The House of Cards Complete Trilogy

by Michael Dobbs

  He slithered to the top of the rock bowl, kept his head low, pointed the Sten gun over the edge and closed his eyes. Then he fired until the magazine was empty.

  George had never been aware of such a silence. It was a silence inside when, for a moment, the heart stops and the blood no longer pulses through the veins. No bird sang, suddenly no breeze, no whispering of the pines, no more sound of approaching footsteps. Nothing, until the corporal, voice a tone deeper, spoke.

  “My God. Now we’ll need the bloody officer.”

  The officer in question was Francis Ewan Urquhart. Second Lieutenant. Age twenty-two. Engaged on National Service following his university deferment, he personified the triumph of education over experience and, in the parlance of the officers’ mess, he was not having a good war. Indeed, in the few months he’d been stationed in Cyprus he’d barely had any war at all. He craved action, all too aware of his callow youth, desperate for the chance to prove himself, yet he had found only frustration. His commander had proved to be a man of chronic constipation, his caution denying the company any chance to show its colors. The EOKA terrorists had been bombing, butchering, and even burning alive so-called traitors, setting them in flames to run down the streets of their village as a sign to others, yet Urquhart’s company had broken more sweat digging latrines than hauling terrorists from their foxholes. But that was last week. This week the company commander was on leave, Urquhart was in charge, the tactics had been changed, and his men had walked four hours up the mountain that afternoon to avoid detection. And the surprise seemed to have worked.

  At the first crackle of gunfire a sense of opportunity had filled his veins. He had been waiting two miles down the valley in his Austin Champ and it took him less than fifteen minutes to arrive on the scene, covering the last few hundred yards on foot with a spring in his step.

  “Report, Corporal Ross.”

  The flies were already beginning to gather around the bloodied body of MacPherson.

  “Two boys and a donkey? You can’t be serious,” Urquhart demanded incredulously.

  “The bullet didnae seem to unnerstand it was being fired by a bairn, sir.”

  The two, Urquhart and Ross, were born to collide, one brought into the world in a Clydeside tenement and the other by Highland patriarchs. Ross had been burying comrades from the Normandy beaches while Urquhart was still having his tie adjusted by his nanny.

  A year earlier Urquhart had been the officious little subaltern who had busted Ross from sergeant back down to private after a month’s liquor allowance had disappeared from the officers’ mess at Tel-el-Kebir and Urquhart had been instructed to round up suitable suspects. Ross had only just been given back the second stripe, still making up the lost ground. And lost pay.

  Urquhart knew he had to watch his back, but for now he ignored the other’s insolence; he had a more important battle to fight.

  The children had stumbled into a remarkably effective natural redoubt. Some twenty feet across, the scraping in the mountainside was backed by a picket line of boulders that effectively denied a clear line of either sight or fire from above, while the ground ran gently away on the valley side, making it difficult to attack except by means of a frontal and uphill assault, a tactic that had already been shown to be mortally flawed. Clumps of bushes hugged the perimeter providing still further cover.

  “Suggestions, Corporal Ross?” Urquhart slapped the officer’s Browning at his belt.

  The corporal sucked a little finger as though trying to remove a splinter. “We could surrender straightaway, that’d be quickest. Or blow the wee bastards into eternity, if that’s what you want, Lieutenant. One grenade should do the job.”

  “We need them alive. Find out where they were headed with those arms.”

  “They’re weans. Be famished by breakfast time, come oot wavin’ a white flag an’ a fork.”

  “Now, we need them now, Corporal. By breakfast time it will be all too late.”

  They both understood the urgency. EOKA supply drops were made at specified times; any more than six hours overdue and the hide was evacuated. They needed shortcuts; it made early capture essential and interrogation techniques sometimes short on patience.

  “In life, Ross, timing is everything.”

  “In death an’ all,” the Clydesider responded, indicating MacPherson.

  “What the hell’s your problem, Corporal?”

