Whispers of betrayal

SEVEN

A day of broken skies and clouds like sheets of crumpled kitchen towel. Mary's mood precisely matched the weather. She sat along with the others on top of an open-deck sightseeing bus as it crawled along Regent Street, doing battle with the traffic. Condensation clung to the plastic seats and there was the constant vague tang of diesel fuel in the air. Around them sat a scattering of Japanese tourists. An unlikely meeting place, perhaps, but good for security. Amadeus had reasoned that the surroundings would make anyone trying to observe them stand out 'like crap in a bowl of custard', and the constant rumble of London made it impossible for them to be overheard.

The bus continued to pass slowly in front of the fine Nash buildings that lined the crescent of Regent Street, and Mary's eyes snagged upon those of a man sitting at a first-floor window. He had the sort of sad, distant-world expression that suggested he might be thinking of jumping, but for the fact that the window was, after all, only on the first floor and constructed of plate glass. Behind him the wine bar, of which he was almost certainly the proprietor, stood empty. His eyes seemed exhausted but, as he caught Mary's glance, he offered her a small wave with plump fingers. Yet the smile was forced. He raised his eyes to heaven, perhaps in hope of discovering salvation, but found only used kitchen towels, and the smile died. Another soon-to-be victim of the downturn.

On the seats around Mary, the morning newspapers were caught by the breeze and began to flap in imitation of dying swans. Their contents were all the same. Water. Suddenly she and the others were famous, or at least notorious. The front pages were filled with Bendall's condemnation of them as hooligans and eco-terrorists. 'PM Slams Eco-Yobs.' 'Bendall Batters Swampies.' And so forth.

Perhaps, deep inside, Amadeus and his band had hoped that one blow would be enough, that their opponent would acknowledge his error and immediately submit. But Clausewitz had known better. War is never an isolated act, he had written. Victory never comes gift-wrapped. Instead of offering the apology they had demanded, Bendall had piled insult upon indignity, and made it even worse.

'So?'

Payne put the question they all carried in their frowns.

'Fine bunch of crotchkickers we turned out to be. Given Brother Bendall a better press than he's had for months. Look at it all.' The Guardsman picked up the pink pages of his Financial Times. 'Still, could've been worse. Hell, we could be the water companies.' He adjusted his rimless reading glasses and seemed almost to smile. 'Getting hammered, they are.'

'But not quite the target we had in mind,' McKenzie added impatiently, failing to see the humour.

'And what really stinks' – Scully threw his edition of the Express contemptuously to one side – 'is all this horseshit about us being hooligans and terrorists. I know Bendall's a lying bastard, but why's he lying about us?'

Amadeus examined Scully. How much better he looked for a few days' fodder. Hair neatly trimmed, hiding the streaks of grey, and standing several inches taller in his new clothes. Almost the man Amadeus once knew.

'I sent him a letter. Skulls. Hand delivered. Made it clear enough that this was a military operation, and what we were about. But…' A moment's silence, a slow, defiant shake of the head. 'Who knows what goes on in his warped mind?'

'Perhaps that's it. Mind games,' Payne offered.

'What is?'

'What Bendall's doing. Calling us names. Insulting us.' He waved at the newspapers. 'He's playing mind games. He knows it's a military operation that could only have been planned by officers Payne paused for thought, too late, followed by a moment of drowning as he remembered the presence of Scully. 'Officers… and senior NCOs,' Payne added hurriedly, trying to extricate himself. He shouldn't have bothered. 'Anyway, Bendall knows that the last thing we would want is to be thrown in the same barrel as sodding Swampies. So he wants to demean us. To provoke us so seriously that either we walk away in disgust

'Nail my balls to the top of Big Ben first,' Scully snapped.

'… or we show our hand a little too obviously. He hasn't the slightest idea who we are, so he's goading us. Trying to flush us out into the open.'

'But why should he encourage us to do more?' Mary pressed, clearly unconvinced.

'Why the hell not?' Payne retorted. 'We've probably just handed him an extra five points in the opinion polls. At this rate he'd be happy to keep us in business until Christmas. As far as he's concerned, yesterday was Christmas.' He paused, sucking at his lower lip. 'Which may be one good reason for pulling out now. While we're still

'Ahead?'

'Alive. Actually I was thinking "alive".'

