The House of Cards Complete Trilogy (110 page)

***

The Battle Bus, as it was known, was a specially designed coach armored with Kevlar and mortarproof compartments that had been constructed as Urquhart’s primary means of road transport for the campaign. Chauffeur-driven Daimlers were deemed too remote and untouchable for the ordinary voter—although had any ordinary voter managed to penetrate the cordon of security thrown around the Battle Bus at every stop and touched anything apart from the windscreen wiper, they would have activated an alarm system delivering almost as many Special Branch officers as decibels. In motion now, sliding through the night air on its way back to London, there was nothing to disturb the Prime Minister’s peace but the whisper of air conditioning and the quiet murmurings from the front compartment of aides conducting a postmortem on the day’s campaigning.

The campaign rally had been a success—no hint of hecklers getting into the hall, a good speech and, Urquhart had to admit, an even better video, although Mortima had been going on about resetting the music track. The evening had rather made up for the afternoon, an industrial visit to a factory that made agricultural equipment that included cattle prods. Some reptile from the press pond had discovered that the biggest single order for the electronic prods came not from an agricultural concern but from the National Police Headquarters in Zaire. Testicle ticklers. Urquhart had decided he’d test one on the cretin who arranged the visit.

But that had been the Six O’Clock News and now the main evening news pictures and the morning headlines would carry more sensible coverage. Not a bad day’s work, he reflected as he rested, eyes closed, in the Tank Turret—the bus’s fortified central compartment.

There was a tugging at his sleeve. “Sorry to disturb you, Prime Minister, there’s a call from Downing Street. You’ll need the scrambler.”

A sense of anticipation rose through tired limbs as he picked up the phone. It was his private secretary.

“Prime Minister, shall we scramble?”

Urquhart pushed the red button. During the last campaign they’d discovered a car shadowing the route of the bus with sophisticated monitoring equipment, hoping to pick up the chatter of the mobile phones and fax machines. He’d been disappointed to discover that the eavesdroppers were from neither the Opposition nor the IRA, either of which would have doubled his majority, but simply freelancers from a regional press bureau. They’d pleaded guilty to some minor telegraphy offense and been fined £100, making several thousand by selling details of their enterprise to the
Mirror
. He held a sneaking admiration for their initiative, but it had left his civil servants as reluctant to break news as pass wind. To bother him on the campaign trail betokened a matter of some importance.

He listened attentively for several minutes, saying little until the call had finished and he had switched off the phone.

“Trouble?” Mortima inquired from her seat on the other side of the bus where she had been signing letters.

“For someone.”

“Who?”

“That remains to be seen.” His eyes flashed and he drew back from his thoughts. “There has been an announcement from Cyprus. It appears that our High Commissioner and their President Nicolaou are both alive, well, and being held hostage in the mountains.”

“By whom?”

He laughed, genuinely amused. “By a bloody bishop.”

“You’ve got to get them out.”

Urquhart turned to examine Mortima, who shared none of his humor.

“It will be all right, Mortima.”

“No it won’t,” she replied. Her tone had edges of razor. “Not necessarily.”

In the subdued night lighting of the bus he could sense rather than see her distress; he moved to sit beside her.

“Francis, you may never forgive me…” She was chewing on the soft flesh in her cheek.

“I’ve never had anything to forgive you for,” he replied, taking her hand. “Tell me what’s worrying you.”

“It’s the Urquhart Library and the Endowment. I’ve been making plans…”

He nodded.

“Making arrangements for the funding.”

“I’m delighted.”

“Francis, I did a deal with President Nures. If I could help him achieve a satisfactory arbitration decision for the Turkish side, he would ensure a consultancy payment made over to the Library fund.”

“Do we have a fund?”

“In Zurich.”

“And did you—help achieve a satisfactory decision?”

“I don’t know. I had a talk with Watling but I’ve no idea if it helped. The point is, neither does Nures. I told him I’d fixed it and he’s delighted.”

“How delighted?”

“Ten million dollars.”

“A drop in an ocean of oil.”

“These arrangements are normal business practice in that part of the world…”

“A finder’s fee.”

