24. Bomb in London (7 pgs.) – Champions Renaissance

ACT I - CHAPTER 24

BOMB IN LONDON

Saturday April 21, 2018

Her Majesty’s Royal Mariners’ Stadium

London England

Alexandre was playing an important match in London at Her Majesty’s Royal Mariners’ Stadium. There were thirty minutes left. Among the audience were many guards armed with machine guns. Others went with dogs or metal detectors. After the attack in Manchester that was the new normal. “The United Kingdom will never be intimidated by terrorism,” the prime minister had said. The attack had opened the debate about security in stadiums around the world. “Protecting football fans is our priority at the World Cup,” the Russian president had stated.

Victoria, with the gift of Venus hanging around her neck, watched the match from the VIP stands, along with Patrick, Alexandre’s representative. His team had to win to stay in the European Cup Championship.

With twenty-five minutes left in the game, Alexandre asked to be substituted. He had pain in his right calf as he had not recovered well from an injury he had suffered playing for the France team in a friendly match in preparation for the World Cup the previous week.

He sat on the bench and the coach gave instructions on the edge of the field.

Five minutes from the end, Octavio Ramírez, one of his team’s defenders, committed a serious foul on the opposing team’s attacker, Bernardo Zamora, a Spanish scorer who played for Los Caballeros del Rey. The foul had not been inside the area, but the free kick was very dangerous.

167

The Spanish attacker was rolling in pain on the ground. His companions pounced on Ramírez and one hit him in the face like a boxer. A pitched battle broke out, but the referee was able to control the situation. Zamora could not get up and was taken out on a stretcher.

The referee expelled Ramírez and the boxer. If the opposing team scored the free kick, it would be almost impossible for Alexandre’s team to qualify for the final.

When all this was happening, Alexandre was checking messages on his cell phone, he looked up and saw a man on the steel marquee that covered the audience who was sitting on the other side of the stadium, in front of him, and it seemed he had a megaphone.

“What is that man doing there?” Alexandre asked another player who was also on the bench.

“Where?”

“There, in front on the marquee that covers the public.”

“I do not see it.”

“He’s standing on the marquee on the other side of the football field.”

“Now I see it. I don’t know! How would I know what he’s doing there? It must be someone from security,” he said and continued watching the game.

Alexandre found it out of place. He continued looking at him when the referee ordered the barrier to take the free kick. At that moment, his cell phone vibrated and he read a text message that came from Boris’s number. “THE STADIUM WILL EXPLODE! GET OUT NOW!”

“We have to get out of here now!” he told his companions, standing up, but they did not understand or react. “This is going to explode!” he exclaimed, but they looked at him without seeing him, they listened to him without hearing him, and they continued watching the game. He ran up the stairs to where Victoria and Patrick were. “Let’s get out of here!” he said when he arrived.

“What is happening?” Patrick asked.

“This is going to explode!” Alexandre responded.

He took Victoria’s hand and they ran down the stairs and, just before the referee whistled the free kick, they heard, “Al-lahu-àkbar,” and then an explosion that caused the heavy steel canopy that was over the stadium to fall over the public. Someone had placed bombs on its pillars, they exploded, it collapsed and fell crushing hundreds of people.

168

The referee, ran waving his arms, suspending the match; the players, ran to the dressing rooms; people, ran in panic to escape; the guards and the police, asked for calm over the loudspeakers to avoid the stampede, but it was useless. Dozens of people were crushed to death by the marquee and by the stampede, leaving in their wake a hundred dead and a similar number of injured.

The news went around the world in less than a minute. The images taken by cell phones circulated on social networks, but the Internet deleted them again and again.

“How did you know what would happen? You scare me!” Victoria said.

“I only saw one man on the roof of the marquee and it seemed strange to me,” he replied.

“But! How can you be sure that a bomb would explode?”

“I just wanted to get out of the stadium. I had a bad feeling.”

“Why?”

“There have been so many terrorist acts lately that when I saw the guy with the megaphone, I took it for granted,” he added, completing his lie. He couldn’t tell her that Boris had warned him. Surely his hacker friends had discovered it.

When they arrived at the hotel it was full of people and the atmosphere was frenetic. When they saw Francisca in the bar, she ran towards them.

“Oh! How happy it makes me to know that you are well!” she exclaimed and hugged them. Alexandre raised an eyebrow when he noticed that she was wearing a gold chain with a light green shark’s tooth, the same color as Victoria’s eyes. “I couldn’t communicate with you on the cell phone. There’s no signal,” she added.

“Alexandre saw the extremist and told us to get out,” Victoria said.

“How did you know he was an extremist?” Francisca asked.

“It was a hunch.”

“And that was enough to make you want to leave the stadium?”

169

“I had a bad feeling, I don’t know, something told me to go out,” he said, looking away and thought, I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you about Boris.

“Maybe your guardian angel warned you,” Francisca said, looking at him tenderly and thought, I know who he is.

“I wish we all had one,” Alexandre said and thought, Mine’s angel guardian name is Boris.

In the hotel bar they saw shocking images of wounded and dead on the television news. Everyone was scared. Some people were arguing about immigration policies.

