The House of Cards Complete Trilogy

by Michael Dobbs

  “Not now, Claire. Let’s give it another month or so, talk about it then.” He was trying hard not to plead.

  “No, Tom. It must be now. You have no marriage to risk, but I do. Anyway, there are other complications.”

  “Someone else?” Pain had made him petulant.

  “In a way. I spent an hour with the PM this morning. He wants me to be his PPS.”

  “And you accepted?”

  “Don’t make it sound like an accusation, Tom. For God’s sake, you’re his Foreign Secretary.”

  “But his PPS, it’s so…personal.”

  “You’re jealous.”

  “You seem to have a weakness for older men,” he snapped, goaded by her observation.

  “Damn you, leave Joh out of this!” Her rebuke hit him like a slap in the face and hurt more.

  “Forgive me, I didn’t mean…It’s just that I’m concerned for you. Don’t get too close to Francis, Claire. Don’t lash yourself to a sinking ship.”

  “Dispassionate concern for my welfare?”

  “I’ve never advised you badly before.”

  Which was undeniable. Makepeace had guided Claire in her first political steps, sustaining her when successive selection committees had determined that her looks were too distracting or that her place was with the children. When she had persevered and her persistence paid off, he’d helped her find her feet around the House and prepared her for its sexual bombast, had even tried to gain her entry to one of the exclusive dining clubs that generate so much useful contact and mutual support around the House of Commons—“like smuggling an Indian into Fort Apache,” he had warned. He’d been a constant source of encouragement—although, she reflected, he had never suggested that she become his PPS.

  “PPS to Francis Urquhart,” he continued, “is such a compromising position. Politically.”

  “We all have to compromise a little, Tom. No point in being the virgin at the feast.”

  “Moral ends justifying compromising means?” He was accusing again.

  “Do you mind if I get out from between the damp sheets of your bed before we discuss morality? Anyway, you know as well as I do that politics is a team game, you have to compromise to have any chance of winning. No point in pretending you can score all the goals by yourself. I want my chance on the team, Tom.”

  “Some of the games Urquhart wants to play I have no desire to join, let alone help him win.”

  “Which is another reason why we have to stop seeing each other like this. There’s so much talk about the two of you being set on collision course, you must have heard the whispers.”

  “Drumbeats accompanied by a native war dance, more like. Tony Franks on the Guardian bet me that either I or Urquhart would be out of Government within a year. He’s probably right.” His face hovered above hers, creased in pain. It would hurt, losing his place in politics. He came from a long line of public servants; his great-grandfather had been a general who had insisted on leading from the front, and in the mud of Flanders had died for the privilege. But politics was so much more dangerous than war; in battle they could kill you only once. “Is that the real reason you want us to stop? Divided loyalties? Are you backing Urquhart against me?”

  She took his head in her hands, thumbs trying to smooth away the lines of distress. “I am becoming his PPS, Tom, not his possession. I haven’t sold my principles, I haven’t suddenly stopped supporting all the things you and I have both fought for. And I haven’t stopped caring about you.”

  “You mean that?”

  “Very much. In another life things might have been much closer between us; in this life, I want to go on being friends.”

  She kissed him, and he began to respond passionately.

  “One last time?” he whispered, running his hand from neck to navel.

  “Is that what we’ve been about? Just sex?”

  “No!” he retorted.

  “Pity,” she replied, and kissed him again.

  ***

  Passolides put down his cup with a nervous jolt, caught unawares by the high double beep of the electronic pager that summoned them. Maria leaned across the table to mop up the spilled coffee with her napkin.

  “That’s us, Baba. It’s time.”

  They had been waiting a little more than half an hour in the small coffee shop of the Public Record Office in Kew, Evanghelos refusing to take his eye for one instant off the red-eyed pager issued to all searchers after truth—at least, what passed as truth in the official British archives. Anything that smacked of British officialdom made him nervous and aggressive, a habit he’d not lost since the old days in the mountains. Even in Islington they had always wanted to snoop, to control him, sending him buff-colored envelopes that demanded money with menaces. Why should he, of all people, pay the British when they owed him so much? A health inspector had once spent an entire week spying on his front door, convinced Passolides was running a business, refusing to give up his vigil until he was dragged away by influenza and other more pressing hazards to the health of the citizens of Islington. He hadn’t known about the back door.

  While he’d been suffering on the cold dank street, behind the tightly drawn curtain the friends of Evanghelos Passolides had spent their evenings toasting his victory over the old enemy. “To Vangeli!”

  The aging Cypriot had little faith that the enemy would help him now. It had been Maria’s idea, something to pursue his interest in the old days, to refresh his memories, an excuse to get him out from behind the drawn curtains by suggesting they might see what information, explanation, or excuse the British documents of the time might offer. So they had traveled across London to the PRO in Kew, a concrete mausoleum of the records of an empire gained, grown, and ultimately lost once more.

