Whispers of betrayal tg-3

by Michael Dobbs

  – =OO=OOO=OO-= 'Tom!' A high, almost musical note, a sound of welcome.

  Then: 'Oh, Tom.' Softer, deeper. About six feet deep. 'By my mother's beard, I really don't know what to do with you. An angel in hobnail boots, if ever I saw one. Never know whether you're coming into my office to bring me good news or give me a bloody good kicking.'

  The Chief Whip waved him onto the single leather sofa and, without prompting, handed him a tumbler of whisky. 'First you ask to see me. Then miss a bloody vote so I have to have you dragged in here by the cods anyway.'

  Eddie Rankin sank wearily into the sofa beside Goodfellowe. The Chief was a Border Scot whose family over generations had seen all sides of the question as armies had tramped their way north and south across his country. His family had fought on all sides, too. Resilience and reticence were woven into the Rankin genes, which made him an ideal Whip. So unlike Battersby.

  Goodfellowe had arrived at the House, panting after his dash down Whitehall, his collar askew, his hair like a nesting site for sparrows. He'd missed the vote. Battersby had been waiting for him. Wearing yellow socks. Yellow, for Christ's sake.

  'Amazing what rubbish floats past if you sit by the river long enough,' the Whip had weighed in. He was a little drunk, his tongue slow, and he was having trouble with the words, like some badly dubbed film.

  'Damn it, Battersby. I bust a gut trying to get here. Not my fault.'

  'Too busy shagging the waitress, were we? You gotta be careful, Tom, or the News of the Screws is gonna find out about that little arrangement of yours. Fact is, think I can guarantee it.'

  'You should be studied by ornithologists,' Goodfellowe had countered. 'As living proof of an old Chinese proverb.'

  'What Chinese proverb?' the Whip had responded cautiously.

  'That everything which craps on you isn't necessarily a bird.'

  Battersby's eyes narrowed. He was supposed to be in charge of this, yet somehow Goodfellowe always put him on the defensive. Still, he had one weapon in his locker. Time to produce it. 'It's not me you have to worry about, my old deary. The Chief wants to see you. Bit of a command performance, I'm afraid.'

  'Don't worry. I had already made an appointment with him,' Goodfellowe had smiled generously, leaving Battersby in confusion, which wasn't all that difficult once one had progressed beyond counting to ten.

  The Chief Whip was a different breed. Subtle. Even a friend, so far as politics allow. 'You see, Tom, we've known each other so many years. I watched you when you were a Minister. Thought you were the one, perhaps the only one of our generation, who had the ability to make it to the top. Seriously I did. Yet now you can't even make it to a bloody vote.' His fingers drummed impatiently on the arm of the sofa. They were delicate, almost feminine fingers, carefully manicured, the mark of a man who had once played the classical guitar with the Scottish National Orchestra, fingers that could pick the conscience from a backbencher's pocket without him ever knowing.

  'Not my fault, Eddie,' Goodfellowe responded. 'Not this time, at least. Got caught up in a demonstration at Trafalgar Square.'

  'Tom, just listen to yourself. Missed a vote because you got caught up in a mob demonstrating against your own Government? What do you think this is? A kindergarten class?' The colour drained from Rankin's voice. Goodfellowe was going to have to earn his whisky the hard way. 'You've spent the last couple of years being about as much help as a nun in a knocking shop. We've been patient, sympathetic. Hell, after you lost your son, and Elinor cracked up…' He paused in sorrow. The ancient leather of the sofa creaked as he leaned forward to refill their glasses. 'You know as well as anybody that we're not all prehistoric like Battersby. But we all have to move on, Tom. I'm running a parliamentary party, not a dog pound.'

  'Aren't we allowed the occasional bark?'

  'I haven't got time to waste on rounding up stray mongrels,' Rankin retorted. 'In your case, some would argue that it was better simply to have you put down. Including, so I've heard, some in your own constituency party.'

  So, the ripples on the Marshwood pond had reached as far as the Chief Whip's lair. Goodfellowe ran his finger around the rim of his glass. An average blend, not a single malt. Unmistakable evidence that this was serious rather than social.

  'Look at it from my point of view, Tom. If you were standing in my socks, what would you be saying?'

