Midnight in Engelstan

By Michael Antony

It is the year 2084. Scotland is independent and England has a nonwhite majority. The change of majorities, though predictable after a century of immigration, has plunged the country into crisis. Political parties are polarized along racial lines. Ethnic communities have become closed and hostile to one another. Sharia law is in force in certain cities. Millions of English whites have fled to Scotland or other countries. These expatriates refer to their homeland as Engelstan.

The new Prime Minister of England, Makhdoom Khan, is a man with a mission. Make sure that the white English never regain control of the country. The leader of the Opposition is eliminated by a staged sex scandal. Meanwhile a white nationalist terrorist movement led by a maverick academic is pushing the nation to the brink of civil war.

Roland, an Anglo-Swiss journalist, whose mother is one of millions of English exiles, returns to investigate the turmoil in his ancestral homeland. He tries to track down and interview the white terrorist leader, who leads him on a bizarre odyssey across the country. He falls in love with a beautiful nationalist extremist and becomes caught up in an opposition plot to bring down the government. As the action races to a climax, the question the characters grapple with is: can Engelstan be undone? Or is it now irreversible? And has England gone forever?

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jul 23, 2012
• ISBN: 9781475933512

Michael Antony

Michael Antony has lived and travelled in many countries and now lives in Switzerland. He is the author of several works of fiction, nonfiction ("The Masculine Century"), and poetry ("Visions of Kali").

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Midnight in Engelstan

Copyright © 2012 by Michael Antony

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ISBN: 978-1-4759-3350-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-3351-2 (ebk)

iUniverse rev. date: 07/18/2012

CONTENTS

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For the Dead

and the Unborn

1

Mark Lyndon took the elevator back up to the twenty-sixth floor of the Ritz-Hyatt Hotel in Manhattan after his morning walk, put the electronic card in the lock and opened the door. The vast room with its panoramic view over Central Park was just as he had left it. The breakfast things were still on the coffee table in front of the imitation Louis XV sofa. The king-size bed was still unmade. He had vaguely expected that the room would have been made up while he was out but then he remembered that he was leaving that day and the staff might have been told to wait till he checked out. He felt a little sweaty after his brisk walk through the park and decided to have a quick wash. He was taking a plane that afternoon and he wanted to feel fresh for the three-hour flight across the Atlantic.

He went into the bathroom, took off his polo shirt, ran the warm tap and gave his underarms a soap and a rinse. It was hardly worth having another shower so soon after the first. He stared into the huge mirror above the double basin. His face looked a little flushed so he gave it a rinse as well. He thought back on the night before—the superb blonde who had graced his bed from midnight until two. That had been a proper work-out, he grinned to himself. He half regretted that he had not woken up beside her but there was no point in paying for sleeping time. He liked some professionals—those who managed to make it seem a real pleasure. He was vain about his sexual conquests, even those he simply bought. He liked to think he was giving the girl the time of her life, even if she was doing it for money. But now he felt a slight itch down below, as though he missed what he liked to call (with an irreverent sense of humor that had often got him into trouble) his morning hair-of-the-bitch.

He was not bad for forty-nine, he thought, as he toweled his athletic torso in front of the mirror. Classic features, hair still dark and thick, and a permanent light tan thanks to his health club, his chalet in Gstaad, and regular stays at the Caribbean island homes of jet-set friends. No wonder the women cracked so easily for him, he reflected. He was that dinosaur in English politics—a man who still indulged himself to the full in women. The media had made it a hobby fraught with danger, but he enjoyed the forbidden aspect, the hide-and-seek with the paparazzi and the tabloid muckrakers. His divorce from his long-suffering third wife last year had taken some of the pressure off him: he was no longer committing adultery, just fornication. That was considered a lesser moral and political sin. It made him a bit of a lad in the eyes of the public, rather than a sleazebag. It had done wonders for his poll ratings with women, as they saw him now as a fantasy lover rather than a cheating husband. He was widely thought to have broken all the rules and got away with it: Leader of His Majesty’s Opposition and future Prime Minister if they won next month’s election, despite all the gossip, the moralistic preaching, and the hypocritical disapproval of the right-thinking stuffed shirts—not to mention the Fundamentalists on the other side. A Sunday Times columnist (a woman he had once bedded) wrote recently that he had made English politics sexy and exciting without lowering the tone. He saw his propensity for sailing close to the wind as a proof of pedigree. Faint heart never won fair lady, he liked to repeat to himself whenever caution looked like getting the better of his natural recklessness. Who was that, by the way? Shakespeare? Byron? Tennyson? He must look it up some time in case somebody queried him on it.

