, and they really did have a situation developing. As the end of the platform at Waterloo glided into sight, Lucas swallowed past a sudden dryness in his throat. How the hell will she cope if Myers dies on us?
He won't. He shuffled forward with the other passengers as the train came to a halt, but the doors remained resolutely shut, the buttons unresponsive. Muttering, this time more irritated than before, filled the carriage.
Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please. Because of overcrowding in the station, we shall be opening the doors one carriage at a time. Flow-control procedures are in operation on the station concourse, and for your own safety, we ask you to follow instructions given to you by the police and British Rail staff. Thank you.
Lucas frowned. What the hell is going on? He could see disquiet on the faces around him. They were in … what, the fourth carriage? Shit. How long is this going to take?
He got the answer to his question twenty minutes later when the doors finally hissed open and released a torrent of frustrated, angry commuters onto the platform only for them to be herded into a narrow corridor formed by two rows of crash barriers. Lucas looked around him incredulously. Waterloo was always busy, and at rush hour it reminded him of Metropolis, but the crowds were always moving, hundreds of people weaving and dodging round each other at high-speed with the experience born of long practice. Now, at least as far as he could see over the packed, bobbing heads all around him, what little movement there was was being orchestrated by police officers and British Rail staff through paths like this one. On all sides, people were jammed up against walls, vending kiosks, and each other, taking their rage out on the sweating and struggling officials. The noise was indescribable.
"What's happened?" Lucas shouted to a policeman as he reached the automatic ticket barriers, now jammed open, and the intolerable pressure of bodies around him eased a fraction. He knew it wasn't a terrorist alert. That would have prompted an evacuation; here, people were moving – or trying to – in all directions.
"Not to worry, sir." The officer's reassuring tone contrasted sharply with his red face and harassed expression. "Just keep moving in that direction please, towards the Station Approach Road exit."
Lucas didn't need the Station Approach Road, he wanted to get to the South Bank, but it was on the opposite side of the station and he didn't need to have access to secret intelligence to know that there was no hope of reaching it. When he finally emerged into the street, buffeted and bruised, he saw a van pull up at the kerb. It decanted twenty policemen who stampeded straight into the station. Two senior officers were climbing from a police car, and on impulse, Lucas moved towards them.
"Commander! What's the problem?" Before the man could bite his head off as he was clearly intending to do, Lucas thrust his I.D. card in front of him. The officer's lip curled in distaste, and he waved his colleague into the station.
"Not a spook problem. Few demonstrators, causing disruption. Police matter. We'll deal with it."
"Where?" Lucas persisted. He had neither seen nor heard any sign of a demonstration – no slogans, banners or violence – and the police rushing into the station were ordinary uniformed officers, not riot control units or the SB.
"Ticket offices. It's peaceful. Just long queues, slow-moving. Blocking access." The officer irritably rattled off the words and then none too gently pushed past him.
"Organised?" Lucas shouted after him, but the officer had already been swallowed up by another wave of passengers surging out of the station, and no answer was forthcoming. Not, Lucas thought, that he needed one. It was already in his mind – Crisis Crusade.
He looked around. A taxi to Milbank was out of the question; there were plenty of them, but the sheer press of people made it almost impossible for them to move. Lucas stepped out into the road and worked his way through the swirling maelstrom of humanity. When he reached Westminster Bridge, he descended to the Embankment, pushed his way unceremoniously through a knot of early-rising Japanese tourists and began to run.
oOoOoOo
"Lucas!" Chen Liu trotted up as he came through the pods. "We thought you might have got stuck at Wa - "
"I did." Lucas looked around the Grid for Ros.
"We tried to phone you but the network went down," Chen continued.
Not surprised. Lucas threw off his jacket. "Boss here?"
"Yeah." Chen waved towards the conference room. "We're about to start. She's – erm -"
Lucas groaned inwardly. His shirt was damp with perspiration from his sprint down the embankment, and his feet were burning. "OK. I'm coming. Just need five minutes to clean up."
"You've got two. Make it quick." He jumped at Ros's clipped tones behind him. As Chen skittered off like a startled rabbit, Lucas turned. She looked her usual self, he thought, brisk, alert, and composed.
"News?" he enquired expectantly, but Ros merely said, "Later," and turned away. Lucas, sweaty and out of breath, glared at her back, furious at the snub. God, you can be a bitch sometimes. He was on the intemperate point of telling her so when Ros casually called over her shoulder: "Two minutes. " She gave a quick, sardonic smile. "We need you."
