Revenger (9 page)

‘Mark was always a bright boy,’ Trower began. He gave a fond, indulgent chuckle. ‘I wouldn’t say he was an intellectual, but he had plenty of brains in his head when he felt like using them. Of course, he loved his rugby and played for the school at every age-level. It was no surprise at all to me when he said he wanted to apply to become an army officer. After all, he was the head boy of Lupton House. He was a natural leader.’

16

DONNY BAKUNIN WAS
almost exactly the same age as Mark Adams. He had also attended a grammar school, albeit at the other end of the country. But no one had ever described him as a natural leader back then. He had countless intellectual justifications for his anarchism, but the simple truth was that he loved the idea of a political creed dedicated to smashing the kind of people who naturally ascended to positions of power. Only in middle age had he discovered that he had quite a taste for power himself.

As he made his way down Stewart’s Road towards the Wandsworth Road, past the low-rise estate on one side and the close-packed light-industrial units on the other, Bakunin could have been any drab, insignificant Londoner. He was walking fast, as people tended to do in this damp, depressing weather, his duffel-coat hood was turned up to keep the rain off his head, and there was an increasingly soggy roll-up in the corner of his mouth. There was no one else on the pavement, but if anyone had been there to hear the words he was muttering they probably would have
taken
him for just another nutter – there were a lot of them around these days.

Only if they had paid particular attention would they have realized that the hood of his coat concealed Bakunin’s Bluetooth earpiece, through which he was giving a series of orders to the forces now massing in the abandoned council estate. Even then, it would have taken a highly unusual, specialized level of awareness to have deduced that the commands related to a violent act of criminality that was due to begin in a little over twelve minutes. Bakunin was running a minute or two late. He upped his pace still further, almost breaking into a run. It made the rain hit him harder, so that his glasses became so covered in water that he could barely see where he was going. But that did not matter. Bakunin could not afford to be late.

He wasn’t the only one on the move. In a deserted side street off Nine Elms Lane one of the men in the parked-up garbage trucks checked his watch. Then he turned to the driver next to him and said, ‘Time to go.’

The truck’s engine fired up, the lights came on and it rumbled off towards the main road. The second truck was close behind. The man in its passenger seat was checking his reflection in the driver’s mirror. His name was Jordan Hayes, but his mates called him ‘Random’ because they never knew what he’d do next. He had an armoured motorcycle jacket with black plastic plates protecting his chest, back, shoulders, elbows and forearms. The plates were outlined in red and made him look well sick, he reckoned, like some evil motherfucker out of
Tron
. Random had a black balaclava over his head with goggles covering his eyes. A tiny ContourROAM HD helmet cam was clipped to the band that held the goggles to his face. Random pressed the record button. From now on, anything he saw, the camera would see too. And he planned to see it all.

17

AT THE LION
Market, Maninder Panu caught his cousin Ajay’s eye and nodded his head to one side, towards the main window of the store. Ajay picked up the hint and looked in that direction. Half a dozen teenage lads, all African by the looks of them, were standing outside on the pavement. One of them was fingering a bowl of apples. He picked an apple up, stood holding it until he was certain that he had attracted the attention of the men inside the shop, then took a large bite out of it and started chewing the fruit, exaggerating every stage of the process, smacking his lips so much he almost seemed to be blowing kisses. He was trying to wind them up, that much was blatantly obvious. He wanted a reaction. So now what?

Maninder turned his attention to Ajay. It wasn’t so many years since Ajay had been living the thug life, wearing his trousers halfway down his backside and calling everybody ‘rude boi’. He’d grown up a lot since then, but he still wasn’t the sort of man to back down from the offer of a fight. Maninder could see the temper rising in him. Any second now he’d be reaching for the baseball bat
and
walking out the front door, waving it in the African kids’ faces. Something told Maninder that that was exactly what they wanted him to do. This was a trap, a set-up, he was sure of it.

‘Don’t,’ he said, before Ajay had even made a move.

‘Come on, man, we can’t let them disrespect us like that. If they get away with it once, they’ll never stop.’

‘And if you start a fight you could end up in jail. They’re winding us up. They want us to react. Don’t give them that satisfaction.’ Maninder frowned. Out of the corner of his eye he’d seen something on the CCTV screen that hung beside the till. He lowered his voice and gestured with his index figure: ‘Come here, Ajay. Quick!’