He was applying his deodorant liberally when he heard a slight noise outside in the bedroom. Out of habit he had pulled the bathroom door to, and now he pushed it open to see. A gratifying sight met his eyes. Her back was turned, so he couldn’t see if she was quite as ravishing as the blonde the night before but she certainly looked promising. Her fair hair was pulled back in a chignon instead of flowing in all its glory over her shoulders, but his expert eye saw her potential at once. Her calves were perfect. Get her out of that dull green uniform dress and her figure would be first-rate. He stepped out of the bathroom, naked to the waist.

Hello, he said cheerily, with a hint of insolence.

She swung round to look at him and stammered in confusion. She was even more stunning than he had dared hope.

I’m sorry, sir, I thought the room was empty. I came for the breakfast things.

Did you, indeed? he said. A likely story. He advanced upon her with an air of mock disapproval, and pulled her chin towards him so he could look into her eyes. They were blue-grey, and after an initial show of submissive shyness they met his with an expression of cool challenge. She had a sexy, pouting mouth that was really exceptional. Mademoiselle did not knock. What was Mademoiselle hoping to see? He let go her chin. She stood her ground.

I assure you, sir, I knocked. You mustn’t have heard, sir.

Is Mademoiselle contradicting a guest? Does Mademoiselle have no particular wish to keep her job?

Oh no, sir, I mean, yes, sir, I do wish to keep my job.

Her English was better than it had seemed at first. He decided her accent was Eastern European. But it seemed natural to go on addressing her as Mademoiselle. When in America he liked to affect the cultured, cosmopolitan air of a slightly decadent European aristocrat. It was not entirely a fraudulent pose, since he counted a baron and a viscount among his second cousins.

I suspect you do this in order to have a quick look through the pockets and papers of important guests on behalf of the secret service of some foreign power, he said, babbling the first nonsense that came into his head in order to confuse her. What nationality are you?

Me, sir? I was born in Latvia, sir, she said demurely.

Latvia? Why should I believe that? He smiled cynically. Mademoiselle is Russian, I bet.

No, sir, I’m Latvian.

Talk some Latvian to me.

What do you want me to say, sir?

Say you love me, in Latvian.

I can’t say that, sir. That wouldn’t be right. She blushed slightly but he detected a hint of a grin at the corner of her sensual mouth.

Why not?

Because it’s not true. She was relaxing a bit as though relieved that he wanted to flirt rather than complain about her.

Say ‘please don’t kiss me’ in Latvian.

She said something in a foreign language. She could no longer stop herself from smiling. He was standing close to her.

I’m afraid I didn’t understand, darling, he said with a laugh. He slipped his hand behind her chignon and kissed her on the mouth. She looked surprised but not seriously displeased. He switched to an intimate, confiding tone.

I bet you’ve been sent by somebody, haven’t you? Somebody playing a joke on me. A very nice joke, I might add. You don’t really work for this hotel, do you?

Yes, I do. She nodded her head solemnly. Since six months.

Really? You could be doing something much more interesting. He gave her a cajoling smile. I am often in New York. Why don’t I set you up in a little apartment where you could welcome me every time I come here? Would you like that?

I don’t think you’re serious, sir. It’s unfair to play with me. Despite the tone of reproach and the attitude of deference, her blue-grey eyes looked at him levelly, as if she knew that her beauty was a match for his wealth and power.

Do you know who I am? he asked curiously.

I think you are a rich man, sir. An Englishman. I think you are in politics. Or business. Or both.

That’s not bad. Not bad. He was pleased. Perhaps she had done some homework on him and was keen to make his acquaintance. You’re well informed.

They tell us about the VIPs, sir.

So, you think I’m not serious about this little apartment? What would it cost? Two or three thousand a month? Plus another thousand or two for your little expenses? What do you like to spend money on? Jewelry? Furs? Shoes? I bet you’re a compulsive shopper. Perhaps five thousand a month won’t be enough? What do you make here?

Not that much, sir.

All right, six thousand? Is that enough?

I’m sure you’re very generous, sir. If you mean it, which I know you don’t.