They saw that a family of Muslims, the father, a five-year-old daughter and her mother, with the hijab on her head, exited the elevator and walked quickly through the hotel lobby towards the exit door to get into a taxi. But they couldn’t get to the door because a group of nationalist fans of the team, ran into the hotel and, when they saw them dressed as Muslims, they pounced on them. The man and woman fell to the ground and were kicked several times, while hotel guards and others in the lobby tried to stop the attackers. It was total chaos.

“These Muslims must be killed! Let them go to the desert where they come from!” a fanatic shouted out of his mind. The little girl cried when she saw how her parents were beaten. A psychopathic coward, completely irrational, kicked the little girl, only five years old, in the back and she flew into the air. Seeing the scene, Alexandre’s anger was so great that he ran faster than light, he jumped and kicked the psychopath’s head like kicking a bowling ball in the air. The psychopath fell to the ground instantly and was unconscious. The instep of his right foot had hit one of his temples squarely. It was packed with people screaming and running in all directions. It was total chaos. At that moment he put back on the hood that had fallen off. Although everything had happened very quickly, some people recognized him. The chaos continued and, without warning, machine gun fire was heard at the hotel entrance. It was the Royal Special Forces shooting into the sky. At least ten entered the room dressed in combat gear. An officer saw that the little girl was in her father’s arms. The military escorted the Muslim family to an ambulance.

When they returned to the bar, Alexandre was limping.

170

“Let’s go to a safer place,” Francisca said, and they left through the side door of the hotel, getting into the same armored car that had saved his life in Munich.

“I hope I haven’t broken my instep,” Alexandre said with a grimace of pain on his face.

“When we arrive, we will heal you,” said Francisca.

Yellow took them through the streets of London to Mr. Walker’s building and they took the elevator up to the 15^th floor apartment. There they had held the philosophical meeting after the bomb had exploded on Mr. Walker’s plane. Francisca, she remembered with shame how drunk she was when she had kissed Alexandre; Victoria, what she had suffered when she had seen the photos of the kiss.

Once again, they were greeted by the wonderful view of the city, Parliament House, Big Beng and the Thames Wheel. Limping, Alexandre walked to the living room couch and turned on the television with the remote control.

They uncovered his right foot and put it in a bucket of salt water.

“It’s going to take away the swelling,” Francisca said while Victoria examined him as if she were a traumatologist.

When they watched the news on the big plasma screen, among all the images that appeared, they showed a crazy man in a sweatshirt and hoodie kicking a fan in the head in a hotel, but the camera angle prevented seeing his face.

“Some witnesses at the hotel say that the person who left this man with a Traumatic Brain Injury is Alexandre Duval, the famous football player from the Club de los Reyes de Barcelona”, commented one of the journalists who was covering the news live.

“I don’t regret doing it and I would do it again a thousand times,” Alexandre said as they continued to treat his foot.

The journalist had not mentioned the kick in the back that the psychopath had given the little girl. But there was so much other more shocking news that it didn’t go any further. The gruesome images of crushed corpses were shown only once. They were too shocking. In fact, Alexandre was surprised that they had been shown. He thought, Brave journalists disobeying coward bosses?

171

The prime minister spoke briefly on television condemning the attack and was followed by the Russian president who said:

“I condemn the cowardly terrorist attack in London and point out that all measures have been taken to ensure that a tragedy like this is impossible at the next World Cup”.

They showed images of presidents of other countries who also condemned it. A new terrorist group had claimed it, but another Muslim group said they were impostors because they had done it.

“Since Muhammad died, they have never agreed on who the leader is”, one religious expert said in an interview.

An independent journalist dared to say that this was a false flag attack by the British government to tighten immigration policies. It was difficult to distinguish real news from fake news and between conspiracy theories and real facts.

“The purge of terrorist immigrants is necessary to recover Europe”, the far-right political leader in France had declared. Days before in her country, the government had put down with a heavy hand the revolts of nationalists who had gone out to burn Muslim cars and businesses.

“This reminds me of the Weimar Republic”, an elderly man they had interviewed in Germany had said.

All of Europe suffered from indiscriminate immigration policies that had made it possible for terrorists to infiltrate alongside honest Muslim families, paying just for sinners.

In Germany there were neo-Nazi groups that wanted the return of Hitler and had formed a political party.

All these irrational groups were fighting for the good of humanity and killing each other. Alexandre was sad to see the circus of irrationality spreading like a fire. Could it be turned off? He thought about the book, We have to finish it and publish it quickly!

They moved into the master suite and were watching TV in bed. He leaned over to look at the top of his foot and it was very, very swollen. He touched himself and had no pain in his tarsals or phalanges, only the first and second metatarsals hurt due to inflammation in the tendons and muscles.

They ordered pizzas and soft drinks.

“My wrist hurts.”

172

“Which one?” Francisca asked.

“The one next to you,” he answered and she brought another container with salt water.

“Take off your shirt,” Francisca said to put some ointment on his left shoulder, which also hurt.

After the medical treatment, they placed him in the middle of the bed with some feather pillows so he could continue watching the news.

Both goddesses got up and returned in their pajamas, laid to bed, hugging him one on each side, as if seeking his protection, and so they fell asleep with their heads on his chest. He hugged them too, as if trying to protect them from the madness of the world; soon after, he turned off the television and fell asleep.

173