Whispers of Betrayal (15 page)

‘I just had to call, Daddy. You were wonderful. Standing up for us like that. Darren and I – he’s really become your biggest fan – we thought you were magnificent. We saw it on the late night news and I’m so sorry about what I said the other day.’ The words tumbled out breathlessly and from the heart. ‘Say you’ll forgive me.’

She was under a considerable misapprehension, of course, but Goodfellowe was in no mood to enlighten her. What she had seen and heard was not Goodfellowe doing battle in defence of his environmental principles but the Prime Minister attacking him for what Bendall, and now Sam, assumed them to be. His new-found hero status was much exaggerated. Still, better a live, tick-infested sheep than a slab of frozen lamb.

‘You’re beautiful and I’m glad you called.’ He stirred the sense-numbing herbal gruel that bubbled in the pot in front of him. The steam curled up slowly, in a mood of malevolence, as though it were looking for someone to strangle.

‘You do forgive me, don’t you?’

The steam swirled closer to him, settling on his exposed skin and making the hair on his forearm prickle. He wondered whether the concoction was also a depilatory if applied externally. Or maybe they’d just given him the wrong bag of herbs.

‘Course I do, silly.’ He laughed, then hesitated. ‘Er, for what?’

‘For ever suggesting that you were …’ The words melted in embarrassment.

‘The shiny bit on Jonathan Bendall’s trousers?’ He laughed again. ‘I really must send you a Dictionary of Insults. Your horizons need broadening.’

‘Oh, Daddy,’ she blurted.

He paused to take maximum advantage of her discomfort, squeezing the last drop of credit for his case. ‘I still want to be a Minister, Sam. You must realize that. Work from the inside.’ He swirled the spoon around the bubbling liquid, sending a fresh fog of vapours onto the attack. They caught his throat, he could say no more.

‘I know I can trust you.’

He wasn’t going to argue, for soon he would need all her support, and then some. For walking hand-in-hand with ambition went desire. His desire was simple. Elizabeth. To lie between her legs so long that she would begin to tremble and cry for him to stop, then to march to the House and do the same to the Opposition. These things he wanted. Together. He wanted once again to be a Minister, and once more to be married.

To Elizabeth.

Which meant setting aside poor, innocent, mind-broken Elinor, and for that he would need all the love and forgiveness Sam could possibly give him.

He felt dampness on his cheek. Damned steam.

When it came to matters of the media, Jonathan Bendall was a wholehearted disciple of the Art of Anticipation. He knew that of all the conflicts made by man, that between Prime Minister and Political Journalist was the most difficult to avoid. Almost a law of
the jungle, ordained by the gods of wrath. You cannot have both harmony and two people in the same room who think they know all the answers. So in order to delay the inevitable onset of verbal violence, Bendall often indulged in anticipation.

Which is otherwise known as keeping the bastards waiting.

It was Bendall’s firmly held view that the Fourth Estate was populated by two kinds of creature. The first were those exotic birds who nested on top of the many ivory columns that had been erected around the estate. These ‘columnist’ birds were unlike the other creatures of the colony, for they were never forced to forage for themselves. Their food was laid on for them, usually in vast quantities, in return for which they were supposed to act as lookouts for the estate, to give advance warning of impending peril or inescapable doom. However, bred into their genes was a fundamental flaw, for these were birds of exceptionally colourful plumage and typically would spend their days (and particularly their feeding times) preening themselves and competing to adopt ever more outlandish poses. So involved would they become in their own vanities that frequently they would neglect their duties, burying their heads so deep within their feathers that most of them, in truth, could hear nothing but the lunch bell and would have missed the arrival of Armageddon. At the very last moment they would be overcome by panic and would attempt to justify themselves by squawking in the most outrageous fashion. As a result, no one paid them the slightest attention.

The other creatures of the Estate all had an unmistakably canine quality. Some developed into intrepid hunters who would patiently and courageously track down their quarry, no matter what its size. Others proved to be excellent guard dogs, even managing on occasion to rouse the attentions of the columnist birds on their lofty perches. But the majority, it must be said, were scavengers, animals who hunted in packs and preyed on the weak, the sort of creatures who spent much of their time with their noses firmly stuck up each other’s arse. They had not a single redeeming quality, but such were their numbers that they were feared, for they brought terror to public servants and piled torment upon princes. They could even reduce princesses to tears. Anyone was potential quarry, except their own. Some base instinct manifested itself within the pack
and drew them to the vulnerable which, once bloodied, would be attacked time and again until it had been torn to pieces.

This was where the Art of Anticipation came into its own. Bendall knew that the sight of food can throw dogs into a feeding frenzy, a raw, primitive call of the wild that has no limits and allows no mercy, yet in
anticipation
of that food, a dog will slaver and come quickly to heel. So it was Bendall’s custom to keep the media in a state of constant anticipation, telling them what they were going to get, and when. In the meantime he would watch them sit up and drool. (He also relied heavily on the principle of idleness, which states that most dogs will eat almost anything so long as they don’t have to go looking for it.)

Out of this grew the idea for what came to be known, in the first instance, as the Surf Summit.

It seemed inspired. Bendall would travel or ‘surf’ around Europe, meeting separately with seven other heads of government in a single day – a day that would, in the portentous words of the press briefing, ‘shake up the politics of indifference and kick-start the European economies out of recession.’ Well, up to a point, Lord Copper. That sort of schedule allowed for no more than forty minutes for each meeting, barely enough time for handshakes and photo-calls. But if modern statesmanship was all about imagery, then those images would be superb. A politician on the move, shoving aside apathy through sheer force of character, his thinning hair tussling in the wind as he ran down stairs, stepped off trains and planes and waved to the carefully prepared camera positions. Look up, young man, look up! And let the whole world follow your gaze, lest they see the nature of what it is you’re standing in …

So the Surf Summit was born, although one early problem emerged. The French President was recuperating from a reported illness at his holiday home near Porto-Vecchio in Corsica. It seemed so much better for his health than Paris, where the streets were plagued with violent protests by impoverished farmers and overindulged students. He had no intention of returning anywhere near the French capital until either the barricades had been swept from the streets or his hapless Prime Minister swept from office, he didn’t much care which. Yet either eventuality was likely to take some considerable while, and in the meantime the emphasis was
on caution – and clean hands. In the circumstances, illness seemed a far better option. The most he would agree to was a video link-up, but at least it was pictures. It would suffice.

