Afterlight (10 page)

Adam crossed the plaza towards them, grinding his teeth with frustration and debating whether to give Danny Walfield a mouthful for letting the lads down tools when they were supposed to be getting a wriggle on and erecting a secure barricade across the front of the plaza. As he stepped through the tight knot of men he saw Bushey holding a small portable TV aloft, intently listening, his RAF-blue beret clasped tightly in one hand.

‘PM’s just coming on,’ he explained to his CO.

The men wanted to hear what was to be announced. For that matter, so did Adam.

‘All right then, let’s see what he’s got to say.’ He turned round and picked out the sergeant. ‘Then, Danny, I want them straight back to work.’

‘Aye, sir,’ replied Walfield.

Adam squatted down beside Bushey and listened in. The small TV screen flickered with the flash of press cameras as Prime Minister Charles Harrison, flanked by his ever-present advisor, Malcolm Jones, stepped up onto the small podium. Adam thought the poor bastard looked haggard and pale, his tie loosened, his jacket off and shirt sleeves rolled up; like some unlucky sod who’d worked through the night and been roused from a nap ten minutes ago with a strong black coffee.

The Prime Minister uttered some grateful platitudes for the press assembling here at short notice, and after steadying himself with a deep breath, he began.

‘Yesterday, during morning prayers in Riyadh, the first of many bombs exploded in the holy mosques of Mecca and Medina, and in several more mosques in Riyadh. A radical Shi’ite group sent a message shortly after to Al Jazeera claiming responsibility for the devices. Similar explosions occurred yesterday in several other cities in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman and Iraq. The situation has continued to worsen in the region. Because of the potential danger this poses to our remaining troops, and after consultation with Arab leaders, a decision was taken to pull all of our troops out of the region until this particular problem has corrected itself.’

Adam shook his head. So far it seemed as if the Prime Minister was doing his best not to mention the word ‘oil’. A lot of news time yesterday had been filled with industry experts talking about the drastic impact the unrest was going to have on crude oil supplies; assessments on reserves in the supply chain, reserves in the holds of tankers still at sea - unaffected and able to deliver - and the possible per-barrel price these reserves might hit in the next twenty-four hours. Five hundred, seven hundred . . . even a thousand dollars a barrel for the next few weeks - that was the kind of punditry they’d been getting all yesterday afternoon.

Today, however, it seemed by consensus between the news channels, no one was discussing barrel prices, reserves or shortfalls. Today’s news agenda was all about getting the boys back home from the troubled Middle East.

It smacked of misdirection. Adam wondered if someone was leaning on the media to steer the agenda elsewhere; to keep people’s minds on matters abroad. There had been endless news footage of our poor lads holed up, besieged and waiting for their planes home, market places running with blood, baying crowds dancing around flaming cars, blackened corpses being dragged behind rusting trucks through rubbish-strewn streets. Horrific attention-grabbing stuff, in marked contrast to yesterday’s footage of smoking oil refineries, towers of orange flame licking through ruptured storage tanks, and twisted piping belching black smoke. The refineries around Baku in Azerbaijan, Paraguana in Venezuela, rendered useless; the striking image of a tanker ripped open and spewing gigantic black lily pads of oil across the narrowest section of the Strait of Hormuz, rendering this crucial shipping lane impassable. Yesterday’s talk was all about how an oil stoppage was going to affect the UK -
what exactly this all means to
me
and
mine
.

Clumsy misdirection. Adam was sure that, no matter how much everyone cared passionately about our boys trapped abroad, what they really wanted to know was
exactly how screwed are we here in the UK?

Charles Harrison rounded his prepared speech off with some assurances that order was going to be maintained and all possible measures were being put into place to minimise the economic damage done.

Adam was surprised to hear no mention of any ‘safe zones’ being set up, or of the implementation of any sort of martial law. Perhaps that was going to come later? Perhaps what was needed right now were some calming assurances, not the announcement of a raft of specific emergency measures.

