The House of Cards Complete Trilogy (104 page)

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 conspiracy into the commercial breaks. One day, perhaps, but until then, the Cypriot will believe anything.

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.

“But…what was all that?” Madams inquired.

He shrugged. “Bones. They’ve found more bones. So there’s another demonstration at the Presidential Palace. Don’t worry, ladies, he’s only gone for a quick shout. Be back in half an hour. Now, what can I get you? Has he told you about the squid…?”

There were bones, uncovered in the hills behind Paphos beneath a pile of rocks in an olive grove. They weren’t of an age that matched with graves from either the British or Turkish wars, and it turned out they weren’t even human. But it would be days before forensic analysis established the facts and in the meantime there would be protests, rumors, inventions, and outright lies.

Through dragging Cypriot days and beneath hard blue skies, truth rots like a gangrenous limb.

***

The Presidential Palace in Nicosia is an unlikely affair. Built to house the imperial trappings of an early British Governor after the old headquarters were wrecked by a popular uprising, it was in its own turn burned to the ground by the coup against Archbishop Makarios, which opened the door to the Turkish invasion. This would have been an opportunity to erase the British stamp upon the presidential home once and for all, and to create a palace of entirely modern Cypriot design. “But the British are our history,” the Archbishop was supposed to have said. “They are our friends.” So, along with the Archbishop, the Palace was restored in the old style, complete with the dominant British coat of royal arms carved in sandstone above the main entrance.
Dieu
et
Mon
Droit.
An unlikely affair.

Aristotle Nicolaou was a similarly unlikely affair. Tall, stooped, of uncomfortable construction, the President had a leanness and a blue intensity in his eyes that set him apart from most Cypriots. He was a philosopher rather than a politician, a man who had encountered no greater pleasure in his life than teaching economics at the London School of Economics and marrying an English wife. His happiness had disappeared with the Turkish invasion that had torn the island apart, and he had returned for no better reason than to assuage his sense of guilt at missing the hardships being endured by his fellow Cypriots. It was not a sense of guilt shared by his wife. Nicolaou was a man of broad ideals who had never fully reconciled himself to the tactics and daily concessions required of political life, any more than he had to those required in his marriage. As he sat at the small desk in his office, surrounded by family photographs and the paraphernalia of power, he felt adrift. Through the great Moorish stone-arched windows came the sound of protest from beyond the palace gates—louder than ever tonight—and from the telephone came the sound of protest from the British Prime Minister. He didn’t know how to handle either.

“Ari, I must emphasize how seriously I take this business. I’m not going to allow people to start kidnapping my High Commissioners and get away with it.”

“Francis, I’m committing everything to this. We’ll find him.”

“But you haven’t. Have you even found out why he was taken?”

“A radio station received a telephone call about two hours ago. Untraceable, naturally. Called itself ‘The Word.’ Gave the position of Mr. Martin’s birthmark. Said it will give the rest of him back in exchange for all files concerning hidden war graves and a commitment from your Government to withdraw from your ‘outposts of imperialism,’ as it called them. Bones and bases.”

“Bloody blackmail.”

In a bowl in front of Nicolaou were piled fresh lemon leaves from the garden; he crushed a few between his fingertips, savoring the sharp fragrance, as was his custom at times of stress. “Can we at least encourage them to talk about it?”

“Ari, I’ve got an election campaign about to start. I’ve no intention of kicking that off by dickering with terrorists.”

“It’s more than that, I’m sure. It’s aimed at me, too. They want to prevent me signing the peace treaty. Even now I have a mob beating at my door.”

Beneath the canopy of a hundred thousand stars, another wave of protest drifted across the grounds—God, had they broken in? For once he was glad his wife was away on yet another trip to Paris. More culture. Shopping again.

“How seriously should we take these people?”

“Have you British not yet learned to take Cypriots seriously?” Nicolaou sounded caustic. “We may be a nation of tavern keepers and taxi drivers, but you’ll remember we saw off the British military machine with little more than a handful of homemade bombs and stolen rifles.”

“I remember.”

“Above all,
I
cannot afford to forget. Throughout the ages we Cypriots have been betrayed by those who let in the Turks and other invaders through the back door. Now some believe I’m inviting them in through the front, putting out the welcoming mat. The arch deceiver, they call me. It’s my head they want, not that of Mr. Martin.”

“I hadn’t realized things were so difficult for you. I’m sorry,” Urquhart said, and didn’t mean it.

The President crushed more lemon leaves and gazed across his office to where, against the soft pastel walls above the fireplace, hung a large oil portrait of his daughter, an only child born five months after their return to Cyprus. Elpída, he had called her—
Hope
. “So long as we have peace for our children, Francis, little else counts.”

The maudlin fool. Matters appeared to be getting out of control in Cyprus; Urquhart could not have been more content. “And you believe these bone grinders who oppose the peace are the ones holding my High Commissioner?”

“I do.”

“Then who in God’s name is behind it all?”

Nicolaou sighed wearily. “I wish I knew.”

***

She was twenty-three, extended in leg and lip with an adventurous, uncomplicated outlook. That’s why she had become an air stewardess, to see something of the world and its charms, and particularly its men. She hadn’t counted on meeting a man like this. Within ten minutes of their encounter in first class he’d offered her a job—better pay, more regular hours, no more anonymous hotel rooms and shabby, sweaty nights with men trying desperately to forget they were over forty and heavily married. At least this one wasn’t married. But she hadn’t expected to be looking down the barrel of a revolver.