The Final Cut

by Michael Dobbs

  'Yes, I've been fortunate, Henry, received a lot of recognition. Mostly abroad, of course. Not so much here at home. Prophet in his own country, you know?' And grammar school achiever in a juridical system still dominated by Oxbridge elitists. Like Ponsonby,

  'Not at all, my dear fellow. You're held in the very highest regard. We English are simply a little more reticent about these things.'

  Sir Henry's words were immediately contradicted

  by an outburst of feminine hysteria from behind as the players resumed their places for the final set. It was noticeable that the many expressions of patriotic fervour emerging from around the stands were becoming mixed with vivid Francophobia. Such naked passions made Ponsonby feel uncomfortable.

  'Let me come straight to the point, Clive. The Cypriots want to settle their domestic squabbles. Shouldn't be beyond reach, both Greeks and Turks appear to be suffering an unaccustomed outbreak of goodwill and common sense. Maybe they've run out of throats to cut, or more likely been tempted by the foreign aid packages on offer. Anyway, most of the problems are being resolved, even the frontiers. They both know they've got to make a gesture, give something up.'

  'Are their differences of view large?'

  'Not unduly. Both sides want the barbed wire removing and most of the proposed line runs through mountains which are of damn all value to anyone except goatherds and hermits.'

  'There's offshore through the continental shelf.'

  'Perceptive man! That's the potential stumbling block. Frankly, neither side has any experience of sea boundaries so they want an international tribunal to do the job for them. You know, give the settlement the stamp of legitimacy, avoid any loss of face on either side. All they need is a little bandage for national pride so they can sell the deal to their respective huddled masses. They're already surveying the waters, and they've agreed an arbitration ‘I panel of five international judges with Britain taking the chair.'

  'Why Britain, for God's sake?'

  Ponsonby smiled. 'Who knows the island better? The old colonial ruler, the country both Greeks and

  Turks mistrust equally. They'll choose two of the judges each, with Britain as the impartial fifth. And we want you to be the fifth.'

  Watling took a deep breath, savouring his recognition.

  'But we want it all signed and sealed as soon as possible,' Ponsonby continued, 'within the next couple of months, if that could be. Before they all change their bloody minds.'

  'Ah, a problem.'

  'Yes, I know. You're supposed to spend the summer lecturing in considerable luxury in California. But we want you here. In the service of peace and the public interest. And, old chap, His Majesty's Government would be most appreciative.'

  'Sounds like a bribe.'

  A double fault, the crowd groaned. Ponsonby leant closer.

  'You're long overdue for recognition, Clive. There's only one place for a man of your experience.' He paused, tantalizing. 'You'd make a tremendous contribution in the House of Lords.'

  Ponsonby offered an impish smile,- he enjoyed dispensing privilege. Watling, by contrast, was trying desperately to hide the twitch that had appeared at the comer of his mouth. As a boy he'd dreamed of opening the batting for Yorkshire; this ran a close second.

  'Who else will be on the panel of judges?'

  'Turks have nominated a Malaysian and some Egyptian professor from Cairo . . .'

  That would be Osman. A good man.'

  'Yes. Muslim Mafia.'

  'He's a good man,' Watling insisted.

  'Of course, they're all good men. And so are the Greek lot. They've chosen Rospovitch from Serbia - nothing to do with him being Orthodox Christian, I hasten to add. The thought would never have entered a Greek mind.' 'And the fourth?'

  'Supplied by Greece's strongest ally in Europe, the French. Your old chum from the International Court, Rodin.'

  'Him!' Watling couldn't hide his disappointment. 'I've crossed judgments with that man more often than I care to remember. He's as promiscuous with his opinions as a whore on the Avenue Foch. Can't bear the man.' He shook his head. 'The thought of being cooped up with him brings me no joy.'

  'But think, Clive. The panel is split down the middle, two-two, by appointment. You'll have the deciding vote. Doesn't matter a damn about Rodin or any of the others, you can get on and do the job you think is right.'

  'I'm not sure, Harry. This is already beginning to sound like a political poker game. Would this be a proper job? No arm-twisting? I'll not be part of any grubby backstage deal,' the lawyer warned, all Northern stubbornness, drawing in his chins. 'If I were to handle this case it would have to be decided on its merits.'

  'That's why you've got to do it, precisely because you're so irritatingly impartial. Let me be frank. We want you for your reputation. With you involved, everything will be seen to be fair. Smother them in Hague Conventions and peaceful precedent. Frankly, from the political point of view it doesn't matter a dehydrated fig what you decide, in practice it will be little more than a line drawn across the rocks. A half mile here or there on which you couldn't grow a bag of beans. But what it will do is enable the Cypriot politicians to sew up a deal they badly need. So come down on whatever side you like, Clive, there'll be no pressure from us. All we want is a settlement.'

  They paused. The crowd was rising to the boil once more as the decisive set began to take shape. Watling still hesitated, it was time for the final nudge.

