Free Dead in the Water by Brian Woolland Page A

a genuine bargaining position?” she asks.
    “ I suppose so. Yes. They could be.”
    “ Could be, not should be?” He shrugs. What the hell does she want him to say? “Do you play poker, Mr Boyd?”
    “ Only for pennies when I was at university. No.”
    “ Ever played bridge?” For all her attentiveness, she seems so relaxed that this could be small talk.
    “ I have done,” he says, looking quizzical.
    “ So what’s their game? You seem to be suggesting it’s a bid, an opening bid. Is that right?” She doesn’t wait for his answer. “Two bombs and then these demands. But they’ve made a clear threat to act again, to raise the stakes if we don’t respond. Is that bluff?”
    He looks again at the list of demands. “I think you’re right. It’s a starting point for negotiations. But the Prime Minister won’t negotiate.”
    “ That’s her stated position, Mr Boyd. I wouldn’t dream of inviting disloyalty, but that’s her job: to be resolute. Isn’t it?”
    “ Yes.”
    “ Who would have written these?”
    “ I have no idea.”
    “ Extremist groups are splinter groups. By definition, they break off from the mainstream. What’s the emphasis here? There are people in the Green movement who lean towards Animal Rights. There are some who get agitated about renewables. Draw me a family tree. Globalisation? Pollution? Bio-diversity? What drives these people? Whose bastard offspring is this?”
    Mark studies the demands again and they talk for a while about the different shades of opinion and focus in various radical environmental groups. He begins to relax a little, dropping in a few anecdotes. She seems in no hurry. “The emphasis here is on transport,” he says pointing to the e-mail. “But it’s all inter-related. That’s the big claim of the Green movement. You can’t talk about global warming without talking about agriculture or Big Pharma. Forgive the pun. But yes, the emphasis here is on transport.”
    “ And is that where the extremists are to be found?”
    “ Not up to now.”
    “ That’s what we thought too. We need to know who we’re looking for.”
    “ And who are you looking for?” he asks.
    She shrugs and smiles again. “That’s why I wanted to talk to you. What do you imagine will be the response amongst your former colleagues?”
    “ To the bombings. I think they’ll be appalled. It’s very damaging. Militant Green action has always been impossible to organise on a large scale. Small groups have delayed road building projects with Monkey Wrench tactics, and Greenpeace has been successful with some of its high profile actions. But for that kind of thing to work it needs widespread support. Anything seriously disruptive blows public sympathy right out the water.”
    “ You have a theory?” Same question as before. Different words, same question.
    “ I’m rather out of touch with developments in Green politics.”
    “ I cannot imagine that Angela Walker would have someone as a personal adviser who was out of touch.” Is that a veiled threat? Without looking up from her notes, she asks: “Had you been expecting something like this?”
    “ Green terrorism? It’s been talked about for years.”
    “ You, personally. Had you been expecting it? Yesterday’s bombs. Did they come as a shock?”
    You’re trying to trap me. You are trying to bloody trap me . “Yes,” he answers quickly. “Yes, it did come as a shock. There was a time when I expected some kind of Green terrorism; but after 9/11, I’d thought that the public revulsion for Al Qaeda would have dissuaded anybody from this kind of action. I’d anticipated local protests, small scale sabotage, the kind of thing the ALF have been getting up to for years. Low key, but tightly focused. I’d never imagined anything like this. There’s frustration about the pace of change. And of course I’ve heard people saying that what human beings are doing to the environment is so extreme that extreme measures are needed. I