Dark Clouds (27 page)

‘This is it, you know,’ he confides.

‘What?’

‘Blighty’s changing, mate. We’re not going back to all of this ridiculous multicultural nonsense. From now on, this is our country. If anyone wants to join us, they’ll have to adopt our values and become proper English people.’

‘I’m off,’ I tell him. I’m covered in blood and I need a shower. I’ll be in the hotel if anyone needs me, and I’ll keep my phone switched on, as instructed ... bye!

I’m being selfish, callous even. Robson needs to talk. He’s got a lot of pent-up anger he needs to express through conversation, but I can’t help him. There aren’t many people on the streets and the porter at the entrance to my hotel is reluctant to let me in. ‘You’re in a bit of a state, sir,’ he says, and I am. Most of the blood on my jacket and shirt has dried, but there are still a few flecks on my face and in my hair.

After some polite banter around the entrance doors, a manager arrives and takes control.

‘Do come in,’ he says, keeping his distance while beckoning me through to the lobby. ‘We’re getting reports of the most appalling goings on at King’s Cross, which I assume is where you’ve come from?’

‘Yes ... I ran all the way.’

‘Oh – my word ... you poor man. Look – why don’t you go up to your suite. I’ll get room service to send you a plate of sandwiches. And would you like a large plastic bag?’

What for?

‘Well ... I imagine you’ll want to get rid of your jacket and shirt.’

He’s right. I had thought of having them washed or cleaned, but it’s probably best if they are disposed of, and I guess we’re talking incineration here rather than their being passed on to a charity shop.

The whisky miniatures have been replaced in my room bar. The first goes down quickly, but I linger on the second and when I’ve disposed of my blood-splattered clothes, I switch on the TV. All of the main channels are focusing on the carnage at King’s Cross. My photograph of Pele Kalim appears as a ‘
and we’ve just received this
’ item at the end of the BBC’s coverage. ‘
We’ve been informed by Scotland Yard
,’ the announcer says, ‘
that this man, Pele Kalim, is wanted in connection with two hand grenade incidents involving fatalities on the Euston Road ...
’

Robson’s acted quickly. He must have downloaded my picture of the Pakistani and sent it off immediately. I can’t take any more of the gruesome reportage though. There are, apparently, twenty Nationalist deaths and many more injuries. I’m flicking through the channels. There are movies on Sky and I pause when I see a Fenian epic. The Michael Collins character is luring British intelligence agents into a trap. Did my great grandmother, Róisín, embrace this man or someone like him? The leprechauns are dancing around inside my head. It’s not all stage Irish characters with harps and shamrocks though, and I’m switching channels. Julie Andrews is suddenly dancing around the Swiss Alps  in
The Sound of Music
. Christopher Plummer is holding fast as the Nazi apparatchiks prepare to attack. I love the bit where Christopher leads Julie and the kids up and over the mountains towards freedom, but my phone is ringing.

‘Rudy?’

‘Sulima – where are you?’

‘I’m at Heathrow … and – ’

‘Please hang up. I’ll call you straight back – OK?’

‘Yes – but …’

No explanations – sorry. Carla’s put a bug in my mobile. I’m not sure about the hotel phone, but I’m picking it up and dialling.

‘Sorry about that … I need to see you. Are you going to your house in Eaton Square?’

‘Yes – but I have to drop by at Maya’s and feed her cat … I promised when she called me this morning in Geneva.’

‘Great – but stay there until you hear from me … it will be within half-an-hour.’

‘Rudy …’

She’s confused, but I’m focused and firm. I don’t want Carla to find Sulima Sharif. The very thought of what might happen if she did is giving me goose pimples on my arms and legs. I’ve switched off my mobile so, hopefully, no one knows where I’m going. An under manager tries to beckon me aside in the lobby. ‘I’m just popping out,’ I tell him. He could be one of Robson’s contacts, but I don’t look around when I take a quick turn into Islington’s Chapel Market. There are stalls on either side of the street selling cheap goods and halfway down I find a guy with a table full of mobile phones.

‘I want one that’s charged and ready to go,’ I tell him.

‘Got just the job for you, guv – a little gem at fifty quid plus the top up.’

He’s passing me a slim Nokia that I’m sure belongs to someone else. But the battery sign is full and it’s got £20 in credit. I call the speaking clock to check, and I hear a strident voice say: ‘
and at the third stroke, the time sponsored by …
’

‘OK … I’ll give you forty.’