  'And I suspect it would be appropriate to speed things along at our end, too. No need to wait in long line, I think we could ensure your name appeared in the very next Honours List, at New Year's. Wouldn't want any uncertainty clouding your deliberations.' Ponsonby was laughing. 'Sorry about the hurry. And about California. But there's pressure on. The Cypriots have been at war with each other for a quarter of a century; it's time to draw the curtain on their little tragedy.'

  'You're assuming I'll say yes? In the interests of a peerage?'

  'Dear fellow, in the interests of British fair play.'

  Further exchanges were rendered impossible, buried beneath the weight of noise. The French player had lunged, tripped, become entangled in the net as in desperation he tried to save a vital rally. Break point. The crowd, as one and on its feet, bellowed its delight.

  The captain of the seismic vessel Happy Valley flicked the butt of his cigarette high above his head, watching it intently as it hung in the heavy air before dipping and falling reluctantly out of sight beyond the trawler's hull. His lungs were burning; he tried to strangle a cough, failed, shivered violently, spat. He'd promised his wife to give up the bloody things and had tried but, out here, day after day spent under callous skies, criss-crossing the featureless seas of the eastern Mediterranean, he found himself praying for storms, for mutiny, for any form of distraction. But there was none. He'd probably die of boredom long before the weed did for him.

  He ached in his bones for the old days, running tank spares into Chile or stolen auto parts into Nigeria, his manifests a patchwork of confusion as he confronted the forces of authority, slipping between their legs with a cargo of contraband as a child evades a decrepit grandparent. Yet now his work was entirely legitimate; he thought the dullness of it all would crush his balls.

  So those Byzantine bastards in Cyprus had agreed to exorcize their ghosts and reach a compromise. Peace to all men, whether Greek or Turk and no matter whose daughters they'd raped or goats they'd stolen. Or was it the other way around? Hell, he was French-Canadian and loathed the lot, but they wanted their offshore waters surveying so they could agree an amicable split. And the sanctions-busting business wasn't what it used to be, not with peace breaking out everywhere. Seismic was at least a job. Until the next war.

  From the sea behind him came the explosive thud of compressed air. Once, he remembered, it had been bullets and mines. He'd never thought he'd die of boredom. He squinted into the setting sun at the lines of floats and hydrophones that trailed for three thousand meters beyond the Happy Va
lley, crisscrossing the seas on a precise grid pattern controlled by satellite while bouncing shock waves off the muds and shales below the sea bed and down the throats of the computers. The damned computers had the only air conditioning on the vessel while the men fried eggs in their underwear. But, as his bosses at Seismic International never ceased to remind him, this was a thirty-thousand-dollar-a-day operation, the captain and his crew were the cheapest part of it and by far the easiest to replace.

  He spat at a seagull that had perched on the rail beside him. The bird rose languidly into the skies behind the vessel, examined the creamy wake for fish and, finding none, gave a cry of contempt before departing in search of a proper trawler. Christ, even the bloody birds couldn't stick the ship. And what was the point? Everyone knew there was nothing but a lot of scrap iron and shards of old pottery down there; not even any fish to talk of, not after they'd blown the once thriving marine world apart with old grenades and other forms of indiscriminate fishing.

  He couldn't stick this outburst of peace. He wanted another war. And another cigarette. He coughed and began searching his pockets.

  He was standing in his dress shirt, bow tie cast aside, staring out through the shard-proof curtains of the bedroom window across St James's Park when she came in. The room was in darkness, his face cast like a wax mask in the reflection from the lighting beneath the trees in the park. Francis Urquhart, shoulders down, hands thrust deep into his dress trouser pockets, looked miserable.

  'They turned old Freddie off,' he whispered.

  'Darling?'

  'Old Freddie Warburton. The car crash? On life support? They decided there was no point, Elizabeth. So they turned him off.'

  'But I thought you said he was useless.'

  Urquhart spun round to face his wife. 'Of course he was useless. Utterly and comprehensively useless. I'm surprised they could even tell when his brain had stopped functioning. But that's not the point, is it?'

  'Then what is the point, Francis?'

  'The point, Elizabeth, is that he was the only surviving member of my original Cabinet from all those years ago. They'll say it's the end of an era. My era. Don't you see?'

  Elizabeth had begun taking off her jewellery, methodically preparing herself for bed in the semi-light while she considered her husband's fragile mood. 'Don't you think you're over-reacting a little?' she ventured.

  'Of course I am,' he replied. 'But they'll over-react, too, the wretched media always do. You know how the poison has begun to drip. Should've retired on his tenth anniversary. An ageing administration in need of new ideas and new blood. An age which is passing. Now with bloody Freddie away they'll say it's passed. Gone.' He sat down on the edge of his bed. 'It makes me feel so .. . alone, somehow. Except for you.'

  She knelt on his bed and began to work away at the tension in his shoulders. 'Francis, you are the most successful Prime Minister this country has ever had. You've won as many elections as anyone, in three months' time you will have passed Margaret Thatcher's record of time in office. Your place in the history books is assured.'

