The Partridge Kite (16 page)

‘What would you say to a new Government that gave you back what this and successive Governments have taken from you: the fundamental values of a decent, thrifty, independent
British
way of life?

‘Do you remember that word . . . “decent”? A “decent” standard of living, a “decent” future for your children, the “decency” of everyday life we once took so much for granted? Do you remember when pornography was a dirty word?

‘Do you remember when the Courts sent rapists to prison?

‘Do you remember the time when Decency was protected by Law?

‘Remember when we could save and used our savings in the way
we
thought best?

‘When we were not subservient to and dependent on the State?

‘Since the last World War the Socialists deliberately and the Conservatives recklessly have pursued policies that have penalised our thrift and made independence impossible to achieve or maintain.

‘They have driven us like sheep into the pen of Dependent Socialism, dipped us, marked us, rationed our feedstuff, medicated and pensioned us. In the Total Welfare State nothing, absolutely nothing, has been left alone.

‘Constantly and unhesitatingly, the values we held fine have been sacrificed to Socialist myths and proletarian greed and envy. But what are now contemptuously ridiculed as “Middle-Class” values are basic to any free and decent society. If they go, we go!

‘Never in our long history have they ever been in such need of protection.

‘We are a nation completely divided, living in animosity as classes, generations, as employers, employees, unemployed, as separate races and immigrants. As those who mourn the loss of freedom and those who haven’t the wit to recognise its worth.

‘Each blames the other for our national suicide, nobody himself. Not the car worker, not the docker, the miner, the Scot, Irish or Welsh. Not the cleric, teacher, doctor, milkman, shop steward, civil servant, Cabinet minister.

‘We are no longer one nation. We who founded the greatest empire this world will ever know, now so finally reduced.

“We are slowly sliding down to die.” Sir Harold Macmillan said that in 1976. And great empires, he also said, take a long time to die.

Tie, with all his famous optimism, provided us with that perfectly adequate epitaph. And we do not deserve it, despite everything.

‘The unknowing, unthinking mass seem content to give up their minds and bodies to the wet nurse of All-Enveloping Socialism. They cannot realise what they’re doing. They haven’t the eyes or wit to have seen the same thing spread from Moscow like a fungus across Europe. They haven’t recognised the spores of that fungus that have been scattered across this island and have settled in dark corners, already fertile.

‘But, my God! We see it! We recognise the tyranny of Uncompassionate Socialism. And I promise, as you are my Testament, we will kill it before it advances one step further!’

His audience were on their feet and the floor shook as a thousand people stamped, clapped and banged their chairs in applause.

Above the roar Tom could still hear Linklater, shouting now, into the microphone.

‘Yes, you
shall
fight! You know now your enemies and you have recognised at last your friends! You
shall
fight and, my God, you
will
win!’

He began flinging out both arms forwards and upwards, punctuating the words of his final chant, like a two-handed Nazi salute. A thousand pairs of hands followed him.

‘LET US FIGHT FOR FREEDOM!’

‘LET US WIN FOR FREEDOM!’

‘LET US LIVE IN FREEDOM!’

Tom sat back in his chair. Despite the cold he felt a slight sweat on his forehead. People were on their feet all around him. He felt he was crouching in a cave.

He remembered Colonel Haig and his classrooms: the chanting soldiers and the chanting students, all so committed. How many other classrooms were there like it throughout the country? How many meetings like this were taking place tonight? How could this all be happening and no one outside know about it? Where were the police? Where were the Press? Where were the International Socialists, Marxists and Maoists and the band of thugs they travelled with, to break up meetings like this?

Tom suddenly realised, through the forest of people, that two of the stewards were staring at him. He felt their hostility. He turned to ease his way out of the row. In the aisle he saw two more waiting for him. One leant forward.

‘You’re not standing, sir. Is anything the matter?’

‘Yes,’ Tom said. ‘I think I’m going to be sick.’

‘For the sake of computer records we are in quorum, Friday, December 17th, time 10.47 p.m. Countdown in accord seven days minus seventy-three minutes.’

The preamble was not for effect. The company around the table had heard it many times before and it had become routine. It was the machines who had decided it should be done.

The computers, banked in three rows of five in the insulated, air-conditioned, fireproof cellars immediately below the room had, since nine days ago, taken over. Each of the five Board Directors now present had since that time become an agent under their guidance and direction. Except in one final exercise that is, which was being dealt with by the Chairman himself. And only he and the computers knew what that was.

The five Directors and the Chairman sat at the large round white marble table ready to begin their evening briefing. Sennheiser microphones, which could pick up a whisper at fifteen yards, were angled about them in such a way that every part of every conversation was recorded. A video camera facing each man transferred into a magnetic impulse every smile, every grimace, every glance. Nothing was said or done in that room that was not recorded and then programmed by the master computer in the cellar below.

It was a long room, oak panelled to the ceiling. Etchings, miniatures, pen sketches and aquatints lined the walls, hung closely together, so tight for space, it seemed, that at first glance they looked like one long frieze.

The oak strip flooring shone brilliantly with two centuries of beeswax polishing. Heavy dark blue brocade curtains hid the tall windows and the primitive landscape outside.

The six men sat at one end of the room close to the Adam fireplace and the blazing logs.

It had been snowing hard and non-stop for two days and two nights.

Snowdrifts in the grounds around the house were in places thirty feet high. In the past forty-eight hours the wind had changed direction, north-east to east, turning the drifts this way and that until they stood like man-made pyramids, perfectly shaped, impenetrable. Cedars and pines ringed the house, their branches heavy with snow. Occasionally when the wind gusted, the snow would glide slowly off the boughs and crash fifty feet down.

