The House of Cards Complete Trilogy

by Michael Dobbs

  “Not unless it includes the abolition of the Royal Trains.”

  “Hardly.”

  “Mr. McKillin, do you think the King is right to take such a high-profile tour?” The questioner was young, blond, aggressive, thrusting a microphone at him as though it were a weapon. Which, of course, it was.

  “The King is high profile, in that he has no choice. Of course he is right to see for himself how the underprivileged live. I believe what he is doing is admirable and I applaud it.”

  “But Downing Street is said to be very upset; they say that such matters should be left to the politicians,” another voice chimed in.

  “When did Mr. Urquhart last visit such places himself, for goodness sake? Just because he doesn’t have the nerve”—in his Highland tongue the word sounded like a military drumroll calling troops to the advance—“to face the victims of his policies, that is no reason why others should also run away.”

  “You wouldn’t criticize the King’s tour in any respect?”

  McKillin paused. Keep the vultures waiting, guessing, anticipating. His chin came up to make him look more statesmanlike, less fleshy around the jowls, as he had rehearsed a thousand times. “I identify myself entirely with what the King has done. I’ve always been a firm supporter of the Royal Family, and I believe we should be thanking fortune we have a King who is as concerned and involved as he is.”

  “So you’re one hundred percent behind him?”

  The voice was slow, emphatic, very dour. “One hundred percent.”

  “Will you be raising the matter in the House?”

  “Och, no. I cannot. The rules of the House of Commons are quite clear in excluding any controversial discussion of the Monarch, but, even if the rules permitted, I would not. I believe very firmly that our Royal Family should not be used by politicians for narrow partisan purposes. So I’m not planning to raise the matter or hold any press conferences. I will go no further than simply expressing my view that the King has every right to do what he is doing, and I join in his concern for the underprivileged, who form such a large part of modern Britain…”

  The communications man was waving his hands about his head, drawing one arm across his throat. Time to wrap up. Enough said to grab a headline, not enough to be accused of exploiting the situation. Always keep the vultures underfed, wanting more.

  McKillin was making his final self-deprecating plea to the cameras when from the street came the noisy rapping of a car horn. He looked up to see a green Range Rover shuffling past. Wretched man! It was a Liberal MP, a neighbor from farther down Chapel Street who took delight whenever he could in disrupting the Opposition Leader’s doorstep interviews. The more McKillin protested about fair play, the louder and more sustained became his neighbor’s efforts. He knew it would mark the end of interest in the interview from the Breakfast TV producer; he had perhaps only a second or two of live television left. McKillin’s eyes lit up with pleasure, he offered a broad smile and cast an extravagant wave in the direction of the retreating Range Rover. Eight million viewers saw a politician at his best, for all the world as if he were responding graciously and enthusiastically to the unexpected greeting of one of his most ardent supporters. Serve the bugger right. McKillin wasn’t going to allow anything to spoil what was turning out to be an excellent day.

  As the producer brought the program back to the studio, Mortima Urquhart dragged her attention away from the flickering screen to look at her husband. He was playing with pieces of blackened toast, and he was smiling.

  Thirty-Nine

  I don’t know why he says these things. How can I? I’m not a psychiatrist.

  The coach taking the party of journalists from the Gorbals to the airport on the outskirts of Glasgow swayed as it turned the sharp corner into the car park. Mycroft, standing in the aisle, clung tightly as he surveyed the results of his handiwork. Throughout most of the coach sat journalists who were exhausted but content, their work having dominated the front pages for three full days, their expenses justified for at least another month. Plaudits were offered in abundance to Mycroft for his Herculean efforts on their behalf. Goodwill expressed itself in face after face, genuine and wholehearted, until his eyes reached the back rows of the coach. There, like truculent schoolboys, sat Ken Rochester and his photographer, alongside another pair from a rival newspaper who had also joined the tour at the last minute. They weren’t accredited Royal correspondents but sailed under a flag of journalistic convenience that described them as feature writers. The attention they had been paying him, and the cameras that had been turned in his direction when they should have been pointed at the King, left Mycroft in no doubt as to whom they intended to feature in their next reports. The word was clearly spreading, the vultures were circling overhead, and the presence of competitors would make them all the more anxious to pounce. He had less time than he had realized.

  His thoughts returned to the words that had inspired him and others over the last few days, words he had taken directly from the King. Words about the need to find himself, to respond to those things he felt deep inside, to see whether he was up to the task not just of doing his job, but of being a man. The need to stop running. He thought of Kenny. They wouldn’t leave him alone, he was sure of that; the Rochesters of this world weren’t the type. Even if Mycroft never saw Kenny again, they would treat Kenny as fuel to feed the pyre, destroy Kenny in order to get at him, destroying him in order to get at the King. He felt no anger, there was no point. That was the way the system worked. Defend the free press and damn the weak. He felt numb, almost clinical, distanced even from his own plight, as if he had stepped outside himself and could regard this other man with the objective detachment of a professional. After all, that’s what he was.

