Jennifer smiled with relief. For the first time, she was beginning to think she’d be able to get her client out of her cell without being charged.

Chapter 6

6

“While SOS will do everything in their power to ensure the smooth running of conference, we cannot control Acts of God. In the event of an earthquake, a nuclear attack or an American decision to bomb some God-forsaken part of the globe, we ask delegates to observe the conventions of conference, to be patient and not to shower us with pointless emergency motions.”

from “Advice for New Delegates”, a Standing Orders Sub-Committee booklet.

Jennifer had never heard a silence more eloquent than the two-minute tribute to the memory of Union Jack. It felt like a balloon whose surface had been so stretched that a whisper of air would explode it into shreds of twisted rubber. The delegates stood, heads bowed, the bright colors of their clothes lending the scene the air of a Billy Graham crusade at prayer.

The platform party were uncomfortably at attention, a few of them failing to avoid the temptation to glance at their wrists. The union president stared down at the table where he’d had the foresight to place his own watch. As the hand crawled round the dial and reached twelve for the second time, his shoulders straightened and he lifted his head. He leaned forward over his microphone and said, “Thank you, brothers and sisters. I’ll hand you over now to Brian Robinson from Standing Orders Sub-Committee.”

The man who had first spoken to Jennifer in the Burger King got to his feet and composed his face into a mask of solemnity as the delegates subsided noisily into their seats. She noted that multi-colored silk had given way to a more sombre black leather waistcoat.

“I realize that many of you will feel uncomfortable about continuing with conference under the circumstances,” he began. Judging by the faces Jennifer could see, he was well wide of the mark. “But those of you who had known Tom Jack for as long as I have will realize he was a man who always demanded most forcefully that the show must go on; except, of course, when it was a matter of getting a paper out during an industrial dispute,” he continued, raising a murmur of appreciation from his audience.