The House of Cards Complete Trilogy (121 page)

“I cannot leave, Elpída.”

“If you stay, Father, you will die.” She knelt beside him, mopping his brow.

“I’m not afraid. I’ve grown used to being threatened with death in the recent days.” It was his attempt at being lighthearted to dispel oppression, but it failed. The atmosphere remained fetid, laden with failure. The pool of pale light cast by the lamp inside the truck had drained the color from his face, leaving only two small spots of protest that suffused the very tops of his cheeks. The rest of him looked like congealing wax.

“Come with me. Now.” Her plea betrayed her desperation. She pulled at him, feeling every bone in his frail hand, but he refused to rise from his mattress of blankets. He was no longer sure he was able, even if he tried.

“You should think about it, sir,” St. Aubyn intervened, his squatting form indistinct in the gloom that was slowly beginning to devour the far end of the truck. “There’s nothing to be gained from senseless suffering.”

“That is…noble of you, Colonel.” Nicolaou’s breathing was growing shallow; he was struggling for his words. “But you risked your lives to rescue us. I cannot desert our British friends.”

“Father, grow up.”

Her rebuke slapped across his face. His eyes, soft-glazed and distant, struggled to focus.

“They did not come to save our necks but those of their High Commissioner. And Mr. Urquhart,” she continued. “Isn’t that right, Colonel?”

St. Aubyn shrugged. “I am a military man. I do as I am instructed. A soldier isn’t trained to ask why.”

Nicolaou flapped his hand in feeble protest. “But Mr. Urquhart has been such a good friend to us, Elpída. The peace…”

“It is our peace, not his. And it’s probably lost, anyway.”

The old man flinched. His suffering had been borne on the hope that all he had fought for would yet come to pass; the contemplation of failure drained him like leeches. “Please tell me I haven’t thrown it all away.”

“You cannot fight on two fronts at once, Father, seeming to give so much away to the Turks while giving in to the British. As much as we want peace, we Cypriots also have our pride. Sometimes that’s more important.”

His hand shook in confusion, reaching for his daughter. “All I have done, Elpída, I have done for you and those like you. For the future.”

“No,
Baba
. You haven’t.”

Nicolaou started choking in confusion. St. Aubyn leaned forward, whispering—“Steady on, miss”—but she ignored him.

“That’s why I want you to leave here and join those people outside,” she continued.

“Why? Why?” her father moaned.

“Because,
Baba
, they are right. And for the British to occupy Cypriot land as lords and masters is wrong.”

“You never said such things before.”

“You never asked me. Nor did you ask anyone else. But Cyprus is changing. Growing up.” She turned to St. Aubyn. “Colonel, believe me, you will be welcomed in my house at any time. As a friend. But I don’t want you in my house as of right.”

He nodded, but said nothing. The concept of retreating from distant outposts was not a novel one to a British soldier.

“Why do you scourge me so, Elpída?” Flakes fell from the President’s fading voice.

“Because I love you,
Baba
. Because I don’t want your life to end in failure. Because if we cross the line, join them, you will not only be doing what I believe to be right for our island, but also what is best for you. Salvaging pride, yes, and a little justice from the wreckage that has been strewn about Cyprus by the British. Maybe even saving the peace, too.”

St. Aubyn coughed apologetically. “The gentlemen outside, sir, have insisted that you and your daughter will only be allowed across the line if you submit your resignation.”

“The presidency has become an uncomfortable bed on which to lie.”

“You cannot make peace with the Turks, Father, until you have brought peace back to our own community.”

“And, it would seem, to my own family.” Nicolaou sank back onto his rough pillow of blankets, exhausted but alert. His bony fingers gripped his daughter’s hand, flexing like the beat of his heart as he struggled to find a way through the maze of his emotions.

“What is to be done? Can I achieve more by remaining in office, or by resigning?”

“Father, you can achieve nothing by dying.”

“To lose everything? The presidency? The peace? You, Elpída?”

“
Baba
, you will never lose my love,” she whispered, and he seemed to gain strength from her words. He squeezed her hand with more certainty, propping himself awkwardly on an elbow, barely able now to see beyond the small pool of lamplight that lit his makeshift bed.

