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  She began making urgent, though never panicky, calls to the appropriate SPAT HQ. Pulling the strings, as Thelma circled the desks like a senior teacher on examination day. The PM paused awhile and shared a long and earnest conversation with Captain Eagles, Liz noted that, and wondered what they were talking about. Moments later she was back at Liz’s side.

  ‘Well?’ she Thelma.

  Liz bobbed her head and issued a single word. ‘Sorted.’

  ‘Wonderful,’ whispered Thelma, already on the move again, as if she couldn’t stand still for more than a moment. The next time she arrived at Liz’s desk she brought a second list.

  Fourteen.

  That was more than either of them had expected at such an early stage. It was still only half way through the morning. The polls were now computing the government losing overall by one percentage point.

  ‘Not a problem,’ said Liz. ‘Probably as well we know as early as this. Gives us more time to take the necessary action.’

  Not for the first time, Liz’s confident manner boosted Thelma’s spirits. Later, when it was all over, Thelma thought back to that moment, and remembered thinking to herself that whatever the future held, a Damehood was the least this capable young woman deserved. She would ensure it was incorporated in the King’s honours list, if it was the last thing she did.

  The fixing of the fourteen took longer. Ringing her officers on the ground, whispering commands, issuing orders, a phone jammed to either ear, while Harry Summers, on the far side of the room, was panicking and bleating aloud that he had two more urgent calls on hold for Liz.

  ‘She’s busy!’ snapped Thelma. ‘Give the girl some elbow room.’

  Thelma completed four more circuits before Liz was able to issue a nod and a sly grin. The PM stood behind her with her hands on Liz’s shoulders, and squinted down at the screens and squeezed her, in appreciation. The computers were still showing the government losing by a single percentage point. That had barely changed since the machines had coughed up the first stats. Thelma leant over, without saying a word, and pointed to the one red figure. Minus 1%. It was blinking red, on off, on off, on off. Minus 1%. Minus 1%.

  Liz read her boss’s mind.

  ‘Don’t fret. It’s all under control.’

  ‘I don’t like the look of that red blinker,’ said the PM. ‘I’ll feel happier when it’s gone to neutral, or better.’

  Tombstone did not produce another list until well gone three in the afternoon. Two lots of beef sandwiches had come and gone by then, together with gallons of strong coffee, refreshment that took its revenge, as each member of the Cobra committee was forced into making regular sorties to the bathroom.

  The latest list shook Thelma to her Dolce Gabanna shoes.

  Forty-six!

  Forty-six!

  ‘Shit!’ she whispered. ‘Is that right?’ she queried, breathlessly.

  ‘Yes,’ said Tombstone, curtly, ‘I’ve already run a check. It’s correct.’

  Thelma had to force herself not to sprint round the room. She carried the list as if it weighed heavy, and dangled it before Liz’s eyes. Liz detected the faintest shake in the PM’s hand, or was she imagining things.

  ‘Christ!’ said Liz, taking a second focus on the sheet, as if her brain did not quite believe it.

  ‘You can sort that, too?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Liz, re-gathering herself, and grinning and turning and looking up into Thelma’s dark eyes. ‘Methinks, time for the H team.’

  ‘The H team?’

  ‘Helicopters,’ said Liz. ‘Choppers! We don’t want anyone getting stuck in Christmas shopping traffic, now do we?’

  ‘True,’ said Thelma, duly impressed, ‘you think of everything,’ and as she glanced down at Liz’s flatscreen, the blinking red figure changed.

  Minus 2%, winking red, on off, on off. Minus 2%.

  ‘Shit!’ whispered Thelma again, a word she used surprisingly often.

  Liz glanced up at the screen and saw the reason for the PM’s language.

  ‘It’s only a blip,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t forget, these figures are not yet taking account of our necessary adjustments.’

  ‘I bloody well hope so.’

  The blinking prediction continued apace, seemingly speeding up, apparently growing in point size before their eyes. On off, on off, minus minus minus, red red red, blood red, as if the government was haemorrhaging its very lifeblood. It was left to Harry Summers to say aloud an idea they had each considered.

  ‘We’re bloody losing!’

  ‘Shut up!’ said Thelma.

