To Play the King

by Michael Dobbs

  The phones never took long to be answered. The difference between disaster and success could often be measured in seconds, and the chief currency dealer couldn't afford to be caught napping by either the markets or any of the seventeen other currency dealers, all of whom envied his job and the commissions that went with it. He dragged his thoughts away from the ruinously fashionable forty-foot cruiser he had just agreed to purchase to concentrate on the voice at the end of the phone. It was not, however, a deal, but an enquiry from one of his many press contacts.

  'Heard any rumours about some scandal at the Palace, Jim?'

  'What rumours?'

  'Oh, nothing very specific. Simply a buzz that there's something brewing which is just about to blow the Royal Yacht out of the water.' He didn't see the dealer wince. 'My editor's asking us all to check around, bit of a dragnet, really. But something's smelling pretty ripe.'

  The dealer's eyes flashed up to his screen yet again, checking the mixture of red, black and yellow figures. Sterling seemed to be fine, all the attention today was on the rouble following news of a fresh outbreak of food riots in Moscow. A cripplingly severe winter seemed to have frozen both the capacity of its leaders and the nerve of its foreign exchanges. The dealer rubbed his eyes to make sure; his eyes ached from the constant strain, yet he didn't dare wear his prescription glasses in the office. His position was all about maintaining confidence and at thirty-seven he couldn't afford the slightest sign of age or physical decline; there were too many waiting eagerly to push him off his seat.

  'Heard nothing this end, Pete. There's no activity in the markets.'

  ‘I can tell you, the flies are definitely beginning to buzz at this end.'

  'Maybe it's just another load of Royal bullshit being spread about the Royal parks.'

  'Yeah, maybe,' responded the journalist, sounding unconvinced. 'Let me know if you hear anything, will you?'

  The dealer punched the button to disconnect the line and returned to massaging his eyeballs while trying to figure out how he was going to stretch his already crippling mortgage to cover his latest material indulgence. He was dreaming of naked girls covered in smiles and coconut oil and laid out across glass-fibre reinforced with kevlar when the phone rang again. It was a client who had heard similar rumours and who wanted to know whether to make a quick switch into dollars or yen. More flies. And as the dealer looked once again at the screen, the sterling figures began to flash red. A fall. Not much of one, only a few pips, but it was another hint. Could he afford to ignore them? Hell, he was getting too old for this, maybe he should pack it all in and spend a year sailing around the Caribbean before getting himself a proper job. But not yet, not before he had made one last big hit, to cover the boat and the bloody mortgage. He tuned in his aching brain to the box that connected him to the brokers and their constant dangling of buy and sell prices, pressing the button which put him through.

  'Cable?' he enquired. It was dealers' kvetch for the price of sterling, harking back to the days when the two great financial empires of London and New York were connected only by unquenchable avarice and a submarine cable.

  'Twenty, twenty-five. Five by ten,' came the crackling response. Even in this age of space travel they still couldn't fix the lines connecting them with the brokers' rooms less than a sparrow's fart away. Or were his ears going, too?

  He sighed. In for a penny, in for five million. 'Yours. Five.' The selling had begun.

  The door to the editor's office had been slammed shut. It wouldn't make any difference; everybody in the building would hear about it within minutes. The deputy, news and picture editors stood around the chief editor's desk in a formation which gave the impression of Sioux circling a wagon train, but he wasn't giving up without a fight.

  'I'm not holding the front page for this. They're disgusting. An invasion of privacy.'

  'They're news,' responded his deputy through clenched teeth.

  'You know the proprietor's breakfast rule. Nothing on the front page that would offend two old ladies reading the paper over breakfast,' the editor countered.

  'That's why there's no one other than old women who read our paper nowadays!'

  The editor wanted to shove the words straight back down his pushy deputy's throat, but since they were precisely those he had used in his increasingly frequent rows with the ageing proprietor, he couldn't. He stared once again at the two plate-sized photographs which had already been cropped in red pencil to concentrate the attention away from extraneous features such as the bed, the disarranged pillows and entangled legs, and onto the body and face of the Princess.

