Fractions_ The First Half of the Fall Revolution - Ken MacLeod [262]
Hours later, when Eleanor and Colin at last appeared in the stream of arrivals, we were as haggard and ragged as they. After hugging and crying and talking, we turned around and fought our way out again. We got to the car, paid the parking surcharge, paid a hawker another outrageous sum for warm coffee, and set off for home. It was about 10.00 p.m.
I drove: Annette was exhausted, I was manic with relief.
As I edged the car around the junction for the M4 a laser’s ruby flicker hurt my eyes. Blinking away the after-image, I was blinded again by a torch, waving us in to the side of the road. On the pavement was a unit of five soldiers with black uniforms and M-16s. I thumbed the car-phone switch and pulled in, turned with a hopefully reassuring smile to the others and stepped out. Other cars inched past me. Everyone in them took great care not to look. I kept my hands on top of the car and moved crabwise around to the near side.
Hands groped around my collar, my torso, down my legs and between them. Then my shoulder was grabbed and I was spun around and thrown back against the car. I froze in the light and kept my hands up. Behind me, through an open inch of window, I thought I heard Annette’s quiet, urgent voice.
The soldier covering me lowered his beam, raised his rifle and loomed close. His visor was up, revealing an impassive, Andean face: I was reminded of the peasant in the poster. What goes around comes around…
‘Jonathan Wilde,’ he said. It wasn’t a question. I didn’t answer. My mouth was dry.
‘Come with us,’ he said.
I felt the window at my back roll down.
‘No!’ Annette shouted.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Go. Go now.’
‘Yes,’ said the soldier. ‘Go.’
He motioned me away from the car. I took two slow steps forward. ‘There are no weapons in the car,’ I said.
‘We know.’ He swung his rifle away from me, towards the car. For the first time his face showed an emotion, something so primal it was hard to tell whether it was fear or rage.
‘Go!’ he screamed.
I could hear Annette’s dry sobs, Eleanor crying, Colin arguing. I dared not turn around, or even make a gesture.
The engine started, and slowly the car pulled away.
Streetlights and fog. Aircraft landing-lights and fog. Night and fog. They had never looked so beautiful. I raised my eyes for a look at the stars I thought I’d never reach, not now. I couldn’t see them. Ah well.
They walked me a few hundred metres to a patch of waste ground. I was actually relieved to see a black helicopter, its matt angular surfaces gleaming with condensation in the shadows. They bundled me aboard and sat me down facing the open doorway as the craft took off. It made surprisingly little noise. The soldiers watched me with silent malice and dirty-secret smiles.
I wondered why I’d kept walking, when I could have run. It looked like I was for one of the classic US-client execution styles, the Saigon sky-dive. I should have run, I thought, and not given them this satisfaction. There’s an Arab proverb, something along the lines that hope is the enemy of freedom, or despair is the liberator of the slave. It explains a lot, including why I climbed into that helicopter.
I hope it doesn’t explain what I did after I got out.
‘Come in, Mr Wilde.’
The polite invitation, from one of a dozen men in suits around a table, was accompanied by a shove in the back from the UN trooper that sent me stumbling into the room and left no-one in any doubt who was really in charge here. The door behind me was too heavy to slam, but it closed with a muffled thud, as if the soldier had at least made the attempt.
I straightened, mustering my dignity, and glanced around the room. Somewhere in Westminster – the helicopter had landed in St James’s Park, and I’d been bundled into the