McKenzie sniffed, a gesture that might have been an indication of the damp atmosphere rather than of disdain, but only if you didn't know the man. 'Is that what ye want? To pull down our colours?'

'We have to consider that option, Andy. Decide what the hell we're doing here.'

'Getting our own back. Getting the Government to change its mind.'

'And what have we achieved? Made bloody Bendall all the stronger.' Payne wrinkled his nose in disgust. The aroma of roasting coffee from somewhere at street level surrounded them for a few tantalizing moments, before it was swamped by the stench of diesel and drying paint. 'Face it, this is a fuck-up.'

The Engineer's cheeks flushed, as though Payne had slapped him. 'So you do want away, then?'

There was the slightest pause before Payne responded, a hesitation that spoke all too loudly. 'What I want to know is what the hell we're supposed to do next.'

It was clear that things had changed between them, between them all, and inevitably their eyes began to settle upon Amadeus. He offered no reply, seemed distracted.

'Peter?' McKenzie pressed. First names. No ranks, not in public. Use a military rank in a pub in South Armagh and your life expectancy might be measured in minutes.

When at last Amadeus responded, softly, he seemed not to want to join in their concerns, almost as if he wanted to escape entirely from the problem. 'I was never much of a reader, Andy. How about you?'

The Scotsman seemed startled. 'Why, Penthouse, Hustler. On a quiet evening maybe a few bomb-disposal manuals

'What about Livy? Ever read him at the Academy?'

'No' exactly from cover to cover.'

'It's coming back to me. I seem to remember you spent most of your spare time chasing the commandant's daughters. Although, if I recollect properly, neither of 'em ran too far.'

McKenzie's tongue passed briefly across his lips as he tasted sweet memories, but he wasn't to be deflected. It was a characteristic of his, refusing to be deflected from his target, even while under heavy fire. That's why he'd been mentioned in despatches in Bosnia. Twice. 'I believe we were discussing your chum Livy.'

'So we were. Roman historian. Worth struggling with. He wrote about Hannibal. You remember? The guy who wanted to take his elephants on tour to Italy?'

'Seem to remember one o' the commandant's daughters made a wee mention o' the matter. Said I looked like Hannibal in my uniform, and reminded her of an elephant when I took it off.'

'Must've had something to do with your wrinkled arse,' Mary suggested, attempting to sound disdainful, but McKenzie simply smiled.

'Hannibal wanted to invade Italy,' Amadeus continued, 'but couldn't figure out how – until he had a dream. Now the dream told him to march his elephants over the Alps. Most people thought this wasn't so much a dream as an extended nightmare, but Hannibal had something of the Para in him.'

'He was clinically mad, you mean?'

'I was thinking more stubborn. Bloody stubborn. There was something else, too, because the dream also told him that, once he'd started, he could never stop. That he mustn't even look back. But, as I said, he was a Para…'

'Too thick to understand an order, let alone obey it.'

'Obstinate. Unable to resist temptation and a challenge. So he turned to look behind him and saw this huge set of teeth ready to swallow him.'

'Must remind you of your nights with the general's daughters, Andy,' Mary tried again.

'Some o' them, maybe,' McKenzie replied, staring directly into her eyes. Inside he was laughing at her. And why not? If you played with bombs, when every day you risked having your brains blown out through your backside, you were entitled to laugh a little. 'But since it's clear that my brains are located in an entirely different part of my anatomy to the rest o' you, could someone give me just the smallest wee hint where the hell Livy enters into all this?'

'Something to do with not stopping, I guess,' Scully offered.

'Correct. Yesterday was only Day One. We daren't look back, not now. Not unless my balls are to join yours dangling from Big Ben.'

'None of us were trained to run, Peter,' McKenzie added, almost as a challenge to them all.

Payne spoke next, his tone no longer aggressive. 'So the next step is… what?'

Before Amadeus could answer, any further attempt at conversation was drowned by an eruption of protest from all sides. While they had been talking, the bus had been inching forward ever more slowly, like a boat rowing through thick weed, until any trace of progress had disappeared and it had come to a full stop. It could advance no further, yet neither could it retreat, and it was blocking one of the main escape routes from Piccadilly Circus. Exasperated drivers in other vehicles began to push forward, trying to squeeze round the obstruction, but every yard they gained succeeded only in strangling the other escape routes until everything began to choke. The Circus was dying, and the horns of a hundred vehicles wailed in dismay.

