The House of Cards Complete Trilogy by Michael Dobbs
The mention of Cyprus arrived like a slap across the face to Makepeace. It seemed to have galvanized Urquhart, too, who was tugging at the sleeve of his Foreign Secretary. Bollingbroke, startled at this unusual intervention from his Prime Minister, subsided into his seat, his place at the Dispatch Box taken by Urquhart. The House fell to silence, fascinated to catch the next turn of the carousel.
Urquhart cleared his throat. “I hate to interrupt my Right Honorable Friend—I was rather enjoying his contribution—but all this talk about morality and bishops. So muddled and misleading. You know, Mr. Speaker, I find it extraordinary that those who spend so much time warning about the dire consequences of wrongdoing in the afterlife are often so silent about it in this life. Turn the other cheek, they suggest.” He sighed. “But if that’s the self-appointed role adopted by the bishops, that cannot be the role for Government—at least not my Government. Our job is not to forgive those who have done wrong. Our job is to protect those who haven’t.”
If Makepeace had thrown down the gauntlet of morality, Urquhart seemed intent on retrieving it and using it as an offensive weapon.
“Don’t misunderstand me, I have a high regard for the contribution made to the success of my Government by the Right Honorable Gentleman while he was a member of it.” He offered a slow smile soaked in derision. “Although I don’t recall sitting around the Cabinet table hearing him expound on how we were making such a mess of things. Not until I sacked him. But loss of office can have such a distorting effect on a man’s perspective and memory.”
The gauntlet struck again. Slap!
“I don’t doubt the sincerity of his personal values, but I do find them odd. Odd when he says we must do this or that, simply because the bishops say so. Even more extraordinary that we should follow this or that course of action because the rest of Europe says so. Where’s the morality in that? In secondhand opinions that follow the herd like dogs follow a dust cart?”
Slap.
“Morality is about deciding for yourself what’s right. Then doing something about it. Let me have around me men of action, not moralizers with empty words. I’ve nothing but scorn for those”—Urquhart’s eyes lashed in the direction of his former colleague—“who sit back and carp at the efforts of others. Who descend from their high moral vantage points after the battle is over and tell the wounded and dying how they got it wrong…”
Makepeace tried not to flinch, but inside he hurt. Claire’s taunt still echoed in his ears—sitting on the sidelines, she’d accused—and now this. They were out to humble him, together. He looked around him as the blows rained down. Those he regarded as supporters were shifting uncomfortably in their places while Annita’s expression urged him on—do something! He rose to his feet, asking for the floor.
“No, no,” Urquhart slapped him down. “I’ve heard enough theology from him to last me a good long while.”
Makepeace held his ground, demanding to be heard, his clenched hand raised—it still gripped Urquhart’s letter—while Urquhart loyalists were jeering, shouting at him to resume his place. Slap, slap, slap! Makepeace stood alone, defying the blows, but was he simply to stand there—doing nothing, as Urquhart had taunted—allowing himself to be gouged and mauled? Annita’s eyes brimmed with sorrow as his own brimmed with the injustice of it all.
“Since he lost office,” Urquhart was saying, “his attitude has become so critical, so negative, so personally embittered and destructive that I sometimes wonder what he’s doing in the same great party as me.”
SLAP!
So there it was. The public challenge. He had no choice but to respond. All around him those with whom he had discussed and conspired were examining him, wondering whether he was up to the duel. Makepeace against Urquhart. He knew that if he ducked the challenge at this moment it would be all but impossible to persuade some of the conspirators to join with him at a later time. Yet it was too soon, too early, he wasn’t fully prepared. Don’t be too impatient, emotional, Annita had warned…but even eagles must fly with the wind. And if he played the politician then he had also been born a man, and that man was hurting inside, his cheeks smarting, his thoughts misted by a dark and deepening fury that demanded satisfaction.
Satisfaction. For the humiliations delivered publicly on the floor of the House. Satisfaction for the insults delivered more privately in the letter in his hand. Satisfaction for denying Maria and her father. And for stealing away Claire.
Satisfaction for it all. Now!
From his position on the benches three rows up, Makepeace stepped sideways into the gangway. Was he running away? The prospect brought the House to instant and observant silence. He stepped down toward the floor of the great Chamber, to the red lines drawn on the carpet that separated Government side from opponents by the measure of two swords, the boundary between friend and unremitting foe. Then he stepped across. Not a heartbeat anywhere, not a sound to be heard, a Chamber so packed with emotion yet as though frozen. They watched as Makepeace mounted the steps through the benches of Opposition, one, two, three rows, and took a vacant seat.
The House exhaled with a single breath as life returned and tumult was restored. They had witnessed a slice of parliamentary life so rare it would fill their chronicles and be retold to grandchildren around the fire. Makepeace had crossed the floor, abandoned his party, torn up the rule book, and declared war on Urquhart, to the last breath.
Yet as he looked across the Chamber to the benches from which he had fought for so many years, Makepeace thought he saw the shadow of a faint, fugitive smile cross Francis Urquhart’s lips.