  “To be honest, Mr. Urquhart, I dinnae hae much stomach for the killing of weans.” MacPherson had a son not much younger than the boys hiding in the rocks. “I’ll do it, if I huv tae. If ye order me. But I’ll tak nae joy fae it. You’re welcome tae any medal.”

  “I’ll remember to include your little homily when I write to MacPherson’s parents. I’m sure they’ll be touched.”

  The tangerine sun was chasing through the sky, splashing a glow of misleading warmth across the scene. Delay would bring darkness and failure for Urquhart and he was a young man as intolerant of failure in himself as he was in others. He took a Sten from the shoulder of one of his men and, planting his feet firmly in the forest floor, unleashed a fusillade of bullets against the amphitheater of boulders at the back of the bowl. A second magazine followed, dust and sparks spitting from the orange-blond rocks; the noise was awesome.

  “You boys,” he shouted. “You cannot escape. Come out, I promise no one will get hurt.”

  There was silence. He directed two other members of the section to empty their magazines against the rocks, and suddenly there was a youthful cry of pain. A spent bullet had ricocheted and caught one of the lads a glancing blow. No damage, but surprise and distress.

  “Can you speak English? Come out now, before anyone gets hurt.”

  Silence.

  “Damn them! Do they want to die?” Urquhart beat his palms with frustration. But Ross was on his knees, fiddling with a Mills grenade.

  “What on earth…?” Urquhart demanded, but could not avoid taking an involuntary pace backward.

  The corporal had bent the pin so that it could not fall out, then with meticulous care and using the stock of a Sten gun for torque he proceeded to unscrew the top of the grenade, lifting it away from the dull metal body complete with its detonator. The powdered explosive poured out easily into a little pile on the rocks beside his boot. He now reassembled the harmless bomb, and handed it to Urquhart.

  “If this doesnae scare those rabbits out of their hole, nothing will.”

  Urquhart nodded in understanding. “This is your last chance,” he shouted to the rocks. “Come out or we’ll use grenades.”

  “Elefthería i Thánatos!” came the reply.

  “The EOKA battle cry. Freedom or Death,” Ross explained.

  “They’re only children!” Urquhart snapped in exasperation.

  “Brave wee buggers.”

  Angrily Urquhart wrenched the pin from the grenade, letting the noise of the spring-loaded firing pin drift out across the rocks. Then he threw the grenade into the bowl.

  Less than two seconds later it came hurtling out again. The reaction was automatic, the instinct for self-preservation overriding. Urquhart threw himself to the ground, burying his head among the pine needles and cones, trying to count the seconds. There came a muffled pop from the detonator, but nothing more. No blast; no ripping metal or torn flesh. Eventually he looked up to find the figure of Ross towering above him, framed in menacing silhouette against the evening sky.

  “Let me help you tae yer feet, sir.” Derision filled every syllable.

  Urquhart waved away the proffered hand and scrambled up, meticulously thrashing the dust from his khaki uniform to hide his humiliation. He knew that every Jock in the section was mocking and by morning the tale would have filled all four corners of the officers’ mess. Ross had exacted his revenge.

  A rage grew within Urquhart. Not a blind rage that blurs judgment but a wrat
h that burned and whose light brought appalling clarity.

  “Fetch two jerricans of gas from the Champ,” he instructed.

  A soldier went scurrying.

  “What are you intending to do, Mr. Urquhart?” Ross asked, the triumph evaporated from his voice.

  “We need information or examples. Those terrorists can provide either.”

  Ross noted the change in the boys’ status. “Examples? Of what?”

  Urquhart met the other man’s gaze; he saw fear. He had regained the advantage. Then the jerricans arrived.

  “Corporal, I want you to get around behind them. Use the cover of those rocks. Then empty the gas into their hide.”

  “And then what?”

  “That will depend upon them.”

  “They’re nothin’ but bairns…”

  “Tell that to MacPherson. This is a war, not a tea party. So they can come out in one piece or with their tail feathers scorched. Their choice.”