Of course I mean it. But I need a trial run to see if you’re worth it. Do you have any idea how much I pay for women normally—when I pay? They cost a fortune for a couple of hours! His tone of moral indignation was not entirely feigned. The ones in your class, anyhow. You wouldn’t believe how we men are exploited! The madams take advantage of us in the most shocking way. He made this confidential revelation about the iniquity of the world as though to appeal to her sense of morality and decency. But I’m sure we could come to a very reasonable private arrangement which would be of mutual benefit. No? He smiled engagingly. Shall we try? Just to see if you like it?

He kissed her on the mouth with a gentle but authoritative pressure, and this time put his arms round her and began to caress her back. He slid his hands slowly down her spine, stroking, massaging, making little excursions to each side of it, seeking the weak point which so many women, in his experience, had somewhere on their back. At last he heard a slight intake of her breath and felt her twitch. He found the spot again, a little to the left, just at the level of her floating rib. His hand glided over it, and his fingers began delicately to explore and probe the flesh, the bones, the tendons, the nerves of that tiny strategic area. He felt her press against him. She put her arms round his neck and sighed as she kissed him back with sudden vigor.

He slid his right hand down onto her buttocks and caressed them, not in an insistent way but lightly, as if to stake ownership, before returning delicately up her crack to her tail bone and then slowly up her spine to the weak spot again. He felt the relief in her body as she crushed herself against him in pleasure. She leaned into another series of passionate kisses. At last he broke gently away.

Let’s see what we have under that uniform, shall we? he murmured. I’m sure all sorts of beautiful things are hidden under there.

He began undoing the buttons at the back of her dress and kissed her neck as he did so. He had a feeling of triumph as she gave in to him. Another one succumbs, he thought to himself. But it was without malice or contempt, but rather with sympathy for the sensual weakness that made women surrender to him so easily. The poor things can’t help it, he reasoned. Thus Nature fulfils her evolutionary plan, ensuring that the most beautiful females yield to the most successful males. The girl let the uniform slip from her shoulders, and he moved back from her so he could pull it down in front as well. He spanned her firm breasts in turn with his right hand as though comparing their diameters. Their volume was impressive. The nipples were already growing firm and nuzzling his palm through the flimsiest of brassieres. He judged that she had now given up all thought of resistance and he reached down, pulled up her dress and lifted it over her arms, which she held up obediently like a child being undressed. He knelt down and pressed his face against her black lace panties, surprisingly fancy for a chambermaid on a working day. He peeled back the flimsy lace border and kissed the tender hollow between her thigh and her crotch. Her pubic hair had been removed at the edges but there was a curly tuft at the top. He stood up, lifted her effortlessly in his arms, carried her the three steps to the bed and laid her gently upon it. Then he threw himself on top of her.

Some time later they were lying naked side by side, and he was idly caressing her nipples with the back of his fingers as though softly strumming a guitar.

Do you give all the guests this sort of welcome? he asked. He was thinking about the fact that he hadn’t used a condom. She had made no mention of one, and he felt a tiny chill of fear as he worried that he might have caught something. The anti-AIDS vaccine had diminished the obsession with condoms of past decades, but there were still things you could catch.

Only the very sexy ones, she said, joining easily into his game of teasing mockery. About three a week.

Three a week! He pretended to be shocked.

It’s not very many! she protested. Then she laughed. No, I’m joking. She squeezed his arm. I have never done it before with a guest.

Do you swear to that?

No. You can believe me if you like. But now I must go. I have work. They time everything we do.

But you must leave me a way of contacting you. For next time. And for the little apartment.

You know where to find me.

But you won’t always be here. You were meant for higher things.

She got up and put her clothes and shoes on. She did not look at him, and then, when she did, it was to give him a strange stare.

Will you help me with my buttons? she said, sitting on the bed and turning her back so he could fasten them. He had done up three-quarters of them when she suddenly swung round so violently the dress tore in his hands. She grabbed his wrist and dug her nails in.

Now, look what you’ve done! You’ve torn my dress! How can I work in this? She was shouting at him angrily and suddenly she slapped his face. He stared at her in astonishment, and as she made to hit him again he grabbed her wrist. She struggled to get free, twisting and turning her wrist in his hand. Then her other arm came round and she scratched him on the chest, raking his naked torso with her nails. She slapped his face again, and this time he felt his lip split. As he put his hands up to it she scratched his face and he felt her draw blood.