The big man scurried over on surprisingly light, nimble feet and looked up at the screen. It showed the views from each of four cameras in rotation. ‘There!’ whispered Maninder as the picture shifted to the liquor cabinets. ‘Look at her!’

There was a young woman on the screen, young enough that she would need an ID to buy any booze. For a moment Ajay thought that Maninder was simply trying to distract him from the goings-on outside, because this chick was stunning, blonde hair falling over the shoulders of a short, furry jacket. Beneath it her breasts were spilling out of a corset a couple of sizes too small to contain them, her crotch was barely covered by a tiny, skintight black microskirt, and she was wearing black tights and heavy red boots. She had a black nylon knapsack in one hand.

Then he noticed what the woman was doing.

She was taking a bottle of vodka off the shelf and sticking it in her bag.

‘That’s the second one,’ hissed Maninder.

The woman wasn’t alone. She had a man with her; a boyfriend or a pimp by the looks of things. He looked a lot older than her and a lot bigger: Ajay-sized, in fact.

And it seemed to Maninder that these two, like the kids outside, were putting on a show. They wanted to be seen.

Something was going on here. But what the hell was it?

The next man on screen at the O2 was a sharp contrast to the previous one. For one thing, he was standing outdoors, on a balcony several floors up in a tower block. For another, he was black. His name was Curtley Mackenzie. ‘Thirty years ago, it wasn’t easy being black in the British Army,’ he said. ‘There were racists who’d call you a darkie, say you had no place in a white man’s regiment. But Mark Adams treated me like a man, like a Para; nothing more and nothing less. If he gave you an order, you jumped to it. But if you were in trouble, you could go to him and he would always listen, always say something to make you feel better.’

The atmosphere in the hall changed. The schoolmaster had been posh, talking about a world that was foreign to most of the crowd. But irrespective of his skin colour, Curtley Mackenzie was talking a language they could understand, and even those who’d never been anywhere near the forces felt as though this was a world that they knew.

‘When we went to the Falklands, well, everyone knows about Lieutenant Adams charging an Argentine machine gun single-handed. But what they don’t know is what he was like with the lads. He kept us going when we were cold, hungry, frightened, and so tired we felt like we couldn’t take another step. He never asked any man to do anything he wouldn’t do. I’ve been to war with Mark Adams. I’ve trusted him with my life. I’d do it again, and all.’

18

‘TYPICAL FUCKING GLORY
boy,’ Schultz muttered into his beer-glass. ‘Like Paras are the only bastards who ever took out a GPMG . . . I’m going to need a Scotch after that.’

He and Carver were sitting at the bar of the Dutchman’s Head. There was a large-screen TV on the wall, left over from the days when Champions League nights were a virtual guarantee of a packed pub, filled with thirsty punters. There weren’t too many people willing to go to a pub just to watch a politician give a speech. But of the half-dozen regulars, most were keeping at least an eye on proceedings at the O2.

Carver caught the barmaid’s attention. ‘Get him a double whisky or he’ll be moaning all night.’

‘What’s his problem with Paras?’ she asked, pushing the whisky glass up to the optic.

Carver leaned forward, ‘Can you keep a secret?’ he asked.

The barmaid giggled. ‘Depends how good it is.’

She put the filled glass on the bar, tantalizingly out of Schultz’s reach, and leaned forward towards Carver. ‘Well, it’s a sad story,’ he
said
. ‘See, he always wanted to be a Para but he couldn’t get in. Scared of heights. I mean, really, really scared. Forget jumping, he couldn’t even get in the plane.’

Carver started laughing as he heard Schultz’s voice off to one side going, ‘I’ll get you for that, you bastard!’

But he had laughed too soon. A look of profound sympathy crossed the barmaid’s face. She stood up, picked up the glass and carried it over to Schultz, who downed the contents in one.

‘I know just how you feel,’ she said. ‘I’m the same. I get terrified even thinking about having to fly. Has it always been a problem for you?’

Schultz nodded sorrowfully. He’d been given an opening and he was going to exploit it. ‘No, it came over me quite recently,’ he confided, lying through his teeth. ‘I always used to be able to fly. And maybe I could do it again, you know, if I had the right company.’ He looked her right in the eye. ‘Someone to comfort me, know what I mean?’

