London Twist: A Delilah Novella

nothing like the kinds of barricades and bulwarks and overall sense of siege that had come to characterize the Washington, D.C. environs of the White House. Traffic passed by normally; tourists gawked through the bars; there were no displays of assault rifles or body armor.
    South of Downing, the crowds were thicker, and many of the people looked to be of South Asian and Arab extraction, though their ranks weren’t short of Caucasian hipster types, either. There were furled banners and a number of tee shirts with pink bullseyes emblazoned on their fronts and backs. She estimated about two hundred people. If this was the rally, it wasn’t terribly impressive.
    Just south of the Downing gates she saw a man, Pakistani from the dark skin, the moustache, and the expansive body language, talking to an armed, uniformed cop. The Pakistani wore a tie and ill-fitting suit jacket, and she wondered whether he was some sort of rally leader. The discussion had the air of a negotiation, with the Pakistani exuding frustration and the cop a quiet, implacable confidence. After a moment, the Pakistani’s shoulders slumped. He nodded and walked briskly south, where he paused to confer with two other Pakistanis, similarly attired. They nodded, glared briefly back at the cop, then began texting furiously into their mobiles.
    She understood what had happened. The protesters had received permission to hold their rally between Downing and Parliament, where the American defense secretary would have to take note of it. At the last minute, doubtless citing security concerns, the police had told them they would have to move it elsewhere. The police didn’t tell them the permission was outright cancelled; had they done so, the decision might have seemed oppressive when described on the evening news. And besides, the protestors, not having anything to lose, might have become unruly. Instead, the police gave them an alternative: have your rally where we tell you, or you’ll all be arrested and you’ll get no rally at all. The real purpose of the exercise, of course, was just to disrupt and dispirit the organizers, cause them to waste time, and make them look like milling, confused losers. Her own government used the tactic routinely against Peace Now and other Israeli protest groups. It was almost always effective, and seemed to be getting the job done here, as well.
    But this group must have been exceptionally well organized, because within a minute of the three Pakistanis sending out their texts, the protesters starting moving south en masse on Whitehall. Everything was brisk and orderly. She wondered if the leaders had some sort of text bona fides the rest of the crowd could rely on—it would be easy enough otherwise for the government to send out false messages to sow confusion and discord. Another tactic she knew was used routinely in Israel, and, she assumed, against America’s Occupiers, as well. If these people were smart enough to use a code, she assumed they’d be smart enough also to have agreed to use it only once. After that, the government, monitoring their phones, either in cooperation with the phone companies or via direct infiltration, would know it, too.
    Delilah followed the protesters and watched them reestablish themselves in Parliament Square. Her earlier estimate was low, she saw, and she revised it to about three hundred overall. Still, not much of a turnout, especially given the weather. The Pakistanis and Arabs were generally middle-aged and conservatively dressed; the whites were younger and favored bandanas, facial hair, and piercings. The Pakistanis held up placards declaring DRONES CAN’T CARE and STOP KILLING CHILDREN and ARREST THE WAR CRIMINALS . The white kids seemed more to favor performance art, lying down on the street while their comrades chalked crime-scene outlines of their bodies. A reporter and cameraman moved among them all, interviewing anyone inclined to talk. The police gave them plenty of space, as though such a motley bunch was barely worth taking seriously. The whole thing felt pointless. Would the British prime minister and the American defense secretary even notice something like this, much less give a damn? It was a wonder these people even tried, and that more of them didn’t become terrorists themselves.
    She took a few pictures—routine behavior for any self-respecting professional photographer. For a while, there was chanting—“This Is What Democracy Looks Like” and “Who Do