He realised the PM was doing his best not to spook the press or the general public.
No one’s ready for a stampede, for a mass panic. This is about buying another twenty-four . . . forty-eight hours of prep-time.

Adam looked at his men.

The PM rounded off and then opened the floor to questions.

They came in noisy volleys. The first few he answered calmly with more assurances that this was a blip that the UK was well-placed to ride out. Then Adam heard one of the assembled journalists cut in - a sharp female voice that sounded as if it had already been spoon-fed enough bullshit for one morning - with a question specifically about how much stockpiled oil and food was on UK soil right now.

The Prime Minister blanched.

‘How long, Prime Minister?’ the journalist asked again, the press room silent. ‘How long can we feed ourselves whilst this oil crisis is playing out?’

Harrison froze for too long with a rabbit-in-the-headlights expression on his face.

‘Twat,’ one of the gunners muttered. ‘He doesn’t fucking know.’

‘Look . . . th-there really is no need for anyone to panic,’ the Prime Minister replied, his voice wobbling uncertainly. ‘There has been a lot of planning, a lot of forward thinking about a scenario like this.’

A shouted question from the back of the press room. ‘Prime Minister, is the army being brought back to enforce martial law?’

A pause. Another too-long pause. They listened to dead air for nearly ten seconds.

‘All right.’ Despite the small tinny sound of the television’s speaker, Adam could detect that the Prime Minister sounded tired, resigned. ‘All right . . . look, that’s probably enough crap for one day. So, I’m going to tell you how it is.’

Adam and Bushey looked at each other.

‘The truth is, everyone, the truth is . . . we are in a bit of trouble. Whilst this mess is sorting itself out we’re going to have to make do with the resources we have. I’m afraid nothing is going to be coming into the UK for several weeks. So we’re all going to have to work together. We are going to need to ration the food that is out there in the supermarkets, corner shops, warehouses, grocery stores. Food vendors are going to be asked to cease trading as of now. We’re also locking down the sale of petrol and diesel from this point on. That has to be reserved for key personnel and emergency services.’

The Prime Minister paused for breath. It was silent except for the rustle of an uneasy press audience stirring. Adam noticed a subtle tic in the man’s face. He looked like someone on the very edge of a nervous breakdown.

‘Look, it’s going to be a very difficult few weeks . . . perhaps months. But, if we
all
pull together, like we did once before, during the Second World War . . . we’re going to be just fine. If we panic, if people start hoarding food and water . . . then . . .’ His voice faded.

Prime Minister Charles Harrison suddenly stepped away from the podium, knocking a microphone clumsily with his arm. He walked quickly to the press room door flanked by his advisor and a bodyguard. The stunned silence was filled a second later with an uproar of questions shouted at the Prime Minister’s back, as the Home Secretary replaced him at the podium and attempted to call the press conference to order.

Adam leant over and snapped the television off. He turned to look at his men, two squadrons of gunners, forty young lads; a good half of them still in their teens and sporting pubescent acne; but all of them silent and anxiously regarding their CO.

He looked across at Sergeant Walfield.

The sergeant shrugged casually. ‘I believe, sir, the shit ‘as just gone an’ hit the fan.’

Adam nodded. ‘I think we had better get on with securing this place.’

 

 

 

T
he foreign man looked up at Jenny from the steaming bowl of chowder, and around at all the others who had gathered in the mess to get a good look at the new arrival.

‘Valérie Latoc? Is that right?’

He nodded, spooning soup into his mouth. ‘Yes. I am from the south of Belgium, Ardennes region originally.’ He pushed a tress of dark hair out of his eyes; brown eyes that her gaze lingered on longer than she wanted.

‘We don’t get many visitors out here,’ she said.