  Goodfellowe stifled a sarcastic response – this wasn't the moment for cheap lines – and gazed around the panelled room with its dark window and conspiratorial atmosphere. On Rankin's desk lay a small pile of folders. Personnel files. Files from the safe, the armoury where the Whips stored most of their weapons, those little secrets and shames that were committed to paper and locked away, to be brought out and brandished whenever one of the dogs started barking. (No computer files here, too easy to copy, only the handwritten daily notes torn from the Whips' Book, along with a few press cuttings and unpaid invoices. Perhaps even a couple of charge sheets, too.)

  There were some secrets that even the Whips were unwilling to commit to paper, matters so sensitive they were confined only to that collective memory that bound together the brotherhood. Such as the whereabouts of the Foreign Secretary's first wife, whom he had inconveniently forgotten to divorce before marrying the second. Her bank account number, too, although a slip of paper recorded details of the regular payments. There was also the identity of the MP's daughter who fed her drug habit by prostitution and by playing the Stock Market with exceptional good fortune following her occasional visits to a Junior Minister for Industry. Nestling alongside the other secrets was the identity of the Whip, one of their own, who'd had a heart attack in his room, tied to his chair with underwear around his ankles. Women's underwear. No need for a paper record. They would for ever remember him as Little Miss Naughty, baby pink, extra large. For a moment Goodfellowe wondered whether Rankin had been running through his own file, and what might be in it.

  'If, as you say, I were standing in your socks, Eddie,' he responded, picking up the Chief Whip's challenge, 'I would say here was a mongrel of some talent. Awkward sometimes, to be sure. The sort of dog who waits until you've built the kennel around him, driven home the last nail, then jumps over the bloody gate. But a dog who's looking for a new…' – he took a deep breath while he hunted for the right word – 'adventure.'

  'Adventure? I prefer the quiet life. No surprises.' Yet curiosity drew him on. 'What sort of adventure?'

  'One that doesn't require me to cycle in the rain around Westminster and get caught up in the crowd.'

  'You want money?'

  'No, you Scottish teuchter!' His voice rang unnaturally jocular in his own ear, too loud, trying too hard. He sipped his whisky, finding it difficult to plead. 'I want to be back with the team, Eddie. It's a tough game in this place and I'm tired of trying to score goals all on my own.'

  'This is a new Goodfellowe,' the Whip responded wryly. 'Why the sudden change?'

  'I've got new interests, new friends…'

  'I'd heard.'

  'New enthusiasms,' Goodfellowe continued, now certain that Rankin had undoubtedly reviewed his file, and that Elizabeth was on it.

  'You want back on the inside of the tent?'

  'It would be more comfortable than staying on the outside. For you, too. I'm so messy when I put my back into it.'

  'So you want in. And you thought the best way to impress me was to balls-up a simple vote?'

  'Think positive. Get me off my bike, Eddie, and you rob an old rebel of his excuse.'

  They held each other's gaze, testing.

  'You pick your moments, Tom,' Rankin eventually responded. His tone was considered, contemplative. Not dismissive. 'The tom-toms are beginning to beat from Downing Street. Testing the tune of an early reshuffle. One or two braves to be burnt at the stake, so rumour has it. Somebody will need to take their place.'

  I'd like it to be me.' There, he'd said it. No ambiguity, ambition to the fore. It felt good, like favourite shoes.

&
nbsp; 'Ah, the appetite returns!'

  'Put it down to menopausal vanity. An insane desire for a higher profile. Before I have to start dying my hair.'

  'And suddenly you've become enamoured of our beloved leader?' There was no hiding the sceptical note. Rankin was a musician, he could recognize a duff score.

  'You know me better than that, Eddie. Y'know Brother Bendall better than that, too. One day there'll be a great shaking of the ground and he'll get buried beneath an avalanche of his own bullshit. But while History makes up her mind as to when the burial will be, I can be helpful. I want to be helpful.'

  'And some might say he needs all the help he can get,' Rankin responded, so softly that it wouldn't carry as far as the walls.

  'Will you put my name forward?'

  'It's my duty, now you've offered.'

  'But will you recommend it?'