‘Do you think that would help?’ the barmaid said. ‘Maybe we could comfort each other . . .’

‘It would help if I knew your name.’

‘Chrystal. What’s yours?’

‘Snoopy . . . to me friends.’

‘Aw, that’s sweet!’

Schultz looked across at Carver, a smug look of triumph on his face. ‘You can leave now, mate,’ he said.

A few miles away across the river, in his Downing Street office, Cameron Young pressed the ‘pause’ button on his Sky Plus controller. ‘What next, do you think?’ he asked, to no one in particular.

Jack Grantham was the first to answer. ‘After two men? It’s got to be a woman.’

‘Or an Asian,’ Brian Smallbone pointed out. ‘Muslims are the new Jews. If he’s fascist and stupid, he’ll attack them. But if he’s smart he’ll make a point of playing nicey-nicey.’

‘So there we have it,’ said Young. ‘We think it’ll be an Asian woman. Let’s see if we’re right.’

They were. Samira Ahmed looked young, elegantly dressed, glossy haired, impeccably professional – like an Asian Kate Middleton. She’d been filmed in a coffee-bar with a cup of cappuccino in front of her. ‘Little Miss Starbucks – very normal, aspirational, nice touch,’ Cameron Young murmured.

‘When I was a little girl, I was the only person in the family who could speak English, and I often had to be the interpreter for everyone else,’ Ahmed started. ‘So when they applied for accommodation from the local housing association, I went along with them, and there was Mark Adams, this famous bloke off the telly, doing volunteer work for the association, and he was the one who took care of everything. I remember him being really kind to me. And he made sure we had somewhere to live. As far as my mum and dad are concerned, he’s a saint.’

‘Shit, that’s not bad,’ said Smallbone. ‘I mean, it might just work.’

Young grimaced in agreement.

‘Don’t panic just yet,’ said Jack Grantham. ‘Adams hasn’t even got onstage yet. There’s still plenty of time left for him to cock it up.’

‘You think he will?’ Young asked.

‘Why not? He’s a politician, isn’t he?’

19

ALIX SUDDENLY FELT
a hand grip hers and squeeze it tight. It was Nicki Adams.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said with a nervous smile. ‘Mark’s on any second now. I’m just a bit tense.’

Then the screen went blank. The stage was shrouded in darkness and the crowd roared as if they were about to see a rock star, not an MP.

‘The time has come,’ boomed a voice familiar from countless Saturday-night TV shows. ‘So please put your hands together for a man who has served his country and its people . . . A man who dreams of a better future for all of us . . . A man who knows that the only way is UPP . . . Ladies and gentleman, this . . . is . . . Mark . . . ADAMS!!’

Suddenly the lights came back up again, blindingly bright, and there in the middle of the stage stood Adams himself. He had no podium in front of him. He was pacing up and down, from one side of the stage to the other, soaking up the adulation and stoking it even higher as he returned the crowd’s applause.

‘Isn’t he wonderful?’ cried Nicki Adams, ecstatically.

Alix was taking in the frenzy of noise and excitement all around them. She had to admit that this man was blessed with genuine charisma, the kind of star quality that can be neither taught nor faked. She wasn’t sure how well he’d go down with the sophisticated opinion-formers of Washington DC, but the Fox News demographic – white, ageing, conservative and fearful – would lap him up. It helped that he had the same quality as Lincoln Roberts: he absolutely looked like a leader and exuded an alpha-male aura of power that she was certain was making every female heart in the arena beat a little faster. No wonder Nicki Adams was excited if she was the one he was coming home to.

‘Good evening. My name is Mark Adams.’ He could not have said the words in a more casual, understated way, but they were enough to start the cheering all over again. He waited for the noise to die down and went on, ‘I just want to say thank you . . . Thanks to all of you for coming here tonight . . . Thank you for giving me the chance to share my vision of a better, happier, fairer Britain with you tonight . . . And . . .’ He gave a wry, self-deprecating smile. ‘Thanks for the money. It means a lot. You see, in this party we don’t have a bunch of multi-millionaire bankers and property developers keeping the coffers filled. We don’t have trade unions using their members’ money to pay our bills. All we have is what you, the people, are willing to give us. And that’s a good thing. In fact, it’s a great thing.’