Gavin Lyall - The Crocus List

The deference wasn't appeasing. "You can't go putting red crosses on armed vehicles, man! You know the rules!"

"Ambulances have an easier job through crowds, sir. And it might muddle somebody who was going to shoot."

The DDCR made a growling noise, but Maxim had a point there. And he must remember that the Americans weren't going to stampede without very good reason. If the missiles were being primed now, who would read the Geneva Convention over the rubble?

"Oh, all right, then. If anybody else asks, tell 'em we ordered it." Still disgruntled, he noticed the unfamiliar submachine-gun slung from Maxim's shoulder. "And where did you get that thing?"

"Friends, sir."

The DDCR growled again. When soldiers were readied for action they always put on non-regulation boots or adjusted their equipment in personal ways. The wise commander didn't nit-pick; you just had to trust to their experience, common sense-and even 'friends' at, he guessed, the SASdepot off Sloane Square.

"All right. Is everything set up here?"

"Their Secret Service have got a CP established in the Deanery. That's just through the arch there and to the left." Beyond the Saracens a tall archway, mostly filled in with ornamental ironwork, led to a tunnel ending, after thirty yards, in the gloomy light of the Abbey Cloisters. "If they get the word to go, they'll hustle the President out through the Cloisters and up here, we shove him into the number 2 vehicle and take off."

"Where are you going to be?"

"Rear, sir, in number 3. With just a couple of chaps; we'll act as pickup in case the number 2 gets stopped."

"Good. Make sure the drivers wear respirators; if this actually happens God knows what they'll throw at you. Smoke, gas, I don't know. You might try to make the President put one on, too…"

The Platoon Sergeant came up with a crisp salute and a mug of tea. Normally the DDCR would have drunk coffee at this time of day, but it would have tasted quite wrong in this scene. He sipped and talked; the sunlight crept down the wall behind him and the headlights were switched off. Radios crackled as they were netted and signallers grumbled at the buildings around them; men tossed down cigarette ends and were told by indignant corporals to pick them up, because this was Holy Ground.

"… and you'd better run up the engines every half-hour to-oh blast it! I'm getting as bad as your friend George Harbinger, meddling in details that aren't my business. Have you heard anything from him recently?"

"He gave me a ring a couple of weeks ago, to ask how I was getting on."

"What did you tell him?"

"I said I was getting on fine, sir."

"And how was life at Number 10?"

"Very interesting, sir."

The DDCR looked at Maxim carefully. "All right, Harry, I don't have to know everything." He sighed and took a last look at the reassuring sight of camouflaged figures crumpled comfortably as cats on impossible niches of the steel Saracens, then turned to his car and the huge lonely possibilities that waited in his office.

"I would it were bed-time, Hal, and all well. Haven't had a chance to say that since I had a sergeant called Harry at the Rhine. Henry the fourth Part One, just before the battle of Shrewsbury." From the extra politeness in Maxim's smile he saw the explanation had been unnecessary. "But I bet you don't remember the line that comes next: 'Why, thou owest God a death.' Put like that, it doesn't seem too much of a debt… You'll have to keep the vehicles here until around 2400: we'll let you know. And I expect the Yeomanry would like them back without the fancy paintwork. I'm sure yourfriends can rustle up a few pints of turps. Good luck, Major."

As the morning wore on a mutter like surf drifted in through Dean's Arch from the growing crowds. The Yard itself became busy with policemen, American Secret Servicemen and occasional clerics. This aspect of security was nothing to do with Maxim, but he soon realised that it was his job to fend off such people with a salute and some reassuring small-talk, leaving the platoon undisturbed. After one churchman had stopped and goggled openly at his submachine-gun, he told Lieutenant Forrest -OCthe platoon-to get all weapons out of sight and drape something over the machine-guns that had been mounted in the Saracens' little turrets.

At ien o'clock the Abbey bells, half muffled, began a slow peal. A Secret Serviceman had attached himself to them, wearing an earplug for his walkie-talkie, and reported to Maxim: "Lawman is airborne." A moment later he got the same message from a radio operator in the third Saracen. Forrest, who obviously had more money than responsibilities, had brought along a tiny colour TV set that one of the signallers had set up on the bonnet of a Land-Roverand was constantly tuning. Abruptly it cut to show the wavery shapes of two helicopters grazing the London skyline.

"Always four pressmen in the back-uphelio,"the Secret Serviceman explained. "Call the bastards the Death Watch. You can figure out why." He smiled without humour. Younger than Maxim, he wore a thin fawn suit and open raincoat in the cool air, but there was a stipple of sweat on his forehead and Maxim could guess at why the hairline had already receded so far. He knew the stress of bodyguard work himself, but nothing like the months and years of watching over the world's most likely target. I wonder if they last for years? he thought, and tried to make his own smile an encouraging one.

"Lawman is on the ground." And very soon after: "Lawman is in thelimoand moving."

"Drivers and gunners," Forrest ordered, and they climbed nimbly into the Saracens. Then: "Ready!" and there was a rattle as weapons were cocked. Suddenly they seemed to have the wide Yard to themselves; outside, the cheering came in bursts, drowning the steady thump of the marching bands. It gave a sense of being in the back kitchen while the Grand Ball went on upstairs, but something in Maxim's character made him enjoy that. He would always prefer to stand in the shadows backstage watching how the scenery was shifted and the actors braced themselves for an entrance than sit out front and see nothing but the play.

Forrest made conducting movements with his hands, spreading those who wouldn't be in the Saracens to cover the Arch and windows around the Yard, in case some sabotage squad knew about the getaway plan. It was an experienced, well-drilled platoon, and Maxim would only have spoiled their rhythm by trying to help.

"Lawman is at the Abbey… getting out of the limo…" The Secret Serviceman's gaze roved the rooftops and his left hand brushed his mouth nervously, but he seemed pleased at the loudest cheer yet.

"Lawman is in the Abbey…" The Secret Serviceman relaxed as the responsibility shifted to the soldiers. They waited, very still in the cool shadow of their corner of the Yard, through the roar and music as the Royal Family arrived and the hush when the service began.

Clay Culliman and a USAF Colonel in uniform, carrying a slim briefcase, walked through the Arch and quickly past towards the Deanery. Culliman's face seemed vaguely familiar to Maxim, though he couldn't recall the name, but he recognised what was in the briefcase: the 'codes', whatever that meant, that enabled the President to trigger the USA's own nuclear forces. He realised with a jolt that he was within yards of one of the two great power centres of the world; for this hour, it wasn't the Kremlin and the White House, it was the Kremlin andhere.

Instinctively he began watching the sky. If it came, would he see anything? One plunging spark, one rip of vapour trail, before the flash dissolved him?

"I just hopesomething bleeding happens," one of the soldiers said, and was told toshut up by his mates beforeanybody more senior could say it. Maxim woke up to the Abbey choir, chanting unsyqchronised from the TV and the loudspeakers relaying the service to the streets outside, and knew the men were getting over-tense. They were taking their mood from him, as they were supposed to, and he scowled at his idiocy in gazing at the sky; hadn't he learntanything in the last nineteen years? If only he still smoked he could hand round cigarettes, try to wind down the atmosphere.