Well, can I borrow your mobile? I need to get this blasted pass from my assistant.
Thats not allowed, sir.
Barlow was fed up with the moronic anti-American protesters who were fringing the square and bawling their questions about oil and how many kids Nestlé had killed that day. But he was also fed up with being treated like a terrorist, when he was a bleeding Parliamentarian, and the people of Cirencester had sent him to this place, and it was frankly frigging outrageous that he should be denied access by this Yank. Not that he wanted to be anti-American, of course.
Theyll vouch for me, he said, pointing to a trio of shirt-sleeved, flak-jacketed Heckler and Koch MP5-toting members of the Met.
No they wouldnt.
Sorry, Mr Barlow, sir, said one of them, I am afraid youve got to have a pink form today. Its all been agreed with the White House.
Well, can I use your phone, then?
Theyll have my guts for garters, sir, but there you go.
Cameron had just reached the office, and was tackling the mail. Ill come now, she said, when he explained the problem.
Roger handed back the phone to the Metropolitan Policeman, and stared again at the American.
Is it true that there are a thousand American Secret Service men here?
Thats what I read, sir.
Barlow couldnt help himself. He went back to Joe of the USSS.
Excuse me. I think you really ought to let me through, because I was elected to serve in this building, and you have absolutely no jurisdiction here.
I know, sir, said the human refrigerator, and he touched the Curly-Wurly tube in his ear and mumbled into the Smartie on his lapel. Im not disagreeing with you, sir, not at all. I have no doubt that you are who you say you are, and I really apologize for this procedure. But my orders say clearly that I dont let anyone through today without a pink P form, and if anyone gets through today who shouldnt get through today, then my ass is grass. Im not history, Im not biology, Im physics. Wait, Joe, who are those guys?
Everything without a pass was being sent up Victoria Street, but now an ambulance had drawn up at the checkpoint. The linebacker was staring at it, but Roger wanted his attention.
May I see your ID? he said. He knew he was being a pompous twit, but honestly, this was London .
With great courtesy, considering what a nuisance the Brit MP was being, the American Secret Service man opened his wallet and produced a badge. It had a blue and red shield within a five-pointed gold star, and on the roundel was inscribed United States Secret Service.
There you go, sir. Is that OK?
Roger couldnt help it. These credentials should mean nothing to him, not on the streets of London. But he felt a childish sense of reverence.
Er, yes, that is OK.
Just wait here, sir, said the American, and he strolled towards the ambulance driven by the man whose passport said he was called Jones.
How are you guys today? he enquired, removing his shades, the ones with the little nick in the corner, and holding out his hand for their papers.
At the next junction, turn left, said the female Dalek of the ambulance satnav.
Whats that? said Matt the USSS man.
She is a machine, said Jones. She is stupid. She is nothing. As Roger Barlow saw the Levantine-featured fellow hand over a pink P form, a thought penetrated his mental fog of guilt, depression and self-obsession.
Oi, he said to the American, but so feebly that he could scarcely be heard above the chanting. Hang on a mo, he said, almost to himself.
Joe, called the vast American to one of his colleagues, would you mind checking in the back of the van here? You dont mind, sir, he said to Jones, if we check in the back of your ambulance?
Its an ambulance, Matt, said Joe.
I know, but we gotta check.
The queue behind set up a parping, and down the Embankment the noise of the protesters reached an aero engine howl.
All the Americans were now touching their trembling ears, and the men from the Met were listening on their walkietalkies.
Joe, called Matt, as his colleague approached the rear of the ambulance, we gotta clear this stretch of road more quickly. We got the cavalcade in around twenty minutes. Weve got POTUS coming through.
POTUS coming through, said Joe, and slapped the flank of the ambulance as if it were a steer. You boys better git out of the way.
Hang on a tick, said Roger Barlow, a little more assertively. You know it really isnt possible, he murmured, as the ambulance went slowly round the back of the green and came to a halt at the traffic lights. I saw those guys a few moments ago. Another thought half-formed in his depleted brain.
Jones stowed the forged pink P form on the dashboard and touched the accelerator.
CHAPTER TWELVE
0851 HRS
Six miles away the cavalcade circled the Hogarth roundabout, and the first Permanent Protectee shifted in the bullet-proof undershirt he had been forced to wear. He looked out of the window and was startled to see a trio of English children, aged no more than eleven or twelve, leering in at him from the side of the road. They were thugged up in their grey tracksuit hoods. They were spotty. They were giving him an enthusiastic two-fingered salute.