Twenty-Six
The Greeks invented democracy. Little wonder that since then they have caused nothing but chaos.
The eye of an inhospitable Levantine sun stared down upon the Cypriot capital, baking the narrow streets of the central city like bricks in a kiln. Hugh Martin was relieved to reach the air-conditioned sanctuary of the Power House, a former electricity generating station that had been turned with considerable imagination into one of the old quarter’s most exclusive restaurants. Works of fine contemporary art competed with menus and wine lists for the attention of the well-heeled clientele, one of whom, Dino Nicolaides, was editor of the Cyprus Weekly and intent on conducting an in-depth interview with his guest. For that purpose he had commandeered the seclusion of the table by the door, which led to the rear courtyard.
Martin apologized to the editor for the presence of Drage—the atmosphere in Nicosia in recent days had soured like uncollected rubbish, and demonstrations of one sort or another had become a daily occurrence, with the demonstrators becoming increasingly confused about whether the target of their protest was the Turks, the British, or the Cypriot Government itself.
“Summer madness,” the editor agreed, and Drage was deposited on a stool by the bar.
If the furniture and decor were fashionable, the hospitality was in best Cypriot tradition and Martin was soon relaxed. Drage, however, could afford no such luxury, having been inducted by his superiors into the Order of Toasted Testicles with crossed pokers after the fiasco outside the museum. “Never again,” his superiors had admonished. “Better a widow’s pension for your wife than you make a complete ass of yourself on the main evening news.” Never again, Drage had vowed. He sat eagle-eyed on his stool, the innocuous flight bag in which he carried “the necessary” perched on the bar beside him, fingers tapping nervously upon his knees. He offered a perfunctory smile but no conversation to the two Cypriots who stood beside him at the bar ordering drinks.
The incident, when it arrived, did so with extraordinary speed. Halfway through the meal a guest from a nearby table rose and crossed to greet the editor and diplomat, an action that in itself aroused little suspicion in such a small community. Drage, however, was immediately on his guard, cursing that the bright sunlight streaming through the window was burning into his retina as he stared, turning all those around th
Impossible! As he reached for the zip that secured the flight bag he discovered that it had been smeared with superglue. Child’s play! Yet so extraordinarily effective. The fastener was stuck solid, the revolver and alarm transmitter inside as inaccessible as though they were still locked in the High Commission’s vault.
Two men—Drage’s companions from the bar—had now entered through the rear door. One was waving what appeared against the glare to be some form of submachine gun while the other helped hustle the High Commissioner up and out. The submachine gun had stopped waving and for several seconds the attacker was pointing it fixedly in Drage’s direction. Then he, too, was gone. Not even a scream, it had all happened so quickly and most guests in the restaurant were still enjoying their food, their first thought of alarm arriving only as Drage kicked over the bar stool in his lunge for the door. It was, as he knew in every fiber it would be, locked. By the time he had made it out through the restaurant’s main entrance and around the side into the chrysanthemum-covered courtyard, the getaway car was speeding off and already lost in the narrow streets of the carpenters’ quarter. He didn’t even get a make, let alone a number.
He had lost the British High Commissioner.
Twenty-Seven
Life is too short to learn the rules.
He sat behind the drawn curtains of his Commons room, eyes closed. The storm was about to break around him and there could be no retreat. Fate, destiny, the games of gods, call it what he might, had contrived to bring him to a time of great decision; if he failed the test they would say he lacked not the opportunity, only courage.
Less than twenty minutes after Makepeace had crossed the floor and changed the face of parliamentary politics, Urquhart had heard of the kidnapping of Martin. Havoc wherever he looked. And in havoc, opportunity. For war had been declared against him on two fronts, the first upon a parliamentary field where his skills and sagacity were matched by none, the other in a distant arena that was one of the handful in the world where British troops were still stationed. An arena he knew so well, where the long journey of his manhood had started, and might yet finish. Where Makepeace would have trouble following, and wouldn’t even know what the spoils were.
There was a knock on the door, a secretary’s head appeared. “Prime Minister, the Cabinet have all assembled.”
“A moment more. Ask them to give me a moment more.”
A final moment, a last listen to the voices inside that spoke of tempests and terrible trials. These were skies of blood that foretold men’s doom and which others dared not walk in. But Francis Urquhart dared. He had wars to fight, and without delay. For in war, timing was everything.
And that time had come.
***
He had sent the wheel of fortune spinning and there was nothing to do but relish the exhilaration of the risk. He felt better than he had done in months. There was a lightness to his step as he walked the few yards from his room back into the Chamber, clutching his piece of paper, a single sheet with a simple portcullis crest and in his own hand, a note that would end up in the Urquhart Library. Or in the Tower. That reminded him, perhaps he should get Booza-Pitt to add a simple amendment to his Bill providing tax breaks for companies who contributed to educational funds. Like the Urquhart Library or the Endowment. There was still time.