The house in the forest was only a ninety-minute flight by jet from one of the busiest capitals in the world. But in midwinter it was as isolated from London as North Cape.

Since Wednesday, when the first snowstorm began, the house had been completely cut off. The nearest public road was fifteen miles away. The single track that led off it to the house was buried deep. The snow and the north-easterly had made CORDON Headquarters a fortress.

It would have been impregnable if an area, thirty yards square, was not cleared by flamethrowers at regular two- hourly intervals, day and night, for the helicopter to land.

The Chairman looked down at his notes and began reading aloud to his Directors.

‘I have indicated in the briefing in front of you the main areas of resistance. By resistance I mean physical, violent opposition. Take note in particular of those universities, polytechnics and teacher training colleges typed in red. In the far right column you’ll see the strength of our military contingents on call locally. Hopefully the siege mentality of students will work to our benefit, and fewer military than the maximum available will be needed.

‘As you are aware, an intensive research programme during the past three years has indicated that opposition in the main concentrations of labour will be, at the very most, passive. But again you’ll see that on computer advice in those listed mines, docks and factories, again typed red, certain precautionary measures will operate under the direction of our members inside, with physical assistance from our military if needed.

The most recent data we have from the computer’s national scan is most encouraging. It gives to within half a per cent an identical conclusion to the same scan done twenty months ago. Our support is constant. The map on Appendix Four shows you the geographical breakdown of that support in the main industrial areas.

‘You are already aware, as of Tuesday’s briefing, of the situation in Ulster. I think you’ll agree with me that the degree of support shown amply rewards the efforts we have made there over the past few years.

‘We know of course the areas of greatest physical opposition, where the coloured immigrant population is most concentrated. We are talking here about immediate response opposition.

‘The data set out in front of you shows the areas of greatest danger to us . . . where we can expect the most violent immediate reaction.

‘You will see that the computers have given a priority rating to certain areas which will need our most urgent attention. Note also that the machines have split the danger. The West Indian settlements will erupt first and most violently, but it will be the Asian settlements that will cause the most extended problems, partly from their numbers, partly from their nature.

‘On the far right column there is listed alongside each area the number of military we will employ to cope.

‘The method of control we have at last agreed on and the computers this afternoon gave their final consent. The green wallet in your folder contains details of that control.

‘I know from our Computer Tone and resistance data that some of our Area Directors have expressed criticism of these methods. Some thought it too drastic. I have heard very reasonable arguments against it on the grounds that it might appall the mass of British people, make hostile the very people we shall depend on most for our support.

‘However, I am informed that this criticism has not developed into opposition. Drastic though these measures are, there is no alternative, and we shall carry them out as planned.’

The Chairman looked up from his notes but there was no expression on his face. He was not looking for endorsement from the five around him. He was not waiting for them to speak. He expected no comment.

He began coughing very softly, mouth closed, the slight noise coming from the back of his throat, like a stifled grunt. He took a small silver container from his pocket - it might have been a snuffbox - and stirred white powder from it into a glass of water in front of him. It always helped. It wouldn’t cure. There was no cure.

It was impossible to guess his age. All the Directors watching him, listening to him, knew his military and political career well enough. But then, in a week’s time when his name became known throughout the world, so would many people remember. They knew little about him that wasn’t already listed at length in
Who’s Who.

Except his age, which had never been published.

He was an unlikely Revolutionary. His hair was now grey but the hairs on the backs of his hands and wrists were still ginger. His skin was tanned though he hadn’t been out of Britain in fifteen years. He wore dark blue-tinted spectacles at all times. Only these five men had ever seen him in the eight years he had lived in the house. And they had never seen his eyes.

He was a tall big man, powerful, and he showed his strength in the way he walked. It showed in the infinite control of his muscles in any movement, however small, like the lifting of a glass. It was hard to imagine him missing a step or dropping anything by accident. It was difficult to imagine him doing anything by accident.

He took care with everything he did, the way he dressed, the way he spoke, the way he thought. He had self- sufficiency in his strength and in his discipline, which was why he adored his computers and why he loathed them. Without them, what was about to happen could never have been. And without him they would have no mind at all.

‘Page five of your briefing notes, please. You will be relieved to see that it is the final computer printout for 0015 hours December 25th. All systems have been checked by the machines and they synchronise perfectly.

‘We have during the past eighteen months deliberately faulted each system in turn and at random, simulating practical blunders or losses on the day. But no matter how often we’ve tested, no matter how ingenious our cross-faulting, the systems compensated. The machines have given us permission to go ahead on schedule.

‘May I remind you of some items on the itinerary. The Queen and her family will still be aboard the Royal Yacht
Britannia
, continuing her visits to Canada. On Christmas Day, it will be anchored in the St Lawrence River.

‘Parliament is in Recess, but make note of the preparations we have made for Downing Street.

‘All Civil Service Departments will be on holiday until the following Tuesday, the 28th. The Home Office, Ministry of Defence and the Admiralty will have a small number of duty officers and security staff but they pose no real problem.

‘The radio transmitters will have their power cut for one and a half minutes only. It is as much time as we can spare without creating alarm in the broadcasting outputs themselves.

‘Those senior members of ours who will be on duty in the various BBC and Commercial Radio studios are prepared and fully briefed.

‘You will see what particular emphasis I have given the continued broadcasting of BBC World Service. A newsflash in all the languages broadcast during the midnight to one o’clock schedule has already been recorded.

‘We have discussed how essential continuity is on the various broadcasting channels, radio and television. It is vital that there should be the minimum of public anxiety in the first hours if we are to succeed. With the exception of the various newsflashes, broadcast speeches and the political forum, whose members you will see listed in Appendix Eight, the Christmas Day programmes must continue just as they’ve been advertised in the various programme publicity literature.