“…and I have a letter signed by him to confirm the arrangement. He also has one from me. One letter each, guaranteeing our good faith. No copies. Just him and me. No one else knows.”

Urquhart considered all he had been told, his fingers steepled as though in communion with a higher authority. He seemed to find some answer and turned slowly to his wife.

“So what is the problem?”

“I also did a deal with the wife of President Nicolaou.”

He shook his head in confusion.

“She approached me at a meeting of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Wives—we’ve always got on well over the years at those meetings. She’d just come from Paris—she has good contacts there, perhaps a lover, I’m not sure. Anyway, she’d heard reports of the oil, very specific reports, said how important it was to her poor country. And to some immensely rich oil concerns in Paris. How grateful both would be for any help…So, we did a deal. I would try to help, no guarantees. Payment only on result. Nothing if the Greeks lost the waters, nothing if they found no oil. On two conditions. That all dealings would be conducted through her, so I would never have to meet anyone else and my name wouldn’t be revealed to the people in Paris.”

“Very sensible. And the second condition?”

“Four million dollars.”

“She must have been deeply disappointed at losing out on the decision.”

“We cried on each other’s shoulder.”

“Does her husband know?”

“No. He’s an unworldly academic…”

“He’s a Greek politician.”

“He didn’t know, I’m sure. It would have raised too many questions about her—how can I put it?—friends in Paris.”

“Then what is worrying you so?”

“Another letter. From me to her. Which apparently she left in a safe in the Presidential Palace. Now she doesn’t know who’s got it, even if it still exists.”

His words were slow and solemn. “That is a considerable pity.” The implications were all too apparent.

She fell silent for a moment, eyes downcast. “I’ve been trying to find the right moment to tell you. Do you hate me?”

He looked at her for a long time until, in the shadows of the night, her eyes came up to meet his once more.

“Mortima, all you have ever done you have done for me. As far as I have ever climbed, you have been at my side. All we have ever achieved has been achieved together. I could not feel anything for you that I do not feel for myself. I love you.”

Her eyes washed with gratitude but there was still within them a cold glint of fear. “But, Francis, the letter may fall into the wrong hands. It would destroy me. And with it, you.”

“
If
it fell into the wrong hands.”

“Do you realize what must be done? We have to make sure the letter is safe. Grab back the President. Send in the troops. Take on the Cypriot mob. Use any means and any force necessary.”

“But haven’t you realized, Mortima? That is precisely what I have planned to do all along.”

***

They were prepared for the assault. Somehow they’d figured it out—perhaps it was the unexpected request for all recent program tapes, or an unwise word on the telephone from one of the officials at the Radio Authority in Holborn. For when three police vans and an RA van drew up outside 18 Bush Way, the doors were blockaded and the airwaves drenched in emotional outpourings that would have done justice to the Hungarian Uprising. Not from Franco, of course. At the first hint of trouble he’d legged it, suggesting that to get caught up in a hassle with officialdom might interfere with his Open University course. They could have used Franco, shoved him in the metal cabinet jammed up against the front door to give it more dead weight.

Resistance was never likely to be more than token; there were too many windows, too many hands on too many sledgehammers for them to hold out long. London Radio for Cyprus went off the air as a policeman kicked out the lock of the studio door and with a polite “Excuse me, sir,” reached across and flicked off the power supply. Simultaneously he also managed to kneel on the producer’s fingers, although whether by accident or design was never established.

But not before the excited Cypriot had succeeded in squeezing out one final phrase of defiance. The EOKA cry of resistance.

“
Elefthería i Thánatos!
”

***

When Passolides returned that afternoon from purchasing fresh crab and vegetables at the market, he found the plateglass frontage to his restaurant smashed to pieces and the curtain of seclusion ripped into shreds. A neighbor told him that a car had drawn up, a man climbed out with a sledgehammer and without any evident sense of haste had calmly shattered the window with three blows.

Passolides hadn’t called the police, he didn’t trust them, but they arrived anyway, a man in plain clothes with an indecipherable name flashing a warrant card.