  He turned. She could see the jaw muscles working away, making his temples throb.

  'That's it, Elizabeth. I feel as if I'm already history. All yesterday, no longer today. No tomorrow.'

  It was back, his black mood, when he raged at the pointlessness of his life and the ingratitude and incompetence of the world around him. The moods never lasted long, but undeniably they were lasting longer. The challenge had lost its freshness, he needed dragons to slay but instead they seemed to have crawled away and hidden between the sub-clauses of interminable policy documents and Euro-regulations. The cloak of office hung heavily on his shoulders, ceremonial robes where once there had been armour. He had towered like a giant above the parliamentary scene, quite beyond the reach of his foes, but something had changed, perhaps in him and certainly in others. They speculated openly about how long he would last before he stepped down, about who would be the most likely successor. His reputation for slicing through the legs of young pretenders was formidable, but now they seemed to have formed a circle around his campfire, skulking in the shadows, staying just beyond his reach, finding safety in growing numbers while they waited for their moment to step into the light. A few weeks ago he had appeared in the Chamber at Question Time, ready as always to defend himself against their arrows, carrying with pride the shield that bore the dents and scars of so many successful parliamentary battles. Then a young Opposition backbencher whom Urquhart scarcely recognized had risen to his feet.

  'Does the Prime Minister know the latest unemployment figure for this country?'

  And sat down.

  Impudence! Not 'Will he comment on' or 'How can he excuse', but 'Does he know'. Of course Urquhart knew, two million or other, but he realized he needed not an approximation but the precise figure and had searched in his briefing notes. He shouldn't have needed to search; he should have known. But the damned figure changed every month! And as he had searched, his glasses slipped, and the Opposition benches had erupted as he scrabbled. 'He doesn't know, doesn't care!' they shouted. He had found the answer but by then it was too late. A direct hit.

  It was unlike Francis Urquhart. He had bled, shown he was mortal. And the black moods had increased.

  'I sometimes wonder what it's all been for, Elizabeth. What you and I have to look forward to. One day we'll walk out through that door for the last time and . . . then what? Horlicks and bloody Bognor?' He shivered as her fingers reached the knot at the back of his neck.

  'You're being silly,' she scolded. 'That's a long way off and, anyway, we've discussed it many times before. There's the Urquhart Library to establish. And the Urquhart Chair of International Studies at Oxford. There's so much we will still have to do. And I met a publisher at the reception this evening. He was enthusing about your memoirs. Said the Thatcher books went for something like three million pounds and yours will be worth far more. Not a bad way to start raising the endowment money we need for the Library.'

  His chin had fallen onto his chest once more. She realized the talk of memoirs had been misjudged.

  'I'm not sure. Not memoirs, I don't think I can, Elizabeth.'

  'We shall need the money, Francis. As much as we shall need each other.'

  He turned sharply to look at her, staring intensely. In the dark she couldn't detect whether the cast in his eye betrayed mirth or yet deeper melancholy.

  'No memoirs,' he repeated. 'Setting down the old falsehoods and inventing new ones. I couldn't write about my colleagues in that way, speaking such ill of the departed. God knows, I uttered lies enough to bury them, I couldn't pursue them beyond the grave. Not at all. Not for a King's ransom.' He paused. 'Could I, Elizabeth?'

  Hakim was angry. His coffee was cold, his moustache growing white, his talents under-appreciated, his bank unsympathetic, and everyone knew him simply as Hakim. Not Mr Hakim, not Yaman Hakim, not Old Friend and Colleague Hakim. There was a small sign on his office door to that effect, they would carve it on his coffin, 'Hakim the Forgotten'. Then they would forget him, the wife, the kids, the bosses, his bank manager. All of them. Especially his bank manager. He sipped the lukewarm mud in his coffee cup and pursed his lips in disgust. A lifetime's conscientious work and yet all he would have to take with him when the time came to go were his unfulfilled dreams.

  He paused to consider. What would he most like to take with him into the afterlife? Young girls? Gold? An air-conditioned Mercedes? The vineyard he had always coveted? Probably young girls, he decided. No, on second thoughts he would take his bank manager. Then they could both burn.

  He smiled to himself, then coughed painfully. The damned pollution was getting to his chest again. It was one of the many problems of building a capital city in the armpit of Anatolia where they burnt filthy brown coal and choked the streets with petrol fumes. And they were slowly, remorselessly congesting his lungs. A lifetime's service in order that he could choke to death. And be forgotten.

  If he
just locked the door from the inside and rotted, would anybody notice? His was a miserable office, even by the unexceptional standards of TNOC, the Turkish National Oil Corporation -shelves crammed with old manuals and reports, walls plastered with charts covered in bizarre patterns, a desk dusted with coffee stains and cigarette ash, the dusty accompaniments of his work as a geo-physicist. For all he knew the office's previous occupant might still be hiding within the bowels of the small document cupboard in the corner - even though this had been Hakim's office for fourteen years.