  The Chief Whip took a slug of whisky. 'Recommend you? Bit like recommending jumping as a cure for vertigo. Who knows? You're such an awkward sod, Goodfellowe

  – =OO=OOO=OO-= The McDonnell Douglas MD-82 banked gently over the sea as it positioned itself for a final approach to the airport at Odessa. The sight that greeted her through the cabin window was remarkable and Elizabeth hoped it would prove to be something of an omen. Through the window of the Austrian Air flight she could see a fleet of aircraft set out beside the runway, a testament to the might of the infant and independent republic of Ukraine. Bombers, transports, fighter planes, helicopters, MIGs, Tupolevs, Yaks and Sukhois, all ranged in straight rows like the tentacles of a great war machine ready to form a guard of honour.

  'Our air force,' the male passenger in the seat beside her indicated. 'Big bloody air force,' he added. Yuri's English was not good and was very guttural, like an engine running on its last drop of oil, but somehow throughout the afternoon flight from Vienna he had managed to make his meanings entirely transparent to his unaccompanied companion. She had already turned down his repeated invitation to dinner.

  As they taxied past the aircraft on the ground he returned to his theme, jabbing his finger for emphasis. 'Air force in mothballs. Big bloody moths, eh?' A laugh originated from somewhere near his large intestine. 'But no bloody balls!'

  She could see what he meant. The aircraft that at a distance had looked so imposing at closer quarters revealed nothing but disaster. The place was an aeronautical knacker's yard. There were old military planes with engines stripped, their sides still covered with Soviet stigmata, single-seater fighters shorn of their canopies and propped up on concrete slabs, helicopters with some rotors missing, the others sagging in surrender. Passenger planes, too. One huge hurry-before-they-rot-and-rust clearance sale. You could buy anything here, she'd been told, even buy a navy to match if you took a trip to Sebastopol, and for a price that was always right. An omen, indeed, she hoped.

  She had heard about the wine from a Ukrainian customer who had come to dine at The Kremlin after delivering his son to his Wiltshire public school. The wine was not his personal business, that at least she had managed to gather from his fragmentary command of the language, although what his business was remained something of a mystery. When she had enquired, he frowned in concentration, hunting for elusive English words, then picked up an imaginary weapon in both hands and, with a juddering motion, sprayed the restaurant with bullets. 'Ah, a soldier,' she had deduced. He shook his head. 'A policeman, then?' He scowled in contempt, at which point she had let the matter rest. A man with access to weaponry and sufficient hard currency to send his son to English public school was not someone she wanted to press too hard. Anyway, he left a substantial tip along with a mysterious reference to wine. There was a specific mention of the Tsars, and mutterings about a lost cellar.

  A few days later she received a warbling international phone call from someone who called himself Vladimir Houdoliy and whose English was, thankfully, exceptional, although delivered with intonation that was entirely American. His mastery of metaphor also left something to be desired. He introduced himself as a man who 'has a lot of experience tucked away beneath my belt,' which left her crippled for days. He apologized for the intrusion, called her Madam Proprietor, and explained his purpose.

  He spoke in colourful tones, so engaging to Elizabeth on a day of leaden London skies, of his homeland and of a magnificent palace that overlooked the sea. A place of dreams, he said, somewhere on the coast of the Black Sea, a former summer residence much favoured by the last Tsar and Tsaritsa and equipped, in their time, most magnificently. Vast floors of the coolest Italian marble. French chandeliers that outshone diamonds. Statuary that would have graced Florence, fountains whose waters tumbled like a constant peal of bells, and beneath it all, dark and secure, an extensive wine cellar whose contents were the pride of the owner of the palace – Vladimir's grandfather.

  In those ancient times when riot and unrest had rushed towards revolution, Vladimir's grandfather had grown increasingly concerned. The Bolsheviks showed such little respect for palaces let alone for French chandeliers, and no respect at all for cellars, particularly those holding the Tsar and Tsaritsa. So he had shipped out the statues, turned off the fountains, draped sacking around the chandeliers, even allowed peasants to sleep in the stables. He also decided to brick up the wine cellar in the hope that he could liberate it at a later time.

  That time had never come. Grandfather had been put to the purge, the palace had been stripped of its marble and then nationalized. Lenin had promised to turn it into a sanatorium, but instead it became a munitions factory and, after a period in World War II when it had been occupied by the Germans, it had been used as a mental asylum. No one had bothered with the cellar, its secrets preserved behind crumbling brick and in faded family legend.

