Whispers of Betrayal

by Michael Dobbs

  ‘When will he make sure our water is safe?’

  It was a simple enough question. Too bloody simple. He hadn’t a clue about what he was going to do, except pass the buck.

  First he laid down a smokescreen. He used words like ‘deprecate’ and ‘wanton act of violence’, he adopted a tone that was selfless and a pose that was statesmanlike, but being noble wasn’t enough. So, ‘I have instructed the Home Secretary to mount an immediate inquiry …’ – in other words, let me make one thing perfectly clear, folks. Any shortcomings in security are the responsibility of Bloody Hopeless.

  ‘But what about the water?’ a plaintive voice insisted from somewhere across the Chamber.

  ‘The specific issue of water quality is a matter for OFWAT, the water regulator …’

  What are they going to do, then?

  ‘As I have just explained, that is a matter primarily for the independent regulator …’ How the hell do I know? OFWAT is independent. I don’t control them.

  So how much?

  How much what?

  How much is it going to cost to make the water safe enough to put in the whisky?

  ‘These are early days …’ I’ve got no damned idea. But whatever it costs. What else can I say? Would someone ask me a different question? How about the upcoming summit meetings, for instance? Anything but bloody water!

  Oh, but damn the Papacy and all its wicked works, if London is to get better water, doesn’t the same apply to those most loyal citizens of Ulster, too?

  Bendall’s shoulders almost sagged. ‘The Honourable Gentleman has made an interesting point …’ – Well … I suppose so, with reluctance, yes.

  The whole country, in fact?

  Yes.

  So how much is all that going to cost, then?

  ‘Allow me to repeat what I said to the House a moment ago …’ – I’ll spell it out to those who are simply too thick or too inattentive to have got it first time around. Whatever. It. Costs.

  You could almost hear the thunder of lobby correspondents’ hooves as they rushed to instruct their brokers to sell water shares. Water companies operated down deep holes. And that’s precisely where their business was heading.

  The House was in fractious mood. The Prime Minister had rubbed against them like sandpaper. A feeling hung throughout the Chamber that he must bear some responsibility for the situation. After all, it had been his bloody bathtub.

  It was at this point that the Father of the House rose from the Opposition benches. Sir Bramble was the longest-serving Member of Parliament who, although well into his eighties, still carried a sardonic smile and a chestful of medals for gallantry from ancient wars fought in his youth. He also possessed wandering hands, if secretarial gossip was to be believed, or perhaps it was only a rumour that he himself propagated. In any event his hands were now well in evidence, grasping his lapels as he turned in the direction of the Despatch Box and the early evening news.

  ‘Is the Prime Minister aware that we on this side of the House applaud his determination to ensure the security of the country’s water supplies? Even if in the circumstances it appears a trifle belated …’ The firm angle of his mouth implied that this was no more than a ranging shot. He was simply gauging distance. ‘But wouldn’t he accept that there is one way above all he can ensure such security? That’s not to put a rocket up the Home Secretary, as much as I wish him well in his endeavours. It’s certainly not to cast shareholders of the water companies into penury. The only way he can deliver on his promise is to apprehend the villains. Who are these wretches? What does he know about ’em? When’s he going to catch ’em? Eh?’

  Sir Bramble was an old duffer but it was an excellent point. A growl of enthusiasm rippled out from those around him until it had infected the entire House. Bendall stood isolated, a mariner facing the storm.

  ‘The entire country will understand, indeed Britain expects, that this Government will not cease in its efforts …’

  More heckling. They knew he was bluffing. ‘Answer the question! Who are they? What does he know?’ The Opposition benches became agitated, like a sea hurling itself against a foundering ship as Order Papers were waved in protest. Bendall gripped the Despatch Box with both hands, determined that he was not to be swept from his position.

  ‘Does the Opposition want to listen? The country is listening. And watching their efforts to score cheap points from a matter of great national concern. They’re pathetic!’