The royal bloody 'we', I assume. Lucas still miffed, sluiced himself under the cold tap in the bathroom, changed his shirt and socks and hurried to the conference room. Ros was already talking; he slid into his seat as unobtrusively as he could.
" … and I don't believe we should be writing Crisis Crusade off as a minor irritant. Lizzie," her piercing gaze stabbed the length of the table into Ruth's junior, "do you have the list of incidents I asked for?"
Lucas raised a silent prayer. He was meant to have ensured that she did.
"Yes." He breathed again. It looked as if it was one of Lizzie's good days. At Ros's nod, she started to read. Lucas was surprised by the length of the list of demonstrations, boycotts and campaigns scattered up and down the country. When the young woman had finished, Ros said: "And you can add Waterloo this morning to that." She snapped at Lucas: "You were there; what happened?"
Trying not to bridle at her tone, Lucas succinctly described the utter chaos he'd witnessed. Callum raised his hand.
"I got the CCTV."
"And I had a little chitchat with the station manager," Khalida offered. "He said that many, many people came to the ticket windows this morning, all of them with complicated queries or complaints that took a jolly long time to deal with. There was no trouble – everyone was very polite and patient, but in rush-hour it caused a most terrible obstruction."
Ros scowled. "It caused a lot more than that. There's a delegation from Brussels here having talks with the Department of Transport about helping to fund the plan to expand capacity at Waterloo and bring those disused Eurostar platforms back into operation. So far they can't even get near the bloody place. Great PR."
"Coincidence," Callum observed.
Ros's lips tightened. "Is it." She swivelled her chair. "Never mind the crowds, focus on the queues." As Callum obeyed, she said; "That's it. Now, look. What do you see?" There was an uneasy silence punctuated by covert glances from one to another until Chen ventured, "People?"
"Bravo. You're getting warm." Ros looked heavenward. "Come on, we're not playing bloody I-Spy here! It's a demonstration. Tell me what you see. Describe it."
"It does not really look like a demonstration." Khalida broke the nervous silence. "No disorder or shouting … no slogans."
"Not every demo has to come equipped with a copy of Anarchy for Dummies," Ros said dryly. "But go on." When Khalida didn't, she pointed a pencil at Chen Liu, who shook his head uncertainly. "Spit it out."
"Well the … the …" the young Chinese scratched his head in frustration, staring at the screen on which Callum was now showing the endless, tangled queues winding across the concourse. "I don't know, but there's something wrong about it – them …"
Everyone round the table jumped as Ros broke the pencil in two with a crack like a rifle shot. "God, if I'd known I'd have to spell it out for you I'd have brought a Ouija Board. There isn't a single person in those images who -"
" – fits the profile of your average demonstrator." Lizzie Sandell looked challengingly at the section chief. "Too - "
"That's it!" Chen interrupted excitedly. "Look at them – there's barely one under forty, and - "
"And the way they're dressed. Home Counties all the way." Callum ran the image slowly down one of the queues. "They look like something out of Midsomer Murders."
Lucas glanced at Ros, expecting to see satisfaction that her team had finally caught up with her; instead she was running the tip of her tongue along her top lip in a characteristic gesture of nervous tension, almost as if she wished it hadn't. She started as Lizzie Sandell spoke again.
"Ros, Ruth was saying something about that – you know, before they left - that all these incidents are … well, different – these people aren't just the usual rent-a-mob coming out for a Bash The Establishment day trip. They're the kind of people we'd normally expect to be backing the status quo. "
Lucas could tell from Ros's face that it cost her to agree with Ruth Evershed, but she nodded abruptly. "Exactly. And they've planning and organisation." She glanced towards Lucas as he inadvertently shook his head. "What - were all those people at Waterloo victims of mass hypnosis, then? Or paid by the French to scupper the EU loan agreement?"
Chen hastily stifled a giggle. Lucas reminded himself of where Ros had spent the previous couple of hours and why, and kept his tone even.
"No … I agree they were organised. But I think the EU thing is a coincidence - " Ros snorted in disagreement, "and it was peaceful. They're entitled to protest, Ros, and they have a reasonable grievance."
"Tell me about it," Callum grunted. "Bloody five per cent hike in ticket prices – let me know, I'd have gone there with them." He met Ros's glare and shrugged. "Joke, Boss."