  Yet, thank God and Gorbachev, the New Revolution had changed all that. Vladimir had been able to reclaim his inheritance and was planning to restore life to the crumbling palace by transforming it into a headquarters building for a Western company. A great opportunity for him – except for the problem of his cash flow. The chaos in those wretched currency markets, you understand? So would Elizabeth be interested in some rather fine wines? Mostly reds, of course, fortified, from the Crimea, plus a wide range of local spirits. All Russian imperial, pre-1917 vintage? At prices in hard currency that would do them both a favour?

  Timing is everything in a woman's life and Vladimir Houdoliy found his timing was all but perfect. Elizabeth needed Vladimir, or someone just like him. Recession had begun to nibble at Westminster's sense of well-being and takings at The Kremlin were down. Not desperate, but down. There was a black hole emerging in her accounts and her bank manager, although appropriately primed with an excellent lunch and one of Elizabeth's most daringly cut dresses, had proved unsympathetic. He had accepted a large Remy then whined throughout the refill about the slim margins and poor security of the restaurant trade. Wanker.

  Elizabeth was resolved. A little fun needed to be put back into the business, and a few cases of good Tsarist vintages at the right price might prove a very considerable source of amusement.

  Houdoliy turned out to be fun, too. Tall, sixty-something, with a sea of silvery waves for hair, he greeted her at the terminal with a chauffeur-driven Audi and a look of gentle mischief in his grand-fatherly eyes. There was also a bouquet of yellow roses. 'For a beautiful and most welcome guest,' the card announced.

  They had driven along the gentle tree-lined boulevards of Odessa with its pastel-painted mansions, once clearly a graceful mercantile capital, now desperately wrinkled at its many edges. 'But safe!' Vladimir had emphasized. 'At night, the most dangerous things on our streets are the potholes.'

  'Why so safe?' she had enquired.

  'Because our local mafia requires all muggers to be off the streets by sunset,' he had exclaimed, before clasping her hand and bursting into laughter. She noticed he had smooth hands, not at all leathery like some men of his age.

  He made her most welcome. He had booked her into the Shevchenko, a floatin
g hotel moored in the harbour that had been converted from an old passenger ferry. Its rooms were small but comfortable, although the main attraction for most visitors seemed to be the much larger bar. That night he took her to The Valday, a restaurant that stood at the very top of the Potemkin Steps. The exterior was inconspicuous but it was beautifully decorated inside and offered the most absorbing dishes of fish, both fresh and smoked. There was also black and orange caviare by the forkful, a little vodka and a remarkably good local sparkling wine. Modern Ukrainian wines had a poor reputation but by heavens they were getting better – although nothing like the pre-1917 vintages, of course, Vladimir had insisted forcefully.

  She discovered that for herself the following afternoon. The palace was a short drive along the coast, at a point where the cliffs swooped down to the great sand beaches of Odessa Bay to play tag with the sea. A place of princes, exactly as he had described, although not as large as she had imagined, brooding, with a cracked whitewashed portico. Outside in the grounds there was nothing but a toppled sundial and a few empty plinths, crumbling like long-forgotten graves in gardens that had been tended by nothing but a few grazing cattle for more than half a century. Inside, the palace was guarded by echoes that swirled around columns and scurried across floors that had been stripped of their marble and patched with bad cement. And deep within, behind a new steel door, he led her to the cellars, rows of musty underground enclaves that smelled of old souls where the bottles were laid out like corpses.

  Oh, but what a confusion of wines! Dessert wines that had been protected by their high sugar and alcohol contents, some of which were still improving. Heavy ports, red and white Muscats, Tokays. Many of the wines were from Massandra, the bottles bearing the double-headed eagle that marked them as once belonging to the Tsar himself. Like a magician, Vladimir would produce yet another surprise, stroking away the layers of dust and encrustation with the tenderness of a young lover to reveal still more wonders. An 1896 Prince Golitzin Lacrima Christi. An Alupka White Port. A Muscat in a bulbous bottle with a huge royal seal on its shoulder, made for the Tsar in the very year they had dragged him from his throne.