The House of Cards Complete Trilogy

by Michael Dobbs

  “Like Francis Urquhart.”

  “As a diplomat I couldn’t possibly comment.”

  Makepeace was in too serious a mood to catch the irony. “I’ve thought about it, Jean-Luc. Thinking about it still, to be precise. But did any of these friends of mine suggest to you how their…ambitions for me might be achieved? Or are these no more than slurpings through mouthfuls of Moët?”

  “My assessment is that this is not idle talk. There’s a desperate sense of longing for a change at the top. I’ve heard that not just within your party but from across the political spectrum.”

  “And from Paris, too, no doubt.”

  “Touché. But you can’t deny there’s a great moral vacuum in British politics. You could fill it. Many people would follow.”

  Makepeace began running his index finger tentatively around the rim of his crystal glass as though he were tracing the cycles of life. “For that I need a vehicle, a party. I might be able to grab at the wheel, force Urquhart off the road, but it would probably do so much damage that it’d take years to get it working again. The party’s scarcely likely to offer the keys to the man who caused the accident.”

  “Then create your own vehicle. One that’s faster and better built than Urquhart’s.”

  “No, that’s impossible,” Makepeace was responding, but they were interrupted by another guest, the Minister for Health who was seeking to bid farewell to his host. Felicitations and formal thanks were exchanged before the Minister turned to Makepeace.

  “I’ve got only one thing to say to you, Tom.” He paused, weighing both his words and the company. “For God’s sake keep it up.” With that he was gone.

  “You see, you have more friends than you realize,” the Ambassador encouraged.

  “In his case not a friend, merely a rat hedging his bets.”

  “Perhaps. But they are edgy, waiting to jump. The rats, too, believe the ship is sinking.”

  Makepeace was back with the rim of his glass, which was vibrating vigorously. “So often we seem to go around in empty circles, Jean-Luc. What’s necessary to make it more than noise, to get the whole universe to shatter?”

  “Action.”

  The Ambassador reached for the finely cut crystal, taking it from his guest’s hand and holding it aloft by the stem, turning it around until it had captured the rays of the afternoon sun and melted into a thousand pools of fire. Suddenly he appeared to fumble, his fingers parted and before Makepeace could shout or move to catch it the glass had tumbled to the lawn. It bounced gracefully and lay, undamaged, on the grass.

  Makepeace bent his knee to retrieve it, stretching gratefully. “That’s a stroke of…”

  In alarm he snatched his fingers back as, with the heel of his elegant handmade shoe, the Frenchman crushed the glass to pieces.

  ***

  The helicopter swept low along the black sand coastline of Khrysokhou Bay in the northwest of the island, past the tiny fishing villages they had known as boys. Those days of youth had been long, summers when the octopus had been plentiful, the girls had eager eyes and much to learn, and sailing boats had bobbed in the gentle swell beside clapboard jetties. Not so long ago the road back through the mountain had been little more than a rutted track; it had since turned into a swirling tar highway that bore on its back thousands of tourists and all their clutter. The fishing villages now throbbed to the beat of late-night discos, the price of fish had soared, so had the price of a smile. Progress. Yet the sailing boats were still moored inside ramshackle harbors, which collected more flotsam than jetfoils. Opportunities unfulfilled, yet Theophilos’s marina on the nearby cape would change all that. Once he’d got the British off his back.

  The helicopter banked. “Bishop’s Palace in five minutes,” the pilot’s metallic voice informed them through the headphones. Dimitri reached for the hand grip; he hated flying, regarding it as an offense to God’s law, and would only submit to such folly so long as God’s personal messenger were by his side. Trouble was that his brother traveled everywhere by helicopter, often flying the machine himself, which served only to exaggerate Dimitri’s congenitally twitchy disposition. He’d give his life for his brother but prayed it wouldn’t be necessary at this precise moment. He sat upright in his seat, relieved that the noise of the engine precluded conversation.