  He pointed at the baying ranks opposite. Behind him his own side were at last rallying to the cause.

  ‘That isn’t an Opposition,’ Bendall continued, jabbing his finger across the Chamber as though trying to gouge out their eyes, ‘it’s nothing more than a rabble!’

  The tempest struck and for many moments the noise became intolerable, making it impossible for him to be heard. He’d won his respite. It took several moments of considerable parliamentary indignity before the storm had subsided sufficiently to allow the Leader of the Opposition, Oliver Creech, to take his place at the Despatch Box.

  ‘Isn’t it clear,’ Creech began, loading every word ‘and clear beyond any question, that the Prime Minister has lost control? He’s lost control of the economy, and quite obviously of his colleagues …’ – Government backbenchers bayed like imbeciles, and Creech paused extravagantly to allow them to make the point for him – ‘but isn’t it clear above all that he has now lost control of the country? It’s bad enough that he’s put Britain on the breadline, now he can’t even guarantee us water!’

  The sound bite had been delivered, tomorrow’s headlines guaranteed. Above their heads the Sirens in the press gallery were composing frantically while below them the ship of state seemed all but dismasted.

  But Bendall hadn’t stood at the helm for four years without learning to master his fear.

  ‘I am a fortunate man, Mr Speaker …’ – Hang in there, guys, I’m not finished yet. ‘The entire country can now see this Opposition for what it is. A gathering of hypocrites – hypocrites who will sink even to embracing environmental terrorism in order to score cheap points.’ He waved his arms theatrically, his cufflinks glinting in the lights. His forelock had fallen across his face and a blue messianic glint appeared in his eye, a look much practised by Bendall in private and held in reserve for just such a time. Now his voice deepened, more vibrato, booming across the Chamber without need of amplification. ‘Over recent months in their increasingly desperate quest to find some group who will support them they have backed every strike. Supported every abuse. Climbed into bed with the eco-hooligans and wreckers, those who have strangled our streets, blockaded our power stations, undermined our motorways. They shout about water, yet they lie on their backs for those yobs who want to cut off the power supplies to pensioners.’

  It was nonsense, of course, but the noise it generated would ensure that Creech would have to share the headlines in the morning. And time for one last salvo.

  ‘They pretend their politics are green but these aren’t green politics, these are the politics – and the politicians – who would turn this country back into a medieval swamp!’

  Behind him, carefully positioned in a stunning red suit to catch the eye of the television cameras, one of Bendall’s enthusiastic altar girls tried to stifle a moan of animal desire and almost swooned in delight at this outburst of Prime Ministerial passion. She’d not felt this way since she’d been invited on an RAF orientation course where they had squeezed her into a gravity suit that seemed to fondle every feminine part of her, before she had discovered it could be still more intimately explosive when pulling six Gs in a Tornado. For a few moments the colours swam before her eyes, but she recovered sufficiently to cross her legs and take a mental note of the precise time for her diaries. Parliamentary history was being made, and she was making it. The first politician to have a full-flushed orgasm upon these hallowed leather benches. At least while the House was sitting.

  Those who make it to their feet in the Chamber place t
hemselves in the hands of hazard, for no sooner do they start speaking than they discover that the green carpet they are standing on has turned to sand.

  Sometimes they are able to make an impression in the parliamentary sands that will endure, some mark that will linger after them for their children and grandchildren to admire. More often, however, the footprints are washed away with the evening tide. And sometimes politicians discover they’ve stepped into quicksand that is just about to swallow them whole.