  'We can't. It's simply obscene.'

  Without a word the picture editor leaned across the desk and, with red pencil and ruler, drew two neat lines cutting both photographs just above the nipple. What was left had all been seen before in countless beach photographs of the Princess, but it made no fundamental difference; the expression on her face, the arched back and the tongue in her ear told the whole story.

  'What does the Palace have to say?' the editor enquired wearily.

  'Sweet bugger all. Since Mycroft publicly deflowered himself they're in something of a mess.'

  'First Mycroft, now this. . .' The editor shook his head, conscious that he would be hounded off the society dinner circuit if these went out under his name. He found another burst of resistance. 'Look, this isn't the bloody French Revolution. I will not be the one to drag the Royal Family to the guillotine.'

  'There's a real public issue here,' the news editor interjected, somewhat more quietly than the deputy. 'The King involves himself in all sorts of matters, stirring up political controversy, while quite clearly he is ignoring what's going on under his own palace roof. He's supposed to be the personal embodiment of the nation's morality, not running a knocking shop. He's turned out to have more blind eyes than Nelson.'

  The editor lowered his head. Sterling had already dipped nearly two cents on the rumours; it was inflicting real harm.

  'No one's asking you to lead a revolution, just keep step with the others.' The deputy took up the cudgels once more. 'These piccies are all over town. By morning we might be the only paper not carrying them.'

  ‘I disagree. I don't give a damn about the foreign rags. This is a British affair. Every editor in this town knows the consequences of using these photos. No one's going to rush, not in British newspapers. No.' He braced his shoulders with patriotic pride and shook his head in determined fashion. 'We are not going to use them unless we know for certain that someone else has. It may be throwing away a scoop, but it's the kind of scoop I don't want etched on my gravestone.'

  The deputy was about to make some comment that the accountants were already chiselling the circulation figures on his gravestone when the door burst open and the gossip columnist rushed in. He was too excited and breathless to make any sense, his words wrapping themselves in impenetrable knots, until in exasperation he threw his hands in the air and made a dive for the TV remote control on the editor's desk. He punched the button to call up one of the satellite news channels. It was German-owned, run out of Luxembourg and had a footprint that covered half of Europe, including most of Southern England. As the screen came to life they were greeted with the images of an ecstatic Princess Charlotte, nipples and all. Without a further word the deputy grabbed the pictures and rushed off to save the front page.

  'Oh, I like this, Elizabeth. I like this a lot.'

  It was after one in the morning, the early editions had arrived, and Elizabeth with them. He seemed not to mind, chuckling as he glanced through the reports.

  "This morning the King stands accused of dereliction of duty",' Urquhart read out from the pages of The Times. ' "In pursuit of personal popularity and his own political scruples he has laid open not only himself but the institution of the Monarchy to frontal attack. The politicians and press lords who have jumped on his bandwagon in the last few weeks have revealed themselves as opportunistic and unprincipled. It has taken courage to stand f
irm for constitutional principle, to remind the nation that the Monarch should be neither showbiz nor social conscience, but an impartial and politically uninvolved head of state. Francis Urquhart has shown that courage; he is to be applauded".' Urquhart chuckled again. 'Yes, I do like that. But then I should, my dear. I wrote most of it myself.'

  ‘I prefer Today,' Elizabeth responded.' "An end to Royal tittle and tattle. It's time for them all to belt up and button up!"'

  '"Crackpot King",' Urquhart announced, reading from another. '"HRH should have an urgent word in the Princess's ear, even if he has to jump to the front of the queue to do so . . ."'

  Elizabeth was in fits of laughter. She had just picked up the Sun with its blaring headline: 'King of Cock-Up'. 'Oh, my dear,' she struggled to respond through convulsions of mirth, 'you really have won this battle.'

  He grew suddenly serious, as though someone had thrown a switch. 'Elizabeth, I've scarcely even started to fight.' He picked up the phone, an operator answered. 'See if the Chancellor of the Exchequer is still in the land of the living,' he instructed, replacing the phone very carefully. It rang less than half a minute later.