  The amiable clerk in the reference room had not been optimistic. “The EOKA period in Cyprus? That’ll have a military or security classification. Used to be a standard fifty-year embargo on those. You know, anything marked SECRET and vital to the continued security of the country. Like old weather forecasts or if the Greek President picked his nose.” He shrugged. “But they review the records every ten years now, and since the cutbacks at the Ministry of Defense I think they’re running out of bomb shelters to store all the boxes. So when they can they throw them away or throw them at us. You might be lucky.”

  And they were. In Index WO 106. Directory of Military Operations and Intelligence. “7438. Report on security situation and EOKA interceptions in Troodos Mountains, April–October 1956.”

  Passolides stabbed his finger at the entry. “They chased us across the mountains for two days, with me on a stretcher and rags stuffed in my mouth to stop me screaming,” he whispered. “That’s me.”

  They had entered their order for the file on the reference computer terminal. And waited.

  And been disappointed.

  The PRO at Kew is not all that it seems. Away from the reference room, behind the scenes in the repository, computerization hands over to dusty fingers and cardboard boxes. Nearly a hundred miles of them. In a temperature- and humidity-controlled environment and to the strains of Roy Orbison and Lulu blaring over the loudspeakers (the whole point of the PRO is that it is not up to date) a young man had sorted through the vast banks of shelving in search of one file among the millions. Once found, it had been transported slowly on a system of electric trolleys and conveyor belts to the general reading room, when Maria and her father had been summoned.

  But it was not there. Beneath the air-conditioned hush and white lighting they had searched WO 106/7438 for any reference to the pursuit of Evanghelos and his EOKA comrades during those days of high summer. How they had hidden in an underground hide with British soldiers less than six feet away and where one grenade would have killed them all. How he had begged his comrades to shoot him rather than abandon him to the clutches of the enemy. How they would have done it anyw
ay, to avoid any risk of his betraying what he knew.

  There was nothing. The tired manila folder was stuffed with individual sheets of paper secured with a string tag, mostly fuzzy carbon copies that appeared to have been retained at random rather than with any sense of logic or in an attempt to preserve a comprehensive record of events. Particularly difficult period, the clerk had explained. The Suez War had erupted in October and everything had been chaos as the British Army turned its attention from the defense of Cyprus to the attack on Egypt. Entire regiments had been transferred and the island had become a churning transit point for the armies of invasion. Paperwork, never the greatest strength of soldiers at war, in many cases had simply been abandoned. For the British, it seemed, Passolides didn’t exist, had never existed.

  But there was something else. A memory. His finger was once again pointing at the single sheet index at the front of the file.

  Item 16. May 5. Above the village of Spilia.

  The date. The location. He had difficulty scrambling through the file to locate the reference; when he had done so, he trembled all the more. A single photocopied sheet of paper, an intelligence report of an action in the mountains near to where it was believed an extensive EOKA hideout was located. Two unidentified terrorists intercepted while transporting weapons and other supplies. An exchange of fire, the loss of a British private. The killing of the two Cypriots. Burning and burial of their bodies to reduce the risks of reprisals. No further indication as to the location of the hideout. A recommendation that further sweeps be conducted in the area. Signed by the officer in charge of the operation.

  The officer’s name had been blanked out.

  “That’s why it’s photocopied. To protect the identities of British personnel,” the clerk had explained. “Not a cover-up, just standard procedure. No way the name will be released, not while he’s still alive. After all, imagine if it had been you.”

  But it had been me, and my brothers!

  Passolides had tried to explain, to insist, to find out more, but his voice and clarity were cracked by emotion and the clerk was bemused by the old man’s talk of murder on a mountainside. In any event, there was nothing more to be found. No other archive, no other records. Whatever the British system had to offer was all here; there was nothing more to be found, except the name. And that he couldn’t have.

  “They were only boys, buried in those graves,” Passolides groaned.

  “You don’t need Records,” the clerk had offered, convinced the old man with tears in his eyes was a little simple. “You need a War Crimes Commission.”

  “But first I need a name.”

  Twelve

  Never sleep with a politician. When they turn their back on you, they take the duvet with them.

  “Damn it! D’you think they’ve got a new editor or something, Mortima?”

  She looked up from her crispbread and letters.

  “The Times crossword has become so”—he searched for the word—“elusive. Impenetrable. They must’ve changed the editor.”

  No, she thought, it’s not the crossword that has changed, Francis. It’s you. There was a time when you would have slain the allusions and anagrams before porridge.

  Irritably he threw the newspaper to one side. The front page was miserable enough, now the back page, too. He searched around the crowded breakfast table and retrieved another sheet of paper. “Fewer problems with this one,” he muttered with considerably more enthusiasm, and began marking off items like so many completed clues. He paused in search of inspiration. “Four or five down, d’you think?”

  “Give me a hint of what we’re talking about, Francis.”

  “A bit of Byng. Time to shoot a few admirals in full view of the fleet to encourage the others, I thought. Just as you recommended—to bring back a bit of fear?”

  “I see. A reshuffle.”

  “Four or five to go, I thought. Enough to cause a real stir, yet not so many as to look as though we’re panicking.”

  “Who are you volunteering?”