‘Shit, no man … sorry, guv.’

‘All right, fifty with the top up credit … and that’s it.’

I’m turning to go when he says, ‘ah fuck it – go on then.’

There’s a café down by the subway and when I get there I call Sulima on my new phone.

‘Rudi – what’s happening?’ she wants to know. ‘I’m looking at a TV screen and there is chaos all around the Euro Star terminal.’

‘I’ll explain when we meet,’ I tell her. ‘So get a cab into town, feed your friend’s cat, and I then want you to meet me in the garden at Penelope’s. It’s a cafe on the King’s Road in Chelsea – about half way down on the left as you come from Sloane Square, just before Jubilee Place. But give me a call when you leave your friend’s house.’

I’ve got maybe two hours before we meet and I need to chill.

‘The Victoria and Albert museum, please,’ I say to a cab driver at the Angel in Islington, ‘and I’d appreciate it if you could avoid the King’s Cross area.’

He’s quiet and just nods. I can’t see a Union Jack or a flag of St George on his dashboard. He looks like a man who keeps his thoughts to himself. It’s an agreeable change from my usual experience with London cabbies, but as an ambulance and a police van flash past us at Farringdon, he shakes his head and catches my eye in his rear view mirror.

‘This is not good,’ he says. ‘You have heard about the incidents at King’s Cross?’

I’m frowning hard and nodding. It’s a serious business.

‘My family came here from Russia in the eighteen nineties,’ he tells me, ‘but others we knew went to Germany.’

‘Right – ’

‘And we are Jewish.’

I’m thinking of Robson and people like him who are now supporting the English Nationalists. They’re going forward and they won’t stop.

‘It could all just blow over,’ I say optimistically, which gets a shrug and a smile from my driver. That’s not what he feels, and I’m thinking of the Warsaw Ghetto Jews in Schindler’s List when we get to Piccadilly.

‘You’ve enjoyed living here up to now?’ I ask.

‘Oh yes. It’s a tolerant place, but it’s all relative, and it depends on what’s happening. Two of my grandchildren are thinking about New Zealand ... and the States is still pretty tolerant.’

There are varying points of view on the way it’s going in my country. My mother thinks the rest of the world is crazy and that we should just close the gates and enjoy what we have. I’m not sure any more, but I get a reassuring grin from my cabbie when we reach the Victoria and Albert museum.

‘I hope I didn’t depress you,’ he says. ‘I’m having cognitive behaviour therapy at the moment ... I’m trying to become more positive in my outlook.’

I give him a normal tip through the window, but I find myself reaching out to shake his hand as he says, ‘good luck.’

*  *  *  *  *

I have ambivalent feelings about museums and art galleries. I think they’re great. I like going to visit them, but after a while, I get tired of all the walking around. This happened quite quickly at the V&A. I looked at paintings from Azerbaijan and the Caribbean and I tried to work out the meaning of tiny pieces of pottery from the Ming dynasty in China. If Ingrid had been with me, she could have explained everything, while holding my hand. It would have been fantastic. Instead, however, I go to the shop after half-an-hour and I then find a door out onto a sunny garden in the centre of the building. I don’t think there was anyone else around when I sat on a bench and fell asleep. I’m in North East Australia and I’m then flitting between the two islands in New Zealand when my phone rings. It’s the one I’ve just bought in Islington and it’s got an unusual sound.

‘Rudy?’

‘Hi – Sulima ... how are you doing?’

‘I’ve just seen Pele on the TV news ... I can’t believe what they’re saying about him ... it’s awful – ’

Wake up. Hold steady and steer carefully through the centre ground.

‘Where are you now?’

‘I’ve left Maya’s place in Belgrave Square and I’m looking for a taxi.’

‘OK ... Penelope’s on the King’s Road. I’ll see you there.’

She’s crying, but says ‘yes’ before hanging up.

There are Nationalists chanting ‘
Allah out!
around the mosque opposite the museum. They’ve got my picture of Pele Kalim on their posters with the word ‘
murderer
’ underneath. The cops and Community Support Officers are looking tense. They don’t know what’s going to happen next. But the traffic’s cutting off up towards Hyde Park and there are no cabs. My sense of direction in this part of town isn’t brilliant, but a nice Indian man points me towards the Fulham Road, where there’s a sign for Sydney Street. ‘
It’s where the siege was, man ... you know, Winston Churchill and the anarchists. It really put him on the political map, and it was years before the second World War.
’

I’m worried about Sulima. She has arrived before me at Penelope’s cafe and is sipping orange juice in the garden. She looks great, although her eyes are covered with huge shades and when she gets up to give me a fraught hug.