You bastard! she began shouting. Where is the six thousand you promised me? You liar, you cheated me, you raped me, you’re nothing but a pervert, a rapist!

She was slapping and scratching wildly at his face, and he grabbed at her arms and wrists. At one point they were both flailing so blindly he hit her on the side of the face. He could see it change color almost immediately. At last he had her by both wrists and squeezed them hard, so she leaned forward and tried to bite his nose. He pushed her back and she bit his fingers. He yelped and threw her off him and shoved her backwards off the bed onto the floor with his foot.

You’re crazy! You’re a crazy bitch, what’s the matter with you? he shouted, almost beside himself with shock, fear and incomprehension.

You bastard! You raped me! she yelled. I’ve got proof! You’re going to pay for this!

She struggled to her feet and made for the door.

Wait! he bellowed. He leapt off the bed and ran after her. If you want money I can pay you! he said desperately, clutching at her. He caught her by the dress.

That’s it, tear it some more! she cried, and swung round violently. The dress tore again. Here, tear the front too! She pulled at the front of her dress and tore that as well, and grabbed his hand and put it on the torn fabric and closed her hand round his so his sweat would be on it. Hit me! Strangle me! Even better! she cried contemptuously. You fool!

He sank to his knees, completely defeated, overwhelmed by his sudden comprehension of the situation.

You’ve been paid! he groaned in despair. Who by? Listen, I’ll pay you more! I’ll pay any amount! I can out-pay them! I’m rich!

He was babbling. He was desperate. He saw it all: the arrest, the tabloids, the prison, the trial. The long sentence. The hellhole. Career gone. Life gone.

She stared at him, and he saw in her eyes for a split second a different expression. Not that of the mad playact of a demented, pretended rape victim. But the sudden look of pity of a professional who had set him up and done her brutal job with deadly efficiency. Nothing personal, it seemed to say. He thought he saw in her glance the sort of mutual recognition that enemy soldiers might briefly exchange before one blew the other’s head off.

Ciao, caro, she said and opened the door and walked out.

The police came for him twenty-five minutes later. He had put plasters on the scratches on his chest and cheeks to stanch the bleeding, then had hurriedly dressed, packed, and gone down to check out. He was waiting for a taxi in front of the hotel when they arrived. The hotel receptionists had looked at him strangely or not at all and he knew they knew. They had taken longer than usual to print out the bill, and he felt they were playing for time. The girl was nowhere in sight but he could sense she had played out her scene in front of them already, while he was desperately dressing and packing. The policemen simply said: You’re under arrest for raping a maid, and put him in the car.

They tried to get him to plead guilty, as they said it was an open and shut case. The girl had been taken to hospital at once for DNA testing. Samples were also taken of his DNA. In the course of the day the results came in from the laboratories.

It’s your sperm inside her, your DNA under her nails and on her torn dress. Sex took place, violence took place, she resisted, she’s got bruises, you’ve got scratches. What other elements do you think a jury needs?

Some proof of the order they took place in, he said.

What, you’re not still claiming she screwed first and then fought you afterwards? Come on, bud, who’s going to buy that? The stocky, balding officer looked skeptical to the point of contempt.

That’s what happened, he said.

Stick to that story and you’re looking at thirty years. Be reasonable, plead guilty, apologize, grovel, placate the feminists, offer compensation, and you might get five to ten. It’s up to you.

He hired a top lawyer, and was allowed to consult with him. The lawyer gave the impression of a veteran used-car dealer trying to figure out how to conceal a broken chassis. The next day he was taken before a judge. Seven charges of rape, assault and sexual abuse were filed, and he was refused bail on the grounds that he had ordered a taxi to the airport after the crime in order to flee the country. He was paraded in handcuffs before a baying mob of reporters and photographers, and then taken to grim Riker’s Island Prison, where he was stuck in solitary confinement for his own protection. A couple of days before, he reflected, he had been the respected leader of the Conservative Party, the Leader of His Majesty’s Opposition, and possibly the next Prime Minister. CNN had just covered his meeting with the President at the White House, part of his run-up to the election, and Stardust magazine had carried a photograph of him at a famous New York socialite’s party. He was a man in a state of shock, one of the privileged of the earth who suddenly found himself on a different, uglier planet, where he seemed doomed to spend the rest of his life.