  “The Euro drones and iron wits. Carter. Yorke. Penthorpe—he’s so abrasive that every time he opens his mouth he all but sharpens the blade for his own throat. And Wilkinson. Do you know he actually spends almost as much time in France as he does in his constituency? Judgment’s addled by cheap wine and fraternizing.” With a decisive thrust he ran another name through with his pen.

  “What about Terry Whittington? I never know whether he’s half-cut or simply sounds it.”

  “Yes, a problem when the Minister in charge of the Citizens’ Charter can’t even pronounce the words without drenching the interviewer. Dull dog but, oh, such a sparkling and well-connected wife. Haven’t I told you?” He looked over his glasses in remorse. “It seems she’s been indulging in what are known as continental conversations with the Industry Commissioner in Brussels while dear old Terry’s been lashed down in all-night session with nothing more diverting than his fellow Ministers.”

  “Quelle finesse. Be a pity to lose such an interesting point of leverage within the Commission.”

  “Particularly with harsh words on car quotas coming up.”

  She bit into the crispbread, which crumbled and fled, and for several seconds she distracted herself with reassembling the pieces.

  “So who else?”

  “Annita, of course. I know she’s the only woman, but she sits twittering at the end of the Cabinet table and I can barely hear a word.” He shook his head in exasperation. “It’s not me, is it, Mortima?”

  “Francis, selective hearing is not only a Prime Minister’s prerogative but also one of his most useful weapons. You’ve had years of developing it to a fine art.”

  It was more than that, she thought, but he seemed reassured. She picked up a knife and, with a deft flick of the wrist that seemed unnatural on a lady, sliced off the top of a soft-boiled egg. “And what of Tom Makepeace?” The yolk flowed freely.

  “Dangerous to get rid of him, Mortima. I’d prefer to have him on board with his cannon firing outward than on another ship with his sights trained on me. But there might be some”—he waved his hand in the manner of a conductor encouraging the second violins—“rearrangement around the deck. Find him a new target. Environment, perhaps.”

  “Kick him out of the Foreign Office? I like that.”

  “Let him struggle with the wind and waters of our green and pleasant land. Purify the people, that sort of thing. What greater challenge could a man of conscience want?” He was already practicing the press release. “And meanwhile remind the buggers in Brussels we mean business by giving the foreign job to that hedgehog Bollingbroke. He suffers from flatulence. Late nights locked in the embrace of our European brethren seems the obvious place for him.”

  “Excellent!” She stabbed at the heart of the egg with a thin sliver of crispbread.

  “And put Booza-Pitt into the Home Office.”

  “That little package of oily malevolence?” Her face lit in alarm.

  “And so he is. But he’s crass and vulgar enough to know what the party faithful want and to give it to them. To touch them where it matters.”

  “As he does half the Cabinet wives.”

  “But I in turn am able to touch him where it matters. I hold his loyalties in the palm of my hand and all I have to do is squeeze. There will be no trouble from Geoffrey.” Suddenly he sat bolt upright in his chair, sniffing the air, as a ship’s captain senses the arrival of new weather from disturbed skies.

  “Francis…?”

  “That’s it! Don’t you see? Eight down. ‘European emergency.’ Twelve letters.”

  “What, ‘Bollingbroke’?” She was counting off the letters on her fingers, bewildered by his sudden switch of priorities.

  “No. Nein. Nein. Nein!” He gave a triumphant chortle and swooped once more upon his newspaper, filling in blank spaces on a flood tide of
enlightenment. “You see, Mortima. Old Francis still has what it takes.”

  “Of course you do.”

  Just in case, however, she decided a measure of insurance might be in order.

  ***

  The corridors of power resemble a Gordian knot of interwoven connections—relationships matrimonial, familial, frequently carnal, bonds of blood, school, and club (beware the man who has been turned away by the Garrick), ties of privilege and prejudice that run far deeper than the seasonal streams of professional acquaintance or achievement. The nectar of tradition sipped at birth or grudges indulged during afternoons on the playing field or evenings in the dorm may provide a framework for a life, sometimes even a purpose. The British Establishment is no accident.

  In unravelling these inner mysteries and tracing the origins of influence, no tool is of more use than a copy of Who’s Who. Most of the gossamer threads of acceptability are to be found within its pages, as well as the raucous buzzing from the occasional brash interloper who, like the insect charging the spider’s web, rarely lasts.

  Mortima’s copy was a couple of years old, but still gave her most of what she needed to know. It told her that Clive Watling was going to be a problem. He had no family of note, no schooling of eminence, no breeding, merely endeavor and honest accomplishment. Which, for Mortima’s purposes, wasn’t enough. He was proud of his humble origins in the small community of Cold Kirby, which lay at the edge of the Yorkshire Moors; his primary school had been given a place of honor in the list, as had his presidency of the Cold Kirby Conservation Society and membership of other local groups. This was a man whose booted feet were stuck very firmly to the moors, where gossamer threads were as rare as orchids. Yet…

  As luck—no, the fortune of family connection—would have it, a second cousin to the mother of Mortima Urquhart (née Colquhoun) still owned substantial Northern acreages in the vicinity of Cold Kirby, along with the hereditary titles pertaining thereto, and Mortima had engaged her noble cousin to extend an invitation to drinks on the terrace.