  “You wouldna burn them out.”

  “I’ll give them far more chance than EOKA would.” They knew the bloody truth of that, had both seen the blackened carcasses, hands stretched out like claws in charred agony, fathers and sons often dragged out of church or from the desperate clutches of their families, burned, butchered. As examples. “And the message will get around, serve as a warning. Make it easier for us next time.”

  “But, sir…”

  Urquhart cut him short, handed him a jerrican. “We’ll give you covering fire.”

  Ross took one step back, shaking his head. “Ah’ll no’ burn them oot. I dinna fight that way. Against bairns.”

  There was an audible stirring of support from the section’s other members. Ross was able, experienced; some of the men owed their lives to that.

  “Corporal, I am giving you a direct order. To disobey is a court-martial offense.”

  “I hae lads of my own.”

  “And if you don’t follow my orders I’ll make sure you’re locked up so long they will be grown men by the time you next set eyes on them.”

  Agony had carved deep furrows across the corporal’s expression, but still he refused the jerrican. “Rather that, than never being able to look my boys in the eye again.”

  “This is not me ordering you, Ross, it’s your country.”

  “You do it then. If you hae the stomach fer it.”

  The challenge had been struck. Urquhart looked around the others, five men in all, saw they had sided with Ross. He knew he couldn’t court-martial the entire section; it would reduce him to a laughingstock. Ross was right; if it were to be done, he would have to do it himself.

  “Give me covering fire when I’m around behind them.” He eyed the corporal. “No, not you, Ross. You’re under arrest.”

  And he had gone. Ducking low, pacing rapidly through the trees, a can in each hand, until he was well behind the hide. He signaled and one then another of the troops opened up, sending barrages of sound across the scene. Quickly and as quietly as he was able, Urquhart edged up to one of the taller boulders, almost the height of a man, which stood directly behind where the boys were hiding. The cap was off one can; he stretched and spilled all four and a half gallons of stinking fuel down the rock face and into the bowl. The next four and a half gallons followed immediately. Then he retreated.

  “You have thirty seconds to come out before we fire the gas!”

  Within their rocky hide, George and Eurypides’s faces spoke of their dread. As fast as they tried to crawl away from the swamping fuel, they were forced to duck back beneath the blanket of ricocheting bullets. What was worse, the fuel had begun to make the elevations of the rocky bowl slippery, the nails on their boots finding little purchase on the smooth stone. The inevitable result in such a small place was that their clothes became soaked in foul-smelling gas. It made them retch.

  “Fifteen seconds!”

  “They won’t do it, little brother,” George tried to convince himself. “But if they do, you jump first.”

  “We mustn’t tell. Whatever happens, we mustn’t tell,” Eurypides choked.

  “Five!”

  It was longer than five. Considerably longer. Urquhart’s bluff had been called. There was no turning back. He had retained a rag half-soaked in gas; this he tied around a small rock so that the fuel-impregnated ends hung free. He brought out his cigarette lighter, snapped it into life, and touched the rag.

  Events moved rapidly from that point. The rag burst into flame, almost engulfing Urquhart’s hand, scorching the hair on his arm. He was forced to throw it immediately; it performed a high, smoky arc in the sky above the rocks before plunging down. Ross shouted. There was a crack. Hot vapor danced above the hide like a chimney from hell. Then a scream, a terrified, violent, boyish shriek of protest. Two heads appeared above the bowl, then the tops of two young bodies as they scrambled up the side. But as the soldiers watched the smaller one seemed to lose his footing, to slip, stumble, he disappeared. The older boy froze, looked back down into the ferment, cried his brother’s name and sprang back in.

  It was impossible to tell exactly what was happening in the bowl, but there were two sets of screams now, joined in a chorus of prolonged suffering, and death.

  “You miserable bastard,” Ross sobbed. “I’ll no’ watch them burn.” And already a grenade had left his hand and was sailing toward the inferno.