  ‘Not any more, we’re not,’ said Liz loudly, dumping the last telephone. ‘Choppers away!’ and she grinned at each one of them in turn.

  The phones fell silent. The news lines did too. Pursing of the lips followed. Furrowed brows. An opportunity for another essential trip down the corridor. Quiet moments, for private thoughts.

  ‘What’s happening?’ said Thelma, betraying her nervousness.

  ‘Lull before the storm,’ suggested Captain Eagles.

  Then everything burst to life at the same moment. All the phones rang. The news wires went crazy. The colour printer surged into action, kicking out the latest bar and pie charts, and fancy graphs and repeated columns of frantic figures, all regurgitated by the latest Yankee software that had been acquired for a ridiculous amount of hard currency. In the bedlam, the blinking red figure changed again.

  Minus 3%.

  ‘Jesus!’ said Tombstone.

  ‘Christ,’ echoed Thelma.

  They had failed to staunch the bleeding.

  ‘Just get him on the bloody line!’ they all heard Liz say, a little over loudly, betraying that even Miss Cool herself was becoming rattled, as she failed to locate some senior officer somewhere in the Birmingham conurbation.

  ‘I tell you, we are losing,’ repeated Harry.

  ‘Wrap up!’ said Thelma, rounding on him. ‘Go and organise some more coffee if you haven’t anything positive to say.’

  ‘That’s Henderson’s brief,’ whinged Harry.

  ‘Just do it!’

  Harry blanched, dropped his chin on his chest, and shuffled from the room. Thelma returned to Liz’s station. The blinking figure remained static on minus 3%. Thank God it hadn’t worsened. Thelma listened to Liz issuing ever more frantic orders, on two phones, to operatives in far-flung corners of the battlefield. Across the desks, Captain Eagles stood up, frantically waving another phone.

  ‘Liz needs to take this,’ he said, his eyes hard and steady.

  ‘She’s busy!’ snapped Thelma.

  ‘No!’ said Eagles, fixing Thelma with that steady glare of his. ‘She really needs to take this call.’

  ‘I’ll ring you back,’ said Liz hurriedly, dumping the two phones she already had.

  Eagles tossed the mobile across the desk. Liz caught it one handed and shouted, ‘Hi,’ as everyone paused and listened.

  ‘Where was this?’ she said, and then: ‘Casualties?’

  They saw her nodding, and strained to hear what was being said.

  ‘All six, ma’am; they never stood a chance.’

  ‘What is it?’ asked Thelma.

  ‘Two of the choppers,’ said Liz, ‘from Boscombe Down in Wiltshire. Collided and crashed. All six on board reported killed.’

  ‘O.M.G.,’ said Tombstone.

  ‘Speak in English!’ snapped Thelma.

  ‘Sorry, Prime Minister, it’s short for Oh My God.’

  Harry Summers returned. He found the atmosphere funereal.

  ‘What’s up?’ he said, sounding like a dopey cartoon character, as he set down the fresh coffee.

  ‘Two helicopters have crashed,’ said Eagles.

  ‘Oh no! Casualties?’

  The captain nodded. ‘All six.’

  ‘I don’t like the look of this,’ said Harry, slumping in his chair. ‘I don’t like the look of this at all.’

  Thelma wanted to throttle him, and if he said another negative w
ord she might ask Henderson to do precisely that. She promised herself when this was all over, Harry Summers would be the first casualty of her essential and extensive reshuffle.

  The blinking figure changed again.

  Minus 4%.

  They all saw it flip over at the moment it dropped another point. The sighs were audible.

  ‘Can’t any of you troopers give me some bloody good news!’ said Thelma, wearily.

  ‘Don’t panic,’ Liz repeated. ‘Everything is under control. It may not look like it now, but it is. With the adjustments we have made, I still have us winning by 3 seats, helicopter crashes or not.’

  ‘Is that right?’ snapped Thelma, to Tombstone.

  He took a moment to run a quick double-check, pressing God knows what on his touch screens and key pads, and smacking his calculator, and then he said: ‘I agree, though it is balanced on a knife-edge.’

  The closing of the polls was coming near. The exit polls were truly dreadful, though thankfully these were not public polls, but secret tallies organised by the SPATs themselves, and fed directly to the Cobra committee war room, as Thelma had come to refer to it. The public exit polls were still showing a government victory by 15 seats. The official Party speaking heads, put up on the television screens, were all smiling confidently as one, and predicting victory, and speculating on what Thelma would do in the new parliament.