Ros didn't look mollified, but just then Chen said uncertainly: "Callum's got a point, though; there's got to be a limit to how much you can squeeze people. "
Ros's expression hardened. "Thank you Chen, when the government needs his Riedonomics no doubt it'll ask for them. In the meantime - " she pointed at the inscription Regnum Defende carved on the conference room wall, " – that is what we're here for. And finding excuses for disruption and instability won't help us to do it."
Chen flinched at the razors in her voice, and Lucas tried again. "Ros, I don't think they're aiming for instability. They're decent, ordinary people trying to make sure someone in government listens, that's all."
"Yeah." Callum nodded. "Middle England, Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells. Probably be writing indignant letters to the Times – if the greedy buggers hadn't decided to skulk off behind a paywall." He shrugged. "It's pretty harmless. Hardly a threat to democracy – unless you know something we don't, Boss."
Lucas shot Ros a glance. That, surely, was her cue.
"Callum, forgive me please, but I believe you are wrong." All heads turned to Khalida at the end of the table. "Perhaps you cannot understand."
Callum rolled his eyes. "It's hardly rocket science - "
Ros turned on him. "You've had your say." She snapped the words like a dog crunching a bone. "Khalida."
"It is, I think, as Ros says. In all these protests we have not been seeing the er – the - "
"Usual suspects," Lucas supplied. She gave him a smile of gratitude.
"Yes. This is not Occupy. They were a minority, no? Very noisy, much show, little effect. Now we have no resistance to police, no calls to media to make sure that they are there when things … play off. This is more … sophisticated, I think? We all know that people are angry and resentful, and I think Crisis Crusade is trying to use that resentment, but in a more - more subtle way. Clever. They are undermining people's trust and belief in the authorities and in their ability to cope."
"There isn't that much to undermine," Chen said. "I went home last weekend. Remember those evictions on the Wirral? Mum says people are still taking the mick over that."
Everyone nodded. A few weeks earlier, bailiffs had attempted to evict tenants as part of house repossessions. The process had been stopped not by violence but by the bailiffs politely being allowed access, the tenants leaving, and supporters then rushing in to seal up every available door and window with industrial strength glue. The hapless bailiffs had used their mobiles to call police, local residents had phoned the media, and the resulting police rescue had hit the national news headlines and then gone viral on the internet. No-one had much sympathy for either banks or bailiffs, mockery was a highly effective tool, and Lucas had laughed along with everyone else. Ros, he suspected from her stony expression, had not, but it wasn't she who responded.
"Yes, it is funny, of course." Khalida sounded worried, not indignant. "Here you can mock the government because your country is stable, and deep down you believe it will always be so, whatever happens. So you can mock and protest in safety because you still have trust in that, even when things are bad. But if you are living - " she looked across at Callum, "in any country where this trust is gone, no-one with enough authority any more to say no, now we stop, we need order and limits, then it is most definitely not so damned funny. It is fear, and violence. You have not seen this, but I have. It can happen anywhere – even here. And if it does, it is the weak, those who hope the defiance and all will make things better who suffer, because everyone turns on everyone else, and it just becomes devil take the hind leg."
"Hindmost." Ros spoke softly, without amusement, and Lucas realised that the atmosphere in the room had changed with Khalida's words. Ros gave the young Pakistani a silent nod and her gaze slowly ranged around the room.
"Anyone else?" For a moment no-one spoke. Then Callum said abruptly: "Yeah. All right. I still think you're exaggerating, but say you've got a point. A couple of bailiffs in a sticky situation and an EU delegation meeting its Waterloo don't mean revolution." It was a measure of the tension that nobody laughed, Lucas thought. Callum hesitated, but forged on. "I still don't see any reason for expecting Crisis Crusade to be rolling the tumbrils down Whitehall - unless there's a reason to fear them that we don't know about." He looked directly at Ros Myers. "Like the one that made you send the red-flash, Boss."
Callum was one of the rare officers who would challenge Ros without backing down. Lucas stiffened in anticipation, and Ros gave him a slight smile with a hint of melancholy about it. He understood. Whatever the news she was about to share with her colleagues now, it would surely alter their attitude to her forever.
"Yes, there is." She scrutinised each officer in turn. When she was absolutely sure five pairs of eyes were riveted on her, she began to speak.
oOoOoOo
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