'This is Hell!' Payne barked, resentful.

'No, no,' Amadeus roared above the clamour, suddenly exhilarated. His eyes had grown several watts brighter as they cast around the scenes of disorder. 'Can't you see? This is like Hannibal's dream! London is talking to us.'

'And telling us what?'

'That we should give Mr Bendall precisely what he wants.'

'Which is?'

'An opportunity to get to know us a damn sight better.'

He drew them into a huddle around him, and as they bent their heads he began gesticulating forcefully, one hand chopping repeatedly across the palm of the other as he made his points. It was several minutes before Amadeus straightened his back. The Circus was still blocked, the chaos continuing to grow. A few feet away, the statue of Eros rose disdainfully above it all.

'By the time we're finished with Mr Bendall, he'll wish he had wings to fly away,' Amadeus concluded.

'Balls of lead, too,' Scully added.

'Are we all agreed, then?' He looked around at faces filled with renewed expectation. 'Good. Let's go round up an elephant.'

– =OO=OOO=OO-= They prepare to depart. Payne picks up his copy of the Financial Times and heads for the stairs. When he reaches them he pauses, glancing back at Mary. 'Fancy a spot of lunch? Terrific little Italian bistro just around the corner. Superb linguini…'

'Sorry, can't,' she replies in a flat tone. His gaze is a little too obvious. Something instinctive, feminine, tells her she doesn't much like him. Anyway, she's already agreed to have lunch with McKenzie.

Payne shrugs, his smile suggesting it's a matter of considerable indifference to him, and disappears.

They make their way off the bus, one by one, Scully the last to leave with Amadeus. The RSM scratches away at a stubborn tuft of grey stubble that has survived beneath his left ear. Perhaps he isn't yet back into the routine of shaving every morning. Or perhaps nowadays he simply misses little pieces of the picture.

'You look troubled, Andrew.'

The scratching stops abruptly. 'Can't help thinking about bloody Hannibal, sir.'

'What about bloody Hannibal?'

Furrows stretch across Scully's brow. 'You know, after the elephants and the Alps. Didn't they end up kebabbing the bastard?'

– =OO=OOO=OO-= Following his encounter the previous day with the Prime Ministerial lash, it might have been understandable if Goodfellowe had felt a little sorry for himself. He didn't. He was surprised to discover that he saw it not so much as a humiliation as a rite of passage, like some Tuareg initiation ritual designed to summon up the blood before setting out on a lion hunt or mounting a raid on the slaver caravans. The scars were necessary, even welcome, because they would remind him. No more wandering distractedly into the Chamber with only half a mind on the game, no more flippant gestures aimed at Ministers in the guise of 'being helpful', no more succumbing to the temptation to throw bricks into the pond for the simple pleasure of watching everyone getting soaked. He wished once more to be part of the tribe, to come in from the shadows and share the warmth of the campfire. He couldn't achieve this by force of arms, he had to be invited, so he was decided. Whatever it took.

However, much to his discomfort, this was not the line taken by Sam when she telephoned him early at his apartment. He was preparing his diet herbs, a broth of strange substances that smelt so foul it was little wonder it persuaded the appetite to run away and hide.

'I just had to call, Daddy. You were wonderful. Standing up for us like that. Darren and I – he's really become your biggest fan – we thought you were magnificent. We saw it on the late night news and I'm so sorry about what I said the other day.' The words tumbled out breathlessly and from the heart. 'Say you'll forgive me.'

She was under a considerable misapprehension, of course, but Goodfellowe was in no mood to enlighten her. What she had seen and heard was not Goodfellowe doing battle in defence of his environmental principles but the Prime Minister attacking him for what Bendall, and now Sam, assumed them to be. His new-found hero status was much exaggerated. Still, better a live, tick-infested sheep than a slab of frozen lamb.

'You're beautiful and I'm glad you called.' He stirred the sense-numbing herbal gruel that bubbled in the pot in front of him. The steam curled up slowly, in a mood of malevolence, as though it were looking for someone to strangle.

'You do forgive me, don't you?'