I guess those guys would rather Saddam was still in power, said the second Permanent Protectee indignantly, and took her husbands hand.
And now Bluetts top man, the sharpest sharpshooter in the US Army, was looking out from his eyrie across Parliament Square and trying to wish the bad feeling away.
Here and there across the crowd, the bleats were turning into an anti-American chorus; and it took Jason Pickel back to the rhythms of the cretinous song the Iraqis sang, the song of adulation of a man who had tortured and killed thousands, some said hundreds of thousands, of his own people.
Yefto, bildam! Eftikia Saddam!
After that statue had been pulled down, on the day of the liberation, they had briefly and obligingly changed the lyric.
Yefto, bildam! Eftikia Bush! they sang, ingratiatingly. But it didnt have the same swing. It didnt last.
The trouble with Baghdad was that the fear never let up. You couldnt sleep at night because it was so hot, and they couldnt fix the air con in the Al-Mansouria Palace, one of Udays little pied-à-terres, a hideous place constructed of marble, crystal and medium-density fibreboard. And even if they had been able to fix the air con, they wouldnt have gotten no electricity, because no one seemed able to get the generators to work; and even if the generators had worked, the juice wouldnt have made it across town, seeing as people kept ripping up the copper cables, and barbecuing off the plastic, and melting down the metal. And then the self-same looters, or their relatives, came and screamed outside your compound, and cursed America.
And when you had to go on patrol, in your Humvee, the crowds of protesters would part sullenly, and the sweat would run so badly down your legs that you would get nappy rash, even if you never got off the Humvee, and no one, to be honest, was very keen to get off the Humvee.
Were going into the Garden of Eden, boys, his commanding officer had told them as they flew over Turkey in the C-130s. Its the cradle of mankind, so I want you to treat the place with respect, and remember that these are an ancient people, and they want our help.
Garden of Eden? thought Jason after he had been there for three weeks. Call it hell on earth.
The economy was shot to hell, the Baathist police wouldnt turn up for work; and almost the worst thing of all was the food. Wasnt this meant to be the Fertile Crescent? Surely this was a place so rich in alluvial salts that it had first occurred to mankind to scratch a bone in the earth and plant seeds.
And all they could get to eat was shoarma and chips, chicken and chips, shoarma and chips, chicken and chips. And you know what the Iraqis really loved, their number one smash hit recipe? They called it Khantooqi Fried. It was funny: back home, people complained about the imposition of American values on an ancient civilization.
Well, there was one delicacy that every Iraqi short-order chef could produce, and that was the brown-grey salty batter in which they caked the corpses of their poor, scraggy, underfed roosters. Long before General Tommy Franks, there was one American military figure who had conquered Iraq, and that was Colonel Sanders.
After a while McDonalds did arrive in the barracks. They installed Coke machines. The troops skin began to suffer. All the guys were getting seriously homesick, and they were only allowed five minutes per week on the phone.
All of it might have been tolerable, however, had it not been for the streets. He hated the streets, walking among these skinny and malnourished people as though you were from an alien planet. You felt like Judge Dredd, with your big padded helmet, your flak jacket, your chest a kind of mobile drugstore: watch, radio, aspirin, scissors.
Always there was the heart-thud of anxiety when the cars cruised towards your station. Everyone was afraid of the guys with the mad eyes, who ran in from the crowds and pop pop pop they fired or ka-boom they blew their killer waistcoats. No damn good a flak jacket was going to do you, not against a man who really wanted to whack you.
Always there was the heart-thud of anxiety when the cars cruised towards your station. Everyone was afraid of the guys with the mad eyes, who ran in from the crowds and pop pop pop they fired or ka-boom they blew their killer waistcoats. No damn good a flak jacket was going to do you, not against a man who really wanted to whack you.
Pickel had been standing on the mound outside the Al-Mansouria Palace, watering his geraniums. Actually, he wasnt watering them, he was Diet Coke-ing them, since some clerks error in the Pentagon meant they were supplied with more Diet Coke than bottled water. The geraniums liked Diet Coke, even if it was bad for people, and Jason just loved the way they grew, the way they responded to him. He loved their geranium smell when he broke their stalks, to make them grow better. He stroked their pinks and reds and whites that mimicked his sunburnt Germanic skin. He marvelled at their long woody stalks, and thought how much bigger they were than the geraniums at home.