  In the war room, there was a moment’s silence, as everyone studied the latest computer projections, as if seeking comfort in the data. It had to be buried there somewhere, an undiscovered nugget, as if desperate to show their teacher, their boss, their PM, their Leader, that they had personally unearthed an overlooked gem.

  The blinking figure changed again.

  Everyone saw it the instant it happened.

  Minus 8%.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ yelled Thelma.

  The news was so astonishing that no one thought twice of her language. That minus 8 silenced the room, until Harry said: ‘We’ve lost!’ and he stood up and pouted and thrust one hand on his hip like some gay TV game-show host. They all say him dribble. ‘Told you! Told you so! What did I say?’

  He was totally ignored.

  ‘It must be a mistake,’ suggested Captain Eagles.

  ‘No mistake!’ insisted Tombstone.

  ‘We can’t be having this!’ screamed Thelma, slapping her toned thighs, and waving her arms in the air. ‘Can’t any of you useless pieces of dog crud do something to stop us slipping down the pan!’

  For a second, everyone glanced at their leader. Liz wasn’t alone in thinking she was close to cracking; then hastily the eyes switched back at the screens. Keep your heads down folks, as if fearing eye contact with the Big Furious Mama.

  The next time Liz dared raise her head to peek across the bank of desks, everyone was staring at her. Thelma was standing in the middle of them, her arms folded tightly across her chest, her head cocked slightly to one side, her eyes unblinking, as if waiting for an official Messenger photographer to arrive, as if to say:

  Well.... Elizabeth Mariner....

  What in hell’s name are You going to do about that?

  Fifty

  ‘Plan B,’ said Liz, icily.

  ‘What the hell’s Plan B?’ barked Tombstone.

  ‘Direct action.’

  ‘Meaning what, exactly?’ said Thelma, by then standing at Liz’s side.

  ‘Precisely that,’ said Liz. ‘Spoil the votes.’

  ‘We can’t do that!’ said Harry.

  ‘Shut up!’ said Thelma. ‘Go on, Liz.’

  ‘We must do whatever is necessary,’ insisted Liz.

  ‘That’s right!’ confirmed Thelma. ‘Didn’t it happen in America with George Bush, way back when?’

  ‘Never proven,’ said Captain Eagles.

  ‘So, how, where, and when?’ said Thelma.

  ‘It will need to be when the transferred votes are introduced,’ said Liz. ‘The agent will have to select a certain number of hostile votes, and spoil the papers.’

  ‘You really can’t do that!’ repeated Harry. ‘It’s a serious criminal offence. We could all end up in clink.’

  He wasn’t saying anything they didn’t already know. Fact was, there was no alternative. Thelma caught Henderson’s eye and nodded. He loped across the room and stooped for her to whisper through the sweeping blond hair that covered his ears. After that, everyone watched Henderson cupping his arm around Harry’s back, and gently easing him toward the door, all the while whispering soothing tones into the old man’s head.

  ‘I am not being ejected just like that!’ snapped Harry.

  ‘Of course not,’ Henderson cooed, by now squeezing him out through the door. ‘Just take a little rest for a short while; there is no point in you getting het up about things. You’ll only upset yourself. You know your heart is not so good.’

  ‘That’s true enough,’ said a flushed Harry.

  ‘Well?’ said Thelma again, once the door had been closed behind them, anxious to hear more of Liz’s Plan B.

  ‘I am just waiting for Tombstone’s projections,’ said Liz, keeping one eye on the flashing minus.

  Tombstone replied: ‘With you in a moment,’ as he frantically banged his keyboard.

  ‘Come on man, come on, every second counts,’ urged Thelma.

  ‘Yep, got it. 100,000 should do it, that’s the computer’s best guess.’

  ‘A hundred thousand!’ said a shocked Thelma.

  ‘So we need 100,000 Spovs?’ asked Liz.

  Tombstone bobbed his head.

  ‘Speak in English,’ said Thelma. ‘What’s a Spov, when it’s at home?’