2

Across the Atlantic, the affair was all over the London tabloids, the television and the internet. The Prime Minister, Jairam Singh, refrained from any unseemly gloating over his fallen rival, and won plaudits from most editorialists for his sober, dignified plea that the presumption of innocence should be respected until the trial. His Labour ministers exulted in an almost monastic silence. The Conservative Party, by contrast, was soon torn apart between those loyal friends who believed Mark Lyndon’s story that he had been set up and those who saw him as a shameless philanderer and exploiter of women who had gone too far and got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Many demanded his resignation as party leader and a day later he gave it. After his political death came his burial, amid an exuberant outpouring of vigorous moral condemnation. There were pious editorials on both sides of the Atlantic on the sexual arrogance of men in positions of power. Feminist articles expatiated on the evils of sexual harassment, the horrors of rape, the contempt in which the victims were held and the vile attempts made by the guilty to discredit and denigrate them. That a man running for prime minister had been willing to risk everything for a fling with a chambermaid suggested the uncontrollable nature of his sexual addiction, and this alone made the claims of rape plausible in the minds of many. His arrest put an end (at least for a time) to the glamorous aura surrounding the eternal, half-envious rumors of rampant libertinism and sexual high jinks in high places. Sex and political power became abruptly incompatible in England.

Of course this situation favored the most sexless, boring and unglamorous personalities in the contest to succeed him as party leader. The obvious choice was the nerdish Jeremy Wimpole, a sixty-seven year-old economist with tufts of grey hair sticking out from a balding pate like a mad professor, owl-like glasses, and a tedious, impersonal, utterly charmless manner. He was a veteran of long-forgotten governments and the shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, and he won the party leadership contest by a slim margin. His defeated rival was a rather more charismatic friend of Mark’s called Gavin Rider, and they clashed in public on the attitude to take to the charges Mark faced. Gavin believed strongly in the thesis of a plot. He rejected Jeremy’s moralizing remarks about the need to change men’s attitudes to sexual violence and consider the plight of the victim. This was implicitly judging Mark guilty before the trial, he argued. Until the alleged victim, who was being kept in a secret location by the New York District Attorney, gave her testimony in court, who knew where the truth lay? Their clash on the issue was so vehement that it bitterly divided the party, and a permanent fronde formed around Gavin which saw Wimpole as a traitor. One or two hotheads even talked of leaving the party and joining the Nationalists, whose websites and blogs were full of insinuations that the government had plotted to eliminate Mark Lyndon. While the Conservative and National parties were rivals for the right-wing vote, Mark had been in favor of an electoral alliance with the Nationalists, and had been in the process of negotiating one to fight the upcoming election. For Wimpole, on the other hand, the Nationalists were an extremist party beyond the pale. It was not hard to believe the Nationalist conspiracy theory that Mark’s downfall was a plot to prevent any alliance between the two Opposition parties. Nationalist blogs refrained from directly accusing Prime Minister Singh, who was generally thought to be an honest man, but they hinted that agents working for the radical Home Secretary, Makhdoom Khan, might well be behind the shenanigans in New York.

By the time Wimpole was installed as party leader there were less than three weeks left till the election. There were some calls to postpone it in the interests of fairness, but the date had been set in legislative stone seventy years before as the first Thursday in May every five years. The government, with Makhdom Khan as its loudest spokesman, was adamant it couldn’t be changed. This gave Wimpole very little time to paper over the cracks in his party. The bickering among factions continued right up to Election Day. The Conservatives were in an impossible position. Those who remained loyal to Mark as he awaited trial were accused of complacency towards rape and sexual violence against women. Those who condemned him before a court had convicted him were accused of pre-judging his case and kicking a man who was down. The factions within the party tore each other to pieces without need of any help from their Labour opponents. There was a desperate attempt to patch things up in which Gavin Rider was given the deputy-leadership and confirmed as the Conservative Party spokesman on Foreign Policy, but this rather forced show of unity produced no coherent program. In addition, Wimpole’s refusal to enter a tactical alliance with the National Party meant the Opposition vote was split in every constituency. The result was a foregone conclusion. With only fifty-two per cent of the vote, the Labour Party was re-elected with a huge majority of seats, despite the discontent with Singh’s lackluster record, the dire economic situation, and the racial tensions and social unrest in the country.