The Chamber was full, aware that such an extraordinary and impromptu gathering of Cabinet Ministers betokened considerable drama. MPs rustled like leaves in a drying autumn wind as Urquhart placed the single sheet upon the Dispatch Box, smoothing its cream edges, and began.
“Mr. Speaker, with your permission I would like to make a statement. This afternoon in the House, a Member crossed the floor in an act that not only reduced this Government’s majority, but also threatens a period of damaging uncertainty…” Others would say it, would already be shouting it as they prepared the morning newspapers, so there was nothing to be lost by the admission. “Such uncertainty can only do harm to the good governance of this country. Moreover, claims were made that my Government had lost its moral authority to govern. That is a challenge no Government can ignore.”
He leaned back from the Dispatch Box so that he could survey his audience and, more importantly, keep them dangling, impatient upon his words.
“This Government prefers to take its authority not from self-appointed moralists but from the people. It is the people to whom we listen and in whom we trust; it is for them to say who should sit on these benches and who among the Opposition. It is the people who must decide.”
From the corner of its collective eye the whole House was looking at Makepeace, who sat impassive, aware that Urquhart was challenging every line of his credentials, and awkward on a crowded bench where not a single one was numbered among his friends or supporters. He looked isolated; he’d jumped too soon.
“In order to bring an end to the uncertainty, it is my intention to ask His Majesty for a dissolution and a general election at the earliest practicable moment, after the passage of certain essential pieces of parliamentary business. That moment should be in four weeks next Thursday. Thank you.”
Picking up his piece of paper, Urquhart left the Chamber.
For several long moments the House reacted in the manner of some prehistoric beast under attack. A bemused silence, before sounds of confusion began to rattle among many throats. Then a sustained bellow as the creature finally became aware that its tail had been torn away. Cries of determination and rage rose on all sides.
“Good God, I never thought I’d see it. The day when Francis Urquhart ran up the white flag of surrender.” A young scribe in the press gallery tore at his notebook, infected by the air of anarchy that prevailed.
Beside him Dicky Withers appeared unmoved, eyeing the scene below him with no apparent display of heat, drawing in his cheeks as though sucking on his favorite pipe. “Bloody fool.”
“What, Urquhart?” his junior colleague inquired.
“Not Urquhart. You. He’s not running away, he’s called Makepeace’s bluff.”
“But he’s behind in the polls, now his party is split…”
“You watch ’em. Faced with an electoral drowning, not many will be keen to join Makepeace in jumping ship.”
He nodded toward the former Foreign Secretary, who was walking alone out of the Chamber. In an arena where everyone was shouting, rebuking, gesticulating, only he seemed to have nothing to say, and no one to say it to.
Twenty-Eight
A Greek life is built around ruins and rumor.
Nicosia swelters by day; by night, life is lived on the street, in the open-air eating places, on corners, at coffee shops, in parks beneath the stars. The hot pavements chatter, gossip flows along every gutter; at traffic lights young men lean out of their car windows or from mopeds to exchange banter and cigarettes with passersby, for everyone seems to be connected either by business or by blood. But, since the Turks invaded, mostly by blood.
And in the stifling atmosphere the soft wind of rumor sweeps through the backstreets, is passed from balcony to bus queue like a mistral of mistruth. Blow your nose by the Famagusta Gate and it has become a full-scale epidemic by the time, an hour or so later, it has reached Makarios Avenue. One day, perhaps, television may rescue the Cypriots, replacing febrile excitement with numbing uniformity and squeezing con
Except politicians.
Beneath a roof of woven palm fronds in the shadow of the great Venetian walls of the old city, a waiter served two British tourists, patiently explaining the menu, imploring them to try the boiled brains that were a specialty of his cousin, the cook, and warning them off the squid. “Last week’s. Too old.” He shook his head as though at a graveside.
A young boy, no more than ten, passed between the tables distributing leaflets. He stopped before the couple, clearly identifying them as British. “Good mornings,” he offered, along with a full smile and a leaflet each, before continuing with his task.
“What does it say?” the woman inquired of the waiter.
“It says we want the British out of Cyprus,” he responded cheerfully, before spying the look on her face. “No, not you, Madams. The bases. Only the bases. We want the British to stay, we love you. But as our friends in our homes and our tavernas. Not in the bases.” His cheerful clarification suggested not a trace of rancor. “Now, how about some suckling pig, freshly butchered…?”
Suddenly a scooter, underpowered and hideously overthrottled, squealed to a halt at the curbside and the waiter exchanged greetings with the driver. The noise grew, however, as did the animation of both waiter and driver, who were gesticulating as though warding off an attack of ravenous vampire bats. Then the waiter turned to his cousin who was leaning from the window of the kitchen. More shouts—the waiter abandoned his pen, pad, and corkscrew on the tablecloth—and the battle with the bats continued as he backed away in the direction of the scooter. Pursued by cries from his cousin that clearly fell well short of endearments, he climbed on the back of the scooter and disappeared into the night.
The cousin appeared at the guests’ table carrying an expression of wearied forbearance, wiped his hands on his apron, and reclaimed the pad.