The Prague Ultimatum Read online

  Abelard countered his intensity, spreading her warm smile wider.

  “You’re not alone there,” she began, “I have a friend who does exactly the same; she gets so worried about the state of the world that she lays it on thick to her daughter to make sure she’s ready to face it. And she’s no soldier, she works for the Council!”

  Her grin was infectious and Stone acknowledged her efforts.

  “We all have our own battlefields,” he said. “There was one time, I remember it like it was yesterday. He had got his school report and it was brilliant, I mean he’s always been clever, but this time it was really, really good. I was on a tour, but managed to ring to congratulate him and tell him how proud I was of him.”

  Stone raised his glass and drew deeply from it, shaking his head just slightly at the rawness of the memory, his eyes lost somewhere over Abelard’s shoulder.

  “I ended up shouting at him, pissed off by some trivial comeback he’d made, or for the way he made it, I don’t even remember.”

  Emptying the heavy glass, he softly replaced it on the table, his grip refusing to slip from it as his thoughts continued on their trail.

  “I always wanted him to be a rebel, to question authority, just…”

  “Not yours.”

  “…Yeah.”

  “I was the same, I suppose,” she mused, “in terms of my marriage I mean. I was so scared of being one of those possessive, harridan wives of old that I went too far the other way. Jonathan was in politics, I knew he’d be away a lot of the time and I had my own career to focus on so it didn’t seem to matter at first that we spent so little time together. It turns out that kind of relationship only works when you can trust your partner…”

  She tailed off as she relayed the memories, Stone offering her a sympathetic smile.

  The brief silence between them was broken by the resumption of the rhythmic booming and the roar of the drunken crowd, as a pair of long legged women, one blonde, one brunette, strode onto the stage below them to the whooping of the mixed crowd below.

  “Looks like the show’s about to start,” shouted Abelard over the music.

  “What, a dance show?”

  “Erm... you could say that,” the Professor said, “in a manner of speaking.”

  Stone looked up at her wide-eyed expression, then down to the stage upon which the two ‘dancers’ had quickly undressed themselves and opened up a box containing an array of objects and devices, the sight of which caused Stone’s own eyes to bulge and the crowd around the stage to whoop and applaud.

  “Tell me,” Stone began, inwardly cringing at the situation, “do you think the weather’s nice enough tonight for a river cruise?”

  It wasn’t long before the pair were sat by the window of an almost empty river boat, having walked stiffly and briskly away from the unexpected ‘entertainment’ and towards the adjacent Vltava, where dinner boats and jazz cruises patiently waited, the mutual eruption of their previously stifled laughter causing the few other diners to tut and frown at their uncouth display.

  “So, tell me Captain,” Abelard grinned as the boat set off past the glowing lights and architectural magnificence of the Prague riverside, “do you make a habit of having lady friends accompany you to erotic shows on first dates?”

  “Regimental tradition,” he grinned back. “I trust this is adequate recompense?”

  “First class Captain, first class.”

  Stone felt his tensions ease as they ate and was delighted to find that his enjoyment of the Professor’s - of Natalie’s - company was every bit as strong as his admiration for her intellect, which likewise grew as they discussed the political scene they had stepped into this last manic day. Before long, they had moved on deck and sat watching the skyline together, as the boat slid elegantly through the tranquil water. As a gentle but determined breeze blew across them, Stone felt her nestling close to him for warmth and he lifted his arm around her shoulders in response.

  “So, what did happen in Syria, I mean really happen?”

  The question caught Stone off guard.

  “Don’t you trust the media?” he half-smiled, trying to deflect the question as lightly as he could.

  “I trust you…”

  The words stabbed at Stone, causing for just a moment, the now familiar lump to flirt in his throat, before disappearing as his soldier’s instincts chased it away.

  “If you believe the papers, the TV and the Parliamentary Defence Committee, then it’s all quite simple,” he began as she snuggled closer into his chest.