The steam swirled closer to him, settling on his exposed skin and making the hair on his forearm prickle. He wondered whether the concoction was also a depilatory if applied externally. Or maybe they'd just given him the wrong bag of herbs.

'Course I do, silly.' He laughed, then hesitated. 'Er, for what?'

'For ever suggesting that you were…' The words melted in embarrassment.

'The shiny bit on Jonathan Bendall's trousers?' He laughed again. 'I really must send you a Dictionary of Insults. Your horizons need broadening.'

'Oh, Daddy,' she blurted.

He paused to take maximum advantage of her discomfort, squeezing the last drop of credit for his case. 'I still want to be a Minister, Sam. You must realize that. Work from the inside.' He swirled the spoon around the bubbling liquid, sending a fresh fog of vapours onto the attack. They caught his throat, he could say no more.

'I know I can trust you.'

He wasn't going to argue, for soon he would need all her support, and then some. For walking hand-in-hand with ambition went desire. His desire was simple. Elizabeth. To lie between her legs so long that she would begin to tremble and cry for him to stop, then to march to the House and do the same to the Opposition. These things he wanted. Together. He wanted once again to be a Minister, and once more to be married.

To Elizabeth.

Which meant setting aside poor, innocent, mind-broken Elinor, and for that he would need all the love and forgiveness Sam could possibly give him.

He felt dampness on his cheek. Damned steam.

– =OO=OOO=OO-= When it came to matters of the media, Jonathan Bendall was a wholehearted disciple of the Art of Anticipation. He knew that of all the conflicts made by man, that between Prime Minister and Political Journalist was the most difficult to avoid. Almost a law of the jungle, ordained by the gods of wrath. You cannot have both harmony and two people in the same room who think they know all the answers. So in order to delay the inevitable onset of verbal violence, Bendall often indulged in anticipation.

Which is otherwise known as keeping the bastards waiting.

It was Bendall's firmly held view that the Fourth Estate was populated by two kinds of creature. The first were those exotic birds who nested on top of the many ivory columns that had been erected around the estate. These 'columnist' birds were unlike the other creatures of the colony, for they were never forced to forage for themselves. Their food was laid on for them, usually in vast quantities, in return for which they were supposed to act as lookouts for the estate, to give advance warning of impending peril or inescapable doom. However, bred into their genes was a fundamental flaw, for these were birds of exceptionally colourful plumage and typically would spend their days (and particularly their feeding times) preening themselves and competing to adopt ever more outlandish poses. So involved would they become in their own vanities that frequently they would neglect their duties, burying their heads so deep within their feathers that most of them, in truth, could hear nothing but the lunch bell and would have missed the arrival of Armageddon. At the very last moment they would be overcome by panic and would attempt to justify themselves by squawking in the most outrageous fashion. As a result, no one paid them the slightest attention.

The other creatures of the Estate all had an unmistakably canine quality. Some developed into intrepid hunters who would patiently and courageously track down their quarry, no matter what its size. Others proved to be excellent guard dogs, even managing on occasion to rouse the attentions of the columnist birds on their lofty perches. But the majority, it must be said, were scavengers, animals who hunted in packs and preyed on the weak, the sort of creatures who spent much of their time with their noses firmly stuck up each other's arse. They had not a single redeeming quality, but such were their numbers that they were feared, for they brought terror to public servants and piled torment upon princes. They could even reduce princesses to tears. Anyone was potential quarry, except their own. Some base instinct manifested itself within the pack and drew them to the vulnerable which, once bloodied, would be attacked time and again until it had been torn to pieces.

This was where the Art of Anticipation came into its own. Bendall knew that the sight of food can throw dogs into a feeding frenzy, a raw, primitive call of the wild that has no limits and allows no mercy, yet in anticipation of that food, a dog will slaver and come quickly to heel. So it was Bendall's custom to keep the media in a state of constant anticipation, telling them what they were going to get, and when. In the meantime he would watch them sit up and drool. (He also relied heavily on the principle of idleness, which states that most dogs will eat almost anything so long as they don't have to go looking for it.)

Out of this grew the idea for what came to be known, in the first instance, as the Surf Summit.