  ‘Spoiled voting paper,’ added Captain Eagles. ‘That’s a hell of a lot. I can’t see how we could arrange that many.’

  ‘I’m on it,’ said Liz. ‘Shouldn’t be so difficult.’

  ‘How?’ said Thelma.

  ‘Five hundred agents in the field,’ said Liz, pumping numbers into two phones and two calculators. ‘Two hundred Spovs each, voila! Job done!’

  ‘How spoiled, exactly?’ said Thelma.

  ‘Any number of ways. Voting for more than one candidate, abusive messages, crosses and ticks, get the picture?’

  ‘The Returning Officers will not like all this gerrymandering,’ said Captain Eagles.

  ‘The RO’s will do as they are damn well told,’ said Liz.

  This woman is good, thought Thelma. Perhaps too good. Captain Eagles was thinking the exact same thing. Even Tombstone was glad Liz was on their side, while Thelma made a mental note to keep a beady eye on her in the future.

  Liz delegated the workload to Tombstone and Eagles, and between them the orders went out. It wasn’t long before the first queries and difficulties were being reported back. Most times they were able to reassure the callers, and the counts continued.

  Hereford was totally different.

  The senior SPATs officer on site in the Hereford City Hall, one Captain Willoughby, called Liz from the honey coloured Victorian stone building.

  ‘Sorry to bother you, ma’am, but we have had an incident here.’

  ‘Serious?’

  ‘You could say that.’

  ‘Proceed.’

  ‘We were working flat out on the Spovs.’

  ‘And?

  ‘The RO came over and demanded to know what we were doing. He insisted on seeing the voting slips, and wanted to know why the sealed boxes had been tampered with. Before we could do anything about it he had jumped to his own conclusions and began screaming for the regular constabulary. The situation was getting out of control.’

  ‘I see, and then?’

  ‘Sorry to report this, ma’am, but a man was shot dead attempting to leave the scene of the contretemps.’

  ‘The RO?’

  ‘The same, ma’am.’

  ‘You carried out the action?’

  ‘I did, ma’am. I apologise. I judged it essential.’

  ‘I agree, Captain. You have nothing to worry
about, Willoughby.’

  ‘Thank you, ma’am.’

  ‘And the situation now?’

  ‘Back to normal, ma’am, body removed, clean up complete, count continuing, requisite Spovs in place. I am confident.’

  ‘Excellent job, and well done. Keep me informed.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.’

  Liz downed the phone and sat back in her chair. The SPAT Captain in Hereford City Hall had impressed her. He was precisely the kind of reliable personnel she wished to see in positions of power and influence. She made a mental note that he should be promoted. He had remembered his training, word perfect.

  A man was shot dead attempting to leave the scene of the contretemps.

  Code words. A coded phrase, meaning: A dangerous opponent had been eliminated. Cleaned out, in the course of emergency action.

  ‘Well?’ said Thelma.

  ‘Spot of bother in Hereford, ma’am. Nothing for you to worry about. One RO down. If that is the sum total of casualties tonight, I shall be reasonably pleased.’

  ‘Couldn’t agree more,’ said Thelma, resuming her anti-clockwise patrol, pausing only to take onboard more coffee.

  ‘Look see, ma’am!’ shouted Eagles, pointing at the screens.

  She closed on him and leant on his shoulders, taking a hint of his cologne, as she peered over his head.

  Minus 2%. Blink blink blink. Minus 2%.

  ‘Six percent drop in one recal!’ said Tombstone jubilantly.

  ‘Tide turned!’ yelled Thelma, confidence coursing through her very being. ‘And not before time.’

  ‘Minus 1% and counting,’ shouted Liz, grinning at her boss.

  ‘Henderson!’ Thelma yelled, for the hunk had crept back into the room unnoticed.

  He bobbed his head at the boss.

  ‘Bring Harry in. I want him to see this.’

  ‘Certainly, Prime Minister,’ and he went outside to locate the guy. Five minutes later the pair of them returned. Harry Summers had refreshed himself with copious amounts of malt whisky. He was positively glowing.

  ‘All right, Harry?’ said Thelma.

  ‘Fine thank you, ma’am,’ grinned Harry sheepishly. ‘I’m feeling a lot better, and I hear things have turned our way.’

  ‘Looks that way, take a peep.’