  The explosion blew out the life of the fire. And stopped the screaming.

  In the silence that followed, Urquhart was conscious that his hands were trembling. For the first time he had killed—in the national interest, with all the authority of the common weal, but he knew that many would not accept that as justification. Nothing was to be gained from this. Ross stood before him, struggling to compose himself, his fists clenched into great balls that might at any moment strike out. The other men were crowded around, sullen, sickened.

  “Corporal Ross, this was not what I had wanted,” he started slowly, “but they brought it on themselves. War requires its victims, better terrorists than more like MacPherson. Nor do I wish to see you ruined and locked away as a result of a court-martial. You have a long record of military service of which you can be proud.” The words were coming more easily now, his hands had stopped trembling and the men were listening. “I think it would be in everyone’s interests that this incident be forgotten. We want no more EOKA martyrs. And I don’t want your indiscipline to provide unnecessary work for the Military Provosts.” He cleared his throat, uncomfortable. “My Situation Report will reflect the fact that we encountered two unidentified and heavily armed terrorists. They were killed in a military engagement following the death of Private MacPherson. We shall bury the bodies in the forest, in secret, leave no trace. Deny the local villagers an excuse for retaliation. Unless, that is, you want a fuller report to be lodged, Corporal Ross?”

  Ross, the large, lumbering, caring soldier-father, recognized that such a full report might damage Urquhart but would in all certainty ruin him. That’s the way it was in the Army, pain was passed down the ranks. For Urquhart the Army was nothing more than a couple of years of National Service, for Ross it was his whole life. He wanted to scream, to protest that this had been nothing less than savagery; instead his shoulders sagged and his head fell in capitulation.

  While the men began to search for a burial site in the thin forest soil, Urquhart went to inspect the scene within the rocky bowl. He was grateful that there was surprisingly little obvious damage to the dark skin of their faces, but the sweet-sour stench of scorching and gas fumes made him desperately want to vomit. There was nothing of military value in their pockets, but around their necks on two thin chains hung crucifixes engraved with their names. He tore them off; no one should ever discover their identities.

  It was dusk when they drove back down the mountain with MacPherson’s body strapped in the back. Urquhart turned for one l
ast look at the battle scene. Suddenly in the gathering darkness he saw a light. An ember, a fragment of fire, had somehow survived and been fanned by the evening breeze, causing it to burst back into life. The young pine that stood in the middle of the bowl was ablaze, a beacon marking the site that could be seen for miles around.

  He never spoke of the incident on the mountain again but thereafter, at times of great personal crisis and decision in his life, whenever he closed his eyes and occasionally when he was asleep, the brilliant image and the memory of that day would return, part nightmare, part inspiration. The making of Francis Urquhart.

  One

  I prefer dogs to humans. Dogs are easier to train.

  The door of the stage manager’s box opened a fraction for Harry Grime to peer into the auditorium.

  “Hasn’t arrived, then,” he growled.

  Harry, a leading dresser at the Royal Shakespeare Company, didn’t like Francis Urquhart. Fact was, he loathed the man. Harry was blunt, Yorkshire, a raging queen going to seed who divided the universe into thems that were for him and thems that weren’t. And Urquhart, in Harry’s uncomplicated and unhumble opinion, weren’t.

  “Be buggered if that bastard’ll get back,” Harry had vouchsafed to the entire company last election night. Yet Urquhart had, and Harry was.

  Three years on, Harry had changed his hair color from vivid chestnut to a premature orange and shed his wardrobe of tight leather in preference for something that let him breathe and allowed his stomach to fall more naturally, but he had moved none of his political opinions. Now he awaited the arrival of the Prime Minister with the sensibilities of a Russian digging in before Stalingrad. Urquhart was coming, already he felt violated.

  “Sod off, Harry, get out from under my feet,” the stage manager snapped from his position alongside the cobweb of wires that connected the monitors and microphones with which he was supposed to control the production. “Go check that everyone’s got the right size codpiece or something.”