The Walking Dead

Banks jerked upright in the passenger seat of the car. First reaction, to slide a hand inside his suit jacket, down to his belt and the pancake holster, feel the cold, hard shape of the Glock. Second, to drop the weathered leather-covered notebook into the jacket pocket where it would lie on the folded black tie he had discarded after leaving the funeral. Third, to reach for the door handle and prise it back.

'Delta Group. Principal with you in a half-minute.'

Their car was parked over double-yellow lines. For the protection officers of the Delta Group traffic restrictions were of no importance; neither did it matter that the nearside wheels were on the pavement. In front of them stood the black limousine, weighed down with armour plating, in which the Principal would be taken away, and forward was the car that would be driven ahead of the limousine. Already the motorcycles were easing past them to take up the position where they could clear traffic hold-ups from the passage of the convoy.

There was a pecking order of importance in the Delta Group. Foremost on the pyramid's pinnacle were the officers of the Royal and Diplomatic Protection team — Delta 1 and Delta 2–who would have had a table inside the hotel's restaurant, but not eaten with the Principal's own people. Half-way up the pyramid were the men — Delta 3, Delta 4, Delta 5 and Delta 6–who had loitered outside the restaurant door in the foyer and in the kitchens. At the bottom were the drivers, and the guys who sat in the front passenger seats: David Banks was Delta 12. He stood on the pavement, his back to the hotel's revolving doors, and made his body into a barrier to prevent late-night pedestrians, perhaps spilled out from a theatre, a film or a meal, obstructing the passage of the Principal.

'Delta Group. All clear?'

'To Delta One. Bring him through.'

He heard the bleak, controlled voices in his ear. He opened his arms, held them wide apart and blocked the pavement. A tourist in a Burberry raised a camera, but Banks shook his head and the lens was lowered. It was the power he had. Power came from proximity to a rated Principal. He twisted his head, at speed, and saw the Minister, the man they protected, scurry across the pavement and disappear into the limousine. Banks walked backwards briskly, and when he was level with the car's door, he ducked down and inside, and they were gone into the late-evening traffic.

Banks almost resented the interruption of the Principal's departure from the hotel. He'd been using a small torch to decipher the faded pencil writing in the notebook. He had read of the journey across France and into Spain and, within a few minutes, had been captivated by the story written seven decades earlier by a relative he had not heard of before. When the Principal had been hustled from dinner to the car, he had known a moment of irritation at being snatched away from the drill yard, the straw-filled bedding and the brain-spattered walls — but, more important, he had begun to feel, just, that he walked in Spain's sunshine with the humility and bravery of Cecil Darke.

The motorcycles cleared a way for them. He could see the top of the Principal's close-cut grey hair through the limousine's back window. The Principal was the Minister for Reconstruction in Baghdad and the carpet had been rolled out for him in London, where he had come to beg and borrow resources. The word was that he would go home with little more than a few asinine meetings under his belt and a few decent meals in his stomach. The Principal was a prime target in Baghdad; there, he would have been at risk every time he stuck his toe outside his front door, but how was he a target here? Only a target if the information was trumpeted to Al Qaeda's office in Iraq that the Minister, for Reconstruction was arriving at 8.35 p.m. at a particular hotel restaurant in a particular street (see attached map), would be entertained by an undersecretary at Overseas Development, then head off again at 10.47 p.m. Al Qaeda, Baghdad, did not have an army of floaters drifting round the West End with primed bombs, loaded handguns and, maybe, an armed rocket-propelled grenade-launcher, all on the lookout for the faint chance of being in the right place at the right time.

No, it was not about the threat.

Yes, it was all about the show.

As David Banks saw it, the size of the escort of Protection Officers was an indication to the Principal of the respect in which his hosts held him. Little on offer in resources and funding, but the compliment of two cars riding front and back of the limousine and a small army of well-dressed men to open and close doors. It was flattering, and it bred self-esteem, and Banks knew that the dread of every home-brewed politician who had held a sensitive office of state was to get the heave from Downing Street or the electorate and have protection removed overnight.