Which was true. The community had grown over the last five years as a result of the people they’d come across whilst foraging ashore for essentials. People in small numbers; a family here, a couple there. It was an unspoken rule, though, that no one could join them on the rigs until Jenny had sat down and spoken with them.
The Jenny Sutherland Entrance Examination,
that’s what she’d overheard Alice scathingly call it.

There’d been those she’d turned away, those she considered might cause trouble for them. Those she didn’t trust. Some she simply didn’t like the look of. Unfair, discriminatory, but Jenny didn’t give a damn what was being muttered, the last thing she was going to allow aboard was some schizo who might go off like a firecracker amongst them.

It was men mostly. Men she didn’t trust; males of a certain age. Young boys and old men she felt comfortable with. But men, particularly very masculine men, who oozed testosterone and smelled of hunger; who looked upon her female-heavy community with hungry eyes like a child in a candy store . . . they had no place here.

‘I want you to tell us about yourself,’ she said.

Valérie spooned another mouthful of chowder, wiped the hot liquid from the bristles of his beard. ‘From the beginning?’

‘From the beginning.’

He shrugged wearily. ‘I was living in Bastogne in Belgium when it happened. The second day, the Tuesday, you remember your Prime Minister’s television appearance?’

She nodded. Everyone behind her nodded.

Valérie shook his head. ‘A big can of snakes he opened. No . . .
worms,
is it not? Can of worms?’

Jenny nodded for him to continue.

‘It was on
TV5 Monde
only minutes after. Your leader was the first one to come out and tell the people how bad things were. Then our President Molyneux had to do the same, and then every other leader. It was the
significatif
word, you know? The
trigger
words that people heard; ration, curfew, martial law . . . words like this that made people panic and riot.’

He sat back in the chair. ‘
Le jour de desastre
. Like a modern day
Kristallnacht,
you see? Every shop window in Bastogne was broken that night.’ He sighed. ‘We had power in Belgium at the time, you know - nuclear power from France, not like you British needing the Russian gas and oil. But even so, we also lost our power on the Wednesday. There was the complete black-out. The French stopped the power to us . . . or their generators had problems. But we had better order in our country. No riots yet. Our government had made much emergency preparations for this kind of thing. Much more than yours, I think?’

He was right. Jenny recalled the appalling state of panic the British authorities went into during the first few days. A complete lack of communication from the Cabinet Office during the first twenty-four hours, the Prime Minister’s disastrous performance on the second day, then there was nothing else from them except one or two junior members of government wheeled out to broadcast calls for calm.

‘But then things became much more worse for us in Belgium in the second and third week. There were millions of people who come up into northern Europe. They were coming from the east, from Poland, from Czech Republic, from Croatia, from Bosnia. We had much, much many more come north, up through Spain, from Morocco, from Algeria, Tunisia. Even from further south; Zimbabwe, Uganda, because of tribal problems in these places. You know?’

He hungrily spooned some more soup, then continued. ‘In week three we became like you people in England. Fighting in the street; my city, Bastogne, on fire. No control by the leaders. Soldiers without clear orders.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘And many, many people dying when the water stopped pumping. You remember? It was very warm that summer?’

She remembered all right. The UK hadn’t been particularly hot, but it had been very dry. When the oil stopped, the power stations, without adequate oil reserves, had soon ceased functioning, and with that so did the flow of water through pumping stations and purification plants. In London, bottles of unopened drinking water became like gold dust; vending machines were wrenched to pieces to reclaim cans of Coke buried inside them.

‘I suppose, I guess a month after the oil stopped, most people not killed in the riots and fighting were sick with the water diseases in my country. You know, cholera, typhoid.’

‘So, Mr Latoc, how did
you
manage to make it through the early days?’

It was a question Jenny always asked. The answer given to this question was, more often than not, the answer that decided her. The type of person she didn’t want on the rigs with her family was the type who boasted about their survival skills; their ability to fight off others for what they needed. They didn’t need fighters. Not out here. What they needed were people prepared to muck in and work a long day, prepared to share, to compromise.