Dead in the Water (42 page)

By midday, when there is still no word from Jeremy, Sara announces that they are going to have to do a little rejigging. The interview will be with Rachel on her own, although they would still like Jeremy to participate in the discussion that will now go out live.

Rachel’s interview itself is easier than she anticipated, although she is feeling let down and angry by Jeremy not turning up. She’s asked to state who she is, talk briefly about what she was doing in Venezuelan Amazonas, give a brief account of how she made the video. She’s disappointed they’re not really interested in José Dias. In the editing process they’ll intercut her contributions with edited ‘highlights’ from the video; and Sara assures her that she’ll get a chance to look at it before it goes out. The whole thing takes less than an hour to do, although when aired it’ll probably last no more than six minutes. They’re going to show about ninety seconds of Rachel’s video on tonight’s programme; but Sara wants to return to it next week.

“
Why not show more of it tonight?”

“
Not yet. We always keep something in reserve. Screening the material and the discussion is Part One. We have a golden rule. Never break the whole story. News is no different from drama. You’ve got to get the structure right. Narrative enigma. Withholding information is as important as releasing it.”

After they’ve recorded the interview Sara shakes her warmly by the hand.

“
So, what now?” asks Rachel.

“
You’re welcome to hang around here until this evening; but I fear that could be pretty deadly. I can arrange for a car to take you back to my place – or to your dad’s place, or whatever suits you. I’m afraid that I’m too busy to ––”

“
No, no, that’s fine. Can I see the extracts you’re going to show from the video?”

“
I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, Mark.”

“
Well?”

“
I went down to Security and there was a package for you, but they treated it as suspicious. There was no return address and no description of contents.”

“
What does that mean?”

“
They destroyed it.”

“
And they couldn’t tell me that themselves. Fuck.”

“
I’m sorry, Mark.”

“
No, no, no. Not your fault. I shouldn’t swear.” He doesn’t swear with Ba. Everywhere else, but not with Ba. Never mind. Just focus. There are still three video cards and Jeremy and Rachel are at the Beeb. Just focus.

He manages to complete his work on his briefing paper for Angela Walker, and he’s proud of it. He has argued for what he believes is right and he knows that it’s a damn good paper – rigorously well argued and written with passion and conviction. For the first time in nearly eighteen months he has taken an unequivocal position. The British government must take a lead, even if it means unilateral action. And in that frame of mind he returns a call to Sara Davis’s P. A. to say that he’s not been able to get through to Andrew Linden for the round table discussion on
Newsnight
. But if it’s going out live he can be there and take part himself..

He should have asked for a minder, should tell Angela when he sees her this afternoon, but fuck it, things have gone too far. If there are bridges to be burned, this is as good a moment as any.

Rachel and Sara Davis are in a dark BBC edit suite when they first hear about the Saint Benedict’s School bomb. The editor is working on the fine cut, intercutting between the interview and the video, which has been enhanced to improve focus and definition and reduce camera shake, whilst not reducing what she refers to as the ‘authentic feel of the thing’. Rachel bridles even more at this phrase than she did at ‘the story’, but keeps her irritation to herself. Sara and the editor have a minor disagreement about it: he would like to work the magic a bit more, whereas Sara thinks they have to retain something of the roughness of the original. Sara’s warmth and charm makes it easy for Rachel to like her, but she’s apprehensive about the way she’s already exerting authority over ‘the material’. They’re looking carefully at a short sequence in the video, when the editor turns round to ask Sara a question and stops in mid sentence. Five monitors in the corner of the room, each with sound muted, are showing what’s currently being broadcast on
News 24
and
BBC1
,
2
,
3
and
4
. Three of the screens have a message scrolling across the bottom of the picture:

On BBC1, a live newscast has replaced the scheduled programme. They turn up the sound. A car bomb has exploded outside a Primary School in Putney. A police spokeswoman is explaining why, for security reasons, they are not allowing news cameras at the scene. The desk telephone rings for Sara. She leaves the room hastily, muttering that she’ll be back.

After the police spokesman has finished his statement and refused to answer any further questions, the two presenters struggle. In the absence of hard news, the production team provide them with all manner of material that looks and sounds like the real thing: maps indicating the area where experts think the bomb went off; telephone conversations with informed analysts of contemporary terrorist behaviour; rerun footage from previous outrages; and interviews with people who claim to have witnessed the atrocity. But these accounts differ drastically. One witness says that a car parked outside Saint Benedict’s exploded as children were leaving at the end of school, killing children and parents; another that the car was driving by the school when it exploded and that it happened before the end of the school day; another that it was a van, not a car; and another that he didn’t hear an explosion at all.

Without turning away from the screen, the editor says to Rachel, “You know what the real news is here? The police are enforcing a news blackout. That’s the news. Nobody has a fucking clue what’s going on. But they’re bloody determined to make it look authentic.”

The first Mark hears about the incident is when he goes to get himself a cup of tea after finishing his briefing paper. In the canteen, the rumour mill has worked up a superheated head of steam. On the one hand there’s the theory that so many parents and children were killed by the bomb that the public are being protected from the full horror of the atrocity. Variations on this include the possibility that the bomb exploded accidentally, that there had been no attempt to kill children, that the bombers had been on their way to a very different kind of target. Another, that the vehicle had been parked between two four-by-fours, and that these, not the children, had been the targets. And then there’s the guy behind the counter who reckons that it’s all misinformation, that there hadn’t been a bomb at all, that the police shot dead another two innocent people who had the misfortune to have their vehicle break down. After gunning down the poor old codger in Hammersmith, they’re desperate to cover their tracks.