‘Oh Rudi ... I don’t know what’s happened. They’re saying that Pele threw a hand grenade into a crowd at King’s Cross.’

‘
Two actually, babe, and the first one could have been for me
.’

I order a coffee with a brandy from one of the Penelope girls. I suggest that Sulima has a shot of something, but she shakes her head.

‘I can’t ... I’d probably pass out,’ she tells me, and when she takes off her shades, I’m heartened by a small wry smile.

‘I know this is grim for you,’ I say, resting a hand on her wrist. ‘But I think what we need to do is to try and put ourselves in Pele’s position.’

‘What do you mean?’ she asks, and I can see she’s shocked by the idea. For the guy I think she still loves has just killed a large group of people and maimed maybe twice as many.

‘He’s fighting for something he believes in ... and I don’t think he’s finished.’

‘But what else could there be? He’s already killed all of these people.’

I’m struggling with Pele’s jihad, but then I think of Mohammed Atta and the North Tower. He was hugely focused. His accomplices maybe slightly less so, but they achieved their objectives. Three thousand people died and the world hasn’t been the same since. I’m reluctant to mention the word nuclear. It’s too remote. OK – it can wipe out a lot of people and the after effects might be with us pretty well forever. But Sulima’s waiting, so I drop the N word: slowly, almost matter-of-factly. There is some hearsay evidence, I tell her, and all of the intelligence predictions are pointing towards a nuclear incident with a great cloud of radiation.

‘Most probably in London,’ I say when I’ve downed my brandy and asked an obliging Penelope’s girl for another.

Sulima doesn’t respond for a while, but then she nods. ‘It’s almost the same with Mike, Rudi. He and Pele have moved from an easy-going middle class liberalism to something quite different. I find it hard to accept the way they’ve both changed.’

I don’t know Pele Kalim, but I share Sulima’s feelings about the way her brother has been seduced into a jihadist lunacy. At UCLA, and again in New York, there were occasional humorous references to American imperialism. ‘
You’re just like the Romans, Rudi
,’ Sharif would say. ‘
You want to go everywhere and control the way we view the world.
’ A little harsh, I used to think. We were a thriving democracy; we had lots of good things to offer the world. If they did it our way they could all become rich and satisfied. Yes? No – alas. Osama and Mohammed Atta had other ideas. ‘
You will rue the day you tried to humiliate us, infidel. We don’t want any part of your tawdry commercial culture ... we’re going to obliterate you ... and if the nuclear option is the only way, then so be it.’

‘Pele had a friend who worked at Sellafield,’ Sulima says when I’ve sipped at my second brandy. ‘He was a Kashmiri scientist
.’

These nuclear guys keep popping up. First Mukhtar Ali and now a Kashmiri called Khan. I’m thinking of rogue states who suddenly get the technology and wham! Or boom! It hasn’t happened yet, but I’m sure it will.

‘When did you last hear from Pele?’ I ask and Sulima hesitates.

‘It was on Wednesday ... I was in Paris.’

And I was lying in the Homerton Hospital having just been shot at, possibly by one of Khan’s associates.

‘Does he know you’re here.’

‘I said I was coming today.’

We’re alone at a table under a tree in this rather unusual cafe. I’m not sure where I’m going. The one thing I’m solid on however is that I don’t want Carla to get her hands on Sulima. This means I have to try and work something out with her to avert a disaster.

‘You two are clearly very close?’

She’s stalling again, just a little. But then she nods and I can sense the strength of her feelings for Pele Kalim. ‘I don’t want him to do anything like what you’re suggesting he might,’ she says and I’m convinced she means it.

‘Could you dissuade him?’

She’s serene in her soul and stunning. I’m sure she could get half the world’s males to do as she wished. But not Pele, it seems.

‘His life is a crusade, Rudi. He’s in Allah’s hands, and he will go for whatever it takes to get a result.’

I’m recalling youngsters in Iraq and Afghanistan happily blowing themselves up every other day as suicide martyrs. Presumably, someone they respect told them it was a good thing to do and that they could have their reward in heaven.