  Theophilos, by contrast, displayed an exceptional degree of animation. He’d been studying a newspaper, repeatedly stabbing his finger at it and thrusting it in Dimitri’s face. Dimitri was sure this was done deliberately in the knowledge that any activity other than rigid concentration on the horizon would induce in him an immediate and humiliating attack of sickness. In many ways they were still kids back on the rocks by the beach, playing, planning new and greater adventures, testing each other’s courage, bending the rules. Dimitri recalled the first day his brother had returned to the family house as a priest, clad in his robes, clutching his crucifix and bible, a dark apparition in the doorway surrounded by all the panoply of holy office. Dimitri, overawed and uncertain, had fallen immediately to his knees, head bowed in expectation of a blessing; instead Theophilos had raised a leg, placed his boot squarely upon his brother’s shoulder, and sent him spiraling backward to the ground. That night they’d got bladder-bursting drunk on homemade wine, just like old times. Nothing had changed. Theophilos was always the bright and ambitious brother, honed by a year at Harvard’s Business School, who would lead the family Firm. Dimitri was a man of linear mind, reconciled to following. Even in helicopters.

  They had landed on the helipad behind the palace and Dimitri, having cheated death once more, came back to the world of the moment. His brother was still absorbed in the newspaper, The People’s Voice, a leading Cypriot newspaper in London. This in itself was not unusual since the Firm had well-watered business contacts among the expatriate community and Theophilos took considerable care to ensure that his press coverage was high in both profile and praise, but this item was not about him. It appeared to be an extensive report concerning missing graves, many column inches, which the Bishop kept caressing with the tips of his fingers, yet his words were inaudible, sent spinning away in the wash from the rotors. As they clambered from the cabin instinctively they ducked low, Dimitri wanting to kiss the ground in relief while the Bishop struggled to secure the flowing kalimachi headpiece. He continued to cling to the newspaper.

  “What? What did you say?” Dimitri roared in his brother’s ear as the noise behind them began to subside.

  Theophilos stood to his full height, his holy garb adding further inches and authority. He was smiling broadly, the gold cap of his tooth much in evidence.

  “I said, little brother, that you should brace yourself. We’re about to catch a bad dose of bone fever.”

  Twenty-Two

  Westminster is the type of place that on occasion makes Chernobyl attractive as a holiday destination.

  The nudges aplenty applied to Makepeace and about which he had complained to de Carmoy had grown to outright body blows. Telephone calls, snatches of passing conversation, journalists asking The Really Serious Question, all seemed to conspire to push him in a direction he was reluctant to take.

  But why the reluctance? Not for lack of ambition, nor fear of the probable suicidal consequences of taking on the Urquhart machine. Surrounded by more self-professed friends than ever before, nevertheless he felt more isolated than at any time he could remember, almost adrift. He’d been shorn of his Ministerial support machine for the first time in a decade—its secretaries, advisers, tea makers, ten thousand pairs of hands, and most of all the daily decisions that made him feel so much part of a team. Even for a man so long in political life he had been mortified to discover that for all the new supporters he appeared to have gained, others he had counted as friends now turned the other way, found things with which to busy themselves whenever he appeared. Friendship within a divided party may be Honorable by the compul
sion of parliamentary etiquette, but it is far from Reliable.

  Then there was his marriage. It was empty and hollow but it had had form, a regularity that was comforting even if for so many months of the year it amounted to no more than a phone call a week. He hadn’t called for more than two, and she hadn’t inquired why.

  Exhilarating as he found such freedoms, they were also confusing and, when he was left alone to brood, almost frightening, like a climber reaching across a crevasse for his first mountain top. And behind him they kept pushing, pushing, pushing, Annita Burke in particular. She was sitting beside him in the rear of the car, Quentin Digby the lobbyist in front. Digby was going on about how the media adore fresh faces and a new story, and this would be the biggest and newest for years. Annita, her black eyes witchlike in the glow of the dashboard, sat stirring. “The logic is overwhelming,” she was saying. “The support is there. For you. I’ve talked to a posse of people in recent days. They’d follow you all the way, given half a chance.”