Preparations were made, then remade, and at last the day had arrived. As a confident new sun crept across the rooftops of Whitehall and set fire to the gilding on top of the Victoria Tower, Bendall’s private secretary checked the schedule one final time. It had been honed by experts and polished by repeated examination until it shone.

At eight a.m., with breakfast television and radio drawing their largest audiences, Bendall would greet the Irish Prime Minister on the steps of Downing Street. The press communiqué had been agreed well in advance; they only had to sign. They would even have time to discuss the merits of remarriage, a shared interest.

At a quarter to nine Bendall would make the three-minute ride in armoured convoy to Leicester Square where, after a walkabout of precisely ninety seconds, he and the assembled press corps would occupy one of the picture halls of the Moviemax cinema, at which point Monsieur le President would appear many times life size on the screen behind him. Stunning. (It was mere coincidence, of course, that the Moviemax was owned by a close friend of Bendall, who was also a considerable contributor to party funds and soon to be included very publicly in the Honours List. Much less publicly, he would then be touched for a contribution to match the size of the enormous publicity he was pulling from the summit. But that was for the future.)

For today, Bendall would hurry out of the cinema, coat tails flying, to be greeted by a crowd of well-wishers. It was certain that the crowd would consist of well-wishers since every single one of them had been hand-picked and shipped in by party headquarters. Nothing was to be left to chance.

He knew where the cameras would be positioned. He knew which part of the future to gaze at, forty-five degrees, no higher, otherwise his neck would begin to look scraggy, then, with a theatrical sweep of his arm, he would leave them all behind as he made the six-minute dash to the international terminal at Waterloo, where he would be met by the Swedish Prime Minister, Kristen Svensson. A railway station in south London might seem an unlikely location
for an Anglo-Swedish summit but there was no time for Bendall to get to Stockholm. Anyway, the Swede was delighted to cooperate. She and Bendall had always hit it off, their public relationship full of clinches and clutches to the point that some suggested it could only be built on a private and much more intimate relationship. Disgraceful suggestion, of course, but it gave him instant sex appeal, made him a real lad, while she’d made it onto the front cover of
Private Eye
almost as often as Prince Edward.

So, after more synchronized smiling it would be a quick wave through the window of the Eurostar on its way to Brussels. And still only ten-fifteen!

At least, that’s what the schedule called for, but as any old soldier will tell you, it’s the best-laid plans that roll over and take the duvet with them.

Amadeus could not know precisely when Bendall would be surfing around London, or which route he would take. There are, for instance, seven entrances into Leicester Square and a dozen near-direct routes to it from Downing Street. However, the Art of Anticipation had required that the summit story be sold and resold countless times before it took place. Inevitably, and in spite of security considerations, the individual parts of the programme had begun to float into view like pieces of an iceberg fragmenting in the thaw. It was enough.

Amadeus had chosen Trafalgar Square in part because it was a celebration of a great British military triumph. He felt good about great British military triumphs, and felt nothing but contempt for those who kept apologizing for the past. OK, so it was inevitable that the British flag couldn’t fly for ever above an empire that had spanned half the globe, but why were the British required to get down on their knees every time it was lowered? Take Nelson. No, not Mandela, our one. There was some half-brained modern theory being peddled that he wasn’t blind, that he’d simply put on the eyepatch in an attempt to screw a bigger pension from the Admiralty. Critics! Bed-wetters and pillow-biters, the lot. Nelson, by contrast, even with one arm and a dodgy squint, had still been able to blow the French navy
to smithereens, even while maintaining a firm grip on Emma Hamilton. A real man.

In those days they had valued their heroes. They’d given Nelson one of London’s greatest squares, complete with fountains, ceremonial lions, statues of bootless kings, and even for many years the capital’s tiniest police station (in its south-east corner, hollowed out within one of the lamp pillars).

Oh, but times change. Amadeus wondered what the modern world might erect for him. Never a statue. A gallows, maybe.

Trafalgar Square is more than a mere celebration of victory, it is also the heart that pumps life through the entire traffic system of central London. From it radiate the great arteries of Pall Mall, Regent Street, Charing Cross Road, the Strand, Northumberland Avenue, Whitehall itself, and that avenue of plane trees called the Mall which points like an arrow directly at Buckingham Palace. The beating of this vast heart is controlled by a complicated system of traffic lights, in effect an enormous electronic pacemaker which keeps London alive. The controls for the pacemaker are located on an island in the square, at the point where it is joined by Northumberland Avenue, just beneath where King Charles gazes down Whitehall from his horse. The controls are enclosed in five metal-clad boxes, about four feet high, arranged in a neat row.

From Northumberland Avenue these boxes look like five skittles standing at the end of a gigantic bowling alley. At least, they do if you’re trying to blow away Trafalgar Square.

Modern man is sometimes his own worst enemy, too clever by half. He builds cities that grow ever more sophisticated – and as a result, more vulnerable. Systems become interdependent and interlocking – what in fashionable terminology is known as ‘joined-up living’. It has one huge fault. It looks pretty, but spit across the right terminal and all the lights go out, all the telephones go haywire and you can’t even play the Lottery.