  Goodfellowe knew all this. He’d seen it all before, yet still he ventured out. He’d been watching the proceedings with wry amusement, detached from the mayhem. It had been a first-class parliamentary cockfight, it would take days for the sand to soak up all that blood. The purists would object, of course, insist that it did nothing but bring Parliament into disrepute, but Goodfellowe had never found much that was pure about politics. However, he was still deeply distracted. The shadow of Beryl was enough to cast a pall across the finest of spectacles. He had only half a mind on the action, hadn’t thought the thing through, and was as surprised as anyone to find himself on his feet, wanting to join the fray, for reasons that he himself didn’t fully understand. Something was buzzing around in the back of his mind about the sensible environmentalists, and the need to distinguish between the Swampies and the Sams. There was a difference, wasn’t there? The Swampies didn’t give a stuff about the law, while in Sam’s case …

  Suddenly he was back on his bike. In Trafalgar Square. Confused. But it was too late.

  ‘Is the Prime Minister aware that I wholeheartedly applaud his caution in matters relating to security? Will he allow me to draw him a little further? He has implied that the attack on Downing Street was carried out by some environmental group. Eco-hooligans, I think was the phrase he used …’

  Several other more lurid phrases were offered by those around him, which, although heard clearly throughout the entire Chamber, would fail to be recorded in Hansard.

  Goodfellowe continued. ‘Can the Prime Minister tell us why he thinks this attack was an environmental protest?’

  It was not only meant to protect Sam but was also intended to be helpful – in Goodfellowe’s view, the Prime Minister could only gain by being a little more explicit, and solemn, about the matter. It was an invitation to regain the high ground. However, in his distraction Goodfellowe had failed to comprehend one crucial factor. Bendall didn’t want the high ground. When it came down to it, he hadn’t a single shred of evidence that this mess was the responsibility of green-freaks, but it was a reasonable assumption and he desperately needed a scapegoat. Anyway, it was all good rhetoric, and admitting he had no bloody idea wasn’t going to get him anywhere.

  ‘I’m perplexed,’ Bendall began his reply, his brow wrinkled, his eyes dismissive, as though inspecting cold porridge. ‘Has my Honourable Friend been sitting elsewhere for the last half hour? I thought I’d made things really rather plain. The reason I suspect it is the work of eco-hooligans is simple. It’s not pensioners and nurses who are trying to close down our power stations. It’s not motorists digging tunnels beneath our motorways. It’s certainly not commuters and shopkeepers bringing London grinding to a halt by staging protests at every corner. And in case he hadn’t already figured it out for himself, I can assure him it wasn’t me or my wife who decided to turn our bathroom into an environmental war zone.’

  Goodfellowe was being made to feel like an alien life form, a visitor from another galaxy which had somehow blundered onto earth.

  ‘To be brutally frank,’ Bendall continued, ‘if the Honourable Member for Marshwood truly wants to be helpful, he’d do far better by bringing round some bath scourer. Then he could really help us clean up. Eh?’

  Bendall was in no mood to take prisoners. Two places down from the Prime Minister, the Chief Whip turned in his seat to cast a look of scorn at Goodfellowe. The lips parted to form a silent but unmistakable word.

  ‘Idiot.’

  SEVEN

  A day of broken skies and clouds like sheets of crumpled kitchen towel. Mary’s mood precisely matched the weather. She sat along with the others on top of an open-deck sightseeing bus as it crawled along Regent Street, doing battle with the traffic. Condensation clung to the plastic seats and there was the constant vague tang of diesel fuel in the air. Around them sat a scattering of Japanese tourists. An unlikely meeting place, perhaps, but good for security. Amadeus had reasoned that the surroundings would make anyone trying to observe them stand out ‘like crap in a bowl of custard’, and the constant rumble of London made it impossible for them to be overheard.

  The bus continued to pass slowly in front of the fine Nash buildings that lined the crescent of Regent Street, and Mary’s eyes snagged upon those of a man sitting at a first-floor window. He had the sort of sad, distant-world expression that suggested he might be thinking of jumping, but for the fact that the window was, after all, only on the first floor and constructed of plate glass. Behind him the wine bar, of which he was almost certainly the proprietor, stood empty. His eyes seemed exhausted but, as he caught Mary’s glance, he offered her a small wave with plump fingers. Yet the smile was forced. He raised his eyes to heaven, perhaps in hope of discovering salvation, but found only used kitchen towels, and the smile died. Another soon-to-be victim of the downturn.