It seemed inspired. Bendall would travel or 'surf around Europe, meeting separately with seven other heads of government in a single day – a day that would, in the portentous words of the press briefing, 'shake up the politics of indifference and kick-start the European economies out of recession.' Well, up to a point, Lord Copper. That sort of schedule allowed for no more than forty minutes for each meeting, barely enough time for handshakes and photo-calls. But if modern statesmanship was all about imagery, then those images would be superb. A politician on the move, shoving aside apathy through sheer force of character, his thinning hair tussling in the wind as he ran down stairs, stepped off trains and planes and waved to the carefully prepared camera positions. Look up, young man, look up! And let the whole world follow your gaze, lest they see the nature of what it is you're standing in…

So the Surf Summit was born, although one early problem emerged. The French President was recuperating from a reported illness at his holiday home near Porto-Vecchio in Corsica. It seemed so much better for his health than Paris, where the streets were plagued with violent protests by impoverished farmers and over-indulged students. He had no intention of returning anywhere near the French capital until either the barricades had been swept from the streets or his hapless Prime Minister swept from office, he didn't much care which. Yet either eventuality was likely to take some considerable while, and in the meantime the emphasis was on caution – and clean hands. In the circumstances, illness seemed a far better option. The most he would agree to was a video link-up, but at least it was pictures. It would suffice.

Preparations were made, then remade, and at last the day had arrived. As a confident new sun crept across the rooftops of Whitehall and set fire to the gilding on top of the Victoria Tower, Bendall's private secretary checked the schedule one final time. It had been honed by experts and polished by repeated examination until it shone.

At eight a.m., with breakfast television and radio drawing their largest audiences, Bendall would greet the Irish Prime Minister on the steps of Downing Street. The press communique had been agreed well in advance; they only had to sign. They would even have time to discuss the merits of remarriage, a shared interest.

At a quarter to nine Bendall would make the three-minute ride in armoured convoy to Leicester Square where, after a walkabout of precisely ninety seconds, he and the assembled press corps would occupy one of the picture halls of the Moviemax cinema, at which point Monsieur le President would appear many times life size on the screen behind him. Stunning. (It was mere coincidence, of course, that the Moviemax was owned by a close friend of Bendall, who was also a considerable contributor to party funds and soon to be included very publicly in the Honours List. Much less publicly, he would then be touched for a contribution to match the size of the enormous publicity he was pulling from the summit. But that was for the future.)

For today, Bendall would hurry out of the cinema, coat tails flying, to be greeted by a crowd of well-wishers. It was certain that the crowd would consist of well-wishers since every single one of them had been hand-picked and shipped in by party headquarters. Nothing was to be left to chance.

He knew where the cameras would be positioned. He knew which part of the future to gaze at, forty-five degrees, no higher, otherwise his neck would begin to look scraggy, then, with a theatrical sweep of his arm, he would leave them all behind as he made the six-minute dash to the international terminal at Waterloo, where he would be met by the Swedish Prime Minister, Kristen Svensson. A railway station in south London might seem an unlikely location for an Anglo-Swedish summit but there was no time for Bendall to get to Stockholm. Anyway, the Swede was delighted to cooperate. She and Bendall had always hit it off, their public relationship full of clinches and clutches to the point that some suggested it could only be built on a private and much more intimate relationship. Disgraceful suggestion, of course, but it gave him instant sex appeal, made him a real lad, while she'd made it onto the front cover of Private Eye almost as often as Prince Edward.

So, after more synchronized smiling it would be a quick wave through the window of the Eurostar on its way to Brussels. And still only ten-fifteen!

At least, that's what the schedule called for, but as any old soldier will tell you, it's the best-laid plans that roll over and take the duvet with them.

– =OO=OOO=OO-= Amadeus could not know precisely when Bendall would be surfing around London, or which route he would take. There are, for instance, seven entrances into Leicester Square and a dozen near-direct routes to it from Downing Street. However, the Art of Anticipation had required that the summit story be sold and resold countless times before it took place. Inevitably, and in spite of security considerations, the individual parts of the programme had begun to float into view like pieces of an iceberg fragmenting in the thaw. It was enough.