A week after the election, Jairam Singh, who was sixty-four and had been in office for ten years, had a heart attack. The surgeons who operated on Singh to put in a stent criticized his doctor for prescribing high doses of a controversial anti-inflammatory drug for a pain in his knee over the last fortnight. This drug had, they claimed, caused his blood pressure to soar and triggered the attack. The doctor happened to be an old friend of Makhdoom Khan, and a nasty set of rumors and innuendos began to circulate, especially among the Nationalists. Singh had to resign for reasons of health, and Khan, the Deputy Prime Minister, won the party election for the leadership. This was now simply held (as it was in the Conservative Party) among the Labour members of parliament, without consulting the rank-and-file party members in the country as a whole. His selection as party leader made him automatically Prime Minister. Thus did Makhdoom Khan become leader of the country without winning a mandate from the people, and with a massive parliamentary majority. He was, in any case, a popular if controversial figure in the grassroots Labour Party for his forceful character and hard-line views, in contrast to the moderate, diplomatic Jairam Singh. Few doubted he had strong support in his own party and in the community that now dominated the country.

The day after he took office Makhdoom Khan sat alone in the cabinet room in Number 10 Downing Street and stared at the twenty-three chairs around the magnificent table. He savored his moment of triumph. This had been the goal of his life ever since he was twenty. It was a long way from the rundown terraced house in Bradford where he had spent his childhood. Makhdoom was a man who had never quite felt accepted anywhere. He had been an outsider all his life, and it had given him both the character of a lone wolf and an intense drive to succeed. The local primary school he had gone to had been dominated by Bangladeshis, and his Pakistani origins had made him an object of historic resentments that he felt were unjust. Then when his father had moved to Dover to take a job in the Border Agency he had gone to a grammar school that was almost entirely white. It was a shock to him, coming from a heavily multi-cultural city and watching television programs reflecting the brown-skinned face of London, to discover that there were still pockets of England where white faces were the norm and brown ones were seen as foreigners. In addition there had been his first name, Makhdoom, which the malicious wits among his white schoolmates had perverted comically into a Scottish name, MacDoom. Since this was the 2050s, when Scotland was in the process of leaving (and destroying) the United Kingdom, the Scots were an object of nationalist resentment among the English (at least among those who didn’t rush to live in Scotland while they still could.) Makhdoom became a theatrical figure of fun, Angus MacDoom. It was a nickname which followed him all the way to his final year at high school. By means of this nickname, and by adopting a fake Scottish accent whenever they spoke to him or about him, his schoolmates were able to subject him to a kind of jokey, comical, anti-Scottish racism as a substitute for the more serious, unspoken, taboo racism against his Pakistani origins. Makhdoom was unable to respond to this absurd ragging in a humorous way that might have disarmed his tormenters. His pride took it all as a serious insult, which made them enjoy teasing him all the more. The fact that he could not get rid of his northern accent for years lent an infuriating plausibility to their sly taunts. He ended up with a bitter resentment of white racism, and a burning determination to get to the top of this bigoted caste system and turn the tables on those who had made his schooldays a misery.

His mobile phone rang and his secretary announced that his Director of Communications and National Security wanted to see him. He told her to send him into the cabinet room. Ghulam Jamali came in with a pile of newspapers, the press review he had asked him yesterday to produce for him daily. Makhdoom was slightly annoyed by the interruption. He wanted to prolong his mood of somber reflection as he sat in the presence of history. He decided to share his thoughts with the faithful retainer who had grown up with him and had accompanied his political career ever since he first stood for parliament in Bradford. It was after all a historic moment for all of them.

Sit down, he said. Ghulam sat at the mahogany table and instinctively stroked its shiny surface with reverent hands. Makhdoom understood the gesture, one of awe and disbelief. Before we get down to the nitty-gritty, Ghulam, just sit back, look around you and think where we are for a moment. The cabinet room of Number 10 Downing Street. He paused. Walpole sat here, Lord North, William Pitt, Wellington, Palmerston, Gladstone, Churchill. This is the office from which the orders were given to conquer the world. A quarter of the planet was once ruled from this room. Including the land of our ancestors. And now we are the ones in charge here. We have conquered them. Savor the moment, Ghulam. Savor the moment.

Ghulam gave a dutiful smile and savored the moment diligently.

The battle will still be a long one before we dominate them completely, but it is now only a matter of time, Makhdoom went on. Our race, our people are now in power here and we will remain in power. They have lost the demographic battle, the struggle for survival, which is the only one that counts in this Darwinian world. They decided not to breed, but to turn their women into clones of men instead. They decided to let us come here in vast numbers, even though they knew that we still have the urge to breed that they have lost. That meant they tacitly accepted that we would one day become the majority here. They agreed to be replaced by us in their own country. They even rejoiced in it, as if this demonstrated some special virtue on their part, some ultimate mark of tolerance and openness. We must not disillusion them too quickly.