  “After everything kicked off again in Syria, I was OF-2 of one of the first Units on the scene, trying to recapture ground from the militants in North Damascus while keeping as far away as possible from the Russian Units who were doing the same thing from the South. We had a rebel cell locked down in Sarouja, that’s just north of the Old City. Orders came through to take them out and I refused to engage. Consequently, the Russians captured the town and a number of the cell were able to escape, later posing as refugees to flee the country. It’s speculated that this cell was behind the attack in London.”

  “I see,” Abelard finished, the news having been full of little else during that time. “But there was no real proof of that, if I’m right? It’s all speculation and paper talk?”

  “Who needs proof in today’s world?” Stone huffed. “Pick a scapegoat, place a few un-sourced ‘quotes’ in the press and a couple of well worded threads on Twitter and let innuendo do its worst. Once everyone’s clicked ‘like and share’ very few are interested in the truth.”

  “Which is?”

  Stone looked defiantly out at the Vltava, weighing up the likely reception of his words. His thumb beginning to gently rub Natalie’s bare shoulder, he sighed.

  “The Russians had got there before us.”

  His face was grim and his words every bit as cold as the waters they sailed through.

  “The MI6 intelligence was flawed and we thought the Russians were further away than they were. Although there were a few fanatical stragglers still in the town, it was occupied by Russian forces, apart from a small portion in the East. I relayed that to command and was informed that their orders stood; they wanted me to go in and capture the town anyway.”

  Natalie frowned at the tale.

  “Wait,” she began, “they wanted you to actually engage the Russian forces in combat?”

  Stone nodded.

  “The perils of taking orders from politicians, I’m afraid. America saw the capture of Sarouja as a key PR stepping stone in the battle against extremism and the Ministry of Defence had already prepared a statement to the effect that British forces had captured the area; neither wanted to lose face.”

  “So you refused.”

  “I moved the unit into the unoccupied territory but I told command there was no way in Hell I was going to start World War Three for them. I met with the Russian commander and shared a drink with him in a bombed-out hospital; I proposed to honour the existing partition, that we’d defend the portion of the town we’d taken but wouldn’t encroach further and he agreed to do the same. He wasn’t in any mood to start an armed conflict between East and West any more than I was; I hope he came out of it better than I did. The whole thing passed almost in a daze; it was certainly the most surreal experience of my life. But we just got on with it; stiff upper lip and all that.”

  Stone felt Natalie’s hand on his, gripping it in concerned affection, willing him to continue.

  “The Americans wanted me relieved of command but my squadron threatened to lay down arms if I was replaced. Fortunately, my Colonel and General had my back and agreed with my judgement, which pretty much forced the UN to agree to joint occupation of the town. Needless to say, my squadron was soon replaced on the ground.”

  “They replaced you for doing the right thing? Bastards.”

  “I could have lived with that. My parents taught me to accept responsibility for my actions and I knew there were bound to be conseq
uences, and at first they were pretty light ones, including dangling a promotion in front of me.”

  “Which you didn’t accept?”

  Stone smiled wistfully.

  “Being a Captain meant the world to me,” he said, “it still does. I joined up as a Squaddie and spent my career with the Royal Tank Regiment, in one form or another. My Dad, my adoptive dad that is, was in 4RTR in the Fifties and it meant the world to me to be following in his footsteps. I applied for an extension to my service once I turned forty, then five years later applied to be commissioned and they made me a Captain.”

  “So why turn down Major after such a long career?” Natalie asked, confusion evident in her voice.

  “I wanted to stay in the field,” he mused. “That’s what soldiering was all about for me. To take Major, to push for Lieutenant Colonel, yes it might have been nice, but I wouldn’t have been a soldier anymore, not really. I’d spent my career in battlefields and that’s where I wanted to stay. I was lucky to be there anyway, promotees from the Ranks are usually assigned administrative duties like Quartermaster but because of my reputation in the field, and possibly for political reasons too, I was given command of Dreadnought, the Battalion’s Command and Reconnaissance Squadron. It was the proudest moment of my professional life; we were a family, I looked after them like they were my kids…”

  Stone heard his voice beginning to drift and was pulled back to the present by Natalie’s probing.