  At the rear of the coach Rochester was talking conspiratorially in the ear of his photographer, who proceeded to squeeze off yet another series of shots as Mycroft stood above the heads of the journalists, like an actor before his audience playing out some great drama of the doomed. By the weekend, Mycroft reasoned. That was all the time he had left. Such a pity it was excrement like Rochester who would get the credit for the story rather than the court correspondents he had worked with and grown to respect over all these years. As the camera shutter clicked away, he began to find his calmness being steadily eaten away by his acid dislike of Rochester with his curled lip and ingratiating whine. He could feel himself beginning to tremble and he held on more tightly. Don’t lose control, he shouted at himself, or the Rochesters will win, tear you to pieces. For God’s sake be professional, go out on your own terms!

  They were well inside the car park now, heading for the bustle of the departures building. Through his lens, Rochester’s photographer saw Mycroft tap the driver on the shoulder and say something that caused the coach to turn aside and park in a quiet lay-by some considerable distance from the terminal. As the coach stopped, Mycroft squeezed out a tight smile for the throng around him. He was right in their midst.

  “Before you finish this tour, there’s one part of the story you haven’t yet got. It might surprise you. It might even surprise the King…”

  Forty

  A life of hunting and humping isn’t much of a claim to be a King, even less to be a Man of the People.

  Urquhart sat on the Government Front Bench, shielded only in part by the Dispatch Box, surveying the army of waving hands and wagging tongues before him. George Washington? He felt more like General Custer. The restraint shown by McKillin on his doorstep has disappeared; the Opposition’s hounds scented blood. It needed nerve, this job, to withstand the slings and arrows and all the vile taunts of which a parliamentary enemy could think. He had to believe in himself, utterly, to force out any room for doubt that his enemies might exploit. Perfect, absolute, uncompromising certainty in his cause. They were a rabble, not only lacking in principle but also in imagination; he wouldn’t be surprised if in their newfound royalist fervor the
y descended to singing the national anthem, right here and now, in the Chamber of the House of Commons, the one place in all the Kingdom to which the Monarch was denied entry. His eyes lit on The Beast and he smiled grimly. The Beast was, after all, a man true to himself. While others around him roared and waved and stirred themselves to heights of manufactured passion, The Beast sat there looking simply embarrassed. The cause was, to him, more important than victory. He wouldn’t cast it aside simply to grasp the opportunity of humiliating his opponent. Bloody idiot.

  They were such petty, unworthy specimens. They called themselves politicians, leaders, but none of them understood power. He would show them. And his mother. Show her that he was better than Alastair, had always been better, would always be better than them all. No doubts.

  As the first backbencher was called, Urquhart knew what he would say, regardless of the question. But they always asked such predictable questions. It would be the King. And Madam Speaker would object, but he would answer it anyway. Emphasize the principle of keeping the Monarch out of politics. Deprecate their ill-concealed attempt to drag him into partisan warfare. Insinuate that any damned fool could identify problems, the responsible looked for solutions. Encourage them to make as much noise as possible, even if it meant an afternoon of prime ministerial humiliation, to tie themselves as tightly as they could to the King so that they could never unravel the knots. Then, and only then, would it be time to push His Majesty off the mountain top.

  ***

  “Damn! Damn! Damn!!!” The expletives ricocheted off the walls as Stamper gave vent to his fury, for a moment drowning the television commentary.

  Sally and Urquhart were not alone. Stamper sat in one of the large leather armchairs of the Prime Minister’s study, agitatedly devouring the news report and his fingernails. For the first time since their relationship had started, she was being shared with someone else. Perhaps Urquhart wanted others to know; maybe she had become a status symbol, another prop for his virility and ego. Or maybe he had simply wanted an audience to witness another of his triumphs. If so, he must be sorely chagrined at the scenes unfolding in front of their eyes.

  “In an astonishing finale to the Royal tour this afternoon, the King’s press secretary, David Mycroft, announced his resignation,” the reporter intoned.

  “I am a homosexual.” The pictures of Mycroft were not particularly clear, there was too much backlighting coming from the windows of the coach, but they were good enough. Surrounded by seated colleagues, sharing news with them as he had done for many years, a player plucking at his audience. This was no fugitive with shifting eyes and sweaty brow, cornered, back to the wall. This was a man in control.

  “I had hoped that my private life would remain just that, and not interfere with my responsibilities to the King, but I can no longer be sure of this. So I am resigning.”

  “What was the King’s response?” a reporter was heard to challenge.

  “I don’t know. I haven’t told him. When last I asked to resign, he refused my resignation. As you all know, he is a man of the utmost compassion and understanding. But the task of the Monarch is more important than any one man, particularly a press aide, and so I have taken it upon myself to relieve him of any responsibility by announcing my resignation publicly, to you. I only hope that His Majesty will understand.”

  “But why on earth is being a homosexual a bar to your job?”

  Mycroft bent his face into an expression of wry amusement. “You ask me that question?” He laughed as if someone had made a modestly good joke. No animosity, no snarl of an animal at bay. God, it was a fine performance. “A press officer is meant to be a channel for news, not the target of it. Speculation about my private life would have made my professional duties impossible.”

  “Why have you hidden it all these years?” It was Rochester from the back of the bus.