  On the seats around Mary, the morning newspapers were caught by the breeze and began to flap in imitation of dying swans. Their contents were all the same. Water. Suddenly she and the others were famous, or at least notorious. The front pages were filled with Bendall’s condemnation of them as hooligans and eco-terrorists. ‘PM Slams Eco-Yobs.’ ‘Bendall Batters Swampies.’ And so forth.

  Perhaps, deep inside, Amadeus and his band had hoped that one blow would be enough, that their opponent would acknowledge his error and immediately submit. But Clausewitz had known better. War is never an isolated act, he had written. Victory never comes gift-wrapped. Instead of offering the apology they had demanded, Bendall had piled insult upon indignity, and made it even worse.

  ‘So?’

  Payne put the question they all carried in their frowns.

  ‘Fine bunch of crotchkickers we turned out to be. Given Brother Bendall a better press than he’s had for months. Look at it all.’ The Guardsman picked up the pink pages of his Financial Times. ‘Still, could’ve been worse. Hell, we could be the water companies.’ He adjusted his rimless reading glasses and seemed almost to smile. ‘Getting hammered, they are.’

  ‘But not quite the target we had in mind,’ McKenzie added impatiently, failing to see the humour.

  ‘And what really stinks’ – Scully threw his edition of the Express contemptuously to one side – ‘is all this horseshit about us being hooligans and terrorists. I know Bendall’s a lying bastard, but why’s he lying about us?’

  Amadeus examined Scully. How much better he looked for a few days’ fodder. Hair neatly trimmed, hiding the streaks of grey, and standing several inches taller in his new clothes. Almost the man Amadeus once knew.

  ‘I sent him a letter, Skulls. Hand delivered. Made it clear enough that this was a military operation, and what we were about. But …’ A moment’s silence, a slow, defiant shake of the head. ‘Who knows what goes on in his warped mind?’

  ‘Perhaps that’s it. Mind games,’ Payne offered.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘What Bendall’s doing. Calling us names. Insulting us.’ He waved at the newspapers. ‘He’s playing mind games. He knows it’s a military operation that could only have been planned by officers …’ Payne paused for thought, too late, followed by a moment of drowning as he remembered the presence of Scully. ‘Officers … and senior NCOs,’ Payne added hurriedly, trying to extricate himself. He shouldn’t have bothered. ‘Anyway, Bendall knows that the last thing we would want is to be thrown in the same barrel as sodding Swampies. So he wants to demean us. To provoke us so seriously that either we walk away in disgust …’

  ‘Nail my balls to the top of
Big Ben first,’ Scully snapped.

  ‘… or we show our hand a little too obviously. He hasn’t the slightest idea who we are, so he’s goading us. Trying to flush us out into the open.’

  ‘But why should he encourage us to do more?’ Mary pressed, clearly unconvinced.

  ‘Why the hell not?’ Payne retorted. ‘We’ve probably just handed him an extra five points in the opinion polls. At this rate he’d be happy to keep us in business until Christmas. As far as he’s concerned, yesterday was Christmas.’ He paused, sucking at his lower lip. ‘Which may be one good reason for pulling out now. While we’re still …’

  ‘Ahead?’

  ‘Alive. Actually I was thinking “alive”.’

  McKenzie sniffed, a gesture that might have been an indication of the damp atmosphere rather than of disdain, but only if you didn’t know the man. ‘Is that what ye want? To pull down our colours?’

  ‘We have to consider that option, Andy. Decide what the hell we’re doing here.’

  ‘Getting our own back. Getting the Government to change its mind.’

  ‘And what have we achieved? Made bloody Bendall all the stronger.’ Payne wrinkled his nose in disgust. The aroma of roasting coffee from somewhere at street level surrounded them for a few tantalizing moments, before it was swamped by the stench of diesel and drying paint. ‘Face it, this is a fuck-up.’