  “Political reasons?” he heard her ask, “Such as?”

  He pulled her tighter to him and allowed a cynical smile to take root on his face.

  “Let’s just say there have been more than a couple of politicians over the years eager for their photo opportunity with the Black Hero.” He laughed contemptuously at the memories of so many saccharine smiles, so many half-hearted handshakes.

  “Man did that change quickly…”

  “The Enquiry?”

  Stone breathed deeply before continuing, realising inwardly that this was the first time he had voiced these frustrations and that the pain and anger they provoked were still fresh.

  “The London attack gave that lot exactly the excuse they needed to hang me out to dry. They needed a scapegoat to explain away the security failure and I was the perfect fit: the Officer who refused an order to take out an insurgent stronghold, allowing them to escape to Europe by posing as refugees and carry out carnage in Britain. The way it was spun, some of the Red Tops pretty much accused me of killing the victims myself. The government emerged blameless, as did MI6, and the papers had a real physical person to unleash their anger on, with the added bonus that the anti-immigration headlines guaranteed good copy. Everyone’s a winner baby.”

  He felt the squeeze of her hand and patted her shoulder in return, attempting to assure her of his resolve as his eyes drifted over the illuminated majesty alongside the river.

  “But you’ll be exonerated now, surely? Jonathan promised.”

  “The word of a politician?” The cynicism left Stone’s face and he smiled gently down at her. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t get too excited. Even if he comes through, things won’t be the same, the price of exoneration is accepting that damn promotion and being shuffled off to Sandhurst. My career in the field is over, but at least I’ll be able to show him I wasn’t a coward, that I tried to do the right thing…”

  “Show who?”

  “My son.” Stone looked down again to see tears welling in Natalie’s eyes and her delicate mouth hanging slightly open, as if she were searching for words that wouldn’t come.

  “Hey,” he whispered, brushing her cheek with his thumb, “it’s ok.”

  He pulled her closer to him, leaning his face towards hers as the breeze continued to caress them. And it was then, just as he felt the brush of this woman’s lips on his own, as he emptied his mind for the first time in so long of all thoughts of bombs, and death and terror, that the grandiose opulence of the domed Rudolfinum, the most beautiful of the city’s theatres convulsed into a frenzied plume of raging flame.

  SEVEN

  STONE PUSHED HIS WAY onto the bow of the boat, willing it to make port faster, before finally leaping to the dock as the vessel laboriously brought itself alongside. Quickly steadying himself, the Captain ran along the bank into the nightmare of Jan Palach Square, the clatter of his shoes on the cobbles drowned out by the chaotic cries of the injured, the screams of the crowd and the wail of sirens both distant and near.

  Flashing his pass, he sped past the stunned young police officer who had moved to stop him, and into the centre of the flaming and bloody sonata playing out under the moonlight before him. Carnage awaited him, but Stone had seen carnage before and fell back on his professional stoicism and combat experience to survey the situation, his eyes steely, flicking back and forth as his soldier’s mind assessed the situation. Of the three blasts, he surmised that one had been in the entrance of The Rudolfinum, its magnificence now burning and tarnished with the blood of those come to seek the solace of music within its walls, and the other two in the gardens the crowd had fled to, past the statue of Antonín Dvořák, which stared grimly at the horrors before it.

  “Bastards,” he whispered, tempted to allow his anger and his hatred of the cowardliness and deliberate cruelty of attacks of this nature. He quickly pushed such thoughts to the back of his mind to focus on the realities around him, for there was work to be done.