Amadeus had chosen Trafalgar Square in part because it was a celebration of a great British military triumph. He felt good about great British military triumphs, and felt nothing but contempt for those who kept apologizing for the past. OK, so it was inevitable that the British flag couldn't fly for ever above an empire that had spanned half the globe, but why were the British required to get down on their knees every time it was lowered? Take Nelson. No, not Mandela, our one. There was some half-brained modern theory being peddled that he wasn't blind, that he'd simply put on the eyepatch in an attempt to screw a bigger pension from the Admiralty. Critics! Bed-wetters and pillow-biters, the lot. Nelson, by contrast, even with one arm and a dodgy squint, had still been able to blow the French navy to smithereens, even while maintaining a firm grip on Emma Hamilton. A real man.

In those days they had valued their heroes. They'd given Nelson one of London's greatest squares, complete with fountains, ceremonial lions, statues of bootless kings, and even for many years the capital's tiniest police station (in its south-east corner, hollowed out within one of the lamp pillars).

Oh, but times change. Amadeus wondered what the modern world might erect for him. Never a statue. A gallows, maybe.

Trafalgar Square is more than a mere celebration of victory, it is also the heart that pumps life through the entire traffic system of central London. From it radiate the great arteries of Pall Mall, Regent Street, Charing Cross Road, the Strand, Northumberland Avenue, Whitehall itself, and that avenue of plane trees called the Mall which points like an arrow directly at Buckingham Palace. The beating of this vast heart is controlled by a complicated system of traffic lights, in effect an enormous electronic pacemaker which keeps London alive. The controls for the pacemaker are located on an island in the square, at the point where it is joined by Northumberland Avenue, just beneath where King Charles gazes down Whitehall from his horse. The controls are enclosed in five metal-clad boxes, about four feet high, arranged in a neat row.

From Northumberland Avenue these boxes look like five skittles standing at the end of a gigantic bowling alley. At least, they do if you're trying to blow away Trafalgar Square.

– =OO=OOO=OO-= Modern man is sometimes his own worst enemy, too clever by half. He builds cities that grow ever more sophisticated – and as a result, more vulnerable. Systems become interdependent and interlocking – what in fashionable terminology is known as 'joined-up living'. It has one huge fault. It looks pretty, but spit across the right terminal and all the lights go out, all the telephones go haywire and you can't even play the Lottery.

Trafalgar Square is so easy to blow away. Sam and her friends had done precisely that, for a while, with nothing more malicious than a couple of hundred bicycle pumps. The same effect could have been achieved with far fewer hands, simply by forcing open the control boxes to the traffic lights – they are not substantial – and short-circuiting the wires or disabling the power supply. A cigarette lighter held across the wires to melt the insulation, then a quick twist to bring the bared wires together, perhaps. But there were five boxes, and timing was everything.

In the wide open spaces of Trafalgar Square there was no cover, nothing to hide behind, nothing to distract the watching eyes. It had to be achieved as quickly as possible.

So they chose the bowling alley approach, straight up Northumberland Avenue, with a bright yellow JCB earth mover as the bowling ball.

– =OO=OOO=OO-= 'Hannibal report ready, over.'

Hannibal. Mary's idea. Seems to sum it up rather well. A JCB for an elephant.

'Hannibal ready, over.'

The JCB is approaching, queuing patiently in the traffic, Amadeus at the wheel, dressed in luminous workman's jacket. Mary is on lookout, mounted on a Suzuki motorcycle, loitering inconspicuously by the central pavement of the Square. She is wearing a helmet, he a hard hat, both have goggles. No chance of being recognized, no matter how many times the CCTV video will be replayed. They also wear short-range walkie-talkies. Forty pounds off the shelf from Tandy's, and modified in under five minutes by Mary to provide a secure frequency. Nothing complicated, a screwdriver job.

The lights change, the heart pumps, the traffic flows. The red buses and delivery trucks and taxis edge forward, all doing their own thing. No one pays much attention to the lemon-coloured JCB in their midst, nudging alongside them, coughing a small cloud of half-burnt fuel.

She takes a last look round, and a deep, lung-stretching breath. Keep the voice down, don't let the anxiety show. Then: 'Stand by – Stand by – Stand by! Hannibal is go!'

'We are go,' Amadeus breathes into his lapel mike. With a slip of the clutch, the earth-mover skips forward.

– =OO=OOO=OO-= At the same moment Scully and Payne, a few hundred yards away in Piccadilly Circus, are levering open the first of three control boxes. The doors to the boxes have been loosened under cover of darkness and swirling crowds the night before, and now it's the task of only moments to complete the job with a crowbar. They, too, are hidden beneath hard hats and protective jackets. Those who bother to take any notice assume they are official workmen, perhaps cleaning off the thick layers of fly postings.