  'How are you, Francis?' a weary and just-woken voice enquired down the line.

  'Well, and about to get considerably better. Listen carefully. We have a particularly difficult crisis on our hands which has already set the doves fluttering in the dovecote. We need to take action before they all fly away for good. I believe sterling is about to take yet another precipitous fall. In the circumstances it would be uncivil and unworthy if we were to ask our friends in Brunei to hold on any longer. It would place an important international alliance at risk. You are to call the Sultan's officials and suggest they sell their three billion pound tranche immediately.'

  'Christ Almighty, Francis, that will do for the currency completely.' There was not a trace of tiredness now.

  'The markets must have their way. It is a matter of great misfortune that the consequences will strike terror into the hearts of ordinary voters as they see the pound plummet and their mortgage rates about to soar. It will be an even greater misfortune that the whole debacle will be blamed on the King's conscience and those who support him.'

  There was silence on the end of the phone.

  'I make myself clear?'

  'Absolutely,' came the quiet answer.

  Urquhart looked attentively at the receiver before softly replacing it. Elizabeth was looking at him with unconcealed admiration.

  'We must all make sacrifices in battle, Elizabeth.' He placed the tips of his fingers to the point of his nose. Unconsciously he was beginning to mimic the King in some of his mannerisms, Elizabeth thought. 'I'm not quite sure how to put this delicately,' he continued, 'so perhaps I shall have to crave your understanding and be blunt. It does not pay to fight a battle from within glass houses. It would be helpful if you would stop taking such an ardent interest in Italian arias. Your new-found operatic interests could be so easily . . . misconstrued. It might confuse the troops.'

  Elizabeth, who had been sipping a glass of wine, replaced the glass gently on the table.

  'Government drivers are such a gossipy bunch,' he added, as if by way of explanation and excuse.

  'I see.'

  'No hard feelings?'

  'After all these years?' She inclined her head. 'Of course not.'

  'You are very understanding, my dear.'

  'I have to be.' She reached for her purse and extracted an earring. It was bold, fashionable, enamelled, costume jewellery from Butler & Wilson in the Fulham Road. One of Sally's. 'The cleaner gave me this the other day. Found it jammed down the side of the Chesterfield. Thought it was one of mine. I'm not sure how to put this delicately, Francis . . .'

  He flushed, lowered his eyes, said nothing.

  'Sauce for the goose? Even a Canadian goose?'

  'She's . . . American,' he responded haltingly.

  'Nevertheless.'

  'Elizabeth, she is important to me; she has more vital work to do.'

  'But not on her back, Francis. Not in a glass house.'

  He looked directly at his wife. It had been a long time since anyone had put him in such a corner. He wasn't used to it. He sighed, he had no choice.

  'All you have to do, Elizabeth, is to say please. You remember how to say please, don't you?'

  'It's getting very messy.' 'It'll get worse.' 'You sure?'

  'Never been more certain.' 'How so?'

  'Because he can't yet be certain about winning an election; there's more to be done. He needs a few more points on the polls. He can't stop now. Risk a Royal comeback. And . . .' She hesitated. 'And because he's an axeman. His target isn't the Princess, it's the King himself. I'm not sure if he knows any longer when to stop hacking.'

  He was silent, pondering. 'Sally, you're absolutely certain about this?'

  'About his plans? Yes. About him . . . ?' She could still feel the mangled flesh of her buttocks where his finger nails had dug deep. 'I'm certain.'

  Then I have work to do.'

  He rolled out of bed and reached for his trousers. Moments later he was gone.

  The currency dealer turned over and lay in the luminous blue glow of his digital alarm. Four thirteen a.m. Crap. He wouldn't get back to sleep again now. He'd been unsettled all night, his thoughts jarring between the yacht and the young nurse he'd tried and failed to pull a few hours previously. They had shared a ludicrously indulgent meal at Nikita's; she'd drunk too much cherry vodka and been sick. Tant pis.