  “The chance of anonymity, you mean,” Makepeace responded acerbically. “Any support short of actual help for fear FU might find out what they’re up to.”

  “No, not a clandestine coup, no attempt to take over the sweetshop by stealth. It probably wouldn’t work and it’s not your way.”

  “Then what?”

  “A rival sweetshop. A new party.”

  God, this had all the echoes of his conversation with Jean-Luc. He remembered Annita’s display of interest at the garden party and began to wonder whether she had put de Carmoy up to it. She was a cynic and natural conspirator, perhaps too much so; how many of the other nudgers, winkers, and pushers had she organized, cajoled, perhaps persuaded to imply support just to get her off their backs?

  “You’d dominate the headlines for weeks. Build a momentum,” Digby was encouraging. “After all these years of Urquhart people want a change. So give it ’em.”

  “I’ve twelve former Cabinet Ministers telling me they would back you, and even one present member of the Cabinet,” Annita continued.

  So she was organizing. “Who?”

  “Cresswell.”

  “Ah, the soft white underbelly. A man whose only fixed opinions seem to center on puddings and port.”

  “But worth a week of headlines.”

  “Publicly?” Makepeace demanded. “He’d come out and say so publicly?”

  “Timing is everything.” Digby was at it again, leaving the question unresolved. “Once the first few are out of the trap, others will follow. Momentum is everything. It’s catching, like mumps.”

  “Safety in numbers,” Makepeace muttered, almost to himself. “It makes that first step so vital.”

  “Timing is everything,” Burke echoed, delighted that Makepeace’s observations appeared to be focusing on the definitive and practical. His mind was on the move, three parts there, just one last push…“You can go all the way, Tom, if we retain the initiative. We must start organizing now, but for God’s sake don’t reveal your hand too soon, until everything is ready. The trouble with you is that once you make your mind up about something you’re too impatient, too emotional. Too honest, if you like. It’s your biggest fault.”

  True enough. Exactly what Claire had told him. He could handle himself, but there were other problems. “To fight and win an election we need a machine, grass roots in the constituencies, not just a debating society in Westminster,” Makepeace reflected.

  “That’s why we need time.”

  “And timing.”

  The car had stopped outside Vangelis, where he had invited them to eat. And, it seemed, to plot. It sparked a memory of something Maria had said at their first meeting by the milk bottles. About a ready-made headquarters in every high street and overnight an army at his side.

  The ghost of a smile hung on his lips. The various strands of his life seemed to be drawing together, or at least entangling themselves. Urquhart. Ambition. Maria. Passion. All pushing him in the same direction. Suddenly there seemed to be no point any longer in reluctance or resistance, he’d better lie back and enjoy it. And as Maria had said only the previous night, his timing was usually immaculate.

  They disembarked from the car. “I guess about eleven o’clock, Mickey,” he told his driver. “Not earlier, I’m afraid. I’ve a feeling this dinner is going to be a long one.”

  Mickey tipped his cap. This new job was proving to be most stimulating. The pay was better than sitting around the corporate car pool; Makepeace was a kind and considerate passenger. And the gossip was a hell of a lot more entertaining than listening to businessmen wittering on about ungrateful clients and their wives’ muscle-minded tennis coaches.

  ***

  Others were being pushed and jostled. Hugh Martin was in his forties, once fleet of foot and a former rugger wing-forward who was more than accustomed to the elbows and abuse of a line-out. He hadn’t expected to find the same tactics used outside the Nicosia Cyprus Folk Art Museum. The museum, which lay among the labyrinths behind the city’s ancient fortified walls, was promoting its most recent exhibition, and invitations had been issued to the city’s erudite and elevated, the British High Commissioner among them. He had counted on a pleasant stroll around the stands with Mrs. Martin, greeting old friends and making some new, perhaps even finding something to inspire his wife, who had started a small collection of ceramics. Instead he found a group of almost twenty people gathered outside the hall distributing leaflets. He had no chance to discover what the leaflets said because as soon as they saw his official Rover draw up the group turned its full attention and considerable volume in his direction.