For himself, though he has no evidence for it, Mark reasons that if the bomb had been as horrific as some of this blather suggests, the police, even with the recent draconian powers that the government has introduced, could not have prevented some kind of images being broadcast: photos from a camera-phone or an aerial view of the school.

He takes a cup of tea back up for Barbara. She smiles and thanks him. His way of dealing with the Saint Benedict’s incident is to switch off from it and immerse himself in preparations for the discussions with the PM. Ten minutes later, soon after half three, he’s about to leave for the Commons, when there’s a telephone call from Herself. The meeting’s cancelled.

“
I’m sure you understand. Be at Chequers for half ten tomorrow morning. We’ll talk there. Most people aren’t arriving until midday. You and I are both well briefed as it is. In the meantime, I’ve asked Jay Porter to get this interview with your daughter pulled. I do not want to embarrass the Americans. We have to have them with us if we’re going to have any chance of getting global agreement on Carbon Resource Funding.”

“
The atrocities in the rain forest have nothing to do with the American government.”

“
That is not the way it’ll appear to Jo Public. And it’s not the way it’ll appear to the President. I agree with you that this stuff needs airing, Mark. But now is not the time.”

“
You do want me at the Summit?”

“
Of course I want you at the summit. I may not always act on your advice; but that does not mean that I am not interested in hearing it.”

“
Prime Minister…” but she’s already ended the call.

How the fuck did she know about the interview with Rachel?

Sara is away for nearly an hour. When she finally returns, her sense of what has happened is no more enlightening than the picture they’ve been getting from the television. Then she drops the bombshell. She was determined to stick with the Amazonas story, but she’s been overruled. It’s postponed until Monday. “I was furious. I told them that it’s part of the same story; that running it alongside a piece on the Saint Benedict’s incident is the ideal way of opening up the issues.”

“
Was it a bomb?” asks Rachel.

“
I have no idea. And I’m not getting answers. Ultimately, I have to do what they tell me. I don’t have a choice here. I’m sorry. We’ll run it on Monday.”

“
Who’s ‘they’?” asks Rachel. Sara looks irritated by the question, and shrugs, mumbling something under her breath about structures of power in the BBC being very complex.

“
But,” Sara insists, “come Monday, we have an excellent programme; and we can start to ask some very difficult questions. I think it’s better like that. Stuff dies in the Friday slot. People who watch every other night of the week are out on Friday. Monday is prime time, believe me.” It may well be prime time; but she has to get through the weekend, and there are people out there who would rather she didn’t. And she is beginning to get seriously worried about Jeremy.

“
I’m really sorry about this,” says Sara. “But I do think it’s for the best in the long run. Look, I’m going to be very busy now, and I’m going to have to take my leave of you.”

“
You said you could arrange a car to take me to where I’m staying.”

“
Yes… Yes…. ” Sara sounds irritated. “Where are you going to be on Monday afternoon?” Good question. “I know you don’t want us to contact you on your mobile.”

“
I’ll ring.”

“
You have my number?” Yes, she does.

She fondly imagined that Sara would arrange for her to be taken back to her dad’s in one of the BBC’s own cars; but a cab company has a contract with the Beeb.

As afternoon fades to early evening, more variations of the Saint Benedict’s story seep out. One states that over fifty children have been killed by a massive car bomb; another that at the latest count thirty four children have been killed when a female suicide bomber, who infiltrated a group of parents and children, set off her explosives; another that there was no bomb, but that police marksmen shot two potential suicide bombers.

By about six o’ clock a clearer picture of what actually happened outside the school is beginning to emerge. In the canteen at Cowley Street a wall-mounted television is tuned to
News 24
. Mark has taken a break, although there are no canteen staff on duty now and he has to get a tea and a packet of biscuits from vending machines. The police have lifted their news blackout, and a Commissioner reads a statement acknowledging that many people have been caused great anxiety as a result of the news blackout, but insists that allowing rumours to feed on rumours was a strategic decision in their hunt for the organisers behind the terrorists’ campaign. Although potentially horrific, the incident has provided them with a breakthrough in their hunt for the
Angels of Light
. The bulletin shows a map of the area around Saint Benedict’s marking the exact spot outside the school where the battered old yellow VW van was parked. Acting on a tip-off, members of the anti-terrorist squad had for several days been tracking the bombers, both of whom were ‘known suspects’. Using computer graphics and the map, the Commissioner shows how the van was deliberately parked outside the school between a Range Rover and a Jeep Grand Cherokee. The unmarked police car, which had been tailing the van, parked on the other side of the road; and immediately afterwards smoke was seen coming from inside the van. Both suspects jumped out of the van and, each wearing a large rucksack, ran towards the school gates, where a group of parents and pre-school children were waiting. By now an alert teacher at the school had stopped children leaving the school to meet their parents at the gates. Police marksmen then shot the two terrorists from long range, both of whom died instantly. They very much regret that in the shooting three young children were seriously wounded – a five year old boy and two four-year-old girls, one of whom is now critically ill in hospital. The vehicle was immediately cordoned off and the area evacuated. Investigations are continuing but had the explosives found in the rucksacks and the van detonated as intended, the death toll would have been horrific. The only doubt the Commissioner allows is that they don’t yet know what went wrong from the bombers point of view: whether the van was intended to blow up once the emergency services had arrived, and why it failed to explode once the detonators had gone off. He is certain, however, that this is the first case in Britain of an attempted suicide bombing motivated by anything other than Islamic fundamentalism.