Ed walked across to the drinks cabinet and unscrewed the Johnny Walker. Through the wide-open french windows, he could see Fall River Lake glittering with evening phosphorescence. The smattering of stars that hung suspended above the hills gave no astrological clues at all to the violence that had swept across America in the past twenty-four hours; nor to the violence that would follow. The breeze stirred the drapes, and chilled the sweat on Ed’s forehead.

‘Well?’ asked Peter Kaiser.

‘Well?’ repeated Ed. ‘What do you want me to tell you? That from now on. I’m going to toe the line? That I love Shearson Jones?’

‘You want to talk to your wife and kid on the telephone?’ asked Peter. ‘You can if you like.’

‘What do you want me to tell them?’

‘Tell them whatever you want. This is a free country.’

‘Can I tell them they’re going to be shot?’

‘They won’t be. Not if you do what you’re told.’

Ed tipped back his whisky in one swallow. Peter watched him with a fixed expression of false good humour. ‘Getting yourself drunk won’t solve anything,’ Peter said.

Ed wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘I’m not drinking this to get drunk. I’m drinking it as an antiseptic.’

Five

At five o’clock CBS News began to bring reports from London that all passenger flights from the United States had been held on the runways at Heathrow Airport without the passengers being allowed to disembark. There had been four hours of ‘crucial discussions’ between Her Majesty’s Foreign Office and the State Department, and eventually the passengers had been allowed to leave the aircraft, but only to assemble in the departure lounges, and not to pass through Customs.

By nine o’clock, all flights to England from the United States had been cancelled, and by seven o’clock all flights to destinations in Europe, Scandinavia and the Middle East had been wiped off the board, too. In London, more than 2000 Americans were reboarded on to their aircraft, and sent straight back to the United States – despite the fact that many of them had left America before the riots of Sunday night.

Lord Carey, the British Foreign Secretary, said that ‘much as I regret the course of action we have had to take in relation to United States citizens arriving in the United Kingdom, it is apparent that the tragic events of the past twenty-four hours would have led many of them to seek to stay in the United Kingdom indefinitely… And while I wish to the bottom of my heart that we had the facilities and the finance to cope with a massive influx of American refugees… the fact remains that we have not… and therefore with the understanding of the President, we have regretfully been obliged to turn away, for the time being, any United States citizen who arrives at a British port of entry.’