He gave a brief, sardonic smile. Ghulam mirrored it. Makhdoom’s voice hardened.

But those among them who have already woken up to what they have done and are now trying, far too late, to undo it are a deadly menace to this nation. They threaten civil war. They must be eliminated. They must be stopped from ever taking power again. And the first step to ensure this was to eliminate the leader of the Conservative Party who was most dangerous and most likely to form an alliance with the Nationalists. If they had joined forces, they could have won another hundred seats in parliament. He let this fact sink in. We must make sure they remain disunited, and that the Conservative Party remains in a state of turmoil and factional in-fighting. For that we need to keep this Mark Lyndon affair alive. I want every story on this affair to be given maximum coverage, especially those which suggest he has done this sort of thing before. Keep it before the eyes of the public as long as possible, until the trial itself. It is a means of blowing apart the Opposition during our crucial first six months in power.

I understand, said Ghulam with a grin of complicity. There are a number of new stories that our editors can easily shift onto the front page when the need arises. A question of timing.

Good. Good, Makhdoom said approvingly. Well, let’s look at what they’ve been saying in the last few hours, shall we? Anything special I should see first?

Well, there is one thing that will annoy you.

Right. Then let me be annoyed first of all.

Ghulam showed him the front page of The Daily Mail. The headline ran: Och, it’s Angus MacDoom! There followed a story of the astonished reaction of some of his old schoolmates to his becoming Prime Minister. It explained how in his school days at Dover Boys’ Grammar he had been nicknamed MacDoom, a play on his name, and had been turned into a fake Scottish figure of fun. Makhdoom read the story with growing anger. He felt his face becoming hot, and tried to control it so his former servant would not see how affected he was. They had even dragged that up, that shameful, stupid story of the stupid cruelty of boys, and were using it to laugh at him again. He sat back and stared in front of him.

I think, he said to Ghulam quietly, I see a very bad accident happening to the journalist who wrote that story. And to that village idiot he interviewed. I really do want them to be among the statistics of next month’s road toll. Or the mindless violence figures. Make the right people understand that.

Ghulam nodded. His face had become a mask. Makhdoom went on.

In my speech to the Metropolitan Police this afternoon I will give orders to step up the fight against white terrorism. ‘Stop and Search’ will not need to be motivated by anything but the gut feeling of the policeman that this could be a neo-Nazi terrorist. They are to take the gloves off and let them know who is now in charge. I want that given favorable coverage as a crackdown on terrorism. Now, show me the rest of this stuff—the products of their gutter minds and their gutter press, which one day, God willing, we will be able to reduce to silence.

3

Roland Duprey was thrilled when his chief editor at La Tribune de Genève suggested that he might like a week or two in London to report on the Mark Lyndon affair and the effect it was having on the nation. It was because of his fluent English that he was the obvious choice, he imagined. Roland looked forward to visiting his mother’s country, and spending some time in a more exciting city than Geneva, even if a slight frisson went through him at the thought of wandering the streets of the crime capital of Europe. But he was eager to go to London for another reason. He was curious to see how England was weathering the transition to a far more radical government, with mostly Asians in key posts, after ten years of rule by the moderate, multiracial government of Jairam Singh. Singh was a man of broad sympathies, an Eton and Oxford man, a consensus politician, who had appointed whites to half the posts in his cabinet. His successor, the former Home Secretary, Makhdoom Khan, had kept only two whites in the cabinet, in minor ministries. He was quite openly and assertively the representative of a new majority, the immigrants who had transformed the population over the past hundred years. Roland was keen to see how the white English would take this, in a Europe increasingly polarized over the whole immigration issue. He was eager to get interviews with the Nationalist leaders and even, if he could, with the leader of the White English Resistance, an underground movement more extreme than the Nationalist Party and accused of acts of terrorism. He thought all this material would make not only some good articles for his newspaper but also a full-length book dealing with the transition of European nations to non-white majorities. It was a problem which already affected France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Sweden, as well as England, and more nations expected to be confronted by it in the decades to come. A number of other countries (including Switzerland) had become bastions of white European culture, dominated by nationalist parties and paranoid about the ethnic and cultural transformation of their neighbors. The Germans, who five years before had pulled out of the moribund European Union, precipitating its demise, were in the process of forming a new, whites-only Baltic League, including Poland, the Baltic states, Finland, Denmark and Norway (but not Muslim-dominated Sweden.) It was jokingly dubbed ‘Old Europe’. A subject that had been avoided as taboo for decades was suddenly at the centre of debate, and Roland saw an opportunity for launching his career as a current affairs writer with an in-depth investigation of the reality on the ground in the country that was the furthest advanced along the road of cultural transformation.

