Chapter Fourteen

'She's talking to it.'

The Brigadier adjusted the focus of his binoculars. Professor Summerfield was dwarfed by the Martian Lord. The two of them were strolling along a footpath, engaged in what looked like a polite conversation. Around the Tower was a mass of people, crashing against the walls like a stormy sea. The Brigadier turned his binoculars on sections of the crowd. Bottles and stones were being thrown at the Tower, but the moat and the high walls prevented any of them from getting inside. So, the brunt of the anger was focused on the tanks of the Provisional Government. Rows of riot police were holding firm as missiles clattered against their plastic shields. Behind the front ranks of police were more heavily-armed units: water cannons, mounted units, even tanks. It wouldn't take much more provocation before they were wheeled out. Some of the Provisional security forces had machine guns. This could become a massacre, and there was little the Royalists could do.

There was a young man propped halfway up a lamp-post, goading other young men in the crowd. There was nowhere for them to take their anger.

'I want some thoughts about how we get into the Tower without the use of air power,' Lethbridge-Stewart said. The walls had stood for centuries, but every so often an army or a mob had managed to get in there: it had happened during the Peasants' Revolt and the Wars of the Roses. These days in normal circumstances, if such a term could ever be used, a couple of SAS or other Special Forces squads would abseil down from helicopters, or parachute in. With the Martian warship there, and the Provisional Government intent to enforce the no-fly rule, the helicopters would never make it to London.

'That ship on the opposite bank... ' Corporal Baxter began.

'The HMS Belfast,' Bambera said, 'what of it?'

'Well do you think those guns are in working condition?'

One of the Captains sniggered.

'You have something to add?' Lethbridge-Stewart asked him.