“Colonel, if I decided to leave, would you allow me to?”

“You are not my prisoner, sir.”

“Then, if you don’t mind, I think I shall.”

The Colonel nodded and reached forward as though to help Nicolaou rise. Elpída waved him away.

“No, thank you, Colonel. If he can, I would like my father to walk back to his fellow Cypriots without leaning on a British arm.”

“I do feel stronger somehow,” her father acknowledged.

“Why do you think I have been kicking you so hard,
Baba
,” she asked, kissing him gently. “You always become so stubborn when you get angry.”

As she helped her father down from the truck she turned to St. Aubyn. “I did mean what I said, Colonel. That you will always be welcome in my house. As a friend.”

It was twilight. The candles flickered, the gentle song of a Cypriot schoolgirl quavered on the evening air as the final colors of purple and fire stretched out along the horizon like fingers drawing on the curtain of night. Leaning heavily on the arm of his daughter, the President of Cyprus turned his back on the British and walked the fifty yards to rejoin his countrymen.

***

The new glass and front door had arrived that morning. A tax demand, too, along with an invitation to arrange a meeting with a sales tax inspector. Vangelis was ready to resume business and already the wolves were circling, drawing nearer.

He felt hounded in every direction he looked. On television he had watched the scenes of Makepeace rejoicing outside the magistrates’ court, raising his hands high above his head as though still manacled, receiving the same sign back from the spilling crowd and accepting their adulation and fervent endorsement. The victor. An Englishman who, so far as Passolides knew, had never set foot in Cyprus was now treated as his homeland’s savior. Honor built on the sacrifices of others. Sacrifices, thought Passolides, like his own.

The screen showed scenes of rejoicing from the island itself, too, as old men, gnarled and bent double like ancient olive trees, danced with young girls and waved rifles and flasks like some scene out of
Zorba
in celebration of the defection and deliverance of Nicolaou.

Everywhere he saw the happiness of others, but Passolides had no part in the joy. These should have been his victories, his accomplishments, yet once again as throughout his life he had found himself excluded.

And the crown-encrusted envelopes of officialdom sat on the table before him. They were pursuing him, the agents of British imperialism, as they had done all those years ago, into his every hiding place, leaving him no sanctuary.

Inside he writhed like a worm cleft by a spade, a dew of despair settled upon his eyes, his mind blanked by bitterness. With a great cry of despair he lashed out, throwing the bottle from which he was drinking at the Satan’s eye of a television screen. The bottle bounced off, hit the new window. Something cracked.

But Vangelis didn’t care anymore.

***

Urquhart had watched those same newscasts as Passolides, his sense of despair equally profound. He had watched the clasped hands of Makepeace rise above his head, then fall, and rise, and fall again. To Urquhart it was as though Makepeace were clutching the haft of a dagger and he could feel the assassin’s blade striking time and again into his own body. In Makepeace’s triumph lay his own doom.

It was late; he had summoned Corder. “Still here?”

“Thought you might need some company.”

“Kind. You’re a good man, Corder. Good man.” A pause. “I’ve got something for you.”

Corder listened attentively, studying the Prime Minister all the while. Urquhart’s stiff expression belonged in an abattoir, his voice strangely monotone, his reflexes mechanical. A man changed, or changing, struggling to hide the despair.

When Urquhart had finished, Corder could find only one word. “Why?”

He had never questioned an instruction before.

Urquhart’s voice was no louder than a hoarse whisper; he seemed almost to choke on every word. “I have just given the order for the convoy in Cyprus to surrender; I have no option. To accept defeat is offensive to every bone in my body. It will kill me, Corder; they will flay me alive and demand my head on a pike. Somehow I must fight on, in any way I can.”

“But why this way?”

“Please, don’t ask me, Corder; I’m not even sure myself. Perhaps because it is all I have left.”