  He flicked on his palm-sized Pocketwatch and checked the miniature screen for the latest state of the markets. Perhaps that's what had been eating away at him. Christ! Sterling was down almost another two hundred points in the Far East and he was beginning to wish he, too, had drunk a little less vodka. He was holding twenty million pounds overnight, and he suddenly felt very exposed. He punched one of the memory buttons on his bedside phone which connected with his branch in Singapore, eight hours ahead. 'What's up?'

  'Negara's been selling steadily since the market opened,' an accented voice told him. So the Malaysian central bank was in on the act . . .

  'What's Cable in forty?' he demanded.

  'Sixty-five seventy.'

  Selling at sixty-five, buying at seventy. But no one was buying. Time to join the herd. 'Shit, let's move it. At sixty-five.' He put the phone down, having just sold forty million pounds sterling in the belief the price would continue falling. If it did he would have covered his overnight position, and more. He'd better get into the office early, in case the entire bloody world woke up with a headache and the herd started to stampede. And maybe he would call that very special client who helped with all those unofficial deals on the side. The client wouldn't mind being woken at this hour, not for the size of stakes he played with. And if they got it right, he could stop worrying about the yacht. And that silly nurse.

  * * *

  Evening Standard, City Edition, 9 February

  POUND AND PRINCESS EXPOSED

  Sterling continued to come under heavy pressure as the London market followed the lead set overnight in the Far East. Dealers expressed concern that the stream of sexual scandal enveloping the Royal Family could cause a full-blown constitutional and political crisis, following the resignation of the King's press secretary last week and lurid photographs of Princess Charlotte published in many of this morning's newspapers.

  The Bank of England and other European banks moved to support sterling as soon as the markets opened but could not prevent further speculative selling driving the currency down hard against the bottom of its EC limits. There were reports of a major holder of sterling in the Far East dumping significant quantities of the currency. It is feared that interest rates may have to be raised substantially to prop up the ailing pound.

  'This sort of situation is a new one for us,' one dealer commented. 'The markets hate the uncertainty, at times this morning they were in turmoil. The sheiks are saying if Buckingham Palace crumbles, how safe is the
Bank of England? The City has the atmosphere of a farmyard before Christmas. . .'

  * * *

  It was a good day for a hanging, McKillin thought. The Chamber was packed beyond capacity with many Members, deprived of a seat on the benches, standing at the Bar, crouching in gangways or crowding around the sides of the Speaker's Chair. The pressure of so many mostly male bodies crushed together gave rise to a heady, boisterous atmosphere, overflowing with expectation. It was said there had been similar scenes at Tyburn when they came to hang some wretch from the three-legged gallows, and that they even paid for the privilege of watching the poor bastard swing.

  There had already been a long queue of victims today. The waves of panic rippling through the currency markets had washed over into the Stock Exchange and by lunchtime share prices were off, badly. The cries of pain emanating from those with exposed positions could be heard from all over the City and it was going to spread faster than a lassie's legs at the Edinburgh Festival. The building societies were meeting in emergency session; mortgages would have to be raised, the only question was by how much. It wasn't the King's fault, of course, but people had lost their innocent belief in bad fortune, in catastrophes simply happening, they had to have someone to blame. And that meant that McKillin, too, was in the firing line, reflecting ruefully on his recent public displays of indulgence on behalf of the Royal Family, wincing at one hundred per cent. He had thought all morning of defence through aggression, making a full-scale charge in support of the King, but decided that the King's position was too well covered by hostile guns. The troops behind him were no Light Brigade, and he wasn't Errol Flynn. No point in getting shot in the Trossachs for nothing, much better to fight another day. Some question about human rights, perhaps, high-ground stuff, related to the PM's lightning trip to Moscow which had been announced for the coming week. That would do, give him some distance from the sound of battle, get him out from under the gibbet... As he waited, he began to feel sticky with the heat and pressure from the bodies of overfed men crowding around.