– =OO=OOO=OO-= Amadeus has lowered the mechanical grab while waiting at the traffic lights. He now has a battering ram. A bit like cleaning up in Bosnia.

He'd been leading a convoy of ambulances and food trucks, trying to get through to the isolated communities of Muslims near Srebrenica that were being slowly sliced to pieces by the Serbs. Or had they been Croats? Couldn't remember any more. What he did remember was the burning barricade of trams and old tractors they'd managed to drag across the narrow highway. Everything covered in thick, foul-tasting smoke that scoured the throat. Sniper fire ringing off the metalwork of the Warrior. They'd already got his corporal, a 7.62mm bullet through his groin that meant, as the surgeons told him later, he'd never need a vasectomy. Hell, but wasn't that the price of humanitarian aid? The convoy had to get through. So the Muslims, or Croats, or Serbs, could live to fight another day.

The JCB slows fractionally as it approaches the kerb. Don't hit it too hard, you'll lose control. A taxi horn blares in protest as the JCB swerves to get into position – Move! I'm bigger than you are, and in even more of a hurry… – but there is little danger of a collision. Everyone knows that JCBs are driven by mad Irish Micks. You keep your distance. Amadeus moves on. The slightest hesitation – Abort? Abort? Abort? – as the JCB clambers up the kerb. A dab of the clutch. A shove on the accelerator. Another belch of diesel smoke.

Other vehicles are beginning to slow now. A twitch on the wheel – Almost…! – and Amadeus is lined up exactly as he wants.

The first box is dead centre, the grab at precisely the right height. Like a knife about to hack through a soft-boiled egg.

– =OO=OOO=OO-= They are forced to choose a different approach to screw up the lights at Piccadilly Circus. The control boxes are scattered at different points around the Circus, and mostly tucked away behind metal crowd control barriers. Impossible to eliminate quickly with a JCB. This one has to be a hand job. So it's a quick drenching of the internal wiring with battery acid, then a sprint across the road to the next.

Not all the control points are going to be taken out, they have decided, three will be enough. For if Trafalgar Square is the heart of London's traffic, Piccadilly Circus is its prostate, and chaos spreads like cancer.

– =OO=OOO=OO-= The first box in the Square goes down with a cry of strangled metal and a whoop of joy. In the fraction of a second before the power cable snaps, the wiring suffers a violent short-circuit and throws up a cloud of acrid smoke. But already this box has clattered into the next. They are, after all, designed to crumple on impact in the event of an accident. One after the other the skittles topple, their cries of complaint growing ever more fierce as the grab slices into them and they fall beneath the wheels. At the fourth box, Amadeus is forced to back up a couple of feet in order to regain momentum. Then it's gone, and the fifth, too.

Trafalgar Square has lost its central nervous system, and London its heart.

– =OO=OOO=OO-= Mrs Annabelle Whapshot from Wandsworth was able to tell the police first-hand some of what followed. She'd been making her way to Selfridges in Oxford Street before going for lunch with friends at Le Palais du Jardin in Covent Garden. Normally she would have taken the Underground, but she had begun to suspect her husband, an advertising executive, of having an affair with his secretary. As a result she had resolved upon a little shopping therapy. No way would she get all those parcels onto the Tube, so she'd taken the car and was driving around Trafalgar Square oblivious to the confusion that was already beginning to erupt when, as she later related in the colourful style of a former amateur dramatist, it seemed as though an enormous yellow dragon had jumped out in front of her, coming to an abrupt halt, blocking the road, belching smoke and fire, like something out of an episode of Power Rangers (an effect greatly enhanced by a disembowelled power cable that was smouldering fiercely beneath one of the JCB's wheels).

At this point a taxi rammed into the back of Mrs Whapshot's car causing extensive damage, a fact that gave her relatively little annoyance since the car was her husband's, his favourite Porsche Boxter. She'd been trying to find the courage to trash it for weeks.