He talked to the one member of staff he thought might be sympathetic to this idea. Serge Monnier was past retirement age but had stayed on as an occasional columnist. He had been a foreign correspondent in numerous hotspots in the mid-century. He suggested that Roland get in touch with some journalists in London before he went there, to get on the inside track, as he put it. He gave him the name of a columnist for The Daily Telegraph, Madeleine Evans, known as Maddie, with whom he had covered the independence of Scotland back in 2052 and later the nuclear war in the Middle East. He wrote her an email, and then phoned her and explained what Roland wanted to do. Maddie was delighted to hear from Serge again and at once volunteered to take Roland under her wing. Roland spoke to her on Scope, and Maddie, an energetic sixty-four year-old with hair too black to be true, clearly showed she had a soft spot for blond young European men who were polite, deferential and eager to learn from an old pro. She promised to get him interviews not only with the National Party leaders, but also the WER. She said they were all keen to get their story into European newspapers to counteract the negative image they were constantly given in the mainstream English press. She even promised to meet him at Gatwick Airport when he arrived.

Roland’s mother was happy he was going to England, the country she had left when she was twenty-one to do a gap year practicing her French. It had been a long gap year, she liked to joke. She had always spoken English with Roland and his father, and had continued to live in a sort of English expat mental bubble which had finally got too much for her husband and contributed to their divorce four years before. Ironically, his father had then gone to live in Zurich and ended up marrying a Swiss German—with whom he also spoke English. But he had realized his dream in the last year and gone to retire in the south of France where he could finally speak his own language—if not to his wife then to everyone else. Roland had been down to see them a few months before. His mother, meanwhile, continued her expatriate life, as a leading light of the Geneva English Drama Society, a regular at the English Church, and a pillar of the Anglo-American Women’s Club—heavily dominated now by the community of Brits who had left England when the Scots broke away and it became clear England was heading for a non-white majority. Engelstan, The United Nigdom, and Wogland were three of the more printable names the expats had invented for their erstwhile homeland. Roland compared them jokingly to the Cuban exiles of Miami, waiting hopelessly decade after decade for a mythical return to a country they had known but which had long since ceased to exist. There would be no return, because there was nothing left to return to. Hence their creation of a little England abroad. It was happening in dozens of places all over the planet—Tallinn, Lisbon, Prague, Krakow, Geneva, Melbourne, Vancouver, Montevideo —where waves of English exiles implanted their theatre groups, singing groups, pantomimes, clubs, pubs, parties, cricket matches, private schools and English bookshops. Never since the nineteenth century had so many English people settled in other parts of the world. And never were so many English people so instinctively convinced of what their culture meant as in the years following their century-long surrender of their country to diversity on the grounds that their own culture was something wishy-washy that didn’t really exist.

Roland had thus grown up with a sense of belonging to two cultures: an idealized ancestral culture, instilled at an early age through nursery rhymes and later through literature and theatre and his mother’s expat circle, as well as the everyday culture of Switzerland. Or rather Geneva, a somewhat special melting-pot whose biggest newspaper had been founded by an American Civil War colonel, its football club by a Brit, and its private banks by French Huguenot refugees. He had been to England twice as a child, but he was eager to see how the reality compared with the idealized image he had carried in his head all these years. Or how it compared with the ugly picture painted by recent expatriates, disillusioned and embittered by what it had become.

He booked the earliest available flight, which was on Thursday, and began getting ready for the trip. He had recently broken up with his girlfriend, who had gone off to Spain, so there were no tearful goodbyes. He talked to his mother and sister about it and they both simply told him to be careful. What surprised him was that word about his trip had got around the office so quickly. Not only was there a hint of jealousy in the reactions of some colleagues—swanning off to cover a sex scandal was how they put it. Some of them also seemed to have got wind of what he had discussed with