  He sped to the flaming entrance, from which stragglers still hesitantly stumbled, clamping his eyes shut in inadequate preparation as he ran through and into the smoke-filled disorder of the inner hall.

  Smoke eagerly and instantly filling his lungs and stinging his useless eyes, Stone reached around, grabbing, fumbling for the source of the screams he could hear around him, latching eventually on to a flailing arm and dragging it towards him. With one arm locked around the waist of his quarry, he pulled them hard towards where instinct told him was the door, collapsing through it and heaving the fresher, if only slightly, air into his burning lungs.

  In one movement, he handed his rescuee into the arms of a waiting fire fighter, resisting her attempts to take him too to safety. Instead he stumbled, almost falling down the steps towards the green, where a fresh pair of arms impeded him.

  “Lincoln!”

  He blinked again, clearing his sore eyes and focusing on the face of his accoster, though her voice had ensured instant recognition.

  “Lincoln!” Natalie shouted again, almost shaking the soldier into cognisance.

  “Natalie! You need to go!”

  “I’m not going without you!”

  “You have to!” His senses returned, Stone was not about to risk the first woman he had felt close to for more years than he could remember and his tone took on the military inflection that had served him so well throughout his life.

  “It’s not a suggestion!” He moved her toward the periphery. “I’ll be fine, this is the day job for me. Go to your hotel and I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  He fumbled in his pocket, pulling out his phone and handing it to her.

  “If you want to help, you can do me a favour and call my boy, let him know I’m ok.”

  “What?”

  She screwed her face in frustrated confusion as Stone began to extract himself from her arms.

  “Just call him!” He repeated his request, almost commanding her. “I’ll see you tomorrow, I promise!”

  With that he pulled himself out of her arms and ran back towards the congregating wounded and fearful on the adjacent green.

  On the grass around him, people lay scattered and broken, some attended by weeping relatives, others by harassed medics. Firefighters ran through flames to search for more to add to their number and overstretched police linked arms to keep onlookers from the perimeter. Some of those lying alone screamed for Stone’s help, but he knew that the silent ones required more immediate attention. Though more sirens were drawing near, Stone’s experience demanded he react now, lest it be
too late for someone. A man, middle aged and apparently alone, lay silent a few yards from the Captain, who bound over to him, instantly spotting the bleed from under the man’s jacket. Pulling it open he located the deep wound in the man’s stomach, pushing his hand onto it and shouting vainly for a medic.

  The click of a camera accompanied by the cry of a young voice distracted Stone and he turned to see a child, a girl of no more than ten or eleven years weeping and looking around her, shouting loudly for ‘Mama’, while a thin man in his twenties clicked pictures of her despair, apparently unfazed by the scene he stood in. His anger bubbling, Stone opened his mouth to deliver a tirade, before a woman, her dress once elegant but now tattered, ran past him and embraced the child who wrapped her arms tightly around her mother’s neck, the pair sobbing uncontrollably into each other. The reunion was nectar to the photographer, whose clicks grew faster the longer they embraced.

  Stone spun swiftly in disgust, pulling the offending object from the astonished man and hurling it as far as he could, then clamping down onto his arm, dragging him alongside the prostrate victim. Stone forced the man’s hand over the gaping wound and pushed down hard.

  “Keep it there,” he ordered, his tone implicitly warning of the dangers of refusal.

  “But, but I’m a photographer!”

  “I couldn’t give a shit if you’re Robert Frank, this man’s life is more important than your fucking Pulitzer Prize, right?!”

  Scared, the newcomer nodded, Stone’s glare sufficient to warn him of the consequences of doing otherwise. The Captain himself ran to the new paramedics jogging through the cordon, stopping one and pointing to the stricken man, before his eyes were drawn to the imposing black car sweeping onto the scene. The rear door flew open to reveal Miroslava Svobodova, who ran with a determination Stone was sure would have taken her into the flames themselves had she not been pulled back by the everreliable Radoslav.