  His bodyguard, Drage, was out of the front seat first. “I’ll check it, sir.”

  But Martin was both curious and amused. If the capital’s demonstrations were anything like its plumbing, the noise would far exceed the efficiency. Anyway, this was Nicosia, courteous, civil, archetypically Cypriot, not Tehran or bloody Damascus. So he followed. It was a move he would soon regret.

  “British murderers,” one old crone hissed through purple gums, propelled to the fore by younger hands behind her. A banner appeared, something about graves and war crimes, and as the protesters gathered around someone behind her shoulder spat. It missed, but the swinging fist didn’t. It came from too far back to inflict any real damage but the surprise caused him to gasp. Drage was at his side now, pushing and shouting for him to retreat to the car, but in turn they were being pushed back by far greater numbers and the High Commissioner, still disorientated and clutching his stomach, stumbled. Drage caught him, lifted him up and tried to move him toward the car. Martin thought the blow must have done him more harm than he had realized for he was seeing lights; to his dismay he discovered they were the lights not of mild concussion but of a television crew. Every part of the demonstration—every part, that is, which occurred after the landing of the blow—was being caught on video. The anger of aged mothers. Waving banners demanding an end to British colonial cover-up. Ban the Bases. The stumbling retreat of a High Commissioner, carried like a child in the arms of his bodyguard, fleeing into the night from the wrath of old women. The first spark of Cypriot defiance. Such an unhappy coincidence that the news crew should have found itself in the right spot at precisely the wrong time. Bone fever had broken out.

  Twenty-Three

  To offer compromise is like suggesting to a shark that he lick you first.

  “The tea room’s infested.”

  “Mice again? I understand Deirdre all but jumped out of the window into the Thames last week when she found two of the little brutes staring up at her. They’re rampant behind the paneling. Time to bring back the cat, d’you suppose?”

  “Not mice. Rumor.” Booza-Pitt was exasperated with his leader’s apparent flippancy. “Tom’s up to something, but no one seems to know precisely what.”

  In the background the squealing serenade of children at
play came from around the pool area where a dozen of them, all offspring of senior Ministers, were indulging in the rare delights of a summer Sunday at Chequers. Out on the sweeping lawn the Environment Secretary was running through a few golf shots as a policeman in blue sleeves and bulky flak jacket passed by on patrol cradling a Heckler & Koch semiautomatic; on the patio, in the shade of the lovely Elizabethan manor with its weathered and moss-covered red brick, an air force steward served drinks. The atmosphere was relaxed, lunch would be served shortly, and Urquhart seemed determined not to be pushed. This was his official retreat; he’d handle matters in his own way.

  “A leadership challenge in the autumn,” the wretched Booza-Pitt was persisting, trying so hard to impress that his eyebrows knitted in concern like a character out of Dostoyevsky.

  “No. Not that. He’d lose and he knows it.” Claire sipped a mint julep—the bar steward had recently returned from a holiday in New Orleans—and subsided. She was leading the Home Secretary on; Urquhart knew and was amused by it, only Geoffrey was too blind to realize. For him, the conversation had already become a competition for Urquhart’s ear.

  “Even so, he might. Out of spite. Inflict a little damage before he fades into the shadows.”

  “No. He has other ideas.” She subsided again.

  Urquhart was himself by now intrigued. She had an air of such confidence, and a voice that brushed like fresh paint on canvas, but he couldn’t yet see the picture.

  “Like what?” Geoffrey threw down a challenge.

  Claire looked to Urquhart; she’d intended to keep this for a more private moment but he was of a mind that she should continue. A golf ball clattered around their feet, followed by a belated cry of warning from the lawn; evidently the Environment Secretary was in considerable need of his practice. Urquhart rose from the wooden garden seat and began to lead them around the pathways of the garden, out of earshot and driving range of others.