Mrs Whapshot's description of what happened next was fragmentary, since she was suffering from the effects of minor whiplash and was able to add very little to what the police could determine from the surveillance cameras. She told them that the man who suddenly appeared in front of her was wrapped up like the invisible man. She could tell nothing more of him behind the goggles, scarf and hard hat, except that he was smiling at her. She suspected he might have crystal blue eyes but, as she freely admitted to the police inspector, that may have been only feminine instinct and a little wishful thinking. At this point a motorcycle appeared, onto which he jumped and rapidly disappeared, but not before he had offered her the crispest of military salutes. Not an American salute, like John Wayne, all soft and sloppy, but crisp, longest-way-up, shortest-route-down, entirely British. Like Alec Guinness in that film about the bridge. And all less than fifty seconds since he had entered the Square.

– =OO=OOO=OO-= An ambitious stone's throw away, beneath the shadow of Eros's wings, a similar story was being enacted. The CCTV surveillance was more intensive here, a consequence of the long history of vandalism inflicted upon the famous statue, but their greater number did nothing to improve the quality. They saw little more than two men, identities smothered in hats and dark glasses, running like hares between the control boxes. An average of eight seconds in front of each.

Then off into Glasshouse Street, which leads directly into the heart of Soho, with its maze of alleyways. From time to time it seems as if the whole of London hides within Soho's clubs and clip joints and exotic watering holes. It's a place to hide an army, let alone two men.

Payne and McKenzie disappeared down Glasshouse Street and into the warren of back doubles that lay beyond, laughing even as they ran. They were followed at a discreet distance by the slow-footed Scully who, like Mary, had been acting as lookout astride another motorcycle.

It was over for them, although for Bendall, the affair was just beginning.

– =OO=OOO=OO-= Pity poor Bendall.

The Prime Minister emerged from the Moviemax just as Amadeus and his JCB were bouncing into Trafalgar Square. He didn't know it yet, but already his day was shot to hell.

When Amadeus slammed on the brakes of the JCB and ripped out the ignition, he also ripped out the heart of the capital. In the minutes that followed, paralysis began to spread and overwhelm its other parts. Major traffic intersections slowed, stiffened, then died. Oxford Circus. Hyde Park Corner. Tottenham Court Road. Frustrated traffic wardens were soon raising their hands in surrender. As the paralysis reached the Aldwych and Parliament Square, it turned south and crossed the river. Soon Waterloo surrendered. The Swedish Prime Minister might as well have been waiting for Godot.

It didn't take long before Bendall knew something was amiss. There were two routes to Waterloo from Leicester Square, one across Waterloo Bridge, the other across the bridge at Westminster. His Special Branch officer McGivens – poor, much abused McGivens – had chosen to use Westminster Bridge since this route offered more avenues of escape, more alternatives in case of slow traffic. But the traffic hadn't slowed, it had rolled over and died. As the car tried to skirt Trafalgar Square they discovered that rigor mortis had set in. Even though McGivens had jumped out and was hammering on the windows of the cars that pressed in on either side, he only succeeded in carving a path a few feet further into the graveyard. And they could no longer turn back.

For five minutes the car didn't budge. The schedule allowed for a maximum delay of twenty. Bendall sat behind the inch-thick windows of the armoured Daimler and fretted.

Another five minutes passed.

Then he shouted at McGivens.

At this point, defying all McGivens's frantic protestations, he jumped out of the car to see for himself. Hoping to clear a path, like Moses. It made no difference, of course. Not even standing in the middle of Trafalgar Square, waving his arms in all directions and screaming his head off made any difference. He could have all the alternative routes in the world, but nothing was going to move, not anywhere, not for hours.

Bendall might have taken the Underground to Waterloo, but as Trafalgar Square began to die all nearby stations were closed as a routine security precaution. He might even have walked; it would have taken him no more than forty minutes. Some of the day might have been saved. Perhaps the Swedish Prime Minister might have been persuaded to accompany him on the Eurostar to Brussels, enabling them to make up a little of the lost time, even to start satisfying rumours that they had joined the Chunnel Club. But as soon as Bendall was out of the car he realized the news cameras that should have been capturing his triumph were, instead, recording his humiliation. By noon the whole world would be pissing on his day.

The Art of Anticipation only works if you can deliver what you have so lavishly promised. And he couldn't.

So he didn't walk to Waterloo. Instead he stomped the four hundred yards back home to Downing Street.