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and as he did that, his right arm slipped out from under my knee. Next thing, he was using the AK-47 as a club, writhing underneath me, trying to beat my brains out with the butt. I wrestled it from him, tearing and biting at his fingers. Finally, I wrenched it out of his hands and threw it blindly behind me. I heard it clatter on the cement and started pounding his face again, left, right and left. He stopped moving. I drew breath and heard Harry shouting at me, “John! Stop!”

I looked up at him with my fist poised for a fourth and final blow, but I realized then that he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking behind me, and he looked worried. That was when I heard the unmistakable, slightly sneering voice saying, “Don’t stop on my account, kill the little shit if you want to.”

I lowered my fist, then got to my feet and turned. He was leaning against the shattered wooden crates, holding an automatic in his hand. “I hope you don’t mind, DI Green, I left your men sitting outside the club, watching my car, and I borrowed the owner’s Merc. He’s an old chum of mine.”

“Caulfield. I knew it had to be you.”

“Well, that makes you very clever, Stone, but sadly, I’m the one holding the gun.”

NINETEEN

He aimed the automatic at my head. “On your knees.”

I stuck out my lower lip, like I was doubtful, then shook my head. “No, if I’m going to die, Caulfield, I’ll do it on my feet, not on my knees.”

“How very admirable. It would be so much more admirable if you didn’t keep two thirds of the planet on their knees.” He waved his gun at Harry. “Cuff him.”

“Countries like Saudi Arabia, Caulfield? Countries like the Emirates?”

“I am not going to discuss politics with a gun-toting U.S. hit man.”

Harry pulled my arms behind my back and as he closed the cuffs he said, “Um, actually, Caulfield. You’re the one toting the gun, and the only hit men in this affair were employed by you…”

“Shut up, Green. Stone, sit down or I’ll shoot you in the knee. Green, get on your toy radio and tell your men to back away. Tell them I want a negotiating team dispatched. Then take your shoes and socks off.”

Harry got on his radio. “Alpha teams One and Two, be advised we have a hostage situation. Alpha One, fall back to the perimeter. Alpha Two, adopt standard fall back procedure, Sergeant Lewis’ discretion. Hostage taker has requested a negotiation team.”

I moved over to one of the boxes of dates and sat on it. Now I could see what it was Dehan had been pointing at. The bottommost crate had been torn to kindling by Sadiq’s gunfire, and you could see the alternating butts and muzzles of assault rifles poking out.

“What is it, Caulfield, one in every ten cases is guns? Who are they for? Don’t tell me you’re planning a coup.”

“Nothing so dramatic, Stone. There will not be ‘rivers of blood’ in the streets in deer old Blighty. Not many, anyway. Just enough to keep a certain level of terror alive, to keep the people pliant.”

“So you arrange the sales to them, then they ship the guns back to people like Sadiq, so he can shoot the workers you represent in the streets of your city. Is that what they call government for the people?”

“I am well past being upset by your cynicism, Stone. You, Green, sit on the floor next to your buddy. Now here’s how it’s going to go. I need a jet fuelled and ready to go within the next ninety minutes, at London Elstree airport. We will be flying to Saudi. I will give the pilot his instructions once we are aboard. You both will be handed over to the authorities when we arrive. Any delays, or attempts at trickery, and I will take something random off you. It might be a toe, a finger, an ear, an eye, a foot. I will steadily dismember you until you are both dead. That is the deal. When the negotiator arrives, you will persuade him that I am serious, and if he tries to play me, I will take a piece of you. Do you understand, Green?”

Green sighed and nodded. “I do.”

I spoke suddenly and loudly. “So, let me see if I have understood this. You are basically employed by who? Al Qaeda?”

“I am not just employed by them, Stone, I happen to have a certain ideological allegiance with them. I like their certainty, their clarity. I like the fact that they are not afraid to stand up against the Jewish conspiracy. The one area where Marx went wrong was in his atheism. What makes a society strong, what unites a society, is a powerful ideology. And let’s face it, few ideologies, if any, are quite as powerful as Islam.”

I gave a small laugh. “Save it for the sheep, pastor. Bottom line is Al Qaeda pays your salary. So why the Marxism? You’ve been in the Labor Party all your life, why the ties with Marxists?”

He laughed out loud. “Have you any idea how many Labour MPs and Labour supporters are Marxists? My dream, the dream of many—and you can raise that cynical eyebrow all you like, it does not change the fact—my dream is for a Marxist Britain guided by the spiritual light of Islam.” He laughed again, shaking his head. “And believe me, it is very far from being an impossible dream. And I am not alone in dreaming it. Islam is for all humanity, salvation is for all those who embrace it, and the same is true of Marxism.”

“That’s very nice, Caulfield. I get a nice, warm feeling when I hear you talk that way. Fortunately, not all Muslims are crazy like