“Not a lot we can do, sir,” he’d explained. “Trouble is, outspoken gentlemen like you make yourselves targets at a time like this. Lot of anti-Cypriot feeling around in some quarters, what with the High Commissioner gone missing. Wouldn’t be surprised if this happened again.”

He’d closed his notebook, dragging back the remnants of curtain to peer inside.

“By the way, sir, I’ll tell the sales tax people you’re ready for inspection, shall I?”

***

The French Foreign Minister sat studying papers before the start of the meeting in Brussels. It was more than the routine gathering of the Council of Foreign Ministers; indeed it had an element of drama. The British would be practicing a little crawling today, and it would force that appalling man Bollingbroke to adopt a position of vulnerability that the Frenchman was looking forward to exploiting. He’d taken enough from the Englishman in recent weeks; he relished the opportunity to show that handing out punishment was not an exclusive Anglo-Saxon prerogative.

His reverie was broken by the clamping of a large hand on his shoulder.

“Allo, Allen.”

Damn him. Bollingbroke always Anglicized the name, refusing to pronounce it properly.

“Looking forward to a fine meeting today, Allen. You know, getting your support on this Cyprus matter.”

“It’s a complicated problem. I feel it would be inadvisable to rush…” But already the Englishman was talking through him. It was like watching a bulldozer trying to cut grass.

“It could get rough, you know. Might have to send in the troops. But I’ve just thought, Allen. What you ought to do. Offer us some of your own troops, a sort of international gesture. After all, we’re trying to sort out an international problem. Restoring order and democracy in Cyprus. We’d take care of ’em, make sure none of ’em got hurt.”

“They can certainly take care of themselves,” the Frenchman responded, ruffling with pride. “But are you suggesting that we give you French troops to help sort out this mess you English have got yourselves into?”

“That’s right.”

“Impossible!”

“You surprise me,” Bollingbroke responded, astonishment wrinkled across his face. “I’d have thought you’d jump at it. Why, give you Frenchies a chance to be on the winning side for a change.”

Another hand came down on the Frenchman’s shoulder, a playful tap he suspected was intended to break his collarbone. His neck turned the color of the finest Burgundy as he threw aside the folder containing his briefing notes. He knew how to handle this meeting.

The French representative was adamant and intractable. He would not be moved and, since most of the other partners had little desire to be moved, even the traditional compromise of fudge was lost. Every request by the British Government for support was turned down. Flat.
Non!
No token troops, no selective sanctions, not even words of encouragement or understanding. Europe turned its back on Bollingbroke. Throughout the long meeting he argued, cajoled, insisted, threatened, suggested all sorts of dire repercussions, but to no avail. And when the vote was taken and he stuck out like a stick of Lancashire rhubarb, he simply smiled.

They’ve no idea, he mused to himself. Middle of an election campaign and Europe says No. Deserts us. With British lives at stake. It’ll be the Dunkirk spirit all over again. They’ll be running up Union Jacks on every council estate in the country and saying prayers in chapel in praise of Arthur Bollingbroke. And Francis Urquhart, of course. Just as FU had said they would.

Bloody marvelous.

Thirty-Six

If you want a camel to move you shove a stick up its arse, and the bigger the stick, the quicker he’ll obey. I put a lot of stick about.

It was Thursday. Exactly two weeks to go before the election.

“I am concerned, Prime Minister, that we should not rush into things. There are lives at stake and, to be frank, we’ve never prepared for a contingency of this sort. Invading Cyprus, if you will.”

“Don’t worry, General, I’ve thought of that for you.”

The Deputy Chief of Defense Staff (Commitments), Lieutenant General Sir Quentin Youngblood, cleared his throat. He wasn’t used to having his military judgment either questioned or improved. “But with the greatest respect, Prime Minister, we’ve found no one who can brief us on the layout. We simply don’t know what this Presidential Lodge looks like and what sort of target it will be.”

“Look no further, General. I visited the Lodge several times when I was serving in Cyprus. It used to be the summer home of the British Governor. It won’t have changed much; the Cypriots are sticklers for tradition. Too idle for change.”