***

The impact was catastrophic, utterly irresistible. Yet, like a dam that had held back the rising flood waters until it could no longer resist, the first visible cracks took some hours to appear. The news of the final humiliation, the announcement that St. Aubyn’s men had set aside their weapons in order to engage in “unconditional discussions” with the Cypriots, came too late for the morning newspapers, and the TV images of the surrender shot through night lenses that appeared on breakfast news were too grainy and indistinct for full impact. Nevertheless, the rumblings of internal collapse were everywhere to be heard.

The noise emanating from the Member of Parliament for Milton Keynes resembled not so much a rumble as a drum being repeatedly struck like a call to arms, unable as he was any longer to confine beneath the straining buttons of his waistcoat all the righteousness that had been building since his hopes of preferment at the last reshuffle had been dashed. “Tom has been a colleague and friend of mine for many years,” he pronounced from the back seat of the radio car parked in his driveway. “Both Tom and I have served our party faithfully and I have enormous respect for Tom.” He clung to the name like a life belt in stormy seas, as though by continued repetition he might convince others of what he had only just convinced himself. “The March is due to pass through my constituency later today and I very much hope to be marching with it.”

The battle for the Blessing of Makepeace had begun.

“The party does not belong to Francis Urquhart nor to any one man. I believe Mr. Urquhart should announce his intention to step down immediately after this election. My choice for his replacement will be Tom Makepeace.”

“And if the Prime Minister does not make such an announcement?” the interviewer asked from the London studio.

“Frankly, I don’t think he’s got any choice.”

From party headquarters came reports of a flood tide of telephone calls from activists demanding resignation—whether of the Prime Minister or the Member for Milton Keynes, the reports did not make clear. In any event a press release was issued in immediate denial, but when journalists tried to check the story they couldn’t get through. The switchboard was jammed.

And from Cyprus came news of Nicolaou’s formal resignation and the first pronouncement of his successor, Christodoulou, the former Vice President who owned the BMW concession on the island. “We shall not rest,” he told a tumultuous press conference, speaking into a bouquet of microphones, “until the blood shed by our fathers has been honored and all soil on this island has been returned to Cypriot control.” Even many journalists started applauding. “And while I believe that we should pursue every avenue of peace with our Turkish Cypriot neighbors, I cannot sign the proposed peace treaty as it stands. A more fair division of the offshore oil resources is vital, and I shall be contacting President Nures immediately to seek further discussions.” Standing beside him was Elpída, strained but seraphic, who nodded encouragement before reading out a statement of support issued by her father from his hospital bed.

Throughout the day the cracks in the dam grew wider, support draining away, the trickles of defiance becoming great bursting geysers of rebellion that were sweeping Francis Urquhart into oblivion.

By the following morning the mood approached hysteria. The van bringing the early editions of the newspapers into Downing Street had a loose hubcap; the noise echoed from the walls of the narrow street like the rattle of a cart over cobbles on its way to the Tyburn scaffold. Since elements of both main parties and any number of pressure groups now claimed Makepeace as their spiritual leader, the outcome of the election was utter confusion; party lines were crumbling into the chaos of a civil war battlefield, and among the tattered ranks roamed packs of reporters trying to find a yet more injurious example of defection from the colors of Francis Urquhart. A telephone poll indicated that less than ten percent of voters wanted Urquhart to remain as Prime Minister; as the accompanying editorial claimed, they must all have been supporters of the Opposition. Attempts were being made to contact sufficient Government election candidates to discover who in their opinion should be their next leader; the answer was overwhelming. Makepeace—if he would have it. But Makepeace was unmoved, saying nothing as his march wound its way toward the outskirts of Milton Keynes, growing by the thousand with every passing hour.

It seemed that with every passing minute the mob at the gate grew in size. Words that in the morning could be attributed only to anonymous but highly placed sources within the Government party by afternoon were having definitive names attached to them; backbenchers, under pressure from small majorities and small-minded wives, rushed to join the execution squad before they were placed against the wall themselves. Ministers were said to be in constant contact and cabal, to be in open rebellion. It was reported that at least two covens of Ministers would be gathering around the dining tables of London that evening to discuss the removal of the Prime Minister—not if, but when and how. The reports were so prolific that the venues had to be changed at the last minute.