Boris Johnson - Seventy-Two Virgins

The acting terrorist leader walked towards her down the aisle, noiseless in her Nike Airs.

‘I think I should warn you that you don’t scare me, young lady.’

‘Then you are brave but you are not smart.’

‘In fact, there is only one thing that really frightens me.’

‘And what is that?’

‘I am frightened of the disapproval of God.’

‘Ferme la gueule. How do you say it in English?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘Shut you the fat gob.’

‘My advice is to follow that young man, find the nearest policeman, and hand over that gun.’

As the two women stood next to each other, the rain outside deepened in tone. The drops swelled and thickened to the size of currants, or even gulls’ eggs, and a great drumming came from the roof. A cloud of Turneresque blackness rolled across the London sky, and as the light died in the windows, strange shadows formed on the women’s faces.

‘Go home, dear,’ said the Baroness.

Benedicte stuck her snout right next to the ancient map.

‘Now is the time for the beeg silence.’ She raised the Uzi to her ear. ‘Or else the silence will be the long one.’

‘What you need, if you ask my opinion, is a nice husband.’

‘Shut your face, vieille putain!’

‘I’m no—’

Benedicte pulled the trigger. Even as far back as Barlow and de Peverill, the shots buffeted their eustachian tubes, as though someone was ripping calico just by their ears.

Lady Hovell clapped her hand to her heart. She sat down. Her eyes fell away from Benedicte, and at once she looked like anyone’s old grandma, just told a piece of bad news by the docs.

A noise went up from the audience, a small but unanimous exhalation. They knew that they had sustained a defeat.

Was Lady Hovell’s chin wobbling? Was that a crinkle on the jaw that had never trembled in forty years of sneering from men who weren’t fit to lick her boots? It was hard to tell. But as Silver Stick gazed at her from afar, tears formed in his ducts, of love and fright.

Frig me spastic, thought Jason Pickel, as the bullets ate into the main collar beam, just ten feet below him. That could have been a serious inguinal injury.

He squinted below, to check whether the mad A-rab bitch might fire again. Then slowly he looped the nylon rope round the crown post, tied it tight, and then began to slide it through two carabiners at his belt.

When he had finished, he crouched once again over the gathering, his big shoulders hunched, rifle ready, like an eagle as it waits for its moment.

Adam was still saying nothing, and Cameron was looking at the TV, trying not to hurt.

The BBC had a ‘Russian expert’, who was casting doubt on the oddly pro-American numbers from Russian TV.

She had to know about his theft. ‘So how did you take it?’

‘I am afraid I just put my newspapers and stuff on top of it, and then scooped it all up when we all left.’

‘So what are you, a spy?’

He groaned. ‘Yes, I suppose I am. But it’s got nothing to do with this business.’

‘And who are you supposed to be spying for?’

Dean watched their conversation. In particular, he watched Cameron, and noticed more detail: the tilt of her nose, the bangle on her wrist, the little white scar on her slender left arm. He shivered, and listened to the rattle of the rain. Not only had the temperature fallen, but the adrenalin was turning sour in his veins, leaving a hangover of fear.

Jones the Bomb spoke. ‘The door is open, Dean, my young friend.’

Dean looked at the door. On the contrary, it was shut.

‘But if you go through that door now, remember that you will lose all chance of bliss. You have a chance now’ — he stared with his mongoose intensity — ‘to obtain the stone that is more precious than the world and anything that is in it. Remember, my dear Dean, that when the first drop of blood is spilled, the shahid does not feel the pain of his wounds, and all his sins are forgiven. He sees his seat in Paradise, and he is saved from the torment of the grave—’

‘Mr Jones, sir, I just don’t believe in paradise.’

The President looked keenly at him. No one ever got elected President of the United States without believing in paradise.

Jones made a sad face: ‘I know it is difficult, and I know it is frightening, and I know we all have moments when we feel we have lost our faith . .

‘You bet your sweet ass,’ said the President.

‘But I hope you still have faith in me, Dean. Do you?’

‘Do I what?’

‘Have faith in the person who has liberated you from the false values of Western decadence?’

Dean rose. He moved towards the door. ‘Mr Jones, I. No. Yes. I … No.’

That’s it, thought Roger Barlow, when Benedicte fired at the roof-beams. Get me out of this thing, dear Lord, and I promise I’ll be good. I’m fed up with being bad.

Here are all the good things I am going to do. I’m going to pick up my towels from the bathroom floor. I’m going to start listening properly when she talks to me. I’m going to communicate. I’m going to stay awake after lights out, because it’s always worth it in the end. I’m going to understand that the important thing is not to solve problems, but to discuss them. After fifteen years, I’m going to get the point that marriage is not a final act; it’s like a meeting of the European agricultural ministers, an endless negotiation of insolubles.

I won’t pick the corner of my toenails with a Bic biro lid. Ditto ears, or at least not at dinner parties.

I won’t open tins of tuna and then leave them under the bed. I won’t go to the fridge, take out a Waitrose raspberry trifle, eat it all, and then put back the licked-out plastic container.

I won’t lose my temper when we get lost, and then refuse to ask the way. I’ll stop farting under the duvet .

His eyes met the twitchy glare of Habib, who was walking down the aisle, swinging his gun like a sadistic maths master invigilating an exam.

It occurred to Roger that if he wanted divine intervention, he had better make some real concessions.

The noise from Benedicte’s gun carried out into New Palace Yard. It penetrated the ambulance, and entered the ears of William Eric Kinloch Onyeama. One lung was half-full of blood.

The pericardial puncture unit had made a neat hole in his chest. His thoracic diaphragm had been punctured, his pencardial membrane was in a bad way and his sternum was severely scraped.

But Eric Onyeama was alive, and he owed his life to the Huskie.

It was the tough little computer which had served as his breastplate, and which had borne the brunt of Haroun’s attack.

He had lost about four pints of blood; but the haemorrhage had slowed, and now he was coming out of his faint. He flapped an arm, and knocked a non-glass urine bottle to the floor.

‘Jesus H. Christ,’ said one of the Swat team that surrounded the ambulance. ‘There’s someone moving in there.’

‘Somebody open the doors.’

‘Cover me.’

With infinite care, and strictly according to the manuals, the Swat team inched towards the handle. Slowly, slowly, in the hope of not setting off some Vietcong-style booby trap, both the rear doors were swung wide. The Swat team stared within, their expressions full of the semi-sacred awe with which a man will look at the bottom of a woman’s handbag.

‘Strewth,’ said one. ‘It looks like a flaming abattoir in there.’

Eric the parkie was almost invisible in the tangle of medical equipment. His lower body was covered in a long spinal board, complete with head immobilizer and securing straps. His upper half was buried in a midden of oximeters, stethoscopes, thermometers, resuscitation masks, vomiting bags, gastric tubes, sterile surgical gloves and defibrillators. The whole assemblage was richly spattered with gore.