  “Hidden it? I haven’t. My marriage broke up recently after many years. I was always faithful to my wife, and I am deeply grateful to her for the years of happiness we spent together. But with that breakup came a new understanding and possibly a final opportunity, to be the man that perhaps I always wanted to be. I have made that choice. I have no regrets.”

  With apparent utter frankness he had turned the attack. Anyway, most of the people here were old colleagues, friends, nothing could disguise the atmosphere of sympathy and goodwill. Mycroft had chosen his moment, and his interrogators, well.

  Urquhart turned off as the TV reporter continued the saga of the Royal aide, whom he described as “much respected and well liked,” against a background of footage from the just-completed tour.

  “Selfish bastard,” Stamper muttered.

  “I thought you wanted him out,” Sally interjected.

  “We wanted him hung, not walking into the sunset with the applause of the crowd ringing in his ears,” snapped Stamper. Sally suspected he was irritated by her presence in what had formerly been an all-male preserve.

  “Don’t fret, Tim,” Urquhart responded. “Our target was not Mycroft, but the King. And even as he surveys his realm from the mountain top, the ground beneath his feet is beginning to crumble. Almost time to give him a helping hand. In the small of the back, I think.”

  “But you only have a week before…Those images of the tour are killing you, Francis,” she said softly, marveling at his composure.

  He looked at her with narrowed, hard eyes, as if scolding her for lacking faith. “But there are images, dear Sally, and there are images.” A dark smile split his face but his eyes remained like rock. He crossed to his desk, extracting a small key from his wallet before slowly unlocking a top drawer. He extracted a large manila envelope and spilled its contents across the desk. Every action was meticulous, like a craftsman jeweler displaying his most precious stones. There were photographs, perhaps a dozen of them, all in color, which he sorted through to select two, holding them up so that Sally and Stamper could clearly see.

  “What do you think of them?”

  She was uncertain whether he meant the photographs or the pair of breasts they prominently displayed. The two photographs, as all the others, revealed the uninhibited charms of Princess Charlotte. The only variation on the central theme was the precise position of her body and the contortions of the young man with her.

  “Oh, I say,” breathed Stamper.

  “One of the more onerous burdens of being Prime Minister is that one is entrusted with a variety of secrets. Stories that are never told. Such as the tale of a young military equerry to the Princess who, fearing that his favored position at the side and on top of the Princess was in jeopardy, took out an insurance policy in the form of these photographs.”

  “Oh, I say,” Stamper said once more as he rifled through the other shots.

  “It was the equerry’s bad luck,” Urquhart continued, “that he should try to encash the policy with the wrong man, an investigative journalist who also happens to be a former operative for the security services. And so the photographs finished up in my drawer while the unfortunate lovesick boy has been told in no uncertain terms that his testicles will be ripped from his body should any copies find their way around Fleet Street.” He took back the photographs, which Stamper had been clinging to perhaps a moment too long. “Something tells me, Timothy, that I wouldn’t wish to be in his predicament in a few days’ time.”

  The two men laughed bawdily, but Urquhart noticed that Sally seemed not to be enjoying the moment.

  “Something bothering you, Sally?

  “It doesn’t feel right. It’s the King who is doing the damage to you, not Mycroft or the Princess.”

  “The limbs first…”

  “But she’s done nothing. She’s not involved.”

  “Bloody soon will be,” snorted Stamper.

  “Call it an occupational hazard,” Urquhart added. His smile was stretching more thinly.

  “I can’t h
elp thinking of her family. The effect on her children.” An edge of stubbornness was beginning to creep into her voice and her full, expressive lips pouted in defiance.

  His response was slow and stonily firm. “War breeds misery. There are many unfortunate victims.”

  “Her only sin, Francis, is to be saddled with a healthy sex drive and an inbred English wimp for a husband.”

  “Her sin is getting caught.”

  “Only because she’s a woman!”

  “Spare me the collective feminism,” Urquhart snapped in exasperation. “She’s spent a lifetime living off the fat served at the Royal table, and the time has come for her to pay the bill.”

  She was about to respond but she saw his eyes flare and pulled herself back. She wasn’t going to win this argument and, in pursuing it, she might lose much more. She told herself not to be so naive. Hadn’t she always known that a woman’s sex was no more than a tool, a weapon, which as often as not fell into the hands of men? She turned away, conceding.

  “Tim, make sure these get a good airing, will you? Just a couple for the moment. Leave the rest.”

  Stamper nodded and took the opportunity to bend over the desk and rifle once more through the photographs.

  “Now, Tim. There’s a good fellow.”

  Stamper’s head came up sharply, his eyes flickering as he looked first at Urquhart, then at Sally, then back to Urquhart. The ember of understanding began to glow in his eyes, and with it rivalry. She was muscling in on his relationship with the boss, and had an advantage not even Stamper with all his guile and gamescraft could match.

  “I’ll get right to it, Francis.” He gathered up two of the images and looked sharply at Sally. “Night, one and all.” Then he was gone.

  Neither of them spoke for some time. Urquhart tried to appear nonchalant, taking great care to adjust the razor-sharp creases of his trousers, but the softness of the words when eventually they came belied their menace.